July 22, 2004
American

Quotes below are excerpts from Bill Moyers address to the 2004 Conference of Inequality Matters. 

Please, read the whole speech.

Let me make something clear here. I wasn't born yesterday. I'm old enough to know that the tension between haves and have-nots are built into human psychology, it is a constant in human history, and it has been a factor in every society. But I also know America was going to be different. I know that because I read Mr. Jefferson's writings, Mr. Lincoln's speeches and other documents in the growing American creed. I presumptuously disagreed with Thomas Jefferson about human equality being self-evident. Where I lived, neither talent, nor opportunity, nor outcomes were equal. Life is rarely fair and never equal.
—Moyers, June 3, 2004
Let's face the reality: If ripping off the public trust; if distributing tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the poor; if driving the country into deficits deliberately to starve social benefits; if requiring states to balance their budgets on the backs of the poor; if squeezing the wages of workers until the labor force resembles a nation of serfs -- if this isn't class war, what is?

It's un-American. It's unpatriotic. And it's wrong.

—Moyers, June 3, 2004

...And it's too late.  The dream was comely and elegant.  It even achieved some reality in parts and places.  But today, in America, it is American to be un-American, it is patriotic to be unpatriotic, and it is right to be wrong. 

I don't believe that any of our battles (i.e.; the fight to reveal the scandolous underfunding by Republicans of the no child left behind initiatives) are battles 'at the front' so to speak, as if there were any real American territory to defend anymore. We are a nation completely overrun by an occupying force alien to the Jeffersonian concepts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  We are oppressed by a force which opposes all things truly American; equality, liberty, freedom, and justice for all.  We still think of ourselves as American, even though under this regime, little remains of what made our nation, historically, so special.

So, I have to say, in despair to my self, "Why go to New York and protest at the RNC?"  As a member of a generation remarkable for its apathy toward, and its failed husbandry of, the commonweal, I have to wonder, "Do I really care?"

It was great growing up in Massachusetts as a Kennedy-an in the 1960's, and feeling that politicians were noble for answering the call to public service.  It was great believing then, even if they were crooks, that they were humane crooks who took care of the People's needs.  Today, power is weilded by inhumane politicians, crooks among whom no honor can be found.

We have been unconscious, and now, responding to bitter economic hardships and visciously inflicted state invasions encroaching on our civil liberties, we wake and say, "There will be none of that!"  "Ha!" I can hear our opressors laugh.  They say, "What do you mean? 'There will be none of that.'  There has been lots of that for decades now, and you have not raised so much as a finger of resistance."

Wake up, my pretty little American boy.  You've been getting screwed both thick and long, while you slept in sweet oblivion.  Now wake, and either face the truth and pain that you are a prison whore, or slip away back to your dreams of an America that is no more.

Posted at 04:05 AM | Comments (0)
July 21, 2004
trash
Boston police ordered the city to remove trash barrels until Aug. 1 from 30 downtown streets, including some in the Back Bay, the North End, and the Theater District.
—from The Boston Globe, July 20, 2004

...resulting in a flood of trash spilling from the open frames which hold the trash barrels.

We can see who the stasi want for president, and it is not the hometown boy.  (Boston Globe article.) 

Tons of garbage and trash—even enough to bury the gleaming dome of the State House, and all of Beacon Hill as well, including Kerry's house—will never stink to high heaven like what the Bush-Republicans have already done.

The Republican National Committee has, for the first time in their 150 year history, selected New York for their Convention from August 29-September 2, 2004.  In a shallow attempt at exploiting the lives lost at the World Trade Center, the RNC has pushed the Convention date to September.  We have witnessed two unjust wars, at least one American life lost each day overseas, a depressed economy, the collapse of the dollar, $87 billion to boost war profiteering, the closing of our firehouses, a health-care crisis, millions of children being left behind, and now this.  We say, Enough!
—from the rncnotwelcome.org site.
Posted at 12:39 AM | Comments (0)
July 09, 2004
despondancy

With a huge effort, the Bush administration was able to create a deadlock over the Patriots Act.  A deadlock.  What a resounding indictment of democracy as we now know it.  I live in the despondancy of the United States of America.

"We're more interested in catching terrorists who are trying to kill Americans than we are in leaving the Capitol in time for happy hour," said Stuart Roy, a spokesman for the majority leader, Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas.

Asshole.  And it was the republicans who made happy hour a tax-deductible business expense for PACs.  How dare he impugn the integrity of true patriots in the name of a lie--the Patriots Act? 

Posted at 03:01 PM | Comments (0)