The results of being a Liberal - a response

Clearly you are confused about the "idea" of liberal. The point of being a liberal, or progressive, is that you are prepared with an open mind to listen to a variety of opinions, and assess the available facts and then come to a reasoned conclusion.

The very idea on a "cult" is an anathema to the philosophy or world view of the truly liberal. [liberals were accused of cult-like behavior.]

I offer this in contrast with those who let FAUX NEWS [the propaganda organ of the PLUTOCRACY] do their thinking for them. I draw you attention to the followers who speak of themselves as the "DITTO-HEADS" who let Mr. Limbaugh do their thinking for them.

You earlier about what alternative did America have to an invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq. You neglected to really "think" about what ostensibly necessitated the invasion. Maybe you would point to the attack on the Building in New York. [Including no doubt the building the fell "in sympathy] with the near by destruction.

Assuming you accept the "approved" version sanctified by the Bush Administration. Wasn't it Saudi's and Saudi money - and of course with the addition money funneled by our "allies" in Pakistan's ISI.

Was it necessary to invade, and occupy Iraq, Afghanistan, to fend off a couple thousand tribesman?  I and many others think not. 

I recommend you read the essay by Marine General Smedley who fought in both the Mexican American War and World War I. You remember that one, it was the one, to end all Wars. Or at least that was the slogan.

I'm sure your open-minded enough to do a little historic reading. As the saying goes, those that don't know history, are bound to repeat it.

A Progressive in favor of Human Rights and Opposed to War!

O... is for OCCUPATION!

 The day, Obama joined; OCCUPY WALL STREET

He told the Secret Service to get the chopper ready, he was headed to a meeting at Goldman Sachs. So they warmed up Marine One and a few minutes later with his usual retinue of handlers advisors and a few staffers, he crossed the lawn and climbed into the copter seconds later and headed off east nor east.

They landed about an hour later on the roof top helo pad atop the GLASSINE TOWER that obscures the corruption at Goldman Sachs. The president was all grins, as he tucked his briefcase under his arm and walked briskly across the roof to the elevator that would take him to his place beside the seat of power.

Far below in the streets thousands had joined the Occupiers that had now, begun the 30th day of the encirclement of the Goldman Sachs building. The occupiers had taken up positions circling the buildings non-stop while the police who have not allowed any sitting or standing on or around the building permitted them to parade around the building provided they didn't blockade the entrances. The police union had promised the occupiers, they would defend their constitutional rights to assemble and protest. Provided they agreed not to blockade any entrances. This truce had stood for two weeks. The circling crowd, never counted less than several thousand.

Not long after Marine One had disgorged its passengers, the crowd surged around the entrance. A galvanic impulse seemed to energize the crowd. A clot of secret service had appeared at the main entrance to the building. The crowd surged forward and then lurched back as the corporate security  team pressed outward against the shifting and slowly circling occupiers.

"Stand Down", the secret service, waved the security guards off,  they were rumored to be a wet team from Xe, each one an example of beefy steroid excess reeking of mercenary bloodlust. The had stood silent guard at every entrance heavily armed bristling with automatic weapons and more.

Seconds later the lanky figure of a black man exited the building surrounded by the secret service contingent that quickly formed the flying wedge that would provide the normal phalanx of protection for a head of state in a public arena. Those closest to the entrance turned to see what would happen next. Instant consensus was that the president would shake a few hands, maybe exchange a few comments and move on, the press hadn't even arrive yet. After all, hadn't Nixon chatted with Anti-War protestors?

The president walked right into the crowd which parted, both in deference to the wedge of secret services  and partially out of civic respect. It was only a few of the curious with cameras perched high overhead and a few souls in close proximity who actually gathered what in fact, was happening. The president strode right into the crowd, with secret service in tow and headed right down the street toward the park that had become the epicenter of the occupation. 

The president stopped briefly at the park edge and spoke to a pair of colorfully coiffed teenage girls. He then turned to some of the media activists and after a few brief exchanges was seen nodding and smiling. He continued wading further into the park. He walked among the seated people pausing here and there, the secret service team twitchingly alert. But eventually one of the occupiers, offered the president some salad and a cushion to rest on, and the crowd shifted to accommodate the newcomers. Some moved closer to catch the exchanges between those near enough to toss a question and retrieve an answer from this adventurous politician.

Some of the secret service hunkered down, after a bit and settled in for what seemed to be an extended stay. A camera crew and producer from Democracy Now, made their way through the crowd, and with battery powered lights opposed the dimming sunset, and the president conducted a brief press conference, from the heart of occupied Liberty Square.

One by one, the commercial media crews found their way most for the first time to Liberty Square. They set up their cameras, and equipment and took up positions ringing the president. He sat, holding court while a couple toddlers, alternative dove in his lap, or raced their toy fire engines over his head.  Ringed by cameras he held forth on the importance of the Liberty Park occupation sitting on a cushion next to a young family who had offered him a bowl of their family salad dinner. Their child had grown comfortable with the president and had begun, occasionally to climb on him, as children will on a person who is the center of attention. While the young mother had twice, tried to pull back when he ran his firetruck over the presidents head, Barack had smiled and gave the toddler a thorough tickling while an uncomfortable Dan Rather balanced uncertainly against a tree.

The press eventually tired of the president's "TIME FOR JOBS" theme and as the lights were shut off Barack  began talking with the occupiers.  Every few minutes for the first couple of hours, the secret service would lean in and ask, was he about ready to go? Clearly the president had no, interest in leaving anytime soon.

It began to drizzle and across the crowded square tarps and plastic sheeting appeared to envelope the activist village. Somebody passed the president a poncho and the secret service team scrambled to locate umbrellas, but the president waved them off.  Down the street, bright lights appeared and began slowly to work their way toward the park. The secret service lead man, leaned down several times and exchanged information with the president. A large smile played across the president's face. 

Eventually the bobbing lights approached the edge of the park nearest the president. The crowd parted and the lights approached more rapidly. Soon, it was clear who was joining the occupiers at Liberty Square. The president's daughters appeared in a gap in the crowd, trailed by the stately Michelle. Daddy, DADDY - we've come to spend the night.  Michelle was carrying sleeping bags, and an aide held a child's colorful tent rolled up. 

Daddy Daddy, we've come to be with you and THE PEOPLE!

We will not go gently back to the feudal servitude

Vicki''s Essay

My support and endorsement as always

No thought is given to the farmer in need of irrigation in Iraq, the US was busy paying to have novels translated into Iraqi. We also built fake factories. Oh how we helped bring civilization to the "Fertile Crescent". (Look it Up)

The chorus of WAR-MERCHANTS drones on about security, security, terror, terror. I guess they mean, take your shoes off we'll be scanning you naked. 

We will pay the WAR-MERCHANTS for their GOLD-PLATED high explosive diplomacy, their fragmentary bombs of diplomacy, their cluster bombs of International Relations, their UNSPENT NUCLEAR WARHEADS of nation building. What a gift, so much more... DRAMATIC than the PEACE CORPS.

Then we'll pay them (The War Merchants) to hire a subcontractor who is little more than a "cut-out" commercial slave-owners to pretend to refill  the craters and rewire the broken buildings and then throw up a Potemkin Village of a "chinese" plasterboard  to replace the real city of concrete and masonry. No money for that bridge in Florida, Kentucky, New York, Ohio...

Americans must stand idle, divided into ever smaller and smaller interest groups, each co-opted by hidden paymasters.  Coerced into opposing their own interests they ride the manufactured buses of dissent and hold the NON-UNION printed signs waving their weapons at their fellow inmates. The schools, and the libraries, are not for the poor alone. Clean air, and clean water are in fact affordable, the planet is not disposable, in fact POLLUTION IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE SAUCE of all.

We must lead the reactionaries forces toward a more humane governance. Something more akin to what the founders bequeathed us. A nation of the people (NOT-CORPORATIONS) and not conducted in secret by a tyrannical government obscured by lies from those who must control and guide it.                                                                                                       

Openness not secrecy is the cure.

 

The national security state can only exist only for it's own perpetuation.

OPPOSE THE WAR on Afghanistan, on Iraq, on Yemen, Somalia, and the most important war of all the WAR on Working Americans. We will not go gently back to the feudal servitude. LAWS are equally for all the people - the corporations, the ruling elite of Wall Street, and the international outlaws of Crawford Texas, are not too big to JAIL!

solidarity & peace

Rick@AveryVoice.com

Pssst NPR over here Occupy Wall Street is news - even if Ashston Kuche' isn't involved

In the long lurch rightward that has reduced NPR to republican framing and talking points has long saddened this reporter. I watched our old NPR, once a stalwart of old time journalism trimming and trimming it's sails until we get 5 interviews from the Heritage and Hoover economic school, and no alternative analysis.

So you can imagine how bad local and regional news is, that I and many other still depend on the gelded NPR for our national and international news. [as well as BBC, France 24, RTV, New India Times,Al Ghezira and others]
Why did it take more than a week to even notice the Wall Street occupation? There is no excuse despite this "explanation" from Dick Meyer of NPR:

RSN reports We asked the (NPR) newsroom to explain their editorial decision. Executive editor for news Dick Meyer came back: "The recent protests on Wall Street did not involve large numbers of people, prominent people, a great disruption or an especially clear objective."

Hundred protesting peacefully for over a week, protesting WALL STREET ABUSES, MORTGAGE GOUGING, FAILURE OF THE REGULATORS TO PROSECUTE WALL STREET CRIMINALS?
Nobody on the cute list? No Billionaires? NO NEWS HERE? Really NPR? PEPPER SPRAYING PEACEFUL PROTESTORS? No Clear Objective?

"Where else are you going to go?" No not me!

I will not support GOP-lite. I will not support a candidate or a party that will use "progressive" talking points as a means to insure that a corporatist wolf, can  be elected with a real mandate to establish universal single payer, restore the rule of law, and put an end to lawless oligarchy and plutocracy in the land of Jefferson, Adams and Franklin.

A constitutional scholar who only looks forward when it comes to bankers and oil men but remembers to persecute (not prosecute) whistleblowers is not a democrat to my taste. Who stands not on the UNION PICKET LINE as he promised but on the green with CAPTAINS OF GOLD-PLATED SACHS on the lawns of the RULING CAST. 

Mistake me not for some inattentive would be LIBERTARIAN, interested only in Ron Pauls words about War and failing to studies his incomplete understanding of the purpose that was so poetically described by "a more perfect union". Lulled into somnambulism, with independence rhetoric in a world where we are connected to the abandoned baby and the tossed away factory worker.

I neither count myself among the jaded who suggest that the hysterical bloodlust of another BUSHITE MEGLOMANIACAL THEOCRAT would serve the country right [having long ago shed it's moral compass in a headlong rush to a new imperium ] or scare it straight back to "little" d democracy. And I all to well appreciate that the possible damage to the nation and its infrastructure both humane and natural might well see the light of both liberty and science extinguished in a new dark ages by any of the several faux theocrats proffered by the GRAND OLD PARTY at present.

I answer to a higher authority than fear, I serve posterity and the light and life of my true brothers and sisters the life artists some refer to as hippies or free spirits or bohemians. Progressives have been assaulted and betrayed enough by the corporatists currently hiding under the rubric of the Democratic Party. I would sooner spit in my grandchild's eye than offer my sacred ballot to such sinister life denying toadies as habit the White House at present.  Wink at torturers, smile at mercenaries and prosecute wars on the innocent with mercenaries uncounted.  I fear not their insults and their armies the tools of spying, police and security apparatus concern me not. When these tools of fools meet honesty they shrink apologetically and TRUTH STAYS UNSULLIED.

Don't tell me the damage to the house of Democracy was damaged by those who opposed the poisoning of the Gulf. Who stood stalwart against the lies of PIPELINES, the victimization of returned and damaged soldiers. My vote does not belong to the purveyors of Corporatist Lies.

Progressives did not destroy Obama's good name, the GHOULS OF GOLDMAN SACHS and their enablers at CITIBANK and Haliburton, at BP and EXXON merely tore the lambskin off the wolf.

LOOK OBAMA's Got No CLOTHES On!   - The Truth is HANGIN OUT!

FRAGGING, DEFRAGGING and Moore

Memo to OBAMA KoolAid Crewe

So guess who's a "warrior for the middle class" now, that it's campaign time?

The friend of Wall Street, the protector of the Cheney gang, that Credit Company enabler  the  O-man himself! - How do we know - He told us so, standing at the foot of one of this great nation's crumbling infrastructure. Grandstanding at the base of a bridge from one ANTI-Worker Republican "McConnel" district to another RULING CLASS WARRIOR Republican Boehner's district. Ask the UNION BUSTER Govenor's how much grief they took, from when President Community Organizer stood in the snow in February with all those Union Activists. [OOPS - He wasn't there]

Responding to another ANTI-PROGRESSIVE ATTACK by another Obamanaut

I think you over simplify tremendously when you right the left, the vocal left, the "professional" and amateur left, the honorable and religious left, hate OBAMA. We dislike capitulation in the face of opposition. We disagree with policies that promise healthcare for all, and then before the negotiations begin a strategy that gives up first principles, that grovels before big pharma. That refuses to prosecute WALL STREET and Bankers but indicts more whistle blowers than any other administration. We disapprove of policies that put a Bradley Manning in solitary for a year before even beginning the hearings, but gives International War Criminals and torturers like BUSH, CHENEY, RUMSFELD, YOO and others a big friendly smile and wave.

You suggest what all of us that worked to elect the Chameleon President who ran as a progressive and only later revealed his presidential model "Ronnie Rayguns" hate the president. Hate him?  that most of us, worked hard for, and voted for and cried in celebration of his election! You are mistaken, my friend mistaken. We don't hate him, we just disagree with his administrations policies. 

When the REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS in lockstep tore up contracts with Unions... where was the Community Activist President... like his predecessor... He was AWOL! - That's not HATE, that's disappointment, maybe the moderates... will pound the pavement for him, or maybe all those lobbyists whose calls he takes... Maybe they'll walk the precincts.

RESPONDING TO ONE MORE.... don't pick on Obama

While I remain "excited" by the republican (oops) T-Party Operatives, who lead the charge against the middle class. I must explain.

I think you over simplify tremendously when you suggest that the left, the vocal left, the "professional" and amateur left, or even the well meaning but honorable or even the religious left, hate OBAMA. It's not about hate, or like or love or even disappointment. 

We or I if you will dislike capitulation at the first hint of opposition. Or surrender as an opening gambit. We disagree with the kind of politics that promises healthcare for all, and then before the negotiations begin a strategy that gives up first principles, and then follows out with a groveling give away to big pharma. Where an administration refuses to prosecute WALL STREET or Bankers but indicts more whistle blowers than any other administration. We disapprove of policies that put a Bradley Manning in solitary for a year before even beginning the hearings, but gives International War Criminals and torturers like BUSH, CHENEY, RUMSFELD, YOO and others a big friendly smile and wave.

Hate of a president that most of us, worked hard for, and voted for and cried in celebration of his election you are mistaken. We disagree with his and his administrations policies. When the REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS in lockstep tore up contracts with Unions... where was the Community Activist President... like his predecessor... He was AWOL! - That's not HATE, that's disappointment, maybe the moderates... will pound the pavement for him, or maybe all those lobbyists whose calls he takes... Maybe they'll walk the precincts.