Posts filed under ‘Politics’
Criminal Behavior
I don’t know where this came from (someone forwarded it to me) but it’s brilliant!
10. Alberto Gonzales
Crimes: The most truckling, amoral flunky to ever serve as Attorney General. A jurisprudent organelle, he manifests no concept of the law independent of its expediency to the president. Would smilingly accuse himself of providing material support to al Qaeda at President Bush’s request, hurriedly plead guilty, sign his own death warrant and flip the switch himself. His testimony before congressional committees is to public service what cholera is to the small intestine. As first Hispanic Attorney General, Gonzo typifies the self-betrayal and ethical compromise necessary for minorities to become successful Republicans. Been felching sweet approval from Bush’s lily-white ass since Texas. A conscienceless, memo-drafting, loophole-crafting liar for hire, pushing for all the worst administration policies, including nixing habeas corpus, denying and then defending rendition, torture, political firings, and a ton of other evil stuff. He even visited a seriously ill and disoriented John Ashcroft at the hospital, attempting to coax him into reauthorizing a clearly illegal wiretapping program. The only Attorney General who ever could have made John Ashcroft a sympathetic character by contrast.
Exhibit A: “The fact that the Constitution — again, there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There is a prohibition against taking it away.”
Sentence: Death by dull guillotine, head bent by Beckham.
9. You
Charges: You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism — it’s nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over. You still think Republicans favor limited government. Your knowledge of politics and government are dwarfed by your concern for Britney Spears’ children. You think buying Chinese goods stimulates our economy. You think you’re going to get universal health care. You tolerate the phrase “enhanced interrogation techniques.” You think the government is actually trying to improve education. You think watching CNN makes you smarter. You think two parties is enough. You can’t spell. You think $9 trillion in debt is manageable. You believe in an afterlife for the sole reason that you don’t want to die. You think lowering taxes raises revenue. You think the economy’s doing well. You’re an idiot.
Exhibit A: You couldn’t get enough Anna Nicole Smith coverage.
Sentence: A gradual decline into abject poverty as you continue to vote against your own self-interest. Death by an easily treated disorder that your health insurance doesn’t cover. You deserve it, chump.
8. Michael Chertoff
Charges: Looks and acts like a man who sleeps in a coffin. As the head, or should we say skull, of our latest redundant security bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security, Chertoff used 2007 to further Rumsfeld’s purportedly defunct policy of “Total Information Awareness,” ordering U.S. military satellites be trained on American soil for first time in history. Beyond that, DHS seems to function as a corruption farm, spending billions on programs that either don’t work or are never implemented, often lobbied for by former DHS employees. If the terror threat really is as dire as Chertoff says, then he is criminally negligent.
Exhibit A: Habitually references his “gut feeling” that the next terror attack is imminent.
Sentence: Gut feeling is actually stomach cancer.
7. Erik Prince
Charges: Priming Baghdad’s streets for American imperialism by making them pristinely wog-free. Prince’s Iraq is one massive free-fire zone for his bullet-sweating mercenaries, a Hogan’s Alley in which everyone dusky is blithely expendable, rape is a mischievous dalliance, and accountability an inside joke. Remarkably, enabling the US occupation and simultaneously fomenting destabilizing enmity. Bringing the privatization of warfare to full fruition — next time, Exxon can just invade a country directly.
Exhibit A: Blackwater Vice Chairman Cofer Black is Mitt Romney’s campaign counterterrorism policy adviser. The company’s website also hawks infant onesies.
Sentence: Tanned and tethered outside Baghdad’s Green Zone after curfew. Whatever happens, happens.
6. Rudy Giuliani
Charges: 9/11 Tourette’s syndrome, compounded by compulsive lying. Despite the ’93 WTC bombing, didn’t act to put all first responders on the same radio frequency and chose to house his Emergency Command Center on the 23rd floor of WTC 7. Giuliani Partners consulting firm routinely did business with a Qatar ministry run by royal Abdallah bin Khalid al-Thani, a man whose farm has seen guests the likes of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Osama bin Laden. Wooed mistress and future wife with an NYPD chauffeur and trips to Southampton on NYC taxpayers’ dime. Ruined the prospect of a Times Square tug-job.
Exhibit A: Stages phone calls from his wife during campaign stops-to show ’em he’s got family values. Family values apparently do not include rudimentary put-it-on-vibrate cell phone etiquette. Invoked 9/11 to explain this.
Sentence: Victim of the next 9/11, which consists of two radio-controlled hobby planes smashing into his face.
5. Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid
Charges: Graduates of the Neville Chamberlain school of appeasement, the Democratic leadership continues to ignore the constitution-and the American people-by keeping impeachment “off the table” and refusing to defund the war. True pushovers, they’re too stupid, cowardly, weak and outmatched politically to accomplish anything substantive, their “strategy” essentially boiling down to whining a lot while handing Bush whatever the hell he wants. There is just no way that appearing this weak and ineffectual could be any better for them politically than impeachment. Everything that the White House gets away with, it gets away with because congress allows it.
Exhibit A: Failure to woo the two thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto is moot: They could defund the war with a 41-senator budgetary filibuster. But that would take guts and conviction.
Sentence: 2 cups anthrax bisque.
4. Seung-Hui Cho
Charges: A useless fucking nerd who shot a bunch of better people because he couldn’t get laid. Take note, all you pent-up losers out there: If you think you’re about to go on a murderous rampage, either take up a drug habit, find a hooker, or just kill yourself. Your inability to cope with a comfortable life in a developed nation is nobody else’s fault, except maybe your parents. Nothing says “I have a tiny penis” like a douchebag taking pictures of himself with a gun.
Exhibit A: Cho’s infamous “disturbing” stories are only disturbing in how completely terrible they are, but now every kid with an imagination is going to be hauled off to the nuthouse if he expresses himself.
Sentence: Used as kindling at bonfire kegger for rich, popular kids.
3. Fred Phelps
Charges: Leads a picketing campaign so hyperoffensive that his Church is unanimously reviled by queers and Bible thumping homophobes alike. Along with daughter Shirley, will drag hate into the public spotlight wherever it might seem least helpful or appropriate as long as it garners his “cause” attention. Harasses widows of heterosexual soldiers at funerals because their beloved were employed by a government that does not stone fags. Torments loved ones of those murdered in anti-gay violence. Is almost definitely gay himself.
Exhibit A: He is such an effective, soul-sucking brainwasher that Fred’s granddaughter declines relationships because of her delusion that world will end in her lifetime.
Sentence: Finally comes out of closet and is immediately killed by his followers.
2. Dick Cheney
Charges: Worst president ever. So openly horrible, he now makes jokes about being Darth Vader. Unashamedly advocating for executive abuse of power and corporate theft. In and out of public office since his congressional internship during the Nixon Administration. Didn’t care about the quagmire he foresaw in ’94, because since then he’d deftly maneuvered to profit from it. Polling lower than HPV.
Exhibit A: His Halliburton stock options rose 3000% in value from 2004-2005. No joke.
Punishment: Raped by the sun.
1. George W. Bush
Charges: Is it a civil rights milestone to have a retarded president? Maybe it would be, if he were ever legitimately elected. You can practically hear the whole nation holding its breath, hoping this guy will just fucking leave come January ’09 and not declare martial law. Only supporters left are the ones who would worship a fucking turnip if it promised to kill foreigners. Is so clearly not in charge of his own White House that his feeble attempts to define himself as “decider” or “commander guy” are the equivalent of a five-year-old kid sitting on his dad’s Harley and saying “vroom vroom!” Has lost so many disgusted staffers that all he’s left with are the kids from Jesus Camp. The first president who is so visibly stupid he can say “I didn’t know what was in the National Intelligence Estimate until last week” and sound plausible. Inarguably a major criminal and a much greater threat to the future of America than any Muslim terrorist.
Exhibit A: “And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I’m sorry it’s the case, and I’ll work hard to try to elevate it.”
Sentence: Dismembered, limbs donated to injured veterans.
Battle over religion in the public square: Round 2?
A local pastor decided to use my letter to the Star as a springboard for his comments – Some try to limit our personal faith to a private world. My reply:
I think Pastor Barry misunderstood my point. I stated in my letter, “The issue is not about prayer in a public venue as much as it is the majority religious view – Christianity – flexing its muscle over the minority – non Christians.” I find it both arrogant and insensitive that one would publically pray in a manner knowingly offensive to others. I certainly respect everyone’s right to their religious beliefs, just don’t assume they’re mine!
I don’t know what else to say – check out the online comments. Fortunately, most are rational rebukes of Pastor Barry. Thank God!
The "city" of Louisiana
Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, see the video at http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/002353.html
SECAUCUS — Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said it all, starting his news briefing Saturday afternoon: “Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater…”
Well there’s your problem right there.
If ever a slip-of-the-tongue defined a government’s response to a crisis, this was it.
The seeming definition of our time and our leaders had been their insistence on slashing federal budgets for projects that might’ve saved New Orleans. The seeming characterization of our government that it was on vacation when the city was lost, and could barely tear itself away from commemorating V.J. Day and watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus, to at least pretend to get back to work. The seeming identification of these hapless bureaucrats: their pathetic use of the future tense in terms of relief they could’ve brought last Monday and Tuesday — like the President, whose statements have looked like they’re being transmitted to us by some kind of four-day tape-delay.
But no. The incompetence and the ludicrous prioritization will forever be symbolized by one gaffe by of the head of what is ironically called “The Department of Homeland Security”: “Louisiana is a city…”
Politician after politician — Republican and Democrat alike — has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the “I-Me” switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or how devastated they were — congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.
And as that sorry recital of self-absorption dragged on, I have resisted editorial comment. The focus needed to be on the efforts to save the stranded — even the internet’s meager powers were correctly devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural… and government-made.
But now, at least, it is has stopped getting exponentially worse in Mississippi and Alabama and New Orleans and Louisiana (the state, not the city). And, having given our leaders what we know now is the week or so they need to get their act together, that period of editorial silence I mentioned, should come to an end.
No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska.
But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn’t even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans — even though the government had heard all the “chatter” from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn’t quite discern… a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.
It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.
Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, “we are not satisfied,” with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which “we” he thinks he’s speaking for on this point. Perhaps it’s the administration, although we still don’t know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, ‘I’ll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die’?
I don’t know which ‘we’ Mr. Bush meant.
For many of this country’s citizens, the mantra has been — as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be — whether or not I voted for this President — he is still my President. I suspect anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to ’08, are wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words which will define his government — our government — “New Orleans.”
For him, it is a shame — in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick “I’m not satisfied with my government’s response.” Instead of hiding behind phrases like “no one could have foreseen,” had he only remembered Winston Churchill’s quote from the 1930’s. “The responsibility,” of government, Churchill told the British Parliament “for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence.”
In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself — it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.
As we emphasized to you here all last week, the realities of the region are such that New Orleans is going to be largely uninhabitable for a lot longer than anybody is yet willing to recognize. Lord knows when the last body will be found, or the last artifact of the levee break, dug up. Could be next March. Could be 2100. By then, in the muck and toxic mire of New Orleans, they may even find our government’s credibility.
Somewhere, in the City of Louisiana.
The “city” of Louisiana
Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, see the video at http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/002353.html
SECAUCUS — Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said it all, starting his news briefing Saturday afternoon: “Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater…”
Well there’s your problem right there.
If ever a slip-of-the-tongue defined a government’s response to a crisis, this was it.
The seeming definition of our time and our leaders had been their insistence on slashing federal budgets for projects that might’ve saved New Orleans. The seeming characterization of our government that it was on vacation when the city was lost, and could barely tear itself away from commemorating V.J. Day and watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus, to at least pretend to get back to work. The seeming identification of these hapless bureaucrats: their pathetic use of the future tense in terms of relief they could’ve brought last Monday and Tuesday — like the President, whose statements have looked like they’re being transmitted to us by some kind of four-day tape-delay.
But no. The incompetence and the ludicrous prioritization will forever be symbolized by one gaffe by of the head of what is ironically called “The Department of Homeland Security”: “Louisiana is a city…”
Politician after politician — Republican and Democrat alike — has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the “I-Me” switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or how devastated they were — congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.
And as that sorry recital of self-absorption dragged on, I have resisted editorial comment. The focus needed to be on the efforts to save the stranded — even the internet’s meager powers were correctly devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural… and government-made.
But now, at least, it is has stopped getting exponentially worse in Mississippi and Alabama and New Orleans and Louisiana (the state, not the city). And, having given our leaders what we know now is the week or so they need to get their act together, that period of editorial silence I mentioned, should come to an end.
No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska.
But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn’t even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans — even though the government had heard all the “chatter” from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn’t quite discern… a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.
It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.
Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, “we are not satisfied,” with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which “we” he thinks he’s speaking for on this point. Perhaps it’s the administration, although we still don’t know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, ‘I’ll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die’?
I don’t know which ‘we’ Mr. Bush meant.
For many of this country’s citizens, the mantra has been — as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be — whether or not I voted for this President — he is still my President. I suspect anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to ’08, are wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words which will define his government — our government — “New Orleans.”
For him, it is a shame — in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick “I’m not satisfied with my government’s response.” Instead of hiding behind phrases like “no one could have foreseen,” had he only remembered Winston Churchill’s quote from the 1930’s. “The responsibility,” of government, Churchill told the British Parliament “for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence.”
In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself — it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.
As we emphasized to you here all last week, the realities of the region are such that New Orleans is going to be largely uninhabitable for a lot longer than anybody is yet willing to recognize. Lord knows when the last body will be found, or the last artifact of the levee break, dug up. Could be next March. Could be 2100. By then, in the muck and toxic mire of New Orleans, they may even find our government’s credibility.
Somewhere, in the City of Louisiana.
United States of Shame
By Maureen Dowd, From New York Times September 3, 2005
Stuff happens.
And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.
America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it’s happening in America.
W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn’t dry. Bye, bye, American lives. “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees,” he told Diane Sawyer.
Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in “the great city” of N’Awlins. He was clearly moved. “You know, I’m going to fly out of here in a minute,” he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, “but I want you to know that I’m not going to forget what I’ve seen.” Out of the cameras’ range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.
Why does this self-styled “can do” president always lapse into such lame “who could have known?” excuses.
Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.
Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.’s prewar reports.
Who on earth could have known that New Orleans’s sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy’s uneasy fishbowl.
In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.”
Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about half its equipment are in Iraq.
Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.
Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and stranded New Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA’s response to Katrina if they had not prepared.
Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA – a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association – admitted he didn’t know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.
Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”
It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle – Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo’s on Fifth Avenue and attended “Spamalot” before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine – lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.
When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.
When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans – most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first – they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.
Who are we if we can’t take care of our own?
A Real Solution
The final and perfect solution is at hand, for the United States and it’s the last one we’ll have. What an opportunity!
Let’s begin IMMEDIATE and massive troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan and bring them to the United States to help our own citizens in the Gulf States who have just experienced a real and honest WMD from Mother Nature.
Why will this work?
- The rest of the world will certainly understand.
- The citizenry will have nothing to worry about except our own domestic problems which are becoming insurmountable.
- In hindsight, we could have saved thousands of lives if our military had been HERE for OUR people who have already paid for these services.
- Oil prices will plummet.
- Jobs will be created FOR AMERICANS.
- We’ll be able to control our borders.
- It will save the Bush administration from going down as the worst in recorded history.
This is our last chance at saving face and the continuing threat from “terrorists” here in the U.S. and healing OUR COUNTRY.
– Saint Kupe 1:7
The Greatest List of Protest Songs
This is the list of greatest, contemporary protest songs. Music is universal in its ability to elicit emotion and speaking truths that mere words cannot. Caution – some of the lyrics may be offensive. But then again, nothing is more offensive then unjust war, lying leaders, and people dying for no reason.
Thanks go to some clever and creative people who’s names will remain hidden in order to protect the not-so innocent! Enjoy!
- The Revolution Starts – Steve Earle
- Support Our Troops-B.Y.O.B.-No. W – Xiu Xiu-System of a Down-Ministry
- Fortunate Son – Dropkick Murphys
- War Profiteering Is Killing Us All – The Suicide Machines
- Turncoat – Anti-Flag
- Jerry Falwell Destroyed Earth – Ben Kweller
- Jet Pilot – Son Volt
- The Real Traitors – Red Star Belgrade
- Mosh – Eminem
- The Proud – Talib Kweli
- Make Love F**k War – Moby & Public Enemy
- Talk Radio – Dave Allen and the Elastic Purejoy
- Revolution #2 – The What
- Deja Vu All Over Again – John Fogerty
- Fiddle and the Drum – A Perfect Circle
- The Idiot Son of An Asshole – NOFX
- Masters of War – Bob Dylan
Crawford Texas by Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Dear Friends,
I’m back from a lightning trip to “Camp Casey” in Crawford, Texas, just outside the Bush vacation ranch.
Before I tell you the story of my trip, here’s an Email I received, after getting back home:
<< Dear Rabbi Waskow:
<< Thank you so much for coming to Crawford to participate in the service on Friday with all of us military and gold star families who are continuing to demand answers while Cindy is away tending to her mother.
<< If there is such a thing as being too angry to cry, that’s what I’ve been for the last two and a half years, but this service moved me to tears and for that I thank you.
<< Many of the participants who I spoke with afterward expressed the same feeling I’ve had, that our own places of worship have been silent about this war, and that has compounded our sense of alienation.
<< Having our government betray us by sending our loved ones to fight and die in this immoral war is bad enough, but then hearing silence from the very community that should be crying out in indignation is almost too much to bear. Of course, this is not true across the board but for too many of us this has been our experience.
<< This is why I am so grateful to you and all the others who led the service. You did a wonderful thing in coming to Crawford to pray with us.
<< Sincerely yours,
P— V—
(the one who asked to hold your hand as we processed)>>
*********************
So if at first I wasn’t entirely sure why I went to Crawford, now I know.
How can we respond to these events? One way is to talk with our own religious leaders, friends, fellow-congregants. Notice “P— V—“‘s outcry about religious silence.
The other way is to address our elected officials. For that, I have some suggestions close to the end of this letter. If you need to jump ahead, here’s the click:
http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/tsc/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=1124
And here’s part of the story: (The whole thing is on my Weblog at our Home Page:
When I got home last Wednesday night after a vigil in support of “Camp Casey” sponsored by a nearby church in Philadelphia, I found a message awaiting me from Glenn Smith, the devoted organizer of a religiously-rooted national antiwar bus tour who lives in Austin. His message, confirmed by a conversation with Rev. Bob Edgar, head of the National Council of Churches, invited me to take part in a multireligious service at Camp Casey in Crawford, at noon on Friday.
So I went. What I found at “Peace House” in Crawford was a crew of Texans whose quiet peace-organizing outfit had been transformed in the last two weeks to the nerve center of a national movement.
Homely notes – “Please shut the door. We can’t afford to air-condition all of Texas.” Delicious food made by local housewives, ranging from Texas barbecue to a vegetarian Iraqi delicacy, made by an Iraqi-American in town.
Cindy’s mother in California had suffered a stroke, wasn’t speaking. Cindy herself had flown to see her. May the gentle strength, the boldness and bravery she taught her daughter, flower in her own life and in all our lives.)
When I arrived, I joined a planning session of other clergy who were planning the noon service. All were Protestants, mostly men but a few women; one was a Methodist bishop. A dozen pastors from Texas, others from the East and West Coasts. Some had driven for a couple of days to reach Crawford.
They asked me to start off the service with a “lament” after three minutes of silence of memorial for the dead. So I actually went to the Book of Lamentations, chose four or five verses I thought especially apropos, and prepared to chant them in English, using the special mournful melodic trope for Eicha.
And I added the same expanded “Oseh shalom” I had used back home at the vigil on Wednesday evening.
Then would come prayers by the various ministers from the Psalms, from the Gospels, from the heart.
Up the road near the Bush ranch was Camp Casey itself, just a short strip of asphalt, part of a narrow, dusty road. So narrow a road that when a car came by, the police bull-horned us to walk in the ditch so the traffic could pass.
Lining the ditches alongside the road were hundreds of crosses and at least one Magen David, for Lt. Seth Dvorin who was killed in February 2004. His photograph showed a tall, broad, open-faced man with a big smile.
Now he’s dead.
May he rest in peace in the world beyond, and may his death awaken us to the need for peace in this world right here.
So at noon we created our dusty, hot “procession” and service and heartfelt memorials to the dead – and afterwards, we schmoozed – the Texans, the clergy, and the survivors.
Then as evening came on, the camp was moved still closer to the Bush ranch, so close that to get there you have to pivot to the left at a stake-out of Secret Service guarding the President from seeing or meeting the people whose sons and daughters he sent to die for a “noble cause” he cannot explain to them.
— Into a big tent rented with small donations that are pouring in from around the country, emplaced on an acre of farm offered by a local man who is the cousin of the angry neighbor who fired a shotgun dangerously at/near the vigillers. Farmer Fred Mattlage was evidently doing penance on behalf of his family. Now THAT’S “family values” in the old-fashioned way! And besides, he’s a veteran — and he thinks it’s a bad war.
And in the tent, on Friday night, there were folk songs and prayers and a visit from three African-American daughters of the South who had lost sons in Iraq – accompanied by Rev. Joseph Lowrey of Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, still talking the – outmoded?? – language of The Beloved Community.
Below are the verses from Lamentations, Eicha, that I chanted. Some are very slightly “midrashified”; I trust God and the author of Eicha won’t mind too much. And then the “Oseh shalom” prayer I used.
What can we do now?
One impact of Cindy Sheehan’s boldness has been to crystallize the deep doubt and disgust now endemic throughout America about the war. That opens up space for elected political leaders to take their own kind of gutsy stand.
So Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, God bless him — he was the only Senator to vote against the “Patriot” Act, and he battled all the party bosses to insist on new rules for campaign financing — has spoken out to demand that all US troops be brought safely home from Iraq.
Says the Washington Post (page 3, Thursday Aug 18):
<< Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) called on the White House yesterday to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of next year and criticized fellow Democrats for being too “timid” in challenging the Bush administration’s war policy.
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You don’t have to be a Democrat to thank him and support him. You just have to reread that letter from “P — V— .”
Please fax him by clicking here:
http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/tsc/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=1124
And though we are supplying a VERY short “model” letter, PLEASE add your own words; MAKE THE LETTER YOUR OWN in some way.
If you feel comfortable making clear your own religious and moral value system – please do. – It could be important to counter the widespread assumption that the only real moral values in America are right-wing.
A little down the road, it might make sense to write other Senators as well. But we think the first task is to make clear to Senator Feingold that many of us support him.
And remember what “P—- V—-” wrote. Speak out yourself in the name of God, and ask your religious colleagues, friends, congregants to do the same.
Here is what I chanted from the Book of Lamentations:
Eicha!! – How lonely sits the city,
Once filled with life and joy,
Now sorrowful.
My eyes fill with grief
At the fate of the youth in my city.
I call on Your name, O God,
You Who are the Breath of Life;
For you have seen all their malice,
Their whispers and murmurs against me.
May You come near to say –
Do not fear!
Do not close Your ear to my outcry
But give me relief.
And then I recited, first in English and then in Hebrew:
May You Who make peace in the ultimate reaches of the universe teach us to make peace within ourselves and between each other — among all the families of Abraham, all the families of the human race, and all the forms of life that You have created on our planet;
May You bring near the day when strength and gentleness are woven together;
May You give gentle strength to all who today dare to face those leaders who make war — as long ago the midwives faced Pharaoh and the prophets faced kings;
— And may You give such leaders the wisdom not only to hear and see face-to-face the pain of those stricken by war, but to bring that suffering to an end by doing Your will and making peace.
Oseh shalom bimromav, hu yaaseh shalom alenu, v’al kol Yisrael, v’al kol Yishmael, v’al kol yoshvei teyvel.
With blessings of shalom,
Arthur
Ma Hamatzav? (Was' Up?) 