Me, My Dreadlocks, and I: A Love/Hate Story
I have a love/hate relationship with my dreadlocks. Married at the root of my head, they cause me great joy and daily heartache. It’s hard to imagine a time that I didn’t have them, and a lot of days I think they look pretty cool, but man they can be a pain in the ass.
See for years I wanted Baby dreads. After 19 years of basically the same hair cut (except for a stint as a straight haired blonde the first two years of my life; an eraser head at 5 I think my mother did to torment me; some Blue hair for a week before college that thankfully almost no one saw; and an afro, I have had the same hair cut), I needed a change. And admittedly it did help that an ex-girlfriend who it ended very poorly with said that she would dump me if I ever got them.
So I decided in South Africa to just let it go (mostly out of laziness and inaccessibility of a trusted barber, you know how black people are with their barbers). When I got back to the US, I finally had the baby-dreads I always wanted. But they kept growing. And I kept getting them tightened and washed.
I remember the best day we had together, when for the first time my hair moved in the wind. I could feel it tickling my scalp as it actually moved hairs on my head, it was amazing.
Then I saw them, just over my brow, the first time I saw my hair without the aid of a mirror. It was a great day.
But when that day came, when my hair and I took it to a new level, that is the day it all changed.
Now my dreadlocks are everywhere. When I sip some tea, the front ones dip in to get that extra flavoring. Today at lunch they got caught in my food (as they all to often do) and almost ate them with my chopsticks.
Because of my father my hair just isn’t quite nappy enough, so my dreads only get washed about every month or so. No water can touch this head for fear of two years of work all come apart, just cause my Mom didled some white guy (just kidding Dad he he) Believe me, those last couple of days are always the worst, trying to scratch all the lint and dead insects I have collected in my scalp over the past 4 weeks can be hellish.
They get stuck everywhere, tree overhangs, coats, wherever they will get caught.
Sometimes in the morning, I look in the mirror and think wow, they are a perfect compliment to a perfect ass to make me almost unbearably sexy.
I always tried to hide in the back as a kid. A leftover from being beaten up when I was in elementary school simply for being the black kid. Lets face it, its hard for a big black man to be inconspicuous. The dreadlocks are perfect I can hide my head and most importantly my eyes so I feel less conspicuous. But of course there is nothing more conspicuous then a big black man with long dreadlocks. Sigh
My favorite is peoples’ reactions…
People treat me as if I am somehow blacker.
Black people always said “Tsup” with the head nod. And not just in the request way we do when white people are around to say, “yup I’m surviving whitey how you doin?”
NO, now they give me the “Tsup” meaning “nice dreadlocks,” or “your down brother.” As if before I was only sorta black, but now with dreadlocks I AM REALLY black.
I have also become scarier to white people. At least once a week women cross the street just because I walked by. But now, well dressed white men do as well.
I get hellos, and goodbyes from people who never noticed me, and have become a featured recipient of pleasantries on Georgetown’s main walk on M St.
My dreadlocks and I are quite the pair.
Some days I love them, I look cool, damn right sexier then I used to.
Some days I feel like Rastafarian Euro trash with bad long hair.
The only question is? When do I go back to the short haired black kid, who is only sorta black?
“These instruments can teach, they can illuminate, and yes, they can even inspire; but they can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use them towards those ends. … Otherwise,they’re merely wires and lights in a box.” — Edward R. Murrow, October 15, 1958
Friday, February 27, 2004
Dishonesty about Economy
"ECONOMY
'Dishonest' Would Be An Understatement
Almost six months ago to the day, President Bush made a Labor Day visit to Ohio, a state which has "lost more than a quarter-million jobs," including 166,000 manufacturing jobs, since 2001. During a speech to workers there, he said he would "appoint an assistant secretary [of Commerce] to focus on the needs of manufacturers, to make sure our manufacturing job base is strong and vibrant…We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move." Yet, six months later, the country has lost another quarter million manufacturing jobs (and Ohio alone has lost another 9,000 manufacturing jobs) and the Administration has not only failed to offer a policy prescription, it has not even appointed the Commerce department specialist. And yesterday, the situation hit a boiling point: the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly Mass Layoff report which showed "there were more mass layoffs in January 2004 than in any previous January for the nine-years that such records have been kept" – a report that prompted outrage from Sens. Schumer, Corzine and Stabenow. The promise to address the manufacturing situation with new policies and a new manufacturing czar – and then failure to follow through – is only the latest economic contradiction from the Bush Administration. What follows is a list of the most brazen and calculated economic distortions:
MYTH 1 – WE CARE ABOUT JOB LOSS: President Bush, echoing an oft-repeated sentiment from the Administration, said recently that "we care about our fellow citizens - we want to make sure somebody who's hurting has a chance to succeed in life by working." Yet, just a few weeks ago, the President personally signed a report wholeheartedly endorsing U.S. job loss to overseas outsourcing, claiming that it was a "good thing" and just an unpreventable side-effect of free trade. But as Paul Krugman notes, free trade is "viable only if it's backed by effective job creation measures and a strong domestic social safety net" – both areas the Administration has repeatedly slashed. For the last three years, the Administration has tried to cut more than $1 billion out of job training programs, while underfunding its own education bill by $27 billion – in essence robbing workers of the education/training tools they need to compete. At the same time, the Administration has cut funding for a plethora of health care and safety net programs. See more on the Administration's policies that are discouraging job and wage growth.
MYTH 2 – WE CARE ABOUT THE MIDDLE CLASS: The Administration has claimed it wants to "help the middle class." Yet, just this week, the President refused to distance himself from Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's proposal to severely reduce Social Security benefits for ordinary people in order to protect the Administration's massive tax cuts for the wealthy. Greenspan said cutting Social Security – as opposed to reducing the tax cuts – was necessary to deal with growing deficits, "effectively embracing the lunatic notion that cutting taxes will generate more government revenue" and that protecting the rich should come before protecting the middle class. In 1966 Greenspan said "deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth." Now, it is Greenspan and the White House using the "scheme" of deficits to justify Social Security cuts – and confiscate wealth from the middle class to finance tax cuts for the wealthy. See more background on the current state of Social Security.
MYTH 3 – WE ARE CUTTING TAXES FOR AVERAGE PEOPLE: As a presidential candidate in 2000, then-Governor Bush said "the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum." It was an oft-repeated sentiment for the next three years, with the Administration saying that its tax bills would be "an achievement for families struggling to enter the middle class." Yet, the data now clearly shows the Administration's tax cuts were overwhelmingly skewed towards the wealthy: By 2010, the top 1% - who make an average of $1 million - will have received more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks, and will have received over half of all the Bush tax cuts ever passed (this might explain why four in five Americans say they have felt no tax relief). To combat this embarrassing truth, the Administration resorted to disingenuous rhetoric, citing deceptive averages to claim that its most recent tax proposal would give "91 million taxpayers an average tax cut of $1,126." Yet, these averages were artificially inflated because they included huge tax breaks to millionaires. In reality, the middle fifth of all households received just $217, with 83% of Americans getting less than the "average" – all while the Administration is effectively raising taxes on the middle class. Most shockingly, the President himself admitted that he knew he was misleading Americans by claiming the tax cuts helped average people. As he asked his economic team when they were pondering even more tax cuts, "Haven't we already given money to rich people? Shouldn't we be giving money to the middle?"
MYTH 4 – TAX CUTS WILL NOT CAUSE DEFICITS: Facing questions about the massive size of his tax cuts, President Bush assured the nation that "we can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget deficits, even if the economy softens." When the tax cuts passed, the surplus evaporated and record deficits hit. Instead of fessing up to its distortion, the Administration blamed the recession for the deficit. Then, realizing that it couldn't take that track because it had said there would be no deficits "even if the economy softens," the President said "this nation has got a deficit because we have been through a war" – claiming the deficit was caused by increases in defense/homeland security spending needed after 9/11 . Yet, hard data and the Administration's own budget documents show that tax cuts – not defense/homeland security spending - were the single largest factor in creating the deficit. Desperate for some explanation, the President said, "I remember campaigning in Chicago, and one of the reporters said, would you ever deficit spend? I said only -- only in times of war, in times of economic insecurity as a result of a recession, or in times of national emergency." Yet even this explanation was not true – as Tim Russert noted, "we have checked everywhere and we've even called the White House as to when the president said this, and it didn't happen."
MYTH 5 – WE CARE ABOUT THE UNEMPLOYED: President Bush has said, "I'm worried about those who are unemployed." Yet, with 760,000 scheduled to lose their unemployment benefits this month, his Administration refuses to demand that its allies on Capitol Hill stop blocking a House-passed bill that would extend unemployment benefits. Adding insult to injury, the Administration's key economic officials visited parts of the country hardest hit by unemployment, yet refused to actually meet with any unemployed workers."
American Progress Report
'Dishonest' Would Be An Understatement
Almost six months ago to the day, President Bush made a Labor Day visit to Ohio, a state which has "lost more than a quarter-million jobs," including 166,000 manufacturing jobs, since 2001. During a speech to workers there, he said he would "appoint an assistant secretary [of Commerce] to focus on the needs of manufacturers, to make sure our manufacturing job base is strong and vibrant…We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move." Yet, six months later, the country has lost another quarter million manufacturing jobs (and Ohio alone has lost another 9,000 manufacturing jobs) and the Administration has not only failed to offer a policy prescription, it has not even appointed the Commerce department specialist. And yesterday, the situation hit a boiling point: the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly Mass Layoff report which showed "there were more mass layoffs in January 2004 than in any previous January for the nine-years that such records have been kept" – a report that prompted outrage from Sens. Schumer, Corzine and Stabenow. The promise to address the manufacturing situation with new policies and a new manufacturing czar – and then failure to follow through – is only the latest economic contradiction from the Bush Administration. What follows is a list of the most brazen and calculated economic distortions:
MYTH 1 – WE CARE ABOUT JOB LOSS: President Bush, echoing an oft-repeated sentiment from the Administration, said recently that "we care about our fellow citizens - we want to make sure somebody who's hurting has a chance to succeed in life by working." Yet, just a few weeks ago, the President personally signed a report wholeheartedly endorsing U.S. job loss to overseas outsourcing, claiming that it was a "good thing" and just an unpreventable side-effect of free trade. But as Paul Krugman notes, free trade is "viable only if it's backed by effective job creation measures and a strong domestic social safety net" – both areas the Administration has repeatedly slashed. For the last three years, the Administration has tried to cut more than $1 billion out of job training programs, while underfunding its own education bill by $27 billion – in essence robbing workers of the education/training tools they need to compete. At the same time, the Administration has cut funding for a plethora of health care and safety net programs. See more on the Administration's policies that are discouraging job and wage growth.
MYTH 2 – WE CARE ABOUT THE MIDDLE CLASS: The Administration has claimed it wants to "help the middle class." Yet, just this week, the President refused to distance himself from Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's proposal to severely reduce Social Security benefits for ordinary people in order to protect the Administration's massive tax cuts for the wealthy. Greenspan said cutting Social Security – as opposed to reducing the tax cuts – was necessary to deal with growing deficits, "effectively embracing the lunatic notion that cutting taxes will generate more government revenue" and that protecting the rich should come before protecting the middle class. In 1966 Greenspan said "deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth." Now, it is Greenspan and the White House using the "scheme" of deficits to justify Social Security cuts – and confiscate wealth from the middle class to finance tax cuts for the wealthy. See more background on the current state of Social Security.
MYTH 3 – WE ARE CUTTING TAXES FOR AVERAGE PEOPLE: As a presidential candidate in 2000, then-Governor Bush said "the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum." It was an oft-repeated sentiment for the next three years, with the Administration saying that its tax bills would be "an achievement for families struggling to enter the middle class." Yet, the data now clearly shows the Administration's tax cuts were overwhelmingly skewed towards the wealthy: By 2010, the top 1% - who make an average of $1 million - will have received more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks, and will have received over half of all the Bush tax cuts ever passed (this might explain why four in five Americans say they have felt no tax relief). To combat this embarrassing truth, the Administration resorted to disingenuous rhetoric, citing deceptive averages to claim that its most recent tax proposal would give "91 million taxpayers an average tax cut of $1,126." Yet, these averages were artificially inflated because they included huge tax breaks to millionaires. In reality, the middle fifth of all households received just $217, with 83% of Americans getting less than the "average" – all while the Administration is effectively raising taxes on the middle class. Most shockingly, the President himself admitted that he knew he was misleading Americans by claiming the tax cuts helped average people. As he asked his economic team when they were pondering even more tax cuts, "Haven't we already given money to rich people? Shouldn't we be giving money to the middle?"
MYTH 4 – TAX CUTS WILL NOT CAUSE DEFICITS: Facing questions about the massive size of his tax cuts, President Bush assured the nation that "we can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget deficits, even if the economy softens." When the tax cuts passed, the surplus evaporated and record deficits hit. Instead of fessing up to its distortion, the Administration blamed the recession for the deficit. Then, realizing that it couldn't take that track because it had said there would be no deficits "even if the economy softens," the President said "this nation has got a deficit because we have been through a war" – claiming the deficit was caused by increases in defense/homeland security spending needed after 9/11 . Yet, hard data and the Administration's own budget documents show that tax cuts – not defense/homeland security spending - were the single largest factor in creating the deficit. Desperate for some explanation, the President said, "I remember campaigning in Chicago, and one of the reporters said, would you ever deficit spend? I said only -- only in times of war, in times of economic insecurity as a result of a recession, or in times of national emergency." Yet even this explanation was not true – as Tim Russert noted, "we have checked everywhere and we've even called the White House as to when the president said this, and it didn't happen."
MYTH 5 – WE CARE ABOUT THE UNEMPLOYED: President Bush has said, "I'm worried about those who are unemployed." Yet, with 760,000 scheduled to lose their unemployment benefits this month, his Administration refuses to demand that its allies on Capitol Hill stop blocking a House-passed bill that would extend unemployment benefits. Adding insult to injury, the Administration's key economic officials visited parts of the country hardest hit by unemployment, yet refused to actually meet with any unemployed workers."
American Progress Report
Thursday, February 26, 2004
Do Christians Hate Jews? - Other Musings about "The Passion"
Why Do Christians hate Jews? Is The Passion and the Christians who love it proof that Christians just accept Jews, but push comes to shove they would sit and do nothing or even partake as they did when the "The Passion" was first popular during the inquisition?
I have to say that when I here people say they liked the movie, my first thought is, THEY WOULD BE OK WITH KILLING or MAMING THE JESUS KILLERS
Thoughts about the rise of Anti-Semitism and the movie “The Passion.”
In the wake of the Mel Gibson movie, “The Passion” and all that is going on with Israel, it is time to take a look at anti-Semitism in the world.
It is a big topic one that may take a few entrees to track.
“The Passion”
My problem with the movie is not just that Jesus is white, with long hair AGAIN. Even though he would have been the only white Middle Easterner of Arabian descent EVER. (maybe that is the miracle, a white guy born to this middle easterner couple and with long straight hair)
Most important is that the majority of theologians (Pat Roberson and Billy Graham aside) agree that it is historically and biblically bankrupt. Based on Gospel that has been brought into question not just by the Rabbis sited on this page, but also by the catholic church and protestant theologians across the country.
It belies the fact that Pilate was a demagogue that crucified many Jews without compassion or sorrow. Pilate was considered brutal in a brutal times. It denies the fact that there were many people of that time claiming some type of messiah. So the Jewish high court would have no reason to be more threatened by Jesus then any other sect of Jews who at the time had similar claims. Nor does it make sense considering early Christians were accepted as full Jews during this time.
But the most important thing the movie misses is the very essence of CHRISTIANITY ITSELF.
That Jesus GAVE, HE GAVE his life so that he could die for our sins. The very most important part of giving himself is that he had to die. So the person who is most complicit in his death, the one who is responsible is Jesus and G-d themselves.
Because for Christianity to exist Jesus has to die.
“In an open letter to the 413 parishes of his New York archdiocese, Catholic Cardinal Edward Egan called on both the Catholic and Jewish communities to handle any negative fallout from the film with ‘grace and wisdom.’
Stressing that Jesus "gave" his life and that "no one took it from him," Egan warned against any idea "The Passion" might give that the Jewish people were collectively responsible.”
The saddest part of the movie is that it is Anti-Jesus in itself.
As NPR reviewer noted, to much of the movie (and modern Christianity itself – but that is another entry) is focused on his crucifixion. When really the Bible and Christianity should be about how Jesus lived his life.
And since his life was dedicated to bringing the world together in peace and love, its seems quite the defamation of his existence to make a movie that is purposely so divisive and one sided.
Would Jesus want this movie made the way it was? To have the result it surely will to aid ant-Semitism as it did when it was plays during the Inquisitions?
It seems G-d does think this movie is a bad idea look what happened:
http://movies.yahoo.com/news/va/20040225/107776005800.html
“Clearly Mel's new film has caused quite the controversy because of some supposedly anti-Semitic themes. I don't know, I haven't seen the movie. BUT during the making of the film, the man who plays Jesus AND an assistant director were struck down by lightning a total of THREE times!? Coincidence?
I can hear the promos now:
"Come see the film that Ebert and God called 'Electrifying!'"
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Movies/10/24/gibson.passion/
I have to say that when I here people say they liked the movie, my first thought is, THEY WOULD BE OK WITH KILLING or MAMING THE JESUS KILLERS
Thoughts about the rise of Anti-Semitism and the movie “The Passion.”
In the wake of the Mel Gibson movie, “The Passion” and all that is going on with Israel, it is time to take a look at anti-Semitism in the world.
It is a big topic one that may take a few entrees to track.
“The Passion”
My problem with the movie is not just that Jesus is white, with long hair AGAIN. Even though he would have been the only white Middle Easterner of Arabian descent EVER. (maybe that is the miracle, a white guy born to this middle easterner couple and with long straight hair)
Most important is that the majority of theologians (Pat Roberson and Billy Graham aside) agree that it is historically and biblically bankrupt. Based on Gospel that has been brought into question not just by the Rabbis sited on this page, but also by the catholic church and protestant theologians across the country.
It belies the fact that Pilate was a demagogue that crucified many Jews without compassion or sorrow. Pilate was considered brutal in a brutal times. It denies the fact that there were many people of that time claiming some type of messiah. So the Jewish high court would have no reason to be more threatened by Jesus then any other sect of Jews who at the time had similar claims. Nor does it make sense considering early Christians were accepted as full Jews during this time.
But the most important thing the movie misses is the very essence of CHRISTIANITY ITSELF.
That Jesus GAVE, HE GAVE his life so that he could die for our sins. The very most important part of giving himself is that he had to die. So the person who is most complicit in his death, the one who is responsible is Jesus and G-d themselves.
Because for Christianity to exist Jesus has to die.
“In an open letter to the 413 parishes of his New York archdiocese, Catholic Cardinal Edward Egan called on both the Catholic and Jewish communities to handle any negative fallout from the film with ‘grace and wisdom.’
Stressing that Jesus "gave" his life and that "no one took it from him," Egan warned against any idea "The Passion" might give that the Jewish people were collectively responsible.”
The saddest part of the movie is that it is Anti-Jesus in itself.
As NPR reviewer noted, to much of the movie (and modern Christianity itself – but that is another entry) is focused on his crucifixion. When really the Bible and Christianity should be about how Jesus lived his life.
And since his life was dedicated to bringing the world together in peace and love, its seems quite the defamation of his existence to make a movie that is purposely so divisive and one sided.
Would Jesus want this movie made the way it was? To have the result it surely will to aid ant-Semitism as it did when it was plays during the Inquisitions?
It seems G-d does think this movie is a bad idea look what happened:
http://movies.yahoo.com/news/va/20040225/107776005800.html
“Clearly Mel's new film has caused quite the controversy because of some supposedly anti-Semitic themes. I don't know, I haven't seen the movie. BUT during the making of the film, the man who plays Jesus AND an assistant director were struck down by lightning a total of THREE times!? Coincidence?
I can hear the promos now:
"Come see the film that Ebert and God called 'Electrifying!'"
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Movies/10/24/gibson.passion/
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Kerry Lies and Keeps on Lieing
Once again We Find out More about Kerry Being a Dirty Scumbag
WMDs in Iraq--Before He Voted for the War
U.N. Weapons Inspector Reveals Personal Conversation with Kerry
Scott Ritter | 02.10.2004
Kerry, Too, Needs to Clear the Air
On April 23, 1971, a 27-year-old Navy veteran named John Kerry sat before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and chided members on their leadership failures regarding the war in Vietnam.
"Where is the leadership?" Kerry, a decorated hero who had proved his courage under fire, demanded of the senators. "Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned?" Kerry lambasted those who had pushed so strongly for war in Vietnam. "These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude."
Today, on the issue of the war in Iraq, it is John Kerry who is all pious rectitude.
"I think the administration owes the entire country a full explanation on this war—not just their exaggerations but on the failure of American intelligence," Kerry said following the stunning announcement by David Kay, the Bush administration's former lead investigator in Iraq, that "we were all wrong" about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in that country. The problem for Sen. Kerry, of course, is that he, too, is culpable in the massive breach of public trust that has come to light regarding Iraq, WMD and the rush to war.
Almost 30 years after his appearance before the Senate, Sen. Kerry was given the opportunity to make good on his promises that he had learned the lessons of Vietnam. During a visit to Washington in April 2000, when I lobbied senators and representatives for a full review of American policy regarding Iraq, I spoke with John Kerry about what I held to be the hyped-up intelligence regarding the threat posed by Iraq's WMD. "Put it in writing," Kerry told me, "and send it to me so I can review what you're saying in detail."
I did just that, penning a comprehensive article for Arms Control Today, the journal of the Arms Control Association, on the "Case for the Qualitative Disarmament of Iraq." This article, published in June 2000, provided a detailed breakdown of Iraq's WMD capability and made a comprehensive case that Iraq did not pose an imminent threat. I asked the Arms Control Association to send several copies to Sen. Kerry's office but, just to make sure, I sent him one myself. I never heard back from the senator.
Two years later, in the buildup toward war that took place in the summer of 2002, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which Kerry sits, convened a hearing on Iraq. At that hearing a parade of witnesses appeared, testifying to the existence of WMD in Iraq. Featured prominently was Khidir Hamza, the self-proclaimed "bombmaker to Saddam," who gave stirring first-hand testimony to the existence of not only nuclear weapons capability, but also chemical and biological weapons as well. Every word of Hamza's testimony has since been proved false. Despite receiving thousands of phone calls, letters and e-mails demanding that dissenting expert opinion, including my own, be aired at the hearing, Sen. Kerry apparently did nothing, allowing a sham hearing to conclude with the finding that there was "no doubt" Saddam Hussein had WMD.
Sen. Kerry followed up this performance in October 2002 by voting for the war in Iraq. Today he justifies that vote by noting that he only approved the "threat of war," and that the blame for Iraq rests with President George W. Bush, who failed to assemble adequate international support for the war. But this explanation rings hollow in the face of David Kay's findings that there are no WMD in Iraq. With the stated casus belli shown to be false, John Kerry needs to better explain his role not only in propelling our nation into a war that is rapidly devolving into a quagmire, but more importantly, his perpetuation of the falsehoods that got us there to begin with.
President Bush should rightly be held accountable for what increasingly appears to be deliberately misleading statements made by him and members of his administration regarding the threat posed by Iraq's WMD. If such deception took place, then Bush no longer deserves the trust and confidence of the American people.
But John Kerry seems to share in this culpability, and if he wants to be the next president of the United States, he must first convince the American people that his actions somehow differ from those of the man he seeks to replace.
"Where is the leadership?" John Kerry asked more than 30 years ago, questioning a war that consumed life, money and national honor. Today this question still hangs in the air, haunting a former Navy combat veteran who needs to convince a skeptical nation that he not only has a plan to get America out of Iraq, but also possesses the leadership skills needed to avoid future ill-advised adventures.
WMDs in Iraq--Before He Voted for the War
U.N. Weapons Inspector Reveals Personal Conversation with Kerry
Scott Ritter | 02.10.2004
Kerry, Too, Needs to Clear the Air
On April 23, 1971, a 27-year-old Navy veteran named John Kerry sat before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and chided members on their leadership failures regarding the war in Vietnam.
"Where is the leadership?" Kerry, a decorated hero who had proved his courage under fire, demanded of the senators. "Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned?" Kerry lambasted those who had pushed so strongly for war in Vietnam. "These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude."
Today, on the issue of the war in Iraq, it is John Kerry who is all pious rectitude.
"I think the administration owes the entire country a full explanation on this war—not just their exaggerations but on the failure of American intelligence," Kerry said following the stunning announcement by David Kay, the Bush administration's former lead investigator in Iraq, that "we were all wrong" about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in that country. The problem for Sen. Kerry, of course, is that he, too, is culpable in the massive breach of public trust that has come to light regarding Iraq, WMD and the rush to war.
Almost 30 years after his appearance before the Senate, Sen. Kerry was given the opportunity to make good on his promises that he had learned the lessons of Vietnam. During a visit to Washington in April 2000, when I lobbied senators and representatives for a full review of American policy regarding Iraq, I spoke with John Kerry about what I held to be the hyped-up intelligence regarding the threat posed by Iraq's WMD. "Put it in writing," Kerry told me, "and send it to me so I can review what you're saying in detail."
I did just that, penning a comprehensive article for Arms Control Today, the journal of the Arms Control Association, on the "Case for the Qualitative Disarmament of Iraq." This article, published in June 2000, provided a detailed breakdown of Iraq's WMD capability and made a comprehensive case that Iraq did not pose an imminent threat. I asked the Arms Control Association to send several copies to Sen. Kerry's office but, just to make sure, I sent him one myself. I never heard back from the senator.
Two years later, in the buildup toward war that took place in the summer of 2002, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which Kerry sits, convened a hearing on Iraq. At that hearing a parade of witnesses appeared, testifying to the existence of WMD in Iraq. Featured prominently was Khidir Hamza, the self-proclaimed "bombmaker to Saddam," who gave stirring first-hand testimony to the existence of not only nuclear weapons capability, but also chemical and biological weapons as well. Every word of Hamza's testimony has since been proved false. Despite receiving thousands of phone calls, letters and e-mails demanding that dissenting expert opinion, including my own, be aired at the hearing, Sen. Kerry apparently did nothing, allowing a sham hearing to conclude with the finding that there was "no doubt" Saddam Hussein had WMD.
Sen. Kerry followed up this performance in October 2002 by voting for the war in Iraq. Today he justifies that vote by noting that he only approved the "threat of war," and that the blame for Iraq rests with President George W. Bush, who failed to assemble adequate international support for the war. But this explanation rings hollow in the face of David Kay's findings that there are no WMD in Iraq. With the stated casus belli shown to be false, John Kerry needs to better explain his role not only in propelling our nation into a war that is rapidly devolving into a quagmire, but more importantly, his perpetuation of the falsehoods that got us there to begin with.
President Bush should rightly be held accountable for what increasingly appears to be deliberately misleading statements made by him and members of his administration regarding the threat posed by Iraq's WMD. If such deception took place, then Bush no longer deserves the trust and confidence of the American people.
But John Kerry seems to share in this culpability, and if he wants to be the next president of the United States, he must first convince the American people that his actions somehow differ from those of the man he seeks to replace.
"Where is the leadership?" John Kerry asked more than 30 years ago, questioning a war that consumed life, money and national honor. Today this question still hangs in the air, haunting a former Navy combat veteran who needs to convince a skeptical nation that he not only has a plan to get America out of Iraq, but also possesses the leadership skills needed to avoid future ill-advised adventures.
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Why Nader Should Run
In 2000 I was against a Nader run for the presidency. I felt that he was being disingenuous to say that the parties are the same. Further is consistent ability to make so much money investing in the organizations he is supposedly against never sat right with me. 3.8 million is certainly more revenue then past civil rights leaders. So to me he was just a politician getting some face time, and to me a politician lying to get elected and make a point is a politician I do not respect. Plus as a Black American I believed Gore could do a lot for our community, certainly more then a liberal intellegencia who does not understand nor resonate in the Black community…
I also believe that Nader cost Gore the election. It just seems to obvious that in key battle ground states where Nader should have never won, even if you discount the people that wouldn’t have voted at all, Nader cost Gore the election. If Gore had gotten just 1/3 of those who voted for him in NH he would have won. Just a few thousand votes in Florida. All places Nader visited and campaigned.
Yes Gore could have run a better campaign and yes the election was stolen but Nader was part of the factors that sent the election Bush’s way.
That all being said (a lot to get to my point) I think Nader SHOULD run in 2004. Here is why:
1. The people that are on the fence, that are fed up with the Democratic party but hate Bush, are going to vote for the Democratic nominee (ie Kerry). So Nader will not be deciding the election like 2000.
2. Nader will only help bring the issues that need to be talked about to light. Certainly Kerry will not shoulder any responsibility for speaking about real issues so we will need someone to do it. Keeping in mind reason #1, Nader can do that without posing a threat to his nomination.
3. Nader may actually be successful in bringing in new people to the process. Lets face it, as said before the people voting for Nader will be people who would have otherwise dropped out of the process, even the Greens fed up with Bush will be voting Dem.
4. Nader will only be running in places like Texas. It will be nice to have an alternative to Bush in places where there is no alternative to Bush. Maybe he can make some in roads among people the Dems won’t even bother addressing.
5. Why not, listing all these reasons, and considering he is not going to sway the election, why not run? I mean people worried about Bush winning will vote Dem, otherwise the people voting for Nader won’t affect the election, so let him run.
I also believe that Nader cost Gore the election. It just seems to obvious that in key battle ground states where Nader should have never won, even if you discount the people that wouldn’t have voted at all, Nader cost Gore the election. If Gore had gotten just 1/3 of those who voted for him in NH he would have won. Just a few thousand votes in Florida. All places Nader visited and campaigned.
Yes Gore could have run a better campaign and yes the election was stolen but Nader was part of the factors that sent the election Bush’s way.
That all being said (a lot to get to my point) I think Nader SHOULD run in 2004. Here is why:
1. The people that are on the fence, that are fed up with the Democratic party but hate Bush, are going to vote for the Democratic nominee (ie Kerry). So Nader will not be deciding the election like 2000.
2. Nader will only help bring the issues that need to be talked about to light. Certainly Kerry will not shoulder any responsibility for speaking about real issues so we will need someone to do it. Keeping in mind reason #1, Nader can do that without posing a threat to his nomination.
3. Nader may actually be successful in bringing in new people to the process. Lets face it, as said before the people voting for Nader will be people who would have otherwise dropped out of the process, even the Greens fed up with Bush will be voting Dem.
4. Nader will only be running in places like Texas. It will be nice to have an alternative to Bush in places where there is no alternative to Bush. Maybe he can make some in roads among people the Dems won’t even bother addressing.
5. Why not, listing all these reasons, and considering he is not going to sway the election, why not run? I mean people worried about Bush winning will vote Dem, otherwise the people voting for Nader won’t affect the election, so let him run.
Monday, February 23, 2004
Why Did We go to War in Iraq?
I have yet to figure out why we went to war in Iraq. Feed through all the lies and there is the essential question still unanswered..
1 WMD
Lets say there were WMD (Presumably our confusion over why they are gone is because we gave all the WMD to them in the 80s. I actually believe they had them and sent them to Syria before the war but that is neither here nor there) do we really believe that Bush cared about weapons of mass destruction especially considering they posed no real threat to the US, so why would a conservative Republican use troops for something like that? I think the best assertion that we were worried about his WMD is a worry he would use them on Israel.
2 Stopping a zealot dictator?
Do we really think the Bush’s Whitehouse cared about saving Iraqis from a dictator? REALLY?? (yeah it is a stretch even for them to pretend to care) The ironic thing is that if a liberal called for intervention to save people from genocide the right and the media would laugh them off as a bleeding heart liberal who didn’t live in the real world. Who wanted to waste our military and our fighting men to fix the world.
3 Empire building
See I don’t really think Bush wants an empire. I don’t think they care enough about other countries. Look at the way we shirk world order. There is to much self-interest to be concerned with creating a Pax-Americana like that of Pax-Britania. I think if Richard Perle and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz could exploit foreign nations without ever having to leave the comforts of our nation they would. I don’t think they really want an empire. Also empire building as the Romans found out requires nation building which we know that Bush was honest about, he would rather cut in run (ie Afganistan and soon Iraq)
4 Oil
Oil has not really been all that profitable. And while I don’t believe that the America public was told the truth about the hardships of occupation post invasion, all Fortune 500 companies have international risk assessment teams who could have (and did as has come out) easily foresaw the resistance and destruction of such obvious targets as US oil lines. I do think that Haliburton saw the prospect of a Saddam cooperating with the international community and thus being able to honor those French and German contracts. Thus giving them an incentive to push the war or loose out the possibility to fleece the Iraqis and Americans.
Real Reason:
But I think the real reason we went to war was good old fashioned war profiteering. As hinted before. I think it was greed. Look what they had to gain, 4 more years in the white house if it went well. Keeping America in a constant state of fear and war. And of course War is great for corporations. Cheney and Haliburton, a faltering war industry hurt by the Clinton years of restructuring and declining investment in war. War is great business.
What other reason could there be? Win an election, divert attention from bad economic policy, help the people in power financially: Sounds like a Bush White House Win-Win.
Sad to think that at the end of the day, there is not separating our government from so called “third world” countries whose democracies are supposed to be less developed. Maybe ours just isn’t AS developed as the elite would like us to believe.
1 WMD
Lets say there were WMD (Presumably our confusion over why they are gone is because we gave all the WMD to them in the 80s. I actually believe they had them and sent them to Syria before the war but that is neither here nor there) do we really believe that Bush cared about weapons of mass destruction especially considering they posed no real threat to the US, so why would a conservative Republican use troops for something like that? I think the best assertion that we were worried about his WMD is a worry he would use them on Israel.
2 Stopping a zealot dictator?
Do we really think the Bush’s Whitehouse cared about saving Iraqis from a dictator? REALLY?? (yeah it is a stretch even for them to pretend to care) The ironic thing is that if a liberal called for intervention to save people from genocide the right and the media would laugh them off as a bleeding heart liberal who didn’t live in the real world. Who wanted to waste our military and our fighting men to fix the world.
3 Empire building
See I don’t really think Bush wants an empire. I don’t think they care enough about other countries. Look at the way we shirk world order. There is to much self-interest to be concerned with creating a Pax-Americana like that of Pax-Britania. I think if Richard Perle and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz could exploit foreign nations without ever having to leave the comforts of our nation they would. I don’t think they really want an empire. Also empire building as the Romans found out requires nation building which we know that Bush was honest about, he would rather cut in run (ie Afganistan and soon Iraq)
4 Oil
Oil has not really been all that profitable. And while I don’t believe that the America public was told the truth about the hardships of occupation post invasion, all Fortune 500 companies have international risk assessment teams who could have (and did as has come out) easily foresaw the resistance and destruction of such obvious targets as US oil lines. I do think that Haliburton saw the prospect of a Saddam cooperating with the international community and thus being able to honor those French and German contracts. Thus giving them an incentive to push the war or loose out the possibility to fleece the Iraqis and Americans.
Real Reason:
But I think the real reason we went to war was good old fashioned war profiteering. As hinted before. I think it was greed. Look what they had to gain, 4 more years in the white house if it went well. Keeping America in a constant state of fear and war. And of course War is great for corporations. Cheney and Haliburton, a faltering war industry hurt by the Clinton years of restructuring and declining investment in war. War is great business.
What other reason could there be? Win an election, divert attention from bad economic policy, help the people in power financially: Sounds like a Bush White House Win-Win.
Sad to think that at the end of the day, there is not separating our government from so called “third world” countries whose democracies are supposed to be less developed. Maybe ours just isn’t AS developed as the elite would like us to believe.
Friday, February 20, 2004
THE Passion
This is Someone else writing, but it is really good and informative:
A Gospel of Love and Hope: How to Respond to Mel Gibson's "Passion"
By Rabbi Michael Lerner
Editor, Tikkun Magazine
Mel Gibson unlocked the secret of why Americans have never confronted anti-Semitism in the way that we did with the other great systems of hatred (racism, sexism, homophobia) when he told a national t.v. audience on February 16 that "the Jews' real complaint isn't with my film (The Passion) but with the Gospels." Few Christians today know the history of anti-Semitism and the way that the Passion stories were central to rekindling hatred of Jews from generation to generation. Many are embracing Gibson's movie and not understanding why Jews seem to be so threatened. Gibson knows that for many Americans it is simply unimaginable to question the Gospels.
Those who wanted to purge hatred of Jews from the collective unconscious of Western societies after the defeat of Nazism in 1945 faced an impossible dilemma. The dominant religious tradition of the West was based on a set of four accounts of Jesus, each of which to some extent is riddled with anger at or even hatred of the Jews. The Gospels were written, many historians tell us, some fifty years after Jesus' death at a time when early Christians (most of whom considered themselves still Jewish) were engaged in a fierce competition with a newly emerging rabbinic Judaism to win the hearts and minds of their fellow Jews (some of whom were becoming Jewish Christians, retaining their Jewish practice but adding to it a belief in Jesus as messiah) and the minds of the disaffected masses of the Roman empire (some Christians already having given up on converting Jews and beginning to think that the real audience for their outreach should be the wider world of the Roman Empire).
The Gospels sought to play down the antagonism that Jews of Jesus' time felt toward Rome, so they displaced the anger at his crucifixion instead onto those Jews who remembered Jesus as an inspiring and revolutionary teacher but not much more (not a messiah, not God). The result: an account that portrays Jews as willfully calling on the Romans to kill Jesus, rejecting the supposed compassion of the Romans, and thereby earning the hatred of humanity for the Jews' supposed collective responsibility for this act of deicide. Conversely, Jesus' Judaism, his viewing the world through the frame of his Jewish spiritual practice and Torah-based thinking, is played-down or at times completely obscured, so that the message of these professional "convert the non-Jews" thinkers would not be undermined by a covert message (still advocated by some of the Jewish Christians at the time of the writing of the Gospel) that to be a Christian one should also become a Jew.
When Christianity gained state power in Rome in the 4th century of the common era, it quickly began to pass legislation restricting Jewish rights. And as Christianity conquered Europe in the ensuing centuries, spreading its story that the Jews were responsible for killing Jesus, the Jews became the primary demeaned other of Europe for the next 1700 years. Jews came to fear Easter—because the retelling of the Crucifixion story often led to mob attacks on defenseless Jews who were blamed for having caused the suffering of Jesus.
In the aftermath of WWII, many principled Christians recognized that the Holocaust was possible in part because Hitler was able to draw upon the cultural legacy of hatred toward Jews nurtured by this kind of Christian teaching. The Catholic Church and some Protestant denominations have sought to distance themselves from this long history of demeaning the Jews. But although anti-Semitism became unfashionable, only a few Christians were willing to take responsibility for the devastating impact of the hateful representations of Jews that suffused the Gospels and culminated in its historically doubtful account of the Roman imperialists, who ruled with an iron fist and crucified thousands of Jews, bowing to the will of a hateful Jewish mob determined to kill Jesus.
Even when the Catholic Church officially banned teaching hatred of Jews, it never ordered its dioceses to teach about the role the church itself had played in creating and sustaining those negative stereotypes.
Liberals and progressives in the late 20th century did an impressive job of confronting and educating the public about the literary, intellectual, and cultural sources of racism, sexism and homophobia. But they tended to shy away from anti-Semitism, both because of the mistaken assumption that it was no longer a real problem (after all, Jews were economically and politically flourishing in post-WWII America) and because such a confrontation would have forced a challenge to the dominant Western religion at the core of its most dramatic story: the crucifixion.
Nevertheless, ever since the 1960s there have been thousands of sensitive Christians, who, to their credit, have created a Christian spiritual renewal movement which rejects the teaching of hatred in the Gospel by allegorizing the story and giving greater focus to the Resurrection than to the Crucifixion. Returning to Jesus' Jewish roots, and refocusing attention on the bulk of the Gospel, with its stories portraying a Jewish Jesus who builds on and elaborates the ancient Torah commandments to "love your neighbor as yourself" and "love the stranger," the Christian renewalists tended to see the two-thousand-year history of Christian anti-Semitism as a distortion of the deeper truth of the Gospel. Easter became a holiday to celebrate the rebirth of an ancient Jewish hope—that the forces of hatred and cruelty manifested in the Crucifixion could be overcome by a triumph of the forces of love, generosity and kindness whose Resurrection and ultimate victory were celebrated at Easter.
Yet that renewal movement is now being effectively challenged by a Christian fundamentalist movement with deep ties to right-wing politics. In post 9/11 America, many people have given up on the hopeful vision of social change movements. They have turned to a deep pessimism in which the idea of a world based on love, cooperation and generosity to the Other is alternately ridiculed and disdained as unrealistic and dangerous. A cynical realism holds sway in the media and mainstream American culture and political institutions, placing American progressive and visionary thinkers on the defensive. No wonder, then, that many Christians are attracted to interpretations of their religious tradition which emphasize the danger and cruelty in the world while sidelining aspects of the Gospel which teach compassion and solidarity with the oppressed.
I've written about this struggle in another context (see my book Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation). Inside the Jewish tradition there has always been a struggle between those who have heard God's voice as the voice of accumulated pain and cruelty of the universe passed on from generation to generation, and those who have heard God's voice as a voice of love, compassion, generosity and transcendence. Even in our Torah there are moments when the people hearing God's voice are hearing it through the frame of their own accumulated pain and hence hear a voice that talks a language of power, domination and cruelty, and other moments when the people hearing God's voice are hearing it through the frame of their own capacity to respond to God's revelation of love and generosity. And so it is through history that we find in virtually every religious tradition the people who distort the message of love of their own traditions and instead portray God as the voice legitimating domination, power over others, cruelty and violence. The George W's, the Osama Bin Ladins, the Ariel Sharons are found in every tradition. And they don't even need the frame of religion (some people like to blame these distortions—but the truth is that the Nazis, Stanlinists, and Vietnam-war mongers of the US did not need religion to act out the legacy of pain and cruelty in the world). There is no religious tradition, no ideology of liberation (including Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism, etc.) that cannot be appropriated by a distorted consciousness and transformed into its opposite, that is, into a mechanism or a justificatory ideology to dominate and act out of cruelty.
So let's understand that the attempt to revive Christian enthusiasm around the part of the story that is focused on cruelty and pain is not only (or even primarily) a threat to the Jews, but rather a threat to all those decent, loving, and generous Christians who have found in the Jesus story a foundation for their most humane and caring instincts. It is these Christians who are under assault by Mel Gibson's movie, and by the particular form of Christian evangelicalism that it is meant to stimulate. Yet, in a deeper way, the Gibson movie is likely to stimulate a broader assault on all of us who seek to build a world based on caring and love, cooperation and generosity, by giving strength to the part within each of us that despairs, the voice within each of us that tells us that cruelty is what is "really how the other is, really how the world is," the voice inside each of us that feels that there is no point in struggling to transform the world because it is too hopeless and too dominated by craziness (and that is the point of the Jews in the Gospel calling for Jesus to be killed, because it is saying "even the Jews, his own people" do this, because evil is dominant in the world and always will be, and the only way out is to believe in Jesus and find salvation in another world, and despair of changing this one). So, part of the struggle is to reclaim and reaffirm the Jewish Jesus, the Jesus who retains hope for building love right here, the Jesus who unabashedly proclaims that the Kingdom of Heaven has arrived (which is to say, that it is here on earth, that the world right now can be based on love and kindness, and that we don't have to wait for some future time or "the end of days" as described by Isaiah, because it is here now, we can make it happen right away by the way that we live our lives). And it is this voice of Jesus that The Passion movie seeks to marginalize or make invisible.
I hope Christians will take the lead in organizing people of all faiths to leaflet every public showing of Gibson's film with a message that runs counter to the anger at Jews that this film is likely to produce in at least some viewers. I hope that every morally sensitive Christian minister and priest will use the weeks ahead to preach about the history of Christian anti-Semitism until most parishioners can understand why Jews would feel worried about the popularizing of the Gospel story. But I hope also that the discussion isn't reduced to that—that Christians take on the underlying challenge and affirm their commitment to the Jewish Jesus, the Jesus that preaches that a world of love is possible right now, right here, through our actions.
The best hope to avoid a new surge of anti-Semitism will not come only from de-coding the anti-Semitic themes in Mel Gibson's film, or the Gospel on which it was based, but rather by re-crediting the ancient Jewish vision of Jesus—that in place of the Old Bottom Line of money and power, a New Bottom Line of Love and Generosity is possible. People of all faiths need to shape a political and social movement that reaffirms the most generous, peace-oriented, social justice-committed, and loving truths of the spiritual heritage of the human race. It is only this resurrection of hope that can save us from a new wave of global hatred.
Please take this message and ask your local newspaper to publish it. Send it to your friends and anyone on your email lists. Please approach local Christian groups to take the lead to create this discussion publicly. Or, failing that, please have your local Tikkun Community create a public discussion of these issues (we are doing that in the Bay Area on March 14th—check our calendar of events at www.tikkun.org a few days before). We will also discuss these issues in greater detail at the annual Tikkun Community Conference and Teach-In to Congress for Middle East Peace April 25-27 in Washington, D.C.—because at a deep level they underlie the entire enterprise of building a world of peace (if you despair of that, then you stop thinking about how to build more cooperation and the Ariel Sharon and George Bush strategy of domination over others is what you are left with).
Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun, national chair of the interfaith peace and justic organization The Tikkun Community (www.tikkun.org), rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in San Francisco, and author of Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation (HarperPerennial) and most recently, of Healing Israel/Palestine (North Atlantic Books, 2003). RabbiLerner@tikkun.org
A Gospel of Love and Hope: How to Respond to Mel Gibson's "Passion"
By Rabbi Michael Lerner
Editor, Tikkun Magazine
Mel Gibson unlocked the secret of why Americans have never confronted anti-Semitism in the way that we did with the other great systems of hatred (racism, sexism, homophobia) when he told a national t.v. audience on February 16 that "the Jews' real complaint isn't with my film (The Passion) but with the Gospels." Few Christians today know the history of anti-Semitism and the way that the Passion stories were central to rekindling hatred of Jews from generation to generation. Many are embracing Gibson's movie and not understanding why Jews seem to be so threatened. Gibson knows that for many Americans it is simply unimaginable to question the Gospels.
Those who wanted to purge hatred of Jews from the collective unconscious of Western societies after the defeat of Nazism in 1945 faced an impossible dilemma. The dominant religious tradition of the West was based on a set of four accounts of Jesus, each of which to some extent is riddled with anger at or even hatred of the Jews. The Gospels were written, many historians tell us, some fifty years after Jesus' death at a time when early Christians (most of whom considered themselves still Jewish) were engaged in a fierce competition with a newly emerging rabbinic Judaism to win the hearts and minds of their fellow Jews (some of whom were becoming Jewish Christians, retaining their Jewish practice but adding to it a belief in Jesus as messiah) and the minds of the disaffected masses of the Roman empire (some Christians already having given up on converting Jews and beginning to think that the real audience for their outreach should be the wider world of the Roman Empire).
The Gospels sought to play down the antagonism that Jews of Jesus' time felt toward Rome, so they displaced the anger at his crucifixion instead onto those Jews who remembered Jesus as an inspiring and revolutionary teacher but not much more (not a messiah, not God). The result: an account that portrays Jews as willfully calling on the Romans to kill Jesus, rejecting the supposed compassion of the Romans, and thereby earning the hatred of humanity for the Jews' supposed collective responsibility for this act of deicide. Conversely, Jesus' Judaism, his viewing the world through the frame of his Jewish spiritual practice and Torah-based thinking, is played-down or at times completely obscured, so that the message of these professional "convert the non-Jews" thinkers would not be undermined by a covert message (still advocated by some of the Jewish Christians at the time of the writing of the Gospel) that to be a Christian one should also become a Jew.
When Christianity gained state power in Rome in the 4th century of the common era, it quickly began to pass legislation restricting Jewish rights. And as Christianity conquered Europe in the ensuing centuries, spreading its story that the Jews were responsible for killing Jesus, the Jews became the primary demeaned other of Europe for the next 1700 years. Jews came to fear Easter—because the retelling of the Crucifixion story often led to mob attacks on defenseless Jews who were blamed for having caused the suffering of Jesus.
In the aftermath of WWII, many principled Christians recognized that the Holocaust was possible in part because Hitler was able to draw upon the cultural legacy of hatred toward Jews nurtured by this kind of Christian teaching. The Catholic Church and some Protestant denominations have sought to distance themselves from this long history of demeaning the Jews. But although anti-Semitism became unfashionable, only a few Christians were willing to take responsibility for the devastating impact of the hateful representations of Jews that suffused the Gospels and culminated in its historically doubtful account of the Roman imperialists, who ruled with an iron fist and crucified thousands of Jews, bowing to the will of a hateful Jewish mob determined to kill Jesus.
Even when the Catholic Church officially banned teaching hatred of Jews, it never ordered its dioceses to teach about the role the church itself had played in creating and sustaining those negative stereotypes.
Liberals and progressives in the late 20th century did an impressive job of confronting and educating the public about the literary, intellectual, and cultural sources of racism, sexism and homophobia. But they tended to shy away from anti-Semitism, both because of the mistaken assumption that it was no longer a real problem (after all, Jews were economically and politically flourishing in post-WWII America) and because such a confrontation would have forced a challenge to the dominant Western religion at the core of its most dramatic story: the crucifixion.
Nevertheless, ever since the 1960s there have been thousands of sensitive Christians, who, to their credit, have created a Christian spiritual renewal movement which rejects the teaching of hatred in the Gospel by allegorizing the story and giving greater focus to the Resurrection than to the Crucifixion. Returning to Jesus' Jewish roots, and refocusing attention on the bulk of the Gospel, with its stories portraying a Jewish Jesus who builds on and elaborates the ancient Torah commandments to "love your neighbor as yourself" and "love the stranger," the Christian renewalists tended to see the two-thousand-year history of Christian anti-Semitism as a distortion of the deeper truth of the Gospel. Easter became a holiday to celebrate the rebirth of an ancient Jewish hope—that the forces of hatred and cruelty manifested in the Crucifixion could be overcome by a triumph of the forces of love, generosity and kindness whose Resurrection and ultimate victory were celebrated at Easter.
Yet that renewal movement is now being effectively challenged by a Christian fundamentalist movement with deep ties to right-wing politics. In post 9/11 America, many people have given up on the hopeful vision of social change movements. They have turned to a deep pessimism in which the idea of a world based on love, cooperation and generosity to the Other is alternately ridiculed and disdained as unrealistic and dangerous. A cynical realism holds sway in the media and mainstream American culture and political institutions, placing American progressive and visionary thinkers on the defensive. No wonder, then, that many Christians are attracted to interpretations of their religious tradition which emphasize the danger and cruelty in the world while sidelining aspects of the Gospel which teach compassion and solidarity with the oppressed.
I've written about this struggle in another context (see my book Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation). Inside the Jewish tradition there has always been a struggle between those who have heard God's voice as the voice of accumulated pain and cruelty of the universe passed on from generation to generation, and those who have heard God's voice as a voice of love, compassion, generosity and transcendence. Even in our Torah there are moments when the people hearing God's voice are hearing it through the frame of their own accumulated pain and hence hear a voice that talks a language of power, domination and cruelty, and other moments when the people hearing God's voice are hearing it through the frame of their own capacity to respond to God's revelation of love and generosity. And so it is through history that we find in virtually every religious tradition the people who distort the message of love of their own traditions and instead portray God as the voice legitimating domination, power over others, cruelty and violence. The George W's, the Osama Bin Ladins, the Ariel Sharons are found in every tradition. And they don't even need the frame of religion (some people like to blame these distortions—but the truth is that the Nazis, Stanlinists, and Vietnam-war mongers of the US did not need religion to act out the legacy of pain and cruelty in the world). There is no religious tradition, no ideology of liberation (including Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism, etc.) that cannot be appropriated by a distorted consciousness and transformed into its opposite, that is, into a mechanism or a justificatory ideology to dominate and act out of cruelty.
So let's understand that the attempt to revive Christian enthusiasm around the part of the story that is focused on cruelty and pain is not only (or even primarily) a threat to the Jews, but rather a threat to all those decent, loving, and generous Christians who have found in the Jesus story a foundation for their most humane and caring instincts. It is these Christians who are under assault by Mel Gibson's movie, and by the particular form of Christian evangelicalism that it is meant to stimulate. Yet, in a deeper way, the Gibson movie is likely to stimulate a broader assault on all of us who seek to build a world based on caring and love, cooperation and generosity, by giving strength to the part within each of us that despairs, the voice within each of us that tells us that cruelty is what is "really how the other is, really how the world is," the voice inside each of us that feels that there is no point in struggling to transform the world because it is too hopeless and too dominated by craziness (and that is the point of the Jews in the Gospel calling for Jesus to be killed, because it is saying "even the Jews, his own people" do this, because evil is dominant in the world and always will be, and the only way out is to believe in Jesus and find salvation in another world, and despair of changing this one). So, part of the struggle is to reclaim and reaffirm the Jewish Jesus, the Jesus who retains hope for building love right here, the Jesus who unabashedly proclaims that the Kingdom of Heaven has arrived (which is to say, that it is here on earth, that the world right now can be based on love and kindness, and that we don't have to wait for some future time or "the end of days" as described by Isaiah, because it is here now, we can make it happen right away by the way that we live our lives). And it is this voice of Jesus that The Passion movie seeks to marginalize or make invisible.
I hope Christians will take the lead in organizing people of all faiths to leaflet every public showing of Gibson's film with a message that runs counter to the anger at Jews that this film is likely to produce in at least some viewers. I hope that every morally sensitive Christian minister and priest will use the weeks ahead to preach about the history of Christian anti-Semitism until most parishioners can understand why Jews would feel worried about the popularizing of the Gospel story. But I hope also that the discussion isn't reduced to that—that Christians take on the underlying challenge and affirm their commitment to the Jewish Jesus, the Jesus that preaches that a world of love is possible right now, right here, through our actions.
The best hope to avoid a new surge of anti-Semitism will not come only from de-coding the anti-Semitic themes in Mel Gibson's film, or the Gospel on which it was based, but rather by re-crediting the ancient Jewish vision of Jesus—that in place of the Old Bottom Line of money and power, a New Bottom Line of Love and Generosity is possible. People of all faiths need to shape a political and social movement that reaffirms the most generous, peace-oriented, social justice-committed, and loving truths of the spiritual heritage of the human race. It is only this resurrection of hope that can save us from a new wave of global hatred.
Please take this message and ask your local newspaper to publish it. Send it to your friends and anyone on your email lists. Please approach local Christian groups to take the lead to create this discussion publicly. Or, failing that, please have your local Tikkun Community create a public discussion of these issues (we are doing that in the Bay Area on March 14th—check our calendar of events at www.tikkun.org a few days before). We will also discuss these issues in greater detail at the annual Tikkun Community Conference and Teach-In to Congress for Middle East Peace April 25-27 in Washington, D.C.—because at a deep level they underlie the entire enterprise of building a world of peace (if you despair of that, then you stop thinking about how to build more cooperation and the Ariel Sharon and George Bush strategy of domination over others is what you are left with).
Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun, national chair of the interfaith peace and justic organization The Tikkun Community (www.tikkun.org), rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in San Francisco, and author of Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation (HarperPerennial) and most recently, of Healing Israel/Palestine (North Atlantic Books, 2003). RabbiLerner@tikkun.org
Monday, February 16, 2004
Lindsay
So I am headed to AU today on my day off.
And on the Shuttle to campus is my good friend Lindsay Bixby.
Some background is needed to get the full effect of this story. We haven't talked in months. But for the past couple of days I had been thinking about Lindsay. I had heard some possible bad news about her and wanted to make sure she was doing ok. Finding out the possible bad news had of course brought up all those unresolved issues we have. So I had been thinking I need to suck it up and contact her.
The past couple of times I had been to Tenleytown I had thought I saw her and kind of jumped on my insides on the prospect of having to deal with her.
To top it all off, Today I was having a very Lindsay Bixby day. I was listening to Janet Jackson and doing the crossword puzzle two things I love (I really do love the crossword puzzle but never have time to do it).
I get onto the shuttle, not paying attention and then BAMB there she is right in a seat by herself.
As I like to say I don't think Serendipity is that obnoxious.
So I sit kind of across from her but definitely in her eye site and say hello
She says nothing...
She is talking on the phone to her parents I find out. AND SHE IGNORES ME AS IF I AM NOT THERE.
It was great, I was in Middle School again (and I say that without any sarcasm, I was honestly impressed)
I cannot let this go, so I stare at her, with a smirk on my face cause I am really enjoying this effort to pretend we don't know each other. Just staring at her with totally amusement.
I have to say that not much had changed, a new haircut and new shoes for her and for me, longer hair, a new jacket, and a new bag.
I could still hear Janet blasting from my earphones, it was magnificent.
She finishes the phone call and I say hello again, she ignores and stumbles to put her headphones on. She then does this fidget thing that she does when she is nervous; rubbing her right index finger between her middle and third finger. It was quite cute.
I continue to stare, laughing at this point (as I am like wow, incredible)...
Honestly, I personally think the whole situation is sad. As much as I was laughing for the amusement, it was a sad laugh as well. I really wanted to shake her and say LIFE IS TO SHORT FOR THIS BULLSHIT. Anything we have done to each other is so incredibly minor when thought of in the spectrum of a blink we call life, and the time crunch of our existence. That if you find someone you can connect with enough to call a friend, you should do everything in your power to keep that friendship. But I to was overcome with sadness and a small case of fear that stopped me from doing anything else but smirk and laugh.
We get to Nebraska and she darts off, the bus.
Pretending the entire time she did not know me. The whole thing was really incredible..
So I say HERES TO YOU LINDSAY BIXBY, that was amazing
And on the Shuttle to campus is my good friend Lindsay Bixby.
Some background is needed to get the full effect of this story. We haven't talked in months. But for the past couple of days I had been thinking about Lindsay. I had heard some possible bad news about her and wanted to make sure she was doing ok. Finding out the possible bad news had of course brought up all those unresolved issues we have. So I had been thinking I need to suck it up and contact her.
The past couple of times I had been to Tenleytown I had thought I saw her and kind of jumped on my insides on the prospect of having to deal with her.
To top it all off, Today I was having a very Lindsay Bixby day. I was listening to Janet Jackson and doing the crossword puzzle two things I love (I really do love the crossword puzzle but never have time to do it).
I get onto the shuttle, not paying attention and then BAMB there she is right in a seat by herself.
As I like to say I don't think Serendipity is that obnoxious.
So I sit kind of across from her but definitely in her eye site and say hello
She says nothing...
She is talking on the phone to her parents I find out. AND SHE IGNORES ME AS IF I AM NOT THERE.
It was great, I was in Middle School again (and I say that without any sarcasm, I was honestly impressed)
I cannot let this go, so I stare at her, with a smirk on my face cause I am really enjoying this effort to pretend we don't know each other. Just staring at her with totally amusement.
I have to say that not much had changed, a new haircut and new shoes for her and for me, longer hair, a new jacket, and a new bag.
I could still hear Janet blasting from my earphones, it was magnificent.
She finishes the phone call and I say hello again, she ignores and stumbles to put her headphones on. She then does this fidget thing that she does when she is nervous; rubbing her right index finger between her middle and third finger. It was quite cute.
I continue to stare, laughing at this point (as I am like wow, incredible)...
Honestly, I personally think the whole situation is sad. As much as I was laughing for the amusement, it was a sad laugh as well. I really wanted to shake her and say LIFE IS TO SHORT FOR THIS BULLSHIT. Anything we have done to each other is so incredibly minor when thought of in the spectrum of a blink we call life, and the time crunch of our existence. That if you find someone you can connect with enough to call a friend, you should do everything in your power to keep that friendship. But I to was overcome with sadness and a small case of fear that stopped me from doing anything else but smirk and laugh.
We get to Nebraska and she darts off, the bus.
Pretending the entire time she did not know me. The whole thing was really incredible..
So I say HERES TO YOU LINDSAY BIXBY, that was amazing
Sunday, February 15, 2004
Is there a Difference between Dems and Republicans?
Frustrated by the prospect that the next presidential contest could be Kerry v. Bush, I see why people stop voting. Kerry a sleazeball embodying everything that is wrong with politics. Bush, well she is just evil. I am not going to vote Nader because he is dishonest and disingenuous at best. So with no viable options why vote? All the candidates are just going to do the same thing anyway.
I understand peoples dissatisfaction and why they don’t vote why people don’t vote.
That being said I started to wonder is there a difference between the political parties, if they both are going to basically keep a lot of the same status quo what is the difference? Is Nader right?
Of course he is wrong. There is a huge difference between them, but not in a good way.
Bush’s administration has been one of right ideologue plagued by insatiable greed and only focusing on winning elections. But it is very ideological. We know what 4 more years of Bush will look like, it will be more disenfranchisement of the majority of Americans; yet they go along with it, convinced by him that it is American, deficits, bleeding of the government, mild recovery to depression again… Degradation of civil rights, loss of woman’s right to choose possibly…
Bush’s record is clear.
But it will not be ideology vs. ideology in Bush v. Kerry, but rather, ideology versus mush. Versus standing for nothing. While Bush’s stance are clear, as a Democrat I still am not sure what the hell Kerry stands for. And it has become obvious nothing (aside from getting elected)
So these are my options to which I respond: Bush for 4 more years of destruction and Hillary 2008
I understand peoples dissatisfaction and why they don’t vote why people don’t vote.
That being said I started to wonder is there a difference between the political parties, if they both are going to basically keep a lot of the same status quo what is the difference? Is Nader right?
Of course he is wrong. There is a huge difference between them, but not in a good way.
Bush’s administration has been one of right ideologue plagued by insatiable greed and only focusing on winning elections. But it is very ideological. We know what 4 more years of Bush will look like, it will be more disenfranchisement of the majority of Americans; yet they go along with it, convinced by him that it is American, deficits, bleeding of the government, mild recovery to depression again… Degradation of civil rights, loss of woman’s right to choose possibly…
Bush’s record is clear.
But it will not be ideology vs. ideology in Bush v. Kerry, but rather, ideology versus mush. Versus standing for nothing. While Bush’s stance are clear, as a Democrat I still am not sure what the hell Kerry stands for. And it has become obvious nothing (aside from getting elected)
So these are my options to which I respond: Bush for 4 more years of destruction and Hillary 2008
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Destroying Media
"MEDIA
Diversity Under Attack
The relentless attack on media diversity continues. Just weeks after the approval of News Corporation's acquisition of DirecTV, Comcast has made "an unsolicited $54.1 billion takeover offer...for the Walt Disney Corporation." If approved by stockholders and regulators, the deal would create a massive conglomerate "with $45 billion in annual revenue, a market value of $125 billion, and 179,000 employees." The combined company would, according to Rupert Murdoch, "stand with News Corporation and Time Warner atop the US media market." Comcast/Disney would have an unprecedented level of vertical integration across every major media business – with significant holdings in theme parks, radio, music, publishing, film production, TV production, cable networks, broadcast networks, cable subscribers, internet subscribers and professional sports teams. The result: "by owning each step of the television food chain...a combined Comcast-Disney would affect what people watch on TV as well as how much they pay."
MEDIA OWNERSHIP LAWS PROVIDE LITTLE HOPE: The Comcast-Disney merger would require regulatory approval – both from the Federal Trade Commission (or Justice Department) for antitrust review and the Federal Communications Commission to ensure the merger is in the public interest, the FCC's touchstone standard for over 70 years. Even though the burden of meeting the "public interest" standard lies with the companies, given the "steady unraveling of media ownership laws and regulations in the last several years, there is little left that would obstruct the merger." Notably, in 2002, a federal appeals court struck down "the decades-old ban on companies owning cable systems and broadcast stations in the same market." Consumer advocacy groups can only hope "the proposed merger will highlight the way ownership regulations have eroded."
MURDOCH AND FOX PAVE THE WAY: The FCC has hindered its own ability to prevent the merger by its previous indifference to media consolidation. According to Rebecca Arbogast, a media analyst for Legg Mason, the precedent of the DirectTV/News Corporation merger "favors Comcast's eventual success." Comcast executive vice president David Cohen agrees: "We think that, given there was a recently approved comparable deal, that will certainly help us on the regulatory and political perspectives." And an approved Comcast/Disney merger "could provoke a rash of new deals between other content and distribution companies" struggling to compete with the mega-corporation. These future mergers, of course, would also likely be approved by federal regulators – based on the Comcast precedent.
INVESTMENT BANKERS CELEBRATE: Despite the announcement potentially being a raw deal for average Americans, the proposed Comcast/Disney merger had investment bankers ecstatic. Apparently, investment bankers, merger attorneys and takeover traders "have spent the past few years lamenting the dearth of deals." Yesterday, "investment bankers not already hired by Comcast or Disney [were] working the phones with clients to scout other potential opportunities." According to Louis Bevilacqua, a lawyer in the industry, "[t]here will be a lot of smiles as people go out and have a drink at one of the bars tonight."
IGNORING PUBLIC OUTRAGE ABOUT MEDIA CONSOLODATION: The Comcast/Disney deal was proposed on the same day public interest groups "urged the federal appeals court [in Philadelphia] to order the Federal Communications Commission to rewrite its new rules that govern the size and reach of the nation's largest media conglomerates." The new FCC rules "make it significantly easier for the biggest companies to acquire other companies both in their existing markets and in new ones." Citizens groups oppose the rule changes because they "could reduce competition and diversity of views on the airwaves, as well as lead to reduced news coverage of local affairs." Meanwhile large media conglomerates, including conservative radio powerhouse Clear Channel Communications, argued that the "commission had not deregulated the industry enough.""
American Progress Report
Diversity Under Attack
The relentless attack on media diversity continues. Just weeks after the approval of News Corporation's acquisition of DirecTV, Comcast has made "an unsolicited $54.1 billion takeover offer...for the Walt Disney Corporation." If approved by stockholders and regulators, the deal would create a massive conglomerate "with $45 billion in annual revenue, a market value of $125 billion, and 179,000 employees." The combined company would, according to Rupert Murdoch, "stand with News Corporation and Time Warner atop the US media market." Comcast/Disney would have an unprecedented level of vertical integration across every major media business – with significant holdings in theme parks, radio, music, publishing, film production, TV production, cable networks, broadcast networks, cable subscribers, internet subscribers and professional sports teams. The result: "by owning each step of the television food chain...a combined Comcast-Disney would affect what people watch on TV as well as how much they pay."
MEDIA OWNERSHIP LAWS PROVIDE LITTLE HOPE: The Comcast-Disney merger would require regulatory approval – both from the Federal Trade Commission (or Justice Department) for antitrust review and the Federal Communications Commission to ensure the merger is in the public interest, the FCC's touchstone standard for over 70 years. Even though the burden of meeting the "public interest" standard lies with the companies, given the "steady unraveling of media ownership laws and regulations in the last several years, there is little left that would obstruct the merger." Notably, in 2002, a federal appeals court struck down "the decades-old ban on companies owning cable systems and broadcast stations in the same market." Consumer advocacy groups can only hope "the proposed merger will highlight the way ownership regulations have eroded."
MURDOCH AND FOX PAVE THE WAY: The FCC has hindered its own ability to prevent the merger by its previous indifference to media consolidation. According to Rebecca Arbogast, a media analyst for Legg Mason, the precedent of the DirectTV/News Corporation merger "favors Comcast's eventual success." Comcast executive vice president David Cohen agrees: "We think that, given there was a recently approved comparable deal, that will certainly help us on the regulatory and political perspectives." And an approved Comcast/Disney merger "could provoke a rash of new deals between other content and distribution companies" struggling to compete with the mega-corporation. These future mergers, of course, would also likely be approved by federal regulators – based on the Comcast precedent.
INVESTMENT BANKERS CELEBRATE: Despite the announcement potentially being a raw deal for average Americans, the proposed Comcast/Disney merger had investment bankers ecstatic. Apparently, investment bankers, merger attorneys and takeover traders "have spent the past few years lamenting the dearth of deals." Yesterday, "investment bankers not already hired by Comcast or Disney [were] working the phones with clients to scout other potential opportunities." According to Louis Bevilacqua, a lawyer in the industry, "[t]here will be a lot of smiles as people go out and have a drink at one of the bars tonight."
IGNORING PUBLIC OUTRAGE ABOUT MEDIA CONSOLODATION: The Comcast/Disney deal was proposed on the same day public interest groups "urged the federal appeals court [in Philadelphia] to order the Federal Communications Commission to rewrite its new rules that govern the size and reach of the nation's largest media conglomerates." The new FCC rules "make it significantly easier for the biggest companies to acquire other companies both in their existing markets and in new ones." Citizens groups oppose the rule changes because they "could reduce competition and diversity of views on the airwaves, as well as lead to reduced news coverage of local affairs." Meanwhile large media conglomerates, including conservative radio powerhouse Clear Channel Communications, argued that the "commission had not deregulated the industry enough.""
American Progress Report
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Is Dean Gay?
So I am running errands in Georgetown crossing the street and this man rides next to me on his bike and asks:
"Is he a gay?"
Obvious look of confusion on my face
"Dean is he a gay."
I forgot I had a Dean pride button on my jacket, mostly because they are readily available in the district not so much because I am coming out.
"uhh no" clearly I am a little taken back what do you say
"Well good cause I am going to vote for him today."
Wow thats a relief...
Seriously, this is why we need start questioning if democracy has failed in this country...
SERIOUSLY
"Is he a gay?"
Obvious look of confusion on my face
"Dean is he a gay."
I forgot I had a Dean pride button on my jacket, mostly because they are readily available in the district not so much because I am coming out.
"uhh no" clearly I am a little taken back what do you say
"Well good cause I am going to vote for him today."
Wow thats a relief...
Seriously, this is why we need start questioning if democracy has failed in this country...
SERIOUSLY
Monday, February 09, 2004
Kerry the Man of the people
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040205-115046-4263r.htm
Once again we learn of Kerry using his influence, good thing he represents the republicans and their corrupt.... oh wait... shit...
by the way it is really sad that it took the Washington Times to report this
Once again we learn of Kerry using his influence, good thing he represents the republicans and their corrupt.... oh wait... shit...
by the way it is really sad that it took the Washington Times to report this
Saturday, February 07, 2004
Blog contest
SO I WANT THIS BLOG TO HAVE A NEW TEMPLATE PLEASE VOTE LET ME KNOW WHAT IT SHOULD LOOK LIKE
http://www.maystardesigns.com/hiddentemplates/home.html
http://www.elated.com/pagekits/washed/page.html
http://www.mizdos.com/miz/
http://www.blogskins.com/info.php?sid=2975
http://www.blogskins.com/info.php?sid=7919
http://www.blogskins.com/info.php?
http://www.blogskins.com/info.php?sid=65
http://www.blogskins.com/info.php?sid=5345
http://www.blogskins.com/info.php?sid=7665
I know what you are thinking, I will never look at all of those, but come on people it will only take 5 minutes and it would be a big help
So please take a look and let me know
http://www.maystardesigns.com/hiddentemplates/home.html
http://www.elated.com/pagekits/washed/page.html
http://www.mizdos.com/miz/
http://www.blogskins.com/info.php?sid=2975
http://www.blogskins.com/info.php?sid=7919
http://www.blogskins.com/info.php?
http://www.blogskins.com/info.php?sid=65
http://www.blogskins.com/info.php?sid=5345
http://www.blogskins.com/info.php?sid=7665
I know what you are thinking, I will never look at all of those, but come on people it will only take 5 minutes and it would be a big help
So please take a look and let me know
Thursday, February 05, 2004
Food for Thought
So today is a long day and I don't have anytime as it is 6:30 and I am just posting now, so here is some food for thought as I love facts like these that just sum up our problems:
If we were to get rid of every non-defense Government spending it would not evaporate the deficit.
Social spending is 1/6th of all US government spending.
If we were to get rid of every non-defense Government spending it would not evaporate the deficit.
Social spending is 1/6th of all US government spending.
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
My problem with Black History Month
My problem with Black History month is that it always get simplified to things like, "Did you know who created the filament for the lightbulb we use today?...... IT WAS A BLACK GUY... (who the hell knows his name)" and then call it the shortest month...
Black History month should be dedicated to expandind our everyday knowledge of Black History fostering the inclusion of it into history classes year in and year out.
Benjamin Banneker the Black American Scientist is great but what about Crispus Attucks the first PERSON to die in the revolutionary war, who happened to be a free slave. He was one of the first PATRIOTS for this country and did more than just be the first person to die for it.
Focus on not just Frederick Douglas but Nat Turner, Malcom X didn't do much to further black interest, but Bayard Rustin a Gay Black civil rights activist was one of the moving people in the Civil Rights movement.
We need to incorporate all of this into our collective history. More about who the Native Americans were. How Mexican migrant workers have contributed to our history. Great Asian American thinkers. And yes Black activists besides Martin Luther King.
I just want more from my history month
Black History month should be dedicated to expandind our everyday knowledge of Black History fostering the inclusion of it into history classes year in and year out.
Benjamin Banneker the Black American Scientist is great but what about Crispus Attucks the first PERSON to die in the revolutionary war, who happened to be a free slave. He was one of the first PATRIOTS for this country and did more than just be the first person to die for it.
Focus on not just Frederick Douglas but Nat Turner, Malcom X didn't do much to further black interest, but Bayard Rustin a Gay Black civil rights activist was one of the moving people in the Civil Rights movement.
We need to incorporate all of this into our collective history. More about who the Native Americans were. How Mexican migrant workers have contributed to our history. Great Asian American thinkers. And yes Black activists besides Martin Luther King.
I just want more from my history month
NO TALL DUKAKIS
I don't like John Kerry, in fact I trust John Kerry LESS than I trust George W. Bush
So I am going to dedicate some times to some more of his lies:
"Dean Supported War Resolution. … Until recently, Dean has been able to pull the wool over the eyes of voters in New Hampshire, Iowa and across the nation on his position on the war. The facts are now clear: Dean supported giving the President the authority to go to war. Only when he determined it to be politically advantageous, did he take an anti-war stance."—John Kerry campaign "media alert," Dec. 12, the day before Saddam Hussein was captured
"Governor Dean and some other people didn't even think it was great. They didn't even know that it was good to get rid of Saddam Hussein. … I personally have said all along that saying 'no' is not a policy. And Howard Dean has only basically been saying 'no' and been angry about the war."—John Kerry, Fox News Sunday, Dec. 14, the day after Saddam Hussein was captured
HE WON'T WIN
NO TALL DUKAKI's
ps. At this time Dukakis was leading Reagan in the polls, so to those who say Kerry is leading Bush, that means squat
So I am going to dedicate some times to some more of his lies:
"Dean Supported War Resolution. … Until recently, Dean has been able to pull the wool over the eyes of voters in New Hampshire, Iowa and across the nation on his position on the war. The facts are now clear: Dean supported giving the President the authority to go to war. Only when he determined it to be politically advantageous, did he take an anti-war stance."—John Kerry campaign "media alert," Dec. 12, the day before Saddam Hussein was captured
"Governor Dean and some other people didn't even think it was great. They didn't even know that it was good to get rid of Saddam Hussein. … I personally have said all along that saying 'no' is not a policy. And Howard Dean has only basically been saying 'no' and been angry about the war."—John Kerry, Fox News Sunday, Dec. 14, the day after Saddam Hussein was captured
HE WON'T WIN
NO TALL DUKAKI's
ps. At this time Dukakis was leading Reagan in the polls, so to those who say Kerry is leading Bush, that means squat
Monday, February 02, 2004
Democrats at a Critical Decision
I am dragging today so its hard to write clearly, but I will try anyway:
I cannot miss the opportunity to discuss the big Democratic vote tomorrow, Tuesday, February 3, 2004 in Arizona, Delaware, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, followed by Michigan and Wisconsin Feb 7th.
We have the opportunity to stand for something, to say that in the times where some many people don’t even matter and people are struggling to make ends meat, that we will stand up for what is right NOT what is politically expedient. That is why I say right now:
I AM NOT VOTING FOR KERRY EVER
IF IT IS BUSH VS. KERRY I AM VOTING FOR BUSH
I know what people will say surely Kerry is better than Bush, and I agree. I fear that if we elect Kerry and Kerry eackes out a win that we will set a bad precedence of believing that we can stand for nothing and continue to elect democrats.
People say that Kerry was pretty liberal in the Senate, this is true, but because he could be, he is a senator from Massachusetts. The only state where all the federal office holders are Democrats. When Kerry knew he was running for office he started to “move to the center” (although it was not a real move to the center, but rather a conformist voting record where he didn't have to stand up for anything) voting for the War and No Child Left Behind, not because he agreed, but because he thought he would be unelectable if he didn’t
DETROIT- The Washington Post reported U.S. Senator Kerry has collected more money from special interest lobbyists than any other U.S. Senator in the last 15 years. The Associated Press reports today that Kerry's tax-exempt political committee gathered donations from groups with direct interests before Kerry's Senate committee.
Truth be told, John Kerry would sell his children into Slavery if the thought it would get him some more votes. And believe me, he will SELL US OUT.
IF I AM GOING TO BE SCREWED, I WANT THE PERSON TO BE HONEST WITH ME ABOUT IT. KERRY WILL SELL US OUT FOR A FEW VOTES, BUSH ATLEAST IS OPEN ABOUT NOT CARING.
I am a pragmatist to the core, so when people say there are to many lives affected to not vote for a Dem I would normally agree. However we are at a crossroads. Our party can stand up for something and start addressing the problems in this country thus laying the groundwork for a new progressive century, or we can cave.
In the shortrun 4 more years of Bush will be very hurtful. But this country is hurt even more in the long run if we do not decide to have an opposition party that stands for something as opposed to Republicans and Republicans-lite.
We cannot continue to allow Republicans to set the agenda and then run candidates that are just democratic friendly representations of their agenda. Continuing the status quo of corporate welfare, corporate trade policy, continue monopolization of our country, regressive tax systems, and exploitation of race to stay in power is more hurtful in the long-run then 8 years of a Bush presidency.
We need someone who is going to be honest and stand for SOMETHING…
So I say today. Bush before Kerry. Kerry for nothing. I am sick of Kerry getting the, well its I think he can beat Bush vote. HE IS JUST A TALL DUKAKIS.
Now why Dean is still the best here is Andrew Sullivan writing in Time Magazine:
“Dean offers, to purloin a phrase, a choice, not an echo His pugnacity in defense of his liberal instincts is obviously genuine. After eight years of careful Clintonian positioning, it's refreshing. Compared with Kerry's packaged, tested, hollow rants against "special interests," Dean's straight talk is invigorating . . . Unlike Kerry, Dean has held a serious executive office — balancing budgets, reforming health care, innovating on civil rights. Kerry's undistinguished, flip-floppy Senate record is far less impressive."
Sullivan talks about electability and how DEAN is the MAN WHO IS ELECTABLE
“Would Dean nonetheless be buried in November? Maybe. But maybe not. Bush is vulnerable in many ways — on fiscal negligence, unseen problems in Iraq, corporate coziness. And Dean is a conviction politician. Like Margaret Thatcher, he may command the respect even of those who disagree with him. He once told the New Yorker, "I think the problem with the Democratic Party in general is that they've been so afraid to lose they're willing to say whatever it takes to win. And once you're willing to say whatever it takes to win, you lose." That's a brilliant analysis of what ails the Democrats — and it's why, even under Clinton, they saw their congressional power ebb and collapse. If Dean is a doctor, he's got the diagnosis dead right. I say, Unleash the id.
Besides, Dean has space to move to the center in the spring. He has already made more moderate noises — on taxes (he may not hike them all) and the U.N. (he won't always ask permission to wield American power abroad). His genuine fiscal conservatism and centrist record as Governor might help fend off attacks from the right. But he's not the only vulnerable Democrat on this score. Kerry will be painted as a hyperliberal anyway. Why not have someone who can truly fight back? Sometimes conviction matters. Without it, political parties wither and die. The Democrats haven't seen this kind of nerve in a very long time. They will end up with regrets if they throw it away.”“Dean offers, to purloin a phrase, a choice, not an echo His pugnacity in defense of his liberal instincts is obviously genuine. After eight years of careful Clintonian positioning, it's refreshing. Compared with Kerry's packaged, tested, hollow rants against "special interests," Dean's straight talk is invigorating . . . Unlike Kerry, Dean has held a serious executive office — balancing budgets, reforming health care, innovating on civil rights. Kerry's undistinguished, flip-floppy Senate record is far less impressive."
I cannot miss the opportunity to discuss the big Democratic vote tomorrow, Tuesday, February 3, 2004 in Arizona, Delaware, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, followed by Michigan and Wisconsin Feb 7th.
We have the opportunity to stand for something, to say that in the times where some many people don’t even matter and people are struggling to make ends meat, that we will stand up for what is right NOT what is politically expedient. That is why I say right now:
I AM NOT VOTING FOR KERRY EVER
IF IT IS BUSH VS. KERRY I AM VOTING FOR BUSH
I know what people will say surely Kerry is better than Bush, and I agree. I fear that if we elect Kerry and Kerry eackes out a win that we will set a bad precedence of believing that we can stand for nothing and continue to elect democrats.
People say that Kerry was pretty liberal in the Senate, this is true, but because he could be, he is a senator from Massachusetts. The only state where all the federal office holders are Democrats. When Kerry knew he was running for office he started to “move to the center” (although it was not a real move to the center, but rather a conformist voting record where he didn't have to stand up for anything) voting for the War and No Child Left Behind, not because he agreed, but because he thought he would be unelectable if he didn’t
DETROIT- The Washington Post reported U.S. Senator Kerry has collected more money from special interest lobbyists than any other U.S. Senator in the last 15 years. The Associated Press reports today that Kerry's tax-exempt political committee gathered donations from groups with direct interests before Kerry's Senate committee.
Truth be told, John Kerry would sell his children into Slavery if the thought it would get him some more votes. And believe me, he will SELL US OUT.
IF I AM GOING TO BE SCREWED, I WANT THE PERSON TO BE HONEST WITH ME ABOUT IT. KERRY WILL SELL US OUT FOR A FEW VOTES, BUSH ATLEAST IS OPEN ABOUT NOT CARING.
I am a pragmatist to the core, so when people say there are to many lives affected to not vote for a Dem I would normally agree. However we are at a crossroads. Our party can stand up for something and start addressing the problems in this country thus laying the groundwork for a new progressive century, or we can cave.
In the shortrun 4 more years of Bush will be very hurtful. But this country is hurt even more in the long run if we do not decide to have an opposition party that stands for something as opposed to Republicans and Republicans-lite.
We cannot continue to allow Republicans to set the agenda and then run candidates that are just democratic friendly representations of their agenda. Continuing the status quo of corporate welfare, corporate trade policy, continue monopolization of our country, regressive tax systems, and exploitation of race to stay in power is more hurtful in the long-run then 8 years of a Bush presidency.
We need someone who is going to be honest and stand for SOMETHING…
So I say today. Bush before Kerry. Kerry for nothing. I am sick of Kerry getting the, well its I think he can beat Bush vote. HE IS JUST A TALL DUKAKIS.
Now why Dean is still the best here is Andrew Sullivan writing in Time Magazine:
“Dean offers, to purloin a phrase, a choice, not an echo His pugnacity in defense of his liberal instincts is obviously genuine. After eight years of careful Clintonian positioning, it's refreshing. Compared with Kerry's packaged, tested, hollow rants against "special interests," Dean's straight talk is invigorating . . . Unlike Kerry, Dean has held a serious executive office — balancing budgets, reforming health care, innovating on civil rights. Kerry's undistinguished, flip-floppy Senate record is far less impressive."
Sullivan talks about electability and how DEAN is the MAN WHO IS ELECTABLE
“Would Dean nonetheless be buried in November? Maybe. But maybe not. Bush is vulnerable in many ways — on fiscal negligence, unseen problems in Iraq, corporate coziness. And Dean is a conviction politician. Like Margaret Thatcher, he may command the respect even of those who disagree with him. He once told the New Yorker, "I think the problem with the Democratic Party in general is that they've been so afraid to lose they're willing to say whatever it takes to win. And once you're willing to say whatever it takes to win, you lose." That's a brilliant analysis of what ails the Democrats — and it's why, even under Clinton, they saw their congressional power ebb and collapse. If Dean is a doctor, he's got the diagnosis dead right. I say, Unleash the id.
Besides, Dean has space to move to the center in the spring. He has already made more moderate noises — on taxes (he may not hike them all) and the U.N. (he won't always ask permission to wield American power abroad). His genuine fiscal conservatism and centrist record as Governor might help fend off attacks from the right. But he's not the only vulnerable Democrat on this score. Kerry will be painted as a hyperliberal anyway. Why not have someone who can truly fight back? Sometimes conviction matters. Without it, political parties wither and die. The Democrats haven't seen this kind of nerve in a very long time. They will end up with regrets if they throw it away.”“Dean offers, to purloin a phrase, a choice, not an echo His pugnacity in defense of his liberal instincts is obviously genuine. After eight years of careful Clintonian positioning, it's refreshing. Compared with Kerry's packaged, tested, hollow rants against "special interests," Dean's straight talk is invigorating . . . Unlike Kerry, Dean has held a serious executive office — balancing budgets, reforming health care, innovating on civil rights. Kerry's undistinguished, flip-floppy Senate record is far less impressive."
Sunday, February 01, 2004
Superbowl Sunday
Let me just say that as an Eagles fan it made me so happy to see the Carolina players so sad after their loss. I can sleep better knowing they suffered. Sick, yes I know, but that is the only consolation I have after such heartache
On another note, let me say that besides the now infamous "Boob" incident with Janet and Justin (I tried to post pictures but I still do not know how) and a few commercials the superbowl was quite boring...
I know last second ending, blah blah, but I have seen that superbowl 2 years ago, I had no desire to see it again...
The only positive was the NFL Network commericial that had all these players singing, "The sun will come out tomorrow"
On another note, let me say that besides the now infamous "Boob" incident with Janet and Justin (I tried to post pictures but I still do not know how) and a few commercials the superbowl was quite boring...
I know last second ending, blah blah, but I have seen that superbowl 2 years ago, I had no desire to see it again...
The only positive was the NFL Network commericial that had all these players singing, "The sun will come out tomorrow"
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