Remembering Ted Kennedy

My mother once met Ted Kennedy on a flight to NY.

She called me when she landed and said 'guess who I was just on an airplane with?' It was so cute. Considering everyone she had worked with in the music business that was the first time I ever heard her sound like she had just met a rock star.

It's sad to lose him at a time when he was still so passionately involved in the current issues and when he still had so much work to do. Nancy Reagan had some wonderful things to say about him, which I think is rather appropriate and very telling about the true spirit of the man. He did defeat Reagan's attempts to reverse his personal labor of love, the Civil Rights Act, that polarizing issue that got Reagan elected in the first place (and that still seems to be at the heart of the animosity between the 2 parties almost 30 years later).

Regardless of how far we have come in our fight to make this country truly equal for all of its citizens, the fact is that there is still fear of racial equality being dramatically served up to the masses and a portion of the population who want to believe it and who thrive on drama and reactionaryism) and yet he never allowed politics to prevent him from being there when his support was needed.

I worry now about who will take his place. Whether you loved him or hated him it cannot be denied that he was the embodiment of pertinacity. He never gave up when he thought a cause was worthy and he had no fear of taking heat. His outspoken opinions and his willingness to fight the long battles made him a key component in keeping a certain equalibrium when the scales were tipped dangerously close to Orwellian paranoia. He was never politically correct, yet he was correct in his politics. All Americans should have a voice in our political system, and when they did not he could be counted upon to be their voice. And he would never back down in the face of attack.

No matter what personal faults and flaws he had as a man, he truly was a man of the people. All people.

"Yes, we are all Americans. This is what we do. We reach the moon. We scale the heights. I know it. I've seen it. I've lived it. And we can do it again."
--Democratic National Convention, August 2008



Technorati Tags: Ted Kennedy, politics, memorial, mourning, news

Holy Cow! Not Huckabee!

Here's the Huckabee Dumond story as told by one of the rape victims, the murder victims family and the parole board.


I'm still reeling over Huckabee's win in Iowa.
Thank God New Hampshire seems to have more sense.
This guy is not only a menace to his own political party, but to Christians and evangelists everywhere.

Ann Coulter doesn't like Huckabee... at all!


Even FOX news doesn't like Mike - And they obviously don't believe his spin on the Dumond parole case.



I don't know what the religious right is thinking in pushing this nomination. This is, without doubt, a party disaster in the making. The Willie Horton case destroyed Michael Dukakis' bid for the presidency. I can only imagine the draconian reaction that awaits Huckabee for the Wayne Dumond travesty.

If you aren't familiar with the story you should make yourself familiar with it. Recently the Huffington Post published the letters that Dumond's victims sent to Mike Huckabee begging him not push for Dumond's release from prison. Including a letter he received from a women who Dumond had raped, with a butcher knife against her throat, while her 3 year old daughter lay in the bed next to her.

In 1985 Wayne Dumond was convicted and sentenced for the rape of a high school student. That student happened to be a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. Mike Huckabee began a personal crusade to get Dumond released from prison. He didn't believe the victim because she was a Clinton relative. He ignored all of the evidence and even told the victim to her face that he didn't believe her.

Victims of Dumond sent letters to Huckabee, then Governor of Arkansas, begging him not to allow the early release of this convicted rapist, but Huckabee continued to pressure the Parole Board for his release. He firmly entrenched himself with the Christian Right who had gotten him elected and, with support from Christian Radio talk show host and Baptist Minister Jay Cole (an old family friend), Huckabee (also a former Baptist Minister) pushed aggressively for Dumond's release. In Arkansas the Christian tabloids had determined for themselves that the case was not about getting justice for the rape victim, but for the victimizer, due to the fact that she was from a powerful and loathed family.

The woman who wrote to him about being raped with her daughter in the bed even went so far as to tell him that she feared that Dumond would rape again, but that next time he would leave no witnesses. Many of his victims wrote that they feared that he would not only rape again, but that he was capable of committing murder.

Huckabee, according to former Aides and members of the Parole Board, continued to push the Board for Dumond's early release. The parole board sent him letters from at least one of his victims expressing their reluctance to release Dumond early, yet Huckabee hammered on. And the radio talk show host continued to spout 'Clinton Conspiracy' theories. And the Christian tabloids continued their campaign to free this poor man, Wayne Dumond, who had been victimized, railroaded, by a powerful and elitist family.

Dumond had been denied parole in Aug. 1996. He should have had to wait a year before being granted another hearing, but he went before the board again just six weeks later. This time he was granted parole. Three of the Parole Board members have gone public about being pressured to parole Dumond. "I signed the [parole] papers because the governor wanted Dumond paroled. I was thinking the governor was working for the best interests of the state. So I signed it."

In 1999 Dumond was set free. He would have served another 25 years if Huckabee hadn't championed his release.

After Dumond's release from prison in September 1999, he moved to Smithville, Missouri, where he raped and suffocated to death a 39-year-old woman named Carol Sue Shields. Dumond was subsequently convicted and sentenced to life in prison for that rape and murder.

But Dumond's arrest for those crimes in June 2001 came too late for 23-year-old Sara Andrasek of Platte County, Missouri. Dumond allegedly raped and murdered her just one day before his arrest for raping and murdering Shields. Prior to the attack, Andrasek and her husband had learned that she was pregnant with their first child.

Mike Huckabee's response:
"There's nothing any of us could ever do. None of us could've predicted what [Dumond] could've done when he got out."

Pardon me sir. That prediction was made. It was made in the letters you received from his victims and it was made by the jury that found him guilty and put him behind bars to keep society safe from him.



From: Balloon Juice
From: Washington Monthly
From: Reihl World View
This post was written by Hot Air on December 5th.
And still his numbers continue to climb.

There's no doubt in my mind that if Huckabee wins this nomination it will rip the Republican Party to shreds.
And I don't think I'm alone on this.



I'd like to say a special thanks to O from Eros Logos for her help with researching for this post.

Technorati Tags: Huckabee, Dumond, election, Scandal, Politics

Ipso Facto

I wrote this post on August 11, 2007.
I had forgotten about it until this week when the numbers were coming in and the media began their doomful wails. I had called it prescience in the post, but that foreknowledge was borne of experience. The inevitable outcome of a known course.
This week I have watched it come to fruition.


If we want this war to end then we are going to have to bring down the hammer on Al Quada in Iraq, and when we begin to push, they are going to push back. The harder we fight them, the more desperate they will become, and the more they are going to respond with violence. We are going to lose more soldiers than ever before, but a full on engagement is truly the only way to bring American soldiers back home.

I'm not in the habit of talking about the war here, other than supporting our troops of course. I've adopted soldiers serving in Iraq in the past and we're gearing up to start another email campaign to let the guys and girls over there know that what they're doing, and the sacrifices that they're making, are appreciated. Christmas is also approaching and, if you've ever done this before you already know, it takes a while for the packages to arrive and get dispersed so an early start is always best.

You can call it a bit of prescience on my part, having been a soldier myself, and having been stationed overseas during the first Gulf War, that I'm looking at the up-coming months with a sense of both dread and also an increased sense of patriotism.

I can't even begin to imagine what the coming months are going to reveal, but it will be extremely polarizing to the American people.

One thing is for sure. There is going to be an increase in the number of soldiers that we lose in Iraq. We may lose more in the next few months than we have lost in the war so far. And that is going to be a huge payload for the media spin doctors, and the Democratic Party is going to use that fact to force their own campaign agendas.

'We The People' have been calling for an end to the war. We want the conflict over and we want our children (and spouses and parents) back home. That means that the conflict is going to have to be heightened. They can't leave, honestly and practically. Safely. Without first eliminating a threat that is growing rather than receding from terrorism. That means that our soldiers are going to be in much more danger than they have been in the past, merely by the nature of this type of assault. They will be putting themselves in positions of risk that they have not been in before.

I do see how this going to get spun though. No one has been louder in calling for an end to the war than the Democratic party, but as soon as those numbers start to rise we are going to hear about what a failure the campaign is. I happen to believe that it's just not so. As a former soldier and veteran let me assure you that the soldiers fighting over there are well informed of what their objectives are. This is still a voluntary Army and the GIs, both male and female, who are charged with defending our country are not going blindly into the abyss. They aren't cattle being led to the slaughter. They are an incredible fighting force and I don't think they've had a real opportunity to show their capabilities thus far.

'I The People', here in the land of me, me, me, also want our troops back home. I don't ascribe to the motto that if you don't support the war, you don't support the troops. And frankly, I feel embarrassed for anyone who can't come up with a more literate approach to the matter than 'If'n yur not fur us, yur agin us!' It insults my intelligence when I hear such lowbrow responses to something as complex as the way Americans feel about this war.

We're now in a position of 'damned if you do and damned if you don't'.
We have to amp up this conflict. We have to bring the hammer down with a resounding thud. And we are going to lose troops doing it. I'm dreading the campaign ads where dead soldiers are paraded as victims to provoke people into making a decision based on emotions rather than facts.

This isn't so much about voting or politics as it is about soldiering. I spent too many years wearing a uniform myself to not recognize how this tide is going to turn. And the only way it's going to turn in our favor is if we make a firm decision to crush the enemy and have it over once and for all. We'll hear about our soldiers being ambushed. The body count will blare on the evening news. But no one is making a comparison to the enemy body count.

I'm going to mourn the loss of every soldier that we lose. I'm going to mourn for their families at Christmas. And there will be a lot of them. But not as many as there will be if we have to spend another five or six or seven years fighting over there. And the way things have been going since this war began, I'm afraid that, without making some major offensive strikes, that could be a real possibility.

We just have to keep the faith.
We have to trust in our leaders.

And I don't mean the White House or the War/Money Machine. What would our commander-in-chief know about soldiering, except how to get out of it? No. I mean the platoon leaders and the squad leaders, people who actually know how to lead--and how to motivate their troops. Because that's what the Army is. It's small groups of soldiers who have worked together and trained together and they will look out for each other. I know this from personal experience. They've learned to fight as a unit. And, given the opportunity, they are going to do what they have been trained to do. And God bless each and every one of them for that. And please watch over them.

My thoughts are with them tonight.
I do believe in our soldiers.
My faith is strong.

 

Iraq, Politics, Soldiers, War, woodnotwood

ATT and Verizon - Shame On You!

"The compromise between liberty and security remains a difficult one. But dismissing this case at the outset would sacrifice liberty for no apparent enhancement of security."
U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker

Geek Hint of the Day:

There are a lot of links on this page.
If you right click a link you can choose 'open in new window' so you won't navigate away from the page.

AT&T and Verizon are now lobbying for immunity from prosecution for warrantless surveillance? They not only offered up voice and data communications from their own customers, but also intercepted data from other companies and turned it over without so much as a warrant or a court order. For years. And now they're expecting Congress and the President to come to their rescue in the face of impending law suits.

Although I do agree, to a certain extent, that there should be accountability in other arenas also, there is no doubt in my mind that this comes down to personal responsibility. The one thing we, as Americans, know, is that we are all responsible and accountable when our decisions and actions harm or threaten someone else. When we've stepped over the line. And there's also civic responsibility. When you consider the magnitude of trust that we have put into the hands of both of these companies it's more than just a bad business deal. It's a betrayal of the public trust (MCI).

I'm sure they feel that some of the responsibility should fall on the shoulders of the government. That there should be a certain amount of 'divine intervention' when what they were doing was obviously condoned and welcomed by the NSA. And was obviously quite well hidden by all parties involved also. If it hadn't been for Mark Klein the world may never have known that there really are men in little rooms handing over our private phone calls, emails and Internet habits to be scrutinized as if we're all criminals. I'm sure Heinlein is probably high-fiving Orwell right now saying 'Dude, you so nailed that one!'

According to the Washington Post President Bush is threatening to veto The Restore Act if the Telecoms aren't given retroactive immunity from persecution. He's quoted as saying that the proposal to require court approval in surveillance procedures "would take us backward". I couldn't agree more. Backward to a time when protection under the Fourth Amendment protected us against 'unreasonable search and seizure' and it was not only expected, but demanded, by all Americans, not just the Un-Patriotic terrorist-lovers, but every American who understood what those rights represented. How incredibly significant they were in this world. Back to a time when it was our enemies we had to fear, not our own White House, not our telephone companies and Internet providers.

"[...] will they limit our ability to collect this intelligence and keep us safe, staying a step ahead of the terrorists who want to attack us?" I'm wondering which terrorists he means. Our loss of privacy hasn't gotten us one step closer to bringing Osama Bin Laden and the terrorists who brutally murdered 3,000 American citizens to justice.

Oooops. Did I say that out loud?

Osama Bin WhoWho? Remember him? I know it's been years and, really, I should be over it by now. I mean, how long can a girl hold a grudge, right? By now he's probably gumming his dinner and wearing diapers anyway, if he hasn't already died of old age.

But he's the one I want. The only one I really want.

I know. Al Q. They're over there right now, arming up and training and chanting death to Americans. But it's decidedly quiet outside tonight. I can hear a dog barking from three backyards over. I wonder if the 'bad' terrorists think we've moved? I just can't fathom that in the six years we've frantically tried to prevent them from attacking us--they haven't even tried. Oh wait. There was that airplane-shoe-guy. It just goes to prove what I've known all along--it's always the converts. But honestly, that very very strange looking guy did make me have to throw out a brand new bottle of 'Tommy Girl' perfume. And for that I'll never forgive. Never.

I don't think this massive betrayal by AT&T and Verizon, or the President's hardline position on Rights? We don't need no stinkin' Rights, is going to protect us any more than it already has. I don't think it's done us any good at all. Americans have been getting attacked for a long time. Beirut, Iran; Maybe it's because we seem proud to them? Like we think we're better than everyone else. Maybe it's because we say what we want to whomever we want. Or because we've been offered the chance to prosper in freedom and we carry ourselves with the confidence of people who know that we matter; we count, and we raise our own children to be just as confident that they have a voice, and a say, in everything in the world that effects them--We got that from our fore-fathers, they said it was so and we trust them that it is so.
And our President said almost that exact thing in his Speech in 2001.
"They hate ... a democratically elected government. ... They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

Maybe he meant these enemies?

So I just have to say 'Shame on you, Mr. President', for fighting to make their immunity retroactive. For trying to force us to let them get away with the harm they've caused us all as a nation. For not making them own up to what they've done. Just like someone else. We're supposed to just keep looking away.

I'm a Veteran. My husband is also. We've picked up arms and put our lives on the line because we believe that this Country, and every person in it, is worth protecting. And we believe that our rights are what make us Americans, and we are confident enough in our own justfulness to extend those rights to people who do us harm. Because we were, and are, patriots.

I know a lot of people freak out about this whole surveillance issue. Thinking that they're being targeted, watched. That men and women are sitting around listening to every word in their phone conversations, reading every word that they write in an e-mail, secretly making notes of every prOn page they view on the Internet. But I have it on very good 'authority' that it really isn't so. Our guys aren't exactly this strack tracking unit, monitoring our comings and goings with high-tech surveillance equipment like in the movie 'Enemy of the State'.

The truth is, their equipment is really outdated. They don't even update and patch their servers like they should. They have to hire outside companies to come in to help find the files and documents they lose. And can you say email? I know it would have made some people feel better to think that there was some mastermind, some evil genius, working behind the scenes, destroying data and emails so that they could never be recovered, so that they could never be used to incriminate them. But honestly. It was just crappy equipment, and technicians who are so overworked and stressed out trying to keep everything going with scotch tape and chewing gum that they've been known to have knock-down, drag-out fights with their car GPS systems just so they can turn off the engine and have the last word.

In a way it's really a win-win situation; if we all think that we're under super secret, high tech surveillance we'll get paranoid, and stop talking so much about the things that are going wrong, it'll distract us from issues that used to be important. We'll be more afraid of the people around us and who we can trust, we'll have to trust the government because they're our only hope. But we'll have to fear them also, because they know our secrets. And we have no idea what they're looking for, what the 'trigger' mechanism is, but we know that they're watching us. And our enemies will see that fear, and they'll trust that we wouldn't be so angry and paranoid if it weren't true. They'll have to change the way they plan their attacks. They'll have to slow down, to really think things through. They'll have to give up some of their Kabal and beer nights so they aren't seen together as often. They'll have to send messages through the personal ads, like Desperately Seeking Susan, and that's really good for us. With no phone and no Internet it could take weeks just to get an ad to run. Let alone decipher it and respond.

No. It's not really the specific information that AT&T and Verizon gave up on us that bothers me. There isn't really much that they can do with it, except lose it or leave it un-secured, so that the identity thieves get their hands on it-- or unwittingly upload it to the Internet (I can just imagine my mother's mortification if they did that to me, I'd be off to the nunnery, tout de suite). I seriously doubt that they have the manpower to go through that data with a fine-toothed comb though, and find anything significant that will lead them to the 'Them'. All four of the 'Them' that could possibly be in a city the size of Atlanta.

I, personally, don't think I could take day in and day out of having to read or listen to the communications of my own neighbors and co-workers, 2000 of the nicest, sweetest, most boring people you could ever meet. And I'm sure my own Internet usage could probably knock someone into early retirement. All the YouTube and pRon and MySpace messages, Facebook and recipes, Ladies Home Journal and about 50 subscriptions to tech emails from Windows Secrets to Cert Advisories. McAfee's great offers that come in about ten times a day even though I wrote them and told them that I am never, ever -not even under threat of death or dismemberment- going to pay for their crappy Anti-virus software when I can't even un-install the stupid trial version they let me download for free 2 years ago. O and I playing on-line Scrabble and IMing at the same time. Sending each other links to I Can Has Cheeseburger and pictures flying back and forth of what we're eating, what we're drinking, 'Damn, doesn't my neighbor have a hairy back', 'I found this weird looking spider under my kitchen sink'. Then there are the long-long-looooooong emails from my grandmother about her hernia and which one of her 200 cats is on death's door this week. And the joke emails that all of my sisters forward around all day. I have 4 sisters. I get the same email 4 times over the course of the day. After the second read it's just not funny anymore. Except for this one. It always makes me smile. My mom sent it to me because I was having a really stressed out week. I saved the music and turned it into her ring tone. Now I actually smile when she calls to tell me that she needs me to come over and chase the squirrels out of her attic. And SPAM! Holy Cow! I had 200 SPAM messages yesterday alone after my email address was added to our work website. I finally started hitting reply on them and sending back a message 'I know you probably didn't send this, I'm sure the email address is spoofed, but I'm having a bad day and somebody is going to hear about it.' I then wrote about ten paragraphs of my chief complaints and copy/pasted it into every SPAM message that came in. Seriously, I'd feel sorry for the guy who had to surveille me. Better to just get a spider to crawl it all and hope it runs into something good, like 'By Allah, I feeling like to up blow something.'


You see. It's not what they'll find that bothers me. I think we all know that, even if they read a million emails, the chances of them finding anything even remotely useful are infinitesimal, and that's being generous. And it's not that I feel like they're reading my personal emails and passing them around laughing at my half-assed attempts at being erotic when I can't even spell tounge.

It's just about it being wrong. Wrong to betray people who trust you. And Un-American to stomp all over the rights that we've had to fight to preserve, and then sit in a meeting with the President and try to get him to make 'retroactive' their immunity after screwing us all. And if being against the war is un-patriotic, then what the hell does that make them? They've turned on their own people. Innocent people who are just exercising their right as a soul to breathe. I'm sure they wouldn't give us all carte blanche to listen to their phone calls and intercept their emails, even if there was nothing bad in them, it's just the principle of the thing. Look who I'm talking about principles. Sheesh.

And, I guess, most of all, it's no one else's business, except my friends and loved ones, if I can't spell tounge. That's something that they don't have the right to know about me. Unless I choose to share it with them.

AT&T, Verizon, Surveillance, Politics, woodnotwood

Irreverent and Irrelevent

The last post got me linked in some directory as a Democratic blogger.

I think a little disambiguation is in order here.

I am not a Democrat.
I am not a Republican.

I am an irreverent.



I voted for both of those morons who spent a whole night putting the end of the War into filibuster. Where are the hookers and the Depends when you need them? I know, I know. People who live in glass diapers shouldn't throw kidney stones.
But they should be careful, we've been known to flip-flop around here.


I worked over-time yesterday and came home absolutely exhausted.
I tried to read some blogs and I did manage to leave a few comments here and there, but then tiredness just overwhelmed me. I decided that what I really needed was a nice hot bubble bath-- a little reward to me for working so hard. I ran the water and sank down into the lavender scented bubbles. It was divine.

Then I realized that I still had my bra on.

Now that's tired.