National IMPEACHMENT Day

Today is National Impeachment Day. For those of you who disagree with the job President Bush has done and will continue to do, please call attention to the administrations impeachable offences today on your blog. If you can’t do that, put up a sign in your front yard, in your window, on your car, or write it on your forehead. Here are just some of the reasons why President Bush and Vice President Cheney should be impeached:

President Bush pressured the EPA to clear the area around Ground Zero so that construction crews and first responders would get to work earlier.

The Bush Administration has consistently denied the existence of Global Warming until recently, and has taken no steps to improve the condition of the planet.

President Bush and his Administration completely mishandled everything involved with Hurricane Katrina, including the evacuation, the housing of survivors, and the clean-up effort.

President Bush introduced and The Patriot Act, which puts no limits on what the government can do to form a case, arrest, and detain a US Citizen without telling them what they’re being accused of or allowing them access to a lawyer.

President Bush ordered the illegal wire-tapping of US Citizens.
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Presdident Bush allowed the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghrab.

President Bush and his Administration initially lied to the American people about why we were going to war with Iraq, and has continued to lie about the purpose of the war, the management of the war, and what is happening to our soldiers.

And let’s not forget:
3,334 US Soldiers have died in Iraq
24,912 US Soldiers have been wounded in Iraq

Lies, Damn Lies…

Even I was moved by the Jessica Lynch story. I wasn’t cynical about it like I was with the death of Pat Tillman. But I should have been. Her bones were broken in a crash during battle, but she was not shot and stabbed during her rescue. In fact, hospital staffers had tried to hand her over to American troops before the “raid”, which involved NO Iraqi soldiers. She didn’t fire any shots, as had been reported, because her gun was jammed with sand. She was uncomfortable with the military publicizing her story (though she helped quite a bit). When she asked about inaccuracies they were attributed to the media outlets. Exactly what happened to her is still being investigated.

Evidence has been destroyed in the Pat Tillman case. Witness statements were changed. His family was told that he was killed heroically in battle when, in actuality, he was shot to death by our own troops.

If our government lies to us about our heroes, doesn’t it stand to reason that they are lying to us about other things, whether they’re related to the war or not? Why aren’t we having a SERIOUS debate about the impeachment of both President Bush and Vice President Cheney?

It’s Too Late to Make it Right

To Doc,
What happened at VT reminded me of “the incident” a few years ago. None of us ever really talked about it, or him, after that summer. I imagine he’s in prison in WV somewhere, or in some sort of a mental institution (which is where he belonged in the first place). Strange that the military didn’t catch that before he killed someone (with a rifle he bought at Wal-Mart). And set his car on fire to fake his own death. And almost got away with it.

I was surprised that you didn’t bring it up when we talked the other day. It seemed so relevant to what has been happening. Instead our conversation was all about the war. After 3 years of just listening to you spout propaganda and tell me that you were defending me and fighting for my freedom I finally had to say something, which was hard because I knew when I finally opened my mouth it would be the last time we ever spoke.

I just couldn’t let you go on pretending that you’re doing this for us. Not now that you’re home and don’t need to keep believing the lies they’ve been feeding you just so you can get through the day. You were not “defending your country“. There’s nothing to defend it from. I’ve been asking you for 3 years to explain the threat to me and not once were you able to do so. You were not “fighting for my freedom“. More of my freedoms have been lost than gained over the course of this war, so if you want to defend freedom, you best do it here where we’re actually losing it, not in the Middle East where it was never really an issue.

It is because I love you that I cannot support this war, a war that we have already lost. It is because I still believe in what we were taught – to serve, to protect, to defend – that I have to walk away. How are you serving the people of this country by fighting a war you know nothing about for a President who wasn’t really elected in the first place? What, other than oil fields, are you protecting? If you are overseas, how, exactly, are you defending our country? And please don’t give me the “we’re fighting them there so that we don’t have to fight them here” speech that we all know is bullshit. I want your life to mean something, and if it can’t be avoided, I want your death to mean something. A person who is willing to give his life for his country is too precious to waste on just any old cause. You are worth more than that. You deserve to know what you are fighting for.

You asked me to put myself in your shoes. I didn’t do that. Instead I put my son in them. And as I imagined him standing in front of me in a soldier’s uniform, it hit me: this war and this President has robbed me of something so important, so meaningful, that once it is lost it may never be regained – my pride in my country. I am not proud of what you’ve done. I have not been proud of anything that has come out of this nation politically since President Bush got into office, and I don’t have much hope that things will be that different once he’s gone. I do not want my son to be a soldier. I barely want him to be an American. I thought of you and I looked at him and I realized – I don’t want him to be anything like you – a man who follows what he believes so blindly that he will allow and encourage others to fight and die for it, even though he cannot tell them why.

I’m glad you’re home. I’m glad you’re safe. I’m sorry that my position on the war is so distasteful to you that we can no longer be friends, especially when we’ve already lost so many to something so pointless. I have lost my faith, brother. I have lost my pride. Hope is all that remains.

9/11: Toxic Legacy

Though 3,000 people were killed on 9/11, many are still dying from the effects the environment in and around the area of the World Trade Center has had on their lungs. The people who are truly most important to us as a nation, the men and women who sacrifice EVERYTHING to save us, are dying because the Bush Administration and the EPA said that it was safe to go back to work. Our fighter fighters and police officers who responded first and those men and women who were active in the clean-up (about 25,000 people) have lung problems beyond belief, some of them with so much debris in their bodies that they are almost at 0% lung capacity, and their health benefits are going to run out in 2009. Please contact your local, state, and federal representatives and tell them that the REAL heroes of 9/11 need our continued help and support, and that President Bush and Vice President Cheney should be impeached for their role in the cover-up.

And the continued victims of 9/11 could use a little help as well:
3,322 US Soldiers have been killed in Iraq
24,764 US Soldiers have been wounded in Iraq

Thinking Blogger Award

Should you choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging.
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote. (I have no idea where to find this)

As a teacher, the only think I have ever asked of my students is that they think. I don’t require that they agree with me, just that they have an opinion. Over the course of the past 2 years I have had the privilege of reading the thoughts and feelings of some incredible people. It’s nice o see that I have made them think as well, and now I have the opportunity to pass their wisdom along.

1. The Cranky Yankee never lets me down. A liberal-minded veteran isn’t always easy to find these days, and I feel that the liberal movement has added credibility when it is backed up by those who have defended our country. It’s hard to call a veteran unpatriotic, even when they’re against a war.
2. Dave Away from Home has been on a roll with some incredible posts lately. He and I tend to agree on religion, but that’s not all he writes about. It’s got to be difficult to be a liberal in Texas. I have found a lot of good blogs through Dave, so I guess you could say he’s part of my screening process.
3. Tales of a Freeway Blogger is a blog I’ve just recently started visiting, but I like everything I see there. It wouldn’t hurt to have one of him in every major city in the country!
4. The Omnipotent Poobah is an excellent writer and is one of my favorite daily reads.
5. Saur and I don’t always agree, but I really like the style of her blog. We started blogging around the same time due to some craziness in a school district in FL, but we’ve kept up with each other since I left the state.

The following people have already been tagged, but I love their blogs and feel the need to mention them anyway: The Zombieslayer (back after a long break), The Sarchasm, and Left in East Dakota.

What I Learned From Virginia Tech

I learned that 32 people can be killed in the course of several hours and no one in this country really gives a damn. Don’t mistake the voyeuristic media coverage for actual concern. Yes, people are upset by what happened and their hearts go out to the students and staff at Virginia Tech, but few people are talking about what’s really important about this massacre: that we live in a culture where this kind of thing can happen anywhere at any time to anyone.

Isn’t that just a little disturbing? Forget about all the political crap that goes along with this tragedy. Forget what the kid said on the videotapes that the media has so insensitively aired on national TV. Forget about the debate on the 2nd Amendment and the people’s right to have guns (even though we don’t have the right to decide what do do with our own bodies, we have what we need to decide what to do with the lives of others). Forget that he’s an Asian kid from Virginia and has probably been the victim of horrible racism since he came to this country (trust me, I’ve lived in VA). Sure, he had mental problems. How many people are there across this country with some sort of mental illness? How many of them have access to guns? How many of them have motive, real or imagined, AND opportunity?

This tragedy is a symptom of the violent culture of America, as were about a hundred other SCHOOL shootings in the past 10 years (not including Lancaster or VT). We live in a country where we cannot say with reasonable certainty that our children are safe in school. How do people not find this alarming? How are people not rioting in the streets? This tragedy has illustrated beyond a reasonable doubt that gun violence is OUT OF CONTROL in the United States and the only people truly outraged DON’T LIVE IN AMERICA. More children are going to die. If we don’t do something now, we might as well get used to seeing higher and higher numbers of casualties in tragedies such as this, tragedies that could have been prevented.

And let’s not forget the other victims of gun violence:
3,315 US Soldeirs killed in Iraq
24,764 US Soldiers wounded in Iraq
Over 60,000 Iraqis killed

Freedom of Speech?

While I wholeheartedly agree with freedom of speech and I agree with the judge’s decision in this case, I feel that the age group discussed here may be a little too young for it. After elementary school I have absolutely no problem with anyone handing out anything they want to my child. By that time I feel that I will have been able to guide him through experiences that will give him what he needs to think critically about what someone says to him, and I’m not just talking about religion. If he’s handed a flier for pee-wee football, I want him to know and understand several things: there is a certain culture that accompanies violent sports that he may not want to get into; he could become seriously hurt and ruin opportunities for himself in the future; etc… I want him to be able to make his own decisions about which activities he becomes involved in, but I want him to do it from a place of rationality, in other words, not just because his friends are doing it.

At the same time, I feel that it is important for children to be proud of what they’re doing and natural that they want to get their friends involved. To that end, there should be a central bulletin board in elementary schools or in each classroom where children can post these things. I have no problem with information being handed out in middle and high schools, but again, elementary school children are too young to make an informed decision, or to look at information they are given objectively.

The Imus Double Standard

I think Don Imus is an asshole. I don’t like him, but I don’t get to decide how people choose to entertain themselves. Imus was fired for making a racist and sexist comment, but no one has really mentioned all of the other people on the air whose comments have been just as bad or worse. Bill O’Reilly, for example, has referred to Mexicans as wetbacks and has NEVER apologized. Ann Coulter recently called John Edwards a faggot, but apparently that doesn’t count because she had to go to rehab. Rosie O’Donnell has used a very offensive “Chinese” accent on The View. I haven’t even mentioned all of the rap “artists” who use offensive language on their albums, but no one is stringing them up.

And while America was paying attnetion to Don Imus, few people noticed that Karl Rove and his staff deleted hundreds of emails over the course of several years.

3,302 US soldiers killed in Iraq
24,645 US Soldiers wounded in Iraq

300 – The Other Side?

The idea for this post is completely stolen from Dave Away From Home. He suggested that the movie could be seen as a triumph of reason and logic (Sparta) against Fundamentalism and the supernatural (Persia). It’s an interesting point, especially if we add in that Leonidas was in the position of fighting the entire Persian army with a small force of 300 men because the priests in Sparta had been paid off to tell him that to go to war was against the will of the Gods. God, apparently, wasn’t a huge fan of liberty. Both the Persians and the Greeks were slaves to their religion. The Greeks served old, outdated Oracles who were really just drug-induced playthings. The Persians served a man-god who believed he was immortal but was really only a man. Still, all involved believed that their god was the real god, the one who would allow them to triumph.

How is religion today any different? How is this war any different from that war? People blindly follow religious leaders without question, even when they build huge temples with a fast food place in the back and a Starbucks by the altar (didn’t Jesus warn about that?). The Muslims follow their clerics into a war they could probably win due to sheer numbers, destroying everything and everyone they love in the process. The Christians follow their leader into a war they cannot win without reinforcements that will not come until the first wave has been slaughtered completely.

3,292 US soldiers killed in Iraq (the living ones have had their tours extended by 3 months)
24,645 US soldiers wounded in Iraq

300 – Entertainment or Propaganda?

My husband received movie tickets for his birthday and decided he wanted to see a movie that didn’t come out until recently. We both have an interest in the ancient world, so I thought 300 might be interesting. What I found was a movie so mired in propaganda that the message was loud and clear. Support our troops, fight for freedom, or we all die! Here are just a few of the parallels I found:

Leonidas lead a small group of free troops against the vast minions of slaves serving Xerxes (who thought himself a god), just like the small number of troops we have in Iraq are fighting against untold numbers of insurgents faithful to Allah. The Greek troops have racial features closer to our own and the Persian troops looked, well, like Persians. The weapons of war were tried and true on the Greek side – the sword and spear (guns and knives), the phalanx (tanks), the shield (body armor) – while the Persian weapons were sneaky and strange – unusual animals (IED’s), Immortals (suicide bombers), and fear. Finally, Spartan women are free to make their own decisions, as long as those decisions support the men in upholding and pursuing liberty, democracy, and freedom, unlike the Persian women who are slaves to their men and their god.

After leaving the theater I found myself asking a lot of questions. Why would Hollywood choose to tell this story now, especially when there were battles that were so much more spectacular? Is it because support for the Iraq war is beginning to fade? Since it was the Queen who ultimately convinced the Greeks to fight, and it is women who carry on social traditions, is Hollywood trying to convince women to be strong, to support our troops, or even to join the military? Who knows? Every war has propaganda. It seems this movie is part of ours.

3,280 US soldiers killed in Iraq
24,476 US soldiers wounded in Iraq