Nothing New With Lieberman
Topic: State Of The Union
The problem with supporting Joe Lieberman runs much deeper than his support for the occupation of Iraq and his belief that it is in some way related to the so-called "war on terror."

A vote for Joe Lieberman is a vote for continued U.S. imperialism. A vote for Lieberman says to the world that it is O.K. that the U.S. has acted with hubris and will continue to do so because no country can stop it. A vote for Lieberman lends support for violent U.S. unilateralism against sovereign nations under false pretenses all across the globe. A vote for Lieberman is a sign to the citizens of our democracy that it is O.K. for a senator to bow down to the increasing power grab of the executive branch. A vote for Lieberman means that the ends justify the means and that the President should not be held responsible for his criminal actions. A vote for Lieberman ensures that Israel will continues to be a major welfare recipient of U.S. taxpayer's money, a bill that has cost us almost $135 billion dollars since 1949. A vote for Lieberman says to the world it is O.K. for Israel to perpetrate terrorist acts against the Palestinians even though they are fighting for their homeland. Supporting Joe Lieberman means that you accept a man who believes that the U.S. should be a radical interventionist to assert its hegemonic authority over the rest of the world. Supporting Joe Lieberman means that you have somehow found a way to justify the murder, rape and imprisonment of innocent men, women and children who just happen to believe in the wrong religion and whose skin happens to be a little too tanned for our tastes. Voting for Lieberman says to the world that it is O.K. to bomb someone's family, friends, neighborhood, wedding, etc., if we arbitrarily label them a "terrorist."

I would agree with Lieberman's characterization that he's a Kennedy democrat. Just look at Kennedy's naval blockade of Cuba that almost brought nuclear war to our shores or his economic embargo of Cuba that has caused tremendous hardships to the people and never succeeding at wresting control from Castro. Or better yet, let's look to Kennedy's excursion in Vietnam for the best example of how this Democratic mentality has allowed a man like Fidel Castro to leave a more enduring legacy than those men who have pursued him violently.

The world doesn't need any more men like Kennedy, Bush or Lieberman and it will continue to be a much more dangerous place when half the battles we fight are against men who cause more problems than they fix. Hopefully someday, the people of the U.S. and men like Joe Lieberman and George W. Bush will heed the advice of the dominant religions in that if you want to save the world the first thing you should do is look within.

Indifferent Decadence
Topic: State Of The Union
For the deaf, dumb and blind amongst us who actually believe that our country is the most benevolent in the world,

"The United States promised $2.5 million
in emergency aid; the European Union
granted $3.8 million"

This in response to a major earthquake in Indonesia that has already killed 4300 people. It absolutely makes me sick that the economically arrogant nation that I live in does so much of all the wrong things and way to little of the right things. Spend $300 billion in blowing up a country, no problem, help poor, suffering farmers who just lost large chunks of their family and we throw them the tiniest of bones.

Just remember that the soldiers that have died for our freedom didn't do so, so that we could live in indifferent decadence.


Quake in Indonesia Kills at Least 4,300


Happy Memorial Day.

Please pick up the slack and make a donation to the RED CROSS.

It's Not The Intelligence, It's Intelligence
Topic: State Of The Union
I'm watching these fools in the Senate hold hearings for Hayden's CIA confirmation. It's amazing to watch Senator Roberts and General Hayden recreate the reality of post 9/11 and the lead up to our invasion and occupation of Iraq. The problem wasn't foreign intelligence i.e. the CIA, simply put, it was intelligence, period.

Watching a couple of morons attempting to recreate reality to suit their present deluded version of it is absolutely infuriating. And if I was a member of the CIA I would be fuming over the constant barrage of blame and criticism for not giving our war criminal President a rational reason for invading a country that was under brutal sanctions for 12 years, menaced by our war birds on a regular basis, possessing a starving population and 2 no-fly zones in the North and South of their country. Reasonably informed people don't need the Downing Street memos to tell us this.

The fact is that this administration cherry-picked pseudo-evidence to make their case for something that they wanted in a pre-9/11 world (and there is more than sufficient evidence to prove that). Couple this with the reality that anyone even remotely familiar with Iraq knew that they weren't even a threat to their neighbors and any senate report and criticism's of the CIA to the contrary are absolutely bogus.

How can anyone reason with people like this when they don't live in reality?

Here It Comes....
Topic: State Of The Union
Possible Cheney Indictment Looming, Impeachment....?

The Indy File
Topic: State Of The Union
The "Cafferty File" on CNN asked the question tonight, "What does it mean when the Iraq war is more unpopular than Vietnam was at this point?"

It means that not everyone who opposed this war from the beginning is a anti-American, un-patriotic, pinko-commie hippie. It means that those of us that were clearly correct when we questioned the motives of our President and the lies, half-truths and hidden agendas of this administration should have a much greater forum for our views and should be given the respect we deserve. It also means that if we really lived in a sane world, guys like Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Savage and everyone at Fox "news" would be out on the streets panhandling for what their opinions are truly worth.

To Good Health
Topic: State Of The Union
A recently published study on health differences between the English and Americans found that people living in the U.S. are profoundly more unhealthy than their counterparts from over the pond. The study did not reach any conclusions but experts were shocked at the extent of the disparity.

You can find hints at the fundamental reasons underlying this problem everywhere you look. All you have to do is look out your front door. You can see it in the over-fertilized, over-watered and well manicured lawns; in fact it's a metaphor for the root of the problem. You can observe it by the things that hang on your wall, the car that's parked in your driveway and the designer jeans that hang in our closets. It's not hard to find at all. You'll see it on the $10,000 car with the $4,000 rims and in the state-of-the-art electronic devices that seem to occupy every nook and cranny of every house in America. You can look at it in the hands of our children as they sit in the back of the family gas-guzzler with the built-in DVD player that bellows the latest Disney movie, speeding away on the 10 lane highway only making pit stops for gas and McDonald's as it heads to our vacation homes.

The problem is that the antidote for it isn't reflected back in the state of our marriages or our families. You won't even come close to finding it in our schools and it's conspicuously absent in our libraries. The box that sits atop our mantle that seems to be continually droning on is nearly devoid of it. We seem to have reached the point where it's absent from not only our everyday conversations but from our hopes and our dreams.

The fact is that as a people we are unhealthy. We are physically, mentally and spiritually sick because we worship a god that is devoid of all substance - but we still keep praying at the altar. Our souls long for meaning and purpose and we feed it with the spoils provide us by our man-made god. We can't seem to grasp that no matter how hard we pray the void grows deeper and the chasm in our souls grows wider.

We come by "it" and we use "it," abuse "it" and discard "it" and that's just how we treat the people in our lives. Have you ever noticed how hard we can be on our possessions? Everything in our collective eyes is expendable - we just toss "it" out, whatever "it" may be with the belief that we can just get a new one. But our religions and our science conclude something contrary to the way we believe and the way we live our lives. Our actions do have consequences and we will continue to suffer as a people and as individuals when we don't feed our need for substance found in true relationships.

People are not expendable, they're not inherently evil and everyone, no matter who they are, hurts because they long for something more than just the attainment of things. We can heal our collective infirmity with a little courage but we must be willing to live, to love, to sacrifice and to give. We must forego our immediate need for the entertainment of the hour and work towards making our homes and communities something more than just springboards for our commercially crafted egos. Together we can remove the log from our eyes. Only then will we approach what it means to have good health.

Oil Versus Independence
Topic: State Of The Union
If you are a believer in free market capitalism, high gas prices are something that you are going to have to endure as the supply is limited and demand around the world is only increasing. If you really wanna do something about high gas prices once and for all, scream at the top of your lungs to your political representatives and car manufacturers that you're not going to buy another car powered by gasoline. Tell your Rep. that we need to stop spending money in Iraq, stop making war around the world and we need to stop stressing taxpayers and cut our $500 BILLION DOLLAR A YEAR military budget (more than what the entire world spends on their military put together) and we need to start investing in de-centralized and alternative energy education, research and development with the goal of kicking the oil habit in no more than 10 years so that not another U.S. soldier has to die on a battlefield protecting an oil pipeline.

A Winning Strategy?
Topic: State Of The Union
I was just reading an article which I found on BuzzFlash.com by TBogg, who calls himself, "...a somewhat popular blogger," entitled, "Welcome to our world". It seems that the consensus is that the Republicans are going to have a hard time in the interim elections.

My advice: I wouldn't break out the champagne just yet. Yes, Bush does have a horrendous approval rating but so does congress. The key to remember is that it is as a whole. If you ask people what they feel about their individual representatives they're not that disapproving. Why you ask? It's the same thing you have heard The Indy Voice say over and over again. In fact, you heard a little squeak of it by Howard Dean just recently. The Democrats are pinning their hopes on a Presidential/Republican meltdown and why they are in the process of getting it, they consistently fail to do 2 things. The first is to offer the country a solution that moves us to the left and the 2nd is they all can't sing the chorus in unison,

"THIS IS WHAT YOU GET WITH REPUBLICANS!!!"

What do you get? Why do you even have to ask?

WAR, DEBT, AN ECONOMY THAT LOOKS GOOD BUT IS A HOUSE OF CARDS, POLLUTION, JUNK SCIENCE, HIGH TAXES FOR THE POOR AND MIDDLE CLASS, BRAZEN TALK WITH LITTLE SUBSTANCE, CRONYISM, LIES, DECEIT, FASCISM, ETC., ETC., ETC.

My prediction: the Democrats only gain a couple of seats but not enough to make any kind of difference.

When 2 boats race you can't bet your money on the boat who's anchored and hope the other sinks. You'll never win because while the other boat may sink, yours is going nowhere.

Glutton for Punishment
Topic: State Of The Union
Even though Feingold's call to censure the liar-and-thief Bush doesn't have a spit ball's chance in hell, I figured we should give the Visigoths guarding the gate the message that we've had enough. When you sign the petition try something like,

"Hypocrisy destroys political parties.
Clinton broke the law and there were consequences
and Bush has broken the law and there have been none.
Patriots put their country before their party."

Please sign the petition to,

Censure
(then Impeach, Convict and Imprison in Guantanamo - it would be nice)
the deceiver, liar, criminal and terrorist,
George W. Bush

I did.

A Country In Need...
Topic: State Of The Union
Let me be honest with you, I only vote for Democrats because the alternative is well, stupid. Don't get me wrong though, some of the Dems possess just slightly more brain cells then the ding-a-lings of the goose stepping persuasion. Take this censure motion by Russ Feingold. At the present moment Russ is the closest thing to a Democrat that I can stomach right now but the idea that your going to get any type of censure motion passed in the barbarian controlled Senate is flippin nuts! Even when it has become readily apparent to anyone with eyeballs that Bush is a conservative-in-name only, the cons still love him. They will support him long after he mounts Condi on the podium during the state of the union and they'll still over shine that spot on their car where they put their ass-lickin Bush sticker.

But the problem isn't that Feingold is a do-do, the problem is the Democrats that condemn him. The Repubs win with guys like Bush because believe it or not in the ears of the American people they talk a better game than the Dems. The average American can't even spell "censure" no less have any idea what it is but that doesn't mean that the truth underlying the proposition can go unspoken without notice. The American people want to hear a firm position. Dems attacking Feingold is yet another clear failure that should have been a major victory. A strong liberal Dem stands up and the capitulators put their tail between their legs, wet their pants and bark at the smart dog. They did the same thing to Murtha.

I got news for those Dems that "expect" support from the American people, you're not going to get our votes by default. Just because the Repubs are destroying this country doesn't mean that the average Joe is going to give the Dems the same opportunity. We're not going to sit around and wait for you to grow a backbone. The Dems are only going to get so many chances to look like pussies before they're equated with cowardice. In the minds of many that threshold has already been surpassed.

Let's face the scary proposition that it is looking more and more like the Repubs are going to be the ones running this country for the foreseeable future DESPITE their massive failures. The reason is clear. Dems have not offered a concise and opposing voice to those presently bankrupting our country. The American people know it but they also believe that they have no where else to turn and at the moment, they may be right.

So what can we do? Besides getting involved and supporting Liberal candidates wherever they may be, my advice is to give the next Democratic politician walking down the street a swift kick in the ass to show him exactly what this country needs.