Iran; Fighting for Truth

Today, as in the past few days, freedom is happening, or trying to happen, in an unfolding outpouring of historic proportions in the streets of Iran. The brave people out there risking life and limb are trying to get a fair election and the leaders that they wanted. Heaven knows that Americans lacked the balls or focus to do the same after not only one, but two stolen elections.

You could say, in fact, that if the Iranian election was stolen, as seems to be the case, the techs who engineered the heist probably learned a thing or two from America's 2000 and 2004 elections. You don't have to go further than our friend Brad's blog to get the lowdown on the fraud in Iran, (and be sure to catch Brad subbing for Mike Malloy this week 6-22 to 6-26, 6PM to 9 PM PT, stations listed here.)Brad is the man when it comes to voting rights and voting fraud, and his piece lays it out very simply; there is no way to trust this result. There was no oversight and there were no checks and balances; paper ballots were taken to be counted in secret by the incumbents staff, with no witnesses from outside....? come on!

So, of course, there is not going to be any winning in this situation. The Ayatollah has told the people to accept it and move on, but how far this thing will go before the uprisings are put down, is anyone's guess. The problem is that unless the government decides to have another vote, this result will never be accepted. Another election will surely prove to be against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is much less popular and very much more like the old time, hard line, conservative voice of the leadership. The people want change and the government does not want to give it to them. This fraud runs deep, because the numbers are so skewed as to be impossible.

America wrote the book on pretending to be a free and open, vote-counting, society; Iran never promised anything of the sort really, and its unlikely that what is happening now will do much more than strengthen the underground movement that will continue boiling along. This is an example of people who feel the urgency of history in their hearts and who are willing to die for the freedom of generations to come. The beauty of this uprising is not only that we are seeing a natural push towards freedom, but it's that we didn't have to bomb them to bring freedom, or any one of a thousand reasons that certain entities, (OK, McCain and his ilk,)gives for wanting to destabilize, install bases, grab oil, and generally mess with the tinderbox that is the Middle East.

President Obama, much to the chagrin of the morning bobble-heads today, isn't getting involved besides a couple of benign statements. People fight for freedom because its part of who they are, not because another regime imposes it on them. We can't tell them to fight on because we are sending in the cavalry, because we aren't. We can be there in spirit with them, but interfering would be another disaster on an already full dance card. Again, I find myself thankful to have Obama as president and not McCain, because I can only just imagine what he would do in this situation!

In Iraq, the "freedom" that we imposed looks pretty much like an ongoing dangerous occupation/war, and when we pull out they can expect some more chaos. I can still hear Rumsfeld's condescension as he told us how messy freedom is. I doubt he'd know, because what they were doing was not spreading the freedom; it was more like a war crime! (...and for some real fun of the vomitous type, check out Rummy in Time. Can someone tell me why these criminals are not being actively investigated right now?)

It occurred to me today that a civilization is truly ready for the revolution when it has embraced some form of Twitter or some level of a face book like popular platform in order to keep people in touch and organized. Even with a government shut down of communications, many Tweeters were changing their time stamps to confuse an already confused government and allow information to be passed around. When movements like this become global projects then anything is possible. The technology isn't the only necessity either; there has to be a movement by the people, not hoisted onto them like an antiquity stolen in all that messy looting.

When Joementum Lieberman looked up at the satellite dishes on the buildings in Iraq's green Zone and declared mission accomplished, his reasoning was that people could talk once again on their cell phones. I believe that it was war correspondent,Mick Ware, who mentioned that they were, in fact, now more fully able to organize to kill us. But regardless of what planet Joementum was on, (soon to be the planet of the unemployed, until the cushy payoff job sets in, I suppose,) those neocons never got the fact that you can't push democracy on a society where the hunger for it has not reached its own crescendo. Hell, it became apparent during that same time that Americans were not even that hungry for all of that freedom and rights crap; not enough to get off the couch and change the channel from the Fox Terra Network, anyway; not enough to have to reason and think about things.

Americans have been the lucky recipients of the sweat and blood of forefathers more high minded than we turned out to be. Their legacy might be that we all got to have a Jennifer Convertible and a flat screen TV for just 1000 easy payments, but somehow I don't think so. They have the record of their intentions set down in history but What they forgot to pass along to us was the lesson about what the first pilgrims fled when they started this crazy experiment. The truth was that the underclass was permanent and that there were no rights. The landed gentry were the elites and there was no way to better your life, much less pick your representation. The American dream was not one of having riches and status, but about having a voice and the ability to do well by your family. That didn't mean to do well at the expense of your countrymen, either, and it also didn't mean to do well outside of your own means gained through hard work and a strong community that cared for every member.

My point is not that what is going on in Iran is not important; It is damned important and its complex, and its also going to lose the attention of the American people as quickly as you can say "Jon and Kate Plus 8 Separate," because its a tiny step in a long process; a process that Bush-Cheney thought they could bulldoze through in some half thunk out disaster that looked good on that Teevee while it was going on, and now, all these years later looks like pathetic liars posturing. Power and oil look pretty sad in the face of just wanting a voice; and whats really sad is the continuing lie that we were trying to help Iraq achieve that voice.

Whats happening in Iran right now is the real thing, and there is much to report, as you can see from HuffPo's great coverage here and it should give us all hope that things like this can happen, and that we don't have to bomb the place to encourage instability and then somehow force our version of elections on them. Its just that the neocons would want to be there to take control from the ashes of this thing, or at least keep a foot in the door, just in case there are weapons of mass destruction or anything. I'm watching with bated breath like the rest of the world, but this is not a cartoon, and those are people with families and full lives who are sacrificing everything just for the chance to have their votes counted.

When you think of how we sat through 8 years of Bush and Cheney lying and cheating, and setting us up to lose everything we've worked for, in a stupor of fast food and reality TV, so long as our kid wasn't the one over there, its pretty eye opening to watch the real thing unfolding. When you think of how easy it seems to be for some people, our President included, to move forward and not look at the mistakes of the past, thereby letting criminals go unpunished, its a little embarrassing in the face of what is real bravery by people who are not only going against their government but also in many cases against their God, who supposedly speaks through the Ayatollah.
Its bravery, plain and simple. The world needs to watch what the government, such as it is, will do with those in custody.

With much of the media banned or shut down, the unfolding story is being told largely by citizen journalists at YouTube.




Brilliant at Breakfast

Jon Stewart and Barack Obama on the Bradley Effect ....Scary Socialism!....and also, Why Would Anyone even Want to be President?

Last night Jon Stewart interviewed a relaxed and happy looking Barack Obama. What has struck me this past week besides my PTSD from the Bush Administration, and fretting over the reports coming out of our good friend Brad's blog about the voting situation, is that there is a certain sour grapes feeling emerging from the right that no one would want this horrible state of affairs now anyway. (...just some ongoing wingnuttia on Hardball; to which I think that even Tweety said to whichever wingnut it was, "well you'd take it if you could, right?")

Woe is to the President that has a House and Senate fully in line with him, because then the blame cant fall anywhere but on that one party. I suppose that some sort of investigation and...er...impeachment might have laid the blame for alot of this on the correct shoulders, but that was not what the party wanted to focus on. So, the American short memory will ensure that the democrats get all the blame for things not moving forward fast enough or things overlooked in the coming years. There will be blame for sure, even if its the American people, so trained in their responses and set in their imperialistic ways, regardless of if their dominion is a mobile home or a mansion, unable to effect and allow change for fear of losing a few dollars here or there. Hey, you save in the long run with preventative care, but most people seem to want the payoff now!

My favorite part of Jon Stewart's interview with Barack Obama last night was that Obama makes it clear that now is the perfect time to effect change, if you're really in it for the right reasons. Presidential politics seems to have morphed into a game where the aim is to cause only enough waves to profit your friends, and emerge with a fine legacy or at least a compulsion fulfilled, regardless of if anything got better in the process. Its all about who gets the blame and who gets the cash. There are two types involved in this mess as far as I can see: the type that sees that there is more looting to be done before its time for the rapture, and the type that is actually a public servant and embraces the hard work of trying to put this thing back together. I could count the uninformed, the dreamers, the anger management problem folks, the risk takers and the gamblers who think that one more lotto ticket will put them up in that high bracket that Obama is attacking. Everyone can get whipped up into a frenzy by Donald Trump when the possibilities being real, but when you look around the Hyatt ballroom and realize that its full of suckers just like you with a pile of bills on the table at home, reality and logic have to take over in the world of grownups.

I believe that Obama is in this for the right reasons. And even though I haven't been his staunchest supporter along the way, I think he shows a great understanding of the hysteria that has gripped the country, and may be able to bring some calm and rational behavior to this situation. I sure hope so because I'm tired, I cant sleep, and I don't know if I can live here if McCain Palin get into office.




Americans of a certain stripe seem to forget the society part of our country; how our technological and intellectual advances were made possible by sacrifices of others who emigrated here or slaved away in factories to make a penny. This stuff isn't taught in school in any real way anymore, but the idea that so many American view the waxing and waning semi-socialist way that this country has run from the get-go as some sort of dictatorship, is just laughable.

So worried is the right about redistribution of the wealth that they forget that the only reason that they were able to earn that money was on the shoulders of everyone who came before, settled this place, fought in wars, invented and designed and worked their asses off in order to give Joe the Plumber the opportunity and the right to spew his nonsense. Call it greed or ego, but Americans are not all that special that we just deserve a chance...and God didn't just give us this fertile land; we took it from the Native Americans in grotesque and horrible ways that we are supposedly still repaying (though, last I looked, we still hold the principal of that, and its counted against the national debt...) Hoarding all of our money in the mattress with that smaller government or whatever it is they are calling it, and no standing army, would leave guys like Joe the Plumber out in the cold if his house catches on fire or he should need the police...or even if he drives down a road or highway to go to his non-job where he spins his web of lies.

I want to know what part of the infrastructure of America, physically and socially, the McCain campaign thinks is not some part of redistribution of wealth. I also want to know what part of the fire and police departments they want to privatize and outsource, because the failing infrastructure of the entire country should indicate how well that works! ...bridges and tunnels and highways and parks? How about the national forests?...come on!

I want to know how Halliburton would run social services? This is not how America was designed, and if what was once a village based economy, where each neighbor could rely on another, has grown to include an organized bureaucracy with which we imperfectly get help when we need it, I would have to say that it may be worthwhile for one of these guys to stand up and say that America is semi-socialist and that unregulated capitalism doesn't work!

A friend taking a friend in if their house is destroyed...is that socialism? Bringing a casserole when a community member loses a loved one...is that Socialism? Helping a friend with a sick relative....the list goes on, and its not considered wrong or strange in smaller view. Churches and social groups collect dues or contributions that go towards running an infrastructure; is that socialism? Its when the population grows and progress moves in such a way that we lose our tribal and family ties; when we begin to rely on the market of a bigger structure than just the farm fields, that we need more of a main structure into which everyone contributes. With proper representation there shouldn't be a problem. Its only a problem if it becomes a talking point and is misused to the point where the word has no meaning anymore. Rather than talking about it so much, I wonder how much time any of these disgruntled wing nuts in my town actually get involved in cutting down on overspending or bureaucracy! Ill tell you, its usually only involving something that effects their bank account or their backyard.

Up the road from me is the old town of Bedford Village, NY. I often take my dog Lola to the green, which, as part of the historic preservation of the area, has a plaque that notes that local farmers shared this village green for grazing their cattle. I'm sure then that they also worked on the green and reseeded it, as good neighbors banding together through hard winters and hot summers. Through history there have been cooperative efforts on the part of Americans, which can be seen in the endless piled stone walls around, here made of the stones that tough Americans plowed up from this rocky place, in order to grow crops. The stone walls built all over the Bedford town square and all roads coming and going from it, were not brought in from Home Depot; they were part of a cooperative where everyone gave time and whatever they had to better the whole. Its only now, in the twisted minds of these wing nuts, that we are seeing some deep rooted form of hate that throws the poor, and anyone else outside of some perceived lucky group, under the bus.

The horrible thing is that Americans likely need to have some tragedy, like the great depression with no social net, or children dying because roads are not maintained, to see that regulation is necessary. The greater good can only be served by Americans remembering that we are all the same, and if our weakest part is really our strongest as a society, then we have been neglecting that part too long. There is a greater good, and if life is fleeting for us , we still have the responsibility of every American since the beginning of this great experiment to leave something to our children; some foundation to stand on for their own dreams.

Ive been avoiding alot of this, and spending time with my birds because I find that I am just really...upset...worried. but I will be making some calls and doing something this weekend...and Im trying to not get my hopes up or take anything for granted in this. Anything can happen, and as much as Obama should have the numbers down...look at BradBlog for some scary facts that will give you pause.

Here is my friend Susan hobnobbing with the actual Barack!...um...or a reasonable depiction of him!...close enough! You go girl!

c/p Brilliant at Breakfast

McCain Boldly Breaks the Law. Are We Just Gonna Let Him? Take Action Here!

John McCain has broken the campaign finance laws by accepting public financing, which comes with a spending limit, and then going over the limit. This is not just unfair advantage, its illegal.
The taxpayer funding was good enough for McCain when he needed it, but recently, when he felt that he could raise more money than the limit, he sent a letter pulling out of the deal. Well, the letter would have to be processed and accepted by the Federal Election Commission and that has not happened yet. So, every bit of money that he goes over the limit, breaks the law.

Considering that this is the most publicized election in a long time, maybe forever, and considering that the entire world is looking at us, including our own country and our children, how can McCain expect to openly break the law without some sort of repercussions. A huge problem that we have in American diplomacy and in American attitude in general, is this feeling that the law doesn't apply equally. We used to have the legal system that other countries would pattern themselves after. We used to be able to be proud of our leadership role in the world. Now we have endless politicians involved in scandals and jails filled to capacity. Worse than that, we are reviled the world over for our lies and deceit. The world is watching this election, and our children will be studying this in school for years to come. What is the answer?

We've been through 7+ years of an administration that shows no respect for the law and makes no bones about their contempt for any institution that might question their pure authority. America is built on laws, and this is one fairness law that has not been thrown out...yet...
We cannot afford another 4 or 8 years of unlawful leadership. We cannot afford to erode our society any further at the hands of another old man who thinks that he knows whats right, and that set of rules seems to apply differently to him than to the rest of us.

Lets let John McCain know that we are not going to consider him to be an extension of the outlaw Bush regime, that he is not above the law, and that he may be able to buy the press with his barbecue and fake swagger, but the American people have had enough.

Daily Kos and FiredogLake have pulled together a group of bloggers and concerned citizens to launch a complaint to the Federal Election Commission, against McCain, and they are collecting signatures here.
If you haven't yet signed the petition, please do and please forward it on to everyone yourl address book...they have had an enormous response in a short amount of time, but they need more. Every voice is important and now is the time to use yours. We cant let one bit of disregard for the American people's laws past us again. It us up to us to take a stand, because its been proven again and again that the system, taken apart as it is, will not work without concerned people powering it.

John McCain is going to have to answer for this flagrant disregard of the law...let's get to it!