Revolutionary Acts

When you can’t speak your mind to a friend without fear that someone else is listening who will misinterpret, codify, twist; when you cannot speak your private thoughts, then that silence creates a revolutionary whether or not that revolutionary ever evolves into revolutionary action. When we are forced to whisper into a trusted ear rather than shout out our thoughts to any and all who would hear without inspiring fear of reprisal in us, then we are engaging in a revolutionary act.

The current administration is in the act of producing revolutionaries of all of us except the 1% richest citizens of this country. The Patriot Act is just that: an official act that creates revolutionaries and patriots so that we may be seized, imprisoned, and destroyed even if it is not our intent to betray America.

No American will stand for being censored when it comes to expressing his or her thoughts. It is not a part of the American psyche to accept fear and to whisper. It is in the American psyche to die for the liberty that courses through our veins; as much a part of our genetic makeup as those very first and original patriots who stood for us then and declared: “Give me Liberty, or give me death.”

We cannot be silenced because we are an idea. We are Americans.

Senator Patty Murray On Impeachment

From: Senator@murray.senate.gov [mailto:Senator@murray.senate.gov] Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 12:10 PM To: xxxxxxxxxxxXX@gmail.com Subject: Response from Senator Murray Dear Ms. N_____: Thank you for contacting me about impeachment proceedings for President Bush or members of his Administration. I appreciate hearing from you about this serious issue. As you know, Congress may remove the President, Vice President, and any Civil Officer of the United States from office through the impeachment process. According to the Constitution, the House of Representatives may impeach an official on charges of "Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors" (Article II, Section 4) to remove the individual from office. Only two sitting Presidents have ever been impeached: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. No sitting President has been convicted and removed from office. Recently, Washington state legislators in Olympia introduced resolutions that called for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. State Senator Eric Oemig (D-Kirkland) was the sponsor of this resolution, Senate Joint Memorial 8016. Howeverx, since State Senator Oemig's resolution was at the state level, it would have had no binding impact on the impeachment proceedings at the federal level. The State Legislature adjourned without taking action on this legislation. In addition, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has introduced House Resolution 333 (H.Res. 333) in the U.S. House of Representatives, which calls for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney. The U.S. House of Representatives is the only legislative body with the authority to begin impeachment proceedings of the Executive Branch. I share your serious concerns and frustrations with the direction that President Bush and his Administration have been taking our country, both at home and overseas. I am troubled that Congress has been denied a chance to hold hearings and to bring accountability to this Administration. Now that Congress is under new leadership, we finally have that opportunity, and Congress is using the oversight process aggressively to get the facts to help our country move forward. We have held more oversight hearings of the Administration's handling of the Iraq war in the first few months of the Democratic control of the Congress than the Republicans did since the war began. I believe the best way to alter the direction that our country is headed in is to focus on fixing the current problems. At both the state and federal levels, there are many issues that require our attention, discussion, and action, and will require the President's active involvement. I am concerned that progress on health care, education, and veteran's care would all be put on hold and would not be fixed if Congress solely focused on impeachment proceedings. Be assured, I believe that the Congress must hold the Administration accountable for their actions and decisions, and I look forward to the upcoming hearings and investigations that are occurring in the 110th Congress. Thank you for sharing your views on this matter with me, and I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind as the actions of President Bush and his administration are reviewed. I hope all is well in Spokane. Dear Patty, I am troubled that Congress has been denied a chance to hold hearings and to bring accountability to this Administration. I am concerned that progress on health care, education, and veteran's care would all be put on hold and would not be fixed if Congress solely focused on impeachment proceedings. Your words above, Patty, and believe me, I am and always have been a fan of yours, but “troubled” isn’t nearly enough of an emotion when America is facing the kinds of devastation that she currently endures under the Bush administration. I know it. My neighbors know it. Millions and millions of us now know it. I think—and forgive me for this, Patty—you guys there who have the reins in your hands have just got to butch it up when it comes to the Bush so-called ‘administration’. I know you are a busy woman and that you are doing your best and I sometimes imagine I can see the frustration and resignation you must deal with on your face when our local news covers your stories. I know you’re doing your best, but Patty, when the American revolution cried out for heroes, the times called forth men like these:

John Adams- “But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” Benjamin Franklin- “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Alexander Hamilton- “A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.” Patrick Henry- “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me; give me liberty or give me death!” Thomas Jefferson- “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” James Madison- “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” Thomas Paine- “It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.” George Washington- “I have beheld no day since the commencement of hostilities that I have thought her liberties in such eminent danger as at present. Friends and foes seem now to combine to pull down the goodly fabric as we have hitherto been raising at the expence of so much time, blood, and treasure; and unless the bodies politick will exert themselves to bring things back to first principles, correct abuses, and punish our internal foes, inevitable ruin must follow.”

I’m not attempting a history lesson here, honestly, but seeking to remind you, in hopes that you might perhaps inspire those others there in Washington, D.C. that ‘troubled’ is not a sufficient emotion in these times; nor is acquiescence a proper response to the machinations that will sooner rather than later deprive us of the liberties for which the above named Americans willingly laid down their lives and their fortunes. Americans have never been afraid to bleed and sacrifice for love of this country. Our children dead and mutilated in Iraq prove that yet again, as they did in Viet Nam, Korea, and any other armed conflict one cares to remember, nor should our elected representatives in these times forget that the most important gift from those old guys and dead guys and mutilated guys was Freedom, which mostly means that you can speak your mind without fear, which, honestly, we haven’t been able to do for a few years now. Get it? Fear is the destroyer of Freedom. And Patty, when the sentence “I am concerned that progress on health care, education, and veteran's care would all be put on hold and would not be fixed if Congress solely focused on impeachment proceedings.” reaches from there in D.C. to my home here in Spokane I wonder if you are truly cognizant of how that resonates. What are these issues if the liberty on which America is founded is dying? And, another thing. It makes sense to me—and granted, I’m not in your shoes—but it makes sense to me that the people we send to Congress are smart enough, and dedicated enough, and committed enough and tough enough to accomplish the rescue of democracy as we know it in this country while also attending to the social issues which may or may not sufficiently rescue the growing masses who can no longer afford energy to heat their homes or food to feed their children, considering that the root cause of all these problems has been the overreaching of the Bush administration and their subversion of the values that created this country in the first place. Forgive me, Patty, first of all for writing to you knowing full well that you’ll probably never lay eyes on this, and that some able assistant somewhere will be looking out for your interests on this level because you are too busy to take care of the thousand and one details that go along with being a Congresswoman. And forgive me for writing to you as if you are an old friend and a neighbor, but you are and have been a splendid American woman to me, and I hope with all my heart that you will continue to be in Congress for many years. But. Patty. Those folks there calling the shots from the ‘thugocracy, neoconocracy, theoconocracy—whatever—have been at this piece of work for thirty years or thereabouts and your social concern is not going to change the ultimate direction that America takes if they manage to finish what they started all those years ago. I’m not asking you to change anything you are doing for us there in Washington, D.C.. I am asking you to consider the possibility that all of us who care about the historical ideals of America are starting to wake up and see that we face an huge threat from the Bush idiocracy. My greatest fear is that America will be denied the next presidential election through some malfeasance of Bush and his ‘people’, and you know what, Patty, I ain’t the only one who fears that scenario. It’s simply the ‘worst case scenario’ in this mess—the bottom line. The final straw breaking the camel’s back—unless Cheney and Bush and all their buddies are brought to heel. I guess my point is this: we have to fight them with words—loud ones—with our woman’s anger—with all the fierce dedication of all the struggles to define women’s rights from the time of the Suffragettes, the ‘60’s ‘consciousness raising groups’, the get-out-and-march-in-the-streets dedication of the first women to gleefully burn their bras and make their old men wash the dishes and change the baby’s diaper for the first time. Scary as hell, those times, but nothing like as scary as these times are now. Thanks for listening, whoever you are reading this, and give Miz Patty my kindest regards. D____

Kucinich Resolution to Impeach Cheney

What America Learned In Viet Nam

What America learned in Viet Nam—and what America is learning in Iraq—is that the will of the people cannot be defeated.

America needs to remember that in these times We, the People, must have the will to defeat the forces of the military-industrial complex currently controlling our country and our world.

Defeating Social Darwinism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism which the neo-cons and theo-cons call ‘progress’, and which in reality is as old as the 18th century and which has been discredited for many years must take precedence over such idiotic and manipulated issues as gay rights and abortion. People who oppose these criminals must no longer be labeled ‘anti-progressive’, ‘out of touch’ , ‘dated’, ‘behind the times’, and ‘old-fashioned’ by the mainstream press. We must continue to remind ourselves that ‘humanity’ and ‘compassion’ and ‘ethics’ exist even in the animal world. We must no longer deny the compassion that we feel for each other on the elemental and individual level. We must commit to our changing world changing to something that benefits the lowliest of us at the expense of the very richest of us.

Every bullet fired, every bomb dropped, every soldier killed on either side of any conflict and every dead civilian killed in ideological strife is another dollar in the pockets of those who own those who rule. Blood is profit to these people and they are so evil they don’t know the meaning of ‘evil’, or their sense of compassion has become so perverted that compassion becomes redefined as the status of one’s bank account.

We all know that profits accrued at the expense of humanity and directly tied to the sufferings of other human beings is wrong. It is time to remind ourselves of this. It is time to remember that what eats those beneath you eventually eats you if the metallic grinding jaws of the military industrial complex are allowed to grow unchecked and unremarked upon.

The people who rule these industries are indifferent to the sufferings of human beings—we already know that is a fact. It is time to acknowledge the secret fear that lives in our own hearts that we, and our families, could be the next down-trodden and bleeding victims of war-mongers and profiteers shown on the television screens of an indifferent populace in some country richer than America, and that could happen any day now.

Terrorism is fed upon the mother’s milk of inequity. Wars start because of inequity. Average citizens get up from their porches, tired of observing inequity and take to the streets to protest. Protest changes things. That is the American way. It is also the American way that we will not long suffer unfairness and inequities that take from the poor to give to the rich.

That is what America is all about, and nobody can change that.

Arise America!

The Torture Red Herring

The press is all about ‘torture’ and ‘waterboarding’ and other subjects regarding the current whoopteedoo around these obviously un-American acts that the Bush regime has introduced into our consciousness in the abysmal and eternal ‘war on terror’. In the meantime, the rape of the U.S.Constitution and The Bill of Rights—OUR rights as Americans continues daily while we sit around with our thumbs up our asses so that we must seem like so many millions of chimpanzees to the Bush regime. How can we be so indifferent to our fate? How can our American Press continue to deny the realities of thousands of Americans marching to protest the war on Iraq and the pending war on Iran? Are there no heroes left in America? Are we to fade into oblivion with nary a whimper of distress over the fate of our beloved country? Or is America really just a platform for making money, while patriotism and the zeal to fight for ones rights belongs to “terrorists’, who, from what I can gather, are just folks like us who are several layers deeper in the dung of the rich and who have joined the extremists of Islam in order to fight for their lives and the lives of their families. Will Americans, finally, reach that point of desperation? Is that the reason for Bush and Cheney’s private Blackwater Army? Is that the real reason for the ‘secret detention camps’ here in America? Are these things for US? For Americans?

What a waste of money. Seemingly, Americans don’t have the balls to stand up for even an honest debate about these issues, nor to stand behind those of our leaders who are trying to change things before it is too late to change anything.

The great hope that the Democratic Party would change events and bring the Bush regime to heel has died—elected Democrats in the House and Senate are knocking each other down in their rush to vote against Kucinich’s resolution to impeach Cheney for REAL high crimes and misdemeanors. The people we elected betray us daily—we’re so accustomed to that state of affairs that betrayal by the Democrats we voted into majority in order to stop this mess doesn’t even register on our consciousness—like the abused wife, we are so beaten down that we lack the will to do more than curl up and take the beating that is being handed out by our politicians.

Groceries—FOOD—is rapidly becoming UNAFFORDABLE. GAS—ENERGY—HEAT to keep us from FREEZING TO DEATH—is already unaffordable. Our utility bills rise every month so that electricity may soon be beyond the means of the average working person. We are being evicted from our homes because we can’t pay the exorbitant and hidden costs of our mortgages—or we are being evicted from our homes so that rich people can make condominiums out of our rat-hole apartments to sell to other rich people.

Are you all DAFT? Have you no will to resist this death by a thousand cuts that is currently being visited upon us by the rich? Are your dainty little jobs so important that you would rather betray your country and your people than take a stand against these people? Do you not understand that as each layer of the economic spectrum is decimated by these events, then the NEXT layer of the economic spectrum is sucked into the mindless gnawing maw of the rich? Do you not understand that there is no safety in acquiescing to the people directly above you? Do you not understand that they will also be destroyed by the top 1% with all the money?

Can you not see into the future if these unimaginably rich and powerful so-called ‘humans’ are allowed to continue in their systematic and rapidly progressing destruction of all the levels of our society? Can you not see the future when you look at the news from Iraq? Pakistan? Darfur?

You think it won’t happen here?

I think it already has and that you just don’t know it yet.

Tomorrow is another day and our turn is coming.