as are equal rights for all!

We got to the JLA at around 6:30 p.m. and saw streams of people lined up n down the steep west end stairs to get in, and across two sky walks that led to nearby adjoining parking structures. It was all orderly, though. The doors had opened at 6:00.

We went to the end of the line leading to the west, or Gordie Howe Entrance, which stretched about a quarter mile to the edge of the Detroit River. The line moved well enough to get us into the Joe slightly after 7:00 p.m. We hurried up to the second tier to nab seats in section 202B below Mike Ilitch's suite. The place was probably 1/3 full, including the press, VIP's, and local organization members milling around the arena floor.

Joe Louis holds almost 20,000, and it was bulging by the time Gov. Granholm took the stage shortly before 9:00 p.m. She introduced both Gore and Obama to a thundering ovation. I have seen President and Sen. Clinton, Vice president Gore, and Gov. Dean before, but simply have not witnessed anything like an Obama rally, a giant political revival in a concert-sized rocking venue, before.

Gore is a gifted speaker, but he was masterful tonight. His endorsement was true, ringing and heartfelt. Obama's reciprocal complimentary remarks obviously were as well. There was effusive praise for Sen. Clinton from all three, and it was more than obvious that Gore withheld his endorsement strictly in deference to her. The strategy should pay off when McCain winds up the path of this juggernaut. I wouldn't wish his situation on anyone.

Let's hope the repugs don't dump McC!

Great laughs, Cheryl!

"If Obama moves to the corps he is going to lose his base."
And if the youth aren't his base, he'll lose them too. Frankly, I think he'll not only move but embrace the corps. Does he really have a choice? Do any good pols have choices anymore?

Hi All,

I will too busy to pay much attention to the rest of the election, I just wanted to pop in and say keep up the good work.

God Bless America

Man Convicted of Preaching Outside “Free Speech” Zone Near Liberty Bell

Repent America
June 15, 2008

Congress Ready to Betray Fourth with Spy “Immunity” Bill

Thomas Ferraro
Reuters
June 15, 2008

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House and congressional negotiators have reached a tentative agreement on an anti-terror spy bill that would permit court dismissal of potentially billions of dollars in lawsuits against phone companies, sources familiar with the talks said on Friday.

Scanners that see through clothing installed in US airports

NEW YORK (AFP) - Security scanners which can see through passengers’ clothing and reveal details of their body underneath are being installed in 10 US airports, the US Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday.

A random selection of travellers getting ready to board airplanes in Washington, New York’s Kennedy, Los Angeles and other key hubs will be shut in the glass booths while a three-dimensional image is made of their body beneath their clothes.

I will pop in from time to time to say hi, so you'll know I'm still kickin.' I will give at least one report from my vacation.

I'm not a biblical scholar but somewhere in the Bible it states that "eating shellfish is an abomination" much like homosexulaity is according to those who say it is. However on Sunday a line snakes around Red Lobster...And is it true that I must stone my neighbor if he works on Sunday?

Feds Farm Out Imprisoned Slaves to Make Corporations Rich

Betty Brink
Four Winds 10
June 15, 2008

The foregone nomination of Barack Obama, which, according to one breathless commentator, “marks a truly exciting and historic moment in US history”, is a product of the new delusion. Actually, it just seems new. Truly exciting and historic moments have been fabricated around US presidential campaigns for as long as I can recall, generating what can only be described as bullshit on a grand scale. Race, gender, appearance, body language, rictal spouses and offspring, even bursts of tragic grandeur, are all subsumed by marketing and “image-making”, now magnified by “virtual” technology. Thanks to an undemocratic electoral college system (or, in Bush’s case, tampered voting machines) only those who both control and obey the system can win. This has been the case since the truly historic and exciting victory of Harry Truman, the liberal Democrat said to be a humble man of the people, who went on to show how tough he was by obliterating two cities with the atomic bomb.

Understanding Obama as a likely president of the United States is not possible without understanding the demands of an essentially unchanged system of power: in effect a great media game. For example, since I compared Obama with Robert Kennedy in these pages, he has made two important statements, the implications of which have not been allowed to intrude on the celebrations. The first was at the conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the Zionist lobby, which, as Ian Williams has pointed out, “will get you accused of anti-Semitism if you quote its own website about its power”. Obama had already offered his genuflection, but on 4 June went further. He promised to support an “undivided Jerusalem” as Israel’s capital. Not a single government on earth supports the Israeli annexation of all of Jerusalem, including the Bush regime, which recognises the UN resolution designating Jerusalem an international city.

Dear Dan,

in 1952, the popular Florida Sen. Claude Pepper was unseated by George Smathers who unleashed a whispering campaign throughout the rural Florida farmland that Pepper was well known in Washington as a "homosapien" whose daughter was an outright "thespian" who performed "thespian-like" acts in front of paying audiences!

So I agree with you. I don't want any homosapeins in our schools teaching our daughters to become thespians.

let's get serious in steps...

6 June 2008

A USA Today/Gallup Poll found that:

63% of adults say same-sex marriage is "strictly a private decision" between two people, while 33% believe the government should have the right "to prohibit or allow" marriage for lesbian and gay couples.

79% of 18- to 29-year-olds polled believe the U.S. government has no right to intervene in the decision of gay and lesbian couples to wed.

These percentages highlight the growing support for marriage equality across the nation.

from the Human Rights Campaign site:

Currently, same-sex couples are entitled to all of the state-level rights and benefits of marriage in Massachusetts. In addition, same-sex couples in New Jersey, New Hampshire, Vermont and Connecticut are able to enter into state-level civil unions, and there are broad domestic partnership laws in California and Oregon. In New York, after a 2008 court ruling, valid out-of-state marriages of same-sex couples must be legally recognized.

(obviously that phrase on CA needs updating. for state specific status, see:  http://www.hrc.org/issues/marriage.asp

By ETHAN BRONNER
JERUSALEM — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday that thousands of housing units that Israel is building on captured land were harming peace talks with the Palestinians. She also said she could not understand why Israel was still blocking three Fulbright grantees from leaving Gaza....

====================
I don't know where they are going to put the other state, in the much ballyhooed "two State solution" more like a "two State red herring"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/world/middleeast/16mideast.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

need to start moving to daytime schedule, eek!

♥'s to all

Kindness is free!

Negroponte is messing again in CA/

CENTRAL AMERICA: US Has Northern Triangle in Its Sights
Thelma Mejía
TEGUCIGALPA - Drug trafficking, migration, high crime rates and even a supposed Iranian presence was the cocktail of concerns raised by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte on his recent tour of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

These guys are seeing Iranians under their beds.

MIDEAST: Net Tightens Around the Fishermen
By Nora Barrows-Friedman
GAZA CITY - When the broiling sun sinks behind the rolling Mediterranean sea in Gaza, hundreds of fishing boats turn on their motors and assemble ragged nets to round up the evening catch. Flickering blue lights scatter across the shallow seas as the boats gather offshore in close quarters. Mackerel, sardine and grey mullet are caught in nets and dumped into plastic crates to be sold in the street markets. But under severe military occupation dominating the Gaza strip, it has become increasingly difficult to make a living as a Gaza fisherman.
MORE >>

I can't pull up the transcript of Gore's speech..

So I'll say bon nuit.

nite nite

Got three copies of the Gore endorsement message.  Looks like they have to meld some email lists.

I am not enthused this morning, since I heard Obama specify on the evening news that it's the combat troops he wants to bring out--no mention of Air Force, Navy and whoever's manning the missiles and radar installations and satellite dishes.

Anyway, I've been reading in my National Journal and learned that the VA has to wait on budget appropriations on an annual bases and that, when the budget is passed late (137 days in 2007, 86 in 2008) all kinds of things have to be interrupted, including payments to nurses and doctors.  That the VA population being cared for has swollen by 1.3 million doesn't help.  I'm going to write up a KOS diary on the story and post it here, as well.

A little blurb on Amtrak (which I expect to be on this time next week) has led to two thoughts.  On the one hand, the funding bill encourages "private sector investment in high speed rail" for which there is no good reason because, IMHO, public funds should not be used to "encourage" or otherwise manipulate the private sector, but to do things that need to be done.  This "ulterior motive" pattern is very wasteful.  That goes for much of the federal budget and the tax code.  Social engineering ought not to be a governmental interest.

My second thought has to do with the assertion that Amtrak should become self-sufficient.  That's a total crock.  There's not a single private corporation that doesn't rely on funding from the public to keep going and expand operations and to afford acquisitions--and without much of a commitment to actually persisting and performing the services they promised.  I would love for private enterprise to be self-funding and accumulate capital to fund their own renovation and expansion, but until that happens, it's an outrageous standard to set for public enterprise that has to provide service, and do so on time, regardless of whether it's needed at a particular moment or not.

Bush/Cheney really exist in an upside down world.  They want to anticipate and prevent human warfare, but they're entirely content to sit back and await disasterour natural events, which actually happen on a much more regular basis and are, therefor, quite predictable.  Guess that's what happens when you're fixated on belief and intent, rather than causes and their effects.  (In Georgie's case, it's possible that he doesn't recognize the relationship between cause and effect and has an awareness of sequential events, at best.  Coincidence is confusing for people who don't register cause and effect).

the real reason to oppose homosexual unions is because they re-enforce the dangerous notion of human equality and deny the importance of potential paternity to validate the natural superiority of the male.  It's the potential to start a new life which certifies the importance of the male.  This is also why terminating a pregnancy on purpose is so dangerous.  It undoes what man hath wrought; it aims to destroy man's association with the Creator of all life itself. Man has invented God to make himself feel important.  Take that participation in the continuation of creation away from him and what does he have?  He's as nothing.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/lindorff/109

On Monday last week, something important happened in Washington. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic representative from Cleveland, who early in the primary season won some of the biggest applause lines in the Democratic presidential candidate debates, introduced 35 articles calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors.

A week later, it has still not been reported in The New York Times, the nation's self-described "newspaper of record," even though the Times had just days before Rep. Kucinich's action, editorialized about the enormity of the president's lies in tricking the country into invading Iraq -- one of the crimes leading Rep. Kucinich's long list.

A number of papers did editorialize against impeachment, including the Philadelphia Inquirer and the (South Florida) Sun Sentinel -- but it says something that these publications thought it more important to attack Rep. Kucinich's action than to actually report on it as a news item.

The unwillingness of the nation's news media to seriously consider the need for Congress to respond to and challenge the president's clear abuses of power -- even as they themselves condemn of those abuses of power -- is a blot on the journalistic profession perhaps worse, and of more lasting consequence, than their failure to act as watchdogs and critics during the run-up to the Iraq War, when they acted more as patriotic cheerleaders than as news organizations.

As impeachment advocates, including Rep. Kucinich, have pointed out, unless this president and vice president are impeached by the current Congress, any -- and probably every -- future president will feel empowered by unchallenged precedent to ignore laws passed by the Congress, to go to war without Congressional approval, to spy on Americans in violation of the law, to ignore court orders, to abrogate international treaties, and to lie to Congress and the American people. Unless Congress asserts its rights under Article I, it will no longer even be a co-equal branch of government, but instead will have been reduced to nothing more than a debating society.

Editorialists, while refusing to honestly report on this Constitutional crisis, have been parroting the claim of gutless and calculating Democratic Party leaders such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in saying that with the nation at war and with a critical election approaching, there are "more pressing" matters to consider than impeachment, and that impeachment would be a "diversion."

This is nonsense. As hundreds of American troops continue to die each quarter in a war that never should have happened, and that was launched five years ago and continued for half a decade thanks to administration lies and deception, there is nothing more important facing this nation than restoring Constitutional government and Constitutional checks and balances -- something that can only be done through the Constitutional process of impeachment.

The American people instinctively know this. In polls, fully half or more of the public consistently continue to say, even at this late date, that they want the president impeached. Considering the media blackout on the issue, this is truly astonishing and even heartening. But it will take more than polls to get impeachment rolling. The public needs to start demanding that its representatives take action, on pain of being voted out of office.

You have no idea how heavenly those big bales of hay I was putting in the shed smelled last night after that flood water full of sewage, farm chemicals, and mud.

the spring was so cold and wet that the quality is good enough to make milk even at this very late date by the calendar but the race is on

food prices are high enough that I'll stick to making milk (hay) today

that old expression actually is true, although most that use it never mean it literally .... there used to be dozens of temporary jobs for teenagers, handling little square bales, ... no more

the big balers are four to five times more "productive", but we are depriving kids of the joy of the last bale off a wagon after a good workout

now you need membership at a gym

Dairy farmers are eating a lot of the increases in costs so far. some will probably quit.

there are horror stories coming out of farms on the flood plains, agriculture is the unreported story

and I get local news from MN and WI and both states have been hammered as well

we need to go to the old oriental model of government that blamed the Emperor if the weather God was displeased and they would lose there job, then impeachment would be un-necessary, lol

I think Conyers needs to set a date for the first hearing.

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

...

4101  in Iraq

521 in Afghanistan

...

I was a suburban kid, but one summer my folks decided we needed some ruralization and took us out to stay on a (tourist) farm in upstate New York.  We got to watch (and smell) the cows being milked, the birthing of a calf, and yes, went out with the hay baler and helped stack up the bales on the truck.

The biggest treat was the big scoops of fresh butter on the dinner table.

Jobs for kids are getting harder and harder to find, because of mechanization, and because others who wouldn't have taken those jobs in the past will take them now.  It's unusual to see a teenager working at a fast food restaurant these days.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20080617/pl_bloomberg/amzfo3yeb4g_1

Obama May Get Rural Votes on Farm-Subsidy Support, McCain Stand

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Republican-presidential-candidate-Arlington2C-Va-Sen-John-McCain/photo//080616/480/95c8d7d5d169435f9fb5dfe9fae24a8e//s:/ap/20080617/ap_on_el_pr/anti_mccain_ad;_ylt=AgBU5DpB13SaAJlFf09AnGth24cA

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., listens to a reporter's question during a press briefing at his campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va., Monday, June 16, 2008.<cite id="captionCite">(AP Photo/LM Otero) </cite>

The Endorsement

By Tom Bearse on Jun 17, 2008 12:23 AM

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/16/mary-matalin-repeats-lie-about-china-drilling-off-the-coast-of-cuba/

Appearing on the Situation Room today, conservative pundit Mary Matalin insisted on opening more U.S. land, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to oil drilling, claiming that the U.S. is “the only nation” impeding efforts at more drilling. She repeated the conservatives’ current favorite lie: that China is drilling near Cuba, just off the coast of Florida — even though the lie has been thoroughly debunked and Vice President Cheney himself has admitted the story was false.

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/87656/

At long last, the bedraggled Democrats have come to the blessed end of their perpetual primary pursuit. Not the beginning of the end. Nor the almost near middle of the end, but the very end end. The butt end. The last millimeter of moldy hair on the bulbous pimple on the butt end of the end end. An end officially signaled by the reluctant arrival of Hillary Clinton at the sequestered gate of Acceptance.

Acceptance. The final state of grief which has been attained only after an unseemly amount of time spent lounging with her old man on the porch swing at the House of Denial. And a couple of not so brief forays to the double-wide Recreational Vehicle of Anger and Depression. Then some boilermakers and cigars back at Denial House. And don't forget that quickie in the Vice Presidential Suite of the Bargaining Motel. But now the cloak of Acquiescence has been thrown over her shoulders by members of her own staff, while the Democratic Tactless Squad wraps Bill in the Shut- the Hell- Up Sheet while beating him across the head and shoulders with rolled up copies of the latest issue of Vanity Fair.

The Dems are fond of calling themselves the party of the big tent, which is all well and good, but you know what else they hold in big tents? Oriental rug sales. Used car clearances. And circuses. And as the newly installed ringleader, Mr. Obama is going to need to find himself a really big chair and an awfully long whip to control the political menagerie that will be encircling him. And something bright and shiny to keep the paying customers focused on the center ring and not the eternally attendant freak show. And cotton candy is always nice.

http://democracyforamerica.com/users/234709-rdorgan/blog_posts/25618-to-the-draft-gore-diaspora

http://www.alternet.org/election08/88211/?page=2

Some of us who have been mesmerized by the Obama-Clinton cage match during the past six months may have developed certain delusions about the state of American politics, in two areas in particular. One is the idea, much pushed by wishful-thinking media commentators like myself, that the abject failure and unpopularity of the Bush administration somehow means the Republican revolution is over, and the mean-ass hate-radio conservatism of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh is finally dead. The other is the even more quaint notion that the historic, groundbreakingly successful candidacies of a black man and a woman have ushered in a futuristic era of political tolerance and open-mindedness.

It's bunk, all of it, and nobody understands this better than John McCain. Like Hillary Clinton, an erstwhile vilified liberal who remade herself as a flag-waving, Sixties-bashing champion of "hardworking Americans, white Americans" once the remarkable candidacy of Barack Obama forced her off her old turf, the one-time "insurgent" McCain has finally decided to sail with the wind at his back by going dumb and courting the same talk-radio demographic that used to despise him. What enables him to do so is a key insight: that while George W. Bush may be unpopular as an individual, fear and hatred in this country have never gone out of style.

McCain enters the general election in the form of a man who has jettisoned the last traces of his dangerous unorthodoxy just in time to be plausible in the role of the torchbearing leader of the anti-Obama mob, waving the flag and chanting, "One of us! One of us!" all the way through to November. He now favors making the Bush tax cuts permanent, he's unblinkingly pro-life every time he remembers to mention abortion, and he's given up bitching about torture. With his newfound opposition to his own attempts to reform immigration policy and campaign finance, McCain is perhaps the first candidate in history to stump against two bills bearing his own name.

"I seek the office with the humility of a man who cannot forget that my country saved me," McCain likes to say. And while he doesn't believe he was anointed by God to lead the great nation of America, he insists, "I am her servant, first, last and always."

That's it -- that's the entire argument. McCain is a canny enough old goat to know that the public's insatiable appetite for traitorous enemies will do the rest. He'll wave as many flags and stand in front of as many fucking fighter jets as you like, while the other guy lectures us about why he doesn't always need to wear a flag pin in his lapel and calls a bomb-throwing Sixties terrorist "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" instead of calling for his immediate beheading.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/309

The next host will have to establish his or her own legacy to the program. Given our times, and the overall timidity of the Washington press core toward Bush and Republicans, the program deserves someone who can stand up to government, regardless of who is in charge. And that person is Keith Olbermann.

Olbermann has stood up to Republicans and Democrats. He is one of the best writers in any form on television today, and could add a special comment at the end of "Meet the Press." And he is the only one currently at NBC News who has the reputation of asking the tough questions of all sides, a true tradition of "Meet the Press."

The big question is whether Olbermann would still do "Countdown." Olbermann should still be able to do both shows, but perhaps be given more time off for "Countdown," giving Rachel Maddow more of the screen time she deserves on MSNBC.

One name from the outside but who does have experience at NBC News is Gwen Ifill. Ifill, host of "Washington Week in Review" and contributor to the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," has worked at NBC News, and would be a great pick if someone from outside the network is chosen. If Olbermann isn't picked, she would be my second choice.

In the long run, Keith Olbermann is just the right candidate who appreciates the past of television reporting and who understands the future of television reporting needs to be straightforward, blunt honesty. On some level, Russert would completely understand that transition.

Too bad I was in bed at the time, lol.

Hope you all enjoyed it!

I am opposed to gay marriage, and here is why.

It's simple really. Anyone who truly reads the word of God (the Bible) will see that God clearly opposes homosexuality in any form.

Does that mean that all homosexuals are sinners? Yes, they are. Take heart though, all of us are sinners. Romans says that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God".

Does that mean that I should hate all homosexuals and cast them out of every corner of the world. Certainly not!!!

God hasn't cast me out of His world, in fact He has welcomed me with open arms.

So how do I reconcile the two? Well, I use every piece of energy, intellect, and skill that I have to oppose everything God opposes and then when I fall into traps of sin myself I ask for forgiveness from Him and anyone else who may have been hurt by my poor choices.

I oppose:

Outbursts of rage; yet I too frequently have them.

Pornography and lust; yet far too often I have found myself lusting.

Lying and "half-truths"; yet in too many pinches I have found myself creating a less painful truth to stand behind.

You see, just because I oppose something doesn't mean that I don't have my own failings. It simply means that I desire to follow my Lord and Saviour everywhere and with everything.

Yes, I oppose homosexuality because it is detestable in His eyes. That doesn't mean that I think homosexuals are less human or deserving than me though. No, I know what the Bible says:

"hate the sin, love the sinner"

I will continue to stand behind the Bible's teachings, even when I'm breaking the rules as well.