FASCISM BEGINS AT HOME

Hi everybody. The current terrorist alert level is "elevated" which is yellow. Or maybe orange. Perhaps chartreuse? I can never get it straight...

------------------------
Well, we are officially on the path to fascism. Today the U.S. government deported Cat "Peace Train" Stevens on the same day that it released from captivity a Saudi national who was fighting with the Taliban.

Stevens, who changed his name to Yusuf Islam when he became a Muslim in the 1970s, had been placed on a U.S. "no fly" list and has been deported to Britian according to State Department officials and reports in the Associated Press.

A law enforcement official who asked not to be identified said the United States had information that Islam, who visited the United States in May, had donated money to the militant Islamic group Hamas.

Islam/Stevens has long donated money to charitable causes and has taken a particular interest in children victimized by wars in Bosnia, Iraq and in the Palestinian settlements.

Meanwhile, Yaser Hamdi, who has ties to terrorist organizations based out of Saudi Arabia and who fought with the Taliban against the U.S. in 2001, has now been released from a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. Under terms of his release, Hamdi, who was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, cannot return to the United States nor can he visit Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Israel, Syria, the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.

Although it is not clear what he was being held for, he has been captive for almost three years and was once thought to be such a threat by the Homeland Security department that he was held in a naval stockade without being allowed to contact a lawyer.

Given this recent information, I have compiled a list of known and not-so-well known Americans who should be concerned about being deported any day now. These include, but are not limited to:

--John Kerry
--John Edwards
--Michael Moore (start packing)
--Jeneane Garofalo
--Me
--Anyone else who contributes to, or regularly reads Dissent Channel
--Sean Penn
--Democratic billionaire industrialist George Soros, who was recently accused by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert of being involved with drug cartels.
--Bill Maher
--Chris Rock
--Your mama
--Senator Barbara Boxer
--Dan Rather and the producers of 60 Minutes
--Reverend Jesse Jackson and anyone else who actually tried to negotiate with Palestinan leaders instead of just shooting at them.
--Gloria Steinem

Personally, I just hope they fly me out on first class. The leg room is so much better.

THE SPIRIT OF '76

Ah, dissent channel is rocking and rolling now! I'll add a couple of my own haikus at the end of this essay, but I bow down to everyone else in the house for their witty, wise and oh so on-target verse. Making the world a better place, one haiku at a time...

---------------
So did George W. Bush really put in those 80 hours of flight time and perform his National Guard duty? Is John Kerry the Purple Heart earning war hero who served bravely on that swift boat in Vietnam? My question is this: who cares?

It is 2004. The Vietnam War ended for this country 29 years ago. There are people with children in grade school who weren't even alive during this conflict. The issues that loom before us in this national election--the War in Iraq, national health care, the future of social security, the protection of our civil liberties, the threat to freedom of reproductive choice, the "war on terrorism", just to name a few--are what we should be talking about in the presidential discussion, not what happened three decades ago. Every second spent talking about it (including on this blog) is a precious second wasted in the Most Important Presdential Election of our time.

But I have to weigh in on this. To those who suggest that Vietnam serves as some kind of character litmus test for the two main candidates in this election, I say bullshit. While I personally view Kerry's record much more favorably (he DID serve in Vietnam, he WAS injured, he DID fight for his country and ultimately he DID speak out about the wrongheadedness of our involvement in Vietnam, thereby making him much less of a "flip-flopper" than Dubya), I'm not nearly as interested in the past military service records of these two men as I am in their plans for both the present and the immediate future. I am interested in their political ideologies, their social views and in their very powerful political backers. In short, its "what have you done for me lately?" or "what are you going to do for me?" as opposed to "what did you do when you were 25?" (I think back to what I was doing when I was 25 and I'm not sure I would vote for myself if I ran for president...)

Funny thing is, call me crazy but I believe the majority of people in this country feel the same way. On Election Day, those who vote will be asking themselves a few basic questions about the candidates, and I have a feeling their Vietnam War record won't be one of them. (Although some people may be misled into forming some kind of character judgement about Kerry or Bush because of this "debate.") So this isn't me scolding the American public (for once) but rather me scolding the media who allow themselves to manipulated by the PAC's and the spinmeisters into reporting non-issue stories at the expense of focusing on what really makes either of these men worth voting for. By not holding a unrelentingly harsh light up to either candidate (which I believe would expose Bush to be the corrupt, morally bankrupt fraud he really is), the media fails us all, softens all of our brains while hardening all of our hearts. It's ugly, frustrating and ultimately, destructive to our republic. It's 2004 and it's 1976 all over again.

-------------------
A couple of the promised haiku:

Ashcroft kills freedom
With wasteful war on terror
Right wing reigns Supreme.

Sudan's genocide
Where thousands die each month
Alas, no oil there.


Keep dissenting...until tomorrow sports fans, arrividerci!

GET YOUR FRESH HOT AK's...

Letter sent by me to Congresswoman Diane E. Watson (D- Ca) on behalf of Moveon.org to try extend the assault weapons ban that President Bush intends to let lapse on Monday:

"Please do not allow the assault weapons ban to lapse. Of course, no one who is in the Congress or the White House would have to personally deal with the effects of having these weapons on the street in their community, but it would be nice if our elected leaders just once acted in our best interests instead of the interests of those who funded their campaigns."

Sincerely,




Write your congressperson today, unless, of course, you happen to have cornered the market on assault weapons for gangstas.

Adios...

CHENEY TO VOTERS: Kerry will eat your babies!

Push, push, in the Bush...

Well, the GOPs are at it again. From the voice of the Republican Party, Fox News, comes this article about how VP Dick Cheney is telling voters that if they vote for John Kerry the country will be attacked by terrorists:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,131692,00.html

This I guess is designed to frighten those who haven't yet grasped that our country is currently being RUN by terrorists (what's the threat level at these days?), but it's still galling that the news media (ha ha, lol!) hasn't covered speeches like this more closely and put the magnifying glass to all the Great Karl Rove lies. I like the Democratic response to this fearmongering (for once), but honestly it's about the most depressing thing in this presidential election--Bush calls Kerry a flip-flopper and everyone forgets about the ultimate flip-flop, the one about the WMD's in Iraq; Zell "Benedict Arnold" Miller questions Kerry's heroism, but no one questions the "Commander-in-Chief" who's never actually done an honest day's time in the service in his life; Cheney says Kerry is too soft on terrorism, but Cheney and Bush are in bed with the bin Ladens, the Saudi's and godknowswhoelse and the rest of the country (except for us leftist "wackos") is out whistling Dixie. And secretly hoping Florida gets hit with another hurricane.

My time is up. You've been a great audience. Please tip your wait staff and don't let friends vote Republican...

CNN: Conservative News Network?

Some thoughts from the dissent channel nation about the lack of coverage of Kerry's rebuttal to Bush's rose colored, misleading, "compassionate conservative", completely untrue acceptance speech on September 2nd:

Me:
I laugh and cry every time some pundit, politician or just plain folk gets on the TV and talks about the "liberal media bias". How can there be such a thing when a network like CNN, supposedly more balanced then the obviously biased Fox News Channel, doesn't even give one minute of time to covering a major speech by the opposition candidate which rebuts several misleading statements made by the President of the United States? This leads me to believe that CNN (and CBS/ABC/NBC) wouldn't even give the opposition point of view of the State of the Union if they weren't sort of required to. It leads me to believe that their interests in this election--and they shouldn't have any interest, other than to report the truth--lies clearly with the power and the president in charge.

I encourage everybody reading this to go to John Kerry's website to read his rebuttal and to never trust CNN to give you the straight story on any political coverage again.

http://www.johnkerry.com/index.html

Some letters to CNN by my cohorts. Very pointed and truthful observations:


Dear Fox, Jr.,
I know you call yourselves CNN, but your lack of
actual news coverage coupled with your emphasis on editorializing, propagandizing, and flag-waving suggests to me that you're actually another pathetic arm of Fox Un-News. While I don't expect much in the way of unbiased news coverage from the networks, I naively believed that CNN was at least attempting to give its viewers a somewhat balanced viewpoint. But, when I tune in to CNN after the GOP convention and find no coverage of Kerry's response to the Bush/Cheney attacks on his character/abilities/attitudes/record/platform, I can't help thinking that you're as insidious as Fox. The bozos running Fox are so unsophisticated and classless that they can't even admit to their biases, but the bozos running CNN are just as bad for pretending you have no biases and insisting that you balance your perspectives. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's sick and tired of the so-called "liberal media" being at most, on the cusp of moderate, and at least, as "fair and balanced" as Fox. Stop kowtowing to the conservative viewpoint that a critical media is a bad thing, and give us the damn news! (EOE)


Where was CNN's coverage of Kerry's response to Bush?????? What is wrong with you people???

We sat up until after 1 AM waiting for some coverage of Kerry's midnight rally and there was nothing. CNN is increasingly disappointing. You better wish that nothing resembling real fair and balanced reporting and TRUTH TELLING ever shows up on cable! If so, your uselessness will be horribly evident! (LA)

Dear CNN,
Where was coverage of John Kerry's speech in Ohio last night (Thursday, Sept. 2)? I have checked cnn.com today, and I still do not find archived video of the speech or a transcript; neither is the screaming headline, "Kerry says Bush 'unfit to lead this nation'," on your front page. What gives? It's not enough that this article on CNN is from the AP wire? Where is CNN on the ground? Why doesn't CNN value retail politics? Why do I have to do a keyword search to get to this article? John Kerry makes the most forceful statement of the campaign so far and you are caught snoozing. This does not inspire confidence, and I am just one of many of your viewers who is fed up w/ the failure of CNN to fairly cover the news as it happens. CNN's attempts to mirror the dubious tactics of its rival FOX News fail again; selective presentations of events will not garner an audience. In fact, you have lost another viewer. I will seek to get my news from C-Span and the BBC. Here's a final note to your news director: things are happening in real time in the world, not only in pundits' fevered imaginations. You should give Bill Schneider and Kelly Wallace a vacation and go back to being a news organization.

Yours in disgust,
ae

Chris Rock has a famous routine where he talks about how Black people can get rich but can never get wealthy because we tend to waste money on flashy trinkets like rims that "are spinnin', they spinnin', they spinnin'. Look at them spinnin'". CNN, MSNBC, CNBC (is that even a network? I mean really?), Fox News--they can't ever report the truth because their pundits are too busy "spinnin,' they spinnin' and spinnin'". Here's hoping that all those conservative pundits spin in their graves one day, when we finally have the progressive revolution we deserve.