NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

Conyers' Lonely Struggle

New York representative John Conyers (D) is doing his absolute best to try and prevent George Dubya from assuming a second term for his shamocracy, but it's tough when you're the only voice of reason in a room full of mindless yesmen and barking dogs. He wants the Senate to formally object to the vote of the Ohio electors on the grounds that vote tampering there questions the legitimacy of the vote and the entire election.

While some Democrats will almost certainly go along with Conyers' call, an objection will not necessarily stall the official Electoral College vote or overturn the result. But even symbolically, it will make a difference for the historical record and help underline what a lie the Bush "mandate" actually is.

New Year's Resolutions for Me - 2005

1. Starting with this year, I will officially stop getting older. When people ask my age, I will bat my beautiful brown eyes and answer, "Wouldn't you like to know?"

2. Even in this non-presidential election year, I will give at least $100 to progressive political groups like NARAL, Moveon.org and the NRDC.

3. I will not, no matter what the circumstance from this time forward utter or type the phrase, "wardrobe malfunction."

4. When referring to President George W. Bush I will, as often as possible, refer to him in print as "El Jefe" since he has about as much legitimacy as many Latin American strongmen.

5. I will recognize that cherry pie is neither fruit nor a vegetable, but a dessert and it should be eaten in moderation.

6. I will use my blog forum as a bully pulpit to sing the praises of Howard Dean as chairman of the Democratic Party and Hilary Clinton as the next nominee of the party for 2008. I'd also like outgoing NAACP chair Kweisi Mfume to play a larger role both among Democrats and within the African-American community.

7. I will donate some money to the tsunami relief efforts, while recognizing that even if an early warning system had been in place, it would probably wouldn't have made much of a difference.

Happy Progressive New Year everyone. Remember that the real work lies ahead of us. Peace...

Watch Fox News, Hate Your Muslim Neighbors?...

44 Percent Say Restrict Muslims

A recent nationwide telephone survey by Cornell University and reported by truthout.org, CNN and others said that 44 percent of Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans.

The survey also suggested that respondents who paid more attention to television news were more likely to fear terrorist attacks and support limiting the rights of Muslim Americans. Perhaps the only encouraging news to come out of the survey was that only 37 percent of respondents believed a terrorist attact was imminent in the United States in the next 12 months. A similar poll in November 2002 put that figure at 90 percent.

I don't really want to live in a country where nearly half the people believe that discrimination against a particular religious group is okay, but then I was born into that country and in fact that way of thinking is ingrained in our very creation and has it's emblems woven into our institutions--even our money, with its ubiquitous "In God We Trust". But perhaps during this holiday season it is important to remember that the only people who need to have their civil liberties violated are the ones we have proven and convicted of being guilty of that crime. Not people who trust in Allah instead of "God".

Happy Holidays all....

POMP, NO CIRCUMSTANCE

Today President Dubya honored three of his former cohorts by giving them the Presidential Medal of Freedom for the role in "the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq." While it won't bother most Americans that neither place is completely liberated yet and that, especially in Iraq, the motivation for the military incursion seems less than noble, it's always good for a President to be seen handing out shiny baubles and waxing grandiloquent about "freedom, security and human liberty." Casual news followers might get a warm, tingly feeling in their heart during this holiday season and the imperial fight for control of oil in the Middle East will all seem somehow a little more grand and a little more righteous.

Meanwhile today in the Baghdad Green Zone, a car bomb detonated, killing 2 Iraqi's and injuring 13.

Bumper Bonanza

It didn't take long after the election for the Bush/Cheney bumper stickers to start multiplying like sex-crazed gerbils. Now I see them everywhere, whereas they were relatively scarce before the election. My question is, are all of these people bandwagon jumpers or are most Republican and Republican-leaning independents not too proud of their presidential ticket and they were just waiting until after the election when it is "safe" to let their freak flag fly?

The other day I encountered a progressive at a gas station in L.A. (He was filling up a 20-year old economy car.) While I was pumping gas, he noted my John Kerry bumper sticker and said, "I'm like you. I just can't bring myself to take the sticker off." I replied, "If I keep the sticker on, it helps with the denial just that much more." Party on President Kerry, party on...

Peace.

HERE LIES TOM RIDGE

Have you gotten caught up in the Desperate Housewives hysteria yet? Yeah, me neither...I'm not sure what the big deal is, but as a red-blooded American male I am constitutionally obligated to mention at this point that at least the stars are hot, and isn't that what all the hype is really about? Especially Eva Longoria and the underrated Felicity Huffman. I'm happy for Felicity, finally landing a hit show years after the deserving and brilliant Sports Night got cancelled. But none of this is what I want to write about, so let's move on...

---------------
Ten Little Cabinet Members

And now say goodbye to Tom Ridge and Tommy Thompson. This week, both Ridge who headed the Department of Homeland Insecurity and Thompson, who ran Health and Human Services, decided to resign from Bush's Cabinet, which is starting to look less like a Cabinet and more like a valise. Don't think that this is any kind of ideological split or a resignation of principle though (the two exceptions: UN ambassador John Negroponte and former Secretary of State Colin Powell). It's time for these high powered politicos and captains of industry to get paid, since government work doesn't pay all that well and the transition from the first to the second term is as good a time to get out as any.

Unfortunately, one cabinet member who probably won't be resigining is Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the mastermind behind our brilliant exit strategy in Iraq and the man who oversaw the excesses of Abu Ghraib. Things are going so well there why would we want to change, right?
----------------------
Peabo Bryson

I'm typing this at my g.f.'s apartment and it's hard to concentrate because she's watching one of those cheeseball paid programmings, in this case Time Life's collection of soul ballads from the 70's and 80's. It makes it hard to concentrate on the degenerate state of the world today when Luther Vandross is singing "Here and Now" and Peabo Bryson is exhorting us to "pick up the phone now" and order today for just four low payments of $29.99. "I trust Peabo," my g.f. says. Ah, romance. What we need is for Time Life to come up with a collection of political protest songs featuring the greatest hits of Public Enemy, Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder. Maybe we could throw in The Pretenders, "Ohio", since that's where the presidential election of 2004 was lost/stolen. I wonder if anyone would buy it. Probably not, unless we could get one of the Desperate Housewives to remove a bath towel and then jump naked into the arms of Stevie Wonder. ("Oh Lawd, I just dropped a white woman!") I think I'm digressing again.

Quick Movie Recommendations

Check out Closer, Sideways, Ray and, if you have kids, The Spongebob Squarepants Movie. You can skip National Treasure, although I guess there are worse ways to spend $8.

Final Thought

This week World AIDS Day came and went and it's important to remember that the United States, under the Bush administration, is in favor of promoting abstinence in Third World countries as opposed to making it easier for contraceptives to be distributed or for AIDS medicine to be more readily available in Africa, where the disease is truly epidemic. It's not always about Iraq and tax cuts for the rich, although these are the areas where most of us see the duplicity and mendacity of the Bush administration the most. What we are dealing with here is a philosophy shaped by the most backwards-looking and religiously conservative elements of our society and that is NOT the way to go about combating AIDS and other major health threats around the world.

Peace...