Trick or Treason

Well, America? Will you let them do it? Or is it time we call out the National Guard? Perhaps we should write and ask them what they intend to do to defend the constitution...

Hey Prissy, what about that "Truck Out"? Well, Dearest Readers, perhaps the DC metro police read blogs too. From Save America Fund:

posted 04/26/07 A SUCCESS IN SPITE OF GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE

TO ALL RALLY PARTICIPANTS: MANY of us showed up but were not allowed to go to the party. We were conspired against by our own government. Monday morning, April 23, about 11 AM, Drew Raines of A Marines Disquisition radio show, told me he could see on a live traffic cam for Montgomery county in DC, truckers lined up on the northbound I 95 into the D.C. Beltway, flags flying, banners on their trucks. Several hours later, he was told by some truckers, that the D.C. police were out in force and that no 18 wheelers were allowed on the Beltway for the next three days, the days of our rally, and they forced all the trucker traffic to go elsewhere. The truckers were also told that the only way they would be allowed on the beltway was if they were carrying a load in their trucks with a legal bill of lading that gave them permission to be in the capitol area.

We have also heard from a large convoy of protesting trucker that were coming into the beltway from the north, that the police were out in force up there too, pulling the truckers over and giving tickets to everyone participating in the convoy. We have heard this from all over the nation, same thing. So far we have heard from about 70+ truckers that got tickets, all over the US, for trying to participate in the slow roll around a capitol, or on the freeways. A convoy of 20+ truckers tried to go to Nashville capitol and were intercepted before they got there and told to leave or get ticketed, some still got tickets, same for Little Rock, same for Oklahoma City. Oklahoma city didn't give up though, we have heard that somewhere between 100 - 175 truckers showed up there, were turned away, regrouped and came back, but this time parking their trucks several blocks away from the capitol and joining the rally on the steps of the capitol, where a state senator joined them and said they had just unanimously passed a resolution urging Congress to repeal the Bush plan and to stop the NAU.

We may have been thwarted this time, but we are not through. We are now regrouping, and planning our second run at this for June, 14, 15, 16, but this time we will be far more organized and have a contact person in every state, organizing the truckers in that state.

I am deeply sorry for the tickets that were issued to those participating in the rally. I am so very grateful for every trucker who participated and the bravery and patriotism each and every one of you has shown. I cannot thank you enough for how hard you all worked to make this rally happen. Even though we were thwarted, I view this rally as a success. The true UPSIDE to all this is that many, many more truckers and concerned citizens know about the NAU and the Mexican truckers, NAFTA's damage to our economy, and our govt's plans to destroy our sovereignty and Constitution, so this next push to get the information out will educate just that many more people.

From Prissy's Inbox:

I was in Vietnam in 1967-68; was wounded on two occasions; received the Purple Heart, etc. I was almost killed or wounded by ‘friendly fire’ several times. The mother of a soldier killed by friendly fire wrote a book by that title that I recommend. A couple of times, when I was with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in the Central Highlands(think Platoon or Full Metal Jacket), we were returning to the camp area after an all-night ambush detail. Once, one of our own soldiers, lobbed a hand grenade at us, which knocked us down from the blast. Another time, we approached an M-60 machine gun and the gunner told us later that he nearly opened up on us before calling out the ‘password.”

After four months as a line doggie, I transferred to a LURP(Long Range Patrol Unit)(think Deer Hunter); operated in 6 man recon teams; 12 man ambush teams deep in the bush. Like Pat Tillman, I was Ranger trained. We monitored trails during Tet 1. We got hit by both ground artillery and navel guns many times. There was one episode where the shells where set to explode at tree top level and were shearing off the tops of the trees around us. Someone did not get the word that we were there, or got it wrong. Another bombardment lasted a long time as we clutched the ground and were lifted up by the explosions. We all received concussions from the impact. We had blood coming out of our ears and noses.

One time we hit a hot LZ(landing zone); the Vietcong were on us and opened fire. We were in a world of serious hurt and had to call in the Air Force jets; the jets, were firing rockets so close to us, that you could hear them whistle and scream by over our heads.

I am sure, any Iraqi vet will tell you, that everyday, GI’s are killed by ‘friendly fire.’ There is nothing disgraceful about that. The soldier is awarded a Purple Heart but the ‘Heart’ is slightly different than the awarded for wounds received from opposing forces fire.

I recently visited the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. They have a wing there for pro football players who served in the armed forces. Pat Tillman has a special section just for him.

Rather than just report what happened to Tillman, YOUR GOVERNMENT felt they were justified in manipulating public opinion through deception. From the World Can’t Wait Call, YOUR GOVERNMENT, ON THE BASIS OF OUTRAGEOUS LIES, is wagering a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.

There is no justification for lies told to Tillman’s family. How many people enlisted in the military after being inspired by the ‘Tillman story’spun to the media?

The Tillman incident is one more example of a CULTURE OF DECEIT promoted by the current administration.

In Washington D. C. at Operation Ceasefire I heard Cindy Sheehan speak. At one point in her talk, she paused, looked over her shoulder towards the White House and yelled, “SHAME ON YOU!.”

Steve Vargo,a Corrections specialist, is the Columbus chapter organizer of World Can’t Wait, www.columbuswcw.org and www.worldcantwait.org and www.waronwar.us

Hot Links

And I Didn't Speak Up

Neat idea...for May 13, 2007 Standing Women

We will be standing for the world's children and grandchildren, and for the seven generations beyond them. We dream of a world where all of our children have safe drinking water, clean air to breathe, and enough food to eat. A world where they have access to a basic education to develop their minds and healthcare to nurture their growing bodies. A world where they have a warm, safe, and loving place to call home. A world where they don't live in fear of violence--in their home, in their neighborhood, in their school, or in their world. This is the world of which we dream. This is the cause for which we will stand.

If you share this dream, please stand with us for five minutes of silence at 1 p.m. your local time on May 13, 2007, in your local park, school yard, gathering place, or any place you deem appropriate, to signify your agreement with this statement. We ask you to invite the men and boys who you care about to join you.

The guys should do this too-soldiers, policeman, steel workers, all of them. After all guys, don't you want to be watching the game with a tall cool one, instead of defending yourself? Think how much your back will hurt at 40, if you get in a lot of fights during your youth...oh you'll be sorry then, Misters.

Mind Prod.com What Republicans Pretend Not To Notice

Good guide to send to your right wing friends. The burden should be on them to explain why they uphold a policy that is not based on facts. Or reality...

Reuters Idea of U.S. threat to Russia is "ludicrous": Rice

- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dismissed as nonsense the concerns of some Russian officials that a planned U.S. missile shield in eastern Europe could pose a strategic threat to Moscow.

Flashback The Guardian February 3, 2006 Blair-Bush deal before Iraq war revealed in secret memo

The memo seen by Prof Sands reveals:· Mr Bush told Mr Blair that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of "flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours". Mr Bush added: "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]".

· Mr Bush even expressed the hope that a defector would be extracted from Iraq and give a "public presentation about Saddam's WMD". He is also said to have referred Mr Blair to a "small possibility" that Saddam would be "assassinated".

· Mr Bush told the prime minister that he "thought it unlikely that there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups". Mr Blair did not demur, according to the book.

And...Prof Sands says Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's UN ambassador at the time, told a foreign colleague he was "clearly uncomfortable" about the failure to get a second resolution. Foreign Office lawyers consistently warned that an invasion would be regarded as unlawful.

NYT Court Asked to Limit Lawyers at Guantánamo

So the treason cabal won't mind if we do the same when its "their turn" to play the wheel of justice?

San Mateo Daily News Accused molester's bail reduced Update on the child psychiatrist accused of molesting children under his care

Prosecutor Melissa McKowan called the case against (Dr. William) Ayres "incredibly grave."

"There are numerous people who were victimized by somebody in an extreme situation of trust," said McKowan. "This is as egregious a child-molest case as you can find."

Ayres practiced in San Mateo County for decades, seeing patients referred to him through local school districts and the county's juvenile court system. He also maintained a private practice.

Police first began investigating Ayres in 2002 after being told by a man who was a patient of Ayres in the 1970s that the doctor had molested him on multiple occasions. But the case had to be dropped after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling effectively changed the statute of limitations on such cases.

C-Net News Intel outlines plans to find missing e-mail

Last month, Intel said that a number of employees had failed to properly preserve e-mail related to AMD's allegations after some people forgot to save "sent" e-mail or assumed IT was backing up their folders. The report doesn't have much in the way of details beyond what Intel has already said, that despite the breakdown in its document retention policies it thinks it can cobble together the rest of the e-mail messages from backup tapes, e-mail preserved by those who properly followed retention procedures, and by looking at other employees within the same department or management team.

The mess goes all the way to the top: court transcripts indicated that CEO Paul Otellini was one of the individuals who thought IT was backing up his e-mail. But Intel noted that it did take a snapshot of every file on its network the day after AMD filed its lawsuit, which are the files that might have the evidence AMD seeks.

AMD said it was evaluating Intel's report before commenting further, but that it might seek to depose certain employees to learn more about the document retention lapses. Intel filed a number of exhibits under seal that contained the names of those on the document retention list, and AMD wants to review all of those documents.

It Was Johnson...a conspiracy theorists dream website. And remember- there are conspiracy theories because there are conspirators...It Was Johnson

NBC Threatens Witnesses in Garrison Trial- On Tape In the Lincoln assassination, three conspirators were nationally known newspapermen. In the Kennedy assassination we had the same situation-- several newspaper publishers conspired to mislead the public-- particularly those publications and broadcast entities owned by billionaire H.L. Hunt, who was also a close friend of Johnson.

Greg Palast Bush’s New US Attorney a Criminal? BBC Television had exposed 2004 voter attack scheme by appointee Griffin, a Rove aide.Black soldiers and the homeless targeted.

There’s only one thing worse than sacking an honest prosecutor. That’s replacing an honest prosecutor with a criminal.

There was one big hoohah in Washington yesterday as House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers pulled down the pants on George Bush’s firing of US Attorneys to expose a scheme to punish prosecutors who wouldn’t bend to political pressure.

But the Committee missed a big one: Timothy Griffin, Karl Rove’s assistant, the President’s pick as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Griffin, according to BBC Television, was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election.

Truth Dig Despite Incompetence, Gonzales Isn’t Going Anywhere by John Dean

Some of the most important and revealing information during this hearing did not come from Gonzales, but rather from the newest member of the committee, freshman Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D.RI). Senator Whitehouse is the former Attorney General of Rhode Island, and a former U.S. Attorney. He thus understands well how the Justice Department should operate, and how it actually is operating.

In a premise to a question for Gonzales, Senator Whitehouse said he had found correspondence in the files of the Senate Judiciary Committee from the days when Orrin Hatch was chairman relating to an investigation of the relationship between the Clinton White House and the Justice Department (under Attorney General Janet Reno). Hatch was concerned about the independence of the Department of Justice, so he wanted to know who in the White House could speak with whom in the Justice Department. The correspondence showed that four people in the White House (the President, Vice President, chief of staff, and White House counsel) could speak with three people in the Justice Department (the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney and the Associate Attorney General)—period.

Senator Whitehouse discovered—and created a chart to make the point—that in the Bush White House, a shocking 417 people could speak with 30 different people in the Justice Department. It was a jaw-dropper. As Chairman Leahy said, when he asked Senator Whitehouse to continue when his time expired, in his thirty years on the Judiciary Committee, he had never seen anything like the open contacts from the White House to the Justice Department that had occurred in the Bush Administration.

Gonzales really had no response when asked about this subject. But this information shows that, in this Administration, the Department of Justice has become a mere political appendage of the White House. (I have a number of friends who are career professionals at the Department of Justice, and since Gonzales arrived, they have said that morale at the department has tanked, for they all feel the politicization of the place, and they do not like it. Many of these gifted, experienced professionals are leaving, which will hurt the Department, the government, and ultimately all of us.)

MSNBC Lieutenant colonel charged with ‘aiding the enemy’ faces multiple charges for alleged misconduct in Iraq

NBC News has learned that the commander of Camp Cropper, the massive U.S. Army detention center in Baghdad, has been charged with aiding the enemy.

The Army tells NBC News that military police arrested Lt. Col. William H. Steele several weeks ago and that he is being held at a detention facility in Kuwait. He now faces an Article 32 hearing, the military's equivalent of a grand jury investigation, to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute him.

An Army statement listed these charges against Steele: "One specification of a violation of Article 104, aiding the enemy; one specification of a violation of Article 134, retaining classified material; two specifications of violations of Article 133, conduct unbecoming an officer, for relationships involving an interpreter and another Iraqi female; five specifications of a violation of Article 92, failure to obey lawful orders for wrongfully storing classified materials, improperly marking classified materials, failing to obey an order from a superior officer, possession of pornography and dereliction of duty as an approving official for the expenditure of government funds."

Strange story lacking most details...So are Iraqi's the "enemy" or are we there to "liberate" them? Dubya needs to make up his mind.

Yahoo Congress passes Iraq bill, veto awaits

WASHINGTON - A defiant Democratic-controlled Senate passed legislation Thursday that would require the start of troop withdrawals from Iraq by Oct. 1, propelling Congress toward a historic veto showdown with President Bush on the war.

At the White House, the president immediately promised a veto.

"It is amazing that legislation urgently needed to fund our troops took 80 days to make its way around the Capitol. But that's where we are," said deputy press secretary Dana Perino.

The 51-46 vote was largely along party lines, and like House passage of the same bill a day earlier, fell far short of the two-thirds margin needed to overturn the president's threatened veto. Nevertheless, the legislation is the first binding challenge on the war that Democrats have managed to send to Bush since they reclaimed control of both houses of Congress in January.

Dearest Readers, wait until you see Prissy do "too much cappuccino Perino." Coming soon from Indymedia...

Learn about poverty-hopefully not first hand...The Borgen Project POVERTY FAQ'S

Why do defense experts view global poverty as a threat to the United States? Poverty creates desperate people and unstable conditions. As the National Security Strategy of the United States says, “A world where some live in comfort and plenty, while half of the human race lives on less than $2 a day, is neither just nor stable.”

PBS Bill Moyers BUYING THE WAR: Watch the Show

Buying the War:Four years ago on May 1, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln wearing a flight suit and delivered a speech in front of a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner. He was hailed by media stars as a "breathtaking" example of presidential leadership in toppling Saddam Hussein. Despite profound questions over the failure to locate weapons of mass destruction and the increasing violence in Baghdad, many in the press confirmed the White House's claim that the war was won. MSNBC's Chris Matthews declared, "We're all neo-cons now;" NPR's Bob Edwards said, "The war in Iraq is essentially over;" and Fortune magazine's Jeff Birnbaum said, "It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context."

How did the mainstream press get it so wrong? How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 continue to go largely unreported? "What the conservative media did was easy to fathom; they had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked. How mainstream journalists suspended skepticism and scrutiny remains an issue of significance that the media has not satisfactorily explored," says Moyers. "How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?"

An excellent documentary-this shows all of the evidence needed to disprove what the White House was telling us in the lead up to the war was publicly available. The Knight-Ridder team knew and so did their readers. Transcript of program is available on the site .

That will serve them well in their future of journalism. And boy, weren't Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel cute heroes?

The careers of the liars will be over,just ask Judith Miller-Prissy hears she's available...

More about those excellent reporters and kudos to the big boys in suits who told them to find the truth! They are patriots too. Refreshing in the media and they should be rewarded accordingly. Knight-Ridder was bought by MCCLATCHY Newspapers, Prissy hopes the new owners appreciate this crew. The decisions, policies and intelligence behind the Iraq War

It's all there...series of articles that disprove the administrations case to go to war in Iraq. All the intelligence experts disagreed with the administrations public case for war-except for the ones who went on TV of course...

1 Old Boring Man Blogspot KR@georgewbush.com…

This frantic email from Jeffery Jennings is from when things started with the U.S. Attorney scandal. Notice the date, the server Karl Rove was receiving his emails on, the fact that Karl Rove was a part of things this early, and that Dana Perino [the Tony Snow clone] was already in the loop.

Sounds kind of governmental [rather than political]. To me, this is the most damning piece yet. It says, "Uh-Oh. We’re busted. Let’s get our stories straight and go into damage control mode." A bunch of petty criminals. The placement of the word, "allegedly," in those sentences is downright funny.

Go to the site to see the email. Hard to say it wasn't government business, in fact, impossible.

The Guardian Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have.

Note to Dearest Readers, If Condi refuses to testify we should insist she is treated like anyone else in that situation...

Quotes of the Day

Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.--Samuel Butler,(1835-1902)

A parent who sends his son into the world uneducated and without skill in any art or science does a great injury to mankind as well as to his own family, for he defrauds the community of a useful citizen and bequeaths to it a nuisance.--James Kent (1763-1847)

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.--Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.--William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

From Richard S. Zera (1001 Quips & Quotes for Business Speeches)

A confident applicant for a job presented his credentials to a personnel manager. The manager looked over them and said, "I see you've got good recommendations from your church minister and Sunday-school teacher. That's good. And, I must admit, you look honest and appear to be of good character. Nevertheless, I'd like to see a recommendation from someone who knows you on weekdays."