Remarks as prepared for delivery:

The hour of decision has come for our nation's Senate. In the debate that has begun, the Republican majority that holds the reins of power will have to make a choice.

They will have to choose between their partisan interests or the people's interests.

Between upholding our liberties and rights or overturning 200 year old protections.

Between continuing to abuse the power the American people have lent them or using that power on behalf of everyday Americans who are looking for a fair break.

When Americans think of a scary person in a black robe, they should be thinking of Darth Vader, not Republican choices for judges. But what the Republican leadership is attempting to do is to pack the courts with judges far out of the mainstream of American values.

To do so they want to scrap rules that have been in place since our nation's beginning that give every Senator the right to speak their mind and say their piece. They are demanding a power no president has ever had: the ability to all-but personally hand out lifetime jobs to judges without giving the other party any say.

That's too much power for one person. That's too much power for one President. That's too much power for one political party.

Our Constitution says the Senate should give "advice and consent." Not advice as long as we agree with everything President Bush wants. Not consent as long as we rubber-stamp the most extreme elements of the Republican agenda.

These checks and balances were put in place by our founding fathers. And they are there for a reason: to prevent any political party from abusing its power.

Look at the facts: more than 60 of President Clinton's nominees to be judges never were allowed an up-or-down vote. In contrast, we have approved 208 out of President Bush's 218 nominees. That's the best record any president has had in a quarter of a century. But its not enough for George Bush and the Republican leaders.

We've approved 95 percent of their picks. But that's not enough for them. They want 100 percent. They want it all. All the say. All the control. All the power. It's their way or the highway. But that's not the American way.

The Washington Republicans are on a quest for absolute power...and we all know what that brings. Their corruption and abuse of power is already here for all Americans to see. House Republican leader Tom Delay is a walking symbol of what's wrong with Washington DC.

At a time when gas prices are going through the roof and families are cutting back on summer vacations, George Bush and Dick Cheney are trying to line the pockets of big oil and walking hand-in-hand with the Saudi princes.

And while health care costs are rising, pensions are sinking, and our economy is stuck in place, Washington Republicans are wasting our time by trying to pay off the far right.

We are a nation at war. And the American people want their leaders to be focused on achieving progress, not playing partisan games.

Fifty years ago this Spring, a US Senator in the majority party wrote that "Fanatics and extremists are always disappointed at the failure of their government to rush to implement all their principles." But that the job of leaders is to follow the "course of their conscience."

Those were the words of John F. Kennedy in "Profiles in Courage." Now comes a time of testing for our own time. In the coming days, we will see who our nation's leaders of courage are today. I ask Republicans who believe in liberty and limited government to join us in taking a stand against this abuse of power.

Its time that the Republican leaders in Congress stopped silencing people's voices and began hearing the voices of Americans who are calling on us to live up to our nation's promise.

The same nameless individual has other incongruous ideas that need to be dismantled.

"1)The US can pretend that it isn't the stablizing force in the world, bend over, and wait for a chaotic ball of Islamic fundamentalists, Islamic dictatorial leaders, and terrorists to fight each other and create a worldwide nuclear and terrorist disaster. (AKA -The US can watch how events like WWII took place where people new damn well that there was a threat and decided to wait for a huge military struggle)."

2) The US can admire the dreams of peace but realize that those are not shared by everybody and that sometimes guns DO get a point across better than Hare Krishna peace walkers, especially when a huge group competing against American society (aka hollywood culture, weed smokers, corporations, rock music, beer, porn, short skirts, religious freedom, etc, etc) is all about killing to get its way. (we do TRULY grasp the counterproductive nature of terrorism that includes blowing one's self up in the name of narrow, pointless causes in order to kill people that stand in the way don't we????) If so, perhaps it isn't too bad of an idea to protect our great society from that.

The US isn't pretending. We are not the stabilizing force in the world. We are the destabilizing force. Who is selling all the arms to those terrorists, who sold that WMD to Saddam in the 1980's, who set up the Iranian nuclear reactors that the administration is now bitching about ... who? Go research all of the defense contractors feeding at the trough, and then go listen to Eisenhower's last Presidential speech when he warned about the Defense industry complex.

Who aided and abetted the Taliban and the Mujahhedan in Afganistan during the 1980s? Who has been fostering dictatorial regimes throughout the world in the 2oth century?

Why is it the multinational corporations who are pushing the bad foriegn policy decisions of our government?

This is called blowback. Do not presume that Iraqi's love us for our presumed moral endeavor? Remember how this was supposed to be a "cakewalk" and how the Iraqi's were all going to throw us roses?

They had to stage the toppling of Saddam's statue. They are not however staging the massive protests in Baghdad and Afganistan over the last month.

Why are contractors getting kidnapped and killed? Could it be that they are seen as invaders?

And what the hell do you mean by #2?

What are you talking about sitting and waiting. How many warnings did Bush- co get about the bin Laden problem? How many times does the FBI and the CIA have to get called off of the scene by the White House because Cheney was busy drawing up plans for the invasion of Iraq in April of 2001 -- 3 months before 9- 11. September 11th never had to happen. They let it happen to pursue their fucked up foreign policy agenda.

And if the world wants us to stabilize the world, how come no one is helping us out by providing troop support and funds? It's our kids and our money that are getting spent. The world did not invite us.

This is not a crusade for democracy and peace versus an evil religious cult. This is about a power grab, a coup d'etat that is being seen as an invasion of a defenseless country.

How come the military could surround the ministry of oil with tanks but do nothing while the museums and nuclear ministry were ransacked?

Do we have to kill them all in order that they may be free?

Who are we protecting our society from? The only hordes of fundamentalists threatening our nation our on the far-right neo-con hypocrites.

This war is a front for a hidden agenda by the cabal that is currently in the white house. We have been lied to, and we are still being lied to for reasons other than the noble ones that are credited.

A certain nameless individual posted the following one day. It is a three- sentence belief system. I will respond after the quote.

All living things, including people, are competitive and always will be. Free market competition is the heart of what makes America prosper. Sometimes corruption goes too far, but it is better than having government be the one to take your money and fuck it up.

But it's the situation that creates the competition.

You are looking at primitive psychology like a game that has wins and loses. Life is not about wins and loses. Life is about eating, shiting, and sleeping. Once there is no concern about eating, shiting, and sleeping, psychology evolves into a satisfied animal state which is more complex than you indicate.

And market (or open system of economic exchange) is a construct of laws, standards, and traditions established by the people in the community or a government of a region. To call this "free" and imply that the government is disconnected from the "free market" is ridiculous. We the people decide how we want to have a market of goods and services to be exchanged. Someone will be deciding how the game is played if government is not. Last time I checked however, it took years of law suit and government regulation to mitigate toxic chemical dumping, unhealthy food, and securities fraud.

What makes America prosper is the government. From the very first 50 years of our nation, Western lands were given to or sold by the government to promote the "filling up" of the West. All of our technologies and mechanisms of business were either fostered or out-right engineered by government interaction. Social Security eliminated senior-citizen poverty and put money into the economy. Telephone, Radio, service become universal because of government regulation which forced these businesses to provide fair, inexpensive service to all communities. Railroads, the interstate system, automobiles, the airline industry, computers, and so on, were all nurtured by actions that either originated from or were coordinated through the government.

You don't know your history my friend.

You think the government just takes your money. It's not the taking of the money that is the problem. It's the spending. Some things are so important for our society and economic well-being that it is more efficient to collect taxes and pay for it. There has never been any other way in history.

Entrepreneurs have insight and work ethic, but they still operate in a land with a strong government that provides resources and infrastructure. That way an entrepreneur is not burdened with all of the costs of doing business.

I suggest you read a book by Robert Kuttner called "Everything For Sale" which discusses the history of what we now call the "free market."

Don't you remember all of the whining the moaning and self-righteous carping by neo-cons about the UN Oil for Food scandal

[from The London Guardian]

A report released last night by Democratic staff on a Senate investigations committee presents documentary evidence that the Bush administration was made aware of illegal oil sales and kickbacks paid to the Saddam Hussein regime but did nothing to stop them.

The scale of the shipments involved dwarfs those previously alleged by the Senate committee against UN staff and European politicians like the British MP, George Galloway, and the former French minister, Charles Pasqua. ...the Senate report found that US oil purchases accounted for 52% of the kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil - more than the rest of the world put together.

"The United States was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated UN sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing UN sanctions," the report said. "On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales."

That's right it was actually United States own companies that did most of the corruption -- at the connivance of the neo-con Bush administration.

And there is more.

The neo-cons like to harmonize all together about big menacing(here it comes) Liberal media. Well, if the media is so liberal, how come the Downing Street memo has received little coverage, and was second rated to the bizarre all day breaking story of a "Runaway Bride." The story of a young girl chasing a delusion is the story all day, not the Prime Minister memo of meeting with the Bush Administration of July 23rd, 2002 that said..

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

But don't you think the liberal media would blasting this everyday all week?

Ignorant people rant and rave, but never have so many done so with such graver consequences. Damn all of you.

Wait ... Barry Bonds is "unethical" because he did steroids ...

But ... corporations can commericialize the game by buying the naming rights to a baseball stadium? How many neo-slave laborers in Asia have to work replacing American jobs so that we can buy cheap consumer goods at Walmart?

Barry Bonds hurt himself, and maybe the "nostalgia" of the game. But real people lose their job or pension when a corporation decides to breech a contract by breaking their pension promises or firing all the workers and then outsourcing new hires to a firm which pays the same workers half-price with no benefits.

This is what corporations do. They can still make money and not do these things, but alas, we have allowed our society and government to become corrupted by fiends and liars.

Making money is one matter. Making enormous amounts of money at the expense of workers and small investors is quite another matter.

Greed is only good when you have the upper hand. Sponsoring a society that allows greed to create the social system will eventually become ruled by kings and tyrants. The big fish will not only eat the little fish, but everything else until there is nothing left, and then sit around with fat bellies blaming it on those who point out the facts.

Greed fosters short-term irresponsibiltiy and unaccountability in our society.

The mythmakers would have you believe that survival of the fittest is man's basic nature, and that greed itself is natural to mankind. They are wrong, because they do not understand primative human nature or themselves, and are instead projecting their own internal sickness.

Once an animals basic needs of food and shelter are met -- which includes most of us in the USA -- an animal's basic drive is for love and respect. Lacking love and respect, we settle for cheap substitutes of fear and power, but this is a symptom of a degenerate society which breeds rampant individualism. In a society which instills relationships, individualism is checked because all individuals have learned love and respect from their community and social relationships.

Our society forms social understanding through the television. We drive in boxes on concrete slabs listening to voices from electronic devices. We are not attached to our surroundings or our connection with the people in our near vicinity. They are competitors, not fellow citizens.

Do y'all ever wonder why we now HAVE TO name our stadiums for corporations? It used to be the name of a local bigwig or a geographical name -- or just after the team name like Yankee Stadium and Dodger Stadium. Who the hell thinks US Cellular field is a better name than Comiskey Park?

Before San Francisco built Pac Bell Park (now SBC Park -- because the telephone utility Pac Bell got bought out by SBC) the Giants games were at Candlestick Park. The park got its name by the nearby odd shaped hill which actually looks like a "candlestick" from a distance -- like a warped shark's fin which narrows as the hill gets higher.

Just before the new park was build, the 3M corporation bought the "naming rights" for Candlestick Park, and all of a sudden the park was named "3M Stadium."

I am dead serious. All the names around "the stick" were changed, the brochures were changed, city maps were changed that got published that year... and now Pac Bell has become SBC.

At least when the park was named for a location,team,or person, the name wasn't in danger of changing. Comiskey Park was never in danger of changing names (neither Wrigley or Fenway Park) until U.S. Cellular bought the naming rights.

And what happens when U.S Cellular is bought out or goes bankrupt? Well look what happened in Houston when the Astros moved out of the Astrodome. Enron Field became Minute Maid Park.

What a pathetic trend? Worship the person-anonymous corporation instead of a historical namesake or locality.

The aristocracy of the Roman, Asian, and European-medieval era connoted their symbols of royalty with banners, privaleges, symbols, and colors. Erecting statues and creating a little park or plaza around a statue was another method of honoring a family or famous namesake.

In France, the Revolution of 1789 and after was largely kindled by the enormous privaleges the aristocracy had accrued at the expense of the laboring people, the peasants, and the "bourgeoisie" (enterprising townsfolk.) But those resentments were no different really from the peasants who revolted in China, and the total disentegration of Russia in 1917 when the soldiers of St. Petersburg could and did not fire on the masses of people storming the government... just like the Parisian's of 1789 stormed the Bastille to release the prisoners.

Revolution is not really a revolt however, but more a dissentegration as desperate, angry masses have no other recourse of action. A struggle over the political organization then ensues that can last 20 years or more.

The United States has never really had social revolution, in which the ruling classes were tossed aside and the political reality was completely upturned. The American revolution was really a taking over of the operations of national government by the Continental elites. That it was also Democratic in roots and its philosophical basis was due to the size of the "new world" out West and the smallness of the colonist population. In the history of the United States, the Government came before Society came fully into being. Changes and transformations did not evolve into law and common practices as in old world. Rather, every decision and new written law was added to an already existing rubric of higher law.

I thought the reconstruction was supposed to change this...or is too much profit being skimmed off.

From the London Guardian.

More than two years after Saddam Hussein's fall, 85 percent of Iraqis complain of frequent power outages, only 54 percent have access to clean water and almost a quarter of Iraqi children suffer from chronic malnutrition, a U.N.- Iraqi survey revealed Thursday.

``The survey, in a nutshell, depicts a rather tragic situation of the quality of life,'' said Iraq's new planning minister, Barham Saleh.

Although Saleh blamed years of wars, economic mismanagement and repressive policies under Saddam, conditions worsened after the U.S. invasion in 2003, and insurgents now are doing their best to tear down the economy, averaging 70 attacks a day at the start of May.

The U.S. reconstruction effort also has drawn criticism. Last week, government investigators said U.S. civilian authorities in Iraq cannot properly account for nearly $100 million promised for projects in south-central Iraq.

...

A total of 21,688 households in Iraq's 18 provinces were surveyed for the report.

It found 1.5 million new housing units are needed to deal with a critical housing shortage. Almost a quarter of Iraqi children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years suffer from chronic malnutrition, and 193 women out of every 100,000 births die in labor.

Unemployment is running at just over 18 percent, literacy at 65 percent.

In addition to power and water problems, only 37 percent of the population has working sewage systems, the report said.

``If we compare this to what was there in the 1980s, we would see a major deterioration in the situation,'' Saleh said. ``In 1980, 75 percent of families had access to clean water.''

Iraq had one of the region's best infrastructures, health and education systems in the 1970s, but conditions deteriorated rapidly after Saddam became president in 1979.

And Saddam was our boy in 1979, the year all hell broke loose in Iran, and our old boy the Shah was ousted by the people. Yep, we traded one sick, repressive regime for another, one right after the other.

And you wonder why they hate us? How delusional is it to believe that our soldiers are over there fighting for freedom?

I support the troops. Stop hemorraging money and bring them home now!!!!!

From the Mahablog

..look at what the righties are saying. Then look at what the lefties are saying. Notice the difference in the quality of the arguments. Lefties write long posts full of data and figures. Righties link to the columnists they want to agree with, then say yeah, see? What he says. Democrats stink.

As we all know, the purpose of right-wing think tanks is to think up excuses for pernicious rightie policies. And the purpose of rightie columnists is to tell the faithful what they want to hear. Essentially, the think tanks mix the Kool-Aid, the columnists fill the cups, and the rightie bloggers line up to drink.

It's a world full of advertising. A world in which we are depicted as imbeciles, savages in dire need, or as persons enjoying the best life has to offer, achieving the ultimate bliss with a grandiose or smooth background tune. It's all a suggestive message that is a lightly offered reminder, a seed planted in the mind that will hopefully germinate.

If you pay attention, you permit the seeds to enter the brain.

It is really that simple.

Liberals are irrelevant. Or so is the profound believe of certain voicebox's of the Reich-wing propaganda spin machine. The hired letter writers are out there are sending their packaged writing to the editorial pages of American newspapers. The words are leaving the lips of the radio-television hired guns of double-speak.

The audacity of the statement is incredible. How can someone profess belief in democracy and yet denounce the opinions of the "other side" as "irrelevant" -- something to be tossed into the dust bin of history by being completely ignored? The very idea of not bothering to listen to someone is the absolute contradiction of democratic beliefs.

What we have here is a twisted sort of "divine right of kings," driven and fueled by the aggregation of political power. That this voice is both twisted and reaches all people does not indicate a popularity of opinion, no more than the availability of coca-cola indicates that a vast majority of people drink Coca-cola. The Coke is there on account of the huge immensity of the Coke corporation, buying out local competitors when necessary. The opinions of the Reich-wing are there because they are abetted by the interests of the large- scale financial conglomerates that own the newspapers and media voice-boxes.

Irrelevant?

Most people don't know enough to have an opinion about most matters of substance and a medium amount of detail. This is not a negative statement. Most people are busy working, or raising families -- or they are incapable of achieving self-awareness. We might know quite a lot of detail about a particular subject, but are quite unaware and ignorant of a number of other topics. Very, very few people know a great deal of detail about a wide range of subjects. Therefore, most people simply don't know enough to form their own opinion independent of being influenced or nuanced by exterior sources.

Thus, there are a lot of people whose opinions are just a concatenation of phrases they have heard from media sources. These phrases and aphorisms form the basis of their proud opinionations. Do not expect them to analysis the meaning of these phrases and aphorisms, because they are fundamentally unquestionable. Would that I understood why this is so. My only venture is that people embed their sense of self and theier insecurity within the chosen phrases of their self-justification. To question the syllogisms of words is akin to questioning their very self.

Irrelevant?

Someone who makes a political statement which pillories the amorphous opposition with something beyond sarcasm is acting violently with words. The true conservatives of the 1950's were polite and respectful. This bunch that calls themselves arch-conservative should really call themselves corporatists, because that's what they really are. They are not at all conservative. They advocate political violence and destruction, not preservation. They do not believe in fundamental liberties, and only say so to promote the myth of their inclusion of the hard-working in their philosophy. It is only banter however. They are the breed which buys you a beer and talks you up, while they are sleeping with your wife and robbing your business.

Irrelevant?

Sounds like a "talk to the hand" technique. One does not have adjust or compromise, simply ignore. One does not have to reassess, learn from mistakes, or even admit that one is wrong. No. All admitting of fallibility is a thing of the past, committed to the dust bin of history, because of the belief that we are never wrong.

Or at least you can follow the finger principle. Simply put, the more you spend time criticizing and scapegoating the opponent, the less time you have to admit to culpability. When questioned, all you have to do is quickly admit to a superficial denial, and then deftly hone in on something specious about the opponent.

"Yes, I have behaved badly, but, but, ... but my opponent has never admitted to voting against bill 234." Alas, there were good reasons to vote against 234, but still that is not the point. The point is to change the subject and focus on the possible weakness of the opponent.

This is the oldest debate trick in the history of mankind. But it doesn't make reason irrelevant.

I feel sad when I read such vile disrespectful opinions, because deep down in my soul I have a great respect for personal opinions. I strongly believe that opinions should be aired out and discussed. Everyone needs to come together and realize that their is common interest, and everyone benefits. When I hear such abhorent statements that essentially murder the idea that another opinion has a right to exist, I am wounded at the core of my philosophical justification of existence.

How can anyone profess belief in democracy, and yet act like they can ignore the concerns of at least 50 percent of our population? All the horror movies in the entire history of Hollywood could not even come close to the one in which we are now experiencing.