First Door on the Left

Bush, Inc. is pushing hard on the politics of fear to accomplish its goals. You have to give them credit–they are true masters at it, the best I’ve experienced in my lifetime.

They have shamelessly used the pain of 9/11 to push their agenda, played on the fear of additional terrorist attacks to justify what have proven to be flat-out lies on the danger posed by Iraq and the need for war, made every effort to portray George Bush to the American people as the only man who can possibly keep us from greater pain and destruction.

They have used the assumed power of a war-time president, along with almost complete control of the major media corporations, to persue policies that are devastating to the economy, the environment, education, our system of justice, our relations with other countries–virtually every area of our public life you can think of.

When I speak to people about what is going on in our country, the replies I hear are often accompanied by a sense of being overwhelmed, the horrible feeling of not knowing how we got to this point and how we can possibly stop this destruction of everything that is good about America.

I learned a long time ago that the only way out of that sense of being overwhelmed is to take a step. It is not possible to address everything all at once. It’s vital to take one step, then another, then another.

And that is what is happening right now.

Continue reading…

Steve Perry says there is an article I should provide a link to. The article was written by Eric E. Johansson, Ex-US Army Paratrooper and Infantryman, and currently President, SF Bay Area Veterans for Peace, Chapter 69.

So I read the article that Eric wrote, and I agree with Steve… everybody needs to read it. Here is the link:

NOW PEOPLE OF GOOD CONSCIENCE SHOULD STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

In the second quarter ending yesterday, 59,000 Americans donated an average of $112 to help boost Governor Howard Dean to the top of the second quarter fundraisers with a total of $7.5 million raised.

Unlike the small, exclusive multi-million dollar fundraisers held in major cities by President Bush over the last week, the Dean campaign saw its numbers surge based on small donations over the Internet—with nearly $3 million raised online in the last week alone. In the second quarter, 45,030 people donated online a total of 51,474 times. The average donation online was $74.14.

“When we said last week during the governor’s announcement that ‘You have the power,’ we had no idea just how much power our supporters had,” said Campaign Manager Joe Trippi. “They are people participating directly in their democracy, and doing whatever they can to help us take our country back—giving $20, $30, or $50. This is People-Powered Howard.”

Second quarter fundraising by the numbers:

Total raised in second quarter: $7,500,000 Total donors (2003 to date): 70,000
Average contribution: $112

First time donors in second quarter: 48,000

Levels of Internet Giving:
Less than $50: 18,422
$50 — 99: 11,579
$100 — $249: 11,436
$250 — $499: 2,379
$500 — $1,000: 368
$1,000 and up: 129

We can do this! We can give Bush & Co. their marching orders on the first Tuesday in November, 2004!

Now, on to the third quarter!

If you’re a Doonesbury fan (and even if you’re not), you have to go read yesterday’s and today’s strips!

Somebody told me that the creator of the strip is a long time friend of Howard Dean’s, and has already made his maximum $2,000 donation to the campaign.

My response: “And your point is?”

With the start of his reelection campaign in the past two weeks, President Bush has revived his pastime of blaming his predecessor, Bill Clinton, for the economic recession.

“Two-and-a-half years ago, we inherited an economy in recession,” he told donors at a Bush-Cheney ‘04 reception yesterday in Miami. He has raised the same accusation in fundraising appearances since mid-June in Washington, Georgia, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

It’s a good applause line for a crowd of red-meat political supporters. The trouble is it’s a case of what the president has called, in another context, revisionist history. The recession officially began in March of 2001 — two months after Bush was sworn in — according to the universally acknowledged arbiter of such things, the National Bureau of Economic Research. And the president, at other times, has said so himself.

Mr. Bush has been lying for so long I doubt he remembers how to tell the truth. This is not the caliber of man we need leading our country.

What he should be saying, if he were to be truthful, is “I inherited the largest budget surplus in the history of this country, and have since turned it into the largest budget deficit in the history of this country.”

Then he would be telling the truth!

Cheryl Seal writes:

If the average American knew what the “New Conservatives” (NeoCons) of the Republican party truly stood for and what their real objectives were, there is no way this clique of corporate schmoozers and phoney “Christians” could remain in power. In fact, I suspect the party would go extinct, just like the old Federalist party back in the early 1800s, which represented largely landed aristocrats of a stamp more appropriate to monarchic England than to the U.S. No, not ALL Republicans are corporazis. But the overwhelming majority in control of all three arms of the US government now are either planted corporazis (people who were hand-picked to run for office by corporate “sponsors” and basically rammed into Congress through a well-funded, well-scripted, deceitful campaign) or corporazi converts – naïve and/or self-interested, easily dazzled weaklings such as Susan Collins (who is supposed to represent working class, under-income Mainers, no less, whilst schmoozing with hand-picked corporazi at White House dinners), who are swept in by corporazi flattery or the glint of corporate gold. Some are intimidated into allegiance by the corporazi’s increasingly common strong-arm tactics. The GOP now even has its own “enforcer” organization for attacking and bringing to heel any Republican who strays from the corporazi “fold:”: its called the Club for Growth. The Club conducts “shaming” and smear campaigns against “dissident” Republicans such as Olympia Snow and George Voinovich (who failed to support the huge Bush tax cut/corporate giveaway). It also pours money into campaigns aimed at smearing and otherwise undermining rivals in the liberal camp. The more heavily supported by the Club a politican is, the more in the pocket of the corporazis they are.

There is no politician in America who has stuffed more corporate money into his pockets than has George W. Bush. Do you really think the $200 million he is planning to raise for the primary is coming from average Americans?

Yesterday, Howard Dean did something amazing. He closed the second quarter by raising over $7 million in campaign contributions. Campaign contributions that did come from average Americans. His staff reports that the average contribution was about $70.00.

I doubt that Mr. Bush will be reporting the amount of his average contribution, but I can guarantee you that if he did, it would be much higher than $70.00. A ticket to one of his “hot dogs and lemonade” lunches goes for $2000.00. His biggest fund raisers are called Pioneers and Rangers.

The people who contribute to Howard Dean’s campaign fund are called Americans. And it is time for us Americans to take our country back from the corporations now governing it.