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17
Jun
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by QuestionGirl
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Etta James & Dr. John
“I’d Rather Go Blind”
Man I love Etta.
Archive for June 17th, 2007
Crossposted from DailyKos by Save Ohio Now Save Ohio Now’s diary :: :: Does anyone remember the relief felt when we learned this past January, as reported in USA Today,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that President Bush lacks the authority to invade Iran without specific approval from Congress, a fresh challenge to the commander in chief on the eve of a symbolic vote critical of his troop buildup in Iraq. . .I do believe that Congress should assert itself, though, and make it very clear that there is no previous authority for the president, any president, to go into Iran.” Then came March and the Annual AIPAC Convention. As a Reform Jew and supporter of a two’state solution in Israel, I want to make an upfront disclaimer: contrary to what many believe, AIPAC does not represent me nor a majority of thinking Jewish Americans. AIPAC”S beliefs are more in line with the far-right Israeli leadership than with Progressive Jews. Another way of putting it: Today’s AIPAC is to the Jewish majority as George Bush and the Neo-Cons are to most Americans. But with mainstream Jews remaining silent, AIPAC has come to represent us in the minds of most. Back to Iran and Nancy Pelosi: March, 2007, AIPAC held its annual convention. John Hagee, the most noted Christian Zionist and founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI,) gave the opening keynote to multiple standing ovations. His promises of financial and ideological support of Israel have become as seductive to some Jews as was Mephistopheles bargain with Faust. Hagee is probably the least known yet most dangerous man in America. He wields enormous political clout, using his powerful connections to encourage nuclear conflict with Iran, all for the ultimate goal of hastening End Times. Don-t believe it? Read his best’selling apocalyptic prophesy, Jerusalem Countdown. Days after the March convention, Congresswoman Pelosi, it seems, changed her tune. As reported in Sun Myung Moon’s uber right-wing Washington Times, “Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi received a smattering of boos when she bad-mouthed the war effort during a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the Democratic leadership, responding to concerns from pro-Israel lawmakers, was forced to strip from a military appropriations measure a provision meant to weaken President Bush’s ability to respond to threats from Iran.”
Cruising the blogs today, and found the Politcal Realm through Liberally Mirth’s blog. From there, I came across this comment from Larry. I thought it worth a post. Larry said… Army Spec. Jeans Cruz helped capture Saddam Hussein. When he came home to the Bronx, important people called him a war hero and promised to help him start a new life. The mayor of New York, officials of his parents’ home town in Puerto Rico, the borough president and other local dignitaries honored him with plaques and silk parade sashes. They handed him their business cards and urged him to phone. But a “black shadow” had followed Cruz home from Iraq, he confided to an Army counselor. He was hounded by recurring images of how war really was for him: not the triumphant scene of Hussein in handcuffs, but visions of dead Iraqi children. Jeans Cruz lives with his family in a Bronx housing project, where a shooting left a door perforated with bullet holes, above. Among the family photographs on their living-room wall, below, hang plaques honoring Cruz for his service and his role in helping capture Saddam Hussein. What the former soldier remembers most about the war, however, is death; he recalls moving the bodies of Iraqi children. In public, the former Army scout stood tall for the cameras and marched in the parades. In private, he slashed his forearms to provoke the pain and adrenaline of combat. He heard voices and smelled stale blood. Soon the offers of help evaporated and he found himself estranged and alone, struggling with financial collapse and a darkening depression. At a low point, he went to the local Department of Veterans Affairs medical center for help. One VA psychologist diagnosed Cruz with post-traumatic stress disorder. His condition was labeled “severe and chronic.” In a letter supporting his request for PTSD-related disability pay, the psychologist wrote that Cruz was “in need of major help” and that he had provided “more than enough evidence” to back up his PTSD claim. His combat experiences, the letter said, “have been well documented.” None of that seemed to matter when his case reached VA disability evaluators. They turned him down flat, ruling that he deserved no compensation because his psychological problems existed before he joined the Army. They also said that Cruz had not proved he was ever in combat. “The available evidence is insufficient to confirm that you actually engaged in combat,” his rejection letter stated. Yet abundant evidence of his year in combat with the 4th Infantry Division covers his family’s living-room wall. The Army Commendation Medal With Valor for “meritorious actions . . . during strategic combat operations” to capture Hussein hangs not far from the combat spurs awarded for his work with the 10th Cavalry “Eye Deep” scouts, attached to an elite unit that caught the Iraqi leader on Dec. 13, 2003, at Ad Dawr. Veterans Affairs will spend $2.8 billion this year on mental health. But the best it could offer Cruz was group therapy at the Bronx VA medical center. Not a single session is held on the weekends or late enough at night for him to attend. At age 25, Cruz is barely keeping his life together. He supports his disabled parents and 4-year-old son and cannot afford to take time off from his job repairing boilers. The rough, dirty work, with its heat and loud noises, gives him panic attacks and flesh burns but puts $96 in his pocket each day. Once celebrated by his government, Cruz feels defeated by its bureaucracy. He no longer has the stamina to appeal the VA decision, or to make the Army correct the sloppy errors in his medical records or amend his personnel file so it actually lists his combat awards. This is how Bush takes care of those who he sent to war. War is hell, especially for those with whom our goverment leaves behind. Source: here Tags: none
Filed: Heroes
I almost forgot! My Dad’s been gone many years. He was such a great guy. Oh the stories I could tell about him. Remember the sailors in Texas bro? ha!! Wherever you went with the man…..you had a good time and there’s no telling who you’d meet. When in a crowed room full of people, you always knew where he was because there was laughter coming from that area. The man was genuinely funny. And a true gentleman. And a great golfer. And oh so smart. And oh so brave, up until his last breath. And a most wonderful Dad. R.I.P Dad….. I miss you! Happy Father’s Day to all you Dads! Tags: none
Filed: Holiday
I know we’re frustrated Progressives about the 110th Congress not doing what needs to be done. Now the media is misquoting Harry Reid. But Joe Lieberman is getting out of control. I am really beginning to think he’s a shill for George W. Bush. Listen to the clip below, taken from WTIC Radio’s Morning Show with Ray Dunaway, then read the story and start steaming about Lieberman a little more. Since this Congress isn’t getting anything done any, send Lieberman packing and let him join the Republican Party where he’ll have no seniority what’so-ever! - JS This following article is from a post at THINK PROGRESS!
Tags: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Army Gen. David Petraeus, Congressional Quarterly transcription services
Filed: Harry Reid, Lieberman
By Elizabeth Drew TODAY MARKS the 35th anniversary of one of the most famous and most misunderstood events in modern American history: the break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate office building on June 17, 1972. The break-in set off a chain of events known as “Watergate,” which led ultimately to Richard Nixon’s forced resignation as president - and which is also misunderstood. For history’s sake, it’s important to set these things straight. The break-in became famous, of course, because the inept burglars got caught by the night watchman - did they not expect that there would be one? - who called the police, who in turn called in the FBI and federal prosecutors. But it was in fact the fourth attempt by the burglars and their supervisors, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy - collectively known as the “plumbers” - to get into the DNC offices and, among other things, place a tap on the telephone of the party chairman, Lawrence O’Brien. The plumbers got their label because they had originally been hired by the Nixon White House to plug leaks to the press; Nixon had been particularly enraged by Daniel Ellsberg’s 1971 leak of the Pentagon Papers, a study of the Johnson administration’s conduct of the Vietnam War. (Nixon feared that the study would reflect badly on his own handling of the war, and besides, he hated leaks.) The first attempted break-in failed because the conspirators got locked in a closet off the main dining room of the Watergate complex. The next one didn’t work because the burglars - most of them Cubans and veterans of President Kennedy’s failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs - couldn’t figure out how to pick the lock on the committee’s door. After that, one of the burglars returned home to Miami to collect better equipment.
Sunday Talk TV Alerts Tags: none
Filed: Television
Crossposted from AdBusters.com By Matt Taibbi Call it the Leslie Nielsen effect. Your first attempt at a show-biz career fizzles out and dies, but your failure is so quirky and charming that it wins you a whole second career. Think Robert Goulet, Bill Shatner, even John Travolta. America loves a brave second act, particularly one that doesn-t mind doing a take or two with egg still on his face. What the Zucker brothers did for actors, the neocons are now doing for politics. In the first six years of the Bush presidency the administration’s ideological nucleus - a tribe of humorless conservative revolutionaries led by Dick Cheney and including the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith and Elliott Abrams - racked up a startling record in matters of official policy. From their juking of the case for the Iraq War to their Jacobin-esque purges within the government’s intelligence apparatus to their paranoid and sometimes criminal fragging of political enemies great and minor, the neoconservatives working for George Bush botched virtually every important move they made in the last six years. Moreover, each time they used the presidency’s bully pulpit to make a prediction, be it about the post-invasion spread of democracy in the Middle East, the utility of Iraqi oil revenues in financing the occupation, or the chilling effect our presence in Iraq would have on Palestinian resolve, more or less exactly the opposite ended up taking place. And yet, despite the walloping defeat of the Republicans in the 2006 midterm elections that seemed to spell the end of neocon rule in Washington, the clowns are once again spilling out of the Volkswagen. Lately the neocons seem to be all over the public airwaves, and not as the targets of purgative public flogging or tarring ceremonies, but as the subjects of serious interviews, with respected journalists treating them like real human beings with real opinions. Even worse, a few are still in office, and appear to be cooking up a last-minute encore before the curtain finally comes down in -08.
This CAN’T be good………
Continue reading at the Washington Post H/T Bur$atil for this post! Tags: President Bush held an unannounced meeting with the top leadership of the United States’ Jewish community, Jewish leaders
Filed: Bush, Israel
I saw these guys on the news Friday night. Man what a treasure they hit!!! From Boston.com
Tags: discovered thousands of pearls, Santa Margarita, Blue Water Ventures, Mel Fisher
Filed: Miscellaneous |
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