Independence Day Could Be Happier Without King George [and his cohorts & enablers]

It's a nice, long holiday weekend, and even though the weather isn't all that great in the northeast these days, nevertheless the summer is in full swing. During this patriotic holiday it's kinda hard to wear those lapel flags, so if you're unsure of the level of your patriotism--and don't want to spend too much time thinking about it-- there a few things you can do to show your patriotism. So, go ahead, use the flag as underwear & bathing suits, have it plastered on sandals, napkins, and pizza boxes. Promote the use our national flag for any possible commercial reason except free speech. Yet, whatever you do, you can't possibly compete with the patriotism of car dealerships that fly a 20-acre flag! You may want to compensate though. Buy a bigger, gas-guzzling car and put a Chinese-made ribbon on it, "Support the troops". You can help kill dissent--because you know those who criticize el presidente are un-Americans. Above all, vote for politicians who are conservative Republicans!


I don't know why, but I just re-read the Declaration of Independence, and I read further than the first paragraph and these lines:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Look what I found:

• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers...
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation...
• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury...
• In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people...

Thankfully, we can change our ..prince and deliver a resounding defeat to him and his cronies this November.

McCain: A Military Hero Who's Got it Wrong!

On another subject, has anyone really examined Wesley Clark's statement about McCain? Clark praised the conservative senator but he just pointed out the obvious: that being shot down by the enemy and being a POW does not necessarily mean you can make the right decisions as the commander in chief of our military! McCain has served in the military and sacrificed for our country, and that's a fact. What did he learn from his military experience? We perhaps don't know all of it, but we do know that he won't hesitate to sacrifice many more Americans in a pointless, stupid, very expensive war in Iraq, even for another hundred years more! McCain has flip-flopped on torture, has refused to extend medical benefits to veterans, and even objected to GI Bill to boost veterans college education proposed by Sen. Webb (D-VA)! We're are not disputing his service (unlike the conservatives with John Kerry's record), but we can challenge his views!

Judging from McCain's public record, we can see that he has learned the wrong lessons from his military experience. Again, he is a conservative after all, supporting policies and promoting a ideology that belong to the past. He represents a Bush third term, and a threat of judicial reactionism--yes, here is a change for the worse. Think of the Supreme Court when you vote this November!

Conservatives Hail Jesse Helms Ideals

I can remember who said this, but to paraphrase it a bit, my mother told me to speak well of the dead... Jesse Helms is dead. That's good! Have you seen the praise conservatives have laid out for their departed friend? I almost gagged every time I heard a talking head offer good words for the bigoted former North Carolina senator, like this from a current Republican leader, Trent Lott: "He had a philosophy, had principles he believed in, and he stood and fought for them,” Lott said, adding that he admired that Helms accomplished his work without being "mean-spirited and disrespectful." Really??!!!

Why, I can think of many horrible persons who stuck to their principles! That's not a good attribute by itself! Stalin, by the way, was a very principled man! Helms, indeed, maintained his bigoted views throughout his life. Here's a FAIR article from 2001 when Helms was the conservative icon in the Senate.

• "White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races." Another ad featured photographs Helms himself had doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham's wife had danced with a black man. (The News and Observer, 8/26/01; The New Republic, 6/19/95; The Observer, 5/5/96; Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms, by Ernest B. Furgurson, Norton, 1986)
• The University of North Carolina was "the University of Negroes and Communists." (Capital Times, 11/22/94) Black civil rights activists were "Communists and sex perverts." (Copley News Service, 8/23/01)
• Of civil rights protests Helms wrote, "The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights." (WRAL-TV commentary, 1963) He also wrote, "Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced." (New York Times, 2/8/81)
• Over the years Helms has declared homosexuality "degenerate," and homosexuals "weak, morally sick wretches." (Newsweek, 12/5/94) In a tirade highlighting his routine opposition to AIDS research funding, Helms lashed out at the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS bill in 1988: "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy." (States News Service, 5/17/88)
• Sen. Jesse Helms says the government should spend less money on people with AIDS because they got sick as a result of "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct," The New York Times reported Wednesday.... "We've got to have some common sense about a disease transmitted by people deliberately engaging in unnatural acts," Helms told the Times.
• A year before the election, when public polls showed Helms trailing by 20 points, he launched a Senate filibuster against the bill making the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. a national holiday. (David Broder, Washington Post, Aug, 29, 2001)

Also, the Guardian got it right! Among other points,

In domestic politics he denounced the 1964 Civil Rights Act as "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress", voted against a supreme court justice because she was "likely to uphold the homosexual agenda", acted for years as spokesman for the large tobacco companies, was reprimanded by the justice department and the federal election commission for electoral malpractice, and compiled a dismal personal record as a slum landlord."

Helms was a person that made our country worse by prolonging discrimination, racism, and sexism, among other regressive policies he promoted. I can't see why praise is appropriate here, except by those who share his convictions--in which case, we should take note who identifies with whom! Wink-wink, nudge-nudge, you know what I mean?