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OmmmSweetOmmm's Journal
1000 dimension chess perhaps? How long have you known him for and did you like it when he voted in the Foreign Relations Committee to confirm Rice (IMHO a war criminal) or did you like his vote on FISA and protecting the telecomm companies? I voted for him over Hillary because of the mandate that he has acquiesced for. Where the hell is is backbone over that. There are enough people falling into poverty without having to worry about a mandate! Or do you admire his selection of Rahm as COS, the same Rahm that actively supported centrist or right wing Dems for Congress and cast aside Progressives? The same Rahm that has been rumored to be the brains and wind behind the "trigger".
For all his faults with the Vietnam War, when Johnson wanted something done, a bill passed, he got the job done with arm twisting. Without that, we wouldn't have had Medicare or Civil Rights Legislation. Bill Clinton got the job done with NAFTA with some arm twisting. Even Shrub used arm twisting to get many of his agendas passed. I have listened to each and every time Obama has talked about the PO, and he is, IMHO, as Harkin said, lukewarm about it. Listen to him again, objectively. The speeches are online at the WH site. If he was behind it, he would INSIST and REFUSE to sign any bill that didn't have it included. Period.
And the government is not ours, it belongs to the highest bidder. I feel as if you are much younger than I am and/or politically inexperienced.
My eldest son, who's 22 is cynical too. Not as much by experience but a very keen mind and a search for truths. He was the HS debate champion for our state and learned how to look at things from different perspectives. He didn't vote in November because he felt that it didn't matter. That the old boss would be replaced by the new boss. I had the same feelings (supported Edwards because I was too cynical to support Kucinich with heart) and I feel like the child next to my son because when I pulled the lever for Obama, it was a final hope that I might be wrong.
So far, Obama has proven me right about him. My first questioning of him came when he ran against Alan Keyes for Senate. Why didn't the Republicans replace Ryan with a more viable candidate? His vote for Rice in the Foreign Relations Committee was a huge red flag to me. Barbara Boxer gave a brilliant argument that Rice shouldn't be confirmed, and he voted for Rice. His vote for FISA turned my stomach. Then his meteoric rise and with a rise like that, he had to have some powerful people behind him. He told people what they wanted to hear, with eloquence and charisma(and he still does).
I was happy, ecstatic when he won, and it lasted for about a nanosecond. The minute that he selected Rahm for COS I knew we were sold a bill of goods.
It isn't wonderful going through life as a cynic and it is in fact against my true nature and hugs to you because it isn't a pleasant way to live one's life.
This was neatly done by placing the determination of those photos within the H.R. 2892, The Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2010 http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/... (Sec. 567) Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 - Requires the Secretary of Defense to: (1) certify any photograph taken between September 11, 2001, and January 22, 2009, that relates to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the U.S. Armed Forces in operations outside of the United States if the Secretary determines that disclosure of such photograph would endanger U.S. citizens or members of the Armed Forces or U.S. government employees deployed outside the United States; and (2) submit timely notice of such certification to Congress. Authorizes the Secretary to submit a renewal of a certification at any time. Provides that a certification or a renewal shall expire after three years. Exempts such a certified photograph from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but does not preclude voluntary disclosure. OPEN FOIA Act of 2009 - Amends FOIA to require statutory exemptions to its disclosure requirements to specifically cite its provision that authorizes such exemptions. http://www.truthout.org/101709A Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-New York) said in a floor statement that the provision to amend the Freedom of Information Act was stripped from an earlier version of the bill, but the language was quietly reinserted in recent weeks, "apparently under direct orders from the administration." Rep. Louise Slaughter's House Floor Speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qADMDj1lk0o Rep. Slaughter is one of the best members of Congress we have.
http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/... (Sec. 567) Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 - Requires the Secretary of Defense to: (1) certify any photograph taken between September 11, 2001, and January 22, 2009, that relates to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the U.S. Armed Forces in operations outside of the United States if the Secretary determines that disclosure of such photograph would endanger U.S. citizens or members of the Armed Forces or U.S. government employees deployed outside the United States; and (2) submit timely notice of such certification to Congress. Authorizes the Secretary to submit a renewal of a certification at any time. Provides that a certification or a renewal shall expire after three years. Exempts such a certified photograph from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but does not preclude voluntary disclosure. http://www.truthout.org/101709A Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-New York) said in a floor statement that the provision to amend the Freedom of Information Act was stripped from an earlier version of the bill, but the language was quietly reinserted in recent weeks, "apparently under direct orders from the administration." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qADMDj1lk0o
Valid info that might hurt very important people. She has been muzzled for years.
Then comes along other "sympathetic" people who start to "share" their "sensitive" information with her, and she becomes an advocate for them, while she is being used by these dis-information agents. They are taking advantage of her and using her and hoping that those who have supported Edmonds in her plight, will buy these lies, hook, line and sinker. I don't think Sibel is crazy, just naive and vulnerable.
so of course I wouldn't allow them to join a racist group.
I remember mentally noting that when my younger son left for school.
I was watching the Today Show when it was cut into by local news. They showed the North Tower in flames and had an eyewitness on the phone that said that he saw a small plane hit the building. I was sick to my stomach. My older son was home from school and I called him in. When the second plane hit, I told my son that we were under attack. My ex-husband works in Midtown and I tried calling him at his office and I was told he was out for a meeting. I had no idea where. My son and I were on tenterhooks until he called a couple of hours later. His meeting was in midtown but a fellow worker's wife worked in the WTC, and his co-worker was going to walk downtown to find her. Thanks goodness she got out and miraculously, he actually met her on the street as he was walking downtown and her up. It took my ex 12 hours to get home.
About an hour after the planes were called down from the skies. my son and I heard a plane and went out on my deck and saw the plane flying due south. My son asked me where Indian Point Nuke Plant was, and I showed him south and to the west. We held her breaths until we saw the plane veer toward the east. I told him that the plane must have been sent down to NYC to patrol the skies.
We were just a bit east of the flight path of the two planes that hit the towers. For several months, every time we heard a plane, we would go out and see where it was going. A form of PTSD.
One thing that I have never heard answered. On the flight path down to NYC, both planes were minutes away from a NORAD base, and why weren't jets sent from Stewart Air Force Base to intercept those flights?
Both my sons had friends whose uncles were firefighters that died that day.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/141456/... (and_frighteningly_powerful)_members_of_the_family/ Posted by tristero, Hullabaloo at 6:30 AM on July 21, 2009. These people are seriously demented, un-Democratic, and fanatical. Most importantly, they are in positions of great power. Jeff Sharlet continues his brilliant reporting on the bizarre christo-fascist cult called "the Family" which counts among its members some of the most powerful people holding elected office in the United States. How bizarre and extreme is the Family? Attempting to explain what it means to be chosen for leadership like King David was -- or Mark Sanford, according to his own estimate -- asked a young man who'd put himself, body and soul, under the Family's authority, "Let's say I hear you raped three little girls. What would I think of you?" The man guessed that Coe would probably think that he was a monster. "No," answered Coe, "I wouldn't." Why? Because, as a member of the Family, he's among what Family leaders refer to as the "new chosen." If you're chosen, the normal rules don't apply.
And just who are known to be members of the Family?
Men under the Family's religio-political counsel include, in addition to Ensign, Coburn and Pickering, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, both R-S.C.; James Inhofe, R-Okla., John Thune, R-S.D., and recent senators and high officials such as John Ashcroft, Ed Meese, Pete Domenici and Don Nickles. Over in the House there's Joe Pitts, R-Penn., Frank Wolf, R-Va., Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., and John R. Carter, R-Texas. Historically, the Family has been strongly Republican, but it includes Democrats, too. There's Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, for instance, a vocal defender of putting the Ten Commandments in public places, and Sen. Mark Pryor, the pro-war Arkansas Democrat responsible for scuttling Obama's labor agenda. Sen. Pryor explained to me the meaning of bipartisanship he'd learned through the Family: "Jesus didn't come to take sides. He came to take over." And by Jesus, the Family means the Family...
The Family sponsors missions overseas
the Family missionaries aren't representing the United States. They're representing "Jesus plus nothing," as Doug Coe puts it, the "totalitarianism of God," in the words of an early Family leader, a vision that encompasses not just social issues but also the kind of free-market fundamentalism that is the real object of devotion for Ensign, Coburn, Pickering, Wamp and Sanford, along with Family insiders such as Sens. DeMint, Sam Brownback and Chuck Grassley...
When they arrive in other countries, on trips paid for by the Family, at the behest of the Family, they are still traveling under official government auspices, on official business, with the pomp and circumstance -- and access -- of their taxpayer-funded, elected positions. Here's how a former National Security Council official who traveled with Family leader Doug Coe on a tour of Pacific nations described the Family effect in small nations where a visitor like John Ensign is a major event: "It reminded me of the story in World War II, where the British sent an OSS type into Borneo ... And this guy parachuted out of the sky and they had never seen anything like this so they looked on him as -- he had blonde hair and white skin and he was a white god who had come out of the sky to mobilize them. Obviously his side was going to win so they had no trouble aligning themselves."
And their megalomania knows no bounds:
Counseling Rep. Tiahrt, Doug Coe offered Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden as men whose commitment to their causes is to be emulated. Preaching on the meaning of Christ's words, he says, "You know Jesus said 'You got to put Him before mother-father-brother sister? Hitler, Lenin, Mao, that's what they taught the kids. Mao even had the kids killing their own mother and father. But it wasn't murder. It was for building the new nation. The new kingdom."
Every once in a while, someone tries to make a case that American democracy does not face any real threat from christianists and theocrats, that it's all overblown.
Thanks to Jeff Sharlet, among others, we know that that is just whistling in the dark. These people are seriously demented, seriously un-Democratic, and seriously fanatical. Most importantly, they are not seeking positions of great power. They are in positions of great power.
she will be going through and if she continues to have teflon coating, might make a run for the Presidency as a third party candidate. I do think though that her luck has run out. BTW...I want to extend a personal thank you for the wonderful words you offered to me upon the passing of my Mom. They were comforting. There were so many beautiful responses and so much love extended and thanking each and everyone was impossible. Sometimes I wish DU had a reply to all button. 
for your loving support. I have read each and every reply and will keep this thread bookmarked to draw strength from. I also sent this to thread to my sons. I'm still pretty much in the same place as I was yesterday but have had some neat memories of my Mom from happier days and very cool ones at that. I remembered how she used to feed a squirrel who lived in our backyard from our kitchen window. How during the summer, we belonged to a beach club on Long Island, and when driving there, she would speed at close to 100 mph while the music blasted on the radio. I am recalling Polka Dot Bikini now! How she once decided to drag race with some people on a well known blvd. in Queens used for drag racing. She pissed the real drag racers off so much that they tried to box in all of the other drivers on the road. A driver from one of the regular cars got out of his to confront one of the drag racers and my Mom quickly drove away. She drove down about a mile then turned around, and when we passed that part of the road where the melee began, there were people being lined up on the side of the roads by the cops! Laughing here. Or when I was 3 or 4 and when coming home from someplace with my sister, discovered that our green parakeet Sugar became Blue. My Mom told me Sugar went to the beauty parlor and had his feathers dyed.  Both of my parents respected animals and although never declaring themselves animal lovers, loved animals. They had my Boxer Taffy before I was born and they always treated her like the member of the family which she was. The same with our cat Tiger. After our Taffy at the age of 13 had to be put to sleep because of she was experiencing the pain of cancer, my aunt gave us her 3 year old poodle whom she just couldn't keep any more. Mimi lucked out because she finally knew the same love that Taffy did. And my Mom loved to dance! She also loved it when the house was filled with people, and our friends were always invited over and always asked to stay for meals. It was not unusual, when my brother had started college across the street at Queens College, for me to wake up in the morning and see his friends crashing on our living room floor. These are just a mere few memories...... Loving hugs to all of you once again! Lois
At the age of 89 she took her last breath yesterday morning at 11:30AM. She died in a nursing home in Florida. I live in NY, my brother and sister in California. We were not with her, luckily she was not alone. A chaplain was there and her aide.
She had been in care for the last four years. She had a psychotic break, nearly killed my Dad (he passed 3 years ago)and needed to be on Meds and have constant supervision.
My Mom was a beautiful, bright, loving, and like many of us, a flawed individual. She born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, was a child of the Great Depression. She was from a non-practicing Jewish family. My Grandpa's family had been in the US since the Civil War, emigrating from Germany, my Grandma's parents came here in the 1890's, escaping Poland and my Grandma was born here.
My Mom had to leave school at the age of 14 to help support her family. She met my Dad (who fell head over heels for her), the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland (who left school at 12 to do the same for his family), and they eloped at the ages of 19 & 21 respectively. The year of the first NY World's Fair.
During WWII, my Dad worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. They then went on to build the American dream. They had 3 children, my sister born in 1942, my brother in 1945 and then me, their "gift from heaven" (mistake), in 1951.
My Dad became a retail furniture company executive, my Mom a stay at home Mom. I was born in Kew Garden Hills, an area of Queens in NYC. A few years later my parents bought a house in a NY suburb. We had 2 cars and later 3 when my sister started to drive. There were family car vacations every year. We moved back to Queens, NY when I was 10 because my Dad was tired of commuting and we rented.
Their favorite activities...my Dad used to golf, paint and play the ponies. As a child, he used to take me fishing. My Mom loved to shop, garden and gamble by playing cards. They were both passionate Democrats. On edit, they were also avid baseball fans...the Dodgers and then the Mets. If there was a game being televised, it was on their tv.
When I was 16 they started to travel abroad. A cruise to South America, traveling to Europe. A trip to Israel. Their favorite countries were The Netherlands and Ireland.
This was the outward facade. Inwardly, there was dysfunction. Both of my parents were products of dysfunctional families and although they loved each other they brought their past baggage with them and couldn't escape it. Many times they were on the verge of separating and divorce, always to be drawn back together. Not because of having to, but because of their love/co-dependence.
Shortly after I was born, my Dad had an affair, and my Mom never trusted him completely after that. When she tried to kill him while they were in their 80s, she was under the delusion that he was cheating on her again.
Once all of their nestlings left the nest and settled into their own lives, my parents moved to Monticello, NY and became snow birds. Florida or Vegas in the winter and back to Monticello in the late spring though early autumn. At some point my Dad coerced my Mom to move down to Florida permanently, a decision she resented. I was the only child left in NY but she wanted to be near me. So when they moved to Florida, she felt isolated. She made friends easily but she was so unhappy there. She then had that psychotic break.
I never got a chance to see them when they moved to Florida. I am one of those who have to work constantly to make ends meet. I love what I do but I live from week to week. I kept contact by phone.
After my Mom tried to kill my Dad, his health failed and was whisked away to California by my brother and sister. He loved her till the end. My Mom, after getting out of jail (for attempted murder) was ejected from a couple of assisted living facilities because they couldn't control her Meds. She was then moved to the nursing home where she died yesterday, a place that had been able to care for her the best. Although she was lucid when I'd talk to her on the phone, the delusions about my father were still evident.
Her remains are being cremated and will be sent out to my brother in California, where her ashes will be next to my Dad's. In honor of her, today I'm going to out to buy and light a yahrzeit candle for her. In my belief system, I feel that all is forgiven between the both of them, and maybe, the next time around, they'll get it right.
For most of my life, two of my greatest fears were of my parents passing. One of those fears came to pass 3 years ago and the other yesterday. I am in a weird place now. I am trying to function normally and then feel waves of grief and out of no where just start to cry. Then there is a feeling of relief...she passed over and that fear is gone. Both of my kids and my ex have been great. The most normal I've felt was speaking to my brother on the phone.
Mommy, I will always love you.
Obama. Doesn't trust and faith have to be earned, especially from a Stranger? We hear eloquent words, but IMHO, actions speak much louder. His first important action in the Senate, as part of the Foreign Relations committee was to vote to recommend the war criminal Rice for confirmation as Secy. of State. Add to that his vote to pass FISA.... not a great beginning to Earn my faith and trust.
Then he takes on Rahm as his chief of staff (Progressives were fucked right there), and since then, so many other actions (mostly through his Justice Dept) and non-actions (ignoring single payer, DADT) that have left me cold.
I voted for him. I felt I had no choice, but for the first time in my life, if he doesn't bring positive Change, I will sit out the 2012 election.
else on another thread and that person told me I was pessimistic. I told that person that I was reality based. When I pulled the lever for Obama it was with the faintest of hopes that I was wrong about him. From the very start of of meteoric rise when he gave the speech at the Democratic Convention I started to look into him. When he ran for Senate and Ryan had to withdraw, the GOP had the nutter Alan Keyes run against him. I suspected something fishy. Then the telltale sign to me that there was "trouble in Kansas City" was when he voted in the Foreign Relations Committee to confirm Rice. That was right after Barbara Boxer laid out such a case against Rice that you would have expected the Sargent at Arms arrest Rice as a war criminal. But no, he voted for her. He is charismatic and ran a very smooth campaign, telling people what they wanted to hear. I being a realist knew Dennis could never win, I'm sorry but he can't as long as campaigns aren't run on public financing. So I supported Edwards. Of course we know where that campaign went too. There was no way on heavens earth I would vote for Hillary. She was my Senator and after she voted for the IWR I vowed never to vote for her again. Being a realist with the ability to still hope a bit, I decided that Obama was the lesser of the two, well you know what. I was happy when he was elected and delighted that my son told me of his college campus going crazy with glee. Them, when Obama, in his first and very act of being President-elect, selected Rahm Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff, I knew we were really screwed. I'm 57 years old and have been watching politics for practically my whole life (born into a strong Democratic family), after awhile, to borrow a phrase from Dylan, "it doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" Sorry for the rant, but I needed to vent!  Dennis or Russ in 2012!
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Profile Information OmmmSweetOmmm
 DU Donor 23042 posts Member since Wed Nov 17th 2004 Female The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing that it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder the hate. So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.
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