COMANCHE COUNTY DEMOCRAT

MY SOAP BOX by Mary Francis

ANALYSIS OF THE HOUSE FUNDING FOR WAR BILL

Mary Francis has posted an analysis of the U.S. Congress Resolution funding the Iraq War.

Click on this link:   www.4disdem.com

MY SOAP BOX by Mary Francis

For Geezer and other good Dems ...
Some things are simply "Classic Dubya" and ought to have a
permanent link on the Geezer website.  (see 2 attachments)
    I'm still traveling - in Seattle right now and will go to Tacoma today -
Ft. Lewis is having the Watada Court Martial on Monday. We intend
to be a presence and witness this blatant attempt to subvert the Army
Land Manual, the US Constitution, the Universal  Declaration of Human Rights,
and the Nuremberg Principles - all in one fell blow.

   Went to the Citizen's Hearing for Lt. Watada over 2 weeks ago and
met some terrific folks.  Then left for a 3 day trip the next Wed.
    Lucinda, my niece, and I went to visit Cape Flattery, the most north-west corner
of the US, saw the Trumpeter Swans, picked up a lovely gentle man named Rik
who was a friend of the delightful couple, George and Miriam, whom I met at the
Hearings and had stayed overnight with.  Rik turned out to be a marvelous, non-assuming
naturalist/peacenik who invited us to spend the night ... I have named his place
RBSB  (for Rik's Bed, Supper and Breakfast)  and then through the pink and salmon,
and sunshiny morning to the ferry to Deception Pass and up Whidbey Island on Thurs.
where we met Marj and Bill, (friends of my friend, Helen Duchon) who live in a breathtaking
Native American Longhouse home with a stunning view of Puget Sound and Mt. Baker.
   Bill took my heart away ... he is a sculptor and, as you may remember, sculpture is my
first degree.  His work is simply exquisite ... and Marj teaches Cello and will host a Ugandan
Children's Choir on Sunday ... an annual fundraiser for AIDs victim's families.
It is soooo fabulous and inspiring and hopeful to know that there are folks like Rick,
Bill and Marj, Ellen, George and Miriam, Jody, Mary and Steve, and all you wonderful friends
to whom I write these notes.
   We spent a beautiful sunny day on Whidbey, exploring Cranberry Lake and Ebey's Landing,
etc, and then spent the night with Marj and Bill.  Fri.- back on the road with a full tummy and a
jar of Marj's home-canned Tayberry Jam, (oh my!) ...and still sunny, to walk the island at the
Pass, see a Heron Rookery and Eagle's nest which Lucinda had found on earlier travels and then
to the Skagit Valley which is filled with a glorious variety of ducks and the Trumpeters an then to
the Skagit Riverroads to see the Eagles ... stopped at a Native American store on SH 20, the Wickiup,
and met a delightful woman - the owner.  We talked and enjoyed her museum quality items and talked
... and talked.  Such thoughtful people live on the earth... gently and openly.
   We topped off the wanderlust with one of the best bowl's of Clam Chowder ever ... better than
Boston's and SanFrancisco's or even Alaska's ... completed with Marionberry Pie.  You gotta try it!
     And next ...??? who knows.  Wandering can take you anywhere.

MY SOAP BOX by Mary Francis

         
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 02:32:37 -0500 (EST)
From: "Mary Francis" <mfrancis1@earthlink.net>  Subject: H.R. 508 Finally! ...an aggressive withdrawal plan
       Yesterday, Reps. Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters introduced H.R. 508: The Bring the Troops Home and Iraq Sovereignty Restoration Act, taking up the President’'s challenge to come up with a plan for Iraq.  Thirteen additional members have already signed on as co-sponsors.  The bill would bring our troops home in six months. 
Tell your Congress Critter to co-sponsor also!

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/woolseybill

More follows by hitting continuation button.

MY SOAP BOX by Mary Francis

Con-men, Control Freaks and Time to Get Started
by Mary Francis

I hope Hal Spake is serious about running again. He has a serious group of folks who are ready to get started with the new campaign, provided he is truly ready to go to work. That means, Hal must getready to walk A LOT, visit every group of 5 or more across CD 4 and speak at every opportunity.Moreover, Halmust have a professional manager and team.

if he wants to be competitive. We were such a rag-tag group as to be almost laughable. Almost, I say, except that we generated a hell-of-a lot of interest at 33cents a vote compared to Cole's $7.00 per vote.  Word is that this result has caused a prominent Dem with big-time connections to money to decide to challange Hal in the primaries next time around.To be viable Hal must start now and call at every occasion for specific changes such as:
   -demanding Public Finance of elections,
   -stopping illegal surveillance of our mail and phones,
   -restoring the Bill of Rights and our American values,
   -defunding NAIS,
   -requiring an Independent Ethics Commission,
   -demanding INVESTIGATIONS,
       http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/investigations
   -replacing our troops with Arabic speakers
       from UN member states such as Egypt,
       Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bosnia, Bahrain,
       Pakistan, Lebanon, Libya, Yeman, etc.,
   -end unverifiable, unauditable electronic voting and
       demand paper ballots,
   -supporting light rail and mass trans,
   -doubling the CAFE standards,
   -enforcing the Immigration laws concerning
       employers,
   -repeal of tax breaks for billionaires,
   -remove the "doughnut hole" and insist upon universal
       national health care,
   -eliminate StarWars (now at $10 Billion a year),
   -demand the release of the CIA assessment
       of the Iraq War and the complete NIE report,
   -repeal the Patriot Act and the recent Military
       Commissions Act which allows torture ....

My God- how the list of Neo-Con sins committed these last 6 years goes on!

These Control Freak Con-men have given themselves the power of dictators. They can now read your email (this one included), listen to your phone conversations, examine your internet searches, overrule your family's medical decisions, send your children to war based on lies, prevent you from flying (effective Jan. 14,2007*) and throw out your vote.  Is there any solution other than the process of investigations which lead to impeachment**?

And those naive Dems in Washington appear to be preparing for their next election rather than realizing that they have only 2 short years to get this ugly mess of the last 6 years straightened out! WE MUST HOLD THEIR FEET TO THE FIRE! We no longer have the luxury of "playing nice"... damn it. The investigations must start now. We have a HUGE job in returning this country to the democracy it once was.

Who will stand with me?

Mary Francis
mfrancis1@earthlink.net

* See `Total Information` lives again
http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20061025-064205-6948r   by Shaun Waterman - Oct 26, 2006

** See  http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/88

Note:  Mary Francis is a former NPR Commentator and public school teacher who volunteered for Hal Spake in his bid for the CD 4 seat in Congress.  She is lives and writes in Norman, OK.

MY SOAP BOX by Mary Francis

Who is naive enough to "play nice" with the vicious likes of Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott?  Apparently, politicos who are already thinking about their next election! 

We must 'Get on the Horn' (emails, letters, phone calls) and tell Nancy, Harry and the rest of the "middle-of-the-roaders in Washington "NO HONEYMOON!" 

We have a short 2 years to fix the last 6 years of corruption and it won't happen by being NICE!!!

"Nice" didn't win this election.  Progressive anger won this election.  We must insist on swift and agressive action on our issues NOW.  Cancel the tax cuts for billionaires, close the torture camps, restore habeas corpus, get the NSA out of our email and off our phones, and replace our troops with Arabic speaking Muslim Peacekeepers.

Afghanistan and Iraq have had elections (remember the proud purple fingers?)  It's time to bring our troops home.

"When is a win not a win? When it's Democratic. When a majority of Americans cast votes for the Dems, the results are invariably interpreted by the media as a public desire for moderation and bipartisanship rather than some "radical left-wing agenda." Democrats are told to abandon their campaign promises and ignore their liberal base. The pain and divisiveness of the (Republican-ruled) past must be healed by big-hearted (and soft-headed) Democrats."

I say "TAKE NO PRISONERS!"  We grassroots folks won this election - now we must push the agenda we campaigned for ... a reversal of 6 years of corruption and destruction of the Bill of Rights ... and we have only 2 short years to do it.     Mary Francis

**************************************
WHEN IS A WIN NOT A WIN?

Tue Nov 14 by Ted Rall

...When It's Democratic.

NEW YORK--Live every day as if it were your last. It's good advice. Modified for politicians: Treat every term in office as if it were your last.

Republicans get political existentialism. When they campaign for office, they promise to be uniters, not dividers. Once they win an election, however, talk of bipartisanship promptly sails out the window. They freeze out the Democrats, elected representatives and constituents alike. Rather than compromise to accommodate the millions who voted against them, Republicans play to their right-wing base: racists and Christianists. The GOP belligerently promotes the most extremist items on its legislative wish list by declaring their victory to be a broad manifesto for radical change and wholesale rejection of the other side. They nominate judges whose conservatism is far to the right of the average Republican. Sure, they want to unite the country--by forcing everyone to go along with what they want.

"Back in December 2000," recalls Lincoln Chafee, a Republican senator from Rhode Island, "after one of the closest elections in our nation's history, Vice President-elect Dick Cheney was the guest at a weekly lunch meeting of a small group of centrist Republicans." Many people expected Bush, who'd received 48 percent of the vote and had been anointed after a controversial Supreme Court decision to halt the recount, to make good on his campaign promises to reach out to Democrats in a spirit of bipartisanship. But Cheney had something else in mind.

"I was startled to hear the vice president dismiss suggestions of compromise and instead emphasize an aggressively partisan agenda that included significant tax cuts, the abandonment of international agreements and a muscular, unilateral policy."

Cheney and Bush understood that they might only have one four-year term to accomplish their goals. Knowing that they might never get another chance, they insulated themselves with a staff of likeminded ideologues and got to work at remaking America in their image. Drawing on bluster and hubris, they bullied Democrats into going along with the transfer of the federal tax burden from the rich to the middle class. Next they skillfully exploited Americans' fear and anger following the September 11th attacks to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. By 2004 they had eliminated civil liberties that citizens of Western countries had enjoyed for hundreds of years, emasculating Congress and the Courts to create a "unified executive" form of government.

Most of the changes carried out by Bush's neoconservatives during his first term--new tax rates, USA-Patriot Act, two wars, pulling out of the Geneva Conventions, torture, domestic eavesdropping--will probably remain in force for decades. Their strategy of running roughshod over the Democrats worked.

It helps to enjoy the complicity of the media. Whenever Republicans win an election, mainstream pundits cite the results as prima facie proof that the American people have handed them a mandate to do whatever they want.

When Reagan won in 1980, Newsweek hailed his triumph as "an idea whose time had come," "a rousing vote of confidence in him and his politics," and posited that the results spelled "nearly certain death for liberal causes." When Republicans picked up seats in the 1994 midterm elections, House Speaker Newt Gingrich drew upon media support to stampede Clinton into a year-long "copresidency," resulting in welfare reform and free-trade pacts.

When is a win not a win? When it's Democratic. When a majority of Americans cast votes for the Dems, the results are invariably interpreted by the media as a public desire for moderation and bipartisanship rather than some "radical left-wing agenda." Democrats are told to abandon their campaign promises and ignore their liberal base. The pain and divisiveness of the (Republican-ruled) past must be healed by big-hearted (and soft-headed) Democrats. Democrats don't get mandates.

The double standard isn't new. "For all the records it broke," Time editorialized in 1996, "[Bill Clinton's 49-to-41 percent win] was a victory for studied modesty; for a willingness to swallow his pride to preserve his power, embrace his enemies to steal their ideas and march into history as the first two-term Democrat since F.D.R., not with great leaps forward but one baby step at a time. It couldn't be clearer if they had spelled it out letter for letter: voters elected a moderate Democratic President to carry out a moderate Republican agenda."

Clearly.

For the first time since 1994, Democrats find themselves in control of both houses of Congress. They picked up 28 seats in the House and six in the Senate--a stunning sweep considering that congressional redistricting has made it more difficult to unseat incumbents. But the facts that a lot more Americans voted Democratic than Republican and that Bush's approval rating has hit a record low (31 percent) don't mean much to the official media--or, it seems, to the winning Democratic candidates.

Time's post-election cover story was called "Why the Center is the Place to Be." The incoming freshmen representatives, reported The New York Times (house organ of the Clinton-style centrist Democrats) in its lead story on November 12, "say they were given a rare opportunity by voters, many of them independents and Republicans, who were tired of the partisanship and gridlock in Washington."

"Now, they say, they have to produce...to find a bipartisan consensus...to avoid the ideological wars that have so dominated Congress in recent years, to be pragmatists, and to change the tone in Washington after a sharply partisan campaign."

"They've set a bad example in not working with us," incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said of the Republicans. "We're not following that example."

Blech. The fools are already running for reelection.

The New New Democrats need to study the calendar. Two years from now, they may well end up back in the minority, reading passionate speeches no one will ever hear to an empty chamber for the benefit of C-SPAN. Rather than triangulate or moderate their views, Democrats should take that two-year time limit seriously and go gangbusters, emulating Cheney and Bush's balls-to-the-wall style to pass as much legislation as they can before 2008. That means unraveling as many GOP accomplishments as possible. Cancel the tax cuts, close the torture camps, restore habeas corpus, get the NSA out of our email, yank our troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq.

It's high time for vengeance. Impeachment is essential, to cleanse our national soul, as a downpayment of good will toward the rest of the world, and because they did it to Clinton for far, far less. And we need investigations--lots of them. Special prosecutors ought to track down everyone, up to and including Bush, who lied about WMDs in Iraq, chose not to pursue Osama in Pakistan after 9/11, deliberately withheld help that could have saved lives during the Hurricane Katrina, and signed off on warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. Law and order starts at the top.

At the same time, Dems ought to ram through such long overdue (and popular) liberal agenda items as national health insurance, pulling out of the failed NAFTA accord and a big hike in the minimum wage. If any Republicans object, do what they'd do: call them terrorists or traitors or some other smear that forces them to sit down, shut up, and vote yes.

Of course, there's an alternative. Bill Clinton wasted his entire political career placing short-term victory at the polls over achieving his political goals. Sucking up to moderates and Republicans got him eight years in the White House, but for what? He never signed a major bill that could be described as liberal.

If they govern like there's no tomorrow, Democratic lawmakers will be able to say that they represented their constituents, who will have gotten what they voted for. That's how democracy is supposed to work. Remember?

(Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.)

Mary Francis
cell: 405 474-0695
Hal Spake 4 Congress
Off: 405 217-4100
www.HalSpake.com