Liberty. Sort of.

Re post on NSA monitors:

Guys, gotta get it straight. The NSA* records your phone calls, emails, internet searches, banking transactions, purchases, and travel in the name of protecting your freedoms thank the good LORD.

*sometimes via probably legal private contractors. cough.

But it’s the DoD that actually monitors YOU as a threat to national security.

You know, like the Quakers?

Got it? Good.

Another Rant about Mental Illness

Michelle Malkin can be sufficiently criticized as evil without slurring mentally ill people:

And speaking on behalf of bipolar/ manic-depressives everywhere, which I can do since it’s June and I’m in mania, leave the mental illness out of it.

You can simply describe her as evil, with a dark and bitter soul.

Mental illness => sympathy.

Evil public speaker => villify/deport.

See? Easy.

———egregious, posted at TBogg

Stolen personal data...not "accidental"

Stolen personal identification: this is not an accident, nor a random crime. This is a concerted plan to gather information on hundreds of millions of Americans for a private database, thus avoiding embarrassing questions of Constitutional legality. Then the government accepts this data, no problem. Except maybe the CITIZENS OF THE FORMERLY FREE AMERICA.

Look at how many ‘accidental’ incidents of stolen data there are. Sooner or later one must allow for the possibility that datamining is not ‘accidental’ theft but…deliberate. Money talks. Data walks.

I am particularly angry about the theft of personal data of our soldiers/sailors/veterans. [G**d*** them for preying on OUR MILITARY who are serving our nation with their very lives.]

Death of Jane Hamsher's Mother

Books that helped me the most after my Dad:

For all the heavy emotional whiplash: Good Grief

And for the utter unfairness of it all: C. S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed

Believe me I read everything to figure out why God was being so cruel to me, to take away my beloved parent. Healing comes slowly, and with frequent and surprising lapses into total sadness and anger.

Offered with love for Jane and her sister.

Arms too short to box with God...

I always liked howling prayers. Like the angry Psalms.

Hey! God! Are you listening?? Yo!! Do you care? etc.

Vote Tampering in Ohio, 2004-2005-2006...2008?

Ohio election politics were warped in 2004, further warped in referenda questions in 2005 [on voting integrity issues] vastly different from the usually precise Columbus Dispatch polls. Issues that were projected to win by 2:1 LOST by 2:1. And in 2006 we have Blackwell as Sec of State supervising his OWN election for governor. Fair I’m sure.

I am from Ohio and keep in touch w lots of people there. Kerry was way ahead in the polls, returns were coming in consistent with this, and then suddenly in the middle of the night, there were new returns that were statistically impossible but yet said Bush won. Don’t believe me? Check out people who have analyzed statistics at the precinct level. Every anomaly, and there were MANY, strangely favored the Republicans.

I know lifelong Republicans who NEVER voted for a Democrat, who voted for Kerry in ‘04. This should have been a major victory for the Democrats, except for having a corrupt Republican Secretary of State. Well, you know, the party that did PHONE JAMMING in New Hampshire? Yeah. Um hmm.

What kind of a country is this?

From Peterr at firedoglake:

A country that detains its enemies, allowing no access to a legal system to help sort friend from foe?
A country that repudiates the Geneva Convention’s prohibition on torture?
A country that disregards its own constitutional prohibitions on searches and eavesdropping without properly obtained warrants granted by a court of law?
A country that smears the honorable military service records of any who dare express dissent?
A country whose leaders out a clandestine operative because her husband criticized the President’s state of the union address?
A country that engages in secret rendition of terror suspects, to keep our hands clean?
A country that turns its eyes from the preventable deaths of millions in Africa from AIDS, by refusing to fund condoms?

-----------(egregious speaking) We are witnesses to the destruction of our nation. World, take note.

James Webb for Senate

Virginia voters decided against politics as usual,
voting in James Webb, former Secretary of the
Navy, as their candidate for Senate in 2006.

Bloggers had a huge influence drafting Webb,
and a huge influence in getting out the vote.

Go Webb! Go netroots!

Fight back

FIGHT BACK. [channeling me3 :)]

I just returned from voting, Webb for Senate in Virginia. Turnout is ultra-light. Individual votes could really make a difference in this race.

As of 10:30 only 120 people had voted, and they said that was three times the level of surrounding precincts.

If you’re angry, sign up to help elect someone, or go to Act Blue and donate money. Write somebody who is doing good work and send them a letter of encouragement. Talk to the person next to you in the grocery checkout about what’s going on with the government.

Everybody can do something. Promote yourself to the next level of civic involvement, like a battlefield promotion. If no one is organizing in your area, YOU do it.

Mental illness and Iraq veterans

There is still a stigma about admitting you are mentally ill.

I imagine that will change when we have tens of thousands of Iraq veterans who desperately need mental health services.

It is a horrible reason, but the very faint silver lining is that maybe for the rest of us, it will be more acceptable to say we are mentally ill.

My daughter worked on the [anti] Stigma campaign in Massachusetts. I am optimistic that for her generation there will be greater acceptance of people who are in need of help.

With reduced government funding for returning Iraq veterans, there will be thousands of hurting people who will be abandoned and alone. I hope they have families, ministers and priests, and communities that take pity on them, for the government that sent them to war surely does not.

Already there are stories about returning vets who have been refused evaulations or services even though they are very sick. Worse, some people who are severely ill are being sent BACK to Iraq in spite of their desperate circumstances.

What kind of country is this?

Dinner with a Congressman

Ok so dinner with the Congressperson. It was in Washington not alas yKos. Next year in Jerusalem…er, or something.

I could cook or we could go out to eat. HAHAHAHA! So the restaurant it is.

Congressperson and spouse, my spouse, and a couple other lovely people. Walking to the restaurant we caught a glimpse of the -very- long Pride parade. Good floats.

Gave them Glenn’s book with a description of why he wrote it; how quickly it was published; how it zoomed to the top of amazon; and why it is important for public policy. Further conversation about the netroots in general, yKos this weekend which they had sort of heard of, and the political energy and ideas which the roots can generate.

More about the direction of the government toward concentration of power in the executive etc etc. The initial pages of Glenn’s book sparked their interest, they had heard of the people giving these rave reviews for the book.

I cannot tell you names or even the party. I can say it is one of the good people.

It is difficult for people in the House, they have so little power and there are so many expectations for them. Plus it’s ridiculously expensive, an economic hardship, they need to own a house here $$$$$ plus one in the home district. All in all we feel a little sorry for Congresspeople. Senators, different story.

This one has an old-fashioned integrity, a sense of honor and responsibility to the nation. Ambition, greed, not so much. Just a desire to serve. How refreshing.

How to dress a hillbilly girl

All right, the outfit. Ecru cotton sleeveless top w matching hip-length sweater. Linen pants. Gold barely there sandals. Emerald necklace and bracelet. Kate Spade tan purse. Pretty good for a hillbilly girl. Usually I dress in the first thing I can find in the morning :)

Washington glamor vs. Gitmo suicides

I feel humble talking about what I was wearing and what I discussed with a powerful person while 3 people killed themselves because of false imprisonment. The despair/death thing is all too easy to understand, I stroll by this territory often. Sometime I would like to write more about mental illness here on my own extremely small blog.

What is difficult is to hold two things high in my mind simultaneously: (1) yay trying to persuade a Congressperson re netroots/Glenn and (2) the idea that we are, against the Constitution, imprisoning people without charges, without lawyers, without habeus corpus, without due process, without hope, without end. Death seems reasonable under such circumstances.

WHAT KIND OF A COUNTRY HAVE WE BECOME that we seize, torture, imprison, deny any hope of judicial review?

And they wonder why I drink.