CT & RI Demands Bush Step Down

This was breaking news on all the cable news channels, WAY TO GO MURTHA!

This is the second important turning point on opinion in the war. The first was Cindy Sheehan last August.

WASHINGTON (AP) — An influential House Democrat who voted for the Iraq war called Thursday for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, another sign of growing unease in Congress about the conflict.

“This is the immediate redeployment of American forces because they have become the target,” said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania, one of Congress’ most hawkish Democrats. At times during his remarks to reporters, the decorated Vietnam War veteran and former Marine was choking back tears.

“It is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering, the future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region,” Murtha said.

Murtha, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, has earned bipartisan respect for his grasp of military issues over three decades in Congress.

CNN.com - House Democrat calls for immediate troop withdrawal - Nov 17, 2005

What other group exists besides the Democrats that are in a position to end the war and bring the troops home?

Great article on how the Democrats waited for the right moment to launch their sneak attack on the Rupublicans and finally became a true opposition party.

WE HAVE HOPE AGAIN!

Of course this is just my opinion, but I believe the answer isn’t fringe groups like the Revolutionary Communist Party or even the Green Party on the National Level - The answer is taking back the Democratic party and making it stand for its beautiful ideals once again, so we’ll all be proud to say we are Democrats without any qualifications.

It’s gonna take alot of work, alot of struggle and theres plenty of room for us in the Democratic Party.

Hey it’s a hell of a lot more realisitic than a communist revolution or even a third party that gets 2% of the vote.
Daily Kos: In Case You Hadn’t Noticed, We Are At War

CBS News | Leaks, Not CIA Jails, Worry Frist | November 10, 2005 23:00:03

This sent in by one of our members and supporters. Im not sure if you heard but it seems the CIA has been operating secret torture chambers in Eastern Europe.

This however does not bother one of our physicians in the senate Bill Frist, the man who was magically able to diagnose Terry Schiavo from watching a video, and when the autopsy was performed after her passing Frist was proved totally wrong.

From the article:

Frist was asked if that meant he was not concerned about investigating what goes on in detention centers.

“I am not concerned about what goes on and I’m not going to comment about the nature of that,” Frist replied.

This is in the same tone as the Bush administrations soluton to the Abu Ghraib Torture Revelations, ban digital cameras.

With 2,262 coalition soldiers dead and over 15,000 maimed you have to ask Bush “What the hell did the military ever do to you” - Did the ROTC make fun of you for being a cheerleader in college? What is it?

I was watching Fox News today and they had a music video playing titled “They Also Serve” - It was about how the war takes a toll on the soldiers families, and I wondered why Bush hates the families of soldiers so much.

I know Bush, Cheney, Rove, Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby and the rest of the peeple who started this war never fought in war. Maybe they just can’t sympathize with military families, having never fought in war themselves.

A Chinese secret agent who infiltrated our government would have a hard time doing as much damage to America as Bush has done as president, so I ask again why does Bush hate America?

I know I’ve been repeating that theme alot lately but I think it’s important - and here’s why. (more…)

Of course we should all be extremely skeptical about any war news we hear in the media, but if the reports are true and it was Iraqis responsible for the bombings in Jordan then we have more evidence that Bush’s war has made us, the people of London and people all over the world far less safe than they were before the bombs fell on Baghdad.

Here’s what Bush had to say:

The killings should remind all of us that there is an enemy in this world that is willing to kill innocent people, willing to bomb a wedding celebration in order to advance their cause,” Bush said in the Oval Office during a meeting with President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen,

It’s funny you should mention bombing a wedding, Mr. Bush.

Right as he says “Willing to kill innocent people”, he breaks out into a huge smile.

Here watch the video for yourself (you have to wait through commercial first)

I think it’s important to understand that Conservatism, and the Islamic Fundamentalism are parallel movements — they both feed off each other. They are both right-wing, authoritarian in nature, both religious and both wish to turn the tide back on science and progress. Don’t let anyone say it is the Left that sympathizes with the terrorists, the Right creates the terrorists. I hate terrorists, and terrorism. I believe in a just world there wouldn’t be that many terrorists, but there will always be some crazy people out there, but they could be easily contained and marginalized by law enforcement and intelligence. Like John Kerry said in the campaign, we’d like te get terrorism down to the level of a nuisance.

Look at that photo a little down the page - you can’t tell me that doesn’t fuel terrorism. 2004 was the worst year for terrorism in the world ever. The most terrorist bombings, the most death in history.

The Right’s relationship with terrorism is the same as it’s relationship with homosexuality. In public they blame gays for the breakdown of society, in private they solicit sex with boys in internet chat rooms.

American politics is a game of capture the flag, Bush and the Republicans stole the flag and wrapped themselves up in it, we’re taking it back.

Bush hates America. If this country went down the tubes because of his policies Bush and the entire GOP would be the first to take their vast fortunes and move to the South of France.

- Will

.50-caliber ammo used so much that supplies run low

The ammo maker just hired 1,000 more workers and it’s still not enough. These are the kind of jobs Bush creates, while losing jobs that actually create something useful with outrageous “free trade” policies.

I knew the war was wrong, I knew a lot of people we’re dying and it made me sad, but I’ve never felt it like I do today.

Jesus God - America is melting the skin off of children!!!! With Chemical Incendiary Whte Phosphorous Weapons, in the name of Freedom of course.

If we’re not doing everything we can to end this war, then we are complicit in melting the skin off of children.

I don’t want America to be a country that burns civilians alive.

The people who started this war hate America, and everything we stand for, they hate freedom and democracy and have cheapened those words, they hate life and they hate Iraqis and they hate themselves most of all.

And I hate them too.
Daily Kos: Melting the Skin Off of Children [GRAPHIC]

As one Abu Ghraib detainee explained to Jamail, “the Americans brought electricity to my ass before they brought it to my house.”

Iraq Dispathches

AlterNet: Blogs: The Mix: If you poll the right question a majority of Americans support impeachment

They did it before, we can do it again. Our predecessors also got LBJ not to seek a second term, so don’t listen to the haters.

I e-mailed our counterparts in World Can’t Wait Los Angeles to track down the truth about the alleged busing of 800 students from ten LA high schools to November 2nd WCW rallies. If ten schools bused 800 people you think they would know about it right? They sent me this:

Hi Will,

Surprise! Another lie from the right wingers. That rumor surfaced here, too, from the cops who then wanted to say that WCW was contributing to the truancy of minors. Many students did hop public buses and some bus drivers let them on for free, in support of the protest.

On to the State of the Union!

Nicole

Katharine DeBRecht a freelance journalist and an active member of the South Carolina Federation of Republican Women and the author of “Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed” apparently just made the whole story up.

Her book is a children’s story where two kids start a lemonade stand and the evil liberals that control the world make them sell broccoli for some reason. Be on the lookout for her upcoming titles:

Help! Mom! Hollywood is in My Hamper!, Help! Mom! There Are Lawyers in My Lunchbox!, and Help! Mom! The Ninth Circuit Nabbed the Nativity!

Here are some conservative bloggers who are really pissed off about the busing that never happened.

Independentconservative.com

Will tax payers in Los Angeles accept this use of their tax dollars? If so, maybe the man they dislike should cut off Federal funding to their area. Then they will really have something to protest about ! And they can do for themselves without having to deal with money associated with the man they dislike .

Honestly this is just terribly sad, that adults would prompt children to take part in something like this! When they could have been learning something. Especially given the conditions in their area. They need all the education they can get!

ilounge.com writes:

I was reading Blogs for Bush and I came across this post about a school busing kids to a anti-Bush rally. It is one thing that education has a liberal bias but when the line is crossed and kids are illegally being taken to a political rally on the tax payer’s dime then something has to be done. It is outrageous and people should stand up and demand the head of someone in the LA school system. An example must be set before there is an extra period in the school day devoted to stuffing envelopes for the DNC.

electricdesert.com this one was pretty funny:

They better not use my kids like that!!

Dammit! They refuse to be held responsible for teaching any student reading, writing or arithmetic, but they can march ‘em off to indoctrination camps

Conservatives sure do hate busing

- Will

Here are some pictures that appeared in the newsaper, courtesy of Hannah.

I’m new to this blog program and the reason your post didn’t show up Hannah was because the program thought it was spam and was waiting for someone to approve the comment. I changed the setting so it shouldn’t happen again.

About seven people signed up as members, you guys should be able to write your own posts by logging in but if not tell me and I’ll fix it.

This photo album is a good idea, I’ll put a link up on the right. Theres another link there titled upload photos that doesn’t require you to log in, you just upload and it gives you a link to use in your posts.

I hope you guys don’t mind my opinions on things, I want other people to post too!

- Will

PS Still waiting for the article in Westerly This Week.

Blogs for Bush: The White House Of The Blogosphere: Los Angeles Schools Help Kids Attend Anti-Bush Rally

Here is the press release from right-wingnut’s World Ahead Publishing

BREAKING NEWS: Public school officials bus students from L.A. high schools to join anti-Bush rally. Kid’s author decries educators’ liberal bias.

LOS ANGELES (November 3, 2005) — Public schools have long been criticized for bringing left-wing politics into the classroom, but yesterday teachers in Los Angeles high schools took their students out of their classrooms to participate in a left-wing political rally!

Ten high schools in the Los Angeles area bused over 800 students to participate in a large anti-George Bush rally organized by a group called “The World Can’t Wait–Drive Out the Bush Regime.” Teachers, administrators, and campus security all defended the decision, saying it gave them a chance to supervise students who would be protesting anyway, but children’s author Katharine DeBrecht decried the decision as an example of educators advancing a liberal political agenda.

DeBrecht — the author of the smash hit illustrated book “Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed” (Kids Ahead; hardcover $15.95; ISBN 0976726904) — said the decision by Los Angeles school officials was tantamount to encouraging kids to join Democratic causes: “It is reprehensible that public school teachers and administrators would actually encourage students to leave the classroom to attend a Bush-bashing event! Not only are these educators ignoring their duty to teach our children, but apparently they care much more about turning them into props for their political causes.”

I have a strong feeling this is a totally made up story by Katharine DeBrecht the author of “Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!. All the reports seem tto indicate that across the country school systems worked hard to intimidate students from walking out of school on November 2nd, many declaring ‘intruder alerts” and locking the school down.

Reading the comments on one right wing blog that carried the story are hilarious though, here are some of my favorites:

It’s the liberal media and the liberal school officials that want to destroy this country. I wonder if you had a choice to go or not?

Oh this is just over the line, these teachers and administrators that allowed this to happen should be fired immediately. A teacher brings a cross to school and the liberals practically start climbing walls. But oh wait, it’s ok to force your sickening political ideology on children. Double standard? Of course.

And what kinda crap is this. Children need to be kept in class and taught history, math, english, etc… not be sent out to protest things they don’t even understand since their only source of information is Saturday Night Live.

And finally:

I wonder if our lefty friends would support, say, busing students to a pro troops ralley??

Of course what we did last Wednesday was Pro-Troops - I think it’s time we start asking these people why they hate the troops so much that they let 2,044 die and over 15,000 come home permanently disabled.

- Will

BBC News - US suspects ‘face torture overseas’

I’m sorry to give you guys this ugly news, but we can’t just turn a blind eye. We’re engaged in a war of ideas here as much as anything and our side has to have the facts to argue with people like Jason (see post down the page)

We’ve all seen the pictures from Abu Ghraib, we’ve all heard about torture at Guantanamo Bay, torture so terrible that the prisoners are trying to commit suicide by going on hunger strikes. Donald Rumsfeld, a man so stupid he thought America could invade Iraq and the people would line the road to Baghdad with flowers instead of IEDs, said these Afghan sheep herders who are so depressed they are trying to kill themselves are just going on a diet. Here it is straight from the war criminal’s mouth.

“Well, I suppose that what they’re trying to do is to capture press attention, obviously, and they’ve succeeded. There are a number of people who go on a diet where they don’t eat for a period and then go off of it at some point. And then they rotate and other people do that.”

Well it seems that the torture isn’t isolated to just those places, it seems the CIA has created a secret network of torture chambers “located in Eastern Europe, Afghanistan and Thailand, the Washington Post claims.”

Good people like us see this and recoil in horror, and besides the moral outrage we feel, we know torturing Arabs caught in huge sweeps only fuels hatred and creates more terrorists, in short it makes us less safe here in America.

That’s not the way Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush Administration see it however.

They view America’s reputation as a country that routinesly tortures people, I’m going to emphasize that America has a reputation now as a country that routinely tortures people as a method of interrogation as an asset, a plus They look at it as a way of instilling fear in our “enemies”, as a way of making them take our threats seriously.

You and me know that before we dropped a 500 pound bomb on their house and killed their sister and six other children, our “enemies” loved rock music and blue jeans.

- Will

Republican Congress seeks to cut Medicaid, food stamps, student loans, agriculture subsidies and child support enforcement. The House measure would allow states to impose premiums and co-payments on poor Medicaid recipients for the first time.

Daily Kos: Shameless. Absolutely Shameless.

Why is it always children, the poor, the elderly, the sick that conservatives go after? It’s always the weakest amongst us they set their sights on. It makes me sick.

Why is the Bush Administration and it’s Republican Congress gutting social services? To pay for weapons, war and tax cuts for the super-wealthy, and we’re still going to be running massive budget deficits.

What’s the next item on the Republican-controlled Congress’s budget agenda? Another 70 billion dollar tax cut for the super-wealthy.

- Will

So far, we have been featured in the Westerly Sun and Westerly This Week. Good article in Westerly This Week (…no photos of me!). I wish there was a little more focus on the idea that the purpose of our demonstration was to raise community awareness of what is going at the hands of the Bush Regime, to educate the community on issues the media refuses to address acurately, to urge other members of the community to join us, and that we will not back down until we change the direction of this country - and that change begins with strong community organizing. It’s a first step though…and this is only the beginning. RESIST THE BUSH REGIME!
- Pat (World Can’t Wait Community Organizer for Stonington, CT.)

I counted three newspapers covering us wednesday - any one seen us in any of them yet?

I was approached by someone from a radio station who wants us to do an interview on air….

I am also going to be writing an Op-Ed about us for The New London Day….

It won’t be long until one of us is on Fox News humiliating Sean Hannity!

- Will

PS Send your pictures of the event to organize at hush.com and they will be posted here.

Welcome new members to our local World Can’t Wait Virtual Headquarters

This place will be our community’s source for important news, strategic planning, and community social networking.

We’d like everyone to register. It’s easy and all you need is an e-mail address.

Registering allows you to post your own entries on the main page and comment on other peoples posts. You can upload pictures, post links and write whatever you want to say to the group. If you have any questions about how to post etc… e-mail me: organize at hush.com (No @ sign used here to fool spam bots)

- Will

Hello to all you crazy Bush hatin’ kids! I must say that Nov. 2nd went acceptionally well, not only in our community (Westerly), but across the nation. What we could be seeing is a true return of the student left, a movement capable of changing the entire direction of our country. I’ve been receiving alot of questions over the past 24 hours, but most commonly, “What next?”. Well this is just the beginning my friends. It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to mean a struggle. It’s going to mean a lot of people putting in a lot of time, a lot of effort, and putting a lot on the line. If we really want things to change - we can make them, but it’s not going to be easy.
There will be a second demonstration this coming Wednesday (Nov. 9th) at the Post Office/Traffic Circle in downtown Westelry, RI. Our mission is to get even more people to attend and make the war and the crimes of the Bush Regime visible in everyday life. We need to bring it home, apathy is not an option. We’re going to bring it into the faces of everyone in our community. No - looking away is NOT an option. By educating ourselves, educating others, and educating the community, we can build a grassroots movement from the bottom up. We can show people that an individual can make a difference in the world - that by organizing and mobilizing, we can create a resistance in solidarity with thousands of others across the nation to drive this murderous regime out of power! More demonstrations and events to follow. I’ll see you in the streets.
www.worldcantwait.org
“The times they are a-changin’…” ~ Bob Dylan

- Pat

Bloomberg.com: Top Worldwide

“Scooter” pleaded Not Guilty today to charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements. Of course these are just a few of the crimes of the Bush Administration.

So why doesn’t the prosecuter add mass murder (Iraq) and criminal negligence (New Orleans) to the indictments?

Because it’s our job to hold them accountable for those crimes, the criminal justice system won’t do it for us.

- Will

“I’m gonna tell all you fascists you will be surprised, people all over this world are getting organized”

I just found out the news is worse for Bush (and better for us) than I thougt in my last post.
CBS News | Bush’s Job Approval Hits New Low | November 2, 2005 22:00:07

Compare this to Clinton’s 72% approval rating post-Monica. CBS News | Poll: More Bad News For Bush | November 2, 2005 22:00:07

And Clinton was a pretty conservative democrat, imagine how popular a real strong progressive would be.

Cheney’s approval rating is only 19%.

Only 31% believe the Iraq Invasion was worth the costs.

The best news for us however is this:

DIRECTION OF THE COUNTRY

Right direction
Now 27%
10/2005 26%

Wrong track
Now 68%
10/2005 69%

Bush must step down and take his entire program with him, the people demand it.

We were in the middle of being photographed by the media, when we heard someone from behind demanding to speak to “the leaders”, someone told him to hold on and not to get “his water in a boil”, when the photo was done being taken I went over to speak to him, hoping it was a member of the press.

It wasn’t, it was a member of the 37-41% who still tell pollsters they think Bush is doing a good job.

You have to assume around %20 is either on the Bush payroll or just has hate in their heart. This kid did not fall into that category, his name is Jason and I believe he is a nice person, a good person but sadly he is just a misinformed person.

Jason had the following points to make with me
1. Iraq had a) Mobile Biological Weapons Labs and b) strong WMD production capability at the time of US invasion.

Of course the Bush Administration’s own David Kay has conceded that Iraq had no deployable WMD of any kind as of March 2003 and had no production since 1991. The mobile weapons labs never existed, ever, they were just made up so the administration could say the UN weapons inspectors couldn’t work because Saddam had the WMD production moving all over the country faster than the UN could find them. Think about it, we never saw any real pictures of mobile labs, just illustrations, no mobile labs were found after the invasion, and finally having tons of anthrax driving around Iraq’s roads could turn a routine traffic accident into a catastrophy. Add mobile labs in with the UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) that were suppose to be able to fly anthrax to NY or London in 45 minutes.

2. Jason reasoned that we had to be wrong about the Bush Administration suspending civil liberties so that even American citizens can be detained indefinitely without access to lawyers or the courts as long as the Administration identified them as so-called “enemy combatants”. Why did he think we were wrong about the PATRIOT act? Because of the Michael Jackson trial, that’s why.

I don’t even know what to say about that one.

3. Jason compared torture to abortion.

Or that one.

We were also wrong because his grand-parents had fought in WW II apparently.

Pat had a lot more patience with Jason and kept talking to him after I gave up and told him to get more informed. Which is probably the right way to go because I do think Jason is a good kid and I really hope he doesn’t join the Marines which he was talking about doing.

- Will