11/11/11/11

The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month... This is the time we honor the end of "The War to End All Wars," which later became known as World War One, when the mission to end war, by war, failed.

Since that time the wars have gone on and the men and women, of all nations, have been wounded and have died in them over and over and over again. Twenty-three years ago, during the Reagan led conflicts with the Soviet Union and the illegally funded and illegally waged contra war in Nicaragua, I helped to create a recording on the subject that unfortunately still holds very much true today.

Then, the war was largely to the south of us where we claimed a sort of divine right to control the lives of those who lived in the same hemisphere as we do. Today our men and women battle over dusty ground on the other side of the world because there are those in our country who believe that the economic interests of oil companies (which actually means the economic interests of themselves and their friends) are the "vital national interests" of our government and country and people. They return home (if they return at all) to inadequate medical care, lying bureaucrats with no interest in their needs, and broken contracts over proper benefits. They also return home to fractured families and soul numbing woundedness that is left untreated and hidden away. They receive neither glory nor honor, but are largely left to fend for themselves by the very same lying thieves who sent them into harms way to begin with.

Our truly vital national interests do not reside under the sand in Iraq... or Kuwait... or Saudi Arabia; they reside in the flesh and blood, hopes and fears, soul and heart of the men and women who are sent as a sacrifice for our benefit, and the families, lovers and friends who suffer without them while they are far away, or gone forever.

Shortly, I will be getting up from my computer and walking down to the city center of Petaluma where the annual Veteran's Day Parade will soon begin. I am not going there to protest. I am not going there to proselytize for peace. I am going there to stand and witness to the heart, and the hope and the bravery of the men and women who have been asked to serve the country.

I am going there to honor their dedication, their commitment, and their service.

I am going there to pray (to whatever God, Goddess, or Flying Spaghetti Monster that is out there) that they and theirs will be kept safe and whole and that those our "leaders" claim are "the enemy" will also find safety and peace because they believe with all their heart that they are in the right as well.

I am going there to say "thank you"... and to say "no more."

"There is no way to peace... Peace IS the way." - A. J. Muste

The Pain of McCain

With the latest in attack dog politics from the pit bull in lipstick and the whisper but wave a big ass club Neanderthal proclamations of the pit bull’s running mate (“The Presidency… so easy a cave man can do it”), I can no longer stomach the soft, respectful, reverent tones used to describe John McCain as a “Great American.”

The truth is that the “Maverick” is just a self-righteous, self-inflated, permanently angry, lying, cozener who respects very little besides his wife’s money and the fantasy that he suffered “righteously” in that hell hole he was stuck in because to acknowledge its worthlessness, pointlessness, immorality and servility would be to make his suffering there, and even his entire life afterward, meaningless.

John McCain’s primary claim to fame is that he spent years in a North Vietnamese prison after being shot down while on a bombing run over civilian areas where, as part of the general Johnson/Nixon campaign to “bomb them back into the Stone Age” he obliterated the homes and lives of thousands of innocent Vietnamese people whose only crime was being on the wrong side of American Imperial interests in the South East Asian peninsula.

The truth is that John McCain should not have been in Viet Nam to begin with, because WE should not have been in Viet Nam to begin with. This fact is common knowledge, and has been common knowledge ever since Daniel Ellsberg showed the moral fortitude to apprehend and then make public The Pentagon Papers, documents which reveal in depth the illegal and immoral ways that our government violated international law, lied to the American pubic, subverted agreed upon Vietnamese elections and finally plunged head over heels into the destruction of a country and a society for the sole purpose of achieving control of the government, the people, and the natural resources (even a Republican like Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about this). It is the story of how we turned a former ally (Ho Chi Minh) into a monstrous dictator and sold him to the American people as a threat to U.S. interest and universal world peace.

Any of this sounding familiar?

Now… it is John McCain’s life goal to see that thousands of American soldiers – the people he claims to value and respect – along with hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, suffer and die in order to redeem America’s image as WINNERS, for one reason only… so that John McCain can finally lay to rest the ghosts of the Hanoi Hilton.

On the way, his campaign has recently decided to wage a vicious attack on Barack Obama for being “a friend of terrorists.” This being a reference to former founder and leader of the Weather Underground, Bill Ayers. Ayers, who is now a college professor, was never associated with Obama in his radical days (Obama was, after all a kid in Hawaii at the time). McCain, and now the Pit Bull, insist on declaring him a “terrorist who targets innocent people” while during the same period of time, John McCain was targeting a far greater number of innocent people and killing and maiming them in “Shock and Awe” of American flash and fire, because he was commanded to do so by his superior officers, and because he personally thought it was a good idea. Even after he knew that the war was both wrong, and illegal, McCain continued and continues to suggest that those innocents who died in Viet Nam (Vietnamese innocents AND American military draftees) could have been redeemed by killing and killing and killing until the war was finally WON.

Now… he insists that this is the strategy we must have in Iraq, another war set up to topple a former ally after he became inconvenient to American interests, begun under direct deception and criminal conspiracy against the Congress and the American public, and waged in a fragmented, ineffective, directionless way because there’s no other way to fight a war you should never have started in the first place.

The terrorist is NOT Bill Ayers… The terrorist is NOT Barack Obama… The terrorist is John McCain. He is willing to send the very military personnel he claims to revere into harm’s way for a war with no purpose and no direction in order to do one thing and one thing only… to redeem HIS PERSONAL SUFFERING of 40 years ago. Along the way, he is willing to sacrifice not only those young men and women who offer their trust, their dreams, their bodies, and their lives to protect us - on the assumption that they will not be asked to sacrifice themselves for no reason – but he is also willing to sacrifice any and all of the best interests of the country he claims to value, love and protect.

He’s got a lot of support on that one, because there are a lot of people in the country who have suffered with the same agony as John. They cannot accept the fact that in Viet Nam (or now in Iraq) the sacrifice they made and are making is anything but honorable. And don’t get me wrong… I believe that it IS honorable, because as someone said recently (I actually think it was Joe Biden, but I'm still trying to find the exact quote), when a soldier makes the sacrifice of their body or their life, the value of that sacrifice is inherent in their dedication; it is NOT DEPENDENT ON ANYTHING ELSE. It doesn't matter whether or not the commanders they trust and believe in were in fact trustworthy. It doesn't even matter if the cause is just. The sacrifice and service, the dedication and commitment should be honored… but NOT by sending more people to kill and die for a lie… for a scam… for a mistake.

This election… and ending this war… is not about John McCain’s 40 year old suffering. It is about US. It is about soldiers who have been lied to and asked to sacrifice for a scheme and a nightmare, as if mistakes of the past can be remedied with mistakes in the future. It is about a nation that has been fed like cheap dog food to the fevered money grubbing greedheads, and the need to snatch that nation, its history and its ideals, back from those fevered jaws that would snap it up and swallow it whole. It is about personal fortune and self-inflation and the need to stop these robbers and liars before they wreck the country completely.

It is about finding John McCain a better way than the Presidency to relieve his personal pain.

The Other Shoe Finally Drops...

For the past several weeks I have been struggling to comprehend the silence of the main stream media, and for that matter even the Obama campaign, around the most basic connection of John McCain to the present financial crisis... The Keating Five.

My best guess regarding why nothing was ever raised regarding the collapse, in the late 80s, of Arizona's Lincoln Savings and Loan, was because most of the senators involved in the scandal were Democrats (including three of my personal senatorial heroes... just for the sake of full disclosure). In another one of his "Maverick" ways, John McCain was the only Republican to "cross the aisle" to become involved in accepting large campaign contributions, major perks, and lovely Caribbean vacations from John Keating in exchange for keeping Keating and his pack of lying pirates safe from Federal regulation until they could loot the treasury of $3.2 Billion (mid-80s dollars!).

This, of course, was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg of late 80s Savings and Loan failures, something that took place after the rabid de-regulation Reagan years, and under the presidential watch of the last President Bush. Ultimately, the Savings and Loan bailout cost taxpayers $125 Billion (again that's 80's dollars of course) in a pail shadow of the last two weeks on Wall Street, K Street, and Pennsylvania Avenue.

Despite this complete collapse of the home loan industry of the time, McCain and fellow Republicans chose to push even more de-regulation, fighting over and over for a financial industry process that not only allows for, but absolultely attracts, the same kind of intentionally deceptive thieving behavior that McCain supported in the 80s and which he continues to support despite the complete disaster of the concept as demonstrated y the last three weeks in the world of finance.

Well... FINALLY... McCain's true colors are beginning to see the light of day. Rosa Brooks, in the LA Times recently provided a detailed reminder of the Keating episode and its McCain connection to today. She does a really good job of detailing the real estate loan roots of the present crisis as well, detailing how dicey loans were repackaged and resold by those seeking to avoid liability and maximize personal profit, a tactic that worked pretty well for John Keating.

In addition, over the weekend The Seattle Times provided a revised and republished story, also from the LA Times, that details much of the McCain involvement with Keating, including a shopping mall project that Cindy McCain hooked into with both Keating and her father.

The Obama campaign has finally showed up to the party with a full website and 10 minute video documentary on the scandal, and McCain's roots deep inside it. The video is definitely worth the 10 minutes it takes to watch it (below), and the site itself provides some excellent, in depth background on the subject.

All I can say is that it's about damn time!



-----

I received an email about the new McCain/Keating site in the same batch that also delivered an article from a right wing friend of mine declaring that the real source of the financial crisis is Barack and The Association of Community Organizations for REform Now (ACORN). Of course we've known for several weeks what the McCain/Palin campaign thinks of community organizers, so it's not really surprising that this weird diversionary tactic should arrive at this time.

TRULY Remembering 9/11

Last night Keith Olbermann spoke (as usual) with incredible eloquence regarding the real meaning of remembering 9/11, as opposed to the Republican ad campaign that abuses the memories of those who suffered in 9/11, cynically commandeering that memory as a way to maintain, and further abuse, the power they so desperately crave.

On Nov. 4, Remember OK City

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic writes, in an op-ed in the NY Times entitled "On Nov.4, Remember 9/11" that "The next president must do one thing, and one thing only, if he is to be judged a success: He must prevent Al Qaeda, or a Qaeda imitator, from gaining control of a nuclear device and detonating it in America. " He goes on to state that "We live, seven years after 9/11, in the age of the super-empowered, eschatologically minded terrorist. He is motivated by revolutionary and theological concerns rather than by nationalist grievances, and he is adept at manipulating technology against its Western innovators."

I would suggest to the rather myopic Mr. Goldberg that the potential terrorists are much much closer, just as fanatical, and ESPECIALLY eschatological. They too have struck on our shores, and the devastation of that event is still being felt.

The posting and the listing below discusses the real threat from religious fanatics in this country.

The gretest danger on November 4 is that we could elect to the Vice Presidency, a fundamentalist megalomaniac in an A-line skirt and cute little librarian glasses. She could, quite easily, and quite rapidly, move to a position where her finger is on the trigger of our entire nuclear arsenal and her religious, God-delivered orders to start The Final Battle have already been given.

This is just scary!

[NOTE AS OF FRIDAY MORNING 9/12/08: The video below is SUPPOSED to be playing from You Tube, but instead there is an error message that comes up stating that it has been removed. I made a search for - and found - another source for this material because I believe it is VERY important that it be seen. In the meantime, please read what I have to say about it, because the perspective remains, and is in fact perhaps even MORE significant in light of this new development.

In addition, for a look at the way Google's censorship policy works in oher countries around the world, go to my story on China and watch the Tank Man movie.]


Sarah Palin's Churches and The Third Wave from Bruce Wilson on Vimeo.

Anyone who knows me personally, or who reads this blog on any semi-regular basis (I only WRITE it on a semi-regular basis), knows that I firmly believe in the importance of the separation of church and state. At the same time, I believe in the rights of believers (all believers of all faiths) to worship as they believe is appropriate (within a certain range of human descency however... murder as a part of worship is not really something that sits well with me for example).

I am "a believer" myself, though what that actually means in my life is not what a lot of people who call themselves "believers" would accept. I have a Masters of Divinity from a Southern Baptist seminary (a degree that also has a social work major - something that no SBC seminary offers any longer), I attended Oral Roberts University my freshman year in college... I have "spoken in tongues" (no smart-ass comments please). I was "licensed to preach" by the Southern Baptists when I was 18. For three years I worked for the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board at a mission in San Francisco. I am an ordained minister, and I co-pastored a small church in San Francisco for a short period of time in 1981. I directed an independent gospel music recording company from 1982 - 1991. I am presently a member of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco.

All I have to say about the above is that we need to BE CAREFUL!!! As you will see in the video (go to the links at the end for more, if you can stomach it), the election of Sarah Palin would be no less than the final ascension of the first of The American Taliban to reach high executive office. It's a plan that began with these people back right about the time I graduated from seminary (1980) and the arch-conservative factions of a number of Protestant denominations swore that they were going to take over first their denominations and then the country as a whole. I stood in an auditorium in LA while Bailey Smith, the newly elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention, made that declaration and I went home and watched as my church (a church open to and welcoming gay people among others) was harassed and eventually thrown out of the SBC.

These people believe in it... These people want it... These people will make it happen. These people aren't your relatively benign, live and let live neighborhood Presbyterians (or Episcopalians, or even most Baptists), these people are fanatical, war-mongering, psychotics and they absolutely believe that what they do comes by direct order from God. There is no difference between the churches that Sarah Palin comes from and the deep fundamentalist Islamic mosques and schools of Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia; no difference except the fact that one believes in a demented Jesus while the other believes in a demented Mohammed. BOTH are wrong, BOTH are evil, and BOTH are terrifying. They are drunk, free-wheeling maniacs commandeering Arnold Schwrzanegger's Hummer and speeding down the political freeway with God in the back seat smoking crack and yelling out orders.

Jim Jones on steroids and lugging gigantic containers of kool-aid.

John McCain is too ignorant of these folks and their beliefs to realize the deal he's made, or - and I truly believe this - he wouldn't have made it. Giving the Republican Party, and the country, to these people is literally a "Disaster of Biblical Proportions!"

While it's possible that John"... would rather lose an election than a war," he clearly IS willing to sell our country down the river to these takeover fanatics in order to win THIS election.

If you thought we were at war before... get ready for friggin' ARMAGEDDON...

Their ultimate goal is to destroy the world so they can go home to Jesus.

We Are The Ones...

Every time I see this video, or hear this song, I keep thinking that this is what this blog is about.

It isn't about my cousin... It isn't about people and principles we can't understand. What this is really about.. What LIFE is really about is BEING the ones that we have been waiting for.

If we succeed, or don't (oh please God no) succeed in seeing Obama win the presidency of the U.S., the real point is what each of us does with it (both before and after). The last couple of weeks - for both public and personal reasons - have moved me to a new place, a REnewED place.

The fact of the matter is, there's only one thing I really give a damn about.

Children, Politics, and "Family Values"

There's been a lot of talk over the last few days about how candidates' children should be "off limits" in discussions of the candidates. While I am largely in agreement with that sentiment, I have a problem with it as well. The issue of Sarah Palin's new grand-fetus may not really be relevant to the discussion of her as Veep, but her approach to the issue, her thoughts on how to help prevent teen pregnancy, and her support, or lack thereof, for services to teenage mothers not related to the Governor is HIGHLY relevant. Hence the above graphic from Salon which shows Governor Palin's use of line item veto to cut $1,100,000 of funding (more than 20%) for Covenant House, a home for teen mothers. She also slashed $25,000 from the Fairbanks Community Food Bank, but that's worth another posting.

In addition, Palin's refusal to support anything but abstinence based sex education (I'm thinkin' THAT horse has left the proverbial barn) in Alaska's schools, begs the question of not only what did Bristol hear about sex in school, but what did she hear about sex in her Pentecostal home and church?

Yeah... It seems fair to ask that Bristol and her obvious fecundity should not be a major part of the campaign discussion. At the same time it is rare indeed that a candidate so strongly advocates one set of principles, policies, and... "values" while providing such an incredibly clear example of the arguments for the other side!

For further examples of this behavior see... Newt Gingrich, Larry Craig, or David Vitter.

Happy 232nd Birthday!

Last year I wrote a blog about how much I love the U.S.A. and I included links to some of the music that is generated from my particular point of observation on what that love means.

I wrote about Springsteen's rendition of Pete Seeger's "Bring Em Home,"an anti-war song from the 60s that might be even more relevant now. I also wrote about one of my all time favorite songs, a tune about the life of this country and the way we are made up by and for everyone, "This Land Is Your Land."

For the last few days that tune has been rolling around in my head along with the thought that I need to follow up on those observations of a year ago with new thoughts on what being "an American" and being a "Patriot" and being George Washington's cousin actually means to me. It seems particularly important right now as we close in on the end of an excruciatingly long presidential campaign, as well as a presidential regime that could very possibly be the worst in history, and is certainly the worst in my lifetime (and there have been some BAD presidencies in the last 53 years!).

The questions of what it really means to be a "loyal American" have been flying fast and furious. Not a week goes by without a good friend of mine in Florida sending me some right wing diatribe (or worse... outright lies and/or complete distortions of fact) about how Obama isn't a "real American" because everyone knows he's actually a muslim, or because he rarely wears a flag pin, or because he doesn't properly salute the flag, or because the former pastor of his former church has the guts and the balls to stand up and do what preachers have been called by God to do since the first Jeremiah spoke truthfully to HIS government.

These intermittent missives almost always carry with them some sort of implied, or directly stated, inference that the the good old U.S.A. would be a better place if we'd just get rid of (deport, incarcerate, or execute) everyone of darker hue and lesser bank balance. they almost always end with some racist declaration of "what America really is..." inevitably, some version of a lily white, self-aggrandizing culture of greed, power and hubris. In other words, pretty much the very picture that most of the rest of the world already holds.

But we aren't that country and we never have been. The startlingly beautiful reality of this country is that we ARE, almost entirely, an immigrant culture. (I consider myself Irish-American, but really, I'm Irish, English, German.. AND George Washington's Cousin). A nation of half-breeds, where the amazing eclecticism of the whole world is brought together in its inevitable ugliness and difficulty, its hatred and war, and its magic, and beauty, and love. ALL of its glorious shining magic. For the most part we got this way, not because of some grand and glorious scheme but because of the darker motives of men (because it was indeed almost entirely men) who in their grasp for unimaginable wealth were in need of fodder for their farms, their factories and their transportation systems (railroad, interstate, and information superhighway). When these dreams were coupled with the hopes and dreams of those they enslaved, conscripted, and kidnapped, we wound up with this weird mix that is the U.S.A. (and no other place in the world).

This country has been built, from day one, on bad promises made to poor people. A reality that Martin Luther King Jr. called a check that has, over and over, come back "marked insufficient funds." Over and over and over again people have worked, struggled, climbed and fought their way out of the cages, jails, and holding pens they were put in... Africans, Chinese, Italians, Irish, Mexicans, Japanese... and of course the Original AMericans who were here at the beginning.

This is THEIR Land.
This is YOUR Land.
This is MY Land.
This is OUR Land.

232 years ago my cousin and a bunch of free thinking men and women (not just a bunch of Christians... no matter what the religious wrong try to tell you) got this whole thing started and damn if they didn't have a great idea!

Happy Independence Day!

That Is Where Perfection Begins

There could not be a better statement about our country, this election, what we are called, to, what our country means, what we must do, or why I began writing this blog.

Bob Cesca has taken a wonderful song and a nearly perfect speech and crafted a masterpiece.

This is why we WORK!

This is why we VOTE!

Lie down With Dogs... Get Up With Fleas

It is absolutely astonishing, though not exactly unpredictable to watch the meltdown of Hillary Clinton's campaign while at the same time watching the kind of racist, ugly diatribe being spewed out of the mouth of someone like Geraldine Ferraro, who SHOULD know better, but obviously does not.

I am not a member of the "Obama campaign" that Ferraro accuses of attacking her, and I am not a member of the African American community that she so capriciously and stupidly attacked with her ugly racist commentary on Barack Obama. I am however, and unfortunately, used to seeing this kind of thing played out over and over and I am used to hearing people make remarks like, "I am not a racist, but..."

The problem is, there is always only one response to this sort of comment and that is simply, "YES...YOU ARE."

I have been trying for the last two days to come up with some kind of reasonably thoughtful, carefully worded response to Ms. Ferraro's idiotic remark (coupled with her even more greatly benighted response), but I am unable to find words that are better than those expressed last night by Keith Olberman.

This country suffers under an unbelievable legacy of racist horror and pain and I have lived with it and watched (from close up and from afar) for all of my life; from southern Florida, to border towns in Arizona, to liberal Northern California, to storm tossed New Orleans. Every time I think we are better... I find we are the still the same.

For me... at this time... I have had it.

There is only one choice in this election... there is only one HOPE in this time of despair.

After living through 53 years of the same old reality, I know that it is time for a CHANGE and Barack Obama is the ONLY CANDIDATE who offers that change. Beyond that we only have ugliness, power, and greed.

Y'all Know The Okie Doke?

Okay... this blog has been quiet for more than six months. I think the reason for that is that I was so completely blown away by the stupidity of the early debates that I was left speechless for quite some time. Quite frankly (per se) I also had some personal issues that arose and they have, to a certain extent, distracted me from the political and the religious issues that this blog is intended to be about.

But we're comin' down to it now, and the fact of the matter is that I am convinced that this is the most important election of my lifetime.


It is important for three reasons:

1) We are in the midst of a war that should have never been begun, and which would never have to have been begun if the very people who advocated it had not set up the son of a bitch we were fighting in the first place. That's called "blow back" and we're experiencing it in Iraq and we are about to experience it in Iran and for the same reasons.

THAT is a legacy that began the year before I was born!

2) In the midst of all of this, both John McCain and Hillary Clinton represent the same old school, status quo, corporate funded, ego driven politics that have dominated this country for my entire life.

3) There is only one man who is capable of changing things and truly making a difference in the way we operate in this country and in the world. That man is Barack Obama. Bill (who at one time I admired completely) and Hillary are doing their best to pretend like the person who can CHANGE America is Hillary... They are WRONG and they are lying.

There is one way out of this mess and the man who can lead us there is Barack Obama.