Freedom Rider

Si Se Puede

"The British, the French, the Spanish and the Dutch didn't get green cards when they showed up on Indian lands. "
Black Commentator

Power to the people. Yesterday more than 1 million people marched across the nation to demand citizenship rights for immigrants. It isn't surprising that rallies took place in Washington, San Diego and New York. You do have to take notice when 3,000 march in Garden City, Kansas, a town with only 30,000 residents.

I digress, but did anyone wonder why the Chappaquiddick Band of Wampanoag spoke shortly after Sen. Ted Kennedy? For a moment my imagination got the best of me and I thought the Republicans were behind it. Maybe living in the Bush age has made me too paranoid.

Cynthia McKinney and Tom Delay

MATTHEWS: Thanks. I owe you one. I owe you two -- today and last night.
DELAY: No you don't.
MATTHEWS: No, I do.
DELAY: I appreciate it.

Cynthia McKinney is a member of Congress, not a serial killer. If you believed what you read in the papers this week you would believe she is the latter.

Republicans need a good distraction this week. After all, Tom Delay is about to be fitted for an orange jump suit. McKinney got into a shoving match with a Capital Hill cop when she didn't stop at a security check point. A bad decision definitely, but she could be a lot worse.

McKinney could have shot someone and then dispatched a private citizen to tell us about it. She could have instigated a war that would make her a much wealthier person. I guess only Vice Presidents get to do those things.

In an era when trillions of dollars have been stolen from tax payers, when the U.S. government advocates torture, I can't get worked up because of pushing and shoving in the halls of Congress. I wish Democrats would do a little more pushing and shoving, figuratively speaking of course.

Speaking of the indicted Tom Delay, he gets applause when he enters Congress. He also has "journalists" who live to suck on his toes. If Chris Matthews had any shame, he would quit his job as host of the laughably named, "Hardball."

Matthews has been whoring for Republicans for quite a while but he was caught on tape with Delay during a commercial break.

MATTHEWS: Hey thank you for calling me. It was a good thing for me, mostly.
DELAY: Oh really.
MATTHEWS: Oh of course it was. We got on the air as fast as we could....
[...]
MATTHEWS: Shannon [DeLay aide] told me, she called me, she said 'don't worry -- he's not calling in to complain'...
MATTHEWS: Have you seen this new focus group stuff on the candidates?
DELAY: No I haven't
MATTHEWS: It's great stuff. I'll send it to you -- it's great -- yeah it's great stuff. Hillary, John Kerry. All these guys, all these democrats, and how they do. And, uh, Frank Luntz did it...
DELAY: who I like
CM: ...and Hillary did not do well. Kerry did well.
DELAY: You're kidding.
MATTHEWS: I am NOT kidding. They didn't like Edwards -- they thought he was a rich lawyer, pretending to care about poor people...
DELAY: Too slick. Too slick.
MATTHEWS: ...and Hillary was a know-it-all.
DELAY: Nothing worse than a woman know-it-all

There is something worse than female know it alls, and that is journalists who treat one party's talking points as though they are truth revealed from the heavens.

Delay announced this week that he isn't running for re-election but apparently he still wields a hammer. Chris Matthews seems to think so anyway. He knows his bread is buttered by the right wing, even if they are on the way to jail.

Israeli Soldier Killed Reporter in Cold Blood

Mr. Miller died as he and colleagues were trying to leave a Palestinian house at night, holding a white flag with a torch shone on it, clad in body armour and helmets with the letters "TV" written on it in fluorescent tape.

Did you know that James Miller, a British cameraman, was shot dead by an Israeli soldier in 2003? Of course you don't know about it. No one in the American media told you.

The shooting really isn't surprising. Occupiers do not take kindly to having their dirty work exposed. They are also unaccustomed to being called to account for their actions. They can do anything they want, including shoot reporters in the neck.

Yes Virginia, There is a Pro-Israeli Lobby

Can there be any doubt that Israel holds sway over American politicians and the media?Presidential candidates vie with one another to promise that they will attack Iran in order to protect Israel. Neither they nor the media will point out that Israel is armed with nukes and Iran can’t possibly have any for at least five years.

It is amazing that Israel and its American allies wanted a war against Iraq, but anyone who points out that very public information is labeled an anti-Semite. Worse yet, no one can point out that the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein when he had WMDs or that Israel pushed for that alliance as well.

Israel may have known about the 9/11 terror attaks. No one is supposed to talk about the so-called moving company in New Jersey whose workers happened to be Mossad agents who happened to have cameras pointed at the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11. I’m also not supposed to mention the Israeli art students who only sold their work at the FBI and DEA.
Sounds strange to me, but what do I know. I’m just an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist.

It seems I'm not the only one who is sick and tired of Israel getting America into one mess after another. A few brave voices dare to speak up in an age when even plays that criticize Israel are banned. "My Name is Rachel Corrie" can't find a home on the New York stage.

Professors Stephen Walt of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, are in the news because of their study "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." They haven't done anything revolutionary, just document the power of Israel's lobby in America.

Amazingly, their detractors claim there is no lobby or that it isn't really effective or declare that Condi Rice is a gentile.

That is the primary power of the lobby, labeling as anti-Semitic anyone who notices its success. I wish that someone would tell me the rules. Am I allowed to say that there is a lobby for Israel? Am I supposed to say its effect is neglible? Am I supposed to acknowledge its success but do so in hushed tones?

Let me know sometime soon. If I'm going to be called an anti-Semite, I would like to know why.

Condom Rice

I never liked her, but I didn't say it. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw did.

As he introduced his guest, the Foreign Secretary held up a copy of a local newspaper and read out the headline: "Condom….er, Condi Comes to the Centre of the World".

Where is Freud when you need him?

9/11: Enough Already

I have had it with 9/11. This week the city of New York released tapes of 911 calls made from the World Trade Center. Two films are due to be released this year, one about Flight 93 ("Let's Roll") and the other about firefighters.

Idealizing American dead only serves to diminish the dead in other countries. I recall being terrified and grief stricken on that awful day, but I'm not going to fetishize what I felt. To do so makes me think that my life is more valuable than another's. As much as I love being alive, I have to say that I don't have more of a right to stay that way than anyone else in the world.

Those are brave words coming from a New Yorker. Osama's warnings are meant for me, my family and my neighbors. I'm the one with a bulls eye on my head.

Having said that, I still say no to 9/11 memorials. The city and state of New York are about to waste millions of tax payer dollars to bail out a developer, all in the name of building something, anything, at the site known as ground zero. What a waste.

What business would move to the site of two terror attacks? The answer of course if no one will. The government will be the primary tenant, all so that we can say that the terrorists didn't win.

Well they did win. They killed nearly 3,000 people, and they taught us they would kick ass. That means they won. Period. Get over it.

We aren't the losers just because of Osama either. 9/11 was used to justify the occupation of Iraq. It empowered the awful neo-cons who now want to attack Iran and make America even more of a mass murderer.

It is never hard to get Americans to kill people somewhere in the world, but 9/11 made it all too easy. Yes, we lost on September 11, 2001. The families of the dead lost most of all. If we think of anyone we should think of them, and then we should move on. Further displays of public grief only empower the killers to keep killing.