They've Just Proved Cousin Raub Correct!

A Summary of Bipartisan Relations

"Bipartisanship is another term for date rape." - Grover Norquist

So the Republicans have said it themselves.

Seeing John Kerry in Person

I'm Tired of the Lies They're Telling About My Candidate!
I was sitting on the floor in the disabled section of the hangar when Kerry's plane pulled in, having exhausted myself directing pedestrian traffic. It is a truly awesome thing to see a full sized aircraft pull up right next to you, and soon I had to stand again, because half the disabled were standing. People we had carefully seated for the two hour wait stood up if they could - and remained standing throughout Kerry's address. Some held onto the barriers.

Local veterans formed an informal honor guard, lining the path from the plane to the platform. Prominent local Democrats waited. Senator Kerry, followed by former Senator John Glenn, stopped and shook hands, talked to, or autographed for each person. As the two men approached the welcoming Democrats, the vets climbed onto the stage, where they stood in three rows throughout the event. Old and young, black and white, male and female, they stood proud.

Since it was a hot night, Senator Kerry soon stripped off his suitcoat and threw it to one of his party. As he began to speak, I studied him to see what manner of man he might be. First, this is not a man who has to be "handled". He is always aware of his environment, watching and listening to everything. The stories he told about his train trip confirmed this; he spoke of the people he had seen through the window and those he had stopped and talked to, schedule or no. Then he delighted us all by naming Nashville as Music City USA, home of the Titans, and home of Goo Goo Candy - this last, I know is not a national brand.

To us Kerry mainly spoke of the domestic issues like jobs, health care, and education that are impacting on us every day to a greater extent than the War on Terror. He spoke of the environment and how in 28 states a father can no longer take his son fishing and expect to eat the fish. We cannot win or be successful at any undertaking while we are undercutting our own people.

Many times he was stopped by cheering. I myself was waving my arms over my head, yelling with pure joy that someone at last was interested in my issues. Senator Kerry handled the interruptions quite nicely. Whenever he wished to resume, he simply said, "Now let me tell you something". There is no condescention here.

When he finished speaking, he waded into the crowd for handshakes and autographs. This crowd had signed no pledges of loyalty; we had merely gone through metal detectors. Nor can I swear that everyone who got into the general, white ticket section actually had a ticket. People were coming in too fast.

John Kerry does not have the charisma of Bobby Kennedy, who could encompass a whole auditorium in his personality. He is a practical man used to command who will be very particular about his intelligence.

A Dime's Worth of Difference???

I'm Getting Tired of This!

Kerry invites us to participate in the same health care plan government employees have, with the government taking the catastrophic claims. Economist Paul Krugman confirms it can be done as Kerry suggests by taking away Bush’s tax cut for families earning $200,000 or above.

Bush wants to lower our health insurance by limiting medical malpractice suits.

Kerry proposes to allow Medicare, OUR Medicare, to use its bargaining power to get lower prescription drug prices and to let in medicine from Canada.

Bush has forbidden Medicare to lower prescription drug prices and has done everything possible to keep Canadian medicine out of our hands.

Kerry proposes to change the tax code to reward businesses that create jobs in America rather than offshore.

Bush sees nothing wrong with American jobs going overseas.

Kerry has always voted to protect women’s reproductive health, despite denunciation of his own church.

Bush has in essence declared war on women’s reproductive health.

While not for gay marriage, Kerry supports civil unions giving the same legal rights. He does not support the so-called marriage amendment.

Bush is actively pursuing a constitutional amendment limiting gay rights.

Kerry has a fine environmental record and will not allow polluters to write the law. He actually believes we should accept scientific findings.

Bush is allowing polluters to write the law and has suppressed scientific evidence, as in the air quality at Ground Zero.

Kerry has consistently supported unions and living wages for workers.

Bush appointed the aggressively anti-union Elaine Chiao as Secretary of Labor.

No, Kerry won’t get us out of Iraq immediately. He does mean to use a very powerful tool to make stabilizing Iraq a real NATO effort – he means to allow foreign firms to bid on Iraqi reconstruction contracts.

Bush intends to go it alone to the bitter end and to keep all the contracts and power in his own hands, regardless of the consequences.

Kerry will address large, unscreened crowds; you only need go through a metal detector.

Bush will address only those who have signed a pledge to support him.

A dime’s worth of difference? Not if you’re a woman or gay or sick or out of a job.

Real Humans Suffered and Died To Give Us Rights!

Remember!
Too many people have forgotten the New Deal and the terrible suffering that brought it about. This last month I've been reminded of another thing we forget - American women suffered torment to get the right to vote!

I was somewhat familiar with the violence of the British movement, and of course I knew about the work of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott. But most of my women's history readings have been about Civil War or labor issues or women in the arts. I was not aware of the brutal beatings arrested suffragists suffered from a sadistic sheriff. I had heard something about force feeding suffragist hunger strikers but had no idea it was done to the point of inducing vomiting. Nor did I know that powerful politicians had tried to have Alice Paul declared insane so they could confine her indefinitely.

I did know and was proud of Tennessee's part in ratifying the 19th Amendment. We were the "Perfect 36", the last state needed to ratify. One vote made the difference, the vote of a young man whose mother wrote him to "do the right thing and help Mrs. Catt put the "rat" in ratification". He suffered harrassment for his convictions; according to some accounts, he slipped out a second floor window at the Capitol and walked a dangerous ledge to enter another room and evade his angry fellow legislators. The women in the Senate balcony, in the meanwhile, shredded the yellow roses that symbolized their movement and showered the petals on legislators. - Yet today we have women too apathetic to vote.

This year's Women for Kerry-Edwards campaign memorialized our rights by starting their campaign on August 26, the day Woodrow Wilson signed the Amendment. In Nashville, we gave out yellow paper roses along with cookies and water to some 300 hearty Democrats who gathered on Capitol Hill beneath the statue of Andrew Jackson. Our women in the state and local government spoke to us, along with Bluebird Cafe owner Amy Kurland.

John Kerry and John Edwards are right on for women's issues -health care, affordable prescription drugs, education, social security, and care for the veterans among us. We cannot win a war on anything by draining our own country of its strength.

Where Are They Now?

Working For An International Bully

On September 15, 2001, I was on a Greyhound bus heading home to Nashville after a Constant Reader Convention in Milwaukee. (Those who could get there by land decided to cock a snook at the terrorists.) The bus stopped outside Fort Campbell to pick up some soldiers, and the driver remarked on the tight security. He had been able to drive right into the fort even during Gulf War I.

Since the driver was a former paratrooper who apparently drove this route frequently, the boys began talking shop. They were wondering where and when they would be ordered to fight, and none of them showed much confidence in the judgement of their Commander in Chief. "He's trying to be a hero, but he'll wind up being a zero." They discussed the number of Muslim countries in the world, showing an excellent grasp of geography, and asserted they couldn't be expected to take on all of them. Some reviewed the Israel situation and quoted the Bible. They were relaxed and hospitable enough to allow me, a mere civilian old enough to be their grandmothers, to chime in with a bit of fact they were trying to remember.

It isn't a long drive from Fort Campbell to Clarksville, where the boys got off to head to their various destinations, but I've never forgotten them. They seemed confident in their professional skills and abilities. Are any still alive and whole now, I wonder? They certainly deserved better than they have been getting.

Death In Nashville

What's a few deaths between friends?
On Friday July 30 a six story scaffold collapsed on workers who were trying to dismantle it. One died. Two are seriously injured, and one of those may never walk again. The Sunday TENNESSEAN had this to say about the incident:

The primary contractor, Construction Enterprises Incc of Nashville, hired Safway Services to erect and dismantle the scaffolding.
Safway has a record of safety violations, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration Web site.
The company was fined $10,000 last year by OSHA in connection with safety violations discovered after an accident in Oregon. It was also fined a total of $3,800 for two other violations found at work sites in FLorida and Pennsylvania last year. A $450 fine was levied against the company in April for a safety violation at a California work site.
A Safway Services worker was killed June 22 in a scaffolding accident at an energy plant in Salix, Iowa, according to The Associated Press.
Since 2002, Construction Enterprises Inc. has been fined a total of $5,850 by OSHA for 10 violations, six of which were labeled "serious".

The pictures in the paper left me with another question, so I drove by the jobsite on my way to lunch. Only one set of scaffolding had been taken down; much was still in place. It confirmed what I thought I saw in the pictures - these scaffolds have no handrail, midrail, and toe board as required by OSHA. A single misstep could lead to a six story fall, or a tool accidentally knocked off could strike someone on the ground.

When I first went to work in insurance, I read some of the safety literature in the office and learned that before OSHA the general expectation was for one death per story of a building or mile of road. Fortunately, the American people decided that was unacceptable. Not only does OSHA do what it can to enforce safety, citizens can read about contractors' safety records on the website!

Obviously, we need somebody in the Presidency who believes worker safety is important. The Kerry/Edwards team is certainly qualified.

Use the Paper Ballot!

I've finally come up with a plan!
Ever since the last election, we've been hearing worrisome news about the Diebold electronic voting machines widely used in the richer venues. Diebold does not provide - and claims not to be able to provide - a paper backup. In fact, as we recently learned in Florida, they can't even insure they can keep the computer record of the election safely archived! No one in the government knows anything about the programming of these machines - it's a proprietary system.

In June I had the opportunity to talk to the local Democrat who coordinates poll workers. She was very frustrated about the touchscreen machines. "They come in and set them in the morning and come in and set them in the evening, and we don't know a thing about them." Since then several news stories have pointed to the relative inaccuracy of the touchscreen systen as opposed to older electronic methods. Still, the state and local election commissions dither and insist they can't do anything. I understand some districts in California still use them despite a state injunction.

I began to remember the presence of those archaic little booths for write-in voting that have featured in every election for some years. Why not use those paper ballots? You mark them yourself with a pencil; there's none of this business of trying to punch a hole in something and just hoping the extra paper has been cleared from the machine so the punch will be clean.

Yes, people can cheat with paper ballots and have been doing so since the beginning of the Republic. BUT THE PAPER VOTES ARE PHYSICALLY EXISTENT AND CAN BE RECOUNTED.

I used the paper ballot to vote early in the Tennessee August 5 primary. It takes a little more time, but it insures your vote exists.

Free Speech and the Bottom Line

The First Amendment Is In Big Trouble 
President Bush is obviously thin skinned and extremely unwilling to take what his party has gleefully dished out to Democrats, but that's not the whole problem - not by any means.  Why did Slim Fast fire Whoopi Goldberg?  Why was Linda Ronstaadt fired from her Vegas show?   - They were threatening their patrons' bottom lines. 

Corporate bottom lines are affecting all that we are allowed to see and hear on the supposedly public airwaves.  A relatively few giant corporations control the media, and it's not just political speech they censor.  They won't tolerate risk or innovation in any direction - it might hurt the bottom line.  A recent Ted Turner article on the AlterNet laid it out in black and white.  Money is controlling not only our free expression but our culture, and both are being stifled.

We're familiar with American Greed in other contexts.  Japanese automakers were willing to take a few years of losses to develop a hybred car.  Now they have a marketable product and are in the black again.  American auto executives wouldn't take the risk.

The reason the Occupational Safety and Health Act was necessary and continues to be controversial is that spending money on employee safety can cause a short term dip in the bottom line.  Machine guarding costs money and doesn't really produce a profit; it just keeps your employees from getting their arms cut off in the machines.  A safe workplace produces a better, steadier profit in the long run, but it can make nasty bumps in your bottom line.

Now this greed is stifling our culture and our First Amendment freedoms.

Terror and November 2

Remember, I died for democracy. Democracy means free elections. 
I have been greatly upset by Bush's trial balloons about putting off the election in the event of a terror attack.  As Norman Solomon noted on the AlterNet, the media comment so far has been negative but leaves the possibility open that a postponement might be necessary.  WE MUST NEVER LET THIS HAPPEN.
 
The VILLAGE VOICE has turned up a more likely - and chilling scenario:

Wayne Madsen, who worked at the National Security Agency (NSA) during the Reagan administration and currently is a journalist, sketches a more plausible scenario than the recent trial balloon floated by the administration-controlled Election Assistance Commission about possibly postponing the vote if there is a terrorist attack. Here's Madsen's scenario, step by creepy step:
If, on November 2, Kerry is ahead in key battleground states, then Bush will announce an imminent terrorist threat in California and maybe Washington state.
By 5 p.m. EST (2 p.m. on the Pacific Coast), Bush HQ will know whether Kentucky and Indiana—key states—are lost. If it looks like they are going down the drain, then the White House will flash the go-ahead, and the U.S. Northern Command (which has military jurisdiction over the U.S.) will, along with the Homeland Security Department and California authorities, declare an imminent terrorist threat.
Polls will remain open, but everyone will be trying to get out of urban centers as fast as they can. Traffic jams will cause panic and make people change their plans to vote after work. "A number of working-class voters in urban centers," Madsen theorizes, "will either be caught up in California's infamous freeway traffic and be too late to get to their polling places or be more concerned about their families and avoid voting altogether."
The people mostly likely thrown off balance who will decide not to vote will be middle- and low-income Californians—the Democratic base. Well-to-do voters (Republicans, more often than not) will likely have cast their ballots early.
By reducing the turnout among urban Democrats, Bush HQ will thus be manipulating the state's 54 votes into the Republican column. If things get worse for Bush as the Eastern vote comes in, the "terrorist alert" can be expanded to Washington state, where panicky rush-hour traffic jams in cities like Seattle can reduce the Democratic vote there, too.
 
Friends, we must prevent this!  Let's encourage early voting.