on Memorial Day...

words from Abraham Lincoln:

"With malice toward none; with charity for all;
with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right,
let us strive on to finish the work we are in;
to bind up the nation's wounds;
to care for him who shall have borne the battle,
and for his widow, and his orphan --
to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace,
among ourselves, and with all nations."

Had a great time protesting Cheney...

...who was in San Diego yesterday, speaking at a fundraiser for Brian Bilbray, the Republican who is running against Democrat Francine Busby for Duke Cunningham's vacant seat in Congress.


The fundraiser was right off Harbor Drive, a scenic stretch of road near San Diego's airport, and the picturesque locale - along with some beautiful sunny weather and a friendly crowd - made a lovely setting for some demonstrating. About 100 people showed up, and after waving our signs at honking drivers for a couple of hours, we got our big payoff when Cheney's motorcade shuffled by, just a couple lanes away from us discontents and our signs - including the dead-on black and green one above.

Heartfelt reporting from Iraq...

...in this touching article from The New York Times:

As Death Stalks Iraq, Middle Class Exodus Begins
by Sabrina Tavernise

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 18 — Deaths run like water through the life of the Bahjat family. Four neighbors. A barber. Three grocers. Two men who ran a currency exchange shop.

But when six armed men stormed into their sons' primary school this month, shot a guard dead, and left fliers ordering it to close, Assad Bahjat knew it was time to leave.

"The main thing now is to just get out of Iraq," said Mr. Bahjat, standing in a room heaped with suitcases and bedroom furniture in eastern Baghdad...

"Shadows," said Eileen Bahjat, Mr. Bahjat's wife, standing with her two sons and describing what is left in the neighborhood. "Shadows and killing." (full article here)

Here comes the 'gration pork...

So at first glance, Bush's plan to militarize the border struck me as a desperate attempt to appeal to red voters' Neanderthal instincts, a la the condemnation of gay marriage. My second thought was "What stake might Halliburton have in this?" Sure enough, today's news tells of another W-enabled defense industry windfall.
This is how they fleece us:

Bush Turns to Big Military Contractors for Border Control
by Eric Lipton, The New York Times

WASHINGTON, May 17 — The quick fix may involve sending in the National Guard. But to really patch up the broken border, President Bush is preparing to turn to a familiar administration partner: the nation's giant military contractors.

Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, three of the largest, are among the companies that said they would submit bids within two weeks for a multibillion-dollar federal contract to build what the administration calls a "virtual fence" along the nation's land borders.

Using some of the same high-priced, high-tech tools these companies have already put to work in Iraq and Afghanistan — like unmanned aerial vehicles, ground surveillance satellites and motion-detection video equipment — the military contractors are zeroing in on the rivers, deserts, mountains and settled areas that separate Mexico and Canada from the United States...The equipment Border Patrol agents use, how and when they are dispatched to spots along the border, where the agents assemble the captured immigrants, how they process them and transport them — all these steps will now be scripted by the winning contractor, who could earn an estimated $2 billion over the next three to six years on the Secure Border job...

full article

Tom Tomorrow's come up with an equation...

...that makes a lot of sense to me. You can see more in Tom's store, and you can read his superb political cartoon - This Modern World - in dozens of papers and on sites like WorkingForChange.com.

I've long loved the writings of Paul Krugman...

...a Princeton economist and long-time Bush critic who has a knack for explaining tricky issues in simple, understandable terms. While many other pundits are devoting their air time to the immigration debate (which still seems like a suspicious debate to me - how it kind of materialized out of thin air), Krugman recently co-wrote a great summary piece on health care reform. Here's the moral:

A history of failed attempts to introduce universal health insurance has left us with a system in which the government pays directly or indirectly for more than half of the nation's health care, but the actual delivery both of insurance and of care is undertaken by a crazy quilt of private insurers, for-profit hospitals, and other players who add cost without adding value. A Canadian-style single-payer system, in which the government directly provides insurance, would almost surely be both cheaper and more effective than what we now have. And we could do even better if we learned from "integrated" systems, like the Veterans Administration, that directly provide some health care as well as medical insurance...

If you're interested in an enjoyably insightful breakdown of our nation's health care challenges, check Krugman's full briefing here.

The BBC on Cheney and the Russian response...

The Kremlin has described US Vice President Dick Cheney's tough condemnation of Russia on Thursday as "completely incomprehensible". Mr Cheney made his comments in a speech in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. He accused the Russian government was using oil and gas as tools of intimidation or blackmail...

Mr Cheney was on Friday in Kazakhstan promoting a new gas pipeline route that will by-pass Russia. The scramble for energy resources, so-called "pipeline diplomacy", has been likened to "the Great Game" during the 19th Century - the struggle for influence in Central Asia...

Full article here.

Here's a piece from David Swanson...

...at AfterDowningStreet.org. Some insightful analysis on the building GOP smear campaign against John Conyers, who has sounded but the faintest rumblings of impeachment.

Congressman Conyers has not done what the vast majority of Democratic voters and many Republicans want; he has not introduced articles of impeachment. Rather, he's stepped back a step and proposed creating an investigation that would make recommendations on impeachment. Talk about going slow! This is a proposal to make recommendations on beginning a process to charge people with a crime we all already know they're guilty of. That's all before a trial can even begin..

Swanson points to a poll that suggests - based on a survey of voters in battleground state Pennsylvania - that about 85% of Democrats would be likely to vote for a congressional candidate who supported impeachment. Interestingly, however, about 90% of Republicans said they would not support such a candidate. Anyhow, check Swanson's full article here.