Browsed by
Category: Activism

Who Will Get the Edwards Votes?

Who Will Get the Edwards Votes?

Comments 6 comments

I wonder if there might have been any behind-the-scenes action to push Edwards out. I can’t believe he didn’t stick in the race – at least until after Super Tuesday! ARGGHHHH.

So, what happens to us John Edwards supporters? Who will get the votes?

John Edwards had the actual plans across the board. I hope the remaining candidates will make their own plans more progressive, but I doubt they will.

I can only speak for myself, and I haven’t completely decided – although at this point, I have to lean toward Hillary Clinton.

My reservations about Barack Obama are mostly about foreign policy. I didn’t like what he said about Iran, and I fear that he may be more conservative than people think. There are too many followers and not enough people asking informed questions. The other small thing that bothers me is that calling him black seems a little racist, like the infamous “one drop” rule. The fact that he’s multi-racial should be a good thing, taking some of the either/or quality off the race debate. Somehow it’s not working that way.

Hillary Clinton is strong, and caring, and flexible, and shrewd enough to do the job well. The main problem is that so many people really hate her. And why? Because she shows all the qualities of a good leader, but happens to be female? So “assertive” becomes “bitchy”? And at the same time, she has one second of choking up during a luncheon (if you blinked, you would have missed it) and that becomes a media circus in which she is portrayed over and over as “weepy”? It seems very misogynistic to me. Still, I would love to get Ted Kennedy alone in a room and get him to tell me why he has rejected Clinton for Obama. That really surprised me.

It’s not enough just to be non-white, or non-male. Those things really don’t matter so much at this point in our history, and I’m over my idealism (thank you Condi Rice).

We have big, big problems in this country, and a huge mess – involving a number of crucial issues – to be addressed.

Who is going to be able to come through most successfully for all Americans, for the country as a whole, and for this country’s relationships with other countries and the world?

That’s my question, and it hasn’t been answered yet.

John Edwards Has Dropped Out!

John Edwards Has Dropped Out!

Comments 1 comment

Just got several notifications that Edwards has dropped from the presidential race. No statement from him that I can see yet.

It almost moves me to cussin’. Every candidate I have ever supported in the opening stages has dropped out of the race.

Why do we push out the best people?

WHY, John? Why did you quit?

I wonder who he will endorse. I can’t call it.

I’ve got some rethinking to do.

Woo-hoo John Edwards!

Woo-hoo John Edwards!

Comments 3 comments

Presidential candidate and all-around fantastic guy John Edwards has joined MyBlogLog, and VirusHead is the very blog community that he has joined! Thank you!

I sure would like to see him win the Presidency.

Download The Plan to Build One America (80 pp., pdf) to see some of the reasons why I am supporting John Edwards.

Here is Edwards’ response to the State of the Union Address last night:

The president tonight renewed his call for an economic recovery plan. But the plan he and Congress have offered leaves out tens of millions of Americans who need help the most. This plan would take months to have any impact, and the people I meet everyday on the campaign trail do not have months to wait. These people are hurting now and need this help now. Over the past seven years, typical workers’ paychecks have failed to keep up with inflation, millions of families are facing the loss of their homes to foreclosures, health insurance premiums have doubled, and families are spending $1,000 more a year on gasoline. The State of the Union may be interesting political theater, but until we find bold solutions to the challenges facing the country, we will be stuck with the same old small, Washington answers.

And in the chamber of the House of Representatives where the president speaks, even though this Congress stopped listening to him a while ago, they will still applaud and cheer him. The truth is that Washington is out of touch with what’s happening across the country. Between now and January of 2009, Democrats must stand up to this president, stand up for what’s right, so he does not continue to forget about the middle class in this country.

Read John’s blog to keep up with the latest on issues and doings.

How We Were Manipulated into the Iraq War

How We Were Manipulated into the Iraq War

Comments 3 comments

I hope that you’ve heard about the study from The Center for Public Integrity in which they collected 935 false statements by eight top administration officials in the period before the March 18, 2003 invasion of Iraq.

We have the searchable database now. Provable, documented lies that can’t disappear or be denied.

Iraq: The War Card – Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War argues that following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

According to the Washington AFP newswire at Yahoo news:

“These false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, just prior to congressional consideration of a war resolution and during the critical weeks in early 2003 when the president delivered his State of the Union address and Powell delivered his memorable presentation to the U.N. Security Council,” the CIJ added.

Bush was the chief of misstatement, with 260 — about weapons of mass destruction and links to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, trailed by then-secretary of state Powell with 254, the study charged.

The center emphasizes the point that its work calls into question “the repeated assertions of (George W.) Bush administration officials that they were merely the unwitting victims of bad intelligence.”

John Cushman at the Washington Post points out that

The database shows how even after the invasion, when a consensus emerged that the prewar intelligence assessments were flawed, administration officials occasionally suggested that the weapons might still be found. The officials have defended many of their prewar statements as having been based on the intelligence that was available at the time — although there is now evidence that some statements contradicted even the sketchy intelligence of the time.

No, they didn’t lie to us a thousand times…. it was just a little under that. But there were spikes – increases in the frequency and intensity of the statements – at politically opportune times. This suggests that they knew they were lying.

The study concluded that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”

Keith Olberman unpacks it with Rachel Maddow:

[youtube width=”350″ height=”289″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knA-lLRYr2Q[/youtube]

Calling Armchair Activists for Progressive Actions

Calling Armchair Activists for Progressive Actions

Comments 1 comment

Here are some more actions that you can take online. Pick a couple, or do them all!

Once again, it’s time for “JWs in the News”

Once again, it’s time for “JWs in the News”

Comments 0 Comment

Some recent media items on Jehovah’s Witnesses:

Surviving a JW Sadist

Alloma Gilbert has published an article – an excerpt from her upcoming book Deliver Me From Evil (March 2008) – on how she survived being starved, beaten and tortured by her Jehovah’s Witness foster mother Eunice Spry (see also the post Sadistic Foster Mom a Devout Jehovah’s Witness).

Ten years later, in court, I would hold one of the sticks she routinely used to thrust down our throats and show the world the two inches of dried blood still staining the end. It was shortly after this appalling incident that something inside me finally snapped. I was 11 by now and had been enduring Eunice’s terrible physical and psychological cruelty for nearly five years.

… But this time I’d had enough. I don’t know whether it was my outrage at all the previous punishments, or just growing older and more defiant, but I utterly refused to admit to something I hadn’t done. “It wasn’t me,” I said. Eunice stared hard at me and came and bent over me. “Answering back, are we?” she said. “Well, you can starve.”

This was the first moment I had ever really stood up to her and although it was only a small thing, and I knew I was going to be hungry afterwards, I felt a tiny edge of triumph. And so I starved. For a week she gave me nothing – not a single scrap to eat. It was a real battle of wills, and I became so weak and sick that I was hallucinating. In my desperation, I resorted to the pig bin and feasted greedily on mouldy boiled potatoes, vegetable peelings and pig nuts. It was revolting, but I just hoped it would give me the energy to survive.

I’m glad to see that Alloma reclaimed her name. To Eunice, who made her answer to the name “Harriet,” it was a magic “demonized” name.


JW’s “Not Exactly Interfaith,” Child Abuse, Sexual Assault, Medical Alarmists

The Independent has a scathing article in health news: The Big Question: Why are the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Why Do They Refuse Blood Transfusions?

Why don’t other religions stick up for them?

Because they have gone out of their way to be rude about them. They have their own, rather eccentric, translation of the Bible and rubbish everyone else’s beliefs as “mere human speculations or religious creeds”. They have routinely described the Roman Catholic Church as a “semiclad harlot reeling drunkenly into fire and brimstone”. Then there are “the so-called Protestants” and the “Yiddish” clergy “like foolish simpletons” participating in “the world empire of false religion”. I could go on. They do. They are not exactly big on inter-faith.

What’s the situation with child abuse?

Not good. They take Deuteronomy 19:15 literally, which demands two witnesses to a crime (not easy in cases of abuse). And they cite 1 Corinthians 6:1-11 – “Does anyone of you that has a case against the other dare to go to court before unrighteous men, and not before the holy ones?” – to justify trying to deal with criminals with courts of elders rather than courts of law. A Panorama investigation reported they have an internal list of 23,720 reported abusers which they keep private. Studies in the US suggest they have proportionally four times more sexual assaults on children than the Catholic Church.

But didn’t they change their policy a few years back?

No. In 2000 the church council announced that it would no longer expel members who had willingly had a blood transfusion. But only because by doing so they had excommunicated themselves. Many JWs still carry a signed and witnessed advance directive card absolutely refusing blood in the event of an accident. And the church’s website still carries alarmist material about the dangers of transfusions in transmitting Aids, Lyme Disease and other conditions. It also exaggerates the effectiveness of alternative non-blood medical therapies.

To verdener / Worlds Apart

In Denmark, a trailer is available for To verdener / Worlds Apart, an upcoming movie based on the life of a young Jehovah’s Witness woman. The situation of a Jehovah’s Witness that falls in love with a non-JW is a very, very common one. Even with the language barrier, you can see the makings of tragedy unfold. My stomach roiled as I watched it.

Watch the Preview

New Resources

Divorce, Blood Transfusions, and other Legal Issues Affecting Children of Jehovah’s Witnesses – The purpose of this website is to bring together in one website summaries of as many custody and other miscellaneous legal disputes involving children of Jehovah’s Witnesses as can be located in published news reports and court decisions. Currently, there are approximately 485 case summaries posted. Approximately 365 summaries are posted in the blood transfusions section; approximately 100 more lengthy summaries are posted in the divorces section; and approximately 20 other summaries are posted in other sections. An additional 50 historical case summaries are linked from the JW History page.

Employment Issues Unique to Jehovah’s Witnesses – A collection of lawsuits in which Jehovah’s Witness employees have sued their employer, as well as related employer issues. The website summarizes, discusses, or identifies approximately 380 Jehovah’s Witnesses cases and incidents, including civil court cases, criminal court cases, threatened lawsuits, complaints filed with various government agencies, media reports, other miscellaneous information about employment-related controversies.