Never heard of him.

In related news, Reuters reports that the collective IQ of the Charlottesville area is expected to see a temporary drop of approximately 25 points on July 4th. According to a White House spokesperson, this is not related to any of the President’s travelation plans.

Oh, the protests he will attract - this could be a real boon for the local hotel industry.

UGH!!!

Kate, think you answer lies in the wording here:

“he has chosen to spend part of the last Independence Day of his presidency at Monticello.”

If they already had a speaker lined-up, this prob wasn’t their call…

Make plans to unwelcome him now!

Dress Republican.

Bring your vocal chords.

Get there early.

http://charlottesvillepeace.org/node/1615

This fine not-commonwealth has voted Republican every year for the last 40 or so, and that includes our respected Prez Bushy, so clearly you’all like him, or you are powerless people who have no say in state level politics.

Go Bush. Go Guns. Go Cigs. Go Virginia. The South will rise again.

your concern has been expected, heard, appreciated, and noted

it does not rise to the level of outweighing the need to stand up to fascism while we can

many a good german obligingly shut up out of respect for many a solemn ceremony, often for quite touching reasons that did not measure up to the gravity of the moment

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

THE CONSTITUTION’S CHIEF DOMESTIC ENEMY IS BUSH
JEFFERSON GAVE US THE DEFENSE
IT’S CALLED IMPEACHMENT

DEFENDING THE CONSTITION
MEANS IMPEACHING BUSH

HERE’S WHY:
http://afterdowningstreet.org/bush

OH WAIT: HE HASN’T FORNICATED
NEVER MIND

OTD - I agree, it is really a shame for these new citizens.

protests or not - just his being there ruins it. Why on earth he would be interested in welcoming new citizens when he has been so nasty about immigration is beyond me.

Assuming of course that he knows what a naturalization ceremony is…

I hope the protesters will be respectful of the parts of the program that are specific to the new citizens. It is a huge day for them and their families.

Okay folks, listen up… if you want to really protest, how about holding the Monticello Foundation accountable for inflicting this disruption on the citizenry and environs of Charlottesville? A bonafide patriot, Ken Burns, was scheduled to welcome new Americans on the sacred ground of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. At the last minute, all are informed that instead, a war criminal and scofflaw of our Constitution has “decided” to take Monticello up on their “standing invitation to a sitting president.” Our law enforcement, residents, and visitors will all have to pay a price, like they’re not paying enough already to GWB’s oil baron associates, for this fiasco. Write to Dan Jordan and his Board of Directors and let them know how shameful their actions are to Mr. Jefferson’s legacy.

I already wrote to the Foundation and you all should too. They aren’t answering the phone over there. There is no e-mail address for Jordan, the bigwig, but there is for the VP and CFO, Victoria Jones. It is .

Boycott the Foundation and let them know it!

Thank you for speaking up. I contacted them as well. Shameful day is right.

Thought experiment: The smoke and airplane debris had come from The Rotunda instead of the Pentagon as I saw it.

…disruption on the citizenry….facisim…destruction of the Constitution…yeah, uh huh…

Have you forgotten? Clearly so.

This is why your arguments ring so incredibly hollow with those who don’t listen to Phish or have two brain cells left.

Hey crispy duck,
Jefferson’s corpse finally just started to smile.
Is it possible rebellion is not dead in his land?

Indeed, Mr. Swanson, as long as there are a few of us out here who don’t cringe at the words “liberal” or “hippie.”

“As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.”

— George Washington

Is he going to apologize for being the WORST president and ruining our country? Probably not I’d guess.
Finally the MISSION is almost ACCOMPLISHED of getting his dumb ass outta office!

Is this the fault of the TJ Foundation? The White House called and told them Bush wanted to be there. What are they to say, No he can’t come? As far as I know, the Foundation steers clear of taking political sides. They have allowed any and all Presidents to visit, as far as I know.

Ok, RtofCville…here’s your story….

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-07-23-bush-protesters_x.htm

You asked for “one law-abiding American who’s been whisked away to the gulag of the Bush Administration never to be heard from again.” Here’s a few who have been heard from. As for the rest, if they are never heard from again, how would we know about it? Very poor argument.

You wrote, “Go read Gulag Archipelago for a true rendition of abridged rights and injustice against a citizenry.”

Sure, there’s no “gulag” in America because people have the right to speak out when a leader is doing more harm than good, and we must continue to exercise that right to keep the “gulag” at bay.

The comparison is offensive, actually. Of course we don’t have it that bad. You choose such inflations of the truth becuase you are desperate to justify your point of view.

Don’t try to distract yourself from the issues today with an argument that “it could be much worse, look what they had to go through.”

Very weak.

Susan,
You point to a story about some folks bent on disturbing the peace in one line, state the possibility of being swept away to an actual gulag (only we don’t know because they wouldn’t be heard from again) in another, and a couple sentences later you say “in America people have the right to speak out when a leader is doing more harm than good.”

So which is it?

As for the story, a) consider the source and the story’s tone (hardly the objective just-the-facts distribution of a series of events) and b) note that all presidents have had their share of kooks taken off to the pokey from public events to cool off in the interest of safety, peace, and a host of other reasons that have nothing to do with abridgement of our freedom of speech. Personally speaking, I wouldn’t give a flip if some John Birch Society member next to me were carted off at a Bill Clinton speech I happened to be attending (even though I think he’s lent to worse constitutional infractions then anything Bush ever has); it’s just plain bad manners for one and for another who knows if the guy was going to fly off the deep end and do something worse.

My admittedly hyperbolic example of the old soviet gulags was only in accordance with the literal hyperbolic notices of the state of the nation as expressed by the likes of Messrs. Swanson and duck. The weakness of the hard left’s view is displayed by the weakness of the hyperbole. Don’t blame me for the lack of logic on your side of the fence.

Nice try though.

I’ll bow out of this discussion. I have to go watch my DVR’d NASCAR race, drink a beer with Billy Joe Bob, and set my spring traps around the compound lest Mr. Duck come after me later tonight. Last word is yours if you like.

A Gulag Tale:

The guards at Guantanamo are terrified. Even a man with no legs (amputated after being intentionally exposed to extreme cold by American guards in Afghanistan) is treated as a horrifying threat:

Here’s a quote. “The bandages wrapped around Abdul’s stumps were never changed. When he took them off himself, they were full of blood and pus. He showed the bandage to the guards and pointed to his open wounds. The guards ignored him. Later I saw how he tried to wash the bandages in his bucket of drinking water. But he could hardly move his hands, so he wasn’t able to. And even if he had, where would he have hung them up to dry? He wasn’t allowed to touch the fence. He wrapped his stumps back up in the dirty bandages.

“When the guards came to take him to be interrogated, they ordered him to sit with his back to the door and put his hands on his head. When they opened the door, they stormed in as they did with every other prisoner. They hit him on the back and pushed him to the ground. Then they handcuffed and bound him so he could no longer move. Abdul howled in pain.” End quote.

A man with no legs? No, a terrorist with no legs, a mythical evildoing creature with no legs. Hatred? Yes. Bigotry? Yes. But driven by fear instilled through training in the U.S. military, fear of monsters with superhuman powers, fear strong enough to make a team of armored storm troopers fear a legless man in a cage.

The passage I quoted is from “Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo,” by Murat Kurnaz, and reading his account might begin to make the reader, too, view the caged prisoners as less than human, were it not for the skillful way in which Kurnaz intersperses descriptions of his pre-Guantanamo life in Germany.

Kurnaz made the mistake of traveling from Germany to Pakistan shortly after September 11, 2001. He has never been to Afghanistan, except in the custody of American guards who took him there from Pakistan on the way to Cuba. The Americans never alleged any particular crime, but simply declared him an enemy combatant and took away five years of his life. A U.S. military kangaroo-court commission convicted him on two counts. The first was having once been friends with a man who supposedly committed a suicide bombing long after Kurnaz was in Guantanamo and about which Kurnaz knew nothing. The strangest part about that first count is that the alleged suicide bomber is alive and well back in Germany, has never been involved in anything of the sort, and has not himself been charged with anything. The second count was of having accepted free food from a humanitarian group with which Kurnaz was working in Pakistan. How that act made Kurnaz “the worst of the worst” is not clear. While the United States always knew that they’d paid $3,000 to someone to turn Kurnaz in, in Pakistan, on the basis of no suspicion of anything, the tribunal concluded that he’d been arrested as an al Qaeda fighter in Afghanistan. At least that was the conclusion up until the moment the United States set him free, or the moment three years earlier when the United States decided he was innocent but allowed him to be tortured daily for three more years prior to release.

At Kandahar air base in Afghanistan, Kurnaz was deprived of food and sleep, routinely beaten, electro-shocked through his feet, threatened with drowning and his head held under water, and hung from the ceiling by his wrists until he lost consciousness. Kurnaz was in very good physical shape prior to this ordeal, and survived it. He saw others die from these procedures. Kurnaz did not know at the time that the worst still lay ahead for him on a Caribbean island, and he had no idea where he was being taken when they loaded him on the plane for Guantanamo:

“They chained us together and herded us onto a plane. We were bound so tightly we couldn’t move a millimeter. Again, I thought they were taking us to an American military base in Turkey. What else was I supposed to think?

“Sleep would have been the only consolation in such a situation. But the soldiers kept hitting us to keep us awake. I thought about the American movies I had seen in Bremen. Action flicks and war movies. I used to admire the Americans. Now I was getting to know their true nature.

“I say that without anger. It’s simply the truth, as I saw and experienced it. I don’t want to insult anyone, and I’m not talking about all Americans. But the ones I encountered are terrified of pain. They’re afraid of every little scratch, bacteria, and illness. They’re like little girls, I’d say. If you examine Americans closely, you realize this - no matter how big or powerful they are. But in movies, they’re always the heroes.”

Brought to the New World in a transport reminiscent of slave ships, Kurnaz was placed in a small metal cage (six by seven feet) exposed to the sun, rain, spiders, snakes, and soldiers, on a lawless military base in Cuba. And he was better off than most of those around him.

“I know of a prisoner,” he wrote, “who complained of a toothache. He was brought to a dentist, who pulled out his healthy teeth as well as the rotten one. I knew a man from Morocco who used to be a ship captain. He couldn’t move one of his little fingers because of frostbite. The rest of his fingers were all right. They told him they would amputate the little finger. They brought him to the doctor, and when he came back he had no fingers left. They had amputated everything but his thumbs.”

Even in Cuba, one of the torture techniques employed is subjection to extreme cold inside a chilled metal box. Kurnaz provides us an inside account of these experiences, and of the day-to-day life of solitary confinement, beatings, interrogations, and denial of adequate nutrition. Kurnaz was once kept awake for three weeks. He was given extensive stays in solitary. He was subjected to extremes of cold and heat. He was denied oxygen almost to the point of suffocation.

When guards trampled a Koran, the prisoners began a hunger strike and discovered that the General in charge did not want them to die. They discovered that they had some power, and they got organized. In the end, Kurnaz and others were force-fed, and the commander of Guantanamo was replaced with another (General Geoffrey Miller) who seemed not to care at all who lived or died. Prisoners once mixed feces and water and threw it on Miller’s face, and from that point on called him “Mr. Toilet.”

In this environment, Kurnaz found humanity among the prisoners, who shared the little food they were given and cared for each other. And in very rare instances he found humanity in a couple of guards who spoke of their disagreement with what they were engaged in. One can only hope that every man and woman who has served as a guard at Guantanamo reads Kurnaz’s book and adds their voice to the growing chorus speaking truth to unspeakable power.

In Guantanamo, prisoners are sometimes told they are being released, given clothes, placed on airplanes, and then thrown back in their cages. So, Kurnaz was inclined to be skeptical when told of his impending release:

“I was brought to an interrogation room and chained to the floor. But no one came to ask me any questions. Hours later, two soldiers appeared and placed a telephone on the table.

“‘You’ll be getting a call,’ they told me.

“That made me curious. I didn’t know who the caller would be. An interrogator? My lawyer? Maybe the judge?

“More hours passed. What was going on here? Suddenly the phone rang, but no one came to help me.

“I couldn’t pick up the receiver with my hands and feet shackled, but the telephone kept ringing. I threw myself to the floor and tried to drag the table toward me with my feet. Kicking one of the table legs, I managed to dislodge the receiver and knock it down to the floor. I squirmed to get my head as close as possible to the handset. I could just hear a voice on the other end of the line.

“‘Hello? Hello?’

“‘Yes…’

“It’s me, Baher. You’re going to be released!’

“‘I know. How are you doing?’

“‘Murat, are you listening? You’re going to be released.’

“‘I know,’ I said. ‘They’re playing a nasty trick on you. How is your daughter doing?’

Yet he was released. And yet we do not all know his name. For five year our tax dollars paid guards to ask him his name and other basic questions endlessly, between beatings. And yet we do not all know his story or feel the shame of it.

All across the United States of America there are university departments that claim to teach philosophy and others that claim to teach politics, and yet there are not a million students and professors in Washington, D.C., every day demanding impeachment. How can this be? Can a German victim of our apathy shake us out of our Good-Germanism?

David, you are right on. ROC, you are foolish; you can’t win this, man. The duck does not mess around.
And it’s “cripsy” not crispy - where’ve you been?!

For those who have questioned the “appropriateness” of protesting Mr. Bush’s visit, perhaps you might consider that the people who will become US citizens on Friday have become refugees, to some extent, because they disagree with the governments of the countries from which they come and they lack the freedom to express their opposition. What more fitting demonstration, especially on this occasion, of what being an American really means could you imagine than expressing your opposition to George Bush?

By Laurie Dobson

Generally Bush tries to come to Kennebunkport on July 4th. It’s Bush family tradition. This year, however, we have a large assemblage coming to Kennebunkport with keynote speaker Bob Bowman. Also speaking will be Harold Burbank, Kurt Daims, and myself, Laurie Dobson, with open discussions planned regarding the current state of the world and including updates on the Bush Indictment Resolution going forward in Kennebunkport. So I don’t think he wants to be here this year…

Laurie Dobson is Maine’s Independent for US Senate
http://www.dobsonforsenate.com

Why all the inflammatory remarks? July 4th is a great day for our Nation, it is our ‘birth’ day and without it, none of us would have the freedoms we have (left, right or middle). There is a time and place for protests, no matter what anyone says and the more reasonable we are, the more we will be heard in the long run. Otherwise we just look like fools. This is an opportunity for all of us on all sides to show our respect for each other and to welcome our new citizens.

God Bless us all and our Nation.

Declaration of Impeachment

Issued by Veterans for Peace for July 4

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and are instituted to secure the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But

“…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

…all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations…design(s) to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

…The history of the present King (George) of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny…To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
§ He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
§ He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
§ He has…deprive(ed) us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury…transport(ed) us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
§ He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us…
§ He is at this time transporting large Armies…to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
§ He has constrained our fellow Citizens…to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

A (President) whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
We, therefore…do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People…solemnly publish and declare, That these…Free and Independent (People)…are Absolved from all Allegiance to the (Bush Administration), and that all political connection between them and (this Administration), is and ought to be totally dissolved…And for the support of this Declaration…we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

(Note: Except for the first two lines above and words in parentheses, this Declaration is quoted directly from the original Declaration of Independence.) http://www.veteransforpeace.org

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all.
By Naomi Wolf, The Guardian, Tuesday April 24, 2007

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

READ THE REST.

Dave Swanson,

Just admit you don’t like Bush an stop saying he is violating the
Constitution .Totally butch of BS as if that is true then a number of
Presidents would have been in violation..including FDR of the detention
of Japanese in WWI.I

As far as the drop in IQ…I think he will increase it over you liberal idiots on this blog….Did YOU graduate from Yale and Harvard. ANd yes he had better grades than Kerry and Gore but then again that is not saying
much !!

FYI:

Cheney to Join Bush in Celebrating Constitution (R.I.P.) on Fourth of July

While George Dubya will desecrate Monticello with some dishonest remarks from a podium on Friday as new citizens swear to defend the Constitution he has destroyed, this AP story has the plans of the man in charge. Dick Cheney will make his remarks on a ship named the Constitution and talk about fighting pirates rather than being one:

**

Dick Cheney to visit Boston on July Fourth
By Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney will be in Boston on July Fourth to attend a ceremony aboard the USS Constitution.

Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said today that Cheney will attend Friday’s military reenlistment ceremony on the historic warship, known as “Old Ironsides.”

The Constitution was commissioned in 1797 and is docked at Boston’s historic Charlestown Naval Yard, a national park. The ship never lost a battle, from fighting pirates in the Caribbean to British in the War of 1812.

**

While only a small minority anywhere in the United States actually supports Bush or Cheney, it will be interesting to see which setting serves as better protection for them from protesters cowed by fears of negative PR. Bush will surround himself with new citizens being naturalized, and Cheney with members of the military. While most Americans oppose the policies of their military, many are extremely resistant to saying so in the presence of members of the military. Charlottesville and Boston, birthplaces of the Revolution and of the author of the Declaration of Independence, let the contest begin. Where does the spirit of rebellion still breathe?

While you fools are bickering online, helicopters have been flying over my house for two hours (9-11 am Wed. in Belmont) CPD confirmed it’s “in preparation of the president.” And my long distance calls have become mysteriously static, the last one just cut out. We’ve got two more days of this invasion to endure!

wanted clinton impeached over bosnia, although not over sex, and still do, except that some other folks have opened up a huge lead in the contest for who most merits impeachment first

(sorry to but-in on this conversation between you and some guy with my name who holds opinions you invent)

best,
David