A Great Blue Heron hunts for food at the pond near Springfield Place. It's the one I have video of already and will add more soon. Nature is so wonderful! I love it.
Oh, also this morning he was at the beaver pond, or shall I say the former beaver pond, at the side of the road. Probably wondering what the heck happened to one of his favorite fishing areas.
First picture: lush beautiful pond, wildlife galore. Second picture: Humans don't like pond, drain pond. Stupid humans!
Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.
Albert Einstein
(People: refuse to go to war.)
I would like to thank the following for their support, prayers, thoughts and action in helping with the Buck Bannister Liver Transplant Fundraiser:
With your kindness we can overcome a great obstacle. We must raise money for Buck's Liver transplant. You can help by going here and then telling your family and friends about it. Please give this your consideration and if you can act quickly.
We have earned 6%, ($101.60) of our $1500.00 goal. This is all thanks to just a few people so far, in just a couple of days starting out. A special note of thanks to:
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive."
Thomas Jefferson
In his speech today, Attorney General Gonzales utterly repudiates the view he expressed under oath to the Senate. He now states that it is his view that a state of war is in fact a blank check for the President, that there are no limits to Presidential wartime power and that he no longer recognizes the role of the courts in our system of government regarding national security issues.
SPECTER: You may be treading on your interdiction and violating common sense, Mr. Attorney General.
So, what do you think? Would you vote for her? She's not just beginning a campaign, she's starting a conversation. Are we ready for a woman president? I would be, but I like Russ Feingold, John Edwards and some others better, yes even Dennis Kucinich. Those who have been anti-war all along the way. Those who have not been as political, more philosophical and more principled.
As far as women go, Nancy Pelosi lost me a little on her, "democrats will not cut off funding for our troups as long as they are in harm's way" stance. How else is this delusion going to end? More money, more troups? Same thing with Hillary as far as the war goes. But as with anything human we go in increments towards something better, as we work out all the details and all the complications. Or we go in increments towards something else if we allow some to manipulate others for their own good---mmm--that would be like "going to hell in a handbasket"?
Your Inner European is Italian! |
 Passionate and colorful. You show the world what culture really is. |
Gone is the beaver pond. (Damn-- dam)
I have been enjoying seeing the beavers lately in the early morning before sunrise. Eating on nuts or seeds or something on the ground by the road. I hope I got a picture of one, (it was dark).
Anyway, no more at least for a while. They removed the dam. Damned humans. The picture on the top shows the reason-- as the dam was getting too close to the culverts with all the heavy rain and flooding. For the beavers it was an opportunity for bigger and better things, (till the humans came along). The bottom picture shows the 
culverts cleared. The first day I saw this the water was even lower than in the picture and my heart was broken. There was less than a foot of water left that day. The beavers had bulit up, my guess, at least 8 feet or more.
I hope they didn't kill the beavers. I'm going to call about it and I'll post more later.
“Jodl! Is Paris burning?”
—Adolf Hitler
Aug. 25, 1944
Petraeus! Is Baghdad Burning?
From the article by Stan Goff
found at Truthdig
"The reason I lead into a discussion of the Bush administration’s military “surge” plan for Iraq by talking about fossil fuels is that neither the government nor the media seem inclined to talk about the subject. The desperation of the coming escalation of criminal lunacy is based not on some fantasy but on a real and coming competition between the U.S. and basically everyone else for these energy stores, even as most honest experts agree that world production of oil has now peaked and will begin an inexorable and irreversible decline. The reason for attempting to implant permanent U.S. military bases in the Persian Gulf area and install compliant governments (the real reason for the war from the very beginning) has everything to do with securing control over the region.
The surge plan is a painfully twisted military option, but what is twisting it is not well understood. Stability in Iraq could be achieved relatively easily, even now, in conjunction with a precipitous redeployment of Anglo-American military forces. The strange attractor—strange mostly because the media never mention it—is Iraq’s ”first postwar draft hydrocarbon law,” which would ”set up a committee consisting of highly qualified experts to speed up the process of issuing tenders and signing contracts with international oil companies to develop Iraq’s untapped oilfields.” This law, which is tantamount to privatization with an Anglo-American franchise in perpetuity, is the bottom line for the U.S., as evidenced by the fact that this is the one, absolute, bottom-line point of agreement between the Bush administration and the so-called Iraq Study Group. The rhetorical scuffle between these two entities is not the what, but the how.
"That Baghdad has become the concentrated focus of most U.S. military efforts in Iraq now is material evidence of the scale of the U.S. defeat there; it is also an indication of exactly how desperate the surge notion really is."
From Columbia South Carolina:
Biden calls for removal of Confederate flag
Sen. Joseph Biden, a Democratic presidential hopeful joining fellow Sen. Christopher Dodd at Martin Luther King Jr. holiday events, said Monday he thinks the Confederate flag should be kept off South Carolina's Statehouse grounds.
"If I were a state legislator, I'd vote for it to move off the grounds -- out of the state," the Delaware senator said before the civil rights group held a march and rally at the Statehouse here to support its boycott of the state.
A little much needed miracle at the end of a frustrating day:
It was already dark when I finished my paper routes this afternoon. I had no drinks at home so I went to the store and on my way home I stopped at the beaver pond, where last night I again saw a huge beaver eating near the roadside. You never know when you'll see things in nature, so as long as I'm close I drive by.
Well low and behold, (if I may say) there was the Great Blue Heron at the side of the pond. Wow! I talking about 25 feet away, not having to get out of the car.
I never knew he/she visited there. I had seen him/her earlier at the pond over at Springfield Place where I deliver papers. That's where I took the video of him/her up on the pinetree.
It was pretty dark, sky not yet totally dark, but with the aid of street lights I could see him/her very clearly.
Thanks, nature, I needed that to lift my spirits. I don't know why it does but I accept it.
me in the EE
From an article by Gary Hart: A Surge of Constitutionalism
The endless Iraq war is decreasingly about Iraq and increasingly about the U.S. Constitution.The article goes on to say:
President Bush's decision to escalate the war, and to further Americanize it, is based on his flawed and dangerous theory of the "unitary presidency," a theory under which, once war is declared, the president as commander in chief can ignore constitutional checks and balances, disregard the bill of rights, suspend accountability, and concentrate dictatorial power in his own hands.
History has already judged the invasion and occupation of Iraq as an American disaster of epic proportions. But an even more important judgment remains to be made. What damage has been done to the U.S. Constitution and our form of government in the name of the "war on terrorism" as cover for a secret neo-conservative agenda in the Middle East?
Surely now even the most cynical neo-conservative is prepared to declare victory. We destroyed all those weapons of mass destruction that Richard Cheney knew existed. Iraq is no longer an imminent threat to U.S. national security, not that it ever was. We have rid ourselves of the tyrant S. Hussein (though it was never quite clear why he, among several dozen tyrants, deserved our special attention), and we have given the Iraqi people freedom, which they are now using to kill each other.Read entire article at link above.
What we, the world's most dominant military power in history, cannot do is impose peace on a nation with scores to settle.
Needed now is not a surge of military forces. Needed now is a surge of citizen commitment to restore the Constitution of the United States of America.
Washington - Seventy percent of Americans oppose sending more troops to Iraq, according to a new poll that provides a devastatingly blunt response to President Bush's plan to bolster military forces there.
All sides in the Iraq debate are keenly aware of mounting public dissatisfaction with the situation: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday it's one thing on which all Americans - including administration officials - are united.
Yet the Associated Press-Ipsos poll found widespread disagreement with the Bush administration over its proposed solution, and growing skepticism that the United States made the right decision in going to war in the first place.
Just as 70 percent of Americans oppose sending more troops to Iraq, a like number don't think such an increase would help stabilize the situation there, the poll suggested. When asked to name the most important problem facing the U.S., 38 percent of those polled volunteered war, up significantly from 24 percent three months ago.
Here's a brief look at the Ethics of war I found interesting at Wikipedia
on the Philosophy of War page:
Ethical categories
Another possible system for categorizing different schools of thought on war can be found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (see external links, below), based on ethics. The SEP describes three major divisions in the ethics of war: the Realist, the Pacifist, and the Just War Theory. In a nutshell:
* Realists will typically hold that systems of morals and ethics which guide individuals within societies cannot realistically be applied to societies as a whole to govern the way they, qua societies, interact with other societies. Hence, a state's purposes in war is simply to preserve its national interest. This kind of thinking is similar to Machiavelli's philosophy, and Thucydides and Hobbes may also fall under this category.
* Pacifists, however, maintain that a moral evaluation of war is possible, and that war is always found to be immoral. Gandhi and Tolstoy were both famous advocates of pacifistic nonviolent resistance methods instead of war.
* Just War Theory, along with pacifism, holds that morals do apply to war. However, unlike pacifism, according to Just War Theory it is possible for a war to be morally justified. The concept of a morally justified war underlies much of the concept International Law, such as the Geneva Conventions. Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, and Hugo Grotius are among the philosophers who have espoused some form of a just war philosophy.
From Crooks and Liars
This video doesn't really give you the sense of all these thousands of birds swooping and swarming together in this dance. You can see the individual birds, but they move like a single, undulating entity. It is truly hypnotic to watch. At sunset every day in Marin County, California, residents gather to watch this wonderful sight.
Greg Palast has an interesting insite as to whose idea it was to add 21,500 American troups to Iraq. From Waste Deep in the Big Muddy:
George W. Bush has an urge to surge. Like every junkie, he asks for just one more fix: let him inject just 21,000 more troops and that will win the war.Cheney and Abdullah
Been there. Done that. In 1965, Tom Paxton sang,
Lyndon Johnson told the nation
Have no fear of escalation.
I am trying everyone to please.
Though it isn’t really war,
We’re sending 50,000 more
To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese.
Four decades later, Bush is asking us to save Iraq from the Iraqis....
....Here’s my question: Who asked the waiter to deliver this dish? Who asked for the 21,000 soldiers?Read all at link above.
We know the US military didn’t ask for the 21,000 troops. (Outgoing commander General George Casey called for a troop reduction.)
We know the Iraqi government didn’t ask for the 21,000 troops. (Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is reportedly unhappy about a visible increase in foreign occupiers).
So who wants the occupation to continue? The answer is in Riyadh. When the King of Saudi Arabia hauled Dick Cheney before his throne on Thanksgiving weekend, the keeper of America’s oil laid down the law to Veep: the US will not withdraw from Iraq.
The chain reaction of evil--wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mexican state moves to allow same-sex unions
The legislature for the northern Mexican state of Coahuila on Thursday approved a law recognizing same-sex unions, the second assembly to take such an action in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation.More at link above.
The measure, which will provide same-sex couples with numerous social benefits similar to those of married couples, was approved with 20 votes in favor and 13 votes against, said Rep. Julieta Lopez of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Lopez helped the draft the bill.
Coahuila Gov. Humberto Moreira, who is also in the PRI, is expected to sign the bill into law.
First, I got to enjoy some time watching a beaver from my car while on my paper route. He or she was about 15 feet from me, 6 feet off the road, in the dark of the early morning, but lit somewhat by the nearest street lamp. M. Beaver was delighting on some kind of food on the ground and paid little attention to me as I pulled up lights off. Knowing that my dogs weigh around 50 to 60 lbs, I would estimate M Beaver was in the 40 to 50 lb range.
I keep forgetting to look up the Constellations to the right of Orion and Gemini. So, let's see. Yes, that's it. Taurus and above it, Auriga, the chariot driver. I learned of them over a year ago, but I gave up the route that goes into the country where I had my observation spots that I stopped at every clear night and learned many constellations. So now I see very few but still love it.
Many people are glad to have me back on another route which is during the day. I gave it up because I was planning on having chemo and radiation which I have since declined for a holistic healing approach for my cancer. It's nice when people are glad to see you and say nice things. I'm usually very upbeat and humorous even when I don't feel upbeat and humorous to begin with.
Tonight's music included Act III of Lohegrin. When the voice tired a little a slice of orange was all I needed and I was blasting away again. It's operatic singing, not what I do on my folk songs. I also sang some Brahms and some Italian songs. FUN. Must do MORE of that everyday!!
So there, besides keeping a watchful eye on my partner, Jesse who has liver disease and rests alot, and needs to go to the doctor alot, (in another town), and taking care of the dogs and Harlie the cat, I've had a full day and I barely thought about the "goings on" in the world---who needs it!!!
me in the EE
From TruthOut : Insanity Surge by Cindy Sheehan.
Bloody George, the lamest duck in US history, has announced to the nation that he will be sending 21,500 more troops into Iraq, which some call a "surge," some call an escalation, and I like to refer to as Operation Increasing Cannon Fodder.
The Hypocrite in Chief has said over and over again, throughout nearly four years of his malevolent and dysfunctional occupation, that he would increase troop levels when the "generals on the ground" asked him to. I guess he never said what he would do if his generals on the ground asked him not to send new troops, but apparently one will get canned, as Generals Casey and Abizaid recently found out.
We humans for peace and sanity need to descend on our Congressional offices to avert this calamity in the making. This past week, Speaker Pelosi threatened Bloody George with withholding funds for this newest venture into the abyss and WE need to make sure that she follows through with that threat. Bloody George's funds need to be cut off. He can't perpetrate any more murder or perpetuate any more hatred if the cash cow runs dry.
I am tired of the warmakers making war with our children. I am tired of our tired troops being sent over to do the dirty work for mob bosses who are going to squeeze the life out of Iraq and not leave until every asset and every natural resource has been raped from the country. I am tired of seeing Iraqis burying their loved ones and hearing the reverberating screams of mothers all over our country who are being destroyed for the benefit of a very few.
It seems that as Bloody George's time winds down, his incompetence surges, and it appears that impeachment is more urgent.
An escalation is not acceptable. Sitting idly by and watching it happen is not acceptable either.
Precedents for Congressional Power in regards to the Iraq war and Mr Bush's anticipated speech on troup escalation.
"A new report from the Center for American Progress illustrates that Congress has acted repeatedly over the last 35 years to ensure the conduct of military action would "strengthen American national security and reflect the concerns and will of the American people." Congress has passed bills, enacted into law, that capped the size of military deployments, prohibited funding for existing or prospective deployment, and placed limits and conditions on the timing and nature of deployments."
from the same article:
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) will propose one option, asserting Congressional authority and demanding accountability for the President's policy. Kennedy "will introduce legislation on Tuesday to require the president to gain new Congressional authority before sending more troops to Iraq.
At Democrats.com
Ten Reasons to Impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney
I ask Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney for the following reasons:
1. Violating the United Nations Charter by launching an illegal "War of Aggression" against Iraq without cause, using fraud to sell the war to Congress and the public, misusing government funds to begin bombing without Congressional authorization, and subjecting our military personnel to unnecessary harm, debilitating injuries, and deaths.
2. Violating U.S. and international law by authorizing the torture of thousands of captives, resulting in dozens of deaths, and keeping prisoners hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
3. Violating the Constitution by arbitrarily detaining Americans, legal residents, and non-Americans, without due process, without charge, and without access to counsel.
4. Violating the Geneva Conventions by targeting civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, and using illegal weapons, including white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and a new type of napalm.
5. Violating U.S. law and the Constitution through widespread wiretapping of the phone calls and emails of Americans without a warrant.
6. Violating the Constitution by using "signing statements" to defy hundreds of laws passed by Congress.
7. Violating U.S. and state law by obstructing honest elections in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006.
8. Violating U.S. law by using paid propaganda and disinformation, selectively and misleadingly leaking classified information, and exposing the identity of a covert CIA operative working on sensitive WMD proliferation for political retribution.
9. Subverting the Constitution and abusing Presidential power by asserting a "Unitary Executive Theory" giving unlimited powers to the President, by obstructing efforts by Congress and the Courts to review and restrict Presidential actions, and by promoting and signing legislation negating the Bill of Rights and the Writ of Habeas Corpus.
10. Gross negligence in failing to assist New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina, in ignoring urgent warnings of an Al Qaeda attack prior to Sept. 11, 2001, and in increasing air pollution causing global warming.
Sometimes I forget that only love will put things right and that in love things are right, things are as they are supposed to be. Not that things have to be the way they are, but that nothing, no illusion, no limitation, no misperception can change what IS. That is the EE.
Another word for the EE is simply Love. Love that is all-inclusive, everywhere present, all- knowing, all-embracing. How can this be when people seem to be so UN-loving so much of the time?
Can you love someone who seems to be the cause of so much grief and suffering? Someone who doesn't seem to care about anyone else? The Jesus dude is said to have said, "Love, like thy like enemies, dude." (Of course he spoke in Aramaic, and probably other languages, so the english translations are probably off a little.) Why is this all-inclusive love important?
I believe, most importantly, this idea changes you, the idea holder. Where there is love awareness there can be positive and long lasting change where needs be. Not the kind of change that actually causes more harm than good, the kind that seeks to rid oneself of projected evil, thereby retaining the inward unconcious evil to be revealed again and again in the "outward world". Love changes you from within so that the outer conditions are truely and really eventually changed for good as a reflection of the inward condition established by an alignment with what IS and has always been and will always be.
So... can I love those I have issues with? Can I love George Bush? Yes...when I remember who he really is, not what he does, not what he thinks or says, for he suffers from the results of his limited thinking, his illusions and delusions as do we all from ours. His may seem to have greater effect on humanity because of his position of responsibility, but without the consent of many others, he has no more power to effect negative change than anyone else. So his, and many others seem to have a negative effect, not even knowing so, as they attempt to force change with their sense of what is right and true. We all do this to some extent not realizing that with love these things that occur offer us a clearer choice for good the worse they get.
These forced changes change nothing really. For what is, IS. Cannot be changed ever. Can be ignored, can be unknown, but cannot not BE. Everything else only seems to be. So if we are judging by limited standards, that which seems to be, then we are also dillusional in our thoughts and deeds, however well intended.
It has been said, "judge not, record his deeds". This is a way of seeking truth and seeking "correction" or clarity as things are played out in relation to what IS. Nothing, no thing, no ISness is ever withheld from anyone seeking it. We may simply and in love, be at peace with everyone and everything, while yes, being aware of the illusions, the miscreations, the misperceptions, so that we are not affected by them, as a wise parent is not affected by the nightmares of his child, yet holds that child with tenderness and love and patient understanding unaffected by the onslaught of the childish perceptions.
This is not coddling and giving way to illusions, but a strong and gentle knowing, a "rock" upon which what Is is trusted to be the foundation of your being, so that you are at peace, that peace which passeth understanding. Offering no resistance to "evil" so that evil finds no playmate in you in an attempt to validate it's existence, which only seems to be.
May we delve deeper and deeper into the mysteries of LOVE. That Love which is all-inclusive and ever lasting. That love which allows us to percieve, as limited as perception is, a greater vision of who we are, who we really are.
me in the EE
Would you like another country bombing your town to possibly kill at least one terror suspect from your neighborhood. I don't think Mr Rogers would approve! This is abuse of power, this is insane.
When will we stop this insanity? What seeds are we planting for our future generations? What goes around comes around, as they say. Oh, yes and... WTF?????
MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN, Associated Press Writer
MOGADISHU, Somalia - One or more U.S. military gunships struck at least two sites in Somalia where Islamists were believed to be sheltering suspects in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. Embassies in East Africa and many people were killed, Somali officials and witnesses said Tuesday.
Read all at link above.
Also dear friend, are you watching what's happening in regards to Iran, Israel and the US?
Who is Planing Our Next War? by Patrick Buchanan
"Israel's war, says Bibi, must be sold as America's war.
We are thus forewarned. A propaganda campaign, using Israeli agents and their neocon auxiliaries and sympathizers, who stampeded us into war in Iraq, is being prepared to stampede us into war on Iran."
Was it and is it all about oil? Our soldiers lifes for the big oil companies' profits? DUH!
'Blood and oil; How the West the will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches'
Ron Brynaert
President Bush's new strategy for Iraq: fire anyone opposed to his flawed policies and rev up the troup numbers? (Oh, and toss in another billion for street sweepers.)
Frank Rich: Surge is a sham; Forces that killed Sheehan's son now run Iraq
Saw these at Raw Story
Over at Antiwar.com from Rep Ron Paul:
We have been in Iraq for 45 months. Many more Americans have been killed in Iraq than were killed in the first 45 months of our war in Vietnam. I was in the U.S. Air Force in 1965, and I remember well when President Johnson announced a troop surge in Vietnam to hasten victory. That war went on for another decade, and by the time we finally got out 60,000 Americans had died. God knows we should have gotten out ten years earlier. "Troop surge" meant serious escalation.
Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine and Scientific American reviews Deepak Chopra's 2006 book "Life After Death: The Burden of Proof." What follows is Deepak's rebuttal.
One of the underlying ideas is: is mind contained by the body, the physical, or is the body or the physical "reality" contained within mind. Is there a mind that serves all that seems to be, all that has existence and thereby extends beyond the physical death of an individual? Are we individuals or part of a greater whole? Are we many individual minds forever separated by physical boundaries that only exist while the body has life? Are there more dimensions to our existence than the physical?
A possible clue. The lesser is contained in the greater. Which is greater? Which is more aligned with what IS, the EE? Which is seeming and which is Being?
Go to article HERE.
Found this at IntentBlog.
me in the EE
I thought this was pretty neat. Don't know if I'd try it.
From Reuters at Yahoo. (They have a slide show of more pictures.)
Former professional Swiss military pilot Yves Rossy, the 'jet-man', flies in the sky like a rocketeer in the southern Swiss Alps near Nyon in November, 2006. Rossy is the first man ever to successfully fly with wings, full-powered by four engines in his back.
me in the rocketEEr
Who knew that the former Soviet bloc country, along with Slovenia were so advanced in regards to thier gay legislation.
The Czech Republic and Slovenia, which also acted last year to legalize gay and lesbian partnerships, are the first ex-Soviet Bloc countries to do so.The Czech law allows couples who register their partnership with authorities to have inheritance and health care rights similar to those given to heterosexual married couples.
The law, however, does not permit marriage or adoption of children by same-sex partners. Recent public opinion polls show most Czechs support same-sex couples having the option of registering their partnerships.
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The Carpetbagger Report
Senator Russ Feingold
Rep Ron Paul
Rep John Spratt
