Monthly Archive for June, 2006

Traffic mess today in Columbus? Guess who’s to blame…

That’s right, it’s the same guy responsible for almost every other piece of crap you can think of!

It’s the Friday before the 4th of July weekend. Traffic would probably have been crazy anyway. So of course Bush has to travel to one of our many rich-a$$ suburbs, right during rush-hour, and close every single street and highway along the way because God-forbid people go about their lives. Sure says a lot when you can’t even trust your own citizens to be within a certain radius of you.

So thanks @sshole, hope you make lots of money cause that’s all we care about too! Forget that silly Iraq war disaster… or the millions without health insurance… or the oil companies making record profits while we use our food budget to pay for gas so we can get to work and make minimum wage which hasn’t been raised in 8 years… go do what a President non-elected individual who pretends he was actually voted into office is supposed to do, attend a fundraiser!

Have fun hanging out with good ole’ Dewine and your rich constituents. You could use the time together to talk about what other parts of the Constitution you can destroy in the name of “National Security.” Us middle-class and poor folks don’t mind idling for hours on the highway waiting for the roads to open again. Gas is dirt cheap these days anyway, might as well use a ton of it! President Gore says that’s bad but you told me the truth about global warming and how greedy American consumption and SUV’s really aren’t causing it at all. Hakuna Matata Georgie!

P.S. The address of this fundraiser is (I think) 1297 Sherborne Ln, Powell, OH 43065. Do what you want with it. I know I will. ;-)

Bush’s rush-hour visit to close roads

The Columbus Dispatch – Friday, June 30, 2006

President Bush’s visit today will raise big bucks for Republican Sen. Mike DeWine — and cause big headaches for rush-hour motorists.

Portions of roadways, mostly on the North and East sides, will be closed around 5 p.m. for undetermined periods while Bush’s motorcade travels from Port Columbus to Powell for the highdollar fundraiser at the home of Randy and Sara Wilcox.

The president’s visit could bring much of northern Columbus to a standstill at a time when motorists will be eager to start the Fourth of July weekend, some of them by heading to the Ger- main Amphitheater on Polaris Parkway for a 7:30 p.m. concert featuring Chicago and Huey Lewis & The News.

“We’re hoping to minimize the delays,” said Tim Greenhalgh, agent in charge of the Columbus office of the Secret Service.

Although the Secret Service does not reveal the president’s travel route, the motorcade likely will use I-270 north to get to Powell. The closure of onand-off ramps, along with overpasses, could delay traffic on I-71, Rt. 315 and other roadways on the North Side, Greenhalgh said. He said the road closures will be for the shortest times possible.

Bush is expected to be at the fundraiser for about two hours, with portions of roadways again shut down when he heads back to the airport sometime after 7 p.m. The fundraiser is private, and Bush has no public events scheduled while in town.

Asked if he was concerned about a rush-hour traffic snarl, DeWine said: “We always have a concern. They’re (the White House) going to do whatever they can to try to minimize it.”

The fundraiser will generate more than $1 million for De-Wine’s campaign and the Ohio Republican Party, with several hundred people expected to attend.

Event attendees will pay at least $2,200 per person; the price for a photo opportunity with Bush at a VIP reception is $10,000.

Randy Wilcox, head of SARCOM Inc., a technology services company, is a loyal but moderate GOP donor. He and his wife have contributed about $14,000 to federal candidates during the past decade, including $2,000 to DeWine in 2000 and $4,000 to Bush in 2003, according to records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

DeWine said he asked the president to come to Ohio to raise money for his re-election bid. It’s the second visit for Bush since February, when he attended a Cincinnati-area fundraiser.

“I got to know the president very well during his (2004) presidential campaign,” De-Wine added. “Fran (DeWine) and I were with him in virtually every stop he made in Ohio.”

Brian Rothenberg, spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party, said DeWine has been reluctant to appear in public with Bush because of the president’s low popularity ratings but is more than willing to use him to raise cash.

“It’s never good for the nation when the president’s approval ratings are so bad that he has to sneak into town and then sneak out,” Rothenberg said.

DeWine said he is eager to appear with the president: “My intention is to greet him at the airport. That’s pretty public. I’m honored he’s coming in. I’m honored to greet him.”

As for the price tag for a politics-only visit by the president, DeWine’s campaign will get a bill from the federal government. Still, the amount a campaign is charged for such a visit isn’t likely to approach the actual costs — shrouded in secrecy but well into six figures — of transporting the president on Air Force One and hauling along his security apparatus.

Iraq War Ends Silently for One American Soldier

“I don’t know if this war is worth the life of Terry Lisk, or 10 soldiers, or 2,500 soldiers like him, what I do know is that he did not die alone. He was surrounded by friends.”

-Colonel MacFarland

Saluting Sgt. Terry Michael Lisk

RAMADI, Iraq – A soldier was dead, and it was time for him to go home.

The doors to the little morgue swung open, and six soldiers stepped outside carrying a long black bag zippered at the top.

About 60 soldiers were waiting to say goodbye. They had gathered in the sand outside this morgue at Camp Ramadi, an Army base in Anbar Province, now the most lethal of Iraqi places.

Inside the bag was Sgt. Terry Michael Lisk, 26, of Zion, Ill., killed a few hours before.

In the darkness, the bag was barely visible. A line of blue chemical lights marked the way to the landing strip not far away.

Everyone saluted, even the wounded man on a stretcher. No one said a word.

Sergeant Lisk had been standing near an intersection in downtown Ramadi on Monday morning when a 120-millimeter mortar shell, fired by guerrillas, landed about 30 paces away. The exploding shell flung a chunk of steel into the right side of his chest just beneath his arm. He stopped breathing and died a few minutes later.

The pallbearers lifted Sergeant Lisk into the back of an ambulance, a truck marked by a large red cross, and fell in with the others walking silently behind it as it crept through the sand toward the landing zone. The blue lights showed the way.

From a distance came the sound of a helicopter.

Death comes often to the soldiers and marines who are fighting in Anbar Province, which is roughly the size of Louisiana and is the most intractable region in Iraq. Almost every day, an American soldier is killed somewhere in Anbar — in Ramadi, in Haditha, in Falluja, by a sniper, by a roadside bomb, or as with Sergeant Lisk, by a mortar shell. In the first 27 days of June, 27 soldiers and marines were killed here. In small ways, the military tries to ensure that individual soldiers like Sergeant Lisk are not forgotten in the plenitude of death.

One way is to say goodbye to the body of a fallen comrade as it leaves for the United States. Here in Anbar, American bodies are taken first by helicopter to Camp Anaconda, the big logistical base north of Baghdad, and then on to the United States. Most helicopter traffic in Anbar, for security reasons, takes place at night. Hence the darkness.

In the minutes after the mortar shell exploded, everyone hoped that Sergeant Lisk would live. Although he was not breathing, the medics got to him right away, and the hospital was not far.

“What’s his name?” asked Col. Sean MacFarland, the commander of the 4,000-soldier First Brigade.

“Lisk, sir,” someone replied.

“If he can be saved, they’ll save him,” said Colonel MacFarland, who had been only a few yards away in an armored personnel carrier when the mortar shell landed.

About 10 minutes later, the word came.

“He’s dead,” Colonel MacFarland said.

Whenever a soldier dies, in Iraq or anywhere else, a wave of uneasiness — fear, revulsion, guilt, sadness — ripples through the survivors. It could be felt on Monday, even when the fighting was still going on.

“He was my best friend,” Specialist Allan Sammons said, his lower lip shaking. “That’s all I can say. I’m kind of shaken up.”

Another soldier asked, “You want to take a break?”

Specialist Sammons said, “I’ll be fine,” his lip still shaking.

Sergeant Lisk’s friends and superiors recalled a man who had risen from a hard childhood to become someone whom they counted on for cheer in a grim and uncertain place.

“He was a special kid,” Specialist Sammons said. “He came from a broken home. I think he was divorced. I’m worried that it might be hard to find someone.”

He said he would write a letter to the family — to whom it was not clear just yet.

Hours later, at the landing zone at Camp Ramadi, the helicopter descended. Without lights, in the darkness, it was just a grayish glow. With its engines still whirring, it lowered its back door.

The six soldiers walked out to the chopper and lifted Sergeant Lisk’s body into it. The door went back up. The helicopter flew away.

The soldiers saluted a final time.

In the darkness, as the sound of the helicopter faded, Colonel MacFarland addressed his soldiers.

“I don’t know if this war is worth the life of Terry Lisk, or 10 soldiers, or 2,500 soldiers like him,” Colonel MacFarland told his forces. “What I do know is that he did not die alone. He was surrounded by friends.

“A Greek philosopher said that only the dead have seen the end of war,” the colonel said. “Only Terry Lisk has seen the end of this war.”

The soldiers turned and walked back to their barracks in the darkness. No one said a word.

By Dexter Filkins, NYT – From CommonDreams.org

Rally for an Oil-Free Congress

Did you know the oil and gas industry has donated $10,161,359 to political campaigns this year alone? And surprise, surprise, 84% of those donations went to Republican candidates.

Oil free CongressFrom MoveOn.org: Gas prices are off the charts, the situation in the Middle East is unstable, and scientists are warning that global warming is at a tipping point. It’s time for an “Oil-Free Congress.”

We can’t afford Congress’s addiction to oil money anymore!

It keeps gas prices high, keeps us dependent on the Middle East and prevents a clean energy future for our kids.

On Wednesday, June 28th — right before the 4th of July when gas prices will be front and center as folks plan for the long weekend — gas station rallies will be held across the country.

Step Up Columbus!

Help pass out leaflets that detail our representative’s contributions from the oil industry and will push Congress to kick its addiction to oil money so we can move towards real energy independence.

  • TODAY! 5:30pm @ Speedway – Hilliard, OH (Main Street & Scioto-Darby)
  • TODAY! 5:00pm @ Exxon Station (Broad and Hamilton) – Columbus, OH

…I’ll be at the Hilliard one, outing the closet lefties!

Next Day Update: Well, there were 10 people signed up but only 3 people actually showed up, counting myself. The woman in charge spent over $100 on signs and flyers! So we showed them off to Hilliard drivers as they waited in the congestion that was Main St. and Scioto-Darby Rd.

About 80% of the reactions were good, one person yelled “get a job!” even though it was 6pm and I had just come from working all day. A fellow blogger who was there took a pic of me holding the sign. My head was not included for identity protection cause she didn’t want the CIA coming after us. Probably too late at this point.

Grand Oil Party

Today starts Comfest 2006

Come celebrate peace and social justice at Comfest, arguably the largest free, non-corporate urban music and arts festival in the US.

Where: Goodale Park, Columbus, Ohio
When: June 23 (12pm) – June 25th (10pm)

Comfest 2006

ComFest is a lot more than a huge, free music and arts festival. It is, among many other things, the largest platform for peace and social justice organizing in Ohio. It’s an intricate and expansive exercise in self-governance. It’s the premier competitive showcase for local musicians and artists. It’s a family reunion for generations of current and former Columbusites. It’s a liberated zone where social relations and politics and sexuality and art proceed at levels entirely different than corporate-sponsored festivals.

It’s everybody’s best effort to live authentically, with trust in others, for at least three days.
And it’s also now an engine for growth: this year ComFest implemented a new grant making process to return some of the proceeds from the festival to organizations that do real community-building in the neighborhoods of our hometown.

It’s a Party with a Purpose.

Eyes Wide Open comes to Columbus

Eyes Wide Open

Eyes Wide Open: An Exhibit on the Human Cost of the Iraq War was at the Ohio Statehouse from June 12th-14th. Unfortunately I was in NYC the whole time so I wasn’t able to see it. But there is some great photo and video coverage of the exhibit from other bloggers and photographers (including my Dad):

When the exhibit was here in Columbus there were 2,497 American soldiers represented on the lawn. Now that number is 2,507. Along with the estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilian casualties.

“Day by day we count the dead and dying
Ship the bodies home while the networks all keep score.

Day after day another Momma’s crying
She’s lost her precious child
To a war that has no end

Did that voice inside you say
I’ve seen this all before
It’s like Deja Vu all over again”

- John Fogerty

Gay Pride Month Series Part I: The Homosexual Agenda

Gay PrideThis weekend many GLBT people will be marching in their respective cities, making their presence known, and celebrating their pride as a community.

HA!

I’m not falling for that, and neither should you. We all know there’s an underlying motive for this silly “Pride” thing.

For starters, what’s to be proud about?

We are NOT proud because:

  • we were born this way
  • we have found love in this crazy world
  • we want to be true to ourselves

We ARE proud because:

  • we want to take over the world
  • we want to ruin the sanctity of marriage and destroy all existing heterosexual relationships
  • we want to adopt children with the sole purpose of turning them gay
  • we want to defy God’s intentions and live a life of eternal damnation in the depths of Hell

The list goes on and on, and it started to get a little complicated. We needed something to keep it all straight for us (no pun intended.) Thus, the Homosexual Agenda was born!

You’ve probably heard the term before, maybe from some scary right-wing organization that believes gay people pose a greater threat to our country than our murderous and entirely incompetent “President.” But do you really know what the gay agenda is? What we’re really trying to accomplish with our lifestyle?

Military Funeral in Greensboro, NCIt’s important that you know because our lovely friends from the Westboro Baptist Church (and other like-minded organizations) will be in town for the event. We only get to see these happy people once a year when they come to the Pride parade and give their childen signs to hold that are full of hatred. You can also find them at many military funerals holding signs like “Thank God for IEDS.” And boy do they like to talk about our Agenda! Okay maybe “talk” is the wrong word. More like scream “You’re going to hell! Save yourself!” as we peacefully walk down the street. They strongly believe the Pride March is a wonderful opportunity to teach their children that God hates mostly everybody.

So now, to make sure you can hold your own and defend our Mission, without further ado I present…

The Homosexual Agenda (aka “Gay Revolutionary”) by Michael Swift

In 1987, Michael Swift was asked to contribute an editorial piece to GCN, an important gay community magazine. A decade later this text, printed in the Congressional Record is repeatedly cited, apparently verbatim, by the religious right as evidence of the “Gay Agenda”. The video Gay Rights, Special Rights, put out by Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition cites it with ominous music and picture of children. But when the religious rights cites this text, they always omit, as does the Congressional record, the vital first line, which sets the context for the piece. In other words, every other version of this found on the net is part of the radical right’s great lie about gay people.

This essay is an outré, madness, a tragic, cruel fantasy, an eruption of inner rage, on how the oppressed desperately dream of being the oppressor.

We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all male clubs, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us.

Women, you cry for freedom. You say you are no longer satisfied with men; they make you unhappy. We, connoisseurs of the masculine face, the masculine physique, shall take your men from you then. We will amuse them; we will instruct them; we will embrace them when they weep. Women, you say you wish to live with each other instead of with men. Then go and be with each other. We shall give your men pleasures they have never known because we are foremost men too, and only one man knows how to truly please another man; only one man can understand the depth and feeling, the mind and body of another man.

All laws banning homosexual activity will be revoked. Instead, legislation shall be passed which engenders love between men.

All homosexuals must stand together as brothers; we must be united artistically, philosophically, socially, politically and financially. We will triumph only when we present a common face to the vicious heterosexual enemy.

If you dare to cry faggot, fairy, queer, at us, we will stab you in your cowardly hearts and defile your dead, puny bodies.

We shall write poems of the love between men; we shall stage plays in which man openly caresses man; we shall make films about the love between heroic men which will replace the cheap, superficial, sentimental, insipid, juvenile, heterosexual infatuations presently dominating your cinema screens. We shall sculpt statues of beautiful young men, of bold athletes which will be placed in your parks, your squares, your plazas. The museums of the world will be filled only with paintings of graceful, naked lads.

Our writers and artists will make love between men fashionable and de rigueur, and we will succeed because we are adept at setting styles. We will eliminate heterosexual liaisons through usage of the devices of wit and ridicule, devices which we are skilled in employing.

We will unmask the powerful homosexuals who masquerade as heterosexuals. You will be shocked and frightened when you find that your presidents and their sons, your industrialists, your senators,your mayors, your generals, your athletes, your film stars, your television personalities, your civic leaders, your priests are not the safe, familiar, bourgeois, heterosexual figures you assumed them to be. We are everywhere; we have infiltrated your ranks. Be careful when you speak of homosexuals because we are always among you; we may be sitting across the desk from you; we may be sleeping in the same bed with you.

There will be no compromises. We are not middle-class weaklings. Highly intelligent, we are the natural aristocrats of the human race, and steely-minded aristocrats never settle for less. Those who oppose us will be exiled.

We shall raise vast private armies, as Mishima did, to defeat you. We shall conquer the world because warriors inspired by and banded together by homosexual love and honor are invincible as were the ancient Greek soldiers.

The family unit-spawning ground of lies, betrayals, mediocrity, hypocrisy and violence–will be abolished. The family unit, which only dampens imagination and curbs free will, must be eliminated. Perfect boys will be conceived and grown in the genetic laboratory. They will be bonded together in communal setting, under the control and instruction of homosexual savants.

All churches who condemn us will be closed. Our only gods are handsome young men. We adhere to a cult of beauty, moral and esthetic. All that is ugly and vulgar and banal will be annihilated. Since we are alienated from middle-class heterosexual conventions, we are free to live our lives according to the dictates of the pure imagination. For us too much is not enough.

The exquisite society to emerge will be governed by an elite comprised of gay poets. One of the major requirements for a position of power in the new society of homoeroticism will be indulgence in the Greek passion. Any man contaminated with heterosexual lust will be automatically barred from a position of influence. All males who insist on remaining stupidly heterosexual will be tried in homosexual courts of justice and will become invisible men.

“We shall rewrite history, history filled and debased with your heterosexual lies and distortions. We shall portray the homosexuality of the great leaders and thinkers who have shaped the world. We will demonstrate that homosexuality and intelligence and imagination are inextricably linked, and that homosexuality is a requirement for true nobility, true beauty in a man.

“We shall be victorious because we are fueled with the ferocious bitterness of the oppressed who have been forced to play seemingly bit parts in your dumb, heterosexual shows throughout the ages. We too are capable of firing guns and manning the barricades of the ultimate revolution.

Tremble, hetero swine, when we appear before you without our masks.

Stay tuned for Part II: Why “Because The Bible Says So” argument doesn’t stand up.

When life’s about your next vacation

Brooklyn Bridge

It’s NYC time! Very early Monday morning my lady and I will be taking a train from Cleveland to Penn Station and will be spending the week wandering the streets of Manhattan. Of course, special attention will be given to Union Square, the Village and the Lower East Side.

On the itinerary:

I’m also very excited about the huge list of vegetarian restaurants I have printed out. And the subway is always my favorite, I don’t care what people say, I think it’s fabulous and fun.

Thank goodness for my new (well, mostly new) digital camera and the 256MB card cause when it comes to NY, I want a picture of everything.

I wish everyone a great week!

P.S. Can anybody tell me what song the subject line is from, without Googling?