I was chosen for jury duty on September 10.   The rest  of the prospective jurors were allowed to leave and resume their lives and for some of them, I guess, their jobs in the nearby World Trade Center.  Having to submit to the inevitability of jury duty, I left  the courthouse and gave myself a lemons-into-lemonade thought.    I  looked up at the Twin Towers  and decided that since these were the halcyon days of September in New York, I’d try Windows on the World for lunch or maybe breakfast.  I’d never  been there.  After all, my life for the next few weeks as a juror in the NY Supreme Court was to start the next day, at 10:30 AM on Centre Street and I’d want to get out for a little fresh air.

I was awoken the next morning by what sounded like a broom handle battering ram hitting against the door of my top floor East Village  railroad apartment. It was nothing, but it was very disturbing. I was there alone, so I was a bit vigilant.  All my loved ones were out of the city.  I showered and got ready to walk the mile to the New York City Supreme Courthouse which sat in the shadow of the Twin Towers.  I was to be there at 10:30 that AM and was running a bit late when it all began.  Looking out of my window onto the street as the towers burned was the incongruous scene of young mothers pushing their strollers with coffee cups and  brand new freshmen NYU students rushing to their still unfamiliar campus.  Insouciance on a New York City scale.  The towers burned.  The people jumping… seen easily even if a mile away.   The towers fell.  The fall was felt under my feet , a subtle rumble of 3.6 on the Richter scale.

My mother had been on the phone with me during the deluge.  “Well dear, don’t you think you really ought to go to the courthouse anyway.  Don’t you think you’ll get into trouble for not showing up?”  (Had I been there on time I would have been in the chaos and debris).  I figured it was her way of denying her daughter’s life was in danger.

When the initial layers of adrenaline washed over me about a thousand times, when I realized I was alive,  after I watched the news from the only station I could receive (CBS),  and when I realized the manhole covers weren’t going to blow up in some final infrastructure middle finger aftershock, I sat mute and  didn’t dare go outside for fear of the air.  Although the sky was clear around me, I didn’t know whether the wind would shift.   My head was calm but perhaps on account of succumbing to the mania of apartment fever, I started having bizarre desires:  I wanted a facial in the baddest way.  I’ve never had a facial.  I wanted to take a bubble bath.  But as I sat in my apartment after having re-potted my jasmine-scented bonsai and playing the same  piano piece over and over again, faster and faster,  I wanted a bubble bath and a facial.  Then, more practically, I thought I’d go to the local Duane Reade for  an antidote for anthrax and potassium iodide for nuclear radiation poisoning.   For certainly those things were  to come.  And Duane Reade would be closed soon and there would be a run on all the Armageddon supplies.  The St. Ives apricot scrub would be sold out.  Cause after an apocalypse, who doesn’t want a chain store facial scrub to feel detoxified?

I was affiliated with the now defunct St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan’s West Village.  The WTC was in its catchment  area and I did my internship and residency training there.  I was an intern during the first attack on the towers and the place got all the action.  I worked the ER then.  This time my gut told me to get out of New York ASAP.   But here,  my mother appealed to my professional purpose. “But, they’ll NEED you!”  She echoed what I already  knew I was going to do anyway.  But not today.  Today I AM ALIVE.  I’ll go tomorrow, after I slept.  Plus there were highly trained emergency personnel at the ready and a whole slew of actual housestaff. I slept the deepest sleep I can remember.  I didn’t know it then, but by so doing I ensured my mental health for the weeks and months to come.

I volunteered “for duty” early the next morning at St Vincent’s.  I put on my white coat and joined my white coated physician brethern all huddled.   Barely looking at me and without as much as a full sentence they issued a bark:  “New School!  The Families!”.  I left for the New School, a campus in the vicinity, now set up to address the families who had already started congregating there in throngs.  They stretched around the entire block.  I was assigned a work station by a benevolently smiling gentleman of the cloth and was given reams of stapled updates and rosters of area hospitals and make shift morgues from Staten Island to Jersey City to Columbia to Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx.  I was also supposed to do crisis intervention with the families.  But no one was really in crisis. It was ultra-calm.  There was a real sense by all that most made it out.  It was just a question of unraveling  the worst rush hour congestion in the city’s history.  Everyone must be in the process of being attended to  somewhere!  It was only a chaotic skein of yarn of an order of magnitude of chaotic chaos. It’s funny how we all turned into urban Pollyannas with furrowed brows.   Fortunately I had slept.  I was unusually clear-minded as I became part doctor, part hostess,  part soldier, part victim.

As each family and non-family member came before me, the tragedy went to the particulars. “Yes”  a mother said about her son, both immigrants from South America,  “he worked at Windows on the World as a prep cook, he wanted to go to law school.  He called me twice. ‘They’re telling me I should stay up here, mama,’  he said the first time, then ‘I’m going down the stairs….mama,  I don’t think I’m going to make it’”.  He didn’t.  Later he was featured in a TV news magazine show as a promising immigrant who worked to put himself through law school.

As grand as the devastation was, so equally grand were the specificities of people’s lives I began to learn about.

“She wasn’t supposed to have gone into work today, but her boss wanted to go play golf and he wanted her to cover for him “, a man said about his mother,  a secretary to a financial firm CEO.  She survived.   Some people were desperate in their descriptions.  “Have you found her?  She has really big boobs.  I mean really big boobs”, a sister said of her missing, never found sibling. In they came,  more stories, more updates, more instructions.  As soon as the forlorn loved ones left my station,  I could see them get back on the end of the line to wait the two or three hours it took for them to come back to me, eager for any news.  I quickly realized what my colleagues were also realizing. We were being told by the trauma teams and ER that no one was being found.  Most everyone who was to be found was already found.  We became paper shufflers, leafing through dead data simply to distract.  A couple of blocks away all the ER staff, intensivists, nurses and other house staff stood outside the hospital in a phalanx of reception.  No one was to be received.

One man I will never forget.  He typified the complexion of the victims.  Young, bright and upwardly mobile. He told me how he adored his little sister.  She had just gotten out of college and had landed a plum position at the ill-fated Cantor-Fitzgerald (everyone perished there except for its head who decided to take his children personally to their first day of school).  He showed me the picture of his sister, Brooke, saying “Look how beautiful she is, look how alive”.  Every time he’d approach my station,  he’d politely ask me if he could use my outlet to recharge his phone.  He did this seven times.  That meant I was there for over fourteen hours. Sitting. Not budging.  A sessile constant in these people’s upheaved lives.  The benevolent gentleman of the cloth forced me to eat and drink.  I took a few bites of  sandwich he brought.  I ate with the  appetite of the grief-stricken.  I offered my food to others who took it but likewise didn’t take to it.  Mothers came in with their children looking for their children’s grandfather. Co-workers who made it out, fiancees, divorcees, lovers,  friends, children.  It is truly hard to describe the spine- chilling bonhomie of these moments.  We were truly united.  A greater mass love I never experienced before.

I kept a log of the number of people I was “looking for”.  Around 120.  I took down the numbers of  the people looking for said 120 people, I told them I would contact them if I found anything.  I wrote down thumbnail sketches like “really, really big boobs”.  I’m now left with that log.    The day ended and I  walked the abandoned streets of the cordoned off area below 14th street.  I walked in the middle of Fifth avenue alone for stretches at a time with no vehicles or people.

I tried working in my lower east side clinic the following day, but by then the air had shifted bringing the pungent electric stench to my neighborhood.  I advised my patients to stay indoors because I knew that  Whitman and the EPA declaring the air quality it safe was BS.   The air became heavy and foggy with toxins and you could hear passersby talking gibberish to themselves.  The following day I eventually breached the envelop of containment with my face mask, to enter what was the usual bustling of New York above 14th street.   I left for a week.

When I came back, I purchased the accompanying  photograph a local photojournalist had taken while he was just below the towers.  He only suffered a broken limb.  It took me over a month to muster a walk to Ground Zero.  It was still smoldering in the October dusk.

It’s funny how one can retrospectively connect the dots of synchronicity.

One was a child’s painting I had picked up a few years before because I liked its composition.  It was of lower Manhattan’s skyline.   But the Statue of Liberty was looking away from the city, her face looking away from the plane that was flying above the city toward the towers, while at her feet, at the confluence of the East and Hudson Rivers, there floated a sailboat called “Trouble”.

The other, occurring some  years before that:  A set of faux postage stamps I bought on the East Village’s Avenue A from the artist who made them.  They were just like real postage stamps.  In fact, I used one successfully to mail a letter.  On the postage stamps were both Twin Towers ablaze with  the caption: Wish You Were Here.

Republican Senator Goldwater launched a bid for President of the United States against Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, and Goldwater was portrayed as reactionary, too right-wing and bat-shit crazy for his fights against the New Deal, unions and liberalism.

He lost the election to Johnson by one of the largest landslides in history, taking down several Republicans with him.

Goldwater was known as a ‘libertarian’ way back when, and in the 80′s when he saw the religious right’s influence with Reagan, Goldwater predicted that there would come a day when he would be labeled a “LIBERAL.”

Then there was Republican Evan Mecham, who owned a car dealership, and he won the election for governor of Arizona in 1986 and is famous for his recollections of folks calling African American children ‘pickaninny’ meant in an affectionate way.

Governor Mecham is also known for overturning the Martin Luther King Holiday and blaming working women for high divorce rates.

Governor Mecham was impeached by the voters of Arizona in April of 1988 for obstruction of justice and misuse of government funds, which he was later acquitted.

Then there was Republican Jane Hull, who bankrupted the state of Arizona with the alt-fuel fiasco, and perhaps lesser known, was that Governor Hull launched the bid of Texas Governor George Bush Jr. for President.

Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano was elected after Hull’s reign of errors, and in her first term as governor of Arizona, Governor Napolitano balanced the budget and got the state out of debt and into the black.

Governor Napolitano even managed to setup a “rainy day” fund, which has since been raided and decimated.

To be fair, midway though Governor Napolitano’s 2nd term, she did play with the numbers and credit and did leave her successor with massive debt, since no one in power saw the collapse of the housing market, which was Arizona’s main economic source.

Arizona’s State Legislature has always been Republican majority and Governor Napolitano did work with them and they would vociferously complain about her vetoes, yet she managed to get the job done.

President Obama scooped Governor Napolitano from Arizona by offering her the job as head of Homeland Security, and there were Republicans rejoicing that Janet was gone, and others saddened that she left, and others angered because she left Arizona in such dire straits.

Jan Brewer slipped into the position of Governor, as Arizona does not have a lieutenant governor, and Jan Brewer is a Republican that held the position of Secretary of State.

Governor Brewer is the fourth woman, the third consecutive woman to hold the title of governor in Arizona.

Governor Brewer, an unelected governor, has not been able to work with the Republican majority in the state’s legislature.

Following former President GW Bush’s example, the Republicans shut out the Democrats from all legislative meetings, Governor Brewer only calling on the Democrats to sign her bills when the Republican majority refused.

The Arizona Democrats refused to support the legislation, since they had no voice in forming the bills, and Governor Brewer led the Republican charge that the reason the state could not balance the budget was due to the Democrats and obstruction.

The Arizona Legislature under Governor Brewer have managed to pass some of the most liberal gun laws in the country, and once again to be fair, Vermont has similar laws.

Governor Brewer was very unpopular for being unable to work within her own Republican Party, but all that changed once Governor Brewer signed the anti-immigration SB1070 into law.

I do not need to share last night’s debate between the unelected Governor Brewer and the Democratic candidate Terry Goddard as it has gone viral on the Internet.

Due to Arizona’s ‘Clean Election Law’ voted in by voters in 1996, Governor Brewer was forced to do one debate and of course, the Republican legislature has been working hard on overturning the ‘Clean Election Law’.

Last night, the local CBS station did a story on Governor Brewer’s ties to private prisons in the state, and the money they are giving to her campaign for governor.

Governor Brewer was silent when 3 dangerous criminals escaped from a private prison in Kingman and when a woman tossed wire cutters over the fence, and then two of the escapees killed a couple from Oklahoma while they were camping New Mexico.

Governor Brewer is not happy with that expose and has pulled all her ads for governor from the local CBS channel 5 in Phoenix.

On another update of Arizona news is that the Department of Justice has issued fines against Sheriff Joe due to his non-compliance with 2 subpoenas for his records regarding a DOJ investigation into abuse of power and civil rights abuse in his jails.

I’ve researched subpoenas and what it means when a person refuses to comply and it is normal for 2 warnings to be given.

This is rare, as a sheriff’s office has never refused to cooperate with a DOJ and Grand Jury investigation since Mississippi in the 1960′s.

Isn’t it amazing that Sheriff Joe is refusing to “show his papers”?

On Saturday, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and spoke to tens of thousands of blindingly white, patriotically obese, special needs Walmart shoppers, claiming to speak for God and urging a return to the halcyon days of religious domination of our democracy which brought America such historic hits as morally justifiable slavery, the slaughter of “heathen” Native Americans, Manifest Destiny, women as second class citizens without the right to vote, prohibition and its resulting in the explosion of organized crime and teens having lots of oral and anal sex in order to honor their Promise Rings.

As a result, as Monty Python once sang, God got quite irate. So, as He is nowadays accustomed to venting his wrath, He blogged the following and asked me to post it for Him:

GOD’S BLOG – 8-31-2010

Let me begin by saying that neither Glenn Beck nor Sarah Palin speak for me. The tip offs are, I never use chalkboards, I don’t drop the last letter of “ing” words to be folksy and lastly, I usually make sense.

Being omnipresent, I couldn’t help but watch these two and their colleagues give their speeches on Saturday at the site and on the day of my dear friend’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Though I don’t see anything wrong with the way I’ve made male dogs mark territory as their own, it is a bit off putting when people use dogs as role models for that trait (wish they copied the unconditional love and loyalty stuff instead).

What can be a little frustrating about being all-knowing is that you never get to say, “What the hell is wrong with that guy?!”, you already know. I do see all living things as my children but some days, your kids can really drive you nuts, you know what I’m talking about?

Glenn claimed that his rally was about returning honor, going back to Me and less overtly, returning power in America to White Christians. That’s like urging people to come together to build and paint a majestic cross just so you can set fire to it.

Believe me, I don’t have an inferiority complex. I’m not stomping around Heaven, upset that people aren’t ruling more countries in my name. In fact, that’s exactly what would get me upset, have you seen what happens in most countries when people declare I chose them to be the leader (my lawyers did send George Bush a Cease and Desist).

Earth is for you folks to take care of and figure out how to run. I’ve totally delegated all executive decisions to all of you, I just want to be invited to the company picnics.

Glenn Beck also urged people to sublimate themselves to me, to get on their knees and make sure their children saw them doing so. I guess the best way to do that would be to get in front of the tv and pray…though I’d guess the kids would just crane their heads around to keep killing people in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

I think this could send the wrong message. First, kids may think that their parents are praying to the tv, that I am in the tv or that Tivo is God (which it is in some households).

Second, I think kids should see that strong moral beliefs are what make their parents stand up and become leaders in their own lives. Impressing subservience is like wiring a weakness into oneself or one’s kids that less principled folks than yours truly can then use to manipulate them to further unprincipled greed and lusts.

Which brings me back to Glenn Beck. He spoke of restoring honor…and did so by dishonoring one of the most honored Americans, Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement he did so much for. Next time, I assume that Glenn will want to campaign on protecting endangered species by hunting them.

So, we can put aside this clearly illegitimate claim as the purpose of this rally, along with a reverence for me because love and respect and power for all races and religions is my thing. Also, despite the claims in their prospectuses and press releases, I am not a wholly owned subsidiary of FreedomWorks, Fox News or the GOP.

I just wish such wolves wouldn’t use me as their sheep’s clothing. The ironic thing is that in order to be so comfortable in using me to promote a self-serving agenda, such people would have to not believe in me (they clearly have no fear that they’ll ever have to face me for their transgressions).

So my suggestion is, the more you hear someone use me or their love of me to justify their actions and schemes that benefit themselves personally, the more of an atheist they probably are.

And BTW, some of my best friends are Atheists (I tell them that whether or not they believe in me, I believe in them and they’ll usually buy me a drink anyway, nice folks) so that’s not a bad thing but it does lend a bit of perspective to these situations.

Satan plays the same game as Glenn but as a practical joke, after a while, he always blurts out, “Just joking! I’m not really speaking for God and there is no barbecue tonight!”

Too bad Glenn doesn’t even display the decency of Satan. Still, it will be hilarious in a number of years, when Satan gets the chance to pull that on Glenn! Man, will he freak!

Had the cutest and strangest experience this morning on the way home from our walk.
It was another miserable sweaty walk this morning and there are these tiny little gnats out that we’ve never seen before.
They’re teensie-tiny black flies and they bite!
And for being so amazingly small, their bite actually causes pain!
Not bad pain, but you can feel it and it feels like a pin-prick.
Very odd.

Anyway, while on the way home we saw an elderly couple that we haven’t seen for awhile on our walks.
We’ve been walking earlier, besides being gone, except today we got a late start so saw them again and they stopped to talk.

We ran into them at the local grocer the other day, and not sure they remembered us, but I smiled and said hello and asked them if they recognized us.
I told them about us always walking our little dog in the mornings and we always wave to them.

The wife said she thought she knew who we were but her husband couldn’t remember.

He’s a real talker, and explained that he has very early onset of Alzheimer so he’s accepted that he can’t remember things very well.

He was so funny in telling us his name – Irvine with an I not an E – and it was his mother’s maiden name and it’s not an uncommon name because there’s an Irvine, California, and that has an I and not an E, too.
Very cute.

His wife is a skinny little thing and perhaps a bit younger than her husband but not by much.
She’s very animated friendly and clapped her hands and smiled broadly while thanking me for stopping to say hello in the grocery store.

So, this morning on the way home from our walk, we saw them and they were so happy to see us with our little dog and yes, now they both recognized us.
Here’s just the cutest thing and funniest part.

They pulled to the side of the road and asked if we were registered voters and we said yes, and then they asked if we would sign a petition.
They got out and while sweating our butts off and swatting at them biting teensie-tiny flies, they explained that they are working to recall one of the Pinal County councilmen for breaking all his campaign promises.

Now, if we could recall politicians for breaking their campaign promises, we’d have to recall them all, wouldn’t we?

My husband asked Irvine if the guy was a Republican and he said yes and he wants to replace him with another Republican – a Tea Party Republican because that guy lives up here and he will keep his promises.
Irvine said they need 10,000 signatures and what the hell, we signed the petition because he only had 7 signatures!

My husband made it a point that he’s all for recalling Republicans!
But they sort of ignored that, even though they did say that “they’re all crooks!”
“And if they’re not crooks when they get elected, they turn into crooks soon after”.

Irvine does talk a lot and he rambles, so you have to pay close attention but he’s a very affable person, as is his wife.
I think they are Tea Partiers, but so unlike the Tea Partiers we see on the TV or read about.
They’re not angry old white people, but they are fearful.

I think their definition of the Tea Party is not the actual Tea Party people we all know and love.

Through one of Irvine’s ramblings – and I cannot remember his wife’s name but will never forget his – but he asked us if we knew who Sylvia Brown is.

Do you know who Sylvia Brown is?

She’s a famous psychic and the only reason we know who she is is because we used to watch the Montel Williams show a few years ago and she was one of his regular guests every Wednesday and Friday, which ended up being his highest rated shows every week.

FOX yanked Montel’s show when he started his mission of seeing Bush get out of office and that’s why we watched him because he did a fairly good job of getting the truth out.

As for Sylvia Brown, well, she was fun to listen to and entertaining and I actually liked her a lot, until she went totally nuts with talking about space aliens and that there were aliens even in Montel’s audience.

She predicted that we are near the “end of times” and that the world would end in 100 years, which is a pretty safe prediction because who’ll be around to say if she was right or not about that.

She would talk crazy about some sort of second or third level creatures from deep in the earth that come out and if you’re attuned you can catch them and even see faeries that sit on flowers.
She’s really out there about things.

But I really liked her and thought her harmless because most people who seek her out were in search of solace from the grief of losing a loved one.
She always provided comfort for distraught people that were deep in grief by telling them that the person is with God and in the light of Christ and that no one ever dies alone.
People come into the world alone, but guardian angels and keepers from the other-side help people cross over upon death.

She does not believe in hell, but said hell is on earth and that the dead walk amongst us always.

She’s harmless and comforting and she always spoke about God, Christ and the Holy Spirit and said there is no such thing as the devil, but that evil lives in man and makes earth hell for the living.

I would never buy any of her books or go see her because she does tour and I would never do that as I am a skeptic, plus she charges outrages prices to see her speak.

But, she is an uplifting, spiritual person and she may very well be a scam artist, but then so are Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and people pay good money to see them and Sylvia Brown brings people up and does good, whereby Palin and Beck are just plain EVIL, in my very humble opinion.

So, Irvine and his wife told us that they went to see Sylvia Brown when she was here in the valley and our first thought on that that we kept to ourselves was – these people are nuts.

Now, I have to share the story about another neighbor- the woman owns a horse named Bonita and just got divorced from her abusive, cheating husband – and she had contacted an animal psychic back east when she was struggling with the decision of whether or not to give her smaller horse, Sadie, away and whether or not Sadie wanted to leave and if Bonita wanted Sadie to leave.
She ended up giving Sadie to a friend who lives nearby due to that phone call.

And then there’s other neighbors who believe that Glenn Beck is some sort of truth-speaker and they buy his books and watch him religiously.

And then there’s yet another, who is a Democrat, but he listens to a right-wing religious radio station and he is against the SB1070 law and thinks Brewer will go to hell for it, but he can quote the bible and believes we are in the “end of times” and he likes Obama, but thinks that Obama is confused when it comes to religion, because he’s not sure if he’s a Christian or not.

Okay, so Irvine and his wife went to see Sylvia Brown and they said that if you paid more for admission that you could ask Sylvia a question.
They said that a woman asked Sylvia if Obama would win a second term.

Here’s where it gets strange.

Sylvia Brown, according to this elderly couple, said that no, Obama would not win a second term, because he will not even make it through his first term.

They said that she said that he will get a bit way through the second half of his first term, but then he would die.

The couple said that people gasped audibly throughout the auditorium and mayhem ensued with people wanting to know if he was going to suffer the same fate as JFK.

Sylvia Brown, according to this couple, said that the cause of his demise would be due to food poisoning and that would be the official reason for his death, but according to the couple, Sylvia implied that it wouldn’t be an accident.

Isn’t that strange?

It is strange, because if that’s true that Sylvia Brown predicted such a thing is that it’s not like the “end of times” prediction of 100 years, but something that she will be proven right on or wrong on within less than 2 years.

I’m stunned that she would dare to predict such a thing, since she has so very many loyal followers and she’s placing her reputation on the line with such a prediction.

And I pray that she is wrong.

And another thing, is that this is an elderly couple – grandparent-like – and first off, I could never imagine my mom or dad ever believing in Sylvia Brown – and secondly, wouldn’t you think that older people would be wiser?

I get it now that I just wrote that, as older people do seem to love FOX and all their pundits.

An elderly woman from my working days just loves Bill O’Reilly and the thing that really gets me about her, is that she continuously sends me these right-wing emails about Obama being a Muslim and about ignorant, anti-American Democrats and liberals, and I swear that I am so tempted to begin bombarding her email with emails from the left about the crazy right-wingers!

I just can’t bring myself to do that though, as it would be a waste of time and really, whenever I get her emails, I just delete them unless she writes me an actual email.
The thing about that though, is that she will write letters in her right-wing emails, so I miss out on a lot of her writings to me.

Does anyone else deal with these type of people?

Or do we really live in the Twilight Zone?

Pres. Obama, being a thoughtful man of reason, responds earnestly to accusations about mosques near Ground Zero, his being a secret Muslim, etc.

We arrived at a consensus that instead of this accomplishing anything, Obama’s responses merely validate and empower the GOP hate machine which is continuing to whip up more and more irrational fear and hatred against non-whites, non-Christians and any other group that can be portrayed as the evil “other”.

A legitimate concern is that such rabid, omnipresent and publicly sanctioned hate mongering is deteriorating social discourse and behavior as well as our democracy…not to mention increasing the likelihood of more terrible, hate-inspired incidents.

What Pres. Obama needs to do, in our opinion, is to bust this fraud wide open and expose the cynical greed for power behind it. Instead of playing defense in this rigged game, Obama needs to kick the board over.

We would like to see Pres. Obama make a speech from the White House to the American People, laying bare the racism and xenophobia being used to manipulate people to empower the GOP and corporate America. He needs to explain to the nation that the GOP’s blocking of everything that would help America recover from the GOP/Corporate-caused economic crash, purely for their political gain, is unAmerican.

By doing so, he could short circuit this dangerous scheme and turn the focus to where it belongs, on those who would betray the people for their own pursuit of power. Instead of standing by while the GOP propaganda machine continues spewing lies and hatreds that Obama needs to keep addressing, it’s time to put the GOP back on their heels and on the defensive for their ruthless and disgusting behavior.

And a bold, confrontational speech by Pres. Obama declaring that this campaign, by the GOP and the Corporations behind them, is about placing the greed for power above what’s best for the citizens of our nation would change the conversation profoundly from the manufactured accusations and divisive distractions from reality to the true reality we’re actually living in.

Such a speech could rally the nation.This country desperately needs to reverse the polarization and come together to confront and overcome the immense challenges facing us, not allow the GOP and Fox to increase the ongoing deterioration of this Union and its future because it’s to their own financial and political benefit.

So we came up with the idea of setting up a collaboration for folks here to offer their thoughts and suggestions on what Pres. Obama could say in such a speech and also what we should say to him in a cover letter to convince him to take such action.

Once we’ve had folks weigh in on this, we’ll draft a speech and a cover letter based on the comments below and post them so people can add their names (confidentially) as signatories to endorse them (and get the word out to try to gather as many people as we can to add their names). Then we will send the letter and speech to Pres. Obama for his consideration.

So please feel free to dive right in with any suggestions, please share your thoughts on what Pres. Obama should say in an address to the nation to defuse this mercenary campaign that seeks to further tear apart our nation and instead inspire people to come together for the common good.

Being the Volunteer Coordinator for the first 2 conventions allowed me to meet and work with some of the most talented, dedicated, professional and committed individuals I’ve ever met. But it prevented me from attending any of the panels and only part of the keynotes. Being an organizer, I enjoy making an event like this run smoothly, but being removed from the actual programs doesn’t allow a clear picture of the event as a whole. Being an attendee put me on the floor and gave me a first hand view of the convention. That means I attended panels, parties, keynotes, unofficial gatherings and yes, I even went to Markos’ Daily Kos party.

So, here we are at the 5^th anniversary of the convention and I’m back in the staff room. Working behind the scenes gets me places most attendees can’t access. Like backstage after the keynote speeches, and sitting at the table in front of the stage. But it prevents me from participating in the panels or the Screening Series and I’m often too exhausted to go to the unofficial events. Although I always find the energy to humiliate myself at the Pub Quiz, (“We’re #10!”), and the AAM has sponsored some very fun events so I did take the time to continue my personal humiliation at the bowling lanes. But it is strange when Nancy Pelosi is answering questions 2 rooms away from me and I’m watching her on the live stream in the staff office. I got up close and personal with Ed Schultz and Al Franken but I missed the panel on Warming up the Cold Call which would have been helpful in my campaign work and I missed the Screening Series completely even though I’m on the Advisory Board for that as well.

So next year we’ll be in Minneapolis and my question is should I go as a worker or a player? What would you choose?

This is my first diary for Planet POV and I’m very happy to be here.

The cover of the latest edition of TIME magazine shows the noseless face of an 18 year-old Afghan girl, who was disfigured as a result of running away from a forced marriage.  The cover suggested that this is what would happen when the US left Afghanistan.

Like many on the Left side of the political equation, I vehemently oppose the continuation of this war.  Like many on the Left side of the politcal equation, I knew from the getgo that Iraq was a lie. Like many on the Left side of the political equation, I am a woman, who came of age during the decade of the 70s, that era in which great strides of gender equality were achieved.

Many on the Left side of the political equation cry out that this heart-rending picture is nothing less than blatant emotional blackmail.  It may be; I don’t know, but it makes me uneasy.

I have a friend from my college years, a lifelong Republican and conservative, an educated man and a lawyer, who’s served several hitches in Iraq and Afghanistan as a JAG lawyer.  We often disagree politically, but I appreciate his insight and respect his opinion. Even before the TIME cover became a topic of conversation this week, he made my conscience squirm.

“You were always at the forefront of feminism in college,” he remarked once in an online exchange. “Yet I wonder at how you and your fellow Lefties can just turn a blind eye to the mistreatment of women in Afghanistan. I mean, that’s supposed to be your thing, isn’t it?”

I suppose it is, and it makes me uncomfortable. The picture of Aisha on the cover of TIME made me more uncomfortable, but the reaction to some people, who purport to be from the Progressive Left, made me downright shameful. A woman, who is a regular commentator on Huffington Post flatly stated that she didn’t give a rat’s ass about the women in Afghanistan, that if they didn’t stand up to the men controlling for their rights, they, basically got what they deserved.

Charming. And oh-so-au courant-liberal. Actually, that attitude positively reeks of the attitude promoted by the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan during the Eighties – the meme of “I’m all right, Jack; fuck you.” I know that Ronald Reagan’s supposed to be to the Left of the current crop of retrograde Republicanism, but since when did Progressives morph into exponents of Ronald Reagan’s philosophy?

Other than that woman’s reaction, the rest of the commentary was filled with people one could visualise squirming in their chairs as they typed painfully constructed rigamaroles of sound bites gleaned from the latest fashionable infotainment pundit, trying to justify that Aisha’s punishment was everything to do with the way her culture was intended to be and simply wasn’t worth our effort and expenditure in lives and money.

But Aisha’s treatment has everything to do with us, because we enabled the Taliban. Once we decided to look the other way, in the wake of Russia withdrawing from Afghanistan, leaving a trail of chaos, as the warlords battled to outdo one another, we allowed the Taliban to rise from the rubble, and we condemned a whole generation of women and girls to the darkness of ignorance and brutality.

And now the Left are looking away again.

Look, I’m not advocating staying in Afghanistan any longer than is necessary. I’d have the troops home tomorrow if I could. I’m not even sure what can be done to help women like Aisha, but the attitude I found from the Left towards this – and especially the crass comment made by the woman on HuffPo, amazes me that there’s an attitude towards women here that ranges from abject indifference to callous cruelty.

Last Sunday night, Bill Maher finished a three-night stint through the Midwest, ending up in Madison, Wisconsin. The next day, Bill posted a raving review of the Madison gig on his Facebook page. The reviewer, clearly a fan, literally bent over for Bill in praise. One of the funniest aspects of the evening, the writer gushed, was Bill’s take on Sarah Palin (a staple for Bill Maher – more than any other commentator or fundit he goes out of his way to bring the subject of Palin into the discussion, even when she hasn’t been in the news.)

The reviewer thought it an absolute riot that Bill managed to call Palin a c*nt no less than six times in a minute – in a New York minute, knowing Maher’s delivery.

I thought it appalling.

I am not a Palin fan. I loathe the woman. I despair that this willfully ignorant woman, someone disdains quality higher education as exclusive and elitist, blaming the latter for all that’s wrong in the country, whilst elevating the mundane and ordinary to new heights of misconceived excellence. I find her divisive, hateful, and extremely derisive and disrespectful of our President. This is a would-be politician who begins by criticizing policy and ends with a full-on personal attack. She is unfamiliar with government and government processes, poorly eductated, inarticulate, quasi-illiterate, sly, untrustworthy, nepotistic, and blatantly untruthful. In short, she is a narcissistic liar.

But she is not, nor does she deserve to be called a c*nt – and certainly not six times in one minute in front of an audience in a public venue.

No woman does.

Yes, you’ll say, Palin is certainly capable of being just as vile, without resorting to crude, guttersnipe language (unless you want to count her pathetic and misspelled attempt at bilingualism – always better to say “balls” if you can’t spell cojones. And she certainly does deserve to be hit hard verbally and discredited.

But any man who resorts to calling a woman a c*nt in public is certainly less of a man, in himself, and shows a singular lack of intelligence in doing so.

Congratulations, Bill … you’ve just joined the ranks of celebrated men whom you’ve previously criticized as their moral equals:-

*John McCain, who famously referred to his wife by the c-word in 1992, and

Mel Gibson, whom you recently flayed in a tweet, referring to his very ugly verbal abuse of the mother of his younger child, whom he called – yes – a cnt.

To your credit, Bill, you’re nothing, if not genuinely fair and balanced, because in February 2008, you famously referred to Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, by the c-word on Real Time, in frustration at her refusal to give up the ghost in favour of your candidate of the moment; so maybe there’s a place for you on Fox News after all.

When I objected to this on Facebook, I was met with a torrent of criticism – some rational, most blindly loyal to Bill to the point that people began to sound like blithering and blathering followers of a religious cult.

Some of those arguing actually called the word “quite beautiful” and pointed out that Shakespeare used it regularly. Wrong. Shakespeare used it alliteratively in allusion and as a clever play on words, never actually saying the word directly. Bill deals in directness. He called Palin and Clinton the actual word.

Others maintained that it’s used in quite normal conversation both in Australia and in Europe. Again, mostly wrong. I can’t speak for the Australians, but the British have the filthiset mouths in Europe when it comes to swearing. Even then, it’s a word used in the extremest and ugliest cases and by the lower gene pool of society (which seems to be expanding rapidly). And it’s understood that a man who refers to a woman as that word is living at the extreme of society at best. It’s something that’s never heard in polite company on the Continent.

Worse than the rational arguments, were the reckoning, by men and also by women, that Palin deserved this epithet, for all the reasons I listed above.  One mature woman with grown children purported to use the word all the time, and saw noting wrong with it.

But would she like to be called a c*nt?

No reply to my question. When she carried on in a wild fervour about how Bill was the ultimate purveyor of truth in the United States, I asked her the question again: would she mind if someone called her a c*nt?

She finally said she’d rather be called a c*nt than a Republican.

I then replied, “Consider it done. You’re a c*nt, and by the way, you’re more than halfway to being a Repuiblican, with your attitude to fellow women and your narrow-mindedness intact.” And then I blocked her.

But the one question no one deigned to answer was this: If they’re OK with Bill calling Palin a c*nt, does that mean they were OK with him calling Hillary the same?

Budding politicians came to the fore, mouthing words which said nothing. Not even sentences made sense. Waffle. I sensed the disciples of the man who purports to speak power to truth suffered a singular Aisha moment.

What a quandry! How could Bill be wrong about calling Hillary a c*nt and right about calling Palin the same? For people on the Right, surely Hillary is just as fearsome, just as divisive, an Ivy League elitist who encompasses everything that is wrong with this country (in their eyes). One side’s c*nt is another side’s Queen Mother, only Bill didn’t differentiate.

Bill is the only political satirist-cum-pundit, other than Glenn Beck, who consitently brings Obama’s race into the fray; but not in a positive manner. Thus far this year, Obama’s been “President Sanford and Son”, the “tanner of two evils” and the ineffectual, professorial President who needs to “black it up a little” with some stereotypical ghetto culture. His disciples decry criticism of such things as harmless, considering Bill’s “only a comedian.” Yet if Beck or O’Reilly had said the same things, they’d be all over their asses like a duck on a june bug. It seems one man’s perceived racism is another man’s comedy, depending on which side of the political coin on which you be found.

Because we on the Left are never racist, are we? And we can never be accused of being sexit either, can we? Or even homophobic, now that Prop 8’s on its way to being ruled unconstitutional.

And if we are, we can laugh it off, can’t we, as comedy. After all, we on the Left, who occupy themoral high ground, we kknow, don’t we, who really puts c*ntry first and who puts the c*nt in country.

When you stay at hotels around the country, visit a bar or restaurant, find yourself in some public place where there’s a tv, you’re more than likely to see on that tv either a commercial for Dulcolax or Fox News.

The way you tell the difference is that one of these promotes the expelling of human waste and the other…hmm…let me get back to you on that.

Why is the exhibition of Fox News in public places so ubiquitous? Less than 30% of the country would describe themselves as Republicans, are there really millions more who think that the way to deal with the Republican party being repugnant is to just hide one’s membership?

Or, should one instead look to the corporations and business owners of the hotels, bars, etc. as the public purveyors of this News porn?

If one is interested in politics, it is wise to stay informed on what one’s adversaries are saying or screaming hysterically as they lean desperately on their chalkboards with tears stream down their faces. Since Fox and the Right Wing have successfully constructed a talking points pipeline, it’s actually hard to escape the piles of dead grannies, Marxist-Socialist-Muslim-Kenyan-Hitler presidents and racist black people oppressing white people.

Still, even though prolonged exposure to Fox News may be hazardous to your healthy gray cells…especially if you do as I do and keep a large wooden mallet next to your couch for smacking yourself in the head each time something especially asinine is said and agreed to by a collection of RW talking heads….it can be educational.

Today on Fox and Friends, it was once again a bone of contention and a big cause of dissatisfaction that Obama has not given every American a unicorn or at least a pretty pony. The criticisms came from every direction, Obama promised there would be no more flatulence in the world, that we’d all get super powers, he hasn’t once turned time back to get there before Lois ‘s car fell in the earthquake-caused crevice nor has he french kissed a single oil company CEO. The guy is a total failure!

I also learned that prior to January 2009, we have no idea who was president or what they did. Apparently, Al Qaeda used some kind of a Men In Black memory-wiping thingy on us, we probably had a president before Obama but in the midst of all the disasters we’ve been going through in this nation and the world, it’s probably not worth the energy to try remembering anyway. Then again, I do subscribe to the Lindsey Lohan School of Strategic Planning.

In a PPP poll in January 2010, Fox News was rated as the most trusted news network. Unfortunately, the results of an OMG poll out the following month showed that a majority found that PPP poll the least trusted results of polls that month. The following month, a BS poll showed that a majority of people don’t believe in polls and would never participate in one. The following month a FUBAR poll found that 200% of poll results are unreliable.

There’s an old saying, “History is written by the winners.” Fox News would add, “…but history is re-written by the losers.”

A federal judge today blocked many of the key provisions of the Arizona Immigration law. Score one for the Constitution and rationality.

Aside from the aspects of this law that institutionalized racism (giving BS lip service to, “We won’t racially profile while we’re racially profiling.”), this law created a huge government intrusion into Americans’ lives.

For the Repubs, yes, Mexican Americans, Arab Americans, etc. are Americans too even though they’re not Anglo Americans.

But the buzz among the MSM is less about the details and more about, “Does this hurt the Democrats in November?” “Does this hurt Obama?” So, though the MSM wants to shove every issue into the political horse race meat grinder, the judge seems to have actually considered the practical ramifications of the AZ police arresting a massive amount of people and having to verify their citizenship or else be sued by citizens for not fully enforcing the law.

The net result would be innocent Americans being detained for undetermined amounts of time though they did nothing illegal, enormous costs to the AZ taxpayers and a squandering of law enforcement resources to house and process all of the people caught up in this poorly thought out law.

Meanwhile, McCain and Kyl block any attempt at a sensible immigration law wailing “NO AMNESTY!”, along with the rest of Republicans, because it’s to their political advantage to rile up the RW who hate “ferners” and non-whites…while attacking Congress for not passing reform. As with gay marriage and abortion, they don’t want a solution, they want the issue to continue because it helps raise money for their campaigns and rally their voters to the polls.

When the SCOTUS rules in favor of corporations, the GOP heralds the judicial process. When a state’s immigration law is found to conflict with federal jurisdiction, the judicial process is corrupt.

It’s like playing Monopoly with a self-centered eight year old brat, when things go his way, it’s great. When they don’t, he knocks the pieces around or kicks the board over. He doesn’t respect the rules unless they work for him. He isn’t there to play a game, he’s there to win a game and anything that gets between him and winning is the enemy.

Just as with the RW/Rove method of calling those who complain about racism, “racists”, we continue to be spiraling down in the world of public discourse, we seem to now matter-of-factly accept that one party (and one news network) are openly racist but because they make a strong argument for why they shouldn’t be viewed for what they are, many let them off the hook.

Will open racism end when a white man is president again? Sadly, I think it may decrease when those who are racist “feel” like white people are in control again.

We can thank The Founders for not making federal judgeships elected positions, one can only imagine how much worse this nation would be with judges pandering to Tea Partiers and Birthers.

Heading out to searing Las Vegas for Netroots Nation and am hoping to provide updates of my adventures in this gathering of godless, communist, socialist, white-hating enemies of America. BTW, should I hit on 16?

Hope I don’t disappoint, so much going on I may have only fleeting moments to update this post but I promise to provide a complete report upon my return.

More soon (I hope)!

UPDATE: Friday, July 23 – 9:30pm

I’m blogging from a bowling alley in the Rio Hotel, bowling with a US Representitive Paul Hodes from the great state of New Hampshire. His very cool son was throwing some strikes and his dad unsurprisingly had a strong spin to the left.

Earlier today, I attended the California Caucus and there were many substantial folks there from such orgs as Courage Camaign, Credo, SEIU, etc., maybe 30-40 people there.

The main discussion was about which propositions on the Nov ballot in CA were the most crucial to invest time and energy on. The consensus was that they are

19 – Legalization of marijuana

23 – Defeating this prop paid for by TX oil men to increase greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels (“to build jobs”…in what, the Space Ark construction industry?!)

25 – Reducing the 2/3 majority needed to pass a budget to a simple majority

26 – Defeating this prop put up by corps and the CA Chamber of Commerce, which would require a super majority of voters to approve any tax increase. Of all the props, this one would doom CA for good.

Out of all the dedicated and strong minded people there, the one who stood out most to me was the woman who explained that her husband, who had just died from cancer had after much suffering found some relief after trying medical marijuana. She expressed that getting out more personal stories like hers should be a strong tactic to make the case for undecided voters to support Prop 19. I agree, personalizing issues makes them so much easier to grasp.

So, Nancy Pelosi is having a Q&A tomorrow morning, should get at least one hour of sleep so I can get there early and hopefully ask a question.

More tomorrow!

UPDATE: Saturday, July 24, 10:03 am

Jan Schakowsky gave an intro speech this morning and already answered KQuark’s question, a Public Option bill has just been introduced in the House.

Her intro was followed by a video address to NN by Pres Obama who made the case again that his admin has made an amazing array of accomplishments and that the election is critical this year in not returning to the failed policies that put us in this terrible situation with the economy.

Pelosi explained that though she and others support the Dream Act and other immigration related bills, she feels that passing the more attractive elements of Immigration Reform independently would make comprehensive reform less likely so they really want a full package to pursue.

The Senate amendment to the Unemployment Ins extension stripped a huge array of jobs funding, including summer jobs for youth. Family values GOP? Really? And BTW, this bill was passed by the house 6 MONTHS AGO!

Talking about passing fair elections, anti-Corp election financing legislation, Pelosi again stressed Politicians do need citizens to make them do what they may even support, it really does matter and make a huge impact when people contact their reps, it really does make things happen!

UPDATE: Saturday, July 24, 11:02 am

Citizens United Panel – The panelists:

Marge Baker – Executive Vice President for Policy and Program at People For the American Way

Rep. Donna F. Edwards

Lisa Graves – Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy

Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen

Representative Alan Grayson

Weissman explained that The Chamber of Commerce represents now a third political party, one aligned with the GOP but a Corporate Party.

Public Citizen’s Pledge For Democracy is pursuing Congresspeople to sign a pledge to vote for a constitutional amendment to overturn CU.

Rep. Edwards spoke inspirationally, she is spearheading the legislation in the House for a Constitutional amendment and has a couple dozen co-sponsors already but here too, asks people to contact their reps to join on.

Rep. Grayson was as entertaining and on target as ever. He expressed an optimism that democracy is resilient enough to overcome the corporate takeover of our democracy but it requires a lot of activism on our part, in concert with their efforts.

He suggested that in order to get the reality of what CU means, he might need to videotape a Corp lobbyist saying, “Vote our way and we’ll spend millions for you or else we’ll spend it to defeat you.”

Graves was passionate and committed to getting Progressives to accept the legitimacy of being able to pass a Constitutional Amendment. She asked, “How hard do you think it was to imagine and pass a Constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote?” The RW has been pushing a Right to Life amendment for 30 years and though it hasn’t passed, it powered legislation and worked as an organizing tool for them and this issue. We need to pursue a Constitutional Amendment.

Rep. Edwards recounted how she and others in her local community each bought five shares of a Corp, went to a shareholder’s meeting and disrupted the status up which caused that Corp to rethink and change policies.

I asked a question of the panel about working on a state by state, initiative process to attack corporate power and influence, Weissman responded affirmatively, particularly identifying public financing of elections.

UPDATE: Saturday, July 24, 12:27 pm

Panel: Building a Progressive Economic Vision

Elizabeth Warren spoke first and was greeted like the rockstar she is. She spoke of her grandmother coming to OK and living modestly until wiped out in the 1900′s but ended her life with her own home and financial security thanks to the financial reforms under FDR.

She made a rallying speech about the importance of protecting the middle class and how the consumer office created through the financial reform bill, though it can’t solve everything, can make a huge contribution to bringing back that kind of security and fairness that the middle class needs in our economy.

She said there are four things this office should do:

1. It must stand for families, making sure loans and credit cards are priced fairly, easy to understand and when the powerful can decide who will be helped or hurt, there needs to be someone at the table to ask, How will it affect American Families?

2. The financial system has to be realisticaly based with workable, viable system, for example, policies that destroy community banks.

3. The bureau has to be able to grow and change because the rules after the Great Depression worked well but ultimately failed because they didn’t change.

4. This will be the first major agency built in the digital age. It can communicate in both directions with millions of Americans the agency’s research function can have this built in to how they deal with regulations.

Three things she’s asking of us. Use our voices for economic security for middle class. Use and discuss ideas. Use your conscience.

Wrapping, we can use the tools of the Consumer Department but it will be tough.

Union leader Richard Trumka spoke powerfully about the fight for economic equality for the American People. He made many salient points and provided a slide show, the most remarkable graph showed very clearly that the biggest components of our deficit come from the Bush tax cuts and his wars. The stimulus is a tiny, tiny fraction and yet all we hear from Repubs is about the fractions that contribute. AND they want to keep the Bush tax cuts as permanent..which would make the deficit impossible to reverse.

UPDATE: Saturday, July 24, 3:25 pm

Sen. Harry Reid Q & A

He began by saying the consolidation of the media and corps especially growing since Reagan, started tipping the balance of power hugely towards them and away from us.

“I’m told that at times I get on your nerves. And there are also times when you get on my nerves,” he said jokingly as he praised the blogging and Internet community for helping to spread and expose the truth.

Lt. Dan Choi, in attendance and just discharged due to DADT, just gave Reid his West Point graduation ring. Reid first tried to give it back but the audience pressed him to keep it until the repeal of DADT is done.

Reid addressed a question many have asked (including me) about reforming the filibuster rule. He said they’ve got to change it but all that he’s done is have a study done on it and continue working on what they might be able to do…I was not alone at not being too pleased with that response. He can change the rules of the Senate by simple majority at the beginning of a session but it would enrage Repubs and no doubt inspire legal action from them. But so what? The SCOTUS can’t dictate Senate rules, the filibuster is not mentioned in the Constitution.

Reid wrapped by offering remembrances of Teddy and Sen. Byrd.

Two hours until the closing event for Netroots starring Al Franken. I guess he really is special!

UPDATE: Saturday, July 24, 6:59 pm

A group (writing this a half hour later, forgot the group’s name but will add shortly) presented a video of testimonials and first hand stories about how the MSM is ignoring the poisoning an illness being spread in the Gulf by the dispersant with which BP has flooded the gulf.

Chuck Rocha, a union leader who led the movement to unseat Blanche Lincoln, displayed the kind of fire in the belly and smarts that Dems can only applaud.

Tarryl Clark, the Dem opposing Michelle Bachman appeared after introed by an amusing Rocky type video. She was greeted very warmly and has a strong shot at taking Bachman down. If you want a big Dem victory story in Nov, helping Tarryl defeat Bachman is a very viable effort to invest in.

Linda Chavez-Thompson, a labor leader running for Lt. Gov in TX, covered many meaningful issues and knocked it out of the park, great sense of humor and incisive, showed what great folks and candidates there are in TX. She closed by saying, “I believe we can turn Texas.”

Al Franken took the stage as the Progressive star he is. He recounted how the netroots transformed politics especially through the last five years…helping to elect many Progressives…including him.

He described how the Repubs are as driven and motivated as Progressives were just about a year and a half ago when we were fighting against a permanent GOP majority.

Franken also said the GOP is trying to spin the success of Dems as a fluke. “I know that people are frustrated. I’m not satisfied with where we are.” He explained that there are more Progressive Senators than before but not enough to pass the agenda we want. “But you can’t check out now.”

He said that while Dems are grumbling about what hasn’t been done, Repubs are planning on killing what has been accomplished.

Franken warned about corporations, how easy it is for them to be evil of they want to. “And your rights are being taken away, one 5-4 Supreme Court decision at a time.”

Net neutrality is the biggest 1st Amendment issue of our times, he said. By monopolizing usage of the Internet, the flow of information and netroots strength could be controlled by corps in a way unimagined now.

Corporate domination of the Internet could mean there may not be new YouTubes or Twitters unless they give ownership to the corps owning the means of distribution…that is, the Internet.

“if we don’t rise to this challenge, no one else will.”

“We have to fight back..but we also have to take credit for our progress.”

Netroots Nation 2011 will take place in MInneapolis, MN.

Thanks so much to my fellow Planeteers for all of your interest and comments. I have been reading all your comments, I will have replies and more to add when I return!

Cheers!