Posted by Mary Mancini on March 28, 2006 under Uncategorized | 
In light of the recent disaster at a Shi’ite mosque in Baghdad, Iraq’s ruling parties are asking us to “cede control of security”. In other words, “can you guys please remove your 130,000 troops? You’ve made a total mess.”
Meanwhile, Condoleezza Rice is asking Iraqis to “assume greater control of their country’s security.”
They want it. We want it. What’s the holdup? Could it be that we spent all that money and time and sacrificed all those lives to create an Iraqi government that didn’t quite turn out the way we wanted? Are the wrong Iraqis in the majority? Are the wrong Iraqi leaders in power? This isn’t our fight now. The Iraqi government is forming. Let it form without us.
Posted by Mary Mancini on March 27, 2006 under Uncategorized |
Our guest this morning was Francie Hunt, State Director for Stand for Children.
If you’re interested in attending Pre-K day at the hill this Wendesday morning at 8am or the 2006 Tennessee Early Childhood Summit, you can find out more information by going to www.prekfortn.com.
For additional volunteer opportunities with Stand, call Francie at 615.972.0765 or send a her an email. Donations also needed and accepted.
Other Links: “Bush’s FISA Defiance,” by John W. Dean (Why Bush does not want Congress to retroactively approve his illegal wiretaps); More Evidence of the Bush administrations’s War on Congress; Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor speaks up against political attacks on courts; and yet another smoking gun.
Posted by Mary Mancini on March 26, 2006 under Uncategorized |
Another memo. This one, from “a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003 ” between President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq.”
(Clear your head. Have some coffee. Read that date again.)
No worries, the memo reveals, Mr. Bush would find a way and “talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.”
(Are you starting to feel abused? Manipulated? Need a shower?)
The memo also states that while our leader seemed to urgently press the United Nations for a second resolution condemning Iraq, behind closed doors “he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons.”
(Are you paying attention yet?)
Posted by Mary Mancini on under Uncategorized |
In what David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues called a ”’mind-bogglingly expansive conception’ of executive power and its low regard for legislative power”, President Bush attached a signing statement to the recently renewed Patriot Act. According to the Boston Globe, “Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law’s requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ‘impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive’s constitutional duties.’”
He wrote: ”The executive branch shall construe the provisions . . . that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch . . . in a manner consistent with the president’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information . . . ”
Couple this report with the recent essay by John W. Dean in which he puts President Bush’s NSA wiretapping program in historical context (Nixon, anyone?) and we begin to have a clear understanding of the Bush administration’s thirst for power and control.
To see where this thirst may lead, try to find the speech made by Sandra Day O’Connor recently in which she drops the “D-bomb.” For a more in depth analysis read American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips, in which he “presents a nightmarish vision of ideological extremism, catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility, rampant greed and dangerous shortsightedness” that is the Republican party.
Posted by Mary Mancini on under Uncategorized |
The NY Times reported last week that the President may bring in another staffer to the White House to help the beleaguered Andrew Card and the increasingly ineffective Karl Rove. Rove, however, continues to deny that anything might be wrong and attributes “Mr. Bush’s problems more to external events, in particular Hurricane Katrina and Iraq, than to anything the White House did wrong.”
Karl, honey, the Iraq war is not an “external event.” You guys manufactured, packaged, and bungled that baby. And although Katrina was an act of God, it was the Federal government, led by the White House, who left New Orleans residents floundering for a week without help. Again, bungled.
Posted by Mary Mancini on March 23, 2006 under Uncategorized |
A post by Brittney Gilbert over at Nashville is Talking celebrating South Dakota’s Oglala Sioux tribe President Cecilia Fire Thunder’s promise to open a Planned Parenthood clinic on her sovereign land prompted the usual hateful rhetoric including the tossing around of the dreaded “anarchist” as an epithet and the labeling of all Planned Parenthood clinics as “baby-killing franchises.”
In light of that discussion, today seemed like a really good day to release our interview with Mark Huffman, Vice President of Education and Training for Planned Parenthood of Middle & East Tennessee. If you’re reading this and you have any pre-conceived ideas about Planned Parenthood, please listen to this interview. Mark is an excellent resource and representative for an organization that not only offers abortion services but also support, adoption counseling, gynecological examinations, sex education, contraception and much, much more to mostly low-to-moderate income women and men. Click here to listen.
By the way, Mark spoke at the press conference/rally held right after SJR127 was passed by our state Senate. His far-sighted remarks are eloquent and reasonable. Click here to read them.
After reading the NIT discussion and listening to the interview again, I still have one burning question: why is it that many anti-choice legislators and activists are unable to sympathize with the mother? When questions are raised about the mother’s health and well-being (whether physical or emotional) they are ignored or deflected. Many that are pro-choice can understand their side and see the moral implications of terminating an unplanned pregnancy. Why can’t they admit that the mother’s health is important as well?
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Posted by Mary Mancini on March 21, 2006 under Uncategorized |
Hat tip to longtime-listener, Marga, who sent me the latest by Greg Palast, who calls us all “fools” and reminds us of the real reason Bush et al. pushed for the war in Iraq:
Operation
Iraqi
Liberation
Palast writes:
“It’s about oil,” Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA’s top oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam’s former oil minister to finalize the plans for “liberating” Iraq’s oil industry. In London, Bush’s emissary Ebel also instructed Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, the man the Pentagon would choose as post-OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom] oil minister for Iraq, on the correct method of disposing Iraq’s crude.
And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq’s oil? The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq’s oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn’t matter. The key thing is what’s inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company that will ‘enhance its relationship with OPEC.’
Enhance its relationship with OPEC??? How strange: the government of the United States ordering Iraq to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is strangling our nation with outrageously high prices for crude.
Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep a lid on Iraq’s oil production — limiting Iraq’s oil pumping to the tight quota set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel.
There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil — not to get more of Iraq’s oil, but to prevent Iraq producing too much of it.”
So, really, it’s about the money. One question for the Bushies, the Chenies and their cronies, just how much money is enough money? How much power and land and ranches and toys do you need? And I don’t want to hear from you free-market capitalists that the answer is “however much they earn” because they’re not earning it, they’re stealing it.
Palast continues:
“Dick and George didn’t want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less. I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon.
Not so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes Dick’s ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 — compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation. In other words, it’s been a good war for Big Oil.”
I hope Greg’s next article is about George and Dick’s military contractor buddies and how big their profits have jumped in the last three years. Although it may be hard for him to prove it since so much of the money from our national treasury has simply disappeared into the desert on large palates inside large, tan-canvas covered trucks. I hope your kids and grandkids enjoy their $30,000 in debt!
Posted by Mary Mancini on March 20, 2006 under Uncategorized |
Tennessee ADAPT, Randy Alexander, Organizer.
Progress Center for Independent Living in Chicago, Diane Coleman, Executive Director.
Posted by Mary Mancini on March 13, 2006 under Uncategorized |
Many thanks to Mark Huffman, Vice President of Education and Training for Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee, for being our guest this morning. If you missed the interview we will have it up and running later this week as part of our archives/podcasts. Mark did a fantastic job of explaining what Planned Parenthood does as well as addressing many of the issues surrounding the abortion debate. For more information about the organization and how you can get involved visit plannedparenthood.org and click on the Take Action! link.
Other links from this morning’s show:
Planned Parenthood’s Keri Adams’ piece, “Nashville Eye: States do an end-run around Roe,” in this weekend’s Tennessean.
Eyal Press’ piece, “Abortion, From a Distance,” from yesterday’s NY Times.
Websites referenced by Nicholas Kristof in his opinion piece about Darfur in the NY Times (unfortunately the link to the article is part of Times Select): www.millionvoicesfordarfur.org and www.genocideintervention.net.
Help stop this madness.
File under “Party on, Garth”
DrinkingLiberally.com
NashvilleIsTalking.com
ThursdayNightFever
Posted by Mary Mancini on March 9, 2006 under Uncategorized |
I just got back from the Press Conference/Rally held to stave off legislative attacks on abortion, reproductive health, and a woman’s right to control her own body.
SJR127 passed the Senate with only 9 votes against.
Interestingly, Room 31 in Legislative Plaze where the Press Conference was held and where organizations such as Planned Parenthood, Tennessee Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, Nashville Women’s Political Caucus, National Council of Jewish Women, NOW, ACLU, Tennessee Democratic Womens’ Political Action Committee, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State were trying to expand and/or maintain rights (which is the reason our state constitution was created) was full of women of all ages, races, and religious persuasions. The Senate chamber, on the other hand, where they were pushing legislation to restrict rights, was full of old white men.
The irony would be delicious if it wasn’t so sad.
