Your outpouring of support has touched my in a way that has been so dear and helpful to me during this very sad time.
I will be writing again soon, I just was hit with a series of really sad events this summer and had to set my sights on grieving and helping those I love grieve.

Now together we will try helping the great folks of New Orleans find love and hope.

I will post my take on Hurricane Can't Reach ya Monday, so until then;

I say again, thank-you so much for being such caring people who make me proud to be part of the Progressive movement.

Love and peace to you all

Hug your folks,
xxx
Lizz

Not only does it unburden women from the shackles of economic freedom with passages like,
“The notion that college education is a cost-effective way to help poor, low-skill, unmarried mothers with high school diplomas or GEDs move up the economic ladder is just wrong." (pg 138)

He bravely takes on tired liberal philosophy by asking the question,
“So what is the liberal definition of freedom-freedom to choose, irrespective of the choice? Freedom without limits? (Page 22)
Finally, someone points out so eloquently and succinctly the dirty truth that liberals are stuck in the past relying on that tired relic called the “Bill of Rights” which should clearly be renamed “The Bill Of Goods”

But it’s his proing analysis of Bono, that selfish Bottom Feeding lead singer of the band, Me Too, excuse me U2 that really hits the nail on the head. (pg 22)
Finally, someone is taking on this Irish blowhard who continues to destroy the moral fabric of the globe by tirelessly trying to feed the poor in countries that don’t have Starbucks!
Hello Mr.Vox? The poor in other countries can’t make campaign contributions!

How can this Bono guy sleep at night?

I mean, the year his rock act put out Joshua Tree, this Bono and his wife traipsed around foreign refugee camps on their vacation.

Compare that to Rick Santorum who just this year, spent his “vacation” tirelessly trying to feed American… Teri Schaivo.

And look how this Bono guys kids have turned out!!!!!!!!!
They also waste their time promoting industry in South America and Africa by way of cotton & design while the Bush twins selflessly took their Judeao/Christian Values and single handedly helped American tavern owners across this great nation exceed their yearly projections.

I mean c’mon, while Bono is scurrilously trying to reduce the debt of poor nations, Santorum was bravely proposing measures that would have allowed a reduction in minimum-wage and overtime-pay protections for millions of workers.

A classic example of what Santorum call, “No Fault Freedom” (pg 22)

Hey Mr.Bono, wake up and smell the decade!

We want OUR Robin Hood to steal from the poor to pay for the rich.

I have been grieving the death of a friend during the entire unraveling of the Plame/Rove incident, (which, just as an aside I have dubbed Full Blown Aides. Cute huh?)

I wasn’t sure how long I was going to stay in this funk, when suddenly as I was watching CNN’s Late Mid-Morning Early Afternoon show, Daryn Kagan broke away from her reading without comprehension to go live to Baltimore, where the president was giving a speech about the Patriot Act.

Today’s backdrop for his piece of orchestrated theatrics was a group of Maryland police officers who apparently didn’t get the memo that their Fearless Reader had cut 1 billion dollars from the 2006 Federal budget for cops and first responders.

Before he got to defending the Gang Rape on Civil Liberties Act, he celebrated his Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, another man who doesn’t seem to have much of a need for civil liberties, and then moved on to his classic, “We need to get the terrorists over there so they don’t come here” i.e., Iraqis really have no need for civil liberties.

As he blathered on and on about “Finding those who want to destroy our freedoms”, I just kept thinking, “You have found them you moron! Just look at the last six months how many you have found!

Bolton, Owens, Brown, Gonzales, Chertoff, Rove.

The list is endless.

It’s like the Wizard of Oz, “You’ve Been searching for something but all the time in has been in your own back yard”.
In fact, not only have you found so many of those who, “Want to destroy our freedoms”, you are them.

I have taken a break from the blog to mourn the death of a friend and hopefully will be back in action by the end of the week. Fortunately for me, I have a fab sister who can pinch hit until I can collect my thoughts.

Heeeeeere's Middle Marge

THere are a few of the more interesting news items about America, part of the federal government’s attempts to destroy the first amendment at home and spread its propaganda abroad.

First, why is Robert Novak not in jail?

The Supreme Court has refused to hear arguments on behalf of Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper from Time magazine, two journalists who face jail sentences for refusing to disclose the high-level government sources who provided them with the kind of essential insider information that informed citizens need to know about the workings of their democracy. This presumably stems from the highly illegal identification of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. Robert Novak revealed her identity in his syndicated column after her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former diplomat, criticized President Bush for leading American troops into Iraq using information from a phony memo that linked Saddam Hussein to purchases of
enriched uranium in Niger. Novak’s disclosure, which he links to a high-level government source, has never resulted in his being questioned, and is thought to have been the Administration’s effort to discredit Wilson (This has always smelled like Karl Rove to me).

It’s confusing that these two face prison while Novak remains free and silent and surprisingly unthreatened. Cooper didn’t write about Plame until Novak had, and Miller never wrote about her at all.

Yet the Supreme Court, which the Bush supporters claim is too liberal, is refusing to act in defense of First Amendment freedoms that protect journalists and their confidential sources.

If Robert Novak, mouthpiece and puppet for the administration’s disinformation campaigns (and who knows, perhaps being paid as well as protected for his loyalty to his friends in the White House…it has happened, Armstrong Williams and Jeff Gannon are prime examples), were in the judicial hot seat, would the highest court in the land turn its back on him?

Another interesting bit of propaganda, from a BBC interview with brigadier general Karl Horst regarding the insurgency in Iraq. When asked about the daily suicide bombings, explosions in trucks full of watermelons, car bombs and explosives attached to cute little puppies, this scripted apologist for the administration replied that there are more violent deaths on the streets of New York City and Los Angeles every day than there are on the streets of Baghdad.

Why aren’t Mayors Bloomberg and Hahn up in arms about this slander on the safety of their cities (especially Bloomberg, who’s desperately hoping that the Big Apple will be host to the Olympics in 2012)?

The truth is, homicides in each of these cities is down, indeed at their lowest levels in decades. And here’s the statistical truth: approximately 600 homicides have taken place in each city in 2002 (source: Chicago Tribune, in an article that places Chicago as the nation’s leader in annual deaths by homicide), compared with the more than 5,500 civilians who have been killed in Baghdad in the first twelve months of the occupation (source: Associated Press, from records released by the Baghdad morgue).

The lie is heinous, insulting and a red herring. Our cities are not under attack nor occupied by a foreign nation, unless you want to consider Japan’s ownership of Rockefeller Center, or China’s attempt to purchase UNOCAL, neither of which, to my knowledge, has resulted in casualties.

Worse, this bit of disinformation, while damaging and untrue, also brings up a critical issue: if the streets of America’s biggest cities are more violent than the streets of Baghdad, why aren’t we bringing our National Guard and reservists home to protect our own citizens? Further, what makes us think we can ensure success in Baghdad when we have failed to do so here?

Why not just tell the truth: the death toll in Baghdad is rising, the U.S. is trying to find solutions to the insurgency crisis, and maybe, just maybe, the situation in Iraq is bloodier than it is in the United States.

This, plus Robert Novak in handcuffs. Now there’s a newsflash I’d like to see.

Today I am featuring her elequent thoughts on the long overdue conviction of "Preacher" Edgar Ray Killen in the murders of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.

My thoughts are with their families today as they can finally, 41 years later, see justice and start on the road to peace.

Thanks to the Internet, CNN, the BBC and EuroNews, the verdict was announced quickly around the world, and few were happier to hear news of a conviction than I was, especially when the KKK, pronounced by a French journalist as Ka-Ka-Ka (say it quickly and it sounds like the French word for the act of taking a crap). And yet, there's sadness in hearing this as well.

Justice had to be done, and it was, though my sisters and I, in our e-mails to each other during the trial, were worried that the prosecution, after 41 years, had presented too little evidence. Indeed, the jury found Killen not guilty of murder because of the weakness of the prosecution in this regard.

This was a shocking development, given the declassification of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission's files (those infamous records, sealed for decades, that chronicled Mississippi's efforts, including Klan activities, to maintain through any means, the racial status quo), the exhaustive work of Jerry Mitchell, an investigative journalist for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, the testimony of other Klansmen in the murder trials of Medgar Evers and Vernon Dahmer, FBI records and the commitment of courageous locals who scoured the community for evidence, information and witnesses.

The other sadness that I feel is that still, after all these years, it appears that many in the Philadelphia, Mississippi community, including family members that will never speak to me again, believe that this trial should have never taken place, that the murders should be buried in the past just as the young men's bodies were buried in a dam, in hopes that the truth would never be unearthed.

When I wrote Back to Mississippi, a Personal Journey Through the Events that Changed America in 1964, I had learned that Edgar Ray Killen was a cousin on my father's side. Dad grew up in Neshoba County during the Depression, and we'd grown up in Minneapolis listening to him tell wonderful stories of rural Mississippi in the twenties and thirties.

But when I discovered the family connection to the murders, the story Dad didn't tell, and decided to write about it, family members who'd been open and loving closed ranks and shut me out. Angry letters, torturous e-mails and unreturned phone calls replaced after dinner chats on their front porches and visits to toothless aunts in the backwoods for coconut cake, sweetened ice tea and Grandma Ora's recipe for the best fried chicken in the world.

The good news is that there were brave and energetic people who lived in Neshoba County alongside our closed-mouthed cousins, people who fought for justice even when their neighbors wanted the whole thing to just go away. I also got to know a few of the people whose lives had been permanently altered by the murders, family members of the civil rights workers, three young men who'd decided to take on people whose heads were mired in ignorance and prejudice, and work to register their black countrymen to vote.

It is a victory for them, for their loved ones, for the justice system in Mississippi, so long held hostage by the Klan, and for those who believed this day would come, even when people who pretended to look the other way, tried to prevent it.

From Paris, where the KKK has become le Ka-Ka-Ka, I say, Vive La Justice!

Today is my pop's 85th birthday and we all will celebrate our dads on Sunday.

Here is a snapshot of my father, the amazing Wilbur Collins Winstead

Born June 16th, 1920 House, Mississippi, the youngest of 5.

One of the best basketball players the state of Mississippi has ever seen.

Volunteered for the war at age 17

Private First Class United States Marine Corps

Four years of service in WWII

Served in the First Marine Division at Guadalcanal

Survived dozens of bouts of Malaria, a bout of polio, 58 years of marriage and well, having me as a leftwing loony as a daughter.

A bridge whiz, a cribbage whiz, a gourmet chef,my favorite Jeopardy! opponent and funnier than I could ever hope to be.

Definitely be one of my lifelines.

More than all of that, he tells me he loves me everyday.

Right back atcha Dad!

How did I get so lucky?

Happy Birthday, Happy Father’s Day

xx
The Baby

“Listen up impressionable young people! If you quit smoking you’ll gain 20 pounds and will feel fat and unloved but hey, maybe you won’t get cancer!”

He would be perfect, he ignores science too!

Now there is some good news.

Since it is highly irregular during a Racketeering lawsuit to drastically drop a sanction by 92%, the judge in this case has indicated she smells a rat.
(Nevermind the rat has been decomposing on her bench for the last six years and the entire nation smells it, but I digress.)
The better news is no matter what the government requests, she can dole out much more if she sees fit.
An in light of the new information today which is that apparently the government told two of its own witnesses to lighten up (no pun intended) on the tobacco industry, she should award us (yes we are the government) every penny of that 130 large.

I mean, let’s face it.

In the “science is bad for Bush policy” world we are living in, no matter what the settlement, at least 10 billion will be spent on some kind of research that will prove Oxygen causes cancer….and makes you fat.

Well I don't know about you, but I was sucked into a false sense of homeland security, when Bush asked the HSD to set up something called the “Nuclear Prevention Office”, and asked Congress for $227 million to finance it.
I jumped for joy when first hearing of this, thinking the “Nuclear Prevention Office” was an agency entirely devoted to preserving the filibuster for judicial nominees!

But then I put down my meth pipe and snapped back into Bushality. No, the Nuclear Prevention Office is to deploy detection equipment at ports, border crossings, major transportation routes and in cities, and oversee research to build better detectors.
Well another dream shattered.

No Wait! That’s a good thing.

Could it be my fantasy turned into another fantasy of a different kind? I mean, this seems like a no brainer! Who could be against creating an entire department devoted to securing our ports and borders?

Well, Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on Homeland Security, that’s who!
Yes, Old Hal slashed $100 million from Bush's budget request last month because he complained the department didn't provide a “solid plan” for how the office would spend the full $227 million.

Really Hal? This is where you decide to show some fiscal testicals? Where were the “solid plans” for say, Iraq or social security?
You seem like a real brain trust Hal. I can see where you would want to halve that budget line when:

A. At 250,000 a pop, the hundreds of radiation detection monitors Homeland security has purchased for our ports are notorious for false alarms, set off by innocuous products.

B. These fancy ass monitors, can’t tell the difference between highly enriched Uranium and kitty litter.
That’s right. We have a half a billion dollars worth of Tidy Cat detectors.

So rest assure, there is no chance of a “Clump‘n’ Flush” attack on American soil!

In fact, if Hal and co keep slashing Homeland Security budgets , “Clump‘n’ Flush” will be all that’s left of American soil.

I am actually in the airport now and wanted to drop a note to all my fellow Lizzbians on this Memorial Day Week-end.

It's because so many brave men and women died to protect the rights of people like you and me because they believed so strongly in that brilliant document our founders wrote.
The One That Starts "We The People", not "We The Corporations"

So each time Frist, Delay and their ilk fight for a judge or a piece of legislation that favors "We The Profiteers" over "We The People", they spit on the honor of those we memorialize this week-end.

True Patriots fight to ensure the minority have a voice,
and more importantly, true Patriots fight for the minority to feel safe.

When deciding how to define "Extreme Circumstances" these two items are of Extreme Importance.

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day!

Throw a brat on the BBQ for me!

Lizz

Now that a compromise has been reached, we all feel SOOOOOO much better knowing the filibuster will only be used sparingly in extraordinary circumstances, not abused in ordinary circumstances, like against a judge who has argued civil rights for same-sex couples would logically extend to activities like necrophilia and bestiality.

Seriously, this is what they call a deal?

Why would I expect anything more from a senate that believes
Alberto “The Torture Guy” Gonzales passed the muster to become the highest law enforcement officer in the nation, and holds up John “Lets Blow Up 10 Floors of the UN” Bolton as a shining star of diplomacy.

Can we really trust these same people to recognize “Extraordinary Circumstances” when it comes to lifetime judicial appointments?

Clearly, these senators wouldn’t know an extraordinary circumstance if it was photographed at the end of a dog leash in an Iraqi prison.

And to add further credence that the senate couldn’t identify an “Extraordinary Circumstance” if it were trying to implement "an unconscionable act of judicial activism" right in front of them, these senators held a press conference to pat themselves on the back for coming up with a compromise that fucks our judicial system with a Skil drill rather than a jack hammer.
Now that’s the kind of bi-partisanship we need to see more of.

So here’s the plan:
Brown, Owens and Pryor will not be filibustered yet Saad and Meyers will be.

I guess extraordinary is in the ally of the beholder.

No I’m not referring to the war or education or Clear Skies.

This is regarding The Silver Ring Thing, George Bushes, “No Virgin Left Behind” abstinence only program that in no small part has lead to a dramatic increase in abortion since the Celibate-in-Chief took office.

Set in a total Lolapalooloza type setting, this magical night of music and comedy is a wholesome Rave where teens gather to drop sex instead of X.
A tax payer sham that climaxes with each participant slipping a silver ring onto his or her finger, pledging they will remain virgins until marriage, much the same way they pledge to take care of that dog they talk you into bringing home.
We all know how that turns out

Yes as the Rap songs and skits reiterate at the Silver Ring Thing events, pre marital sex is a world of darkness and tragic consequences, and one valuable public health message I gleaned from them watching “Sixty Minutes” last night, is that the use of condoms is about as safe as pouring a big glass full of aids right down your throat.

The Message?
Sex is evil, sex is dirty, and sex is dangerous…
SAVE IT FOR THE ONE YOU LOVE!

You can preach and lecture and throw money at this issue until you are blue in the balls, and the result is going to be the same.
Teens are gonna have sex for three simple reasons,
1. It’s fun
2. It’s free
3. It’s against your wishes

Wake up! When the most fun a person can ever have in the whole world is free, you can’t stop it.
Not even with twisting scientific facts like a balloon animal.

No the only science that may work to prevent kids from having sex may be reverse psychology.
Maybe if you sit your kids down and say, “When I grab your mothers’ firm buttocks and mount her like a stallion, she screams for the whip and God do I make her beg for it.!”

After they’ve stopped throwing up, maybe they’ll vow never to have sex.
We’ll see how that turns out.

But watching George Galloway rip through Norm Coleman’s crackpot theory faster than Horsley can rape a mule, I ached to be him.

His style, his passion, his scathingly fluid remarks toward the unscrupulous Worm Coleman.
Man, I would have given anything to say those things to Senator “Sold My Soulman”.
But at least I got to watch it live.

Now if you missed it, have no fear! You can read the full transcript on the website of the US Senate, er wait, it’s not there. That’s ok, just link to that front page New York Times story that’s just dripping with quotes!”
Yeah, not there either.
WAIT! Here it is.
Wow for a minute there I was thinking there may be a cover up going on but here it is….
IN THE TAIWAN NEWS

And in fairness to The New York Times, they did cover the story.
In The International Section
On Page A14
Covered by Judith Filler er Miller.

And call it kismet, but that lying bank robber Ahmed Chalabi, who was an oh so helpful contributor to the brilliantly detailed works of fiction Judy did for the Times leading up to the Iraq war, just so happened to be involved in the works of fiction Norm Coleman has been reciting to the world at large.

Seems so odd she wouldn't mention that fun fact in her piece.

Huh…….

Thank God I thought to look in the Taiwan News.

I mean C’mon.
The torture guy for Attorney General?
Or even worse, a nominee for the federal bench the torture guy thinks is too extreme!

And now the man, who advocated of blowing up 10 stories of the UN, is our top choice to be its ambassador?

Give me one good example of how this president has earned the distinction of a full senate vote on his choice of this mustachioed megalomaniac to be our diplomatic voice when HE HASN’T MADE A SINGLE GOOD CHOICE TO DATE!?

Yesterday, the Republican Party defined itself as never before.

Even when having to ask this question of the presidents horrific nominee;

“What message are we sending to the world community when in the same breath we have sought to appoint an ambassador to the United Nations who himself has been accused of being arrogant, of not listening to his friends, of acting unilaterally, of bullying those who do not have the ability to properly defend themselves?"

They will still fall in line and rubber stamp any person or piece of legislation that rewards the powerful and ignores the interest of the people.

And WE pay for it all.

Blind Ambition, thy name is Republican.

So today while the blogtopia was posting away about Chuck Hagel’s hinting on
ABC’s, “This Week, Like Every Week I Will Lob Softballs Onto The Laps of My Guests Instead of Pressing Hard on The Issues, with George Stephanopolous,” that he may Fist Frist on the Filibuster, I was much more intrigued by an entirely different aspect of the interview.

And spill he did.
Here’s what happened BEFORE he danced around his nuclear option.

Right out of the gate, he blasély admitted no one in the administration, or congress really knows what motivates the insurgency, (Hint: Blowing up their country FOR NO GOOD REASON is a reliable motivator) or who funds the insurgency, (Hint: The guy Bush was holding hands with last week could help, because it was his subjects who blew up our country FOR NO GOOD REASON).

To which the littlest interviewer responded, “How can that be?”
To which Senator Haggard replied, “Well it’s complicated.”

I’ll bet!

Especially without a reason to go in the first place, no plan once you got there, not enough troops, scant few allies behind you and no exit strategy.
You know what’ll help? Throwing money at the problem!

What the Chuck?

YOU ARE ON THE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE!
AND THE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE!
If you don’t know who does?
It sounded like he thinks intelligence is someone else’s problem, or if you ignore it, it will just go away.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Intel”

This confidence inspiring segment continued when, in responding to America’s place in the world economy Hagel replied, “The United States is no longer the dominant power on earth as we have been in the last sixty years, and that is good news I think for us.”

What the Chuck?

YOU ARE ON THE BANKING TRADE AND FINANCE COMMITTEE!
Just exactly who is the “US” that this is good news for? US as in you and your bare banking buddies you just rewarded with that Stankruptsy Bill?

OK, quick recap.
So far in this interview, a ranking member on the Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees has just admitted we know about as much about why there is an insurgency in Iraq as we do about Thomas Pynchon’s love life. And as a ranking member of the banking committee as well, he thinks it’s good for America that China has our economic balls in a vice.

What the Chuck!
I almost forgot,

He’s CO-CHAIRMAN OF THE CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA!

So then we get to the topic of quarantining North Korea, and the Senior senator from Nebraska who serves on the Banking, Intelligence, Foreign Relations and Rules committees said, “ I have not talked to Secretary Rice about this issue but the other thing about North Korea is WE DON’T HAVE GOOD INTELLIGENCE…WE’RE KINDA FLYING BLINDLY IN SOME WAYS.”

What the Chuck!

Flying blindly with that nuke kook Kim Jung Ill? That’s like going to Jeff Gannon’s house without a raincoat on!

It wasn’t until after ALL THIS, that he said, I believe in the filibuster, blah blah.

Now don’t get me wrong, when Chuck Hagel hinted that he may vote against Fristifer
on the filibuster, it warmed the cockles of my heart.
But compared to those 22 minutes that led up to it, the Monday blog postings left me with the bitter taste of anticipointment.

What The Chuck...

Married to Wilbur Collins Winstead for 58 years and still goin' strong!
(Ok, That's a stretch but still goin' for chrissakes!)

Mother of 5
Grandmother Of 9
Great-Grand Mother of 3

(Yes That makes me a great aunt for those of you keeping score at home)

And Simply the best mom ever!

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

Love You Tons,
The Baby