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by IfLizWereQueen

Thinking about 2012 and where I will stand

May 16, 2011 in Issues

I have not made up my mind except for two main points:

1) I will NOT stand with the Tea Party/Republican wackos. Any American who does not belong to the upper 10% who does vote for candidates from this group is either totally ignorant, or has a wish to totally destroy what shreds of a democracy we have left.

2) I will not stand with the current Wall Street corporate centrist/blue dog Democratic coalition that has control of the Democratic Party.  They are not the majority but they control the party machinery. The perfect analogy in comparing them to the Tea Party/Republican wakcos is that the wackos will take the entire cake while the do-gooding Corporate Centrist Democrats will toss the majority a few crumbs–but always with a string firmly attached.  They don’t even hand out crumbs any more without taking a few nibbles beforehand. [As for Blue Dogs like Ben Nelson of Nebraska--they are Republicans as far as I'm concerned.]

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HERE ARE MY OPTIONS IN ORDER OF PREFERENCE FOR NOW:

#1 Join up with the PDA. The Progressive Democrats are a faction of the Democratic party.  They may as well be a separate party when considering the differences in the platforms they advocate.  From all appearances it looks as if the PDA may be pulling away from the Democratic Party.  For example, instead of supporting the Democratic candidate in a New York race, they are supporting Ian Murphy–the Green candidate and the fellow who called up Gov Scott Walker pretending to be David Koch.  I have to see how things progress with the PDA before deciding.

#2 Green Party - The Green Party has more support this year than it ever has. I am more than confident that they will win several House Seats this year.

#3 Labor Party – The Labor Party is another good option.  Like the Green Party, they too are building a strong coalition.  If the labor unions get behind their movement, the Labor Party, like the Green Party, is sure to capture a few Congressional seats as well.

#4 Independents - Of course there is always this group as well.  The finest Senator we have is an Independent–Bernie Sanders.  He stands up for the people every time.  He better represents the majority of the American people than any other Congress person in the Senate or the House.

By the way:  just in case you may be wondering, Bernie is no millionaire.

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    by IfLizWereQueen

    Tea Baggers and Liberals often employ similar strategies–Both need to get in touch with their real power–their money

    December 30, 2009 in Is Poverty a Forgotten Issue?, Issues, Strategies, Take Action, Wall Street

    Even though most of us don’t have much of it left, collectively we still do and we need to leverage that collective wealth if the working and middle class are to survive.

    Back in the fall I watched and smiled sardonically as I saw the tea baggers converge with their march on the White House.

    How many times have liberals followed the same tactic–march on Washington?  I myself have been to two anti war rallies in front of the White House.

    Have any of them stopped Congress from rubber stamping our tax dollars for Iraq, Afthanistan and now Yemen without the consent of the majority of the people?  No it has not even slowed down the 1% who through the multimillionaires in our Senate and House control our nation.

    IT IS TIME FOR THE PEOPLE TO TRY NEW AND MORE EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES.

    FORGET THE MARCHES.  THEY ACCOMPLISH NOTHING.  ALL THEY DO IS PROVIDE AN OUTLET FOR PEOPLE TO LET OFF STEAM.  Those in charge actually like such demonstrations because they are like valves to let off dangerous steam.

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    The most effective strategy is to take control of our money.  Each individual American can take charge of their own money.  There is no law that says you must have it in Bank of America or Wells Fargo or Goldman Sachs.  Put your money in a local credit union.  Make it your new years resolution to take it out of a too big to fail bank and put it into a credit union.  You might even be able to transfer that credit card account to a decent loan with your credit union and pay it off.

    Unlike Wall Street predators, credit unions play fair with their customer.  They do not have gottcha fees.

    As for investments–well what better investment than in your own local community?  If you have your money in a Wall Street Bank, most of that money flows OUT of your community.  If you have your money in a local credit union, most of your money stays and enriches your local community.

    Wall Street is corrupt.  Bring your money home where  you can literally see it with your own two eye being put to work for you.

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    As for Congress and their “two-party” system?  Turn  your back on that too.  Only give your money to candidates who stand for what you believe in.  Don’t give it to the Party.  BOTH parties are controlled by the same rich Wall Street predators.

    Ordinary Americans need to start paying attention to what is really happening.  It’s not about party.  It’s not about left and right–that’s a dog and pony show of the rich.  It’s about the rich against the working and middle class.  We are engaged in a full blown class war.

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      by IfLizWereQueen

      “Overhaul the current system?” what a joke! What an insult to the American people! We don’t have a health care system. We have a death squad.

      September 6, 2009 in Health, Healthcare, Issues, Obama, Obama Administration

      How the hell does one “overhaul” a death squad, led by people who have been committing crimes against humanity for decades and getting rich on it?

      ***********************************************************************

      In the USA, we don’t have a health care system.  We have a death squad that kills more Americans every year than Saddam managed to murder each year when he was in power, and the President’s advisers (Axelrod and Gibbs) talk of a plan to “overhaul” it?

      We had less than 4,000 people killed in the Twin Towers and our right-wing, Bush-led, government was willing to start a war that is still going on and is fast approaching over a trillion dollars in cost and the cost of over a million lives.

      During that SAME time, over 162,000 Americans needlessly died because they can’t afford health care and no one says anything and the current members of the Senate along with the Obama Administration are haggling over whether or not to include even a damn public option when what we really need is a Single Payer System like the rest of the civilized world has.

      SHAME ON EVERY DAMNED ONE OF YOU MULTIMILLIONAIRES IN THE SENATE WHO CONTINUE TO SIT ON YOUR ASSES AND NOT STAND UP FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.  YOUR FAMILIES SHOULD JOIN ME IN SHAMING YOU.  YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO HUMANITY.

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      Not only should the USA health care system NOT be overhauled, all of its leadership should be tried for crimes against humanity.

      We might as well go for the solution that a majority (61%)  of Americans want:  SINGLE PAYER

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      The multimillionaires in the Senate didn’t want Single Payer on the table because they know that with a public discussion that the public would be more educated about it and thus corporate fear mongers like David Koch and his trained hate mongers from “Americans for Prosperity” with their hate rhetoric and references to Hitler and “socialized medicine” would lose power. They know that 61% of the American people support a Single Payer option.  They know that when the single payer is put side by side with even a public option that the people could see the truth.

      AND YES,  “PUBLIC OPTION” is CENTRAL to the bill.  Without public option there is nothing but bullshit and a health care boy scout badge for President Obama.

      IT IS A SHAME AND DISGRACE THAT WE EVEN HAVE TO DISCUSS THIS, MUCH LESS FIGHT FOR IT WHEN 83% OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WANT IT. A NATIONAL DISGRACE.

      EITHER WE HAVE A DEMOCRACY OR WE DON’T.   THAT, Mr. Gibbs and Axelrod is what is central to this health care issue.  Either we have a democracy where the majority of the American people rule or we don’t.

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        by IfLizWereQueen

        Joe Bageant asks: Are you about to join the white underclass?

        July 19, 2009 in Culture, Economics and Ideology, Issues, The Real Truth

        Queen’s Byte: Joe Bageant (JoeBageant.com) posted an article in AlterNet yesterday that is worthy of a read.  When I first saw the title, I was interested because so few writers in America seem to be willing to talk about “class.”  Then when I saw it was Joe who wrote the article, I was not surprised by the title.

        For those who don’t know who Joe Bageant is, you can visit his site Joe Bageant or you can check out a couple of the Queen’s posts about Joe and his opinions.

        Deer Hunting with Jesus–Viewpoints of Poor Whites
         December 31, 2008

        What do Poor Americans Really Want?
        Feb 2009

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        The thing i appreciate about Joe Bageant is that his writing leads me down paths to think about our society and its people in ways that I had not previously considered.  That to me is the mark of a great journalist, if not writer.  Excerpt from Joe’s latest article:

        “. . . Middle class also has implications of people’s occupations, usually white collar occupations, though it also includes some of the ever thinning ranks of blue-collar workers. But this comes down to describing human beings solely in terms of their jobs in the capitalist labor marketplace, and assumptions about income and whether one takes their daily shower before they go to work or after they come home. By that definition, anyone of working age who doesn’t have a steady job of the right type, for whatever reason, is in some sort of “economic underclass.” In other words, they are the people that middle class folks feel should damned well be working, if they are over age 18 and have a pulse. (“If I gotta do time in this meaningless workhouse of a nation, you do too!”) This underclass includes any people of color seen on the street at midday during the week, single mothers, and paraplegics too, now that the middle class is paying taxes for handicap parking spaces and wheelchair access to the public shitters.

        Another way we define underclass is as “losers.” People who cannot talk, think, or act like middle class professional and managerial workers, people who cannot even be posers. There is absolutely no excuse for these people. We’ve got television 24/7 to show’em how to behave. They could learn to act like the blue collar workers we see on the endless reruns of The King of Queens (an American sitcom about a parcel service delivery truck driver.). They could at least be funny and amiable fer godz sake. . .”

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          by IfLizWereQueen

          MORE ON Gov dick Sanford

          July 13, 2009 in Conservative Nonsense, Issues, The Real Truth, The Rich

          QUEEN’S COMMENTS: Last week South Carolina pals of Mark Sanford rewrote the law regarding felonies.  In spite of the fact that Mark Sanford had taken $3,000 of taxpayer money and used it to fund a trip to visit his mistress in South America, the lawmakers deemed that Sanford had not committed a crime since he repaid the “loan”.   Of course their actions leave a lot of open-ended unanswered questions such as:  Do you think he would have returned that money he stole/”borrowed” if he had not been caught?  Considering his reputation for cheapness, I doubt it.

          AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, Will their ruling begin a new precedence in the State of South Carolina whereby any felon who repays the money they stole will be let off the hook?

          Or is this just another special case for the rich.  It’s ok to embezzle and steal if you are rich?  Apparently that seems to be the case for Sanford.

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          WHAT VALUE HAS SANFORD BEEN TO HUMANITY?  LITTLE

          According to dickipedia:

          Sanford’s cheapness extended to his political views, as he voted against any legislation that required government spending.

          Some of the bills that he voted against included:

          -A bill that protected the preservation of sites linked to the Underground Railroad

          -A commemorative stamp raising breast cancer awareness

          -The reauthorization of the Violence Against Women act

          Sanford evidently didn’t see what the big deal was with slavery…or beating women…or beating women with breast cancer. It is unclear whether or not he has a stamp collection.

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            by IfLizWereQueen

            BUY A COPY OF “THE FAMILY” TODAY AND READ IT.

            July 12, 2009 in Conservative Nonsense, Issues, Justice, Political History, Strategies, The Rich, Wackos, Wing Nut Awards

            Queen’s comments: I’m only half-way through the book, but I highly recommend it.  It is one more of those books about the jackasses who run our country that will have your jaw on the floor.  There is no “conspiracy theory” to it.  This is just another story about the shadow people and how they manipulate our democracy to suit their own selfish purposes.

            Tom Coburn, John Ensign and Mark Sanford are all members of The Family.

            IN 2010, LET’S BEGIN TO CLEAN THE MULTIMILLIONAIRES OUT OF WASHINGTON DC BY SUPPORTING THEIR NON-MULTIMILLIONAIRE OPPONENTS.  I’ve had it with their bullshit and I hope that ordinary Americans will join me.

            “Just when we thought the Christian right was crumbling, Jeff Sharlet delivers a rude shock: One of its most powerful and cult-like core groups, the Family, has been thriving. Sharlet’s book is one of the most compelling and brilliantly researched exposes you’ll ever read — just don’t read it alone at night!”
            –Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, Bait and Switch, and Dancing in the Streets

            From the bookjacket:

            They are the Family—fundamentalism’s avant-garde, waging spiritual war in the halls of American power and around the globe. They consider themselves the new chosen, congressmen, generals, and foreign dictators who meet in confidential cells, to pray and plan for a “leadership led by God,” to be won not by force but through “quiet diplomacy.” Their base is a leafy estate overlooking the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia, and Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have written from inside its walls.

            The Family is about the other half of American fundamentalist power—not its angry masses, but its sophisticated elites. Sharlet follows the story back to Abraham Vereide, an immigrant preacher who in 1935 organized a small group of businessmen sympathetic to European fascism, fusing the Far Right with his own polite but authoritarian faith. From that core, Vereide built an international network of fundamentalists who spoke the language of establishment power, a “family” that thrives to this day. In public, they host prayer breakfasts; in private they preach a gospel of “biblical capitalism,” military might, and American empire. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao, the Family’s leader declares, “We work with power where we can, build new power where we can’t.”

            Jeff Sharlet’s blog

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              by IfLizWereQueen

              Just one more reason why 95% of Congress need to be booted out on their asses

              July 11, 2009 in Health, Healthcare, Issues

              Some Choice Words for the ‘Select Few’

              by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

              If you want to know what really matters in Washington, don’t go to Capitol Hill for one of those hearings, or pay attention to those staged White House “town meetings.” They’re just for show. What really happens — the serious business of Washington — happens in the shadows, out of sight, off the record. Only occasionally — and usually only because someone high up stumbles — do we get a glimpse of just how pervasive the corruption has become.

              Case in point: Katharine Weymouth, the publisher of The Washington Post — one of the most powerful people in DC — invited top officials from the White House, the Cabinet and Congress to her home for an intimate, off-the-record dinner to discuss health care reform with some of her reporters and editors covering the story.

              But CEO’s and lobbyists from the health care industry were invited, too, provided they forked over $25,000 a head — or up to a quarter of a million if they want to sponsor a whole series of these cozy get-togethers. And what is the inducement offered? Nothing less, the invitation read, than “an exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will get it done.”

              The invitation reminds the CEO’s and lobbyists that they will be buying access to “those powerful few in business and policy making who are forwarding, legislating and reporting on the issues…

              MORE

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              QUEEN’S ADDENDUM: As was noted in this article, if any of the ordinary Americans who really need healthcare showed up at this soire, they would be shown the door.

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                by IfLizWereQueen

                What can we do with our nuclear waste? Why we can park it on the Indian Reservations in the USA.

                July 9, 2009 in Culture, Environment, Issues, Justice

                QUEEN’S COMMENTS: Reading the article from Colombia Passport regarding the mistreatment of indigenous people in Colombia reminded me of how poorly our government leaders and corporations have treated in Indians in the USA.

                One would think that after all our leaders of government have done to harm our own indigenous people that there would be little left to add to the long and shameful list, but this would not be true.

                There is still much more harm that can be done to these people.

                Low-income and minority communities are disproportionately targeted with facilities and wastes that have significant and adverse human health and environmental effects. [1] This places the burdens of society on those who are most vulnerable. These communities are at a tremendous economic and political disadvantage over the decision-making process that is dominated by large, wealthy corporations and/or government agencies. Ironically, low income and People of Color communities targeted with hazardous facilities often benefit the least from whatever societal “good” is purported to justify the generation of the hazardous substances in the first place.
                According to the 1990 U.S. Census (the very time period when the U.S. nuclear establishment intensified and accelerated its targeting of Native American communities with high-level radioactive waste dumps.  Over 31% of Native Americans living on reservations had incomes below the federal poverty line. After centuries of oppression and domination, stripped of their lands, resources, and traditional governments, these communities lack political power, and desperately need economic development.

                The “tribal sovereignty” of Native Americans, which makes their lands exempt from state law and many environmental regulations, only increases their attractiveness as targets for facilities unwanted elsewhere. Native Americans have already disproportionately borne the brunt of the impacts from the nuclear fuel chain over the past 60 years. In the case of radioactive waste storage and disposal, the nuclear power establishment in industry and government is simply taking advantage of these vulnerable communities, attempting to hide from environmental regulation and widespread public opposition behind the shield of tribal sovereignty.

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                [1] The United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice Report, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Communities Surrounding Hazardous Waste Sites. New York: United Church of Christ, 1987.

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                  SUGGESTED MENU FROM THE QUEEN FOR THE G8 SUMMIT

                  July 8, 2009 in Foreign Affairs, Globalization, Hunger, Issues, Obama, Obama Administration

                  The leaders of France, the USA, United Kingdom, Russia, Gemany, Japan, Italy and Canada are the member states of the G8.

                  This year the three-day summit is to be held in Italy beginning July 8.

                  Suggested Menu:  NOTHING

                  The Queen suggests that the menu ideally be nothing, or at a maximum a  1/2 cup of rice each day along with a questionable glass of water to drink.  That’s correct.  I suggest that these world leaders subsist on the same amount of food that the majority of the people of the world live on–the ones who are lucky.  Those who are not so fortunate are starving to death–thanks in some part to the efforts of these very leaders of the G8 Summit and their Globalization policies and support of IMF and the World Bank.

                  Then perhaps addressing the issue of starvation might be at the top of their list as opposed to figuring out more ways to promote Globalization–ie. Corporate Global Slavery.

                  To put things in proper perspective:  trillions have already been spent to patch up leading world financial institutions, while out of the comparatively small sum of $12 billion pledged in Rome earlier this year, to offset the food crisis, only $1 billion has been delivered.

                  Over 16 million people have starved to death on this planet so far this year alone.  More than 800 million people in the world are malnourished — 777 million of them are from the developing world. 177 million of them are children.

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                    It’s time to start telling the truth about our founding fathers and the real state of “democracy” in the USA

                    July 7, 2009 in Banks, Bipartisanship, Issues, Justice, Labor Struggles, Peace, Political History, Terrorism, The Rich, War

                    TO PARAPHRASE FROM NOAM CHOMSKY: The American Republic was founded on the principle that there should be a democratic deficit. James Madison, the main framer of the constitutional order, his view was that power should be in the hands of the wealthy of the nation, the more responsible set of men who have sympathy for property owners and their rights.

                    [That's right folks.  According to the founding fathers values, women and blacks and even white men who did not own property were not worthy of participating in government activities that decide their fates.  Those are the same founding fathers than many Americans are taught to revere.  I say piss on their values. It is past time for serious change.  REAL change and not double speak political rhetoric from the mouths of multimillionaires.  And oh yes, did I mention?  It is a class war we are having right now in the USA.  Anyone who says otherwise is either misguided or a liar.]

                    Madison sought to construct a system of government that would, in his words, “protect the minority of the opulent from the majority.” That’s why the constitutional system that he framed did not have co-equal branches. The executive was supposed to be an administrator, and the legislature was supposed to be dominant, but not the House of Representatives, rather the Senate, where power was vested and protected from the public in many ways. [and that is why we have a Senate that is more than 75% multimillionaires and why we must oust them all.]  That’s where the wealth of the nation would be concentrated.

                    This is not overlooked by historians. Gordon Wood, for example, summarizes the thoughts of the founders, saying that “The Constitution was intrinsically an aristocratic document designed to check the democratic tendencies of the period,” delivering power to a “better sort” of people and excluding “those who were not rich, well born, or prominent from exercising political power.”

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                    BATTLE LINES ARE BEING DRAWN.  AND THE GREATEST WEAPON THAT THE PEOPLE CAN HAVE IS EDUCATION.  TELL OTHERS THE TRUTH OF WHAT HAS BEEN HAPPENING AND WHAT CONTINUES TO HAPPEN.  WHEN ENOUGH AMERICANS REALIZE WHAT HAS BEEN DONE TO US, A TIDAL WAVE WILL SWEEP THE GREEDY RICH TRASH DOWN THE DRAIN AS CERTAINLY AS THE FRENCH RID THEIR NATION OF THEIR ARISTOCRATS.

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