In a major shift in policy today, Barack Obama, who has vowed all election season to have a salad instead ordered a large bowl of lettuce along with tomato slices, cucumbers, carrot shavings, a hard boiled egg, with cut up pieces of ham, salami and cheese.

The Republican party, understandably jumped on this shocking change in strategy:

    For nearly two terms in office, Team Bush has been undermining what constitutional conservative scholar Bruce Fein calls the "very architecture of the Constitution." And they've had a pretty good run at it.
    Let's see. we've already destroyed the Fourth Amendment on unreasonable search and seizure.  Has that stopped terrorism cold?  Does Osama Bin Laden quiver in fear because we have crippled the Fifth and Sixth Amendments?
    And the First? Have we defanged Islamist extremists by damaging the First Amendment?  Are we any safer?  Does this strike you as an effective remedy to terrorism?

The words are from the last book of Molly Ivins, cowritten with Lou Dubose.    These are Mollys' words, from her introduction, entitled with the words of Ben Franklin: "A REPUBLIC - IF WE CAN KEEP IT."

Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights is a book you SHOULD read.  If you are reading my words, you care about our fundamental rights, as did Ivins.  Let me illustrate.

So today I read Bush's remarks on the passing of Jesse Helms, and I wondered how anyone could say such wrongheaded things:

"Jesse Helms was a kind, decent, and humble man and a passionate defender of what he called "the Miracle of America." So it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July. He was once asked if he had any ambitions beyond the United States Senate. He replied: 'The only thing I am running for is the Kingdom of Heaven.' Today, Jesse Helms has finished the race, and we pray he finds comfort in the arms of the loving God he strove to serve throughout his life."

-- President Bush.

And now, tonight, the Washington Post has answered my question.  I should have seen it right away.

what the hell is going on here?  Yes, I knew Obama would move toward the center after getting the nomination, mostly because I never believed he was a "different kind of politician" in the first place.  But I never considered the Fourth Amendment or a whole new reason to start executing people to be the middle. I thought those were positions way on the right.  When Obama went there I was mortified.  But there were still three good reasons to vote for him- John, Paul, and Stevens.

So what do I do when Barack Obama, Democratic nominee for President, prior possessor of an 100% NARAL rating and their endorsement, starts talking off Right to Life's playbook?

In the final paragraph of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans,   the Delaware sage Tamenund remarks, "The pale faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red-men has not yet come again." Despite hopeful signs, in the case of commercially viable movies, that time has still not come.

Although we’ve come a long way from those movies in which whooping, headdress-bedecked Plains Indians are depicted riding around and around circled wagon trains – a myth stolen directly from the performances of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show – the only places you can typically see Indians as more than savages or sidekicks is in films by Indians given attention by the American Indian Film Institute at the American Indian Film Festival, the 33rd annual of which will take place this autumn in San Francisco, and the Talking Stick Film Festival, which debuted two weeks ago in Santa Fe. The Talking Stick Festival opened with Older Than America, a Canadian film by director Georgina Lightning (Cree) about atrocities at Indian boarding schools, and Hopi director Victor Masayesva’s  Paatuwaqatsi – Water, Land, Life.

These festival films aren’t the kind that make it to your neighborhood multiplex. Indeed, although Wes Studi (Cherokee), Gary Farmer (Cayuga), August Schellenburg (Mohawk), Michael Horse (Yaqui), Irene Bedard (Inupiat-Metis), Steve Reevis (Blackfeet), Adam Beach (Saulteaux), Kalani Queypo (Blackfeet), Graham Greene (Oneida), and a handful of others make a living as actors, only a single American Indian has managed to sustain a career as a director – Chris Eyre (Cheyenne-Arapaho), whose premier film was Smoke Signals a decade ago.

I was forced (more or less) to resign my job this week, and I go over to 4th of July weekend and my Dad gives me crap (in this economy you'll never get another job) and then my neighbor gives me shit about KATRINA of all things. Says it's all Bill CLINTON'S fault. grrrrrrrrrrr.

Gene McCarthy used to say that the function of liberal Republicans was that, when they saw a drowning man, they would throw him a rope exactly halfway too short to reach him. Under the ironclad economic rule that there are no progressive multimillion dollar corporations, the New York Times is now, and always has been, a liberal Republican paper. In the editorial today, "New and Not Improved," the Times is letting its desire to appear loftily superior outrun the facts. Just as it did when it permitted the discredited Judith Miller to shill for the Iraq war, the Times is now flacking for the Republicans with today's arguments. As usual, it does so just to create the appearance of being evenhanded while proclaiming a nonexistent equivalence of disreputability between the candidates.

For the past three years, I've known it and I am sure others have also. Once I started to think about it, I knew I had been different since my days in kindergarten. On the outside, I looked like every other straight guy but on the inside, I was attracted to those straight guys. I thought I had a problem so I always tried to hide those feelings but I really couldn't. I had to act straight to make sure my friends didn't find out or I would be without my friends.

We fast forward to today and I am proud to say that I am gay. I went to my first "gay" bar a few months back and although I will never go back, I was very happy to know that I could be comfortable with myself.

New York Times, 14 October 2001
''If bin Laden takes over and becomes king of Saudi Arabia, he'd turn off the tap,'' said Roger Diwan, a managing director of the Petroleum Finance Company, a consulting firm in Washington. ''He said at one point that he wants oil to be $144 a barrel'' -- about six times what it sells for now.

As you may have heard, oil prices went above $144 this week.

It’s the Fourth of July and while other families are enjoying barbeques and fireworks and family together time, I’m fighting a pity party by making a "movable banner" for my dog and dragging her to a public fireworks celebration to register voters this evening.  

Don’t worry, I promise we’ll be home long before the fireworks start and make her heart pound.

I’m kidless for another fourth and if you sense a little self-pity, yeah, I’m indulging.  It’s not too often but on days like this, I think have every right...  You see, my two boys signed up to serve their country and nothing's been the same since.  

Short diary to thank Malia Obama, 10, for sharing her birthday with so many others in Butte, Mont.

I'm the father of a 10 year old girl myself. I know how important birthdays are.

Here's my birthday wishes for you. I'll be going to my father in law's later today for a cookout. You and he share a birth date with this country. Born on the 4th of July. And I'm going to be talking to him about you and your father. I hope both you and my father in law have wonderful birthdays.

I apologize for the brevity here, but the prospect is too juicy not to pass along:

GOP strategist Karl Rove and former Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards will debate the issues of the presidential campaign Sept. 26 as part of the [University of Buffalo's]  Distinguished Speakers Series, The Buffalo News has learned.

Tickets go on sale later this month.  You can find out more details, including some ticket information, here.

(Cross posted from Docudharma)

"Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason."

Octavio Paz

This article, in the Roanoke Times, should be a heads up to everyone in the country.

Roanoke, Virginia is in a very temperate region, with winter temperatures falling from slightly below 20 degrees and rising to a high of over 100 degrees, with an annual average of between 60 degrees and 80 degrees.

With the startling statement:

No matter how you heat, be prepared for costs to rise significantly this winter.

our local newspaper is delivering a dire warning and begging for people to begin to prepare for the coming Fall/Winter season.

I’d like to invite everyone to take a journey with me over the next year and a half.  It’s a farewell to our beloved farm, and the beginning of a new one.  In the course of it, I hope to give y’all a glimpse into the real life of a farm and the practices of sustainable ranching.  And I'll share a few pictures of our farm, including some adorable baby lambs, along the way.

My husband and I have a small, organic (not-certified) farm just outside of Austin, Texas. I bought this place after I graduated law school ten years ago.   I’ll post about my transition from environmental attorney to farmer another day.  For now, suffice to say that I am a student of holistic management and eco-agriculture.  

This diary is cross posted at
La Vida Locavore

I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy
A Yankee Doodle, do or die
A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam
Born on the Fourth of July

I've got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart
She's my Yankee Doodle joy
Yankee Doodle came to London
Just to ride the ponies
I am the Yankee Doodle Boy
 
by George M. Cohan

 
Maybe you remember James Cagney playing the role of George Cohan in the movie by the same name. It was another of those films Hollywood put out during WWII to boost morale and patriotism. But, beyond some one born on the Fourth of July what is a Yankee Doodle? I have two ex-BIL's who where born on the Fourth of July, notice I said ex.

Cross posted on Guaranteed Healthcare.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is a part of the United States Bill of Rights that expressly prohibits the United States Congress from making laws "respecting an establishment of religion" (the Establishment Clause) or that prohibit free exercise of religion (the Free Exercise Clause), laws that infringe the freedom of speech, infringe the freedom of the press, limit the right to peaceably assemble, or limit the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Before I tell you about the crushing healthcare burdens destroying Americans of every socioeconomic level, I hope those of you too young to remember, will take a look at this video about how my generation changed the course of a nation.

THIS ELECTION IS GOING TO BE A BARN BURNER SO DON'T YOU TURN OFF CNN AND CNBC AND MSNBC BECAUSE IF YOU DO YOU'LL BE REALLY, REALLY SORRY AND YOU'LL BE THE LAST TO KNOW SOMETHING YOU WISH YOU WERE THE FIRST TO KNOW!

SERIOUSLY THIS ELECTION IS ESSENTIALLY TIED AND IF YOU TURN OFF THAT TELEVISION YOU MAY DIE OF "NOT KNOWING SOMETHING" DISEASE WHICH IS VERY PAINFUL AND TOTALLY EMBARRASSING... WORSE EVEN THAN THAT TIME IN HIGH SCHOOL WHEN YOU WENT OUT FOR GYM WITHOUT PUTTING YOUR SHORTS ON.