Liz Cheney should not be interviewed, she cannot be trusted to tell the truth. Her father got FIVE deferments in order to NOT go to war, yet she has the hubris to criticize Barack Obama. After 7 years of Bush-Cheney refusal to show photos, or even SHOW UP to honor our war dead, Obama met a military plane to respect those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney NEVER went to Dover AFB to honor our dead soldiers as their caskets flew home.
Lawrence O’Donnell slams her:
“Liz, don’t let your dad do this to you. Don’t let him parade you on to the stage to defend the indefensible. Let him suffer the full weight of the shame that we know he must feel when he watches Barack Obama do what he never had the decency to do.”
How can it be 2009 and we still do not have equal human rights for all US Citizens?
Today I met Judy Shepard, mother of Matthew Shepard. I remember the day in October 1998 when Matthew was found, beaten nearly to death, tied like Christ to an x-bar fence out in Laramie, Wyoming. My own sons were 6 and 4 and I was horrified that someone was so homophobic that they literally beat a good kid to death, simply because he was gay.
Judy’s new book, “The Meaning of Matthew” puts a human face on Matt and tells the story of their family awakening into action after his death.
I always wished I could have a gay kid, because I believe that you are supposed to live fully as you were born to live, no ifs ands or buts. God doesn’t make mistakes: you’re born who you are because the world needs you to bring forth your special abilities, to help your community live fully. Interestingly, none of my kids are gay or lesbian, but I’m trying to raise them aware that all people are fine, as they are.
Can you believe its 2009 and it took Ted Kennedy’s death (he has always advocated for the Hate Crime Bill and equal rights for all) and adding the Hate Crime bill to a military spending bill to get it passed?
How barbaric are we, that it takes 11 years after the brutal death of an innocent to make such a change, that our politicians still live in fear of standing up for what’s right?
Its odd enough that we don’t naturally allow people to be who they are, but the fact that we still have to FIGHT to get equal rights for all seems so UN-AMERICAN.
Parents are still raising their kids with hatred for people they do not know or understand. Religious groups insist that the US is a Judeo-Christian country, yet Jesus never beat a young gay man to death. If you use Jesus’ life as your North Star, you cannot judge or harm someone for living as God made them.
To me, the meaning of Matthew Shepard is not just that gays deserve the same legal protection as straights. Its that we’ve become so barbaric that the violent beating death of a young innocent man is still not enough to get the US to be fair and equal. We’re very un-Christ-like.
The woman at my polling place asked me do I believe in equality for gay and lesbian people. I was pretty surprised to be asked a question like that. It made no sense to me. Finally I asked her: what do you think I fought for in Omaha Beach?”
After the implosion of the American economy and the continuing multi-billion dollar economic rape by banking institutions, lobbyists and politicians in their pockets, its time to install FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights.
It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.
EconomicPopulist easily explains the shocking horror of $2 a day workers in China subsidizing America’s ‘lifestyle’…
If China were to decide to suddenly start selling their massive pile of dollar assets the value of the unsold pile would plummet. To put it another way, there simply isn’t enough dollar demand out there to buy up all those dollars. If China only wanted to sell, say, 20% of their stockpile, it would overwhelm market demand and the value of their remaining 80% would plummet by more than they would save from selling the 20%.
Therefore, China and the rest of our 3rd-world Asian creditors must continue to prop up the wasteful American lifestyle by buying our overvalued debt (i.e. vendor financing) if they want to protect the value their nation’s savings. They are prisoners of a currency system that resembles a confidence game.
As a first step to extracting themselves from these shackles, Asian creditor nations have created Sovereign Wealth Funds. Using these funds, the governments of the world are buying up companies all around the world, rather than just keep recycling their funds into treasuries that earn less than the rate of inflation.
Let’s take a step back and consider just how sick and twisted of a relationship that is.
Here you have the nations of billions of people that struggle to make about $2 a day lending $2 Billion a day, 365 days a year, to one of the wealthiest nations on earth so that it can continue to spend it on imported electronics, textiles, and speculating on stocks and real estate.
To put it more simply: the poorest of the earth are subsidizing the lifestyles of the richest of the earth.
And if that isn’t sick enough, the enormous amount of money that America borrows each day doesn’t go to building factories, or upgrading infrastructure, or mining and oil production, or anything that would enable America to pay back all the money it borrows. Instead we get more strip malls, track housing and smart bombs.
When you consider that 85% of all the world’s savings gets redirected into these non-productive ways, this era will be remembered as the biggest malinvestment in human history.
How can a situation like this continue?
The answer is that it can’t. Eventually it must break.
CDF recently released its annual Protect Children, Not Guns report in conjunction with the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the news is bad: After a decade of decline prior to 2005, the number of firearm deaths among children and teens increased for the second year in a row. CDF’s report shows that every two hours and 45 minutes a child or teen is killed by a gun. That’s almost nine children and teens each day and 61 every week.
California had more shooting deaths of children than any other state in the nation: 511 gun deaths of children in 2006, up from 474 in 2005. More children died from firearm deaths in California in 2006 than in New York, Texas and Arizona combined.
To view charts, read more key findings and learn how to take action on this important issue, visit CDF website.
