Tannishblog

One of the tenets of Buddhism is Inter-connectivity: Everything, everyone, is interconnected, interdependent. Our fragile society is so complex that sometimes it’s hard for people to connect the dots. But the following seemingly disparate news items are - to me, at least - so intertwined as to be one, yet I don’t hear anyone putting them together. Taken together, they form a bleak view of American politics over the past few decades.

Exhibit a: President Obama’s July, 25 2011 speech on the Debt Debacle.

This quote alone secures my vote.

“For the last decade, we’ve spent more money than we take in. In the year 2000, the government had a budget surplus. But instead of using it to pay off our debt, the money was spent on trillions of dollars in new tax cuts, while two wars and an expensive prescription drug program were simply added to our nation’s credit card.”

Exhibit B: An artistic portrayal of the state of education in America.

Put these together and what do you get? A nation with mistaken priorities.

Clearly the nations of the world would agree with this assessment. Our “leaders” should take this, pour it into a bucket and stir - Liberally.

Another in the never-ending series of I-Should’ve-Thought-Of-That:

Time to get our National Shit Together.

A first for the usually dour Tannishblog: A fun and funny video! I bet you didn’t think I had it in me (A funnybone, that is…). I offer to you: A Gentleman’s Duel.

The winners of the 2008 Blogisattva Awards were announced last Sunday. To my glee, I was honored with a win in the Best Achievement in Wonderful, Remarkable, Elegant Design category. But the best part is being introduced to so many remarkable Buddhist bloggers sharing their experiences and words. My bookmark files overfloeth.

Thank you all. Namaste.

I just learned that this humble blog is a nominee for the 2008 Blogisattva Awards. Perusing their many nominees, I see they’re promoting primarily Buddhist bloggers whom, in my opinion, can use some recognition - if even amongst ourselves. The project is quite comprehensive, boasting “26 categories of awards with an aggregate 132 nominations.” I’d love to know how they found this little blog…

Look me up under the category of:
Best Achievement in Wonderful, Remarkable Elegant Design.

(It could use a few more superlatives, perhaps?) The winners will be announced, this Sunday, Feb 24, 2008.

Cool. Thanks, good people!

Clipped from rougegovernment.com:

1,000 Attempt Citizen’s Arrest Of Bush

As George Bush made his appearance and speech today at the United Nations in NYC, 1,000 people issued a citizen’s arrest warrant against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

[…]

The idea of citizen’s arrest has its roots in common law, and allows for any citizen to execute an arrest on someone who they witness committing a felony offense. All states in the United States allow for citizen’s arrest, except for North Carolina, which follows different statutes. Those undertaking a citizen’s arrest can still be held liable in civil or criminal court for any damages they inflict in the process. However, they have full rights to detain and arrest a suspect who they witness in commission of a felony.

Applicable felonies in this case include, but are not limited to: treason, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice, perjury, conspiracy malfeasance in office, fraud, embezzlement, and kidnapping.

Under established international and military law, also, the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, for which, as commander in chief, Bush bears command responsibility for the actions of those under his command as well as for his own policies.

Under the principles of the Nuremburg Trials at the end of World War Two, Bush would be indictable for all four counts established back then:

1. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of crime against peace;

2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace;

3. War crimes;

4. Crimes against humanity.

While the efforts of citizens today to serve an arrest warrant on Bush failed, be advised: the warrant stands. Please do you duty, and try at every opportunity to bring this criminal to justice.

Freaking brilliant. Nothing will ever come of it, though. But I applaud your efforts!

Well, that was short-lived.

For a bit I was scaring myself getting glassy-eyed over a Republican presidential candidate. Ron Paul says some very compelling things that his netizen echo chamber is happy to crow, but I found Daniel Miessler, a pro-Paul blogger honest enough to list some of the more troubling statements made by the man.

Here’s the bullet points. Daniel explains them better than I could:

He Doesn’t Believe in the Separation of Church and State
No More Federal Environmental Protection.
He’s Against Abortion and Would Like to See Roe vs. Wade Overturned.
He Doesn’t Believe The Evidence for Man-Made Global Warming Is Convincing.

I can almost hear you… “Well, yeah. He’s Republican. Duh!”

I deserve it. I’m dutifully putting my optimist back in his padded cell. there is no Holy Grail, there is no Santa Claus, and there is no candidate who will speak with the peoples voice. Perhaps there never has been. Surely the cadre of millionaires currently stepping forward will not represent us. I know this in my heart, and still let my foolish self prevail.

I’m through with that now.

Do you listen to the radio via the Internet? Enjoy it while it lasts, because it’s doomed:

I like Accuradio.com. They provide the best selections of genres I have found yet. They’re always thinking of new ways to mix the music and appease the eclectic in all of us. Today, I received a desperate email from them:

Dear AccuRadio listener,

We’re organizing a campaign today that may save AccuRadio, and we need your help.

AccuRadio is facing a very serious issue that could silence us forever. As you may know, a recent government ruling has dramatically increased the royalties that Internet radio stations must pay to record labels and recording artists. In our case, it’s an almost 1,200% increase — jumping to about 150% of revenues in 2006 and beyond.

Since no business can survive if it has to pay 150% of revenues for a single expense, AccuRadio and most other webcasters will be bankrupted on July 15th when payment is due. (You can read more about this in a Seattle PI article here or Chicago Tribune article here.)

Fortunately, there is a solution on the horizon! A bipartisan bill has been introduced in Congress called the "Internet Radio Equality Act" that would overrule the new rates and keep Internet radio alive.

Our goal today is to flood Congress with phone calls from AccuRadio listeners. Please, click the button below (between 9AM and 5PM ET) and call your two Senators and your Congressman and ask them to please co-sponsor the "Internet Radio Equality Act." (After you type in your zip code, you’ll be given the phone numbers to call and a sample script to use.)

 
Please, if you can, call today and help us save AccuRadio. Thanks for your help!

Sincerely,
Laura Holt
Editor

We’ve all heard about Digital Rights Management, a euphemism for Feed the Fat Cats, wherein entertainment media conglomerates are shaking in their Puss-N-Boots over the freewheeling technologies of the twenty-first century. To protect their market shares, companies like Sony BMG and Time Warner are creatively trying to limit the rights of paying customers to play music and video on any device they prefer. You can’t download from iTunes, burn it to CD to play in your car, nor can you buy Ghostbusters and copy it to your laptop to watch it after hours on a business trip. In order to protect the rights of the "owners" of the media, consumer rights are infringed.

If I remember my civics, free market trade is a cornerstone of Republican values. Regulating commerce in favor of the big guys is the antithesis of a free market. Not only is the White House loading the dice in favor of political contributors, it is betraying a long-held value of its constituents.This is just one of many ways the Bush administration has favored big business over all other considerations: The Best White House Money Can Buy.

Show your support of free markets and call your congressperson on behalf of consumer’s right to chose. And listen to the radio on the Internet, buy from their links and show the Fat Cats that online radio can be their friend.

Impeachment is getting a lot of traction lately. www.a28.org is the latest web roots attempt at creating a notional movement to oust our ineffective leadership. Their tagline is that today, April 28th, is the first day of Impeachment Summer. I hope their right.

But I’m skeptical. The time for preparation for impeachment was last year. Gathering evidence takes time, and to begin now would only result in an outcome determined only a few weeks before the natural ending of Bush’s term. What benefit is that?

What is the current value of impeachment? The republican congress of Newt Gingrich has forever cheapened the role of impeachment in the way they used it as political leverage to lynch Bill Clinton. What he did was a personal matter, it was not a national disaster. Hurricane Katrina is a national disaster. Our misbegotten war in Iraq is a national disaster, as is the regression of stability within Afghanistan that is currently taking place. The hubris and arrogance, cheating and dishonesty of the Bush administration is a national disaster. The selective amnesia of our Attorney General (no doubt a side effect of extended use of party-line Kool-ade) is a national travesty, if not yet a disaster. These things matter far more than the sexual adventures of consenting adults.

I ponder if it wouldn’t be better to gather all possible records toward the goal of impeachment, but to delay until the administration is out of office. Then we might go after these former public diservants as the war criminals they truly are. To my mind, the charge of war crimes, held in an international arena, has more weight than a mere presidential impeachment process.

A war crimes tribunal hosted by the UN would be better. Freezing the monetary gains made by war the profiteering of Dick Cheney and pals would get their attention: money is central to their thinking. After all, this whole Iraq disaster is "just another business deal" to secure an oil sharing agreement from Iraq. Our administration will not willingly withdraw from Iraq until the fledgling government there agrees to our terms regarding the sharing of oil with the United States. Republicans have said so as recently as last week during the debate in the Senate on troop withdrawal timelines.

So I reservedly back the growing impeachment movement, unconvinced it will do any good. At the same time, I believe we must "prepare for trial" regardless of possible outcome. Please support this growing movement. It is the only way average Americans can regain a voice in our own destiny between election cycles. Even if you think, like I do, that it may be in vain. While the time is running out on impeachment, there is no statute of limitations for war criminals. We can take all the time we need.

The following is  from Sara at Orcinus:

Hate crime is a low-level form of terrorism designed to disenfranchise, stifle, and ultimately remove certain people from the public sphere by forcing them to erect imaginary boundaries of fear in their own heads. It causes people to change their behavior, shrink their horizons, and stop participating fully in their own lives. Suddenly, there are places — the synagogue, the clinic, downtown after dark, professional conferences, the comments threads that form the living rooms of their own online homes — that they can no longer approach with a feeling of acceptance, belonging, and safety.

This is from Michele Malkin’s site:

Dear Muslim Terrorist Plotter/Planner/Funder/Enabler/Apologist,

You do not know me. But I am on the lookout for you. You are my enemy. And I am yours.

I am John Doe.

I am traveling on your plane. I am riding on your train. I am at your bus stop. I am on your street. I am in your subway car. I am on your lift.

I am your neighbor. I am your customer. I am your classmate. I am your boss.

I am John Doe.

I will never forget the example of the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 who refused to sit back on 9/11 and let themselves be murdered in the name of Islam without a fight.

I will never forget the passengers and crew members who tackled al Qaeda shoe-bomber Richard Reid on American Airlines Flight 63 before he had a chance to blow up the plane over the Atlantic Ocean.

I will never forget the alertness of actor James Woods, who notified a stewardess that several Arab men sitting in his first-class cabin on an August 2001 flight were behaving strangely. The men turned out to be 9/11 hijackers on a test run.

I will act when homeland security officials ask me to “report suspicious activity.”

I will embrace my local police department’s admonition: “If you see something, say something.”

I am John Doe.

I will protest your Jew-hating, America-bashing “scholars.”

I will petition against your hate-mongering mosque leaders.

I will raise my voice against your subjugation of women and religious minorities.

I will challenge your attempts to indoctrinate my children in our schools.

I will combat your violent propaganda on the Internet.

I am John Doe.

I will support law enforcement initiatives to spy on your operatives, cut off your funding, and disrupt your murderous conspiracies.

I will oppose all attempts to undermine our borders and immigration laws.

I will resist the imposition of sharia principles and sharia law in my taxi cab, my restaurant, my community pool, the halls of Congress, our national monuments, the radio and television airwaves, and all public spaces.

I will not be censored in the name of tolerance.

I will not be cowed by your Beltway lobbying groups in moderate clothing. I will not cringe when you shriek about “profiling” or “Islamophobia.”

I will put my family’s safety above sensitivity. I will put my country above multiculturalism.

I will not submit to your will. I will not be intimidated.

I am John Doe.

Pass it on.

Thus goes the battle cry of the Paranoid Pandemic. Google shows a measly 1,730,000 iterations of this meme-of-madness. The first several pages illustrated the depths of the Wingnut Echo Chamber. Truly astounding how many otherwise healthy Americans are willing to sell their liberty for the freedom to cower in fear behind the shield of racism. Or, and the General says:

Dear traitorous Brownislamunistofascist, Homoislamunistofascist, Femislamunistofascist, Poorislamunistofascist, JehovahWitnessislamunististfascist, Hebrislamunistofascist, and/or Libislamunistofascist,You do not know me. But I am on the lookout for you. You are my enemy. And I am yours.I am Michelle’s hood.

You do not know me. But I am on the lookout for you. You are my enemy. And I am yours.

I am Michelle’s hood.

In the spirit of good blogmanship and in fear of the holy wrath of the General’s Glorious Conservative Christian Cultural Revolutionaries, I cannot post the attendant picture of the Divine Miss M in a very fashionable white silk, pointed KKK hoodie.

I’m sure everyone will be wearing one soon. Make them red-white and blue, though, and sell them at Wal-Mart.