General: June 2006 Archives

(Washington) The Department of Defense has admitted it conducted surveillance on groups opposed to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” on a more extensive level than previously reported.

The new revelations are part of an ongoing call for information under the Freedom of Information Act by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an organization that represents gays in the military.

Some of the surveillance outlined in the new documents suggests, SLDN says, that the spying may have been part of an undercover Pentagon operation.

The new material shows government surveillance of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and anti-war protests at the State University of New York at Albany, William Paterson University in New Jersey, Southern Connecticut State University and the University of California at Berkeley.

The documents released today indicate that emails sent by various student groups were intercepted and monitored by the government and that the government collected reports from seemingly undercover agents who attended at least one student protest at Southern Connecticut State University.

None of the reports in the documentation, however, indicated any terrorist activity by the students who were monitored.

“Federal government agencies have no business peeping through the keyholes of Americans who choose to exercise their first amendment rights,” said SLDN executive director C. Dixon Osburn.

“Americans are guaranteed a fundamental right to free speech and free expression, and our country’s leaders should never be allowed to undermine those freedoms. Surveillance of private citizens must stop. It is the suppression of our constitutional rights, and not the practice of them, that undermines our national security. It is patently absurd that this administration has linked sexual orientation with terrorism.” (source)

Well, I suppose this is one reason I’m being monitored by so many “.mil” sites, since I’ve spoken out so many times against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. That and the fact that I’ve repeatedly called the President a moron and other less generous names. I’m not surprised.

The United States is coming closer and closer to a police state every single day. How long are we going to keep living in denial as our rights, one by one, get stripped away?

And this week the Senate is about to pass a constitutional amendment against burning the American flag. For the first time, it’s going to be a very close vote.

As much as I love the American flag and would personally never burn it (I actually have two hanging on my home), I will defend the right of expression for those who do feel they should burn it. That is what democracy is - defending something that you yourself feel is repugnant and wrong. That is defending freedom.

United States Constitution - First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee called yesterday for criminal prosecution of The New York Times, saying that its report Friday on U.S. government surveillance of confidential banking records “compromised America’s anti-terrorist policies.”

Interviewed on Fox News Sunday, Rep. Peter T. King, a New York Republican, accused the newspaper of compromising national security when it exposed a Treasury Department program that attempts to track terrorist financing by secretly monitoring worldwide money transfers. The program, instituted after the Sept. 11 attacks, bypasses safeguards put in place to ensure against government abuse. [...]

According to the reports in both newspapers, the program was part of an effort to gain intelligence data by tapping into bank transfers from the world’s largest financial communications network. The network - run by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT - carries up to 12.7 million messages a day. Those messages typically include names and account numbers of bank customers - private citizens and huge corporations alike - that are sending or receiving funds.

To gain access to the information, the Bush administration used an obscure power known as “administrative subpoenas,” which are not subject to independent governmental reviews. [...]

Yesterday, Specter indicated that Congress and the White House were nearing agreement on a proposal to submit all such eavesdropping to a secretive federal court that considers intelligence matters. “We’re getting close with the discussions ... to having the wiretapping issue submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” he said. “That would be a big step forward for the protection of constitutional rights and civil liberties.” (source) - Highlighting my own

You didn’t really think that our current government was going to stop with illegal wire tapping, did you? Anything you do right now - absolutely everything you do - can be picked up and heard by an outside source.

You go to the keyboard to send an email to a friend, it’s likely being read by some computer program that is parsing your information to try to determine if you are some kind of threat to national security. Everyday, I look at the traffic logs on this site. Those logs tell me that I am being watched carefully on what I write about and the content of that writing. I can tell from the logs that these are not just people, but I am being scanned by government computer programs, probably because I have been highly critical of this government.

When someone is talking to me on the phone, I can hear an occasional click. I know what it is and what is going on.

And all of this, without my knowledge (supposedly) and without a warrant. Why? Because the President of the United States feels that he has that power. And when Specter states that, “We’re getting close with the discussions ... to having the wiretapping issue submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” what he is really saying is that the U.S. Government is “getting close” to abiding by the law - laws that require the review of a court before these actions are taken in the first place - laws that have been on the books since 1978.

So just remember, when you pick up that phone, when you send an email, when you post to your blog, when you place a bank transaction, when you go to a U.S. Post Office to buy that money order, it’s all being recorded for who knows what reason.

And if that’s not bad enough, I keep hearing about breaches in security involving “private” records - although, if the government is collecting these at will, how “private” are they? First, it was the Veterans Administration, when someone took computer records home that were stolen. The information contained sensitive information such as date of birth and social security numbers. You can do a lot (assume an identity) with that information.

And just a few weeks ago, I received a letter from Mortgage Lenders Network (our mortgage lender) informing me that I “may” have been included in information that was “potentially” leaked that included our private mortgage information - where we live - how much we paid for our home - what’s left on our mortgage - along with our legal names, date of birth, social security numbers, credit report information, annual salaries, place of work, and on and on. Their suggestion is that we request an annual credit report to “make sure” that no one is using our identities for anything unapproved, and to also put a “fraud alert” on our credit report, which would require that we be called every single time a new account is created in our name. This, they said, had to be renewed every three months.

I guess I can understand why the government wants this information, although they should go about getting it legally. My big beef is that there is apparently nothing in place to prevent this information from getting out in the open. We are all vulnerable here.

Meanwhile, the President of the United States and Congress, while kind of talking about it here and there (when they aren’t talking about an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to prevent “gay marriage” and “flag burning”), are really doing nothing about it - other than threatening the New York Times for exposing what the government is up to.

Our government at work.

On my lunch break, I often go down to the Connecticut River. It’s just across the road from where I work - just over the levee. It’s nice over there, although the river is so high that the water comes right up to the parking lot.

As I sit and eat lunch, I often listen to the news, just to see if we’ve bombed Iran or Korea yet. Often, it’s the same dribble... Republicans hate Democrats.... everyone hates Karl Rove... yada yada yada....

Nothing usually gets my attention. But today, one correspondent said something that got my attention. I’ll try to paraphrase it.

He said, “One thing is clear. The United States has clearly changed it’s goal in Iraq. Now, we are no longer trying to defeat the insurgents. Now, we are trying to get the country in a stable enough condition that we can hand it over to an Iraqi government that will hopefully be able to control it, and will hopefully be tolerant to all the people of Iraq. We (the United States) have come to the conclusion that the day-to-day bombings are going to be a regular occurrence and are not going to go away anytime soon. The best we can hope for is to try to restore power to people for more than one hour a day, and basic services.”

The November elections are coming. After everything this president has put our country through, I would like to think that he’s not going to cut and run now. I would like to think that the lives of our soldiers lost have not been thrown away and lost for nothing.

When I talk about an exit strategy for our troops, I’m talking about one that works. I’m less interested in coming up with a date that we will be out. I’m much more interested in doing what we have to do now to at least give the government a fighting chance for long-time survival. We did this to them after all. Do we not have an obligation to see it through?

Or, better yet, not fabricate a war and go there in the first place - but that decision has been made for us. We are beyond that now. President George W. Bush once said, “The Command In Chief must not waver!” Well, if there was a time when he should listen to his own advice, this is it. He shouldn’t waver on this, other than coming up WITH A PLAN ALREADY!

Bush, on his second trip to Baghdad since the 2003 US-led invasion, was boosted by last week’s killing of Zarqawi but he warned of further violence.

“There are going to be tough days ahead, and more sacrifice for Americans, as well as Iraqis,” he said during his five-hour unannounced visit.

“But I come here - come away from here believing that the will is strong and the desire to meet the needs of the people is real and tangible.” [...]

“There is the worry almost to the person that we will leave before they are capable of defending themselves and I assured them they didn’t need to worry,” Bush told reporters traveling with him on Air Force One on the way home.

“They are deeply concerned that the stability provided by our coalition forces will be removed and there will be a vacuum and they’re concerned about what goes into the vacuum and I can understand that concern,” Bush said. (source)

And my favorite....

“And it’s in our interests that Iraq succeed. ... And when Iraq succeeds in having a government of and for and by the people of Iraq, you will have dealt a serious blow to those who have a vision of darkness, who don’t believe in liberty, who are willing to kill the innocent in order to achieve a political objective.” (source) - Highlighting, my own.

Words. Just words, all wrapped up in political rhetoric, signifying nothing! Absolutely nothing. He still doesn’t understand the culture of the region. He uses American concepts of freedom such as having a government of and for and by the people, as though that will work in Iraq. Tell that to the gay people in Iraq who are being executed right now - today, as our troops do nothing! A couple of weeks ago, a gay asylum seeker asked our troops for protection because he was a homosexual. They laughed at him and turned him away. Days later, he was executed. As one gay Iraqi put it, “But, when we go to the Americans, they laugh at us and don’t do anything. The Americans are the problem!”

The President’s concept of our way of government has worked well for us. It’s a noble concept. It sounds good, except for the fact that it hasn’t always worked very well for America either. Under those words, we’ve had slavery, lack of equality for women and minorities, and even today, we have a government that falls far short of being a representative government for the people. It is a government of special interests, political games and cover ups, and the outright breaking of laws. This is the best we can do for Iraq?

And after all of this grand standing (it reminds me of when Bush stood on the aircraft carrier and announced, “Mission Accomplished!”), the fact remains that since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, nearly 2,500 of our soldiers have died, along with tens of thousands of Iraqis. And, the ONLY safe and secured place in Iraq is the “Green Zone”. It’s not a big place. It’s heavily fortified and the only safe place that the President could enter - and then only at night in an unmarked Black Hawk helicopter that came in completely unannounced. He came, he spoke, he left.

And we are still no further ahead in how we are going to get out of this mess. This was nothing more that a scheme to try to boost his sagging-by-the-day poll numbers. Will it work? Well, it didn’t work with the troops in Iraq. According to the news last night, Bush is not very popular in Iraq among our troops. Can you blame them? I listened to his speech to them last night. He is either the worst spokesperson I’ve ever seen (which is highly possible), or his words were scripted and insincere (which is highly possible). Whatever the case, the troops didn’t buy them. Why should they?

But another cause of the current chaos may be traced to the blunders committed by Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and other policy makers after the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime three years ago. That history had to be in the minds of Iraqis yesterday when Bush told Maliki, “I have come to not only look you in the eye; I have also come to tell you that when America gives its word, it will keep its word.”

Presumably, Bush was saying Iraqis can trust his administration not to abandon them prematurely. But Iraqis have had to live with the chain of disasters traceable to an attitude Rumsfeld expressed when he responded to an ominous outbreak of postwar looting by saying glibly: “Stuff happens.” [...]

If Bush is serious about finding the right policy balance for Iraq, he will order an end to petty and divisive political tricks. (source)

Well, it’s true - America has never broken a promise to anyone, right? We are always truthful and righteous in our cause. And don’t forget, God is always on our side because we are “one nation, under God”. And Rumsfeld is right, “stuff happens”, and pigs fly, and elephants are purple, and Karl Rove is innocent. But one would hope that we can do a little better than that. And one would hope that the future of Iraq has more to hang on too than a politically charged trip of our President in a surprise visit to Iraq.

If the President can’t do better than that, any traction that he gets in his poll numbers will be just a bleep on the political polling screen.

There’s an interesting article over on Slate concerning gay marriage. Kent sent me the link this morning. I basically says (and I don’t want to dwell on this subject anymore) that the tactic of using this issue (gay marriage) again to garner votes will fail, for three reasons:

The first is the combination of cynicism and futility evident in the way Republicans are bringing the matter up now. In 2004, when Bush campaigned on the Federal Marriage Amendment and the Senate first considered the matter (which fell short by a wide margin), there was at least a news hook. [...] But since 2004, the momentum has been thwarted (though pending court decisions in Washington state, New York, and New Jersey have the potential to revive it). The San Francisco couples were ruled not legally married by the California State Supreme Court. [...] Two years later, 45 states have passed laws prohibiting gay marriage and Massachusetts remains the only place where it is legal. After Bush’s re-election, Republicans simply blew off the issue—to the great dismay of leaders on the religious right, a few of whom indicated that they felt taken advantage of.

A second reason the issue won’t work again is that Democrats have by now figured out how to handle the issue. It is reasonable to assume that a great many of them would, in their heart of hearts, like to see gay marriage legalized. But they recognize that pressing the case nationally is likely to set back the cause as well as their prospects for retaking Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008. So, Democrats have honed their talking points on the subject: Marriage should be an issue for states (the federalist position usually espoused by Republicans); the amendment is discriminatory and would also ban civil unions ... and why tinker unnecessarily with the Constitution, especially while the Defense of Marriage Act is in force?

The third reason gay marriage will fail as an issue is that Bush is bucking the tide of history. The past two decades have seen a quiet revolution in attitudes toward homosexuality throughout the West. People in advanced democracies around the world are growing more accepting of gay unions by the year.

I think it’s all true. The political climate on this issue has changed in a very short period of time. I suppose I’ve relaxed a bit on the issue, on a personal level, because I know that time is on our side on this issue. I am 100% certain that gay marriage will happen. I don’t believe I will live to see the day that the federal government will treat it equally to heterosexual marriage, but I could be wrong. I do expect to see a splattering of states around the country allowing civil unions with full marriage benefits (to the extent a state can offer benefits) before I leave this Earth. Unfortunately, all the really important protections that carry the most weight are at the federal level.

But aside from my predictions of history, what I thought would happen, did happen. On Monday, the President addressed the nation on this most important issue, as did the Senate. All other business in the nation came to a halt, as if we had nothing else to worry about. The very next day, the President had moved on to immigration as though Monday never happened, leaving the Senate to be left behind with an issue that has been rated # 33 on the list of concerns for average Americans.

After that, the backlash started in the press, and blogs like this one, across the country. And talk radio is having a field day with this, and not in a good way for the Republicans. They are now seen as a party who just doesn’t get it and a party who is just pandering for votes on this one issue (let’s call it desperation).

It’s time the administration called off its marriage-discrimination crusade. The Senate won’t go there, Mr. President. It’s also time to stop using the issue to divert attention from Iraq, deficits and so many other mistakes. (source)

But something did happen this morning that is good news for all of us - the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. This will boost the morale of our troops in Iraq, as well it should. But there are other young terrorists who are just itching to take his place, and they will. Still, this is a blow to the tide of violence. Why? Because the tips that we received on the location of al-Zarqawi didn’t come from our intelligence. They came from ordinary Iraqis who are growing tired of the day to day violence against innocent Iraqi civilians.

On my way to work this morning, I listened to President Bush’s address on this news. It was a short speech and only addressed the death of al-Zarqawi. But one thing I did notice in the President’s speech was his lack of the phrase, “...this is a turning point...”. He’s used that before - many times, to bolster our efforts in Iraq. Perhaps he’s learning to stop using catch phrases that can eventually bite him in the ass. Perhaps he’s learning to stay to script and not waiver from that script.

Short speeches from him are nice. The less I must hear his voice, the happier I am.

I got a chuckle out of this and just thought I’d share it.

2:00 -- “ACTIVIST JUDGES!” If DoMA is overturned, EVERY STATE WILL HAVE TO RECOGNIZE MARRIAGES FROM MASSACHUSETTS AND SAN FRANCISCO!

He’s getting into it! He’s excited again, banging the podium. Civics lesson time. How does an amendment get ratified? First, you need a demagogue.

“Every American deserves to be treated with tolerance, respect, and dignity.” Give or take 10%. But hell, let’s just agree with him about the constitutional amendment thing being the most Democratic way to solve the HOMO LOVE CRISIS. Once it fails miserably in the Senate, will it PLEASE GO AWAY FOREVER? THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN. (source)

Source for cartoon

WASHINGTON Jun 5, 2006 (AP) -- President Bush and congressional Republicans are aiming the political spotlight this week on efforts to ban gay marriage, with events at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue all for a constitutional amendment with scant chance of passage but wide appeal among social conservatives. [...]

“A vote for this amendment is a vote for bigotry pure and simple,” said Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, where the state Supreme Court legalized gay marriages in 2003.

Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, which in 2004 began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, on Monday denounced Bush’s move as predictable and “stale rhetoric” aimed at rallying conservatives for this year’s midterm elections.

“It’s politics. It’s pandering and it’s placating a core constituency, the evangelicals,” Newsom said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” (source)

I’m told that this amendment has a snowballs chance in hell of passing, so I’m not really worried about it. I’m more disgusted than anything else. They want to leave this issue to the states to form “civil unions”, or not (preferably, give us no recognition what so ever).

The real issue is, therefore, if they really feel that way, perhaps we should embrace the notion that separate but equal is what our country should be about. Perhaps we should revisit...
blacks joining the military
and after we let blacks into the military, if it was a good idea that they were finally allowed to integrated into the “white” units because it was feared that it would have a negative effect on “unit cohesion” (sound familiar?)
the right of women to vote
Brown vs. Board of Education
interracial marriage (Loving vs. Virginia)
and of course, abortion
and while we’re at it, hell, why not slavery? At the time, we would have kept that by a popular vote!

And no, I’m not talking out of both sides of my mouth here. When I said I am no longer going to fight them on this issue, I meant that. I just hate hypocrisy and that is what I’m trying to address.

And, I find it ironic and sad that our President has picked this day to use his office to advance bigotry. On June 5, 1981, twenty-five years ago today, U.S. public health officials reported the first known cases of a disease that would come to be called AIDS.

Related Article
June 4, 2006 - Dividing A Nation

But like so much else in contemporary politics, the Senate vote isn’t designed to produce a law; it’s intended to pick a fight. The White House and Senate GOP leadership are betting that a noisy confrontation over gay marriage will encourage turnout this November from conservative voters -- many of whom, polls show, are discouraged over President Bush’s second term.

That strategy may help Republicans in some red states this year. But it could also deepen the image of intolerance hurting the GOP in many white-collar suburbs outside the South. Either way, these near-term, tactical calculations don’t represent the most important political consequence: Both parties may pay a long-term price if manufactured cultural clashes such as the gay marriage amendment continue to control the spotlight. (source)

I told a friend at work last week that I’m tired of this fight. They have managed to wear me down to the point that the right to marry my partner is no longer worth the fight for me - not when there are so many more important issues facing this nation.

This is not easy for me to say. I call being able to be married a “right”, because there are over 1500 federal rights associated with it. That makes it more than just symbolic. So, people like me have a lot to lose when I give up on this fight.

But to people like President George W. Bush, it actually means less to him. It meant so much to him, that he used it in the last presidential election to get his conservative base to the polls to vote to reelect his sorry ass back into the presidency. It meant so much to him that after he was re-elected, he completely dropped the issue altogether - until now.

Tomorrow, he will give a speech on how we must protect marriage from the gays - the same sorry, warmed over argument, all over again. I say we completely ignore the fool. Let him and his party show their intolerance and hatred for what it is. And let us concentrate on the larger issues that are real to most people, and to us, since our president and Senator Frist are apparently unable to do that.

Will their tactic work again? Will it manage to drive the conservative base back to the polls even after they were betrayed last time? Well, nothing would surprise me. In this country, most people do not vote. And of those who do vote, 90% of them are not well read on the issues. They pull the lever without ever really knowing what they are voting for. They vote largely on what people have told them are “bad”. They do not vote on facts, they vote on emotions, and they certainly don’t stop to think about the unfortunate consequences about passing a state constitutional amendment banning all relationships in law, outside of “marriage”. They never stop to think that it may just effect them, and that would be “bad”, because they aren’t in the minority group du jour that is being bashed. Even some from conservative groups can see this for what it is.

GEORGE Bush is facing escalating crises in Iraq, an out-of-control budget deficit and a slumping approval rating down to about 30 per cent.

So this week the President is focusing the nation’s attention on the problem of greatest concern to his social conservative supporters -- many of whom are pathologically obsessed with the threat posed to American values by homosexuals. [...]

The debate will drag on for most of the week before it’s defeated in the Senate, with most senators wishing that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, with his 2008 presidential ambitions in mind, had not insisted on this debate.

Will this cynical and hopeless political exercise give Bush a boost with his conservative base? Joe Glover, president of the Family Policy Network, is an anti-gay marriage lobbyist who remains sceptical.

“I’m going to go and hear what he says, but we already know it’s a ruse,” Glover said. “We’re not buying it.” (source)

So it is in our country. The larger issue is not gay marriage. It is the idea that a group of people - any group - can be singled out and demonized for what is wrong with this country, thereby distracting people from the real cause of the problem.

The real cause of these problems stems from a President, and a Congress who would rather cause a distraction than admit that they are out of answers for our country.

They have no idea what to do about gas prices in this country. They have no idea what heating costs are going to be for Americans next winter or how to have any control over that. They have no idea what we will do if another natural disaster strikes. They have no idea what to do about Iraq. So they appeal back to their base with “flag burning” and “gay marriage”. It’s like standing in your house while it’s on fire. As the flames approach you, you are standing in your TV room trying to figure out why your video recorder isn’t working the way it should.

Meanwhile, our men and women in Iraq are doing their best with what they have. What they have to answer to is a government who puts such issues as gay marriage above that of them and their brothers in combat.

Disgraceful.

This is why I’ve decided to move on. I rarely look at the gay marriage debate anymore because I now see it for what it is - a tool to help religious fanatics that want control of this country. That will only work if people like me fight them. Without me, they will have nothing to fight. And at the end of the day, when the smoke clears, what we will see is a group of self-righteous bigots who care nothing for our country, or what is going on in the real world.

Hopefully, President George W. Bush, Senator Bill Frist, et. al., will be standing right there with the pathetic lot of them.

The Bush administration, heavily influence by the Christian right, is blocking key proposals for a new United Nations package to combat AIDS worldwide over the next five years because of its opposition to the distribution of condoms and needle exchanges and references to prostitutes, drug addicts and homosexuals.

The United States is being supported by many Muslim countries, including Egypt, and various conservative African and Latin American nations. “There are a lot of unholy alliances all over the place,” said a European official attending UN talks in New York last night.

Fraught negotiations were continuing to try to salvage as much of the package as possible. More than 140 nations are attending the UN summit in New York which began on Wednesday. The meeting is intended to update a 2001 declaration that provided the momentum for a worldwide campaign against AIDS. A new declaration is due to be agreed today.

Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, told the summit: “The world has been unconscionably slow in meeting one of the most vital aspects of the struggle: measures to fight the spread of AIDS among women and girls. These shortcomings are deadly.” (source)

You know the thing that bothers me most about my country today? It isn’t that we have so many points of view that disagree with each other. That is after all, democracy. What bothers me is that our elected officials have been bought out by religion. They are being pimped out by the Christian Right. That’s a good analogy. They Christian Right pays them larges sums of money, mobilizes their forces to keep these bastards in office, then turns around and says to them, “Now, go earn me some money, bitch!”, read, vote the way I want you to vote! And that is when we stopped being a democracy.

Without a cure for AIDS, we’ve come to a point where we won’t even recommend the one thing that has been the most effective weapon against AIDS to date - the condom (pictured left... hey, if it embarasses you to look at it, you can’t talk about it to those who need it, and if an older Jewish lady such as Dr. Ruth can come on national TV and say, “The vagina can accommodate any penis size.”, I think we can talk about condoms, right?). Why is the United States trying to block the use of condoms? Because the religious fanatics don’t believe in the use of condoms.

We are beyond that. I would think that millions of people dying, and millions more being infected each year, would trump their fear of a simple piece of latex material to be placed over a penis prior to sex. That’s just logic and you would think that we could see that.

The same holds true for clean needle exchange. They would say that we are encouraging drug use. Folks, the drug use is already going on and if you know anything about drug addiction, you can’t tell someone that they can’t shoot up because you refuse to give them a clean needle. They will simply find another needle, and they won’t be picky about how clean it is or how many have already used that needle, because their craving for their fix outweighs all other considerations.

The answer, give them a clean and safe needle to shoot up with. Then, deal with the drug addiction problem separately, because that really is a separate (and bigger) issue. At least, they will be alive.

Why can’t my government see this? It’s simple logic. It would attack the disease directly in the absence of a cure against AIDS.

Luckily, my community, who was largely outcast already by the religious creeps driving this, had little problem tell them to go screw themselves. We distributed condoms all over the place. We did the same thing with clean needle exchange programs, and where that wasn’t possible, we distributed bleach to drug users and taught them how to sterilize their needles before drug use.

These are drastic times. People are dying of AIDS, and they don’t need to. For our government to buy into this religiously motivated bullshit is.... GENOCIDE.

The USA is rejecting gay, black and poor communities in its response to AIDs, according to a health watchdog.

The report, published by the Public Health Watch HIV/AIDS Monitoring Project of the Open Society Institute (OSI), provides the first comprehensive analysis of how the United States is responding to the domestic AIDS epidemic and calls on the US government to step up prevention and treatment efforts.

It claims US efforts against the disease are uncoordinated, with no national plan for comprehensive HIV prevention, treatment, and support, half the people in the US who need HIV treatment are not receiving it, and the number of new HIV infections in the US has not decreased in over a decade.

The document also highlights a lack of support for communities of colour, gay men and men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and the poor. (source) Emphasis, my own

Well, I honestly don’t know when the United States was EVER coordinated (or cared) about it’s citizens with HIV/AIDS, so I guess I’m at a bit of a loss to understand why this story is news.

But, on other issues, we are fully coordinated.

HURRICANE KATRINA
I mean, we handled Katrina pretty well, didn’t we? We got to those people in weeks and helped them out. And now, a few nightclubs are open and doing business with the hundreds that have come back into the city. As for the people who’s homes were destroyed, the government has concluded that many of those homes weren’t that good anyway (no need to rebuild).

IRAQ
Things couldn’t be better. We are were going to pull troops out pulling troops out of Iraq until just a week or so ago, when we order 1500 more in to try to control the insurgents. And these massacres that we keep hearing about in the news is just a “few bad apples”, but the President is “very concerned” about it all, and will coordinate with “others” to bring that under control. AND, we do have an exit strategy and always have (that was coordinated also). It’s just that it’s highly classified information and we will know what it is when we need to know.

GAY MARRIAGE AND FLAG BURNING
I’m not sure how those two got lumped together as the two top concerns that Congress is going to tackle next week, but you can rest assured that this is a coordinated effort to bring both of those under control. Maybe most flag burners are gay and want to get married? I don’t know. I don’t have those secret “intelligence reports” that Bill Frist and the President has, BUT, they are both coordinated!

PRICE OF GAS
Not a priority at this time because even though we citizens are paying over $3 per gallon of gas, it’s going to the oil companies and that’s eventually going to “trickle down” to ... us, I think. At any rate, the President is “very concerned” about that too and just working and thinking (he likes to think a lot) about a way to coordinate it. I have faith that he will deliver relief with Katrina-like speed!

NATIONAL SECURITY
On my way to work this morning, they said that the Office of Homeland Security is pulling funds from areas at high risk of being attacked. Washington, D.C., and New York City will have about 40% of their funding cut. They say that they want to “direct larger chunks of money to high-risk cities, rather than less obvious targets.” I would think that Washington, D.C. and New York City are both obvious targets, but apparently not true. It seems that Omaha, Nebraska and Milwaukee, Wisconsin are bigger targets. Needless to say, this is all coordinated.

HIV / AIDS
We, as a country, are coordinated on this -- we simply don't care for “those people”. Let’s be honest about it and stop saying that “everything that can be done is being done”. Oh please. (related story)

So, we are coordinated. This accusation that our country doesn’t have it’s crap together is greatly exaggerated (and uncoordinated).