Walkin’ To New Orleans – Day 5

A few excerpts from the blog at Bring Them Home Now:

This is a red state!
You are going to get lynched!
Don’t go into the deep south!

These are the things that the lethargic pessimists said of this march but as we walk the love and support are overwhelming. This is now at least a purple state if not a full blue state as the honks and peace signs shower us along. I have to say that there are the middle fingers still every so often but not the hate I was expecting. These people are living off of nothing but love and it has overwhelmed and is helping to heel the wounded souls of the Iraq War vets. [...]

Geoffrey Millard
Iraq Veterans Against the War
17 mar 2006

* * *

We ran off schedule this morning because some local folks asked us to come take a look at their section of town. They wanted someone to see what had happened to them. So instead of sticking to the planned route, we walked a loop around their area. People came out of their businesses to watch us go by, and were incredibly supportive. I dropped out of formation to talk to a few women from a dental clinic who came out in their scrubs and business suits. They didn’t know we were coming, but felt they had to come out and support us. I introduced myself and explained who we were, and our purpose. They said they came out to watch because they felt they had to show their support. I asked if they’d been affected by the hurricane, and one woman looked away, another nodded in her direction and said she had been. She said she lost everything, and then choked up. She was having a bad day, she said – it was the third time today she had broken down. We ended up just standing in the center of the parking lot, hugging each other.

[snip]

Nothing but love in Slidell.

Audrey Mantey
Veterans for Peace

Add Franklin Graham to the list

At the rate we’re piling up bigoted, intolerant ‘Christian’ ministers, we’re going to have to build a retirement home just for them.

We’ll call it the ‘Hate Preach’ Home.

From baptists4ethics.com:

Evangelist Franklin Graham stood by remarks he made in 2001 calling Islam a ‘very evil and wicked religion’ in an interview aired Wednesday night on ABC’s “Nightline” program.

Graham, heir to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and head of the international relief agency Samaritan’s Purse, rebuffed offers by Muslim leaders to meet with him and try to get him to change his mind about Islam as attempts to ‘indoctrinate me.’

‘I know about Islam. I don’t need an education about Islam,’ he said. ‘I’ve been working in Muslim countries now for 40 years or more. So I know about Islam.’

‘If people think Islam is such a wonderful religion, then go to Saudi Arabia and make it your home,’ Graham said. ‘Just live there. If you think Islam is such a wonderful religion, go and live under the Taliban somewhere. Children, women cannot be educated, and if they weren’t dressed a certain way they were beaten. If a woman was caught in bed with another man they pulled them out into the street and shot them in the head with an AK.’

There are some sane Christians out there:

Robert Parham of the Baptist Center for Ethics said neither Robertson nor Graham ’show much familiarity with the largest bulk of Jesus’ moral teachings which are found in the Sermon on the Mount.’

‘If they would hear and follow Jesus’ teachings, then they would halt their anti-Islamic diatribes,’ Parham said. ‘The Sermon on the Mount is crystal clear about peacemaking, loving enemies, doing good to others, striving after God’s kingdom and practicing discernment. Regrettably, fundamentalist Christians ignore the Sermon on the Mount, because it is not a manual for war-making, which is at the heart of Christian crusades.’

Saturday Miscellany

Pregnant Waitress Gets Big Tip

From the AP: When a couple left a huge tip on the table at a local restaurant, their waitress figured it had to be a joke.

They left $1,000 to cover a bill of $26.35 and a note saying ‘Keep the change! Have a great day.’ [...]

Turley on Olbermann:

Crooks and Liars has the video. mcjoan has the transcript.

Olbermann: (reading from a U.S. News & World Report press release) ‘Soon after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, lawyers in the White House and the Justice Department argued that the same legal authority that the same legal authority that allowed warrentless electronic surveillance inside the US, could also be used to justify physical searches of terror suspects homes & businesses without court approval.‘

Olbermann: Doesn’t that send chills down your spine?

Turley: Well it does. It’s horrific, because what that would constitute is to effectively remove the 4th Amendment from the U.S. Constitution and the fact that it was so quick as a suggestion shows the inclinations, unfortunately, of this administration. It treats the Constitution as some legal technicality instead of the thing were trying to fight to protect. [...]

Idiocy At DC Airport:

From Reuters: Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams was delayed at a Washington-area airport on Friday for a secondary security screening, a Homeland Security Department official said.

Adams had been scheduled to fly from Washington’s Reagan National Airport to Buffalo, New York, for St. Patrick’s Day appearances with Democratic Rep. Brian Higgins of New York but was unable to make the trip because of the airport delay, said Teresa Kennedy, a spokeswoman for the congressman.

Earlier on Friday, Adams, along with Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and other Irish leaders, attended a meeting at the White House with President Bush. [...]

More Airport Idiocy:

From Lisa Myers, Rich Gardella & the NBC Investigative Unit:

Government sources tell NBC News that federal investigators recently were able to carry materials needed to make a similar homemade bomb through security screening at 21 airports.

In all 21 airports tested, no machine, no swab, no screener anywhere stopped the bomb materials from getting through. Even when investigators deliberately triggered extra screening of bags, no one discovered the materials.

[snip]

Investigators for the Government Accountability Office conducted the tests between October and January, at the request of Congress. The goal was to determine how vulnerable U.S. airlines are to a suicide bomber using cheap, readily available materials. [...]

Boehner: King Of Ethics Reform Lobbyist Play Toy:

From the Washington Post: House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio), who rose to power in the wake of a congressional lobbying scandal, spent the equivalent of nearly six months on privately funded trips over the past six years, according to a new study by a nonpartisan research group.

[snip]

Boehner also flew at least 45 times on corporate jets owned by companies ‘with a financial stake in congressional affairs’ from June 2001 through September 2005, the center reported. The corporations on whose planes Boehner flew included tobacco companies such as R.J. Reynolds Tobacco (15 times), UST Inc. (seven times) and Swisher International Inc. (seven times).

[snip]

Boehner rejected that characterization and offered himself as an agent of change, especially on the issue of congressional ethics. The center concluded, however, that Boehner built ‘a network of political and business relationships’ with corporations and other interests ‘not unlike’ his predecessor, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), whose tenure in the job was controversial in large part because of his close ties to lobbyists and lobbying groups.

For All The Children

I guess I just didn’t think about it. I mean, we all know – in that abstract, back of the head way – that soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan weren’t orphans without families. You know they had families of their own. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters…

But you don’t think about the children. Children who’ve lost a parent to the ‘vision’ of a man who believes himself to be doing the work of God.

(Newsflash, George: Your God is supposed to smite your enemies. ‘Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’ –Romans 12:19 [KJV])

Until something literally smacks you in the face and says, ‘LOOK!’ you just don’t think about the children now facing a life without their father or their mother.

And that’s what happened to me today.

I was taking my daily tour through the various news sites and checking the blogs to see what everyone’s talking about. I’m running a bit behind due to some miniature crises – nothing truly major, just a bloody nose, a washing machine-hose spill, a daughter with ear and sinus infections and a case of the whinies. Trying to decide if it’s even worth it to even start writing posts for this blog, because I know I’ll be interrupted 50 times in the two hours it’ll take. (I’m slow and I edit a lot…)

Then I clicked on Newsweek’s photo gallery. [Sorry, this will only take you to the homepage. It won't let me link. You'll have to scroll down the right-hand side.]

This photo gallery is one of children whose parent made the ultimate sacrifice.

A boy holding his father’s Purple Heart. A girl at a memorial for her father outside her home. A boy and his mother in a room they’ve turned into a memorial for his father. A six-year-old who ‘made her mother ‘pinkie-swear’ that she wouldn’t die.’

It all became clear once again. Why we need to bring our troops home. Why we need to make peace – some kind of peace – in Iraq, even if it’s just allowing them to split the country into three autonomous regions.

For our children and their children. For my children and your children. For all the children.

As of last week, Newsweek has calculated that 1,043 American children have lost a parent in Iraq.

For those who would say we’re there to free Iraq and to create a peaceful nation for the Iraqi children, I say: War cannot make peace, and freedom cannot be imposed by outsiders.