Things to not forget when the partying quiets down:

The VFP 72 (BOHICA’s baby) constructed and maintains Peace Park in Portland, Oregon. The largest park for Peace in America.

1. Bob Gates is a crook, a liar, major scumbag who was at the very center of Iran Contra and Arms for Hostages. He cannot be rubber stamped by the outgoing lame duck Fascist-dominated Congress.

2. Donald Rumsfeld is a war criminal and should not be allowed to escape prosecution. There are legal moves being made right now in Germany to officially declare him, as Henry Kissinger was, an international war criminal subject to arrest and detention in many countries. There are documents available which identify Rumsfeld as directly running extreme Gitmo tortures and illegal extradition for the purposes of torture of a number detainees–in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, to which we are signators. This man deserves to hang just like Saddam.

3. We still have on the books un-Constitutional laws which illegally retroactively indemnify the Bush war crime family from any prosecution from their heinous acts against Humanity. This would be like OJ passing a retroactive law making it ok for a Black man to kill 2 White people as long as he was only using sharp objects.

4. The United States currently has abandoned the rule of Habeas Corpus. This must be reinstated immediately.

5. We have legalized extradition of American citizens for the purposes of torture. This must end.

6. We have legalized torture and all manner of violations of the Geneva Conventions. This must end.

7. We have legalized un-Constitutional violations of privacy against Americans. This must end immediately.

8. Every Federal department and agency has been jam packed with corrupt corporate shills selling off our land, the very air we breathe, our water, our seas and our birthright to voracious multinational conglomerates. They harass broadcasters to kowtow to the hysterical whims of radical Religious nuts. Freedom of Speech has disappeared. The FDA is approving dangerous drugs with little or no oversight, and blocking safe drugs which violate the superstitious fantasies of radical religious lunatics. This too must end.

9. Science is under attack at all levels in America by religious fanatics with a huge sway over corrupt politicians. This too must end.

10. The Middle Class is under attack on all fronts by policies forged by elitist neocons which have long since run away and hid and disavowed their original policy input. Thus we have a kind of political V-Ger which lives on past its shelf life continuing to destroy without thought or reason.

11. The massive corruption in Washington can only be stopped by public campaign financing, and strict limits on spending.

It’s exactly to the degree that the Democrats answer to these issues and many more over the next two years that our present exhilaration will be vindicated. As Han Solo said…

“Don’t get cocky, kid!”

In fact, if 2 years from today we can point to ONE of the above getting crossed off the list, it’ll be a $&%^%$#@ miracle. We only have a better class of politicians in place now, kind of like getting mugged by a better class of mugger. These guys will thank us for the nice watch.

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No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. — James Madison, 1795

Full credit to my dear friend and hockey pal, Ken Melville. Photographs I’ve taken from along the way of a very strange year and a half.

I’d like to add:

Bring our Troops home NOW and get our War Resisters out of jail… NOW!