Author: LookingUp

In follow up to storiesinamerica’s diary of yesterday, about the female soldier who was sexually harassed in Iraq. Perhaps this info ended up in the diary, I didn’t see it.

The mother is asking for our help, for our letters. But first:

She was sent to Iraq right out of her basic training. While she was packing, we cried, as she assured me she would be okay. One of her sergeants assured me, “Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ll take good care of your daughter.” I desperately hoped that I could trust him to watch over her. I later found out he was one the first predators to try to have sex with her and make her “his private.”

What she needs us to do:

Please write to Lt. Colonel Switzer, Ft. Lewis, Washington, to ask that Spc. Suzanne Swift receive a medical discharge or an honorable discharge from the Army due to her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. After writing the letter, please fax a copy to:

    Senator Gordon Smith
    Federal Building
    211 East 7th Avenue, Room 202
    Eugene, OR 97401
    Phone: 541.465.6750
    Fax: 541.465.6808

    Senator Ron Wyden
    151 West 7th Avenue
    Suite 435
    Eugene, OR 97401
    (541) 431-0229

    Congressman Peter DeFazio
    151 West 7th, Suite 400
    Eugene, OR 97401
    Phone: (541) 465-6732

    Senator Patty Murray
    950 Pacific Avenue, Ste. 650
    Tacoma, Washington 98402
    Phone: (253) 572-3636
    Fax: (253) 572-9892

    If there is no fax number, you can email them. Let me know if you send a letter and if you get a response.

    If you want to donate to Suzanne’s legal or medical fund, please contact me at formydaughtersuzanne@yahoo.com.

    Thanks so much from Suzanne and her family. We appreciate your love and passion. This is so important for us to do – not only to end the war, but to defend women who are in the military.

    Peace,

    Sara Rich, M.S.W.

More info here, a very good article:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061406A.shtml

Thank you for reading this.

I was there when abortions were illegal. When I went to college they were illegal. While I was in college, they became legal. But before that…

College girls (we were freshmen, what, 18 or so?) who became pregnant had several choices, besides suicide. For abortion you: a) found a back-alley doc in the nearest big city b) waited until spring break, scrounged a car or a bus ticket or a plane ticket, and went to Mexico.

What happened when you got to those clinics was roughly the same in both countries, as far as I know. You probably had little pain medication.
Aspirin — did you bring your own? All the tales I heard were full of a sea of pain.

The doc would get you in the position, crank you open, and then begin to stuff cotton gauze into your uterus through the cervix. I suppose some dialiation was done to make this possible. If you don’t know what a uterus or cervix looks like, Google is your friend, there are pictures out there, but far too many are icky, pictures of sick cervixes, so keep looking for a healthy one. In nature they are gorgeous, pink, shiny… and the os (the opening in the cervix, which is at the end of the pear-like uterus) is closed.

If you’ve ever seen a woman having pain during a period or child birth — well, same muscles, organs, nerves — that kind of pain is what these young girls experienced. Mind-searing pain, white-hot pain. The kind that stops your body in its tracks, sends you into shock.

OK! Now that the gauze is stuffed inside you, you can go… back to some sleazy flea-bitten room you’ve rented in whichever country you’re in. You wait. 24 hours? 48 hours? I forget. Then you go back into the “clinic”.

Now the “doc” grabs onto the gauze, and pulls it back out. Men, just imagine the gauze being pulled out of your organ, and how enjoyable it would be. ANYTHING going in or out of the os is horribly painful. When women pass tiny clots in their periods they’re in pain.

When the gauze has been removed, you can go back where you came from. Enjoy the car, bus, train, or plane ride.

The results of this procedure could be:
–quite a bit of tissue has been removed
–the fetus is disturbed greatly, and you’ll begin to mis-carry
–both the above, plus likely:

–you’ll get an infection from left-over tissue, but possibly be able to blame it on a “miscarriage” and get treatment from a legit medical facility. Uh, if you have insurance or access to one.

I watched a girl and her roommate down the hall from me my first year in the dorm. They had gone to get the pregnant girl an abortion in Mexico. She came back with a raving infection. They tried to deal with it on their own for days. But failed, of course. It was so far beyond horrible.

She finally sought treatment at the med center on campus, and she lived.

A follow-up to the last diary on community.

This diary’s topic: getting to know your neighbors.

Do you know any of your neighbors? Are you in a house or an apartment building? Other? (Dorm, barracks, underwater cave…)

Have you ever invited neighbors to your house or yard for a party?

Ever helped to create a block or neighborhood party?

If you haven’t met any of your neighbors, yet, how would you go about that? FOr those of you that have, what method do you use?

If you haven’t met anyone from your block, that is your assignment for this week. Figure out a way to meet one person from your block or apartment building (underwater cave).

If you wonder — how could this be political? I think I mentioned in last diary that the lady from China across the street from me said I’m the only one on the block who talks to her. She, uh, also asked me in 2004 who to vote for, and said she would take my word for it.

That’s when community gets political, eh?

Barn-raising.

What does the concept evoke for you?

A bunch of Amish guys with hammers swarming over a pile of wood? Let’s look at it as a concept instead.  

It’s what built this country. Cooperation. One neighbor, relative, or group helping one person or family to do more than they ever could alone. The apple harvest. The wheat harvest. Home-building. Barn-building. Wagon trains. (NOT solo wagons.) Rounding up the pigs. Slaughter and preserving animals. Cattle round-up.

It’s how people STILL live in the rural areas or small towns in this country. Helping each other. It’s a noble way of life, a life filled with meaning. With thanks, gratefulness, with that wonderful feeling that you just helped someone else have a better life. Where you’re woven into a never-ending series of favors given and received, no end in sight, the beginning far past.

A world where you don’t have to worry so much about doing “the big projects”, because you don’t have to do them on your own. Think about that, I mean really ponder it. A world where it’s natural to call on your neighbors, friends, relatives for help. Where you are more doing them a favor by asking, because you weave the community together by doing so. Where this is as much a part of life as breathing. A security infuses your everyday life. Not that hardships won’t come, but that you won’t bear them alone, but with help on every level.

Emergency at your house? No problem. As many people as needed will show up to help you. One person’s needed to watch the kids while you drive one to the hospital? Done. 14 people to help vacuum the water out of your house after it flooded? Here they come. Are some of them taking the day off work to do that, because their boss is a member of the community? Yes. Are they being paid to work at your house on the water by that boss? Possibly. Either the boss is sacrificing their pay on your account, or they’re sacrificing it by working for free for you, in any case, it’s all part of a beautiful circle, which will benefit every member in its time.

Do we have this type of community in our world today? In our country today? On this blog today? If not, why not? And if not, how can we create it? Why spend time bemoaning it if we don’t have it, let’s create it!

I would contend that creating those types of communities, both online and in person in our daily lives, is one of the most effective political acts we can commit. No, the MOST ESSENTIAL political act we can commit. Most essential.

One thing that’s so great about creating truly interwoven, giving communities? On the face of it, it’s not “political” — it’s social. It’s innocuous. But it’s powerful! It’s powerful in a way that squares or cubes the meaning of the word “powerful”. It’s the most radical,profound — and yet sweet, meaningful, and wonderful change we can make in our world.

So — that was the vision portion of this piece. Please, let’s discuss this, and not in just one diary, not just one day. Let’s not give it the add/adhd treatment.     🙂

 Now to bring this subject to the personal level, the level of this community. Last night I logged onto Booman and read that one of the premier diarists here was using a computer monitor which barely worked, and was very very small. That person lives roughly 100 miles from me. Yesterday I drove 15 miles to pay a business $10 to take an old monitor from me, and resell or recycle it. Needless to say, the irony of that is not insignificant.

Even more “synchronistic”. I’m ex-board member of a computer club in Seattle, I’m hooked in with at least 4 computer/monitor give-away programs. Add to the mix that I’ve even corresponded with that diarist personally before — she’s the person who gave me the courage to post my first diary on dKos. What’s relevant here is not that “I owe her one,” but “I kind-of personally have an email relationship with her”.

My point is — IF this diarist had asked us for help in the past, I personally could have resolved this situation long ago, and likely for no money changing hands. I sent out 3 emails about finding her a monitor, one sent at 1:02 PM.  At 1:12PM, I had a reply, “Yes, there’s one sitting in the front of the user group office waiting for someone to pick it up.” In addition, I literally know a person who probably lives within 30 miles of the diarist, who runs a computer give-away program.

My point related to the above is:
If Susan had asked in the past, the need would have been supplied instantly. If I wasn’t a part of Booman, or didn’t see that post, or wasn’t connected with my computer group, it would have been easy to fill her need, another way. $10 from 30 people, and she’s got $300 for a computer monitor, easy.

So — why didn’t she ask? Why, if this is a community, as so many have said it is, didn’t she feel that it would be (back to the vision thing) doing us a favor to allow us to help her, via making her need known? After all, helping someone else a little bit, keeps the pump primed for the time when we need a little bit of help.

Thus: I propose that we radically, politically, socially change our vision of asking for help. That we see it not as weakness in some macho view of the world. Or failure in some 50’s isolationist nuclear family model of the world: “I’m not doing it all MYSELF”.

I propose we see asking as a privilege, because it means we’re a part of a community that cares. That we see it as a privilege for the others to give, because it infuses their lives with meaning, usefulness, community, belonging, and an avenue to share love.

Barn-raising. A metaphor for the kinds of community we need to create, to live in, to breathe in, to love in. What better legacy for our children and our world?

Ask, and you help to create that community.

the cause to which you devoted the mature part of your life: convincing young people not to join gangs.

I was so sad about this all day. A human life to be wasted. Another blot on the country’s name, every case that’s famous like this is that.

My body tried to fall asleep several times in the middle of the day; I realized I wanted to sleep through the execution, vs worrying about it all day. Working late at the computer, I had NPR on in the background to listen to “As It Happens” (Canadian show.)

Then American news came on, and the announcer said, “Tookie… will die this hour.” Looked at computer clock, it was 12:01, what a shock. The time the first chemical would hit his veins, if they were on schedule.

I spent three minutes silent, eyes closed.

“His claim of rehabilitation doesn’t correlate with his claim of innocence,” said Mr. Swartz or his attorney writing a statement for him. What gobbledegook. How does that make sense? What makes those two ideas related in any way?

The only thing I can think of circles back to the title. I hope that in death Tookie serves the cause of ending the death penalty. I hope he serves the cause of inspiring kids to avoid or quit gang life.

I hope he inspires the rest of us to do something to make avenues of achievement for some of the kids who’d have ended up in gangs without other options.

Markos wrote:

Media savvy will carry a movement much further than any march, regardless if it had 100,000 or 500,000 or a million people. Cindy Sheehan had the right idea with the Crawford protest — there was a story line and drama which the media could use to create a narrative, hence a long-running story.

Cindy had the right “idea”? That’s hilarious. You’ve never lost a child or you wouldn’t say that.

Cindy Sheehan had PAIN. From her PAIN she, on her own, decided to go to Crawford, and camp out to confront Bush. To try to stop him from killing another mother’s son.

Cindy Sheehan had no clue that bunches of people would come join her, to spend time asking the same question, or that it would become a media moment. After all, she’d done scores of other actions, other speeches, that didn’t provoke all that.

She didn’t know how long she’d be there, if Bush would come out the first or second day. She didn’t care if she was arrested, run over, made fun of by Bush or by national news. Enough pain puts you past caring about details. She just knew she had to stand up and do what she, as one person, could do to try to stop the war.

Why? So years later, when people asked her, “What did you do to try to stop it?” — she wouldn’t have to say, “Nothing, I sat home in my living room and watched TV.”

There comes a time in a person’s life when they have to stand up and do SOMETHING to “speak truth to power”. To go to the seat of power, and stand up against it.

And that is EXACTLY what everyone at the march in Washington DC, or Seattle, or Sagebrush, Nebraska was doing. Standing up for what’s right. Voting with their feet, their spines, demanding that their government listen to them and get out of this despicable war.

You think it didn’t make any difference that millions of people marched against the Iraq war before it happened? Think again. It was an unprecedented event, a pivotal event in world history.

Maybe you think marching doesn’t take guts, but maybe that’s because you haven’t tried it. It took guts for Cindy to go alone to Texas. It took guts for every single person to go to DC. To every single local march. If you’ve never tried to get yourself off your rear to a march, you don’t know that.

To imply — to even imply! — that one second of the time and effort that anyone spent getting to an anti-war march should have been spent doing something else is to entirely misunderstand the nature of social and political change.

It isn’t an “either / or” decision. It’s an “and / and” situation. Every single time that someone stands up for what’s right, for what’s true, for better treatment for humanity, it matters.

We can’t intellectually “discover” one perfect approach and then get people behind it! Life isn’t like that, perfection doesn’t exist. Life is too complex for any one person to dictate a “right strategy” to everyone else. (Yoo hoo, that’s what’s wrong with a “dictatorship”.)

We’re weaving a better world. A military planner once said, “If I come at you from many sides, it’s because the frontal attack is obsolete.” We need to celebrate each and every person who does something to make things better — no matter what it is – AND celebrate the person next to them who made a different choice.

And / and.

Thank you for marching, all of you, and thank YOU for writing a book! And thank you for taking in a homeless kid, and thank YOU for Freeway Blogging, and thank YOU for helping the senior on your block, and thank YOU for running a solar panel business and thank YOU for working to establish paper trails for all votes in your state.

This positive action and that positive action, all adding up into streams and rivers of change. Eventually changing our world. And / and.

TOGETHER we’ll get there.

[If you don’t catch the ref, it’s from a song.]

Here I am again, with a diary inspired by another diary. “Frederoil” posted here: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/7/11/32619/6292

I’m tired of people fawning over the military and I’m going to speak out about it.

One reader responded:

….So you’re going to dehumanize the returning troops – it’s what you are doing.

Well then. Now we’re rockin’ and rollin’. Now, I happen to kinda agree with Frederoil that we’re waaaaay too into “How Cool War Is tm” in our society. At least those making decisions at the top are! And if we don’t even dialog about this — how on earth are we going to even learn a darned thing about it??  

Does “Support the Troops” mean “Support the Troops” when the policy makers that promote Iraq/ Afghanistan wars —ALSO— propose pay cuts for ACTUAL troops? When they propose cutting health care for FORMER and ACTUAL troops? When they allow today’s vets to become HOMELESS by screwing up their pay, their back pay, by denying them housing loans? When they ask these troops to pay for their own meals in hospitals after being wounded in Iraq war? (How can you get more insulting, more “not-support troops” than that?!?)

Or does “Support the Troops” mean “SCREW the TROOPS, but Line My Friend’s Pockets with Wealth Earned From Munitions Factories And Troop Services” when these policy-makers say it??
YES, this is controversial to discuss. What’s the point of wasting time here talking about what the chattering talking heads are already repeating endlessly?

I could rant on — but let’s do that in Comments. I started this diary to preserve a story I told on Frederoil’s diary. Of a time when the health and safety of ordinary citizens was tossed out the window by our government — so the USA could buy arms for hideous, tin-horn dictators in third world countries. Here’s my response to “YOU are de-humanizing the troops” (if you speak up against war in general) — and the story of trading air-bags for bomblets.

“Dear poster, Lots to ponder, but when you say “you’re going to de-humanize the returning troops” — that’s quite a stretch!

Look — the words “de-ification of the troops” may not make sense to you. And indeed I can’t imagine that someone in the service would feel that they’re worshipped, it’s a tough life.

But our society now DOES have a lot of elements that worship war unquestioningly. Example: “Iraq war MUST be OK, because we got into it.”  What’s up with that?

Our society now DOES have a lot of elements that worship unquestioningly our OVER-50 PERCENT OF FEDERAL BUDGET war-and-arms budget. Example: “Wow, some of that money may trickle down to my town, so we can have jobs”.     Well, yeah, but a factory to build airbags for cars would employ people in your town, too. Or any peace-time application, like wheelchairs designed for children who need them.

Here’s an example:
Did you know that there was a project to build air-bags for cars in rural Washington state in the mid-1980s, that was DE-funded because our gov’t wanted to spend more money on weapons than on safety for its citizens? It’s real, I worked for the company.

What happened? They’d built the new plant, in an area where people desperately needed jobs, they’d bought some tools for it, they had a LOT of OKs on the original project and funding. Then Congress REVERSED a bill that had called for enhanced car safety…   and the creation of airbags in our cars was delayed.

AND the funding for that plant to make air bags evaporated.

They ended up making small BOMBLETS to sell to third world dictators who were … making war on their own people. Bomblets that kill 20-100 people and maim more.  You think I’m kidding? I was there. You think I’m a candy-assed management sissy telling this story and arguing that peace is a better goal than war? I drilled holes in those bomblets, I was a machinist standing on cement floor 8 hours at a stretch, getting covered with oil, ponder that.

This is the kind of thing that happens in a country where the basic thinking is that “war is a higher priority than citizen health and safety.” Bomblets over airbags or wheelchairs for kids.

Whether that diarist expressed that choice well in his choice of words or not, he’s trying to say he is TIRED of war getting SO MUCH of our budget and our PRAISE. Tired of war taking young people, and not-so-young National Guard members (who ONLY wanted to defend our country if it was attacked), and sending them off to die or be maimed for life.

To make sure you know, I have friends who have BEEN to Iraq. I have corresponded with people serving in Iraq to try to keep them uplifted. I may hire an Iraq vet soon, OK? (Troop support, post-war, in case not obvious.)

I had a friend who died his first day in Vietnam, (FIRST DAY) which took the scales off my eyes, as far as creepy, needless, dirty, self-serving little wars chosen by blinded politicians. See how that could change ya?     Over 900 boys died their first day in Vietnam, so get ready, because it’ll happen to someone in Iraq/Afghanistan, if it hasn’t already. I CARE about that, I wish they could LIVE, does that make me a troop-hater?

AND one of the things I fight for now is BETTER treatment of our Service men and women on their return from Iraq/Afghanistan.

They should have FULL health insurance! Should have help with health problems caused by the war! They should have loans for home purchase! And more — correct?

So don’t try to lump all people who “don’t want war to be worshipped (de-ified)”, with “people who hate troops”. It’s a terrible argument, and worse, it simply is NOT true. “
(End my thoughts to other netizen.)

Shall we discuss?

Do you by any chance know what it was?

Did they change colors on a National color alert system? (Or might they be adult enough not to have such a grade-schoolish system in place?)

Did their government ministers get on TV and say, “Everything is OK, don’t worry?” Or maybe “Bring ’em on!” Or, “We’ll catch ALL these terrorists, don’t you worry your little head about it!”

Or… maybe “We need more restrictive laws so our government can spy on Japanese citizens easier”?

Or…

(Below the fold, and have your guesses ready, now, don’t cheat!)

I wouldn’t know either, but I have a Japanese foreign student living here, and yesterday she was reading Japanese news via wireless laptop at the kitchen table while I cooked dinner. Then she asked me, “What is the orange terror alert? Why do you have it? I cannot understand this”.

Well, jerk my chain! Have you tried to explain our country’s policies to someone from another country lately? Oh, yeah. Explain the PATRIOT act. Explain why we’re in the Iraq war. Explain “The gov’t can secretly find out what we read at the library”.  It’s worth it just for the expressions of disbelief you see on their face. And the contortions you have to go through to get the explanation conveyed.

If there’s anything that’ll make me go off, try asking me a question like this, where I’m safe to be honest. So I told her that after 9/11/2001 plane attacks GW Bush and his Republican government had installed a system of color coding to “let people in our country know how safe it is today.” I said many Democrats and others thought this was grade-school-maturity thinking — because, how safe IS it to be in America, really?

First Most other countries in the world have lost more people to terrorist or nut-job bombings on their own soil than we have in the past few decades, or to actual wars and fighting on their own soil. So America in reality is one of safest countries — “terror alert” is nonsense on that scale.

Second  it’s a very big country. If ALL of Spain was blown up, and ALL of Oklahoma was blown up, it’s roughly the same territory — and people in the other 49 states are still safe. We didn’t lose our whole country. (People would be devastated — but safe.)  So MOST Americans are safe every day, even if one city or entire STATE suffers something horrible. So “orange for whole country” is simple fear-mongering on that account.

Third  IF we were to use such a system, it shouldn’t be used in response to a bombing in another country — what has changed here? What exactly is different than yesterday? IF we use colors, they should be used in response to what our intelligence services tell us their spies and spies of other countries tell them. “It will happen in X month. It will be planes, or, It will be buses, or, it will be trains, or it will be sports stadiums.” Then our government should tell us the truth so we can truly be safer by acting differently.

   (Sidebar, did you know that our Republican/Bush/Cheney/current government IGNORED the at least 7 countries which were telling our Intelligence Service that the 9/11/2001 bombing was about to occur, and WHEN it was about to occur. How backwards is that, and why would anyone trust them now??)

Fourth  Governments throughout history have tried to incite their citizens to FEAR whenever they’ve wanted to go to war. Gee, how would terror alerts for the whole country fit into that? (Pause for wheels to turn while she accesses what she knows of history to verify run-ups to war and phony nationalist rhetoric foisted on population during that run-up.) (She got it.)

Fifth  What does it DO? Green/yellow/orange/red accomplishes NOTHING. What is anyone DOING to make us safer? (Not much that we can tell.)
   Sidebar — we know that people in other countries laugh at us about this color-coding if they know it exists, because it’s so simplistic and grade-schoolish.

Sixth  Sidebar on other ridiculous/ scary moves that’ve been instituted by our government, ostensibly to make us “Safer”. How they’re bogus, no true help. Including: how the no-fly list works, how people get put on it when their name is transliterated incorrectly. Example: 30 Arabs can’t fly because of one very common Arabic name that can transliterate 15 different ways. How Americans with former securitiy clearances can’t fly because of the no-fly list and can’t find out what they’re accused of. http://tinyurl.com/d3ps7

How I can’t travel with nail clippers or embroidery scissors in my purse, [I’M TAKING OVER THE PLANE WITH THESE NAIL CLIPPERS, STAND BACK, ALL 100-300 OF YOU!!]. How female school teachers get frisked for having a weighted bookmark, prevented from flying and taken to jail.

How all the rhetoric about “Arab this” and “Muslim that” tends to fan the flames of race and religious hatred… so we’re setting the stage for internment or group persecution based on nationality, race, or religion — like the Japanese internment camps of WWII in the USA.

   (Pause to not talk about this stuff while I chop lettuce, so I don’t slice a finger from Excess Outrage. I thought and talked about how GREAT Dems and others are doing in being proactive about this stuff, and how we’re going WIN our country back, no matter how long it takes.)

Seventh  Fatigue — ordinary people will tire of the alert system, and ignore it when they hear it. Then what if we need it?

Eighth IF we were to use such a system, it shouldn’t be used in response to a bombing in another country — what has changed here? What exactly is different than yesterday? It should be used in response to what our intelligence services tell us their spies and spies of other countries tell them. “It will happen in X month. It will be planes, or, it will be buses, or, it will be trains, or it will be sports stadiums.”  Our government should tell us the truth so we could change our behavior to be safer.

   (Sidebar, our Republican/Bush/Cheney/current government IGNORED the at least 7 countries which were telling our Intelligence Service that the 9/11/2001 bombing was about to occur, and WHEN it was about to occur. How backwards is that, and why would anyone trust them now??)

Ninth  For contrast, I talked about tornado alerts in the Midwest, how they’re REAL alerts about real threats, and they don’t use them unless there is a real threat — juxtapose THAT to “colored terror alerts”. To add impact to the background of how the alerts function in today’s America, I described how some Republicans had proposed a law to have Americans spy on their neighbors, and have them tell their postman if they thought the neighbors were terrorists. Wanting to turn the postal carriers into moving, neighborhood-roaming spies.

But Dems and others spoke up (er, yelled) against it. That maybe we spoke up because we knew about the lessons of Nazi Germany, where neighbors spied on each other, kids were asked by the government to spy on their parents (and did), and a climate of abject fear was created in everyone. So we don’t want to let things get that far, so we’re speaking up and acting NOW.

But I digress! What did the Japanese do? Well, after about a 5-7 minute detailed lecture, trying to speak slowly, I asked her why she wanted to know. “My teacher in school was angry today, because of orange alert. She said that she rides bus to school every day, and the bus driver stopped it and made everyone get off and looked in their parcels. So the bus was an HOUR late. She said ‘Orange Alert’, but I could not understand what it is.”

I asked her if Japanese people had been asked to sacrifice during WWII, to conserve. “Yes.” Same here, we were asked to save metal to make more bullets or airplanes… we had rationing, even, of gas. Asked her if she knew what Bush asked us to do for his War on Terror. “No.”

Me: Go shopping.

“Go shopping!?” she asks, “How does that relate?!?” Indeed, I said, what would that REALLY do? It would make the people who own corporations richer — and they’re already rich, and use MORE resources, not less, so we need to go into anOTHER country to get more oil/metal/etc. Exactly backwards.

But I was digressing again, wasn’t I? After that, I asked what the Japanese news was today? “Well,” she said, “we have a lot of underground subways. They took the trash cans out of the stations.” They emptied them?, I asked? “No, they took the whole can out.”

I sat there stunned a minute. That makes sense, I said. It would help. Wow, doing something besides changing a color. Something to make the citizens safer. At home, in their own country, the same day. People carrying their own trash, or disposing of before entering — a real sacrifice/ inconvenience being asked of them — to create safety for the group. Positive corrective action.

Another stunned pause. Then I said, “Well, now you know why I started giving money to Democratic causes two years ago, and why I still do.” Yes, folks, she got that point BigTime. I told her I hadn’t gotten my Democracy Bond yet, but would today because of our conversation. Just finished.

Won’t you join me? Get your DNC Democracy Bond today. Just 2 million Americans at $20/month will create TWICE what the monthly income Republicans have to run their party. Let’s send a message to the FarRight Republicans that we are UNITED and READY to fund our party so we can take our country back. And restore sanity, safety and honor to it.

Join me here: http://tinyurl.com/anmz3  or via here: http://www.democrats.org/ .

[cross-posted on DailyKos] [Allison in Seattle]