CapitAl Hill

By Dante De Navarre

It's time to take back our government from double-dipping politicians and give it to the real citizens: Corporations.

What's it Going to Take?
How in the world are we ever going to fix the most dire, pressing dilemma of our time: Corporate Poverty, and the almost complete absence of Corporate representation in Washington?

Let's Elect Corporations!

Now is our chance, as a free nation, to finally eliminate the useless middleman! Now is the time to end the most notorious bigotry and discrimination in history, and proclaim from the rooftops: Corporations are people too!

Look at the time and effort, not to mention money, wasted in the elaborate pretense of campaigns and elections for a phony representative democracy. Why should We the Corporations have to pay a single dime in bribes to Representatives and Senators who already get an allowance from the taxpayers? All they do, at best, is rubber-stamp what corporations want, and at worst, try to water down corporate will with pricey bells and whistles. Why pay for that? If we could just grow up a little bit, put away our childish toys like the Constitution and accept the things we cannot change, we could save the rich untold billions more, and that is the name of the game, n'est pas?

Appoint Corporations Directly to Government!

Imagine the incredible streamlining of government operations, the efficiency, the clarity!

Ask the corporations which seats they want. Let them pick the committees to chair. Goldman for Finance. KBR for Defense. Exxon for Energy. Let them appoint cabinet and agency heads. Facebook for State. Walmart for Commerce. Bank of America for HUD. ConAgra for Agriculture. Blackwater/Xe for Justice. Monsanto for FDA. Koch for EPA. And let's not forget to allow full participation by both the Religion and Prison Industry sectors, two of the fastest growing Amerikan success stories.

No More Gridlock!

Gone would be the endless partisan bickering, the political posturing of pretending to be a champion of the poor unborn on one side, a champion of the born poor on the other, when none of those insects really matter! The belittled, embattled and embittered Legislature could finally be Free! After putting an end to all the acrimony over campaign donations, accusations of corruption and boring fund-raising dinners they will finally, gratefully, cobwebs clearing, muscles flexing, all stand together and with one clear, resounding voice pass laws like bolts of greased lightning, ending at long last our shameful dependence onhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif domestic jobs, our spineless addiction to peace, our crippling health, environmental and financial regulations, our foolish infatuation with alternative energy, our greedy desire to tax the rich, our irresponsible handouts to small, useless people who are not corporations, the list goes on and on...

Capitol Hill can finally come out of the closet and proudly proclaim its true self, Capital Hill.

More of Mr. De Navarre's work may be found at OpEd News

Virtual hookup connects grieving Haitian father to Miami family

A Haitian man tried and acquitted on terrorism charge is denied admittance into the United States to attend the funeral of his teenage son struck and killed by a vehicle on I-95.

BY JAY WEAVER AND JACQUELINE CHARLES

jcharles@MiamiHerald.com

PORT-AU-PRINCE – Lyglenson “Levi’’ Lemorin, sitting inside a Cyber Café Saturday, waited patiently for technology to connect him to the heartbreaking scene unfolding some 700 hundred miles away inside a Miami Liberty City church.

“You sitting next to my mother?’’ he asked, fighting back tears as he spoke to his 13-year-old daughter, Lauren, over a cell phone. “Stay strong, alright Baby? Baby, don’t cry.’’

Lauren and the rest of the Lemorin clan were grieving, crying not just for 15-year-old Lukenson “Lil Luke’’ Lemorin, killed on April 1 by a passing vehicle, but also for Lyglenson Lemorin.

A Haiti native who lived in Miami most of his life, the elder Lemorin, 36, has been on a painful odyssey since his arrest in June 2006 on terrorism charges, his acquittal, then his eventual deportation back to Haiti - country he left 24 years ago when he moved with his family to Miami.

Now, in the Port-au-Prince café, his grief is even more searing because he cannot physically be there with family members to mourn the death of his only son.

“There is no way my son would have been on the streets at 11:30 p.m.,’’ he said of his son, who, according to the Florida Highway Patrol, was struck by a vehicle as he and two cousins pushed their disabled car off I-95 into the median.

Lemorin was a member of the Miami-Dade group that became known as the Liberty City 7, who federal investigators charged in a highly publicized terrorism case accusing them of conspiring with al Qaeda to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower and federal buildings in Miami. The indictment was built on a sting operation, with a government informant playing the role of an al Qaeda financier directed by the FBI.

The seven defendants, investigators say, took an oath to the terrorist group.

A Miami federal jury found that Lemorin had distanced himself from the group, which worked together in a stucco business and hung out in Liberty City.

On Jan. 20, Lemorin was among 27 Haitians sent back to that country, after U.S. immigration authorities resumed deportations. He was shipped out in the dark of night and arrived in an earthquake-ravaged country that was fighting off a deadly cholera epidemic. Having heard about the tents cities, he said, “I prayed to God I didn’t have to live in one.’’

On Friday, another 19 deportees arrived in Port-au-Prince amid protests from immigration activists.

“I am so sorry this happened to his son and to him,” Lemorin’s immigration lawyer Charles Kuck of Atlanta said. “His case is a classic example of government-assisted human tragedy."

Although Lemorin was acquitted, immigration authorities still deemed him a “national security” threat under the U.S. Patriot Act passed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Now, he lives with the guilt over his son’s death, a son who went from a well-mannered kid to one in and out of juvenile detention center, and out late at night – a sign of defiance, Lemorin said, because he wasn’t there.

“I believe he acted up because I wasn’t around,’’ he said. “When he got arrested three times, I thought, ‘Does he actually think he’s going to end up the same place with me?’”

Since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement denied his request to enter the United States to attend his son’s funeral, Lemorin was forced to view the Saturday service at Mt. Calvary Missionary Baptist Church via Skype.

It took 55 minutes and multiple tries, but Lemorin was to finally connect to see images of the service where more than 200 mourners paid their respects to “Lil Luke,” whose body lay in a silver casket draped with white flowers. “Don’t show me inside the coffin,’’ he said as he heard his mother wailing in the background.

The virtual hookup with Lemorin in Port-au-Prince and mourners in Miami was organized by Michelle Karshan, Executive Director of Alternative Chance, a Haiti-based re-entry program for criminal deportees in Haiti.

In Miami, Debbie Carter, a California woman who has come to the aid of Lemorin and his co-defendants, carried a laptop around the church enabling Lemorin to connect with his wife, see the flowers and make out his son’s casket.

Lemorin’s family has been struggling to raise the estimated $10,000 to help defray the cost of his son’s funeral and burial. So far, they have raised about one-third of the money and are seeking donations from the public.

Meanwhile, Lemorin has been struggling to find meaning in his son’s death and the uncertain future he has been dealt in the country of his birth.

As for being able to attend the funeral – even through the Internet - Lemorin said he’s grateful.

“I got to hear my family,’’ he said.

Link to article: http://tinyurl.com/3vn6mr2

Miami Herald Staff Writer Kathleen McGrory contributed to this story.

This material is copyrighted by its original publisher. It is reprinted by Citizen Rampant without permission, solely for purposes of criticism, comment, and news reporting, in accordance with the Fair Use Guidelines of copyright material under § 107 of U.S.C. Title 17.

Right to Vote?

Of course you have a right to vote, unless you're Black, or elderly, or poor...at least that's the way it is in Ohio .

"Ohio Republicans pass new Jim Crow law disenfranchising 900,000 voters"
by Bob Fitrakis

"While Ohio public employees' rights to bargain collectively are under siege, the Ohio Republican Party executed a perfect sleight of hand by disenfranchising nearly 900,000 Ohio voters. In the most vicious and direct attack on voting rights since Bull Connor ran amok in the deep South, Ohio House Republicans passed HB 159 that requires Ohio voters to produce one of four state photo IDs at the polls."

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

Then weep for our country.

Oh Barack, you do disappoint me.

What can I say after a couple of years spent waiting for "change"? I'd do better panhandling for some, than waiting for the reality of those bright promises that fell so earnestly from your lips as you wooed and finally won us.

We are being bashed to death by Tea Potty Turds, general vitriol spitting regular Right Wing Repulsicans of the Olde School...and there's dear Mama Grisly for a little spice if hemlock is your poison of choice.

God! Where do they come from? Are you a magnet for the lunatic fringe, or is it the fact you're so yielding where their demands are concerned?

You see, it's the yielding that gets to me. You are throwing away OUR ground.

I don't like the way you play footsie with the power freaks who are hellbent and determined to continue on in their Imperialist ways, and public opinion be damned. I don't like the tracks of inhumanity we are skidding along on these days, and I don't like the xenophobia we have given in to after so many decades of trying to level the playing field.

Didn't anyone tell you you're the boss of this place? Stand up and kick some ass, then go out and do a few things right, like getting to hell out of Haiti for one, and getting out of all this war for another.

Oh yeah, lest I forget to mention it...you're a definite washout where the working man is concerned. We are the class that put you over the top and got you where you are. Remember us?

Just when you thought I was dead...

surprise, surprise.

And what do I think about all the political palaver? You don't want to be battered by foaming mouthed diatribe, but you will be, and maybe even spittle spattered in the bargain. I have earned my rabidity

Hillary Clinton stridently accuses Barack Obama of plagiarism. Hillary Clinton is a good old boy trapped in the body of a woman.

There was a time when I thought her husband was okay. That came to a screeching halt when it became clear he had sold out the poor, and was a far too conservative Democrat to suit me. Any sucking up to big business while hundreds of thousands go hungry, does not sit well here.

I do not want to see another Clinton in the White House. It'll be the same old same old, and it is truly time for a change.

I'd rather see Donald Duck run the country. He couldn't do any worse a job than the seated incumbent running it into the ground is doing now.

There is no mention of John Mc Cain. Mc Cain is unmentionable.

For those hawkish, tight, "principled", "family values" oriented hypocrites, who prefer to:
1. steal on a massive scale rather then screw,
2. see no child left behind, over any poor child getting a really good education,
3. have the low-income needy vaporized, as opposed to any possible hint of the long bony fingers of realistic tax laws digging into their fat pockets…
TAKE A HIKE!

The party's over. Time to get the hell outta Dodge.

And study war no more, while you're at it.

Unless of course, you would prefer to offer up your young as sacrificial lambs to the Gods of Greed, Commerce, and the Good Old American way of taking everything it covets to appease the endless appetite for oil, general riches, and world domination in the quaint old European Imperialist style you ape so faithfully.

In that case, go biblical, please do.

Then you can spend your declining days in a mea culpa wallow, doing a Lady Macbeth, because Johnny didn’t come marching home from some depleted uranium saturated oil rich country. Or maybe worse yet, he did, but he just ain’t the same no more and never will be.

Put the intellectual into the White House. Let's see what the process of thought can do…for a change.

Peckerhead Peter Pace Pukes Up More Pap

Top general: Military must do more to explain progress in Iraq

Thursday, December 1, 2005 Posted: 1651 GMT (0051 HKT)


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Thursday urged defense personnel, civilian and military alike, to step forward to explain to the American people President Bush's strategy to achieve victory in his war on terrorism.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace spoke to students at the National Defense University at Fort McNair to "punctuate" the publication Wednesday of Bush's "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," a document that underscored the president's commitment to "stay the course" in that Middle Eastern country.

"We cannot say, 'We win and get on to the next event,'" he said. "We can say, 'We are winning, and we will stay at it because our children and grandchildren deserve to live in the kinds of freedom you and I have enjoyed all our lives.'"

Pace said victory in the war on terrorism would not be "Victory in Europe day. It is not Victory in Japan day. It is not something where there will be a signing ceremony."

Instead, he said, short-term victory would be the progress made in Iraq, mid-term victory would be Iraqis taking the lead in their own country and long-term victory would be "a free and peaceful Iraq living in peace with its neighbors and no longer hospitable" to terrorists.

Military and civilian defense personnel, he said, could do a better job spreading the word about the progress in Iraq, and he called on the students -- military and civilian defense leaders along with some international officials and personnel returning from Iraq -- to talk about the issue both among themselves and in the community at large.
'We have done ourselves a disservice'

He cited progress in all three main areas of Iraq -- political, economic and security -- noting the upcoming election, increasing business opportunities and nearly 300,000 Iraqis who have had some security force training.

As Bush did Wednesday, Pace skimmed over the number of Iraqi battalions capable of fighting on their own -- believed to be only one -- and instead focused on the way the military describes units ready to function on their own.

"We have done ourselves a disservice in the way we have defined the progress of Iraqi forces," he said.

More than 30 battalions are controlling their own areas of operation, he said, but they need some support from U.S. troops, just as individual battalions of U.S. troops need support from other units.
'No option but victory'

Pace also addressed the call for a plan of withdrawal from Iraq, saying there is "no option but victory."

"I say to those now who say we should just stop fighting in Iraq, just stop fighting in Afghanistan, just stop fighting the terrorists and this would just go away -- you need to get out and read what our enemies are saying," he said. "Remember Hitler. He wrote 'Mein Kampf.'"

Terrorists have laid out a plan for global domination in 100 years, he said, although he did not specify the origins of that information.

"Their goal is to destroy our way of life," he said. "No equivocation on their part. They're not saying if you stay home we won't come after you."

"Our enemies are ruthless, uncaring," he said. "They murder children with bombs. They murdered tourists in Bali, children in Russia, folks waiting in line to vote."

"The more people understand who these terrorists are, the more they will gather together to defeat them."

Pace said the fight against terrorism -- which he described as "a long war" -- would be won, particularly with a global coalition.

"There is no nation so big and powerful that it can carry this fight by itself, and there is no nation so small that it cannot have strategic impact," he said. "We need to work together as friends."

Finally, Pace said that while Iraq occupies front and center in the war on terrorism, other areas are under scrutiny. He declined to offer details, however.

"(Iraq) is the current center of gravity both for our prosecution of the war on terrorism and for the terrorists, ... (but) there are multiple other places around the world where we are focused on countering the terrorist threat," he said.
END OF ARTICLE

Sisyphus Groans

As America is Sisyphus, George Bush is to America what the stone was to Sisyphus. Every time that man opens his mouth he embarrasses the entire country. He makes me want to vomit, with his phony down-home poorly fitted falsh teeth hick talk.

The man is a college graduate for crying out loud. I've heard him speak without a trace of this useful artifice which makes people feel at home with the idea of him.

Better to feel comfy with a barracuda.

The president of any country should set an example that can be followed with a certainty the citizens are emulating the best possible model, and that not only includes, but highlights speech.

Living George Bush down is like pushing a mountain out of the way every time you want to go to the bathroom. I have had friends whom I never imagined would make the statement after one of his infamous speeches, “ I am ashamed to be an American. Having a president like that man makes me feel ashamed.”

When this man speaks, he egregiously goes beyond the pale in toadying to the illiterate masses. His mere presence in the White House makes me recoil in disgust.

John Kerry went the way of all ambitious men, when he decided to become one with the common man, and began to talk just like George. What a shameful sham. Fie on him also. To emulate any one of these rotten-to-the-core political hacks is unforgivable, to select one who deliberately apes the illiterate in a country that is so undereducated, is unthinkable.

Just for the record, we do not, “wait on” an event. We do not, “wait on” a person, unless we happen to be waiters or waitresses. We wait for an event to transpire. We wait for a person.