Buon
Appetito!
Rosanna and James
HUMOR
Click this line for some really fun
optical illusions if you think SEEING IS BELIEVING
(thanks to Sharon Tramontana)
Amount of pizza eaten each day in U.S.: 75............. (acres)
Found on the seal of a bag of bagels:
NEW
IMPROVED
Made the old
fashioned way
Sign in a restaurant:
"We reserve the right to serve refuse to anyone."
Heard on a radio station.
What did the female mushroom say about the male mushroom?
"He's a real fun guy [fungi]."
Q: Ever wonder about people who pay $2 for a bottle of Evian
water?
A: Just spell "Evian" backwards!
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WISDOM
of
United States
Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio)
thanks to Jeanette Thomas for sending this
Email responses to
Dkucinich@aol.com
I offer
these brief remarks today as a prayer for our country, with love of democracy,
as a celebration of our country. With love for our country. With hope for our
country. With a belief that the light of freedom cannot be extinguished as long
as it is inside of us. With a belief that freedom rings resoundingly in a
democracy each time we speak freely. With the understanding that freedom stirs
the human heart and fear stills it. With the belief that a free people cannot
walk in fear and faith at the same time. With the understanding that there is a
deeper truth expressed in the unity of the United States. That implicate in the
union of our country is the union of all people. That all people are
essentially one. That the world is interconnected not only on the material
level of economics, trade, communication, and transportation, but innerconnected
through human consciousness, through the human heart, through the heart of the
world, through the simply expressed impulse and yearning to be and to breathe
free. I offer this prayer for America.
Let us pray that our nation will remember that the unfolding of the promise of
democracy in our nation paralleled the striving for civil rights. That is why
we must challenge the rationale of the Patriot Act. We must ask why should
America put aside guarantees of constitutional justice?
How can we justify in effect canceling the First Amendment and the right of free
speech, the right to peaceably assemble? How can we justify in effect
canceling the Fourth Amendment, probable cause, the prohibitions against
unreasonable search and seizure? How can we justify in effect canceling
the Fifth Amendment, nullifying due process, and allowing for indefinite
incarceration without a trial? How can we justify in effect canceling the
Sixth Amendment, the right to prompt and public trial? How can we justify
in effect canceling the Eighth Amendment which protects against cruel and
unusual punishment?
We cannot justify widespread wiretaps and internet surveillance without judicial
supervision, let alone with it. We cannot justify secret searches without a
warrant. We cannot justify giving the Attorney General the ability to designate
domestic terror groups. We cannot justify giving the FBI total access to any
type of data which may exist in any system anywhere such as medical records and
financial records.
We cannot justify giving the CIA the ability to target people in this country
for intelligence surveillance. We cannot justify a government which takes from
the people our right to privacy and then assumes for its own operations a right
to total secrecy. The Attorney General recently covered up a statue of Lady
Justice showing her bosom as if to underscore there is no danger of justice
exposing herself at this time, before this administration.
Let us pray that our nation's leaders will not be overcome with fear. Because
today there is great fear in our great Capitol. And this must be understood
before we can ask about the shortcomings of Congress in the current environment.
The great fear began when we had to evacuate the Capitol on September 11. It
continued when we had to leave the Capitol again when a bomb scare occurred as
members were pressing the CIA during a secret briefing. It continued when we
abandoned Washington when anthrax, possibly from a government lab, arrived in
the mail. It continued when the Attorney General declared a nationwide terror
alert and then the Administration brought the destructive Patriot Bill to the
floor of the House. It continued in the release of the Bin Laden tapes at the
same time the President was announcing the withdrawal from the ABM treaty. It
remains present in the cordoning off of the Capitol. It is present in the
camouflaged armed national guardsmen who greet members of Congress each day we
enter the Capitol campus. It is present in the labyrinth of concrete barriers
through which we must pass each time we go to vote. The trappings of a state of
siege trap us in a state of fear, ill equipped to deal with the Patriot Games,
the Mind Games, the War Games of an unelected President and his unelected Vice
President.
Let us pray that our country will stop this war. "To promote the common defense"
is one of the formational principles of America. Our Congress gave the
President the ability to respond to the tragedy of September the Eleventh. We
licensed a response to those who helped bring the terror of September the
Eleventh. But we the people and our elected representatives must reserve the
right to measure the response, to proportion the response, to challenge the
response, and to correct the response.
Because we did not authorize the invasion of Iraq.
We did not authorize the invasion of Iran.
We did not authorize the invasion of North Korea.
We did not authorize the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan.
We did not authorize permanent detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
We did not authorize the withdrawal from the Geneva Convention.
We did not authorize military tribunals suspending due process and habeas
corpus.
We did not authorize assassination squads.
We did not authorize the resurrection of COINTELPRO.
We did not authorize the repeal of the Bill of Rights.
We did not authorize the revocation of the Constitution.
We did not authorize national identity cards.
We did not authorize the eye of Big Brother to peer from cameras throughout our
cities.
We did not authorize an eye for an eye.
Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on September 11,
be avenged with the blood of
innocent villagers in Afghanistan.
We did not authorize the administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it
pleases.
We did not authorize war without end.
We did not authorize a permanent war economy.
Yet we are upon the threshold of a permanent war economy. The President has
requested a $45.6 billion increase in military spending. All defense-related
programs will cost close to $400 billion. Consider that the Department of
Defense has never passed an independent audit. Consider that the Inspector
General has notified Congress that the Pentagon cannot properly account for $1.2
trillion in transactions. Consider that in recent years the Dept. of Defense
could not match $22 billion worth of expenditures to the items it purchased,
wrote off, as lost, billions of dollars worth of in-transit inventory and stored
nearly $30 billion worth of spare parts it did not need. Yet the defense budget
grows with more money for weapons systems to fight a cold war which ended,
weapon systems in search of new enemies to create new wars. This has nothing to
do with fighting terror. This has everything to do with fueling a military
industrial machine with the treasure of our nation, risking the future of our
nation, risking democracy itself with the militarization of thought which
follows the militarization of the budget.
Let us pray for our children. Our children deserve a world without end. Not a
war without end. Our children deserve a world free of the terror of hunger,
free of the terror of poor health care, free of the terror of homelessness, free
of the terror of ignorance, free of the terror of hopelessness, free of the
terror of policies which are committed to a world view which is not appropriate
for the survival of a free people, not appropriate for the survival of
democratic values, not appropriate for the survival of our nation, and not
appropriate for the survival of the world.
Let us pray that we have the courage and the will as a people and as a nation to
shore ourselves up, to reclaim from the ruins of September the Eleventh our
democratic traditions. Let us declare our love for democracy. Let us declare
our intent for peace. Let us work to make nonviolence an organizing principle
in our own society. Let us recommit ourselves to the slow and painstaking work
of statecraft, which sees peace, not war as being inevitable. Let us work for a
world where someday war becomes archaic. That is the vision which the proposal
to create a Department of Peace envisions. Forty-three members of congress are
now cosponsoring the legislation. Let us work for a world where nuclear
disarmament is an imperative. That is why we must begin by insisting on the
commitments of the ABM treaty. That is why we must be steadfast for
nonproliferation.
Let us work for a world where America can lead the way in banning weapons of
mass destruction not only from our land and sea and sky but from outer space
itself. That is the vision of HR 3616: A universe free of fear. Where we can
look up at God's creation in the stars and imagine infinite wisdom, infinite
peace, infinite possibilities, not infinite war, because we are taught that the
kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.
Let us pray that we have the courage to replace the images of death which haunt
us, the layers of images of September the Eleventh, faded into images of
patriotism, spliced into images of military mobilization, jump cut into images
of our secular celebrations of the World Series, New Year's Eve, the Superbowl,
the Olympics, the strobic flashes which touch our deepest fears, let us replace
those images with the work of human relations, reaching out to people, helping
our own citizens here at home, lifting the plight of the poor everywhere. That
is the America which has the ability to rally the support of the world. That is
the America which stands not in pursuit of an axis of evil, but which is itself
at the axis of hope and faith and peace and freedom.
America, America. God shed grace on thee. Crown thy good, America. Not with
weapons of mass destruction. Not with invocations of an axis of evil. Not
through breaking international treaties. Not through establishing America as
king of a unipolar world. Crown thy good America.
America, America. Let us pray for our country. Let us love our country. Let
us defend our country not only from the threats without but from the threats
within. Crown thy good, America. Crown thy good with brotherhood, and
sisterhood. And crown thy good with compassion and restraint and forbearance
and a commitment to peace, to democracy, to economic justice here at home and
throughout the world. Crown thy good, America. Crown thy good America. Crown
thy good.
Thank you.
To contact Representative Kucinich please visit:
http://www.kucinich.us/contact.htm
