You can’t imagine how much I would love to sit here and have the focus of this post be how great a year 2007 was. But there isn’t enough Republican Kool-Aid or hallucinogenic drugs in the world (God only knows what drugs Bush and Cheney are taking) to pretend this year was a good one either FOR our country or our country’s efforts throughout the world.

Nor it is easy to wishful think my way into hoping 2008 will be remarkably better, given that we still have more than 380 days to King George and Dick’s villainous reign and historically, some of the worst things a sitting U.S. president does occurs during his last days in office. Given what terrible acts they have done since before they seized office, it is past frightening to try to imagine how much more evil they can perpetrate.

Indeed, my one great hope is that more of us will “see the light” and with it, become involved citizens unwilling to drink the Kool-Aid, unwilling to let this felonious, murderous, greedy crew get away with any more acts of evil we can prevent.

We - not Washington - are the hope for 2008 and beyond. Remember that. Think upon it. Act upon it.

This is about as toned down as it gets. Here comes 2008; let’s meet it with excitement, exuberance, and action.

We have way too many people in America snugged comfortably - ass-print and all - on Apathy’s couch, the thought bubble reading “Doesn’t matter what I do” and floating above their head like a stubborn, stagnant, fetid fart. We need to lead by example: mobilize, volunteer, get involved. Do something. Ghandi said “we must be the change we wish to see in the world,” but putting that in the signature of your outgoing emails doesn’t actually make you the change; it makes you complacent. “Do or do not; there is no try.”

I don’t care what party you are a part of: get active. Be a part of the process, whether it’s political or environmental or humanitarian or Mogwai. Find something that makes you want to tear open the shutters, throw up the sash, and scream your damned brains out. Then do that.

When you are standing on a street corner with a protest or concern sign, when you’re attending a rally - whether ten or ten thousand strong, when you’re writing letters to your elected officials and getting out there with your vote to back it up, that’s when you’re moving, that’s when you’re doing something. Then do more. Escalate. Aspire.

Let’s make 2007 cry like a little schoolgirl because it’s so jealous of 2008’s progress. Let’s show Americans what America can be. Let’s make it count.

While Time Magazine and CNN and all the usual suspects rush to TELL US what films, books, and yes, even scandals were the best and worst of 2007, we’re all thinking people here who don’t need to be told what we can reason for ourselves.

With this in mind, what films/documentaries and books did YOU find to be the best of 2007?

Some of my big favorite books (and they would go on a big favorites list that spans more than just this year, btw) also happened to find their way onto my Christmas wish list, and I’ve already devoured two. These are:

* “Touch and Go” - Studs Terkel’s excellent memoirs (he’s a national treasure!)
* “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” - Michael Pollan, an excellent follow-up to his mind-opening botany book that discusses how Americans really ARE what we eat
* “Deep Economy” - a must-read by Bill McKibben, a Vermont neighbor, that gives us a real eye-opener of an understanding of how the economy, much of which escapes our attention, drives our lives and politics and the future of this planet

But I can’t fail to note the late, forever great Kurt Vonnegut’s last book that I literally inhaled, “A Man Without A Country”.

As for films and documentaries, I would rank “An Unreasonable Man” (about Ralph Nader), Michael Moore’s “Sicko”, and “The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” among a slew of excellent works that I saw this year.

What about your favorites?

Well, the ruination of the economy and the labor market the Bush-Cheney Administration worked very hard to bring about in record time between the December day they stole the election from Al Gore in 2000 and the first 100 days of them “presuming” office in January 2001, and continued throughout their absolute monarchy is almost complete.

We’ve already seen - for the first time - economists in many other lands besides our own say the American dollar is increasingly useless and is shunned compared to many other emerging players like China and yes, even Iran and the Euro. Also a firstie: the Canadian dollar has become (significantly) more valuable than its U.S. counterpart, a phenomenon many said would never happen. We’ve seen the middle class grow poor and more home foreclosures in this country than at any time since the stock market crash and resulting economic phenom known as “The Great Depression” began in 1929.

Now, many are saying flat out that the dollar’s days are numbered, which means ours as an economic superpower also are numbered. I can’t help but think that it’s all too apt to say that the buck stops with Bush and Cheney, because it quite literally may, even before they leave office on January 20th, 2009.

Here’s one example of the dollar’s funeral dirge submitted by Reader Sharon (whose typing is only slightly better than her marksmanship).

Just when you thought Ron Paul might be a reasonable person, that he was getting the short end of the stick from the Republican Party even while amassing campaign millions (okay, no one really thinks that), he goes and throws himself under the bus. (h/t Largest Minority)

On the topic of evolution: “I don’t accept it as a theory.” Watch it:

Someone should probably explain to the good doctor (he is an OB-GYN) what most of us already know and he should: that a scientific theory is a model of reality that can - and has been - repeatedly tested and not disproved. How far would the medical field have come without the germ theory of disease? How about the theory of gravity? Or is disease the watchmaker smiting us and gravity his fingers pushing us down?

I don’t know what’s more frightening: a doctor and presidential candidate’s abject renunciation of science or the wide-eyed, twitchy, Stepford grins on the Paullites in the background of the above video.

Since Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf plunged his country of Pakistan into one of its maddest states ever in his efforts to control the results of voting a few months ago that threatened to unseat him, it became not a question of IF his major opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, twice elected and twice unseated as a Muslim country’s first major woman leader, would be assassinated, but when.

I find much about the reaction to her death to be completely disingenuous. The first was the Bush Administration’s reaction, acting like they were saddened when I doubt they were; my biggest questions with her death, in fact, center around just how much involvement Musharraf - who was to face Ms. Bhutto in elections in less than two weeks - and the Bushies may have had with her assassination earlier today. While we’ve heard that the Bushies really wanted her there in a power sharing arrangement with Musharraf, there is far more evidence that neither Musharraf nor Bush actually did want her there, since the progressiveness she represented is hardly what the Bush Administration wants in trying to control that part of the world.

But I am just as suspicious concerning the rush by the Bushies and their ilk - including “I see 9/11 everywhere” Rudy Giuliani - to identify al Qaeda as responsible for Bhutto’s death. Sure, Bhutto did not pose herself a good candidate for al Qaeda; she also wasn’t who Musharraf and Bush want either.

In truth, there are any number of groups and individuals who could have put the hit on this woman. Sadly, the more the Bushies point to al Qaeda and boast “they know” Osama bin Laden is behind it, the more questions I feel arise as to their own culpability here. After all, the Bushies - and this is clear right from their administration HERE at home - are no champions of democracy; they like the “absolute monarchy” kind of arrangement. While Bush is hardly the first “monarch” to decide who lives and dies, a hell of a lot of destabilization and attempted coups around the world since 2000 (including the short ouster of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez) point right back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

As the holiday hangover fades, let’s remember that we’re back to filling up on politics and a different type of turkey. Talking Points Memo TV compiles the candidates’ Christmas wishes:

Gee, zombies. Sounds like much of his administration and loyal followers.

Keep watching this video to see the scariest zombie of all at the end. Please, make that zombie eat salt (the way to get a zombie to die or crawl back to his - or her, of course - grave).

I’ll be away from the intertubes for the next couple of weeks, so here is wishing each and every one who may read this a safe and happy holiday season. 

It’s no joke, as I’ve written in various places before. There is a growing movement - the best known is Second Vermont Republic, in Vermont, which has taken on some serious momentum the deeper into the Bush Administration and its non-stop wars and the end of the American Constitution we go. However, I doubt that even if Dennis Kucinich was somehow elected in November 2008, that these people will want to stay part of the same country that is overrun by the politics of the Deep South, the Neo South, and Texas.

Under the holiday tree this year (uh, well, that is, IF we had a Christmas tree - illness and lack of room have limited me to a 12 inch live Canadian grown Cypress I can plant come spring) for my partner will be what he loves best: a Free Vermont t-shirt and products that leave little if any carbon footprint (and where that’s less possible, ones that can be operated by off-the-grid power source like wind-up). Well, that and a very good book, of which there are many you can find, such as on the Amazon list to the right sidebar.

The Onion News Network’s been on my radar for a while and this video seems especially appropriate as it will sully the sincerity of yesterday’s post. Enjoy.

Our Troops Send Holiday Wishes For Peace, Goodwill, And Body Armor

I recall as a boy reading about the treatment received by American POW’s in Vietnam. I had a book on the war, and one of the pictures in that book was a drawing of an American man on his knees, his arms draped over a pole which ran across his upper back. He was leaned forward, and the position looked very uncomfortable. At the time, I knew full well that this was an illustration of torture. But in modern day society that very same picture would be termed a “stress technique”, and there are many who would hotly defend the use of such methods against detainees in the war on terror.

You may be asking yourself, “self… why has friky started waxing philosophical about the attitude of society as a whole on what is or isn’t torture”. The answer may be found in this story on MSNBC titled ‘Staff fired over prank-call shock treatments’. (more…)

During this holiday season, while the news facetime gets eaten up by battling candidates, premature primaries, baseball’s steroids, and end-of-the-year top 10 lists, let’s not forget that an illegal war begun by our current administration has spawned an American body count that will be creeping frighteningly close to 4,000 as we begin a new year.

As of today: 3,895 Americans have been confirmed dead in Iraq by the DoD.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the the families of those deceased and all the troops still overseas. We’re workin’ on it.

Check out these conflicting stories about the Turkish military bombing the Kurds in northern Iraq. (more…)

Everyone’s talking about it, so here it is:

Huckabee says it’s just a bookshelf.

I’m an actor of 20 years with both film and television in my background; I have a solid understanding of what happens during a shoot and in post-production. Two possibilities here:

1. The production team hired to film a national commercial for a leading presidential candidate cleverly lit part of a bookshelf brighter than the Christmas tree or even Huckabee himself to in order to not-so-subtly bring a cross into the image to reflect the message of God Bless and Merry Christmas, and everyone is lying about it.
2. The production team hired to film a national commercial for a leading presidential candidate are talentless, legally-blind hacks who errantly lit a bookshelf and, according to the Huck’s story, not only didn’t notice a blaring cross during the shoot, but didn’t notice it in post-production, and only oh-my-gosh’ed when the public saw it.

I don’t believe for a second that it’s the latter.

Are you surprised? Actually, they’re getting a little extra flack for their blatant refusal to appear on the neocon mouthpiece of a network. Take a look at the video and feel free to sign the open letter supporting Edwards and Obama in their boycott.

As much as I try to pay attention to what all the 2008 presidential candidates are saying (and yes, even the truly ridiculous ones like Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani), I find I can’t just assume that the best (Democrat) candidate will win Election 2008 in less than 11 months. And my fear isn’t just vague and unfounded, not when I’ve watched the last two presidential elections, 2000 in Florida taken from Al Gore and 2004 in Ohio stolen from John Kerry. So have you, whether you accept this truth (as has been confirmed by many sources now) or not.

Nor did my fear lessen when even Democratic lawmakers agreed a few months ago to put back any real voting reform until 2012 - a DOZEN years past the first documented stolen vote.

It doesn’t matter WHO the Democrats put up for president if the Republicans have a way to steal and otherwise invalidate winning vote counts. Nor can we wait until Election Day to not just voice our concern but to demand better.

Will Mike Huckabee, former Baptist minister, now growing a swelling of support, be able to keep that support coming, be able to hold the base, be able to maintain his blame of the world’s ills on “Abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornography, drug abuse, and homosexual activism?”

From the deliciousness of Mother Jones:

In lamenting the “cultural conflicts” besetting the country, he wrote,

Abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornography, drug abuse, and homosexual activism have fragmented and polarized our communities.

Why was he lumping environmentalism with activities he considered sinful? He did not explain further. A few pages later, Huckabee complained,

It is now difficult to keep track of the vast array of publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations—from homosexuality and pedophilia to sadomasochism and necrophilia.

Huckabee did not say what public endorsement of pedophilia or necrophilia he had in mind. But he did seem to be equating homosexuality with both.

Why is it that we need to put these things up for public display? Why are they not already up for public display? I visualize an ideal world where FOX News and Media Matters lists the ten most hopeful and hurtful quotes from each candidate, republican and democratic, whether from public speaking or published works or emails, and we get both sides on all candidates and “it’s all there, black and white, clear as crystal! You stole Fizzy-Lifting Drinks–”

Sorry. The world in which we live is just that absurd sometimes.

Let me applaud New Jersey for becoming the first state in the better part of a half century to REMOVE state-sanctioned executions (aka capitol punishment or death sentence) from its courts.

New Jersey has been doing some good things of late and this is one of the most positive.

Nods to Jon Corzine and the people and lawmakers of New Jersey.

On the heels of yet more evidence from Ohio that the 2004 presidential election was stolen (on the heels of the Bushies already having stolen the vote in Florida in 2000), Colorado’s secretary of state has helped in the process of de-certifying electronic voting as being too easily corrupted. More at BradBlog.

Good for Colorado!

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has pulled back his revised FISA bill that would grant retroactive immunity to those communications giants like Verizon and AT&T who fell all over themselves helping the Bush Administration wipe its ass on the U.S. Constitution by illegally wiretapping the phone calls of American citizens never charged or suspected of a crime.

But even if the bill languishes and dies, it will be hard for me to forgive Reid for allowing it to make it to the Senate floor at all.

We don’t need more Bushies, Mr. Reid. Nor do the American people appear to WANT more.