Mr. Bush is a kind of strange president.I find a lot of his actions worrying.Probably eighty percent of all he does is illegal,wrong or somewhat distasteful to a whole lot of people and yet he was voted for.COINCIDENCE?
I also sympatize with him and i am tempted to believe Dick Cheney and his henchmen are mostly responsible for most of his{Bushes} actions.
He lied to us about saddam hussiene and weapons of mass destruction.Dick cheneys company gets the bulk of reconstruction and military supplies contract.No bid i suppose.COINCIDENCE?
Katrina happened and he promised with a lot of vague terms and disgraced America and showed how racists we are.his mother even made his racism even clearer by saying katrina evacuees were better off in shelters.COINCIDENCE?
He side stepped special courts which would give him anything he needed without questioning just to excercise his dictatorial tendercies.COINCIDENCE?
Needing to get more money to help his cronies he still wants to go rip the sacred arctic wildlife refuge to steal oil.How much are we going to get from there?He drives an F350 with 5 miles to the gallon truck,how else could he satisfy his cravings.he pretends to be God fearing.I think he is satan himself if he refuses to see that all the lives lost because he waged war on innocent Iraqis are on his hands and he is worse off than Saddam because Saddam is being tried for ordering the killing of one hundred fifty people.How many American lives has he ordered to be killed and still does?Oh he is a shame to this nation.
How often do we take responsibility for things we do wrong and say we are sorry?Almost on a daily basis,not for Bush.No one has ever done anything wrong in his government.
I will leave it here.I hope not to have come on too strong.‘he comes pretending to tend to the sheep and stills,murders and destroys all along his path’

Thank you Dennis Kucinich!  It’s heartening to see a U.S. Congressman looking after the indigenous peoples of our land. Everything you said about the history of our relationship with American Indians is true, and the list is long. But, there’s more recent history which should be considered. In the early 70’s the American Indian Movement (AIM) worked hard, and with much success, to bring ongoing abuses by our government on Indian land to the attention of American people.
  There was the sterilization of Indian women by the US Government run Indian Health Service without their knowledge or consent, which was investigated, and stopped, by your congress. And there was the plan to turn the Pine Ridge reservation (that’s the Lakota, whom you referred to) into a “National Sacrifice Area,” with an “Energy Park” containing major coal and uranium mines, as well as coal-burning and nuclear power plants, which would have made the reservation uninhabitable for many hundreds, even thousands, of years.
  AIM’s efforts to stop these plans resulted in the deaths and beatings of many AIM supporters on the reservation. 60 murders and over 300 beatings were documented by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, most of which were either attributed to the US government or the US backed tribal government.
  The US Commission on Civil Rights ran out of funds for its investigation on June 26, 1975, after a shootout on Pine Ridge resulting in the deaths of two FBI agents and one Indian. And the (Frank) Church Commission, investigating abuses by the FBI, changed its plans to include abuses on the reservation in its investigation with the conviction of Leonard Peltier, our government’s scapegoat, for the agent’s deaths.
  AIM triumphed in stopping the rape of Pine Ridge and the sterilization of Indian women. But Leonard Peltier still languishes in prison, after almost 30 years, even though our government admits that it coerced witnesses, fabricated evidence, withheld evidence and doesn’t know who killed who killed the agents.
  It occurs to me that if you want to oppose ANWR by supporting indigenous rights and bringing up past crimes against Indian people, you could do better by educating the public and your colleagues about ongoing problems. FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!

MoveOn is asking people to thank Senator Cantwell.

Just moments ago, led by Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, the Senate voted down desperate efforts to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Drilling proponents had shamefully attached Arctic drilling to a critical bill that provides our troops with the resources they need to keep us safe.

Supporters of Arctic drilling won’t give up and they’ll push for drilling again, perhaps even this week. But Cantwell, along with other key senators, won a huge victory today for the environment. Thank her for standing up and fighting efforts to drill in the pristine Arctic wilderness.

Cantwell sounded like a fighter when she said this week, “This is nothing more than a sweetheart deal for Alaska and the oil companies. That’s why I am prepared to use every procedural option available to me as a senator to prevent this language from moving forward.“1 That’s exactly what she did, leading a filibuster against the drilling bill and winning the critical vote against drilling. Republican leaders could call a re-vote, but they’re more likely to strip the Arctic provision and pass the underlying bill to provide for the troops.

Thanks to the efforts of Dennis Kucinich and others like him, it seems that the drilling rider will disappear for now.  It will come back though and that time honored Republican tactic of “just keep bringing it back” (remember the Contra funding and attendant scandals in Nicaragua)will bring it forth again and again.  I’m afraid that vigilence is, and will remain, the order of the day for thinking, concerned citizens and legislators.

A few of you asked what you can do.  Do NOT send e-mails to your senators and congresspeople.  They ignore most of them.  HAND WRITE a letter to them with your concerns.  They read that.  What do they pay most attention to?  A phone call.  Call your representatives.  Flood their phone lines.  If they don’t hear from us, they think we don’t care.  That’s the bottom line.

If this government has such disregard for Katrina victims and so easily cuts spending of programs for the poor, education of our children, etc. why should this matter?

What environmentalists don’t seem to get and why I have yet to see a PR approach that explained simply, clearly, consistently and on a on a widescale basis and directed to middle America, suv owning America, and our throwaway culture: If there is no direct relevance, direct connection and impact NOW, TODAY, to what is happening in “my everyday life” and if you can’t convince me why it matters to me and my kids, living in the cities or in suburbia, this issue is something very far away and relegated to those idealist souls who care about pristine areas, small tribes, and caribou.

What would get the attention of hard working Americans, working 60-70 hrs a week supporting families:

GAS PRICES, HEATING OIL OR
PRISTINE AREAS, SMALL TRIBES, CARIBOU.

I have been following the actions of the robber barons and their apologists for many years - hoping and praying that the folks who have the same kind of ethics and compassion my father had would finally stand up and put a stop to all the lies and thievery - Why have the American people let this happen again? We have history to teach us it’s lessons - we cannot say that “we didn’t know” or any other excuse or platitude.  If our “elected” officials do something in our name, then we have a moral obligation to make them accountable, for surely someone must be held accountable in eliminating a culture of such long standing, merely for narrow-minded profiteers.  History will judge them, and us, by what we do - make a fuss!! Protest, even if the Justice Department does put you on their list - do something!!  Become educated on the issues, then make them honor those who died to keep safe our American way of life.  America still means something good - thinking people of the world still know that it’s our (temporary) administration creating this mockery - not the American people - but if we let them get away with it - if we are silently complicit - “too busy” - then the world will begin to believe it is us, after all. I pray that Americans will wake up and reclaim our real national treasure - “Truth, Justice, and The American Way”  Shalom

The reins of our government are in the hands of outlaws.  They “ignore,” or choose not to “enforce,” the laws of this country that have been fought for and painstakingly passed, one at a time, for over 225 years. What would our country’s Founders, and particularly George Washington, have to say about Bush and his crowd? We may NEVER find out the real reasons why our armed forces were misled, why they were ordered to launch a unliateral invasion of a sovereign nation. The current administration believes that nothing they do is any of our business. They are the abusing their authority, trampling on the constitution, and working the will of Big Oil.

Once again Republican “conservatives” have shown their compassion. These self-appointed guardians of Christian values seem to enjoy flaunting the teachings of Jesus, they do it so often and in so many ways.
It has been said that no one can be elected to public office who doesn’t believe in heaven and hell. Given what I have seen since Bush, the religious right, corporate America and the conservatives have imposed their reign of terror on the world, I am going to look for a slate of atheists comes the next election.  Even non-believers would show more respect for man and the environment than does Bush and his supporters

Thank you Mr. Kucinich, for providing the true perspective from which this issue needs to be addressed.  This land, by what is right and true, belongs to the Gwich’in people.. 
With this legislation to drill we are stealing from these people, whose lives and culture are already threatened by the effects of global warming melting the tundras.
The greed and self service that floods Congressional decisions today,  will ultimately bring the flood waters that will wash them out in 2006… Maybe then,just like Walmart rolls back prices,  the American people can roll back the influence of these neo-cons once they are out of office and in jail where they belong.

Dennis has raised one voice towards recognizing the voices of a people whose existence is threatened by a rapacious energy policy. Many in Congress and everyone in the Bush administration seem to value the lifestyle of the SUV tribe over the lives of the Gwich-in!

“People of the Caribou”

I’ve read of the Gwich’in, I think in a book called The Story of B by Daniel Quinn.  The Gwich-in call themselves the “People of the Caribou” because they know who and what they are.  They know that they are caribou, because they eat caribou meat and drink caribou milk, and that caribou are people, because when the Gwich’in die, caribou food grows out of their remains.  They understand the cycle of life, because their understanding goes back to a time before we forgot how to live.  Thus, they already have the precious knowledge that our sages, philosophers, and therapists try to help us find.  Once, our ancestors lived in a similar tribe, with wisdom inherited from the very origins of the species.  But it’s hard to find preserved aboriginal cultures today—we live cut off, with a paltry 10-12,000 year history.

Not only would drilling in ANWR be an atrocity to the People of the Caribou, it would be the end of a culture that has been preserved since the beginning of human life.  It would therefore represent a tragic loss for all of humankind, not just the People of the Caribou.  A little oil, precious though it is, doesn’t nearly offset this loss. 

Slowly, but surely, we are eliminating aboriginal peoples from the earth, by their deaths, or by their forced assimilation into our society.  We can make a stand here.

Thanks, Mr. Kucinich.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is the lowest of the low, in my book.  To tack this rider on to a troop funding bill that he knows might carry it through even though opposed by a majority on it’s own merits, is just despicable.  None of us are naive and know that frequently special interest riders are tacked on to bills that will have majority support, but it is the sensitive nature of this rider, both to our fragile ecology along with our abominable history of abuse of Native Americans, that marks this as another seminal moment of shame to all of us who want to be proud to say we are Americans.  This gang that has been in charge now for too long has got to go down, and go down soon, while we still have something to fight for.

Dear Representative Kucinich,

How can I help you?  This is an underhanded trick to attach this amendment to the appropriations bill.  It was deliberate and planned.  I realize this.  But what can I do today?  I live in Midland, Texas, and I am poor.  My senator and representatives will not listen to me.

I will do as you ask, just let me, or us, the public, know.

Thank you for all your wonderful and hard work.  You do make a difference.  And thank you, also, for the Department of Peace.

Sincerely, Paula Kline

Dennis, as usual, is on it. The Neanderthals running our country are completely missing the insistent changes taking place within our culture. Instead they still trying to manipulate and consolidate power. The model we see playing out on Main Stream Media is a dinosaur, and will soon be seen as such.

“We must search for an alternative way to live.”

World 5.0
http://world5.org

It’s a start.

thank you

what can i do to prevent the drilling in ANWR?

Once again Congressman Kucinich has stated this situation with his eloquence. It will be my pleasure to send this message to all on my list.

We profess to the world that our democracy is the only model that works. Yet there seems to be no true democracy anywhere. The politicians only want our votes, not our moral insights. They maintain there cynical positions while bowing to the corporate money providers. We are being treated much like the native americans were in the 18th and 19th centuries. As a native american I see only anarchy ahead. Until that time those in power will continue on the path of destruction without any thought to the damage they inflict. The sooner the anarchy arises the sooner this country can start to rebuild from what is left in the dust.

Dennis C is seen as one of the “most progressive” politicians in the United States. Bravo. Yet, he chooses to describe the US/Native American without the word “genocide.” Why? Because he suffers from a lapse of memory? I don’t know. It’s not enough. How many Native people were slaughtered in the name of progress? Can Ms. Huffington help him him with this figure? How many African people are going to die from AIDS in the next 10 years? Can we stop calling Republicans idiots and get an agenda, one based on honesty? All Americans carry the burden of acknowleging the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of and murder of African people.The alternative way of living Kucinich mentions will only come about by dealing with our past, for which most Progressives don’t feel they are responsible. They weren’t around then. They just continue to benefit from the economic boom that both atrocities sprang.

I totally agree.  I have donated to the cause.  Signed petitions.  Called and written my rep in the House.  The Republican majority seems intent on destroying everything American - our liberties, our civil rights, our stature in the world and the very land we live on.  What can we do before everything that once made us proud to be Americans has been destroyed?

Dennis, if only it were your voice that had actually been heard when the infamous, election sham took place a seeming eternity ago, when instead, a useless, selfish and self-serving organism was installed as spokesperson for, what was once, our country. I heard no word of the Wounded Knee anniversary from any media source today. Certainly no mention of the slaughter of indigenous peoples from the soft, lying mouth of boy-georgie as he rattled his atomic-sword. Thank you, Mr. Kucinich for being a human being in that house of zombies.

Dennis——-We can not thank you enough for all the good work you are doing.  Your efforts are not falling on deaf ears.  Years from now we will look back on the Bush years and compare them with the McCarthy era, the enternment of the
Japanese in WWII, and the many other sordid
actions taken by Us Goverment against its own
people.  All of this has been allowed to happen
because citizens succumbed to fear rather than
rational thinking.  Keep fighting for us, we need
you.

Bravo Dennis! Seems to me we should be searching for alternative fuels. Oops I forgot most Right wingers are invested in oil. Forget about it!

Thank you, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, for having the wisdom and courage to write this article.  Ted Stevens was so rude to a group of Alaska Natives who visited Washington DC recently that it was embarrassing.  Obviously he has no respect for the Indigenous Peoples or the Land on which we live.  I wonder if he cares about his great grandchildren to the seventh generation, what kind of a legacy he will leave to them.  His oily greed is so obvious I wish he could hear some Athabascan legends about what happens to greedy people.  Tsin’aen!

This idea to drill in the Arctic refuge has absolutely nothing to do with providing safety for the U.S. nor will it assist in relieving us of our dependence on foreign oil. It is all about money and greed.  President Bush insists that American people understand why he does what he does, for the protection of the American ppeople, but he never tells us the truth about why he is doing what he is doing, let alone tell us what he is truly doing.  We are not stupid, we know what is going on. If this decision to drill passes through Congress, we will pay the price of this for hundreds of years to come. It will contribute to the downfall of this country which is already under way.  We still have time to act in the ways which have been our values since the beginning and truly care for all life.  I hope our representatives will act on the will of the American people which is leave the Arctic Wildlife Refuge alone for the protection of all life.

Rep. Kucinich’s insight is
A congressional delegation visited the calving and nursery grounds of the Arctic Refuge several months ago.  The Gwich’in Nation invited them to visit one of our communities.  They did not respond to our request, instead the military aircraft they flew in went right over our communities.  In the brief amount of time that I was given to try to educate them a little about Gwich’in and our way of life I felt a real sadness because it was as if the spirits of Plains Indians like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were also in the room—as I thought and felt that the delegation did not care nor did they want to hear what I had to say it seemed like that was probably what the Plains tribes felt not that long ago as their way of life was irrevocably changed.
It is not right that such an important issue be attached to the Department of Defense budget this is dishonorable to those who are sacrificing in the armed services, because the proponents of development know that they would fail on a straight up or down vote—which is where this issue belongs.
Now is the time to speak up louder than ever we have kept them out of the Sacred Place Where Life Begins since 1988 and we can continue to do so with the voices of many!
Mahsi,
Luci Beach
http://www.gwichinsteeringcommittee.org