Nov 16 commentary

"For links to the articles I read on the air, guest websites, archived shows, my commentaries, a listener's discussion forum, and the text of Mark Stanneart’s latest commentary, visit: www.rabblerousing.org."

Lets start with some local news; some corporation based elsewhere bought a local trailer park and in the great American capitalistic tradition has jacked up rents so that they make their maximum profits in order to pay off the loans they floated to purchase the property, while the tenants will all probably have to move out into local parks and national forests, as they wont be able to afford to live anywhere else. Isn’t American capitalism wonderful? Our county supervisors looked at the issue last tues and said cluck, cluck,cluck, cluck cluck, isn’t this just terrible, but what can we do? Well here is a suggestion for what you could do if you really want to help these folks, rather than sit around watching while your constituants lose their place to live: the us supreme court recently made a fascinating ruling in a case called kelo vs somebody or other. The supremes ruled that a local govt can confiscate private property and give it over to developers and call it eminent domain, which in other words, means, "for the good of the people". The ruling was of course designed to make rich folks even richer, but a law is a law and could conceivably be used to also help poor or middle class people. That’s a funny thing about laws. Sometimes they are applied to everyone, rather than just a select few. So nev co sups, why not use this recent ruling and have the county take over the trailer park under eminent domain, pay the blood suckers fair market value, and let these poor people live out their lives in peace? Set it up as a non profit that would generate enuff profit to pay off whatever expenses the county and tax payers accrue and actually show up as compassionate. Would the tax payers go for it? Would local business interests, the ones who actually call the shots in local govt go for it? Who knows? Why not give it a try? This proposal would be real affordable housing, and you might even get the state to help fund the project since it would be the first and perhaps only time you would be following state mandates to actually provide affordable housing for county residents, rather than just paying lip service while doing essentially nothing. Imagine that-using a supreme court ruling to help poor people? Is that radical or what?

Next item: the us govt and us military has been caught in yet another lie. Bbc reports that after denying it for months, the us now admits that well, yes, we did use white phosphorous bombs in our destruction of falluja. That’s a war crime folks. Using willie pete on civilians is a war crime. Another in a long list of us war crimes committed by Americans in iraq. Seems like a curious way to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis. But what do I know?

Next item: please stop sending me articles calling for the impeachment of king george and his cohorts. bush will never be impeached. Period. gop controlled congress and senate have tied their political fortunes [which is all that is important to them] to him and they believe they cant afford to cut loose. end of story. he and his cohorts can do anything they please-anything, and the gop will never impeach him. sad, but thats how i see it. Next item: Regarding election Fraud What is the ordinary citizen to do?. here are some brief suggestions. By ernest partridge:
Spread the word, person-to-person. Do your part to make respectable a skepticism of past elections and the demand for election reform. If the conspiracy of media silence is sustained and the paperless machines and secret software remain in place, the GOP won’t lose no matter what the voters have to say about it. If the fraud is exposed, they can’t win. It is just possible that if the polls forecast a Democratic blowout – say, twenty-plus percent – the GOP won’t dare to reverse the outcome. But beware: fake polls are not out of the question.
Thankfully, there is one institution that remains independent of Bushevik control: the criminal justice system. Thus the aforementioned criminal indictments, present and forthcoming. Herein may be the best hope for the restoration of honest and verifiable elections. In the United States, elections are administered at the local and state level. Surely there must be some prosecutors somewhere in the realm prepared to investigate this crime with the powerful instruments of subpoena, discovery and perjury threat. So let us, as concerned citizens, demand criminal investigation and prosecutions of the crime of voting fraud.
Put pressure on the media. Boycott the offending corporate media and their sponsors, and tell them that you are doing so. Demand that they investigate malfeasance of office and report "all the news that’s fit to print" about issues of public concern. And if they won’t, make them irrelevant. As Sinclair Broadcasting learned in the last election, if right-wing propaganda results in a loss of market-share, the management must answer to the stockholders.
Support the alternative independent media and the progressive internet – the last, best hope of a free press that the founders of our republic insisted was indispensable to a republic of free citizens.
Encourage progressive candidates to oppose the "GOP-lite" Democrats in the primaries. Even if the "Democrats in Name Only" (DINOs) win, they will be given a message: "represent us, or next time your done for!" And write your Senators and Congress members, repeatedly. Send a constant stream of letters to the editor. Add your feet and voices to the public protests. Organize!

Next item: this sent by a listener off the web, Updated: 2:39 p.m. ET Nov. 9, 2005 AMMAN - police sources at the scene told Reuters that A blast at the Radisson hotel in the Jordanian capital Amman on wednesday was caused by a bomb placed in a false ceiling, the listeners comment. Does this sound like a suicide bomber to you? My comment. Have you heard this follow up to this story on your tv or newspaper? If not, why not?

Next item: ok, for those of you who don’t already know it, im a closet pro sports fan, and I just got to make a comment on major league baseball. I find it interesting how, once the world series is over, and one expects them to go off and quietly prepare for the next season, one would be wrong. Every other pro sport votes their awards at the same time. Bang and its over. A week or so after their season ends, you don’t hear of them again until the following season. . But baseball, seemingly Desperate for attention, strings out their end of season awards, one per week, so they garner news coverage for months. it may be a brilliant strategy, but I find it just boring. Its rather like The parties over, you want to get on with your life, but one guest refuses to go home. But for those of you who love this sort of stuff, wait till next week when major league baseball announces this years award for club house rookie janitor of the year. Thrilling stuff.

Next item:got an email from some friends of mine, local musicians and political activists. I thought you might want to consider what they have to say.

Please bear with us for just a moment as we bring you up to speed on the state of live music - nationwide. Smaller (mad some larger) venues, across this country, are suffering terribly right now, riding a slippery slope of falling attendance for the last year... Since attendance is down across the board (why? Money woes? Fear? Home entertainment centers, video games and DVDs? Too Old? Not interested? Do you know?), they are hesitating - more than ever - to book smaller, lesser known, but no less talented, touring acts.... Which means that folks, like us, are finding it more difficult to carry on what it is that we do. Which then translates eventually in an inability to record and continue giving forth the fruits of our labors, the embodiment of our heart and soul, in live or recorded song.... We ALL must continue to support the live music that we love. Do our part to keep the Arts alive in these troubled times. If the music loving crowd - in particular those of you who cherish the music of the smaller, independent artists - doesn't get out there, voting with their bodies, showing up, supporting and helping to pay the less than living wage of most of the smaller touring artists you have loved - great independent music, all of that stuff you love that falls underneath the radar of the Greg Browns and John McCutcheons and Eliza Gilkysons, will disappear. Poof, gone. This is not Chicken Little the Sky is Falling folks, this is for real. Please, please continue to support live music and your local venues - go out to shows, support hard working musicians who bring you the music you love, socialize with your community members... Show up. Keep the healing alive. If you don't, it will be your loss as well as ours. We hope to see you along the road. In peace Eleanore and Paul

Next item: whatever happened to Patrick Fitzgerald and his investigation of who outed Valerie plame, and did he nail dick chaney or karl rove? Funny how quickly that story died. Cheney’s yes man is persuaded to fall on his sword and that’s the end of it? Amazing. Looks like we fell for it again. Hope may spring eternal, but these guys sure are good at dashing all hope. Like the bumper sticker says, "will someone please give these guys blow jobs so we can impeach the lot of them.

Next item: it appears that disgusted in Peoria has crawled out from under his rock long enuff to warn us about the latest craze of wearing foil hats to ward off signals beamed at us by our favorite federal govt. according to a web posting, some students borrowed fancy college lab equipt, tested various foil hat designs and concluded as follows:
The helmets amplify frequency bands that coincide with those allocated to the US government between 1.2 Ghz and 1.4 Ghz. According to the FCC, These bands are supposedly reserved for ''radio location'' (ie, GPS), and other communications with satellites., these bands are at the hands of multinational corporations.
It requires no stretch of the imagination to conclude that the current helmet craze is likely to have been propagated by the Government, possibly with the involvement of the FCC. We hope this report will encourage the paranoid community to develop improved helmet designs to avoid falling prey to these shortcomings. In other words, wearing foil hats may amplify rather than protect you from these signals.

Next item: a listener sent in a commentary by jeff rense of rense.com followed by his comment.

... Rense wrote; "Did you know that under the terms of the new Patriot Act prosecutors will be able to seek the death penalty in cases where 'defendants gave financial support to umbrella organizations without realizing that some of its adherents might eventually commit violence'?"

the listeners comment: we are now living in total dictatorship, though we are not yet capitulated into obvious nationalistic totalitarianism. can you believe people are going to get death for supporting an organization that has some members who at some point in the future do violence ??? how goddam vague is that ???   does this mean that if you belong to a labor union that has a strike in which someone gets shot by someone else you get the firing squad ???  if you belong to  'earth  first ' and one member disables a logging crane    you get death ???  does this mean that all the policemen on the oakland police force get death because some of them planted a bomb in judy barry's car, for which they were convicted in court, though i don't think anyone ever did any time ???  I guess we're all screwed, at least everyone who gave so much to the IRS....something tells me this kind of  "law" will only be enforced against certain kinds of people ...

Humor at end: this one is still good: How many Republicans does it take to screw in a light bulb?

 1 One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed.
2 One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed.
3 One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb.
4 One to tell the nations of the world that they are either responsible for changing the light bulb or for darkness.
5 One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Haliburton for the new light bulb.
6 One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a stepladder under the banner: Lightbulb Change Accomplished.
7 One administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how Bush was literally in the dark.
8 One to viciously smear #7.
9 One surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong lght bulb changing policy all along.
10 And finally one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country.

Did you survive that one? Here is another: A cabbie picks up a Nun. She gets into the cab, and the cab driver  won't stop staring at her. She asks him why he is staring.He replies? "I  have a question to ask you, but I don't want to offend you."

She answers,  " My son, you cannot offend me. When you're as old as I am and have been  a nun as long as I have, you get a chance to see and hear just about  everything. I'm sure that there's nothing you could say or ask that I  would find offensive."

"Well, I've always had a fantasy to have a nun  kiss me."

She responds, "Well, let's see what we can do about that: #1,  you have to be single and #2, you must be Catholic.

"The cab driver is  very excited and says, "Yes, I'm single and Catholic!"

So the Nun says:  "Pull into this alley." The nun fulfills his fantasy with a kiss that would make a hooker blush. But when they get back on the road, the cab  driver starts crying.

"My dear child," said the nun, "why are you  crying?"

"Forgive me but I've sinned. I lied. I must confess, I'm  married and I'm Jewish."

The nun says, "Well, that's OK, my name is  Kevin and I'm going to a Halloween party."