Global

Each year the Congressional Progressive Caucus releases a weaker and weaker budget proposal. This year they asked for input first. I sent them this and communicated with them about it, so I know they read it. An excerpt:

Robert Bowdrie “Bowe” Bergdahl was held as a POW by the Taliban for 5 years and now for over a year by the U.S. Army at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. He has received constant treatment from an Army psychiatrist but he has not been returned to his family and home in Hailey, Idaho. Thus in my opinion his recovery and reintegration process has probably done more harm than good by continuing his isolation from the world. But his treatment after repatriation is more about politics than his service or U.S. Army procedures. Consequently, after what he has gone through and endured, he should be freed with an honorable discharge and all of his pay and benefits. Anything less would be an injustice.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Bangkok's coup-installed military regime has
agreed to give legal immunity to some of Thailand's Islamist
insurgents and allow them to travel internationally during peace talks
in the south where more than 6,000 people have died on all sides
during the past 12 years.
   The immunity and travel protection for the rebels increases the
likelihood that the talks can grapple with more serious issues in one
of Southeast Asia's long-running insurgencies, such as the denial of
justice and local participation for Muslims in the economically
depressed area.
   "The military will never defeat the guerrilla tactics of the
insurgents," said a Bangkok Post editorial on March 3.
   "The obvious stalemate cries for a political solution."
   The current peace talks however do not allow discussion of the
insurgents' demands for autonomy within Buddhist-majority Thailand or
an independent nation ruled by Islamic law.
   Meanwhile two rubber tree plantation workers -- a Muslim and a

Bring spray bottles of pink liquid to military recruitment offices and displays.
Spray them.
Tell potential recruits: Be all that you can be. And this could be you.

“Pink mist. That’s what they call it.
“When one of your mates hasn’t just bought it,
“but goes in a flash, from being there to not.
“A direct hit. An I.E.D. An R.P.G. stuck in the gut.”

Those are lines from a play called Pink Mist written in verse by Owen Sheers about three young lads from Bristol who sign up for war in Afghanistan.
Read it. Perform it. It begins like this:

“Three boys went to Catterick.
“It was January,
“snow pitchen on the Severn,
“turning the brown mud white,
“fishermen blowing on their fingerless gloves,
“the current pulling their fishing lines tight.
“That’s how it was the morning when
“the three of us did what boys always have
“And left our homes for war.”

“Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” –Orwell

The U.S. government has reached the bottom of the barrel. Having packed every square inch of the National Mall with monuments to every war they wanted to admit to, including the wars on Vietnam and Korea, and including the two world wars, our dear leaders have decided that another World War I monument is needed, and that it will be built in Pershing Park (named in 1981 for a World War I general by then already sufficiently forgotten).

It’s the day after the big vote and I’m doing my best to dig Tulsi Gabbard’s endorsement of Bernie Sanders out from beneath the pile of Super Tuesday numbers and media declarations of winners and losers.

As a Boston Globe headline put it: “Clinton and Trump are now the presumptive nominees. Get used to it.”

But something besides winning and losing still matters, more than ever, in the 2016 presidential race. War and peace and a fundamental questioning of who we are as a nation are actually on the line in this race, or could be — for the first time since 1972, when George McGovern was the Democratic presidential nominee.

Embrace what matters deeply and there’s no such thing as losing.

Washington, D.C., March 1, 2016 – The nationwide nonpartisan Election Protection voter hotline, 866-OUR-VOTE received more than 2,000 calls as voters in 12 states made their voices heard during the Super Tuesday presidential preference primaries and caucuses. The hotline received a steady stream of calls throughout the day with voters seeking information as well as assistance on a range of issues resulting from poll worker misinformation, voter ID problems, overcrowded polls, long lines and ballot shortages.