I picked up a pamphlet the other day that said "Just for You" at the top, so I assumed it was just for me.  Much of the front page contained an image of soldiers marching, and next to them the words "What's your exit strategy?"  That's easy, I thought.  Impeachment, removal, indictment, and conviction.  But was this really a pamphlet about peace?  I read the text at the bottom of the front page:

"In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States had thousands of troops in Vietnam.  Citizens sharply criticized the government.  The United States wanted out, but found it hard to develop an exit strategy.  More recently, the United States government came under attack for not having an exit strategy in Iraq.  One writer has said that a general…"

OK, so I had to open it.  And I immediately saw a bunch of quotes from "your Lord and Saviour [sic]."  It turned out to be a pamphlet about personal strategies for "exiting" your life and flying off to Never Never Land.

The Bush Sycophants brought down a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, whose only mistake was to lie about wetting his whistle while married.

            Yet, the Dithering Democrats can't derail a lowly attorney general. A no-confidence vote? Why don't Democrats just offer Alberto Gonzales a buyout?

            The Double Ds have Jimmy Carter so flustered that he's shrieking like a parrot trying to tell his owner that the house is on fire. Give 'em hell, Jimmy!

            Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein were dressed for a funeral when they announced we'd have to wait until June to give Gonzo his sense of the Senate slap. It's mourning in America.

            Gonzo disrespects the laws he swore to uphold. He agreed to go around the FISA court to unlawfully spy on citizens. He saw nothing wrong with outsourcing torture or violating the Geneva Conventions.

In the global campaign to save the Earth, a shared vision is vital.

"Solartopia" foresees a democratic, green-powered 21st Century civilization. Our economic and ecological survival depend on it.

Technologically, the vision rests on four simple pillars:

1. Total renunciation of all fossil and nuclear fuels. In a sustainable, survivable future, they are a 20th Century pox, neither green nor clean.

2. All-out conversion to renewable energy, led by the "Solartopian Trinity" of wind, solar and bio-fuels. Mother Earth gives us the natural power we need.

3. Complete commitment to maximum efficiency, including revived and solarized mass transit and passenger rail systems. Our automotive "love affair" is a hoax.

4. Zero tolerance for production of anything that cannot be re-used or recycled, including chemical-based food. Solartopia is an organic, post-pollution world.

The FCC recently launched an official inquiry into Net Neutrality. They're already hearing plenty from AT&T, Verizon and Comcast - who want to be the gatekeepers deciding what you can do online. Now they need to hear from you.

This may be the best chance we have this year to demonstrate to Washington that protecting Internet freedom is an issue that matters millions of Americans. Please Tell your story to the FCC: Save the Internet
I remember when Memorial Day meant that we had learned that war was not the solution to any conflict, and vowed never again.

I remember when mothers who held their children close to their breast were not the same mothers who supported the killing of other people’s children.

I remember when ‘Support the Troops’ meant giving them adequate protection in combat, and bringing them home alive, but did not mean supporting their mission of the murder of other human beings.

I remember when sons taught their fathers about peace by being conscientious objectors to another war that was supposed to be ‘the war to end all wars.’

I remember when fathers learned from their sons.

I remember when supporting our veterans meant that though we may not have agreed with the reasons they went to war or the irreparable violence and destruction they inflicted upon others, we had the decency and respect for the time and lives they gave to their country, (time forever gone,) to not cut their health benefits, and steal their personal information.

Senator Boxer's Floor Speech

In March and in April I voted for emergency spending legislation that would have fully funded our troops in Iraq, but also changed their mission to a sound one. That mission would have taken our troops out of the middle of a civil war, and put them into a support role, training Iraqi soldiers and police, fighting al Qaeda, and protecting our troops.

The President will not agree to that.

As a matter of fact, the President won't agree to any change in strategy in Iraq, and that is more than a shame for the American people; it is a tragedy.

It doesn't seem to matter how many Americans die in Iraq, how many funerals we have here at home, or what the American people think. The President won't budge.

This new bill on Iraq keeps the status quo. With a few frills around the outside, a few reports, a few words about benchmarks. While our troops die.

The cave-in on Capitol Hill -- supplying a huge new jolt of funds for the horrific war effort in Iraq -- is surprising only to those who haven’t grasped our current circumstances.

Public opinion polls aren’t the same as political leverage. The Vietnam War went on for years after polling showed that most Americans opposed the war and even saw it as immoral.

Slick phrases about the need to bring our troops home can easily become little more than platitudes on wallpaper in media echo chambers.

No matter how many Democrats are in Congress, they won’t end this war unless an antiwar movement develops enough grassroots strength to compel them to do so.

Unfortunately -- and unnecessarily -- for years now the Internet powerhouse MoveOn.org has often functioned as a virtual appendage of the national Democratic Party. That close relationship has largely squandered MoveOn’s opportunities to help build strong deep independent activism for the long haul. And, on crucial issues of the Iraq war, MoveOn has failed to back the positions of such gutsy progressive visionaries as Reps. Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey and Maxine Waters.
Another day, another impeachable offense.  If this one were on a television show we'd all flip it off in disgust as too unlikely.  The President phones up a hospital to demand that the ailing Attorney General (who has turned over his duties and is disoriented) admit the President's legal counsel and chief of staff so that they can ask him to sign off on an illegal spying program.  The AG refuses to sign off.  The acting AG, who is fully conscious but considers the program illegal, also refuses to sign off.  The White House goes ahead and launches the program anyway, a program that involves the FBI, a program so dramatically illegal or offensive that the serial criminals running the Justice Department refuse to go along with it.

I knew there was a war on against cancer and, oh yeah, drugs, illiteracy, poverty, crime and, of course, terror, and that many arenas — sports, religion, business and politics, to name a few — are often portrayed as war without the body bags. But I was still surprised to read recently in the New York Times that we’ve opened up a fat front:

“It is a scene being repeated across the country as schools deploy the blood-pumping video game Dance Dance Revolution as the latest weapon,” the Gray Lady informed us, “in the nation’s battle against the epidemic of childhood obesity.”

Enough already! If I were an overweight kid, would I want Braveheart in my face? My impatience here reaches into the language center of the American brain, or at least the media brain. When chubby 9-year-olds are inspiring the language of Guadalcanal and 9/11, maybe as a nation it’s time to rethink our rhetorical default settings. Maybe it’s time to stop regarding every challenge, danger, obstacle, mystery and fear we encounter as a military operation, to be won or lost. We should at least be aware we have a choice in the matter.

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