demnan's quest

I just got back from Lafayette Square Park (Veto Protest - 5/2/07)

The rally in front of the White House didn't have many attendees, there might have been 75 people there when I showed up just after 5:00 pm, but some were tourists. There were a few Code Pink, and some Moveon.org. There's a guy who dresses up as death who reads the names of the dead who was there as well. Typical Washington Peace Center, let's be really really even more depressed than when we showed up - but you know they have a good point. World Can't Wait actually tried to run their rally over by 17th street where the traffic was which is a bad idea, in my opinion. They ended up with two ladies who came over and joined us. So much for World Can't Wait - I feel their pain. When you have these kinds of rallies on the fly it's best to pick the place everyone knows. And right in front of the White House is a wonderful place. The little street lady was there of course, who actually has a permanent permit and has been there for years, I spoke with her tonight. She has a sweet little voice. She said, "Impeach! That's right!"

Granted you don't get car traffic in front of the White House due to security restrictions, but you get plenty of foot traffic which might be even better. Remember the guy dressed as Bush with the prison suit? - he's in our collage on the Latest News page. He was there so I stood next to him with a large Impeach sign and lots of people came by to take pictures, mostly of him because he just was so great. I held my Impeach sign over his head for the pictures. Rueters News took our names as well. Who knows we'll probably both have our taxes audited. His name is Sam Cook, and he's a pretty nice guy, he lives up in Maryland somewhere. He knows Alan as well. He stands there in front of the White House a lot of Saturday afternoons, so I thought it might be fun for us to hook up and make some slack-jawed tourists' day.

He wasn't the only one in the Bush suit. There's a guy who dresses as the devil in red and wears these shorts with tights underneath. His legs are pretty nice! Sam knows him and said he would tell him so.

Hey, sometimes it's just nice to stand in front of the White House with a giant Impeach sign painted in barn paint. I also sold a button on the metro on the way back.

The Power of the People

I was braced for failure, but we had success.  I thought few people would come out for an impeachment event, we didn't have a massive event but the ones who did come were treasures.  My friend Dave who I vigil with nearly every week, knowing I was uncertain about the letters being formed on the Mall, came up with his own idea, partially I think to cheer me up, flying a kite marked "IMPEACH", so he came up with an entirely new idea to help us through the Summer of Impeachment, "Tell Bush to go fly a kite!"  And what a wonderful place the Washington Monument is to fly a kite.  See this being an event for June perhaps.

My other friend David is a source of inspiration to me.  He always sees the good in everyone and that's why he is patient and works for impeachment tirelessly.  He considers every opinion and every friend.  He is a soft-spoken intellectual and thoughtful person.

My friends Keith, Larry, Alan, Brian, Greg,  Ric, who would have driven the bus if we had enough people, our new friend Ron, who just joined our group, and some of the others, Meeting and knowing each and every one of them has been a blessing for me.

Pam, Rachel and Illana who couldn't make it today are very important people to me.   But for all the friends that I have who couldn't make the event (we had a Virginia Tech mother in our group and we also had one of our most devoted members who is studying for a Masters Degree and just couldn't make this trip today).  It's a very demanding time of year but we made additional friends to add to our group and that really is our strength.  We need to press on and if I falter one of my friends will help me along the way.

My letter to Tom Davis

DC Voting Rights and the "I" Word

Dear Mr. Davis,

Congratulations on finally getting the voting rights for DC bill
passed.  This is a major triumph for you and a demonstration of your
skills of working with others in Congress in a bipartisan manner to
right a horrible wrong that our neighbors to the north have been
living through.  The good Ms. Holmes-Norton will make a fine full-time
Congresswoman.  "Good on you", as the kids say.

I did want to make note of a deficiency regarding your previous
correspondence to me.  Your highly efficient and courteous staff sent
me a letter explaining your views on Iraq, which grow increasingly
more like mine every day, however, I wrote to you on Impeachment.

I know that the Democratic leadership in Congress have taken
"Impeachment off the table" but that doesn't mean you should.  I am
very disappointed in the Democrats at the moment, they are reluctant
to "rock the boat" because they are waiting to clean up in 2008.  And
they shall clean up because your political party will be known as the
"Needless and Disastrous War Party", and the "Illegal Torture Party",
and the Illegal Wiretaps Party".  Mr. Davis, if you were to introduce
articles of Impeachment, not only would you be our next Senator, you
could run for President and win.  You could have the stature of
Senator Baker during the Watergate Investigations if you were to go
forth now for truth, peace and justice.  Mr. Davis, I remember those
hearings and the faithful bipartisanship that helped to right the
wrongs done by the Nixon administration.  No one hated Republicans
then, nor should they blame all Republicans now.

When I was young I got involved with an abusive man and it only took
me a couple of months to figure this out and end the relationship.
You have been in an abusive relationship with George Bush for six
years now (and he WILL VETO the bill you have worked so hard to get
passed!).  You know this.  So end the relationship now.  What have you
got to lose when all those ignorant yokels from your party won't stand
up and support this voting rights bill.  Stand up, Mr. Davis and
please do what is right.  Also, I'd like a written response on
impeachment and to hear your views on it, please.

I hope you still have the little green IMPEACH HIM button I gave you.
Keep it in your pocket for the moment, but when the time is right, I
hope to see you proudly wear yours, when Kucinich puts his on and
maybe together you can right the wrongs that have taken place in this
country.

Sincerely,

Nancy Maynard

The Elephant in the Room

Yesterday the biggest killing spree ever that has ever taken place on an American school or University happened.  And while everyone is sorry, no one is sorry enough to look at the giant elephant in the room, certainly not George Bush, but not the good Governor Tim Kaine either.  Senator Jim Webb was silent about this elephant yesterday as well.  Senator Warner?  Not a word.  Mark Warner?  Forget about it.  Only the BBC’s Justin Webb nailed it.

The elephant in the room is easy gun access.  Virginia has the distinction of having some of the most lax gun laws in the South, where gun laws are all lax. In Virginia, guns are easy to obtain and readily available anywhere in the state without much of a background check required.  Don’t believe me?  Take this quiz regarding Virginiagun laws:  http://crime.about.com/library/blgunquiz_va.htm 

When you buy a home in Virginia a lawyer is required to look over the legal paperwork with a fine tooth comb.  In fact, Virginia has one of the toughest real estate titling processes in the United States, but obtaining a gun, a device for killing, requires hardly any scrutiny.  Any crazy can do it.  And this is unlikely to change, for the NRA (as Justin Webb so rightly pointed out), resides in Virginia and the NRA’s propaganda resides in the minds of Virginia’s residents.

I have no hope that any tightening of gun laws will come from this tragedy.  But I can see the elephant in the room, and I will be surprised to see any politician owning up to this fact.  If they did, they would earn new respect from me.  As for my fellow Virginians, I suggest you write a letter to the governor and state legislature about gun control, and remove your children from Virginia schools until sanity reigns regarding Virginia’s gun laws.

And so it goes

A great man died yesterday, a man who was the most courageous novelist of his generation.   And he was a great American who was perhaps the last German-American humanist left in this country.

Before anyone else suspected, Kurt Vonngut knew our country was on the wrong road just before the end , during and just after World War II.  He thought the bombing of Dresden was immoral but the attacks in Japan, using a new atomic bomb were beyond comprehension.

I have a strange connection with Kurt Vonnegut.  His father dated my grandmother.  My father's family is from Indianapolis, my grandmother's family the Undversaws, were a very old German family in that city.  When I read Vonnegut, his accent and his way thinking are immediately familar to me.  The Germans who came over in the 1850's or so were escaping a war culture that the Kaiser in Germany had planted.  These immigrants wanted to farm and live in a free society.  My grandmother told me once that her grandfather thought that the best thing was for blacks and whites to intermarry in this country and then we would have a fair society.  Their family had been part of the Undeground Railroad.  They were socialist-thinking people who loved their families and their animals.   They spoke English in public and privately admonished their children in German at home (I was a witness to this a few times).

German culture has a humanist side that is more intense than English culture has - this is obvious in music, literature and political writing.  Goethe, Beethoven and  Marx come from the same thought process.  Vonnegut melded this German intensity so beautifully with a Scots-Irish accent like Mark Twain did for his hero, like Huck Finn.  So we have lost our Mark Twain, the one who reminded us of the failure of our national morals  in a humorous way, and who was so darkly right.

And so it goes.

We have the fight of our lives before us

Our President is denying the will of the people.  Will the people respond?

Today we were told that Army registrants would be sentenced to an additional 3 months in hell because no one else is signing up.

We are in a war which is causing pain and suffering and will have no good outcome, even the Generals say that.  The people in Iraq who initially supported our effort want us out because we have so dismally failed them.

This President is so resolved not to follow the will of the people that he taunts Congress to only come meet with him when they will agree with him.

The only response is to impeach this President and his administration!

Letter to Bartcop

Hey Bart! Just a note to let you know about the Patriots for Peace and Accountability and our latest activities. Our Congressman, Tom Davis (R (for Rich beyond our understanding) VA 11th, decided to have a Town Hall meeting in our area. The strength of our passion is that we had people in every area he had the meeting to ask about impeachment throughout our Congressional District. Also I decided it would be great to welcome him at the Prince William County Government Building with Peace and Impeach signs. My buddies the Prince William Peacemakers came out in force, and Dave my friend, farmer and teacher of Manassas, VA made me a very fine Impeach sign with vivid red barn paint. Also we had Impeach and anti-war people inside to ask questions there as elsewhere.

I wore for this event my Kevin Cunningham original "IRAQ - because 50,000 body bags from Vietnam just aren't enough - tee shirt. Do you ever hear from Kevin anymore? He just stopped his cartoons. But if you know how to contact him please let him know that Tom Davis the Republican kept looking at my shirt! I left my sign outside. I just was curious about what was going on and had to "bear witness", after all I am of a WWI, WWII and Vietnam veteran family. I walked into the county building very proudly wearing the shirt and I had an IMPEACH HIM button on my shirt, these buttons are produced by the Washington Area Impeachment Fund, an organization I also support. When Davis wasn't looking, I placed a button under his soft drink can.

After I left (to get in position to hold the Impeach sign to escort his hybrid Explorer further west) he thanked whoever gave him the button, probably in a glib arrogant way. When they drove out, Davis was driving, the aide on the phone nodded at me.

When Davis entered his next spot, he announced that he had been greeted by "Professional Protesters". I'm his constituent, goddamit - I live less than 2 miles from that building but a Republican lies to perserve their sense of self importance! Well, Bart! I wonder where my goddamned check is anyhow! If I was that good for Hugo and Castro, then I can expect my check every day and I don't have to count my pennies to pay the mortgage until the next paycheck from my job, will I?

Your friend,

Nancy

Lobbying for Impeachment

Our investigation for impeachment group, the Va Patriots for Peace and Accountability met with a minority side staffer of the Government Reform Committee for Tom Davis (our Congressman).  Brooke Bennett was like most Davis staffers I've encountered, courteous and good at her job.  She listened to us and we had a good exchange and I hope we can continue to have dialogue with her and with Davis, even though as a Republican, I'm sure there are many differences between us and them.

We presented some particulars we wanted investigated.  I won't go into that here as I think we all know what those items might be.

We also met with Kucinich, actually we walked in while he was talking in a very casual friendly way to PDA members.  His wife Elizabeth was there and gave a very friendly smile.  I as a woman have to notice that if she ever became First Lady she is so beautiful and slender that she would give most women in this country an inferiority complex, she seems oblivous to this idea, the adoring and intelligent political wife, with a peace sign on her blazer, I have to assume she is one of those rare people who are as beautiful inside as out.  I gave Kucinich one of our local Impeachment group's IMPEACH HIM buttons.  Now I can die happy, I've done my best in this world and perhaps Kucinich is one of the few Congress Critters who would listen to us.

One of our group was an 8th Congressional District member, and although this wasn't  a planned meeting we asked to talk with someone from Mr. Moran's office, it was rather more unpleasant than I would have thought.  Instead of being invited in, we were escorted out in the hall to meet with this young man whose name was Heath.  Heath was really rather contemptous of us, I must say.  I hope  that's how Congressman Moran's staffers treat anyone working for impeachment.  I'm not sure why Moran doesn't want to defend the Constitution and investigate.  In Henry Waxman's office we gathered little paperback copies of the Constitution, and having already met with Davis's office who allowed for us to sit comfortably in a meeting room it was rather a bad situation.  Perhaps the staffer who normally deals with troubling impeachment people had already left for the weekend, I don't know.

No retort too mean

Howard Kurtz notes in his smug "Media Notes" column in the Post today a sense of outrage at recent quotes in Huffington Post.  After Cheney's visit to Afghanistan's Bagram Air Force Base and the supposed near miss from a suicide bomber, a few people took the opportunity to express their disappointment that the bomber didn't reach his supposed intended target.  It seems that Howard feels comments stating things like "Dr. Evil escapes again . . . Damn" and "At first you don't succeed" are "vile".

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100587.html

Well Howard, those who live by the sword should be prepared to die by the sword.  When you think of all the people who have died due to Cheney (and Bush's) illegal decision to go to war, a few unkind comments thrown Cheney's way seems like a small burden to bear.   Why are the Republicans and their defenders so thin-skinned when criticism comes their way? 

My letter to Tom Davis

Dear Congressman Davis:

When President Bush took office he vowed to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States. He has not done so and should be impeached and removed from office.

Before 9/11 George Bush ignored warnings that a terrorist attack was imminent. He ignored reports prepared for him with intelligence warning of the 9/11 attacks. Attorney General Ashcroft even knew at that time that it was dangerous to fly on commercial airplanes and instead took a private jet on his travels.

After 9/11 President Bush, with the assistance of Congress, enacted the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act must have been prepared in advance because within days of the attack it was already ready to be given to Congress.

I doubt Congress fully understood the implications this act had. With the Patriot Act in hand President Bush has expanded his powers and suspended such precious rights as Habeas Corpus. Wiring tapping and spying on our citizens is a crime against the Constitution. This act has been used to justify the imprisonment and torture of people rounded up haphazardly in the wilds of Afghanistan. People who might be in the wrong place at the wrong time have been denied their rights under International Law and refused a trial.

All this occurred before the Iraq War.

The evidence is now clear that the Bush administration falsified intelligence to persuade Congress to enact a war resolution against Iraq. Some in Congress and public life were not fooled, but many went along with the President and gave him the money and backing he needed to start the war with Iraq.

Before we invaded Iraq it was a dictatorship, but in the context of the region, it was not a worse dictatorship than many of the other countries around it. It had no viable way to threaten the United States. The 1991 attack on Kuwait had been thwarted during George H. W. Bush’s administration. Saudi Arabia is a dictatorial monarchy, and this dangerous country, which produced most of the 9/11 hijackers and has promoted hatred toward non-Muslims throughout the world through its funding of ultra-conservative schools, is an absolute monarchy that seems to find the Bush family extremely friendly to its interests.

The Bush family’s unusually close ties to the Saudi Royal family needs to be investigated. Is it possible we got involved in the Iraq war because it was better for Saudi interests? If not, why is it that we removed our military presence from Saudi Arabia and put it in Iraq? Why was our presence in Saudi Arabia suddenly not needed? It’s not sane to consider that we removed them because this was Usama bin Laden’s biggest beef against us, is it?

After we were lied to about the intelligence leading to the Iraq war, members of the Bush Administration from the top brass in Dick Cheney’s office outed a CIA undercover agent because of a grudge against her husband. Whoever did this is clearly a traitor to this country who put the lives of many agents in danger. The trial for this crime is going forth, but very slowly. I demand that whoever is found guilty in this trial be treated as the traitor that they are. We need to know how information is disseminated within the administration. Who has knowledge of our undercover agents? I believe it is Cheney and his top staff and they clearly should be impeached for this traitorous act and imprisoned for this crime. If Cheney was not the one responsible, then he clearly was very negligent about Top Secret information that should have been withheld from journalists, and he and his staff should be impeached and tried just for the negligence.

This does not take Bush off the hook for this crime. He should have demanded an immediate investigation and taken personal action to cleanse this administration and right the wrong. But the Bush administration cares little for the safety and efficiency of its intelligence community. Homeland Security is such a huge organization with such inefficient tools to do their work that I wonder who benefits from this inefficiency.

After the Iraq War Commission gave its findings and recommended gradual troop withdrawal, Cheney was summoned to Saudi Arabia. Why? After he returned, Bush announced that he would be working on a strategic plan for Iraq. Shortly after Christmas he announced that he would not only not take the measured bipartisan advice offered by the Commission, he decided to do the reverse and throw more lives into this war in Iraq. This administration has increased its threatening rhetoric against Iran. Are we throwing precious lives away for the benefit of Saudi Arabia, so that weak monarchy can feel safe around its neighbors?

I demand that the elected officials in this country represent the best interests of the people of the United States and the Constitution that upholds our wonderful county. Our interests over the past six years have been gravely neglected. A beautiful city has not returned to its former glory, Americans are suffering from the economy where jobs pay less and less and housing and health care have sky rocketed. You have the obligation to look to these issues as well, but first we must extract ourselves from this insane situation in Iraq. Impeach the President and Vice President quickly so we can enact the plan put forth by the bipartisan Iraq Commission.

Sincerely,

Nancy Maynard

Dear Madam Speaker:

Enclosed you will find my letter to my Congressman, Tom Davis. As a concerned citizen of this great country and a loyal volunteering and contributing Democrat, I demand that you put impeachment back on the table.

Sincerely,

Nancy Maynard