REST IN PEACE, TEDDI WINOGRAD

Rest in peace Teddi Winograd (Nov. 24, 1919 – August 21, 2007) Today Teddi will be laid to rest at 1 p.m. Teddi Winograd, 88 years old, was one of the sweetest, most courageous souls on the planet and I will miss her so much. As a supremely moral, ethical, humble, loving mother and patriotic American peace activist, she would appreciate this picture of Bush and the Impeach Bush banner in the sidebar. God Bless you Teddi and God Bless Marcy and the family. We will carry your mission of restoring Democracy to America - onward!



THE WHITE HOUSE: If they have nothing to cover up, why are they covering everything up? Read more below, but first, this:



Peace activist extraordinaire, the inimitable Teddi Winograd — one of my heroes, mother of the amazing Marcy Winograd who ran for Congress last fall -- and one of the greatest women in America, passed on Tuesday. "During her final hours, my mother took great pleasure in seeing me in my Impeach Bush and Cheney t-shirt. When I changed clothes, she said, 'Where's the Impeach t-shirt? I like to look at it.' Wanting to please my mother, I wore the shirt and read to her about Karl Rove's resignation. Rove's exit made her feel good when her health failed. For more on my fabulous mother, please read on" ... Warm regards, Marcy

Linda Milazzo writes: "What most amazed me about Teddi is how much more stoic she was than those of us who are decades her junior. She never complained. In fact, she wore the rest of us out. But I understand the source of her strength. She was, as Tom Brokaw would come to say, part of the "Greatest Generation." She gave birth to her son Barry while Sam was away in the Second World War. She fended for herself with dignity and strength. Barry was twelve months old the first time he saw his father.

If you want to know how a woman can go from being a millinery worker at thirteen to owning a home on Rodeo Drive, you have to read Teddi's autobiography, "Chit Chat This 'n That." If you want to understand how a woman can know EVERYTHING about owning and operating a multi-million dollar business, how a woman who never went to college self-educated herself to grasp the innermost workings of the stock market, you must read this book. If you want to understand the depth of undying love and devotion to a spouse, how deeply a parent loves her children, how much she'll do for her grandchildren, how she weathers great tragedy with dignity and grace — and how one lives with endless enthusiasm, read it.

If you want to see how Teddi and Sam Winograd dedicated their entire lives to the cause of peace, read it and you will understand why the door to Teddi's home was always open to anyone with a commitment to bettering our world.

What is left for us ... are the very same orders Sam gave Teddi in 1998 when Parkinsons took him away: "CONTINUE TO WORK FOR PEACE."

Teddi, we will!!

For many of us, the only good that has come out of the downfall of our democracy over the past seven years has been the creation of our own progressive community that embraces Teddi's passion for peace. In Los Angeles, Marcy and Teddi have been leaders in the progressive community. Teddi's lovely home has been a welcoming hub for democratic activism, intellectual stimulation, and political and social education for countless guest speakers and eager attendees.

The maternal heart of The Progressive Democrats of America, Teddi hosted the Great Minds Series at her home in Beverly Hills, where she welcomed authors and speakers Gore Vidal, John Dean, Elizabeth de la Vega, John Nichols, Cynthia McKinney, Syd Blumenthal, Cindy Sheehan, Tim Carpenter, Mimi Kennedy, Lila Garrett, Danny Schector, Harvey Wasserman, Joy Horowitz, Joe Mealey, Michael Shoob and others. She was waiting for my book to come out and had invited me to be part of the Great Mind series. I now feel Teddi is sitting on my shoulder, giving me the courage to go forward without fear.

A week before she died of cancer, she enjoyed an anti-war serenade in her peach bedroom, then courageously went to the window to wave to Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich addressing a fundraiser in her backyard garden. (Marcy Winograd: winogradblog

Teddi ready to hit the streets with her placard opposing Schwarzenegger's special election ballot measures.
Photos by Margery Epstein.

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WHITE HOUSE SECRETS

If they have nothing to cover up, why are they covering everything up? Not only are they trying to prevent the people from knowing what was contained in the 5 million missing e-mails, but Dick Cheney's lawyer instructed the Secret Service that it "shall not retain any copy" of material identifying visitors to the vice president's official residence. Why? Isn't the government in our country, THE PEOPLE? This administration is the most dishonest bunch of crooks in the history of our nation. Even Nixon didn't go this far.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Tuesday that records about missing White House e-mails are not subject to public disclosure, the latest effort by the Bush administration to expand the boundaries of government secrecy.

Administration lawyers detailed the legal position in a lawsuit trying to force the White House Office of Administration to reveal what it knows about the disappearance of White House e-mails.

The Office of Administration provides administrative services, including information technology support, to the Executive Office of the President.

The office has prepared estimates that there are at least 5 million missing White House e-mails from March 2003 to October 2005, according to the lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a private advocacy group.

More....

In court papers seeking to end the case, the Justice Department said the White House Office of Administration has no substantial authority independent of President Bush and therefore is not subject to the disclosure requirements of the Freedom of Information Act.The issue came into focus early this year amid the uproar over the firing of U.S. attorneys. It turned out that aides to Bush improperly used Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts for official business and that an undetermined number of e-mails had been lost in the process.

The Justice Department Web site, which lists all FOIA contacts inside the government, identifies seven units inside the Executive Office of the President as responding to FOIA requests, including the Office of Administration.

The Office of Administration "has certainly acted like an agency in the past," said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive, a private group advocating public disclosure of government secrets.

Fuchs' organization filed a request in February 2006 after Fitzgerald revealed that e-mails might be missing. When the Office of Administration finally denied the private group's request in June of this year, the office said it was not an "agency" as defined by the Freedom of Information Act and was therefore not subject to the law's requirements.

The administration has been resisting disclosure of information on an array of fronts.

In September 2006, Vice President Dick Cheney's lawyer instructed the Secret Service that it "shall not retain any copy" of material identifying visitors to the vice president's official residence. The lawyer, Shannen Coffin, wrote the letter as The Washington Post sought copies of Cheney's visitors.

The letter regarding the vice president's residence was in addition to an agreement quietly signed between the White House and the Secret Service when questions were raised about visits to the executive compound by convicted influence peddler Jack Abramoff.

That agreement, which didn't surface publicly until late last year, said White House entry and exit logs were presidential records not subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

When the agreement was signed in May 2006, a number of private groups and news organizations had filed FOIA requests with the Secret Service in an effort to identify how many times Abramoff or members of his lobbying team visited the White House.

(read the entire article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070821/white-house-secrecy

PARTING SHOT

Darklords, Dunces and Dictators!

Guest post by Mike


Darklords, Dunces and Dictators! Truth oftentimes mirrors or is stranger than fiction, this article will compare history to fiction to illustrate the similarities both in motives and actions between historical and fictional darklords, dunces and dictators.

An interesting commonality when examining evildoers is the theory that evil may start out with fair motives before the all consuming desire for power to exert their will and control and dominate others eats them up and becomes the sole objective. Now keep in mind when I say "fair motives" I DON'T mean benevolent or good intentions that benefit society as a whole, what I do mean is that originally the motivations were more likely self serving and megalomanical in nature such as seizing power to do what these people felt was right or beneficial to themselves rather than genocidal or nihilistic. Hitler for instance most likely didn't ORIGINALLY intend on committing genocide by throwing people in ovens and gas chambers but the quest for total power lead him to those twisted actions eventually.

Lets examine this theory first by looking at one of my all time favorite authors Tolkien. Tolkien states that the Darklord Sauron was not wholly evil in his beginning, in fact Tolkien states that at the beginning of the second age Sauron's motives, the rehabilitation and reorganization of Middle-Earth were indeed fair, however his arrogance and desire for the power to control and effect how that change and reorganization were carried out eventually consumed him and metastasized into something very different, the desire to exert his will and control and dominate other's.

I think this is a very common theme, for the rise of dictators/darklords, although we will likely never KNOW definitively I would speculate that Bush, Cheney and the Neo Con's original intentions weren't to torture, destroy the US Constitution or get bogged down in an almost 5 year and counting unwinnable quagmire in foreign lands............

I think they were energy men who KNEW peak oil was fast approaching, they also KNEW our economic and military dominance is predicated on cheap oil, and that Iraq and Iran were just about the ONLY countries with relatively untapped oil and gas reserves that could be increased significantly. In fact Iraq probably has the cheapest oil reserves in the world and Iran has enormous natural gas reserves and could probably almost double oil output with significant investment, all that was needed was the implementation of the Neo Con plan to overthrow the USA hostile governments and install puppet governments loyal to them and we not only would we have cheap oil to keep our economy humming for almost 2 decades, but American oil companies and those in league with them could reap vast fortunes developing and buying those reserves and rewriting the laws to give our oil companies favorable contracts. ........problem is it didn't go as planned and now the desire to dominate and exert our will in ANY way possible has superceded the original plan.

The original plan was to usher in another 20 year economic boom by insuring our access to cheap oil, they also wanted to continue Reagan's work to maintain our military dominance, and continue the erosion of safety nets and regulations protecting the working class, and permanently rig the system in favor of the wealthy. Essentially they wanted to undo the NEW DEAL, abolish Social Security, destroy unions and neuter regulatory agencies like the SEC, FCC, FDA, EPA, OSHA......etc.

Similarly, although we will never truly KNOW, although Hitler despised the Jews I think in the beginning, his original plan was not the nihilistic and genocidal extermination of a race, but rather to restore Germany's former economic and military power and pride and extricate it from the yoke of harsh, punitive war reparations. I think his seething hatred and racial prejudices combined with his megalomanical obsession with exerting his will and dominating and controlling others consumed him and transformed him in to the monster we read about today.

Lets move on to the movies, in Revenge of The Sith, when Padme is witnessing the rise of the Empire, Palpatine who manipulated the republic into war to seize and cement absolute power via dictatorship, triumphantly proclaims himself emperor and Padme says "so this is how democracy dies with thunderous applause" . It chillingly reminded me of how people cheered as the heinous Patriot Act was railroaded through Congress to give the "DECIDER" special "war powers" that further eroded the checks and balances and started the transformation of our country to a police state and dictatorship.

Another "interesting" Star Wars comparison is Dick Cheney stating he is President of the Senate and thus does not fall under, nor is he subject to Executive Orders and oversight.............kinda reminds you of Emperor Palpatine shrieking "I AM THE SENATE" or cackling "unlimited power" as he implements his coup to hijack the republic and seize ultimate power.

Anakin Skywalker is another perfect example of fair motives being corrupted and replaced with the all consuming and nihilistic obsession for the power to implement the desired changes. Anakins original desire was for the power to protect the ones he loved, end the war and restore order and justice to the universe...........eventually his obsession with power transformed him into the very thing he despised and opposed.

Fortunately if we follow this theme to its logical conclusion evil always turns on itself and defeats itself, its arrogance often blinds it. Sauron never imagined any one would even attempt to destroy the ring, the irony here is that it wasn't one of the good guys that actually destroyed the ring, it was evil that turned on itself that destroyed the ring and laid the mighty Sauron and his evil empire low, it was Gollem's greed and obsession that led to Sauron's demise. Same for Hitler, it was his arrogance that caused him to overextend himself in Russia, and hastened his demise. similarly Evil once again turned on itself when Darth Vader turned on the emperor and destroyed himself and his master. Arrogance and the megalomanical perception of omnipotence and obsession with unrivaled and untouchable power led all of the previous dark lords, and dictators to the same ruinous path to the void and the nothingness and irrelevance that awaits them.

Now that we covered the darklords and dictators its time to focus on the dunces...........GWB and the Neo Cons will be brought down by their own incompetence, pompous arrogance and perceived omnipotence, exactly WHAT will bring them down is the question of the century........lets see we have attorneygate, Iraqgate, Spygate, Libbygate, and most recently Commutationgate, that is clearly a plan to further obstruct justice by providing Libby an EXCUSE to not have to testify and likely implicate GWB and Cheney in the Plame civil suit while his appeal is going on etc..............too many more to list! I'd like to hear your opinions on what will bring about the demise of the Bush Administration


Image by Stephen Pitt Cartoons