• You don't choke on pretzels and fall off segways
  
• You don't have embarassing pictures of yourself shaking hands with Saddam
  
• You didn't kill 30,000 people and then make a joke
  
• You don't have embarassing pictures of yourself kissing Bush
  
• You don't have to have drinks with Viveca Novak
  
• You don't have to read any of Woodward's books

It goes back to George Fox who, the story goes, wouldn't take off his hat in court, pointed his finger at the judge, and yelled, "Shiver and quake in the presence of the Lord."

Dangerous bunch, we.

And John Woolman.  Danged if he wasn't subversive.  Actually talked people out of slave ownership.  Helped start a movement that led to a Civil War.  If that's not being a "subversive terrorist," what is?

Bunches of us keep ending up in prison because we won't kill people.  How despicible can you get?

Quaker terrorists have a cell meeting each Wednesday in Brooklyn, jes standin' around sayin' nothin, handin' out literature that sez the government shouldn't be in the business of puttin' people to death.

Let me end with a quote from a kid just about as devilish as any Quaker:

And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven,whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's One that's always on the lookout, and ain't a-going to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn't so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, "There was the Sunday-school, you could a gone to it; and if you'd a done it they'd a learnt you there that people that acts as I'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire."

   It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie -- I found that out.

   So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter -- and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

    Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.

    HUCK FINN.

   I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking -- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

   It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

   "All right, then, I'll go to hell" -- and tore it up.

   It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming.

Well, then I had better assume they have my name and photo already.  Hopefully they didn't miss my 16yo stepson standing next to me at our recent protests; I figure being a known subversive threat has gotta lower his risk of getting drafted.  

Is it wrong, or un-Quakerly of me, that my gut impulse to this news is a very Bushesque "Bring it on!"?  

I'm wondering precisely what the military plans to do with those names and photos when they start to see the "significant connections" between anti-war events that has heretofore been absent?  Because from what little I can discern, the antiwar movement in this country is finally beginning to get its act together.  

Hmm, I'd better e-mail this story to some friends and suggest they make a plan in case the military notices their activities and decides to disappear them to Poland for a while.  

I joke but in all seriousness folks these fascists are out to destroy anyone that disagrees with them. Notice the new meme they have added to Bush, Rummy, Condiliars speeches these past two weeks? It goes something like this, "We know there are people that disagree with our policy on Iraq and that is what Democracy is all about, but they are wrong". So its ok to disagree but not really. ALso notice(which really isn't new)the military backdrop and/or places like Heritage Foundation(Rice yesterday). These war criminals are getting spookier by the minute.

Frodo failed...Bush has got the ring.

What caught my attention was your statement Meanwhile, back in the unsexy world of news that's syrupy quaint because it actually matters and affects real people's lives,...

Lately I have been thinking along the lines of HOW can we get consistent, well done MSM that actually functions as our fore fathers intended the media to function.

When Knight Ridder became available for sale, I recalled that George Soros, Warren Buffet and other really flush Democrats had formed some sort of group earlier this year. What if Bloggers and Liberals wrote to Soros through his  foundation begging them to purchase Knight Ridder, even if it had to be under a front that disguised their identities??

Imagination running and dreaming of a BIG Christmas present for everyone...and then they could incorporate a satellite company called something like ...American News Network ---The only FACTUAL news network

Possibilities are endless for Pundits and variety; Bill Noyers NOW, Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now", Dan Rather needs some work, and of course there is Keith Olbermann, Aaron Brown, Al Gores channel, John A of AMERICAblog for a game show, Brad of Brad Blog, Dahr Jamail for on the ground news in the Middle East with input from Riverbend an of course news clips from John Amato. Jerome a Paris would be terrific with economic and energy shows, Booman could cover elections happening around the country, you could help Booman, as well as do specials for those oh so sensitive and hard hitting reports as only you can do. There could be an affiliation with BBC London for hourly world news 3-4 times a day, and an affiliation with CBC for documentaries we do not get to see in the states. I'm sure everyone has loads of other possibilities.

What do "ya all" think about begging, beseeching, pleading with George Soros at his foundation.. or am I just dreaming way too big???

"The most successful politician is he who says what the people are thinking the most often and in the loudest voice." Theodore Roosevelt.

  The credibility of potential threat as most would assume it to be isn't the only thing they have the legal right to monitor. It can be an obscure connection that generates a forward to another agency for possibilities of networking connections.

  Think "6 degrees of seperation" as one perspective.

  It's also open to personal abuse or exploitation by those in the system, neighbors or business competitors who might want to cause harm or even innocent misunderstandings.

Memos, 'Wing Nuts' and 'Hit Lists'

By Michael Getler

Sunday, June 19, 2005; Page B06

The bulk of the mail last week, by far, was focused once again on the "Downing Street Memo." This is the memo produced by a national security aide to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, based on notes taken in a meeting with Blair and his top advisers on July 23, 2002, eight months before the invasion of Iraq. It is marked "Secret and strictly personal -- UK eyes only" but was leaked to the Sunday Times of London and published May 1.

Included in the note-taker's account was an assessment by the chief of British intelligence, after returning from a visit to Washington, that: "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The memo, and the coverage and interpretation of it, continue to generate contention, especially among critics of the war and Bush administration policy. The overwhelming majority of e-mails I received last week seemed to have been prompted by a write-in campaign sponsored mostly by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a liberal, self-described media watchdog organization.

Their target this time was a column by Post staff writer Dana Milbank on June 8 in which the term "wing nuts" was used. Many of the e-mailers said the reference disparaged the real concerns of many people that the administration misrepresented the situation that led the country to war.

Milbank is one of the paper's most talented and observant reporters. On the other hand, for the past several months he has also been serving as a columnist, frequently writing observations that go beyond straight reporting in a column labeled "Washington Sketch" that appears in the news pages of the A-section. On Friday, for example, The Post covered an unofficial antiwar hearing on Capitol Hill only in a Milbank column. Several readers found this inappropriate.

Unfortunately, it has never been announced or explained to Post readers that reporter Milbank is also now columnist Milbank. The reference to "wing nuts," as in left-wing nuts and right-wing nuts, appeared in the June 8 column, not a "news story," as many e-mailers wrongly stated. This is also understandable because FAIR neglected to tell its subscribers that this was clearly marked as a "Washington Sketch" and not a news story.

Milbank's column was about the June 7 Bush-Blair news conference in Washington and it reported that "Democrats.com, a group of left-wing activists" had sent e-mails offering a "reward" for anyone who could get an answer from Bush about the report that intelligence had been "fixed" around Iraq policy. Later in the column, Milbank wrote that a reporter who did ask such a question, and who had no idea of the activists' e-mails, "wasn't trying to satisfy the wing nuts."

The sooner the majority of the public realizes the  Bush regime's entire approach to everything is dictated by a deep-seated and totally dysfunctional clinically defined pathology the sooner we can repudiate them in their entirety and set about restoring the country to some sort of reality-based path.

Denial is our most dangerous adversary.