Thanksgiving 2007

It may be difficult this Thanksgiving to find much to be thankful for, living in these dark days of our seventh year under King George’s rule. A reign marked by secrecy, deceit, unjust war, terror, and fear mongering. We also discover more each week about the White House’s open contempt for the rule of law and its shameless hostility towards citizen’s rights. We watch helplessly as their crony capitalism robs the national treasury.

It is now sadly becoming a string of revelations, as we learn more and more about a Congress that cares less and less about our Constitution and the liberties it once granted us. If, as Pelosi says, “Impeachment is off the table,” then so is the Constitutional mechanism for justice.

Our nation’s dwindling freedoms and faltering democracy have fallen into as dismal a condition as any living person can remember.

Nevertheless I will try to look for the things for which we can still be thankful. Optimism and hope must never be abandoned by freedom loving people. Tyrants fall and empires collapse.

For now, we can be thankful for a roof over our heads, for the love and support of family and friends, and yes, for the food on our table.

Let us also be thankful for the spirit of freedom and justice that moves our new heroes.

Let us thank those who have spoken truth to power, and acted on their words.

Thanks to Cindy Sheehan for her sacrifice and her efforts towards the cause of peace.

Thanks to the Dixie Chicks for speaking out earlier than most against the war and its instigator.

Thanks to Air America Radio for countering the right wing corporate media.

Thanks to Keith Olbermann for his special comments and courage to broadcast them.

Thanks to Paul Riekoff and his Operation Truth and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Thanks to Lieutenant Ehren Watada for having the vision and conviction to refuse orders to fight in Iraq on grounds that the war is illegal, and having the courage to face a court martial for it.

Thanks to Doris "Granny D" Haddock for her walk across America, in support of the cause to eliminate private money from elections.

Thanks to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson for exposing Bush’s lie intended to start a war in the State of the Union Address.

Thanks to Valerie Plame Wilson for her service to our country, until she was treasonously betrayed by the White House

Thanks to John Dean for his book, Conservatives without Conscience.

Thanks to Richard Clarke for his book, Against All Enemies.

Thanks to Elizabeth de la Vega for writing The United States v. George W. Bush.

Thanks to Wil S. Hylton for writing The People v. Richard Cheney.

Thanks to Neil Young for his album "Living with War".

Thanks to the Huffington Post, the Daily Kos, MoveOn.org, and the other bloggers for their very necessary questioning of authority.

Thanks to Bill Moyers for bringing some conscience and genuine investigation to television.

Thanks to Michael Moore for the film SiCKO, showing us a country’s greatness must also be measured by how it treats its sick people.

Thanks to Robert Greenwald for his films Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, Uncovered: The War on Iraq, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, and Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers.

Thanks to retired AT&T technician Mark Klein for alerting us to the illegal wiretapping and data mining by the NSA at the AT&T central office on Folsom Street in San Francisco.

Thanks to John Edwards for saying on November 15th at the Democratic Presidential Debate in Las Vegas,”… 37 million people in this country live in poverty every day; 47 million Americans have no health care coverage. And there is a fundamental choice that everyone in this room, and Democratic voters have to make. And that is, who do you believe will take on this system and change it so that it's no longer rigged, corrupt, and rigged against the interests of the American people. That is the fundamental choice. ..
When is our party going to show a little backbone and strength and courage and speak up for those people who have been left behind? “

Thanks to Dennis Kucinich for House Resolution 333 calling for Cheney’s impeachment.

And thanks to William S. Burroughs for his Thanksgiving Prayer.