Prairie Recommends: Dover Homecoming

.
For this president, the responsibilities of the decisions he makes are profound. His recognition of that while the yammering rightwing schoolyard bullyboys and girls prattle on deserves notice.

Obama at Dover a somber reminder that war is not posturing and screeding.

The likes of the Cheneys and their ilk should hang their heads in shame.
.

Prairie Recommends: Bob Herbert on The Ultimate Burden

.
Vacation state of mind, everybody's got it right now, except for the young college kids flooding the campuses to begin a new year. The preschoolers clutching their Crayolas heading off to kindergarten for the first time.

And then there's the precious few with something else entirely on their minds, as Bob Herbert poignantly reminds us today. Will we have a thought for them? Will we take time out to do something for them? Do our own part?

Or will we just go along to get along until those little kindergarteners are grown up enough to send off where the blood is spilled for naught.

Four soldiers were killed near Kabul today, an I.E.D. Did you know?

Do you care?

Well, then, what are you going to do about it?
.
crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

For Your 4th

.
Whatever you have on tap for this holiday weekend, take a little time out to give thought to what you can do to truly "support the troops" who don't have a choice between the usual holiday at the resort, or the beach, or the national park, or even "staycation."

Men and women are putting their lives on the line each and every day for us...in Iraq and Afghanistan...on the fire line in Big Sur...at home, ready if the call for first responders goes out.

We talk a lot here and throughout the blogosphere, and one of the things we've talked a lot about is Congress and oversight. Why, we ask, haven't the now in control Democrats put the brakes on the runaway freight train about to careen off the side of the mountaintop that is the Bush Administration?

We talk a lot...but what are we doing? How many have sought out our Senators or Congressperson to say, listen to US. Listen to America. Don't listen and vote for the special interests on K Street, like the telco's who just had their way with the House of Representatives while doling out a paltry few thousands of campaign dollars.

I'm thinking that works because the Congresscritters are tellin' themselves, if I don't vote AT&T's way, then maybe Corp X, Y and Z would see that they might not get their "money's worth" and turn off the campaign contribution spigot, too.

A screwed-up system.

On the Imus Show this week, Tom Friedman, the man who put the "FU" in friedman unit, opined, as though by a timely cosmic revelation, we've got to fix our democracy here, we've got to fix our country.*

Well no shit, Sherlock.

Welcome to reality, pal. While you've been busy furthering the friedman unit, the rest of us out here in the real world have been dealing with the consequences of the Village's blithe bolstering of the gut of Bush. And it ain't pretty. So put down that plate of cocktail wienies, step away from the RNC blast o'the hour, let go of the self-indulgent claptrap, grab your media-darling cronies, and say, hey, maybe it's about time we stopped treating this as some kind of theatre of the absurd, pushing people around like pawns—a few thousand layoffs here, a few thousand layoffs there, a few hundred thousand casualties over there, pretty soon it adds up to real yadda, yadda.

Because oversight belongs to all of us. Congress. The media. And you. And me.

So this Fourth of July, between the wienies and the fireworks, ask yourself...what am I putting on the line?
.
. Need a jump start? Christy's got some great ideas and tools over at firedoglake.

* my paraphrase, because WABC hasn't put the interview up on their website for linkage and exactitude as of this writing...not that that ever stopped the BBQ Media from runaway adoration of St. Mc and distortion of whatever they feel like distorting on any given day.

The Long War

.

War Talk takes on many forms. "Shop, shop, shop..." Or, this morning on CNN, Admiral William C. Fallon telling Kyra Phillips his recent (forced? ya think?) retirement isn't the story, confidence in the chain of command is. Or last night, on The Daily Show, John Stewart grilling Scott McClellan about the intent to mislead as pretty much the prime directive of George Bush and his administration, and ultimately Bush's ability to deceive himself. Mary Cheney shootin' off 'er mouth to the rightwing AIPAC organization about confronting Iran....

Today, on the final primary day of the Democratic nominating process, the attention is understandably focused on whether Barack Obama will lock in the nomination tonight. Will the speech in Minneapolis be "the" speech that kicks off the general election campaign.

But we need to take a moment and consider again why these votes all matter so very much.

This morning, Marine sergeant John (D.J.) Guerrero is undergoing his second surgery on the amputation of his right foot at Fargo's VA hospital. It's been a long, often painful journey that this old soldier has made. First, from the barrio of Sacramento to service in the Marines. And then, when schrapnel shot up the left side of his body, embedded, and took part of his left hand, life brought him to Fargo, where he found a home.

And where he became a good neighbor to a whole community. Tirelessly volunteering for organizations like the NDSU Teammakers and the ND Special Olympics. Co-authoring a series of books with Father William C. Sherman on the various immigrant groups who settled our state. Looking forward to the next book in the works, from the diary of a long-ago immigrant across the plains.

Visiting John yesterday, we chuckled over old times--the peaceniks and the Marine sergeant--for our friendship goes back decades.

John calls himself a poster child for the consequences of Agent Orange, because it's been some 40 years that he has, with too many other servicemen and women like him, struggled for acountability for the damage that weapon of war inflicted upon him...40 years, while it silently ate away at his body.

John was recently at the reunion of A Company, First Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment in Albuquerque when he went to the local VA hospital because his foot was in pretty tough shape. We know about such matters, even if their origin was not war. Rather than staying in Albuquerque for the necessary surgery, he had them bind him up, and he drove the long drive back to Fargo. Back home.

So today, we see the great tapestry of life weave some interesting strands. Two men, old friends, commiserating on the long road of disability ahead. Two men, who when they were young, vagabonded from Fargo to San Diego on a long ago quest for adventure. Now, timeworn and life-tested. One a disabled American veteran. One, my own sunshine.

When a certain politician jokes about Iraq and says 100 years, why not... just remember, even if we're not there in combat, the consequences are indeed that long. It's been four decades, and the consequences of Viet Nam still live within us, all of us.

So send some good karma to prairie country for John Guerrero today. And for all the John Guerreros this current war is making.

Cross-posted today at NorthDecoder.