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We, the People of the Democratic Party, Part 3
2008-04-01 04:31:00
    It’s A Landslide Victory     for the People  By Hank Edson After the worst presidency in history, during most of which the Republican Part y controlled all three branches of government, we, the people of the Democratic Party are going to win a landslide victory in November over John McCain and the Republican Party. We need to begin every thought with this sentence. We need to test every opinion we hear against this sentence too. We need to use the heft of our conviction on this point in responding to the voices that thrive on confusion. The corporate media has two agendas. One is ratings. The other is aiding corporate control of the American people’s government. Both agendas are served by projecting a “tight” race for the presidency. We’ve got to be more sophisticated if we, the people of the Democratic Party , really want control of our government. We have to know our truth and their lies. Even when appropriately an...

We, the People of the Democratic Party, Part 2
2008-03-28 02:35:00
Hillary Clinton's Big State Lie       By Hank Edson No matter who the Democratic Part y nominates, that candidate ought to win hands down--following as he or she will, the worst administration in history, during which the Republican Party controlled all three branches of government. That's why diverting the political discourse into considering any other alternative is to put oneself at odds with the interests of the Democratic Party . We, the people of the Democratic Party, already have a resounding victory.  Don't tell us our victory is at risk; it is not.  Don't tell us you will save us; we don't need to be saved.We don’t need a candidate selection process, in fact; anyone will do. Make no mistake about this. The fact that we would like a genuine leader does not mean that we are in doubt about our victory over the abusive politics of Republican rule.  It does not mean that we are for an answer to our fears.  We are not afr...
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We, the People of the Democratic Party, Part 1
2008-03-26 06:18:00
John Edwards, Where Are You Now?      By Hank Edson As the number of Americans killed in President Bush’s deceitful war surpasses 4000, this shameful milestone ought to be the Democratic Part y ’s bully pulpit for a saner, safer, more humane government. On one hand, it ought to be a bully pulpit that speaks for itself. The leadership of the Democratic Party ought to circle the American people around it for a moment of profound and deliberative silence. On the other hand, it ought to be a bully pulpit from which the tragic aftermath of Republican rule of all three branches of government during the majority of Bush’s administration is reviewed with eloquent and angry common sense. One thing is sure, with 4000 Americans killed by the Republican management of foreign policy, the general election should already be won by the Democratic Party. John McCain’s showing in the polls should be as low as George Bush and Dick Cheney’s approval ratin...
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A Declaration of Renewed Principle
2008-02-29 08:52:00
A New Rule and A New Generation     By Hank Edson Americans want change. A spirit of optimism is awakening in the new generation. A new rule of equality and justice for all waits to be born in the politics of our nation. A secret is being whispered from ear to ear by the young and the visionary. The secret is our non-negotiable unity as human beings. The old generation doesn’t understand this point and their failure to understand it betrays a lack of commitment to truly advancing humanity through democracy. Even when the heroes of the old generation proclaimed our essential equality, they proclaimed it only for “all men” and then continued to hold many as slaves. The pattern they gave us has been flawed from the start, flawed by its violation of our non-negotiable unity. We now see where the progress of this pattern has led. We see that the old generation has built a political process in which the campaign contributions of the top 5 percent matter mo...
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Campaign 2008
2008-01-31 06:18:00
A Positive   Vision   of 21st   Century   Democracy We need to be as ambitious in envisioning political process integrity as John Edwards has been honest in talking about political process corruption.By Hank EdsonFor supporters of John Edwards, the end of his 2008 campaign for the presidency should not be spent in either deep gloom or false bravado.  The future of the cause Edwards champions remains open and John Edwards’ influence on the rest of this campaign and perhaps on the next four years is unknown.  We would be mistaken to write him out of our script just because he has bowed out of the race for the presidency.  At the same time, clearly his campaign is lost and what is most appropriate in the face of this political loss is to take stock of the lessons we can learn from it.  They are not Edwards’ lessons to learn alone, but are instructive to the entire nation.What we learn from the Edwards campaign is that American po...
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Campaign 2008
2008-01-26 00:01:00
 What the   Reagan-Flap   Really Says   about Obama,    Clinton,and  Edwards By Hank Edson The recent flap over Barack Obama’s comments on Ronald Reagan speaks volumes about what distinguishes our three democratic presidential candidates. But what it says is not complementary to either Obama or Clinton. Instead, once again, it shows us that John Edwards is the real candidate all Democrats should support. Obama’s Intent When Obama described Reagan’s Republican Party as the “party of ideas,” his intention was to use Reagan as a sort of yardstick for measuring whether or not a candidate has the mojo to rally a large majority of the nation’s political support. By invoking the concept of “the Reagan Democrat,” Obama intended to show that the Clintons did not measure up to the Reagan yardstick and to suggest, however, that he would. Obama was thus casting a Clinton White House as one which would l...
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Campaign 2008
2008-01-21 19:48:00
   Goldilocks     and the Three Candidates    By Hank EdsonIt was primary day in the forest and so Goldilocks told her mother she was going to go vote. Goldilocks was a democrat and she was terrified at the terrible condition of her country. Her vote today mattered a great deal to both her and her country. She left her home and went down the path to the local library where the voting booths were all set up. The kind young man at the welcome counter had her sign her name in the register and gave her a voting card to take into the poll booth. When Goldilocks had pulled the curtain closed behind her and sat down on the stool in the voting booth, she was surprised at what she saw. Instead of a computer screen with a touch pad, there was a counter with a slot for her voting card in the side and three porcelain mugs resting on top. Each mug had the face of a different candidate on it. Goldilocks impulsively picked up the Barack Obama mug. She had he...
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Campaign 2008
2008-01-17 02:19:00
     The Survivor, The Meteor, and the Champion      By Hank EdsonThey all can win in the general election; therefore, the question is which will be best for our nation? Consider:The Survivor: Hilary Clinton has a record of change. She also has a record of failure, a record of compromise, and a record of working with corporatists who have corrupted our system and turned it against the American people. Clinton, in short, has the record of a survivor. She aspired to heroism in attempting to overhaul our health care system in ’92, but the abuse she suffered taught her to be more calculating. Her husband had the strength and intelligence to balance the budget, but this achievement was a matter of fiscal common sense; it was not a demonstration of a moral commitment to justice and liberty for all. If our country was a corporation, Bill Clinton might be regarded as the best leader we ever had, but our country is much more than a corporation. I...
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Campaign 2008
2008-01-07 02:43:00
It’s Our Democracy, Stupid. Why the Progressive Movement Needs to Unite Behind John Edward By Hank EdsonLast August I proposed in two sequential opinion pieces that perhaps John Edwards was the man progressives should rally around in order to have the most beneficial impact on our direction as a nation. (See Edwards, Does He Mean It and Edwards/Kucinich 2008 ? )  At that time, however, we were still months away from the primaries and many readers were not persuaded by my argument. I am hoping that following this weekend’s New Hampshire democratic presidential campaign debate, the time may now be ripe for an organized effort to demonstrate unified progressive endorsement of John Edwards for President of the United States. Saturday night saw four democratic candidates at the debate podiums: John Edwards, Barrack Obama, Bill Richardson, and Hillary Clinton, from left to right across the TV screen. Each candidate urged the voters to apply a different standard in sel...
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Corporate High Crimes and Gross Inhumanity
2007-12-18 02:21:00
The Bottom Line on the  Halliburton Rape Cases  By Hank EdsonThe FactsThe facts are despicable, criminal, worse than animal, just absolutely ugly. In 2005, 20-year-old Jamie Leigh Jones of Houston, Texas had just signed on to work in Iraq for a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR), one of the private military contractors most used by the United States military. Just two days after arriving in Iraq to begin her job, a group of several of her American co-workers drugged her, gang raped her, and left her naked to wake up bleeding and in pain, still groggy from the drugs she had been slipped. Jones writes that she would eventually need surgery because “my attackers tore my pectoral muscles due to the brutality of the attack.” When she got back from the Army doctors who told her she had been repeatedly raped “both vaginally and anally,” however, Halliburton/KBR’s immediate response was to place Jones under guard inside a shipping ...
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Impeach Bush and Cheney Now!
2007-12-06 05:23:00
    The Neo-Con Foreign Policy     of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy    Yet Again: Why We Must Impeach    President Bush and Vice President Cheney  By Hank Edson A Time for Humble PieOn Tuesday, President Bush reported to the nation and the world that a recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluded that four years ago Iran had stopped its covert program aimed at developing nuclear weapons. To many sober minds, this news would be cause not only for a little celebration, but also a little humble pie. After all, over the past several months, the President and other senior members of his administration have depicted Iran over the last several months as bent upon acquiring nuclear weapons. As recently as October, President Bush said in a press conference, “ I think so long -- until they suspend and/or make it clear that they -- that their statements aren't real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledg...
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Political Process Integrity
2007-12-01 10:18:00
Oprah Good; Pundits Bad By Hank Edson With the writer’s strike in play, the nation has been badly missing its nightly dose of John Stewart, especially when it comes to those clips showing a series of one pundit after another banally repeating the same talking points with overwrought intensity. What has particularly been driving me crazy these past few days is hearing over and over again one pundit after another saying they don’t think Oprah Winfrey will have that much impact on the presidential campaign and that she might be getting in over her head. What the pundits don’t get about Oprah is that she is like MoveOn.org and Ross Perot: She is an available high capacity vehicle for the people’s political energy in a time when the political process is completely clogged up by corruption and our government is utterly dysfunctional. It’s not about Oprah’s impact. And she doesn’t have to pass any “gotcha” question test. All Oprah has t...
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Handmaiden to the GOP
2007-11-19 06:14:00
        ;  Fire Robert Novak! By Hank Edson "I may have called you a douchebag... but I only said those things because I honestly think you're a horrible person!"          ;      &nbs p;      &nb sp;      &n bsp;      & nbsp;          -- John Stewart Robert Novak’s unseemly brand of journalism should have been amply demonstrated by his role in publishing the identity of an active undercover CIA agent, exposing her and multiple other agents around the world to life-threatening danger. In how many professions, after all, would a person be allowed to cause the type of damage and danger that Novak’s revelations caused and still be allowed to keep their job? In how many professions would it matter whether or not the individual who caused ...
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A Call to Duty, Drafting Mr. Gore
2007-11-08 05:36:00
The Answer to Bloomberg?         ;      &nbs p;      &nb sp;     Ad-Free Gore !  By Hank EdsonI originally posted this piece in a slightly different form back in June, when Bloomberg decided to drop out of the Republican Party.  Since Newsweek devoted it's cover story to Bloomberg this week, I thought it was time to reiterate the thoughts I had in June.When New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg broke from the Republican Party this June, there was widespread speculation that he would make an independent run at the presidency using his own fortune. This past week Newsweek renewed interest in this possibility by devoting its cover to Bloomberg’s presidential ambitions. Bloomberg, however, is just the latest act in a political season burgeoning with discontented energy after six plus years of the worst presidency in our history. To begin with, there were all tho...
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Demand Impeachment!
2007-10-24 02:28:00
Extraordinary Rendition:    Apologies Are Not Enough  By Hank Edson After Two Years, It’s Still Business As Usual The Bush administration’s determined and diseased compulsion to torture ought to be reason enough to impeach George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but sadly, it is far from the only reason for taking such politically responsible, humanitarian action. The White House has claimed itself justified in the exercise of a totalitarian brutality that begins with unprovoked shock and awe mass murder of innocent populations, and then swiftly proceeds past torture into the worst nightmares of Joseph Kafka or George Orwell. We are all hopefully aware by now that the depravi ty of the war on terror extends well beyond heinous torture and involves something the administration refers to as: “extraordinary rendition.” Extraordinary rendition consists of the seizing of foreign individuals in the midst of their daily lives, refusing them any comm...
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MP3 Away: Replay of June Torture Post
2007-10-17 12:11:00
   We Want Our Humanity Represented! Impeachment for Torture , Now! by Hank Edson(This Post was published by CommonDreams.org on July 1, 2007: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/ 07/01/2227/)There is no shortage of reasons why we should impeach President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. Their crimes are so extensive and so egregious that it is hard to find time to grasp just how deliberate their pursuit has been over the past several years. Today’s topic, torture and how impeachment for torture is necessary to the representation of humanity in our democracy, does not even cover the subset of impeachable offenses: war crimes. By my count, this subset contains six separate impeachable war crimes committed by Bush and Cheney: (1) the supreme war crime of commencing a war of aggression, (2) torture, (3) extraordinary rendition, (4) termination of habeas corpus, (5) inhumane weaponry (such as daisy cutters, depleted uranium shells, and phosphorus bombs), and (6) the us...
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Progressive Profiles
2007-10-10 00:59:00
   What’s It    All About,    Barack?   By Hank Edson      Is it just me, or has America already gotten tired of the 2008 presidential campaign, more than a year before the actual election? Has the corporate media winded itself in its frenzied impulse to hype meaningless content 24/7? Why does it seem in early October 2007 that the 2008 campaign has already come and gone, complete with YouTube presidential debates, “fundraising primaries,” and book tour after book tour? In the eerie emptiness of campaign news, we have a moment of contemplation available in which to reflect upon the strange Twilight Zone of historical moments in which we presently find ourselves. This is the first presidential campaign in over 50 years with no incumbent president or vice-president seeking the oval office. We find ourselves not only at war, and not just the unjust aggressors in that war, but also the duped people of a d...
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Can We Stop the War and Torture?
2007-10-05 04:05:00
New Secret Torture Memos;    Nationwide Protest on October 27th!    By Hank Edson   Just as they say that the one thing that never changes is change itself, the one thing we have learned about the Bush administration is that we always have more to learn. Today, The New York Times has published an important article by Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen detailing the Bush administration’s still active pursuit of the right to torture, now three years after the passage of the McCain Detainee Treatment Act, which was intended to outlaw what was already twice illegal: torture under the Geneva Conventions ratified by the United States in 1955 and also under the the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996. Some of the story has entered into the public lexicon, “the torture memo,” “Abu Ghraib,” and “waterboarding” are now sadly common usage in American English, a fact that makes me want to resort to the Oxford Dictionary of...
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Jena and American Racism
2007-10-02 21:03:00
America’s Crime      Against Its Own Humanity  By Hank EdsonWe are a nation and a culture recklessly out of balance in many more ways than one. I will not count the ways here, but will say that in addition to war, the criminal abuse of our political process by our executive branch, and global warming, we also have our own deep seated racism still twisting our American soul and we must not ignore it in the coming presidential campaign. Now, as always, but now more than ever, it is a time when we must try once more to look at our own moral culpability as a society straight on. Lately, reality has been challenging us to do this, but we have been resisting with all the determination of a corporate media intent on discussing O.J. Simpson rather than focus on what happened in Jena . Jena is a challenge for us to look at ourselves more honestly, a challenge to look more thoroughly, more deeply into just how strong our racism remains inside us. JenaIn case you ...
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A Call to Protest!
2007-09-29 23:53:00
 Let’s Honk Our Horns    as a “Last Resort” By Hank EdsonOn March 8, 2003, President Bush gave a presidential radio address discussing his “War on Terror.” A major portion of his address was devoted to his claims that Saddam Hussein was not complying with weapons inspections, was not disarming, and that “he possesses weapons of terror.” He ended his address, saying, “We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force. Across the world, and in every part of America, people of goodwill are hoping and praying for peace. Our goal is peace -- for our own nation, for our friends, for our allies and for all the peoples of the Middle East. People of goodwill must also recognize that allowing a dangerous dictator to defy the world and build an arsenal for conquest and mass murder is not peace at all; it is pretense. The cause of peace will be ad...
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BLOGGERS UNITE!
2007-09-27 06:43:00
Vote Green  To Stop the Abuse Of All who Depend Upon a Clean and Natural Planetary Environment!September 27 is Bloggers Unit e Against Abuse Day: MP3 is Proud to Participate By Hank Edson The hardest part about abuse in all its forms is that it almost always involves a cycle of repetition magnified through a complex network of co-dependent relationships, wreaking a social havoc that spreads outward in incalculable shudders through the lives of one’s community, as an earthquake shaking city skyscrapers. Such is the case with the largest scale, if not yet the most violent or egregious, case of abuse human beings have ever known, committed, or suffered: global warming. So who are the abused and who are the abusers? What is the community in peril here? Obviously, we are all touched in some way. As a spiritual person in a scientific way, believing that there is a conscious intelligence at the quantum foundation of existence where light energy and creative in...

Profiles In Shame
2007-09-25 01:46:00
   A Bad CharacterBy Hank EdsonRecent events have me thinking about character.  Character is the perennial campaign issue the GOP falls back on whenever their pandering to the wealthy leaves them no other reason to offer the American People for voting Republican.  “We may be stealing your last hard earned nickel,” they say to us voters, “but at least we have moral strength!”  Hunh?The False Wall Between Morality and PolicyIt is bad enough that the GOP has so long succeeded in compartmentalizing personal moral character in the public eye as something completely separate from one’s positions on policies regarding the social welfare of the vast majority of voters.  For years the media has bought hook line and sinker this illegitimate segregation of the private and public spheres.  As we all know, for example, the talking heads raged over Bill Clinton’s betrayal of his marriage as though it were the most condemnable ...
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The Wisdom of the Best about the Worst
2007-09-21 04:25:00
What Would Lincoln Do? “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” By Hank EdsonOne of the often quoted facts about the American Civil War is that more Americans died in it than died in all the other wars combined.  The number of American Civil War dead is estimated at approximately 620,000 people.  The President who presided over this carnage we regard as our greatest.  Why do you think that is, dear reader?  Isn’t it at least a little strange? Before you answer, let me suggest we take a moment to read Lincoln’s own thoughts on this carnage.  In his second inaugural address, Lincoln spoke of man’s intentions and man’s relationship to God, in an attempt to puzzle out the meaning of so much terrible death.  Referring to both sides of the war, Lincoln reflected:“Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fund...
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The President's Hostages
2007-09-17 17:21:00
The False Dilemma    Over War Funding By Hank Edson Last week General David Petraeus gave his long awaited report on whether President Bush’s troop “surge” plan had achieved sufficient success to reverse the opinion of two thirds of Americans who want our troops brought home ASAP. President Bush then gave a national address in which he was expected to lay out a clear strategy for moving ahead in Iraq based on the success of the surge or for pulling out of Iraq based on its failure. Of course, what the American people got from the Bush administration was predictable based on past performance. What we got was an artfully vague choreography of political manipulation in which the big picture was hidden from view, a few positive details were exaggerated, change was postponed, and deception was employed by presenting a plan to “reduce” troop levels that merely brought the number of troops in Iraq back to the level they were before the “su...
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Campaign 2008
2007-09-13 23:35:00
        ;      &nbs p;      &nb sp;       Senator Clinton:     &nb sp;  Change from Within or More of the Same?  By Hank EdsonThanks to our lucky stars, The Declaration of Independence did not justify compromise; it did not state that “we have found a way to work with the monarchists, such that we will be severing our ties with our parent corporation and spinning-off a new elite, which will hence forth direct slavery operations under a more liberalized profit sharing program.” Hillary Clinton is the subject of Newsweek’s cover story this week. Newsweek’s portrait of her is largely flattering describing her as a politician whose life has been committed to making change within the system. In the final question of her interview, Jonathan Darman asks, “What about the biggest difference between Hillary Cli...
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Measuring the Death Toll
2007-09-11 16:19:00
On 9/11, The Question Is:    What Are We Forgetting?   By Hank Edson Less than 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001, the culmination of a criminal conspiracy that was years in the making. According to the Center for Disease Control, in 2005, 16,885 people died as a result of alcohol-related car accidents in the United States. Thus, the annual death toll resulting from a culture of alcohol addiction, callous disregard for personal responsibility, and a consumer industry that markets intoxication as happiness is over 5 times the death toll arising from terrorism in the United States in the worst year ever recorded for terrorism in America. In 2005, handguns killed over 30,000 people in America. This is 10 times the worst ever annual death toll for terrorism in America. Like the culture of Alcohol, we deliberately sustain a culture of...READ MORE!         ;      &nbs p;     &nb...
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Political Process Integrity
2007-09-10 07:27:00
   Electoral College Chaos  in California By Hank EdsonBack in June, I posted an article entitled, “Campaign Issue: Targets in the Electoral College,” in which I wrote, “ As 2008 approaches, the Democratic nominee should make scrapping the electoral college a campaign issue.” I lamented that “[w]hat was once the key to building a democratic union has today become a means of isolating the weakest link by the anti-democratic ideologues that have taken over the Republican Party.” That’s the reason the Bush campaign was able to steal the presidency first in Florida in 2000 and again in Ohio in 2004. While writing these thoughts I was anticipating that yet another battle ground state would become the shame of the nation in the next election. The Republican Party would rape Pennsylvania or Michigan of its political process integrity in 2008. Perhaps this prediction will come true. In the mean time, however, a new development has ari...
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Campaign 2008
2007-09-07 22:13:00
     Bill’s New Book    is "Giving" me a headache By Hank Edson  Former President Bill Clinton is touring the talk shows selling his new book, Giving, and it’s giving me a headache. I don’t like the way Clinton co-opts corporate friendly, conservative policy and rhetoric and then brands it as a new form of liberalism. It’s as annoying to me as George W. Bush’s attempt to co-opt a social conscience from truly progressive proponents of democratic principles. In the case of Clinton's new book, “Giving” just reminds me too much of Bush’s “Compassionate Conservatism.” Clinton’s preaching of the civic duty of philanthropy sounds too much like Bush’s “Faith Based Initiative.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against giving. I am not against generosity. And I am not against virtue. It’s just that there’s something inherently in poor t...
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The Voters' Role
2007-09-06 07:16:00
   Building Progressive Unity By Hank Edson A week ago I wrote an opinion piece about John Edwards. Edwards had taken a step out onto the ledge of progressive rhetoric, and, while he was out there, I wanted to give him a push. That is, I wanted to see him truly commit to the plunge implied by his posturing. The article was published in CommonDreams and the blog-style forum discussion that followed directed my attention toward the process of public discourse. Initially, many readers were frustrated that more truly progressive candidates, such as Dennis Kucinich, Mike Ravel and Ralph Nader, were ignored by my article. Interestingly, their criticism was not aimed at what I said, but at something I failed to say. Although these readers did not seem to recognize value in challenging a more mainstream candidate to become more progressive, I did recognize value in their complaints. Because the mass media neglects these truly progressive candidates so severely, writers on the prog...
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Campaign 2008
2007-09-04 06:30:00
Edwards/Kucinich 2008 ?  By Hank Edson (This Post was published by CommonDreams.org on September 4, 2007: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/ 09/04/3597/)The Gold Standard for Progressive Candidates Last week, CommonDreams published an article I wrote, which was in  part about a speech made by John Edwards. In the speech in question, Edwards set forth the rule by which I think all candidates for the presidency should be judged: Are they anti-corporate power or are they corporate owned? I titled my piece, “ Edwards, Does He Mean It? ,” but CommonDreams gave it a new title, which better suited the full scope of my discussion. Without its original title, however, many readers interpreted my discussion to be an endorsement of John Edwards. In fact, it was meant as a challenge: “You have spoken bold words, Mr. Edwards; now, show us that you really mean them.” Thanks to reader participation in CommonDreams-type forums, we all learn a tremendous amount...
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