“Canada is busy sending back Bush-dodgers. The flood of American
liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the
past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal
immigration.

The unflinching arrogance of the Bush Administration is prompting the
exodus among liberal citizens who fear they’ll soon be required to hunt,
pray, and agree with Bill O’Reilly

Canadian border farmers say it’s not uncommon to see dozens of sociology
professors, animal-rights activists, and Unitarians crossing their
fields at night. “I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there
was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn,” said Manitoba farmer Red
Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. The producer was cold,
exhausted and hungry. “He asked me if I could spare a latte and some
free-range chicken. When I said I didn’t have any, he left. Didn’t even
get a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?”

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher
fences, but the liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers
that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields. “Not real effective,” he
said. “The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much
they wouldn’t give milk”

Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals
near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive
them across the border and leave them to fend for themselves. “A lot of
these people are not prepared for rugged conditions,” an Ontario border
patrolman said. “I found one carload without a drop of drinking water.
They did have a nice little Napa Valley cabernet, though.”

When liberals are caught, they’re sent back across the border, often
wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors
have been circulating about the Bush administration establishing
re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to drink domestic
beer and watch NASCAR.

Liberals have turned to sometimes-ingenious ways of crossing the border.
Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap
Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans
disguised in powdered wigs, Canadian immigration authorities began
stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers. “If
they can’t identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we
get suspicious about their age,” an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are
creating an organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan
Sarandon movies. “I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian
economy just can’t support them,” an Ottawa resident said. “How many
art-history majors does one country need?”

In an effort to ease tensions between the United States and Canada, Vice
President Dick Cheney met with the Canadian ambassador and pledged that
the administration would take steps to reassure liberals, a source close
to Cheney said. “We’re going to have some Peter, Paul &Mary concerts.
And we might put some endangered species on postage stamps. The
president is determined to reach out.”
_______________________________________________________________________

As I was clearing out old email this morning I came across a message sent to me by a friend containing “A Woman’s Creed.” It seemd fitting to share this with you, my DS blogger friends.

A WOMAN’S CREED

We are female human beings poised on the edge of the new millennium. We
are
the majority of our species, yet we have dwelt in the shadows. We are
the
invisible, the illiterate, the laborers, the refugees, the poor.

And we vow: NO MORE

We are the women who hunger – for rice, home, freedom, each other,
ourselves.

We are the women who thirst – for clean water and laughter, literacy,
love.

We have existed at all times, in every society. We have survived
femicide.
We have rebelled – and left clues.

We are continuity, weaving future from past, logic with lyric.

We are women who stand in our sense and shout YES.

We are women who wear broken bones, voices, minds, hearts – but we are
women
who dare whisper NO.

We are women whose souls no fundamentalist cage can contain.

We are women who refuse to permit the sowing of death in our gardens,
air,
rivers, seas.

We are each precious, unique, necessary. We are strengthened and blessed
and
relieved at not having to be all the same. We are the daughters of
longing.
We are the mothers in labor to birth the politics of the 21st century.

We are the women men warned us about.

We are the women who know that all issues are ours, who will reclaim our
wisdom, reinvent our tomorrow, question and redefine everything,
including
power.

We have worked now for decades to name the details of our need, rage,
hope,
vision. We have broken our silence, exhausted our patience. we are weary
of
listing on our suffering – to entertain or be simply ignored. We are
done
with vague words and real waiting; famishing for action, dignity, joy.
We
intend to do more than merely endure and survive.

They have tried to deny us, define us, denounce us; to jail, enslave,
exile,
gas, rape, beat, burn, bury – and bore us. Yet nothing, not even the
offer
to save their failed system, can grasp us.

For thousands of years, women have had responsibility without power -
while
men have had power without responsibility. We offer those men who risk
being
brothers a balance, a future, a hand. But with or without them, we will
go
on.

For we are the Old Ones, The New Breed, the Natives who came first but
lasted, indigenous to an utterly different dimension. We are the girl
child
in Zambia, the grandmother in Burma, the woman in El Salvador and
Afghanistan, Finland and Fiji. We are whale-song and rainforest; the
depth-wave rising huge to shatter the glass power on the shore; the lost
and
despised who, weeping, stagger into the light.

All this we are. We are intensity, energy, the people speaking – who no
longer will wait and who cannot be stopped.

We are poised on the edge of the millennium – ruin behind us, no map
before
us, the taste of fear sharp on our tongues.

Yet we will leap.

The exercise of imagining is an act of creation.

The act of creation is an exercise of will.

All this is political. And possible.

Bread. A Clean Sky. Active peace. A woman’s voice singing somewhere,
melody
drifting like smoke from the cookfires. The army disbanded, the harvest
abundant. The wound healed, the child wanted, the prisoner freed, the
body’s
integrity honored, the lover returned. The magical skill that reads
marks
into meaning. The labor equal, fair, and valued. Delight in the
challenge
for consensus to solve problems. No hand raised in any gesture but
greeting.
Secure interiors – of heart, home, land, – so firm as to make secure
borders
irrelevant at last. And everywhere laughter, care, celebration, dancing,
contentment. A humble, early paradise, in the now.

We will make it real, make it our own, make policy, history, peace, make
it
available, make mischief, a difference, love, the connection, the
miracle,
ready.

Believe it.

We are the women who will transform the world
Written by Robin Morgan, in collaboration with Perdita Huston, Sunetra
Puri,
Mahnaz Afkhami, Diane Faulkner, Corrine Kumar, Simla Wali, Paola
Melchiari
1994.

As you probably know, California’s passage of the Civil Marriage and Religious Protection Act (AB849) would grant equal marriage rights to same-sex couples and affirm the basic rights of all Californians.

For the first time in history, a marriage equality bill has passed through a state legislature. The bill could reach Governor Schwarzenegger’s desk this week.
The Governor has indicated that he will veto this historic legislation.
Governor Schwarzenegger needs to hear from the entire country that the passage of this Act will ensure equal treatment under the law for all Californians. The elected officials from California have already spoken for the people, and now it is time to show the Governor that signing this Act into law is the right thing to do.

Call Governor Schwarzenegger directly at: (916) 445- 2841 and urge him to sign AB 849, and affirm the equal rights of all Californians, or fax him a letter at (916) 445-4633.

Thank you for your support in this monumentous occasion. Don’t miss out on your opportunity to be a part of history in the making!

Sincerely,

Joe Solmonese, HRC President

While Katrina’s dead have not yet been counted, it’s not too soon to hammer home a point: government policies have real consequences in people’s lives.

Like many of you who love New Orleans, I find myself taking short mental walks there today, turning a familiar corner, glimpsing a favorite scene, square or vista. And worrying about the beloved friends and the city, and how they are now.

To use a fine Southern word, it’s tacky to start playing the blame game before the dead are even counted. It is not too soon, however, to make a point that needs to be hammered home again and again, and that is that government policies have real consequences in people’s lives. This is not “just politics” or blaming for political advantage. This is about the real consequences of what governments do and do not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying the price for those policies.

This is a column for everyone in the path of Hurricane Katrina who ever said, “I’m sorry, I’m just not interested in politics,” or, “There’s nothing I can do about it,” or, “Eh, they’re all crooks anyway.” Nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my life, nothing I can do about any of it. Look around you this morning. I suppose the NRA would argue, “Government policies don’t kill people, hurricanes kill people.”

Actually, hurricanes plus government policies kill people. One of the main reasons New Orleans is so vulnerable to hurricanes is the gradual disappearance of the wetlands on the Gulf Coast that once stood as a natural buffer between the city and storms coming in from the water. The disappearance of those wetlands does not have the name of a political party or a particular administration attached to it. No one wants to play, “The Democrats did it,” or, “It’s all Reagan’s fault.”

Many environmentalists will tell you more than a century’s interference with the natural flow of the Mississippi is the root cause of the problem, cutting off the movement of alluvial soil to the river’s great delta. But in addition to long-range consequences of long-term policies like letting the Corps of Engineers try to build a better river than God, there are real short-term consequences, as well.

It is a fact that the Clinton administration set some tough policies on wetlands, and it is a fact that the Bush administration repealed those policies — ordering federal agencies to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands. Last year, four environmental groups cooperated on a joint report showing the Bush administration’s policies had allowed developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands.

Does this mean we should blame Bush for the fact that New Orleans is underwater? No, but it means we can blame Bush when a Class 3 or Class 2 hurricane puts New Orleans underwater.

At this point, it is a matter of making a bad situation worse, of failing to observe the First Rule of Holes (when you’re in one, stop digging). Had a storm the size of Katrina just had the grace to hold off for a while, it’s quite likely no one would even remember what the Bush administration did two months ago.

The national press corps has the attention span of a gnat, and trying to get anyone in Washington to remember longer than a year ago is like asking them what happened in Iznik, Turkey, in A.D. 325. Just plain political bad luck that, in June, Bush took his little ax and chopped $71.2 million from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction.

As was reported in New Orleans CityBusiness at the time, that meant “major hurricane and flood projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now.”

The commander of the Corps’ New Orleans district also immediately instituted a hiring freeze and cancelled the annual Corps picnic. Our friends at the Center for American Progress note the Office of Technology Assessment used to produce forward-thinking plans such as “Floods: A National Policy Concern” and “A Framework for Flood Hazards Management.” Unfortunately, the office was targeted by Newt Gingrich and the Republican right, and gutted years ago.

In fact, there is now a government-wide movement away from basing policy on science, expertise and professionalism, and in favor of choices based on ideology. If you’re wondering what the ideological position on flood management might be, look at the pictures of New Orleans — it seems to consist of gutting the programs that do anything.

Unfortunately, the war in Iraq is directly related to the devastation left by the hurricane. About 35 percent of Louisiana’s National Guard is now serving in Iraq, where four out of every 10 soldiers are guardsmen. Recruiting for the Guard is also down significantly because people are afraid of being sent to Iraq if they join, leaving the Guard even more short-handed.

The Louisiana National Guard also notes that dozens of its high-water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators have also been sent abroad. (I hate to be picky, but why do they need high-water vehicles in Iraq?) This, in turn, goes back to the original policy decision to go into Iraq without enough soldiers and the subsequent failure to admit that mistake and to rectify it by instituting a draft.

The levees of New Orleans, two of which are now broken and flooding the city, were also victims of Iraq war spending. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, said on June 8, 2004, “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq.”

This, friends, is why we need to pay attention to government policies, not political personalities, and to know whereon we vote. It is about our lives.

Molly Ivins writes about politics, Texas and other bizarre happenings.