Friday, July 30, 2004

Update, found the transcripts I was looking for..more to come.

Update:  I have found the Actual speech Rev. Al Sharpton presented at DNC and added it.  There was a press release speech it was planned for him to give, and he gave a quite different and rousingly patriotic speech instead..why, in response to the President's challenge on the African-American vote.  It's quite a powerful speech.



I also found the speech for Ret. Lt. Col. Steve Brozak and added that one.

I have also several other speeches, including Al Gore, and I will continue to add the speeches over the days ahead as I get time.  And of course, must have is John Kerry's acceptance speech.


 

For now, you can visit the more notable speeches at

 
http://coastalrain.tripod.com/liettarugersweblog/id10.html

 

And well, of course, you can find all the transcripts at the DNC website.

Thursday, July 29, 2004

Transcripts of Keynote Speakers at Democratic National Convention

  The primary broadcast channels are NOT showing the Democratic National Convention and some of those especially riveting and memorable speeches by some of the keynote speakers, like Barak Obama, Bill Clinton, Al Sharpton,   marine Lt. Col. Steve Brozak, Al Gore (the truel elected President), Teresa Heinz Kerry and some other notable speeches. 

 

  So I'm collecting the transcripts and putting them in one place on a website (yep, I'm building it)   and you can see the transcripts at

 

http://coastalrain.tripod.com/liettarugersweblog/id10.html   

 

 

   Help.....   I am still looking for the transcipt for what Rev. Al Sharpton actually said, not the press release speech.   He did some last minute changes and offered up a noteworthy speech that I want to collect, it will be historical.    

 

   I'm also looking for the transcript of speeches made by 

 

    .. marine Lt. Col. Steve Brozak, who served in Iraq, he was Republican and dismayed by what he is seeing in Iraq has switched to Democratic party, plans to vote for John Kerry.   He speaks for many officers and soldiers that have no public voice.    

 

  .. Al Gore,   the authentically elected President  

 

    We are actually watching the Democratic National Convention each night this week on PBS channel and CNN is also showing.   Interestingly, and sadly the major broadcast channels, CBS, ABC, NBC   are NOT showing coverage.

 

   Interesting, because these are public channels who are given the public air waves at no charge and have legal responsibility to cover elections....  

 

   quoted   "Democracy, the Ultimate Reality TV..... The Big Three networks have decided that our democracy is bad for their business, which is why this week viewers were treated to worm munching (NBC's Fear Factor), puking (CBS's Big Brother 5) and liposuction (ABC's Extreme Makeover) instead of primetime convention coverage from Boston’s Fleet Center. "

 

    If you have the transcripts or can point me in the right direction, email me at   
deersong@swandeer.com                thanks.



Crabgrass, why this name?

 First entry in Crabgrass blog.  Why did I name it crabgrass.....well, because I wanted to name it Dandelions but someone else cleverly thought of that name.  I wanted Dandelions because they are a flower that springs up in the yard and garden from seemingly nowhere and anywhere it wants to sprout.  That is what my thoughts feel like sometimes.
 
  Okay, so if not Dandelions, then what else springs up unbidden...ahhh, Crabgrass.  And yeah, that works, maybe even better cause my astrological sign is the Crab and lately my thoughts have felt pretty crabby!  So Crabgrass it is then. 
 
   Now to see what I will do with this blog...I'm on a roll just now, this is not the first blog I've done, but it's a new container for capturing those thoughts that spring up here and there and aren't necessarily in keeping with a theme. 

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

President Bush on Drugs

Bush Using Drugs to Control Depression, Erratic Behavior

 

By TERESA HAMPTON

Editor, Capitol Hill Blue

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_4921.shtml

Jul 28, 2004, 08:09



President George W. Bush is taking powerful anti-depressant drugs to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia, Capitol Hill Blue has learned.

 

The prescription drugs, administered by Col. Richard J. Tubb, the White House physician, can impair the President's mental faculties and decrease both his physical capabilities and his ability to respond to a crisis, administration aides admit privately.

 

"It's a double-edged sword," says one aide. "We can't have him flying off the handle at the slightest provocation but we also need a President who is alert mentally."



Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters' questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay.

 

"Keep those motherfuckers away from me," he screamed at an aide backstage. "If you can't, I'll find someone who can."

 

Bush's mental stability has become the topic of Washington whispers in recent months. Capitol Hill Blue first reported on June 4 about increasing concern among White House aides over the President's wide mood swings and obscene outbursts.

 

Although GOP loyalists dismissed the reports an anti-Bush propaganda, the reports were later confirmed by prominent George Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Dr. Frank diagnosed the President as a "paranoid meglomaniac" and "untreated alcoholic" whose "lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions and pumping his hand gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad" showcase Bush's instabilities.

 

"I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he did and reading what he wrote and watching him on videotape. I felt he was disturbed," Dr. Frank said. "He fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated."

 

Dr. Frank's conclusions have been praised by other prominent psychiatrists, including Dr. James Grotstein, Professor at UCLA Medical Center, and Dr. Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University Medical School.

 

The doctors also worry about the wisdom of giving powerful anti-depressant drugs to a person with a history of chemical dependency. Bush is an admitted alcoholic, although he never sought treatment in a formal program, and stories about his cocaine use as a younger man haunted his campaigns for Texas governor and his first campaign for President."

 

President Bush is an untreated alcoholic with paranoid and megalomaniac tendencies," Dr. Frank adds.



The White House did not return phone calls seeking comment on this article.

 

Although the exact drugs Bush takes to control his depression and behavior are not known, White House sources say they are "powerful medications" designed to bring his erratic actions under control. While Col. Tubb regularly releases a synopsis of the President's annual physical, details of the President's health and any drugs or treatment he may receive are not public record and are guarded zealously by the secretive cadre of aides that surround the President.

 

Veteran White House watchers say the ability to control information about Bush's health, either physical or mental, is similar to Ronald Reagan's second term when aides managed to conceal the President's increasing memory lapses that signaled the onslaught of Alzheimer's Disease.

 

It also brings back memories of Richard Nixon's final days when the soon-to-resign President wondered the halls and talked to portraits of former Presidents. The stories didn't emerge until after Nixon left office.

 

One long-time GOP political consultant who - for obvious reasons - asked not to be identified said he is advising his Republican Congressional candidates to keep their distance from Bush.

 

"We have to face the very real possibility that the President of the United States is loony tunes," he says sadly. "That's not good for my candidates, it's not good for the party and it's certainly not good for the country."  

 

                                                          **********     end article  ******

Sunday, July 25, 2004


My son-in-law, Woody Holifield, 1st Armored, having served honorably 15 months in Iraq, home at last on leave. Reunited with his wife (my daughter) this is them leaving the airport to go home. Posted by Hello

Home at last on leave!


Our son-in-law, Woody Holifield, 1st Armored, having served honorably 15 months in Iraq, home at last on leave. Reunited with his wife (my daughter) this is them leaving the airport to go home. Posted by Hello

Thursday, July 22, 2004

He's Coming Home Today, Iraq veteran

My son-in-law, having served with the 1st Armored (extended) in Iraq for 15 months, is returning stateside to his family today.   We will pick him up at SeaTac airport tonite, bring him to his home where he will be reunited with his family  (wife and three children). 
 
This has been an amazing growth year for me personally, as what has become an almost singular focus for me is the evolution of political events since 911 to the war in Iraq, to my son-in-law going to serve, to an amazing need to shore up my understanding of political process, to lending my own small voice to activistism and speaking out against not only the war, but many of the actions taken by President Bush. 
 
The sermons I deliver on my assigned Sundays at church (I am preacher-in-training at our church) have taken on a definite bent that speaks at every opportunity against the war as not among the teachings of God or Jesus.  I was feeling a disconnect with my own parish as the subject of politics, war, global events seemed to be non-existent.  The first time I introduced the topics in my turn to deliver the sermon, I guess I thought that there would be boos and throwing rotten eggs (okay, that wouldn't really happen among our parishoners).   But it wasn't just my local church, rather there seemed to be a non-voice amongst many of the churches and faith beliefs while the "Christian" voice of the President seemed to take on more and more weight and pretty much seemed to be setting up the defining of what it is to be christian.  My thoughts, distressed, kept wondering why I wasn't hearing more from the collective churches. 
 
Maybe the churches were speaking out and I just wasn't tuned in or finding the places where that was happening.  By now, nearly a year later, the churches are coalitioning and speaking out.  In those many, many anxious months while we waited at home, supported my daughter's family while we listened to the news, scoured the internet trying to learn as much as we could about the war efforts in Iraq, it sure seemed to me that the churches were being strangely silent on the subject.   In frustration and helplessness, I had to find places where I could speak my own thoughts, ask questions, challenge and wonder aloud, and one of those venues was to use my sermons for that purpose.  It wasn't quite what our little church group was used to hearing, yet they did listen and comment positively on the content of my sermons, or maybe it was my passion for the subject since it was so close to home.
 
We have two in our family, actually, both served with 1st Armored in Iraq, both 15 months, and my nephew arrived safely to Germany in early July, with my son-in-law arriving to Germany a few weeks later.  Tonite then, we will collect our veteran soldier son-in-law and bring him home to his family.  There is so much yet to be learned from his first-hand observations, but for now, it is closure to an  anxious chapter in our lives. 
 
Deersong
 
 

Friday, July 16, 2004

In Wonderment

Well here I am in wonderment for sure as I go about trying to kick off this new blog.  I get the drift of how to use the tools.  I'm less sure about how this connects or hooks up to other people and their blogs.  So guess I will wait, watch and see, and meantime wonder around till I see how this all fits together.   

 

  Deersong   

Begin the blog

Test entry to see how this blog works. 

 

  deersong