from eve ensler
For your discernment? then please pass it on . .
Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer,
feminist and activist best known for 'The Vagina Monologues',
wrote the following about Sarah Palin:

Drill, Drill, Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for polar bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the Arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism, which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country choose those candidates, the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast
in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally
disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the
clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with
regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the Arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, 'It was a task from God.'

Sarah Palin does not believe in the choice of a safe legal procedure to terminate a pregnancy.. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes. The babies that are home in need, are lost to Sarah's campaign schedule.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the li brary, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who
could and might very well be the next president of the United States.
She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the polar bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected, then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, 'Drill Drill Drill.' I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

Eve Ensler
September 5, 2008

As I understand the latest push by our Attorney General, Justice Department and the present Administration is one that ALL citizens of this country should be aware of and stand against shoulder to shoulder. The Attorney General at the request of the White House has petitioned Congress to declare the world as a war zone so that we do not have to get permission to track, apprehend and punish those who this administration declares to be a threat real or otherwise to this country's National Security. The unfortunate part of this is that it would allow the Bush administration to side step our very own "Constitution" and "Bill of Rights" wether it is justified or not. Who ever is targeted by this illigel act would for the most part become simply stated a "War Prisoner", which by the way includes every man, women and/or child in this country because the broad based assumption that we would have the right to target ANYONE right or wrong. There would be NO rights to councel, no need for charges, no proof of quilt and no one would have the right to sue for false imprisonment, they would simply disappear from sight to the rest of the world.

This country was and still is founded on the presumption of innocent until proven guilty and this blatant attempt to circumvent this proven system is an outright attempt to take away ANYONES Freedoms for virtually nothing more than an accusation or possibility. This country has, since it's inception been the worlds vision of what FREEDOM is all about and a huge part of that Freedom it born out of our rights as a Free Society to have our say and to face our accusers in an open court with representation. Yes, to be sure there are those who will manipulate the system but the idea is to make sure that even one person who is truely NOT Guilty is not incarcerated unjustly. It is better to let a pack of jerks go than to take anyones rights away who has not done anything wrong.

This country's citizens have always been willing to give up our lives to protect those principles that insure our continued way of life. Our "Constitution" and "Bill of Rights" are NOT found ANYWHERE else in the world and are standards by which Free Peoples rally around. As a Vietnam Veteran I find it hard to believe that ANYONE in this country would back such a complete turn-a-round to our justice system as is proposed by the White House. It is surprising that this administration tries to belittle ANYONE who they deem as Not supporting our troops but turn around and try to change the very core of what our soldiers have been giving their all to protect these many years.

Bill, the following was run in the NY Post concerning the financial bail out issue also faced and fixed by the Swedish government in 1992:

Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way


By CARTER DOUGHERTY
Published: September 22, 2008

A banking system in crisis after the collapse of a housing bubble. An economy hemorrhaging jobs. A market-oriented government struggling to stem the panic. Sound familiar?


It does to Sweden. The country was so far in the hole in 1992 ? after years of imprudent regulation, short-sighted economic policy and the end of its property boom ? that its banking system was, for all practical purposes, insolvent.

But Sweden took a different course than the one now being proposed by the United States Treasury. And Swedish officials say there are lessons from their own nightmare that Washington may be missing.

Sweden did not just bail out its financial institutions by having the government take over the bad debts. It extracted pounds of flesh from bank shareholders before writing checks. Banks had to write down losses and issue warrants to the government.

That strategy held banks responsible and turned the government into an owner. When distressed assets were sold, the profits flowed to taxpayers, and the government was able to recoup more money later by selling its shares in the companies as well.

?If I go into a bank,? said Bo Lundgren, who was Sweden?s finance minister at the time, ?I?d rather get equity so that there is some upside for the taxpayer.?

Sweden spent 4 percent of its gross domestic product, or 65 billion kronor, the equivalent of $11.7 billion at the time, or $18.3 billion in today?s dollars, to rescue ailing banks. That is slightly less, proportionate to the national economy, than the $700 billion, or roughly 5 percent of gross domestic product, that the Bush administration estimates its own move will cost in the United States.

But the final cost to Sweden ended up being less than 2 percent of its G.D.P. Some officials say they believe it was closer to zero, depending on how certain rates of return are calculated.

The tumultuous events of the last few weeks have produced a lot of tight-lipped nods in Stockholm. Mr. Lundgren even made the rounds in New York in early September, explaining what the country did in the early 1990s.

A few American commentators have proposed that the United States government extract equity from banks as a price for their rescue. But it does not seem to be under serious consideration yet in the Bush administration or Congress.

The reason is not quite clear. The government has already swapped its sovereign guarantee for equity in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance institutions, and the American International Group, the global insurance giant.

Putting taxpayers on the hook without anything in return could be a mistake, said Urban Backstrom, a senior Swedish finance ministry official at the time. ?The public will not support a plan if you leave the former shareholders with anything,? he said.

The Swedish crisis had strikingly similar origins to the American one, and its neighbors, Norway and Finland, were hobbled to the point of needing a government bailout to escape the morass as well.

Financial deregulation in the 1980s fed a frenzy of real estate lending by Sweden?s banks, which did not worry enough about whether the value of their collateral might evaporate in tougher times.

Property prices imploded. The bubble deflated fast in 1991 and 1992. A vain effort to defend Sweden?s currency, the krona, caused overnight interest rates to spike at one point to 500 percent. The Swedish economy contracted for two consecutive years after a long expansion, and unemployment, at 3 percent in 1990, quadrupled in three years.

After a series of bank failures and ad hoc solutions, the moment of truth arrived in September 1992, when the government of Prime Minister Carl Bildt decided it was time to clear the decks.

Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the opposition center-left, Mr. Bildt?s conservative government announced that the Swedish state would guarantee all bank deposits and creditors of the nation?s 114 banks. Sweden formed a new agency to supervise institutions that needed recapitalization, and another that sold off the assets, mainly real estate, that the banks held as collateral.

Sweden told its banks to write down their losses promptly before coming to the state for recapitalization. Facing its own problem later in the decade, Japan made the mistake of dragging this process out, delaying a solution for years.

Then came the imperative to bleed shareholders first. Mr. Lundgren recalls a conversation with Peter Wallenberg, at the time chairman of SEB, Sweden?s largest bank. Mr. Wallenberg, the scion of the country?s most famous family and steward of large chunks of its economy, heard that there would be no sacred cows.

The Wallenbergs turned around and arranged a recapitalization on their own, obviating the need for a bailout. SEB turned a profit the following year, 1993.

?For every krona we put into the bank, we wanted the same influence,? Mr. Lundgren said. ?That ensured that we did not have to go into certain banks at all.?

By the end of the crisis, the Swedish government had seized a vast portion of the banking sector, and the agency had mostly fulfilled its hard-nosed mandate to drain share capital before injecting cash. When markets stabilized, the Swedish state then reaped the benefits by taking the banks public again.

More money may yet come into official coffers. The government still owns 19.9 percent of Nordea, a Stockholm bank that was fully nationalized and is now a highly regarded giant in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea region.

The politics of Sweden?s crisis management were similarly tough-minded, though much quieter.

Soon after the plan was announced, the Swedish government found that international confidence returned more quickly than expected, easing pressure on its currency and bringing money back into the country. The center-left opposition, while wary that the government might yet let the banks off the hook, made its points about penalizing shareholders privately.

?The only thing that held back an avalanche was the hope that the system was holding,? said Leif Pagrotzky, a senior member of the opposition at the time. ?In public we stuck together 100 percent, but we fought behind the scenes.?

As ALL the world knows Osama Bin Laden was the real culpert for 9/11, it seems only Bush and company still believe their own lies and mis-truths. So I believe given the nature of how this continuous mis-direction is still applied to the "war on terror" I am now of the opinion that Bush has attacked us more through his inept leadership than anyone else. He has now allowed almost 4,000 of our finest to die and aprox 30,000 wounded of which over 13,000 are much more than just severe and at the same time has created a rallying cry for every nut case in that region to create much more violence to include over 80,000 Iraq citizens who have been killed. So let's see now, all together Bush has been the instigator for over 85,000 people killed and countless others wounded plus several million Iraq citizens who have been displaced because we went after the wrong man. Now given that we lost 3,000 plus citizens during 9/11 and Bush has determined that 85,000 plus have died plus the thousands wounded and the millions of displaced citizens, all for his war on terror. In my book when you enable that many people to die for a cause that was started by a lie then you are the real terrorist in no uncertain terms and I don't give a **bleep** what religion you profess to believe in. The other problem I have with this ongoing senerio is that Osama Bin Laden is still out there thumbing his big nose at us and plotting......5 years now. He must have been laughing out loud when Bush made a wrong turn to follow his dreams. If nothing else Bush is to blame for Osama still being alive. I am also starting to believe that George Bush has deliberatly let Osama stay free because he needs him out there somewhere to keep his justification for his "war on terror" to continue. I may be wrong but that's the way I feel and I've seen this kind of irresponsibility before. The truth is that it's the middle and lower class's are the ones who really suffer for these arrogant decisions by those seeking power.

I was involved in a war in the sixties that had all the ear marks of todays fiasco. We were lied to then and we are being lied too now and if you don't believe it please send some money so we can start building another "WALL" dedicated to those in harms way now. The most precious attitude I came away with during the sixties, was to ALWAYS question AUTHORITY because as a free society WE are the checks and balances and if we fail to do so, we are doomed to repeat bad decisions all over again, just like we are doing today. Bottom line is we were attacked from without by Osama Bin Laden on 9/11 and today we are being attacked from within by this administration.

>>Subject: Fw: New Gas War--Read and Let's Make it Happen
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I do not usually forward these, but this one I think is VERY
important. Hope you do the same.
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NEW GAS WAR - a new idea that WILL work
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This was originally sent by a retired Coca Cola executive. It came from one of his engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton. It' s worth your consideration.
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Join the resistance!!!! I hear we are going to hit close to $4.00 a gallon by the end of this summer and it might go higher!! Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united action. Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea.
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This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the 'don't buy gas on a certain day' campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to 'hurt' ourselves by refusing to buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work. Please read on and join with us! By now you're probably thinking gasoline priced at about $1.50 is super cheap. Me too! It is
currently $3.25 for regular unleaded in my town. Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50 - $1.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace..... not sellers. With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.
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Here's the idea:
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For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one),EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.
But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions ofExxon and Mobil gas buyers. It's really simple to do! Now, don't wimp out at this point.... keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people.
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I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us sends it to just ten more (30 x 10 = 300) ... and those 300 send it to at least ten more 300 x 10 = 3,000)...and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers. If those three million get excited and pass this on to tenfriends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it.....THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!
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Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all. (If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people.... Well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician But I am, so trust me on this one.)
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How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!!
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I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you?
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Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. I suggest that we not buy from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $1.30 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN.
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THIS CAN REALLY WORK.

Bill I would like to have you ask of your panel what they think of the following question that I call "the invisible factor and the race to the white house"

I believe that the one factor that all of the news media overlooks about this race to the white house is simply that they overlook the dissatifaction and anger that this country has for the Republican party as a whole after this last eight years of assult on our freedoms, the war and other social issues we are confronted with because of their lack of positive leadership.

Just when I think most of the mud slinging is over....there it is again in full force. This time it's over a picture of Obama wearing a traditional wardrobe. What in the hell does a piece of cloth have to do with the problems of this nation? I am so sick of the nit picking between all the candidates that I might just vote for Nader now that he has once again entered into the race for the White House. What the hell is it that the political parties and their candidates don't get about the last election? Enough is MORE than enough when it comes to the same old and dreary play on words and taking everything out of context to try and prove a point which is meaningless to us out here waiting to hear about their plans for turning this country around. These people had better start getting real or none of them will deserve my vote.

I am still waiting to hear what has happened to the eight+ Billion that no-one can find in Iraq through Haliburton. Now excuse me if I'm wrong but it seems to me that we tax payers footed the bill for that and alot more with, to date, no accountability from those who were intrusted by us to oversee all of that hard working man's cash. I would assume at this stage that those who are responsible for handling that money has invested in a condo on the Rivera and a nice yaught too.

This is yet another one of Bush's and Cheney's mishandling of those aspects that they were charged with by the American public, yes, the buck stops in the White House. Of course we will never know how or why it went missing as it has been so down played by this administration that it is yet another secret for the few. I really do not understand the American citizen when this kind of slap in the face occurs once again by Bush and company and once again the tax payer take it in the shorts. Why has there not been a rallying call for answers to this and other secretive desicions made by this administration. We seem to be like sheep, and blind at that, when it comes to being robbed in front of our faces all the while waving their flags and professing to be good Christians, which is why I am not a Christian or belong to any religious cults. If we allow those that we put into power to run rough shod over us the way they do and do nothing about it then we get what we ask for.

I am sure that you have heard of the "Choking Game" now being played by our young. The numbers of those playing and dying is on the rise. I have come to the conclusion that this is part of a "Natural Selection" process to weed out the idiots of the world before they get into public office. I wonder though if it's to late for Bush and Cheney to have a "Choking Game" party to renew their commitment to excellance.

I am mistifyed by the rhetoric of this administration and it's supporters still clining to the notion of Democracy being reached in Iraq. The bottom line is that there will NEVER be a Democracy in any part of that region as long as religion controls the governments. The religious ferver from that region holds sway over everything anyone does or says and it will never change no matter what hair brained inconcevable ideas are born between the ears of our arrogant leaders. You want peace then let them alone and go after Osama, kill the bastard and his followers, then come home. Continueing to chase after the unattainable is an idea born of futility at best. Love to hear what your panel and yourself think.

Bill I would like your take on the Republicans proposals to either continue the war in Iraq (McCain) and Huckabee's proposal to continue the fight to amend the "Constitution" based on his and his supporters religious views. I respect McCain for his service but he still has Iraq on the brain and will only continue to mire us another 4 plus years with no end in sight. Huckabee seems hell bent on keeping his rights to "Freedom of Choice" but with the results being that he takes away anyone's same rights unless they believe in his brand of religion. As a veteran (Vietnam) I am of the opinion that to many have been maimed and killed over the years to protect our freedoms and rights for ALL citizens only to have someone take away someone elses rights because of their religious views. I had assumed that separtation of "Church and State" meant just that.....hope I am not wrong.