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WilliamPitt
WilliamPitt's Journal
WilliamPitt's Journal
March 25, 2013
Every one of these files represents a veteran waiting for assistance from the VA...and this is only one of the VA's many claim processing offices. 22,000 veterans died waiting last year.
Number of veterans who die waiting for benefits claims skyrockets
https://www.baycitizen.org/news/veterans/number-veterans-who-die-waiting-benefits/
The Long, Long Wait
Every one of these files represents a veteran waiting for assistance from the VA...and this is only one of the VA's many claim processing offices. 22,000 veterans died waiting last year.
Number of veterans who die waiting for benefits claims skyrockets
https://www.baycitizen.org/news/veterans/number-veterans-who-die-waiting-benefits/
March 23, 2013
I want to thank every DUer who has survived/endured sexual assault and discussed it here.
The DU conversation on rape, assault, rape culture and everything else that travels in this wretched applecart has been going on (in GD anyway) for a long while now. I, for one, have learned a lot, and have been required to look inward at a variety of things that I'd honestly never considered before. The conversation has gotten ugly more than once, but it is an ugly topic, and painful, and burdened with all the baggage that upbringing and culture and ignorance and anger brings along.
In particular, I am deeply grateful to the DUers who have survived/endured sexual assault, and have chosen to speak of their experience here. It takes a tremendous amount of personal courage and strength to bring up and speak out about such horrors, and that shared experience has given profound and important depth to the conversation. Of course I wish it had not happened, but it did, and by sharing it, you have made me and many others think very hard about a great many things, and I thank you for that from the bottom of my heart.
Also, in case you didn't know, this just happened:
Sexual Assault Survivors Support (Group)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1266
March 22, 2013
Story: http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/153162-mrs-warren-goes-to-washington/
Just right: the last cover story by the Boston Phoenix features Senator Elizabeth Warren
Story: http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/153162-mrs-warren-goes-to-washington/
March 21, 2013
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
Thursday 21 March 2013
In my own country
I am in a far off land.
I am strong
but have no power.
I win all
yet remain a loser.
At break of day
I say goodnight.
When I lie down
I have great fear
of falling.
- Francois Villon
There is a certain miasmic symmetry to the fact that America passed the ten-year anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war in the same week that the assault weapons ban went down to dirty defeat in Congress with nary a vote passed.
The war in Iraq was a crime, as was the Sandy Hook massacre that temporarily inspired the ban.
The rank and ravaging cowardice of those who should have known better allowed the Iraq war to happen, just as the rank and ravaging cowardice of those who know better allowed the Sandy Hook massacre to happen through their inaction and indifference, and then allowed the ban to fail in the aftermath.
No one - not the politicians, or their hyper-enabling media whores, or the "defense" contractors who robbed the country blind, no one - has been punished for the crime that was Iraq, just as no one - not the gun manufacturers and sellers who armed the shooter, or the NRA shills who empowered them all, no one - has been punished for Sandy Hook.
And some got very well paid: the cash shelves in the Treasury are barren and empty because of Iraq, just as the ammo and weapon shelves in almost every gun store in the country are barren and empty after a season of heady and hearty sales. Cleaned out, pocketed, thanks very much, you pack of numb suckers.
Some got paid, no one is faulted or held accountable, and the dead lie still and voiceless in the cold ground.
That is America.
The rest: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/15241-iraq-sandy-hook-and-america
Iraq, Sandy Hook, and America
Iraq, Sandy Hook, and AmericaBy William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
Thursday 21 March 2013
In my own country
I am in a far off land.
I am strong
but have no power.
I win all
yet remain a loser.
At break of day
I say goodnight.
When I lie down
I have great fear
of falling.
- Francois Villon
There is a certain miasmic symmetry to the fact that America passed the ten-year anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war in the same week that the assault weapons ban went down to dirty defeat in Congress with nary a vote passed.
The war in Iraq was a crime, as was the Sandy Hook massacre that temporarily inspired the ban.
The rank and ravaging cowardice of those who should have known better allowed the Iraq war to happen, just as the rank and ravaging cowardice of those who know better allowed the Sandy Hook massacre to happen through their inaction and indifference, and then allowed the ban to fail in the aftermath.
No one - not the politicians, or their hyper-enabling media whores, or the "defense" contractors who robbed the country blind, no one - has been punished for the crime that was Iraq, just as no one - not the gun manufacturers and sellers who armed the shooter, or the NRA shills who empowered them all, no one - has been punished for Sandy Hook.
And some got very well paid: the cash shelves in the Treasury are barren and empty because of Iraq, just as the ammo and weapon shelves in almost every gun store in the country are barren and empty after a season of heady and hearty sales. Cleaned out, pocketed, thanks very much, you pack of numb suckers.
Some got paid, no one is faulted or held accountable, and the dead lie still and voiceless in the cold ground.
That is America.
The rest: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/15241-iraq-sandy-hook-and-america
March 21, 2013
Filmed at a bar a couple of blocks away from my house.
Epic drunken Irish puppet fun.
Filmed at a bar a couple of blocks away from my house.
March 20, 2013
The rest: http://www.mediaite.com/online/donald-rumsfeld-gets-absolutely-pummeled-on-twitter-for-his-10th-anniversary-iraq-war-tweet/
Donald Rumsfeld Gets Absolutely Pummeled On Twitter For His 10th Anniversary Iraq War Tweet
Donald Rumsfeld Gets Absolutely Pummeled On Twitter For His 10th Anniversary Iraq War TweetThe rest: http://www.mediaite.com/online/donald-rumsfeld-gets-absolutely-pummeled-on-twitter-for-his-10th-anniversary-iraq-war-tweet/
March 19, 2013
By Charles P. Pierce
Esquire
Tuesday 19 March 2013
The "public editor" of The New York Times tells us today that the paper's coverage of the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War is likely to be less of a hoot than back in the drum-banging days when Judy Miller was standing atop a great pile of stove-piped bullshit while Bill Keller threw roses at her feet.
That is, of course, all bollocks. Keller still writes a column. The Times is playing this on the downlow precisely because it never truly has atoned for its role in a fiasco. The op-ed page still welcomes submissions from people whose work on this most grotesque foreign-policy blunder should have been as definitive a career-killer as were Joe Hazlewood's navigational abilities.
(snip)
Shut up, all of you. Go away. You are complicit in one way or another in a giant crime containing many great crimes. Atone in secret. Wash the blood off your hands in private. Because there were people who got it right. Anthony Zinni. David Shiseki. Hans Blix. Mohamed ElBaradei. The McClatchy Washington bureau guys. Dozens of liberal academics who got called fifth-columnists and worse. Professional military men whose careers suffered as a result. Hundreds of thousands of people in the streets around the world. The governments of Canada and France. Those people, I will listen to this week. Go to hell, the rest of you, and go there in silence and in shame.
The rest: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Happy_Anniversary
A tour de force. Read it.
Pleased to be Shutting the Piehole Now: Charles P. Pierce on the NYT and the anniversary of the war
Pleased to be Shutting the Piehole NowBy Charles P. Pierce
Esquire
Tuesday 19 March 2013
The "public editor" of The New York Times tells us today that the paper's coverage of the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War is likely to be less of a hoot than back in the drum-banging days when Judy Miller was standing atop a great pile of stove-piped bullshit while Bill Keller threw roses at her feet.
I asked Dean Baquet, a managing editor, about the low-key approach. He said that while a few stories are planned, editors did not see a need for a major project or special section, as they did with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "The war itself has been dissected to a tremendous degree," he told me. "You have to have something new or fresh to say." He would not provide specifics about the articles that are planned, but said there might be one or two that would make their way onto the front page this week...Is The Times's own role in the run-up to the war a part of this relative reticence, as some readers have suggested to me? Is there reluctance to revisit a painful period in the paper's history? Mr. Baquet said that's not a factor. "The Times has probably acknowledged its own mistakes from that period more than anyone," he said. "We certainly haven't been shy about doing that. We're doing the stories that make sense to us and that offer our readers something worthwhile."
That is, of course, all bollocks. Keller still writes a column. The Times is playing this on the downlow precisely because it never truly has atoned for its role in a fiasco. The op-ed page still welcomes submissions from people whose work on this most grotesque foreign-policy blunder should have been as definitive a career-killer as were Joe Hazlewood's navigational abilities.
(snip)
Shut up, all of you. Go away. You are complicit in one way or another in a giant crime containing many great crimes. Atone in secret. Wash the blood off your hands in private. Because there were people who got it right. Anthony Zinni. David Shiseki. Hans Blix. Mohamed ElBaradei. The McClatchy Washington bureau guys. Dozens of liberal academics who got called fifth-columnists and worse. Professional military men whose careers suffered as a result. Hundreds of thousands of people in the streets around the world. The governments of Canada and France. Those people, I will listen to this week. Go to hell, the rest of you, and go there in silence and in shame.
The rest: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Happy_Anniversary
A tour de force. Read it.
March 19, 2013
The Greatest Greatness of George W. Bush
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
Wednesday 07 January 2009
Take me down little Susie, take me down
I know you think you're the queen of the underground
And you can send me dead flowers every morning
Send me dead flowers by the mail
Send me dead flowers to my wedding
And I won't forget to put roses on your grave ...
- The Rolling Stones
To: George W. Bush
From: Your biggest fan
Re: Your imminent unemployment
Greetings, Mr. Bush.
I was sorry to hear about the passing of your cat, India. Eighteen years is a long time for a cat - my mother has one that's 20 and still going strong, if you can believe it - and I'm sure India had a comfortable, caring life with your family.
I got to spend part of last weekend with an old friend of mine. He's a bit older than 18, and he's also a troop who recently rotated back from a tour in Falluja. He just had a baby daughter, and he will be sent to Afghanistan before too much longer. He did his duty in Iraq, dealt his share of death and saw his friends die or be ripped to shreds right in front of him.
He was hollow in a lot of places that had been full before he went to Iraq. He was not the same man we'd said farewell to. But he was alive, and if he survives his upcoming Afghanistan tour, maybe he will get the chance to have a long, comfortable, caring life with his family, just like little India.
At present, my friend's life is the polar opposite of comfortable, and he still has Kabul waiting for him just over the horizon. His life is the way it is because of you, Mr. Bush. You have been the single greatest influence upon his time in this world; you put him over there and hollowed him out, and because of you, it's about to happen again. You were the single biggest influence upon the lives of every person he knew over there, every person he saw over there, and every person he killed over there.
It's funny. I was thinking the other day about when I marched in one of the first large-scale post-inauguration protests against you in Washington, DC. It was May of 2001, it was The Voter's Rights March to Restore Democracy, and it was a few thousand people shouting down the unutterably ruinous Supreme Court decision which unleashed, just as we then feared, everything that has since come to pass. "Not my president!" we bellowed. "Not my president!"
It's funny because that memory seems so very quaint to me now. A stolen election? Pfff. To paraphrase a different president, Americans get scarier stuff than that free with their breakfast cereal nowadays. Thanks to you, governor.
(snip)
From a certain perspective, one could argue that you have been the most successful president the country has ever seen. Think about it, because according to your definition of "success," it's true. You came into office looking to make your friends richer, and to fulfill as best you could your most overriding personal belief: that government is the problem, so government must be damaged and denuded to the point of impotence. Through your tax cuts and your two vastly expensive boondoggle wars, you made your friends rich. By unleashing Mr. Cheney and your other minions, you tore the Constitution to shreds and tatters. You have achieved both goals in smashing style, so from that certain perspective, you have triumphed.
Could you also, from the proper perspective, be considered our greatest president?
Perhaps, someday, if we make it so.
It will be in the best interests of many powerful people if we as a nation simply dismiss you and forget you ever happened. A lot of news media people want us to forget you, because in forgetting you, we would forget the media's vast complicity in your actions and misdeeds. A lot of rich people making new fortunes from war profiteering and defense contracts want us to forget they and you even exist, as it would make it possible for them to do it all again someday. A lot of politicians who stapled themselves to you would simply adore it if we forgot about you. The Republican Party would be forever in our debt if we forgot about you.
No. We will not forget you. We will remember.
We the people are going to save you from ignominious oblivion. We will remember. You could be the president who doomed America, the worst president of all time, but we must not, will not let that happen. You will be remembered differently, because we will hold the memory of you high, and behold you, and say, "Never, never, never again." We have tasted the soot and smelled the blood on the wind; we have seen how fragile our way of government is when placed in the hands of low men such as you, and because of that, you will be remembered for all time.
Your greatness will be defined by how we rise to overcome and undo what you have done. Your greatness will stand forever if we never, ever forget the hard, bitter lessons you taught us. We are responsible for this republic, for our Constitution, and for each other. We are our brother's keeper. You taught us that by becoming our Cain. You nearly slew us, but here we stand, and we defy the place in history you would relegate us to. We defy you, and by doing so, we rise.
Something like you must never again be allowed to happen to this country, and if we save ourselves by preventing you from ever happening again, your greatness is assured. You are the tallest of all possible warnings, and a promise all of us must solemnly and stalwartly keep. If we can damn you to the past, we will save our own future.
May you live forever, you son of a bitch.
http://archive.truthout.org/010709j
The Greatest Greatness of George W. Bush
I wrote this a few days before George W. Bush finally left office. It is about the war, and everything else. In the ten years I've been writing about Iraq and all the corollary crimes, this is the article that means the most to me. - WRPThe Greatest Greatness of George W. Bush
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
Wednesday 07 January 2009
Take me down little Susie, take me down
I know you think you're the queen of the underground
And you can send me dead flowers every morning
Send me dead flowers by the mail
Send me dead flowers to my wedding
And I won't forget to put roses on your grave ...
- The Rolling Stones
To: George W. Bush
From: Your biggest fan
Re: Your imminent unemployment
Greetings, Mr. Bush.
I was sorry to hear about the passing of your cat, India. Eighteen years is a long time for a cat - my mother has one that's 20 and still going strong, if you can believe it - and I'm sure India had a comfortable, caring life with your family.
I got to spend part of last weekend with an old friend of mine. He's a bit older than 18, and he's also a troop who recently rotated back from a tour in Falluja. He just had a baby daughter, and he will be sent to Afghanistan before too much longer. He did his duty in Iraq, dealt his share of death and saw his friends die or be ripped to shreds right in front of him.
He was hollow in a lot of places that had been full before he went to Iraq. He was not the same man we'd said farewell to. But he was alive, and if he survives his upcoming Afghanistan tour, maybe he will get the chance to have a long, comfortable, caring life with his family, just like little India.
At present, my friend's life is the polar opposite of comfortable, and he still has Kabul waiting for him just over the horizon. His life is the way it is because of you, Mr. Bush. You have been the single greatest influence upon his time in this world; you put him over there and hollowed him out, and because of you, it's about to happen again. You were the single biggest influence upon the lives of every person he knew over there, every person he saw over there, and every person he killed over there.
It's funny. I was thinking the other day about when I marched in one of the first large-scale post-inauguration protests against you in Washington, DC. It was May of 2001, it was The Voter's Rights March to Restore Democracy, and it was a few thousand people shouting down the unutterably ruinous Supreme Court decision which unleashed, just as we then feared, everything that has since come to pass. "Not my president!" we bellowed. "Not my president!"
It's funny because that memory seems so very quaint to me now. A stolen election? Pfff. To paraphrase a different president, Americans get scarier stuff than that free with their breakfast cereal nowadays. Thanks to you, governor.
(snip)
From a certain perspective, one could argue that you have been the most successful president the country has ever seen. Think about it, because according to your definition of "success," it's true. You came into office looking to make your friends richer, and to fulfill as best you could your most overriding personal belief: that government is the problem, so government must be damaged and denuded to the point of impotence. Through your tax cuts and your two vastly expensive boondoggle wars, you made your friends rich. By unleashing Mr. Cheney and your other minions, you tore the Constitution to shreds and tatters. You have achieved both goals in smashing style, so from that certain perspective, you have triumphed.
Could you also, from the proper perspective, be considered our greatest president?
Perhaps, someday, if we make it so.
It will be in the best interests of many powerful people if we as a nation simply dismiss you and forget you ever happened. A lot of news media people want us to forget you, because in forgetting you, we would forget the media's vast complicity in your actions and misdeeds. A lot of rich people making new fortunes from war profiteering and defense contracts want us to forget they and you even exist, as it would make it possible for them to do it all again someday. A lot of politicians who stapled themselves to you would simply adore it if we forgot about you. The Republican Party would be forever in our debt if we forgot about you.
No. We will not forget you. We will remember.
We the people are going to save you from ignominious oblivion. We will remember. You could be the president who doomed America, the worst president of all time, but we must not, will not let that happen. You will be remembered differently, because we will hold the memory of you high, and behold you, and say, "Never, never, never again." We have tasted the soot and smelled the blood on the wind; we have seen how fragile our way of government is when placed in the hands of low men such as you, and because of that, you will be remembered for all time.
Your greatness will be defined by how we rise to overcome and undo what you have done. Your greatness will stand forever if we never, ever forget the hard, bitter lessons you taught us. We are responsible for this republic, for our Constitution, and for each other. We are our brother's keeper. You taught us that by becoming our Cain. You nearly slew us, but here we stand, and we defy the place in history you would relegate us to. We defy you, and by doing so, we rise.
Something like you must never again be allowed to happen to this country, and if we save ourselves by preventing you from ever happening again, your greatness is assured. You are the tallest of all possible warnings, and a promise all of us must solemnly and stalwartly keep. If we can damn you to the past, we will save our own future.
May you live forever, you son of a bitch.
http://archive.truthout.org/010709j
Profile Information
Name: William Rivers PittGender: Male
Hometown: Boston
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 58,179
