Monthly Archives: November 2013

Remember Vets – By Doing Something!

We have had another Veterans’ Day and remembered the sacrifice of the men and women who served this nation.

But we really should be doing a lot more than simply – “remembering them.”

We must do better and demand that our elected and appointed officials “do something.”

My late uncle, Charles Flannery, served in the armed forces led by General Patton when the Allies attacked by way of Sicily the beaches of Italy.  Charles was shot in the chest, lifted off his feet, spun around, knocked unconscious, and taken prisoner.

Years after the war, Charles died in a hospital in the Bronx that, according to my elders, refused to give him more blood, to save him from that earlier war wound.  Ours was one family, as young as I was, that resented the nation’s unfulfilled promise to our Uncle Charles.

Our nation has been long on promises to vets when leaving our shores to serve our nation abroad, and quite uneven, often indifferent, to their needs upon their return home when broken by the war.

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No Representation

In Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winning book The Color Purple, Celie refers to her abusive husband as Mr.______. He doesn’t have a name because he beats, abuses and neglects her. He treats her like a piece of chattel property. To him, she isn’t a human being. She’s subhuman. The Mr.______ name is one way of fighting back.

My legislators are like Celie’s husband. Politically, they beat, abuse, and neglect me and thousands of other citizens. I’ll be parsing the words beat, abuse and neglect in future posts to show these behaviors in the public square. This post is an introduction.

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Can You Hear Me Now?

You may repeat into your cell phone, as you walk around, trying to find a signal, “Can you hear me now?,” but you mean, can a known friend or family member hear you?

Not some government agency.

We thought we’d come a long way from rural party phone lines when uninvited listeners might overhear what was said in violation of a caller’s right of privacy.

But we now have the “all-consuming N.S.A,” as one paper characterized the agency, for which “no morsel [of private information][is] too miniscule,” meaning that our government is tracking the calls of every American and much more information under the elastic aegis of the ironically named Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act.  Absent any restraint by any other governmental branch or agency, the NSA’s rules of engagement are, “Why not?”

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Seriously, Jim Plowman, … Seriously?

Frank Wolf campaigns for SPLC designated hate group leader

Jim Plowman, our Commonwealth’s Attorney issued a fake “legal opinion” berating President Obama for campaigning for Terry McAuliffe. He ends his charge with the quote below, emphasis mine. The statement was published by anti-semite John Whitbeck in a GOP 10th CD email. This is the same CD committee whose chief fundraiser is the County’s tax collector.

The very fact that President Obama is campaigning for McAuliffe raises serious questions as to whether McAuliffe’s stature in the Democratic Party is shielding him and his company from full and timely investigations by the DHS and SEC.

Virginians would be right to question whether the President’s appearance with McAuliffe produces a legitimate conflict of interest.  Principles don’t change depending on which elected office you seek.  These actions would never be tolerated at the local level and they shouldn’t be tolerated at the State or National level either.  The public deserves prompt answers to these questions.

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Tag Greason: Palling around with liars

Tag Greason and other legislators with anti-gay liar Bishop E.W. Jackson

Tag Greason assured me that he wasn’t anti-gay when I first met him at school board candidate debate in 2007. But political pressures are what they are, and now he’s palling around with certified anti-gay liar Bishop E.W. Jackson. Here’s a photo op with Greason and Jackson at a Virginia Family Foundation event in Richmond. The original photo can be found here. The comment on the flickr photo steam says:

Great photo of Bishop EW Jackson, Delegates Massie and Robinson, and Sen Obenshain! Delegate Greason usually has a perpetual smile as his colleague to his right so elegantly displays 🙂

Maybe Jackson can provide his friends with instruction on how to deal with inconvenient facts, such as Greason’s vote in favor of mandatory vaginal ultrasound probes: Just lie and hope that no one checks. Here he is lying to the public via WUSA’s Derek McGinty:

McGinty: Did you say that gay people live a sick lifestyle, they’re sick people?

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