Tag: White House

There is something tangibly rewarding when after have put your hands in warm soil, planting for your own table, to being able to harvest bounty from the soil.  

Along with millions, tens of millions of others, my own gardening experience is reflected in a larger plot and on a much bigger stage as First Lady Michelle Obama pursues organic gardening on the White House lawn with the assistance of many, including students from a DC elementary school.

While there has been some 80 lbs harvested to date, some for White House meals but most for local food kitchens, yesterday The First Lady celebrated the end of the school year with Bancroft Elementary students with harvesting from the garden and eating an organic salad. And, they all literally had the fruits of their labors as “once kids finished their salads, they were rewarded with a cupcake topped with fresh garden berries”.

While it might be fun to get one’s hands dirty, rewarding to see the ‘fruits of one’s labor’ on the plate before you, and tasty to eat this fresh, pesticide-free food, this connects to larger issues.

More of the same old same old from the Obama Administration.  

Obama Blocks List of Visitors to White House

The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn’t have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.

Despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to introduce a new era of transparency to Washington, and despite two rulings by a federal judge that the records are public, the Secret Service has denied msnbc.com’s request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present. It also denied a narrower request by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which sought logs of visits by executives of coal companies.

Updated: CREW says it filed suit Tuesday against the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service. Here’s a copy of CREW’s complaint.

“We are deeply disappointed,” said CREW attorney Anne L. Weismann, “that the Obama administration is following the same anti-transparency policy as the Bush administration when it comes to White House visitor records. Refusing to let the public know who visits the White House is not the action of a pro-transparency, pro-accountability administration.”

Enjoy your new overlords.  Same as the old overlords.

Oh, but I know, Obama is really trying!   He’s just up against such pressure and such opposition like a 67% approval rating and both houses of Congress.

Yup.

I’ll bet you thought I was gonna be spending another one of those boring suburban Mondays at home.

Well you’re wrong. I’m in DC right now. Surprise. 🙂

Here’s Desiree, myself and Liz of CodePink protesting outside the White House while Bush and Italian President Berlusconi were having a press conference. We brought megaphones and my “Yessongs” drum to protest the building of a US military base at Dal Molin. Over 25,000 people – 95% of the people living in Vincenza – do not want the base.

We were told that they could hear our protests in the Rose Garden. I was yelling funny stuff like “AY PAESAN, WHADDAYA DOIN’ IN THERE WITH THAT STUNARD BUSH!” Some of our chants were in Italian: “BASTA LA GUERRA!” and “NO ALLA BASE, SI ALLA PACE!” Eventually the Italian version of the Associated Press, ANSA, came out and interviewed us. We are also now frontpaged on the “No Dal Molin” web site.

One of the things I was yelling for my own amusement was “Ay Berlusconi! Dig my Tronolone!” My maiden name, Tronolone, means “thunder”. The family name is not exactly as common as “Smith” on this side of the pond, but it is a prominent one in northern Italy where they are trying to build the base. I mentioned to the ANSA people what my maiden name is and snarked that I come from a proud family tradition of fighting against Emperors. (In the 1110 AD, the Tronolone family stood with three other Milanese baronies against a forced assimilation into the Holy Roman Empire by Frederick Barbarossa.) The ANSA reporters were amused.

Common Cause released a press release a few days ago (April 15, 2008) showing how the GOP Leadership in the House, at the instigation of the White House, derailed the “Emergency Assistance for Secure elections Act of 2008” which had been under consideration and being honed for a year.

After a year of consideration, the House today unexpectedly failed to pass in a streamlined process a bill that would have authorized funding for states to replace paperless electronic voting machines in time for the presidential election in November.

…snip…

At stake is the Emergency Assistance for Secure elections Act of 2008.  The bill had been placed on the House “suspension” calendar, meaning it needed two-thirds support to pass.  Democrats and Republicans last week had reached agreement and passage was expected today {4/15/08}.

Then the White House at the eleventh hour issued a statement urging the House to vote against the bill.  And, in an unexpected move, Rep Vern Ehlers (R-MI), the ranking memeber of the House Administration Committee, and Rep Roy Blunt (R-MO), the minority whip, also came out against the bill.

Another Repug coup to insure that they can again steal the next election, the 2008 election.  I am afraid because if we don’t take this country back soon, there will be no country to take back.  It will be like what any aware Germans were up against in 1939.

I am horrified.  Stop this madness.  Into the Streets.  General Strike.  Refuse to go along.

I’m mad as Hell and I not going to take this anymore.

Into the Streets for the General Strike on May Day, and stay there.  Do not be complicit.

I haven’t put together a video to song in awhile, than I came across “Lock Them Up”

The song in video is by ‘Nam Veteran Pat Scanlon brother member of Vietnam Veterans Against The War and Veterans For Peace.