peacocks and lilies

Late Night Update! Digg the Declaration of Objections! If we can get just a little over 100 diggs, it could make the front page, where it will get media attention. Do your part to spread the word! (h/t Princess Jen & joeysky18 @ the Hillary Clinton Forums)

One of the best-kept secrets of online communities such as message boards, personal blogs, community blogs, and Internet news media (that allow comments) is that you can find a ton of link-gems in them. Most people just skip over a link that is offered, but some of us surf with a PUMA-like instinct for the yummiest morsels. With that in mind, I offer you some of the yummiest red meat I’ve found this morning.

• H/T DownListen at bitterpoliticz: Bitterqueen has a fantastic and moving personal piece on how he came to his PUMA center. Beautifully written, here’s a slice:

Whether or not my father or anybody else wants to admit it, there is a great deal of emotional violence done to us through condescension, reproach, and unwillingness to hear our story. I have lived with the wreckage of male violence: my mother, who became psychologically and emotionally crippled beyond repair by her father’s ritual rapes and her mother’s silence; and my sister’s rape and the terrible hush-up of it, which has led to an ongoing battle with drug addiction. I emerged from that dream realizing that for me, “Truth and Reconciliation” meant saying no to the party that would have us repress our own choices; negate our own best judgment; and “chin up” after being bloodied by the press’s bludgeons. The request is to “pull yourself together and serve us.” I was asked to do all this in the interest of Party unity! For what? If the party members and leaders treated us like this, why would they have our best interest in mind? If we crawl back and fall in line behind their standard-bearer, Barack, we are like that battered wife apologizing to her husband for his punches, blows, and insults. It is like my father asking me to apologize to him for his own bad behavior.

• Guest post by William at bitterpoliticz: Money-quote–

And that day will likely come. I am more and more convinced that while Obama is likely to be elected, he will not be a good President. He apparently has no core ideological convictions. He obviously has no real experience with governing. He faces a hornet’s nest abroad, and daunting economic problems at home; and has not said anything which gives me any confidence that he has a broad and encompassing vision to deal with them. He is already extremely disliked and distrusted by much of the White working class. His patriotism, his concern for America first, is open to question. He comes across as aloof, supercilious, lacking patience and the common touch. This does not at all bode well for his administration. He is more intelligent than George Bush, but that is far from enough. He could well turn out to be another version of Jimmy Carter; and we know how well that turned out for Democrats.

• Are You Going to Denver? I am. Coordinate with PUMApac!
• PUMA works!
• Third-Party PUMAs: Here’s a great article on the truth-telling habit of Green Party Candidate Cynthia McKinney, via The Slideshow. The links in this one are great for some history on this candidate too. I like her more and more. She actually sounds like a liberal:

The need for an investigation of the events surrounding September 11 is as obvious as is the need for an investigation of the Enron debacle. Certainly, if the American people deserve answers about what went wrong with Enron and why (and we do), then we deserve to know what went wrong on September 11 and why.

Are we squandering our goodwill around the world with what many believe to be incoherent, warmongering policies that alienate our friends and antagonize our allies? How much of a role does our reliance on imported oil play in the military policies being put forward by the Bush Administration? And what role does the close relationship between the Bush Administration and the oil and defense industries play, if any, in the policies that are currently being pursued by this Administration?

• Via the Reclusive Leftist: Obama’s new abortion stance is in line with to Thomas and Scalia.
• And finally, let’s not forget about our real world Citizen Action tomorrow! Prepare yourself today with details from Declaration Day II.

I’ll be out of the house doing laundry and gardening for the afternoon. Consider this an open thread.