Pia Savage

How sad. I live on the Upper West Side in New York where many people are more liberal than I am, but not everybody has an imaginary dog named Toto. Every day something new is exposed.

But are we any closer to an impeachment hearing? Would say that I want the America of my childhood back. But we lived in a court with 39 other families; in a crescent that went on forever.

While parents never hovered; it was a child centered idealized world. Just a few miles away were very poor neighborhoods that we never saw. Then again we never really knew the richer neighborhoods until we moved to one And my sister and I have forever longed for the neighborhood of our true childhood.

But maybe most people long for an America that really only ever existed in childhood imaginations, TV and film. Dragged my best friend out to Long Island, last night, and saw The who if you don t know, you will. Never thought that I would see a concert that would equal Tom Waits.

Oh, but I was wrong. My BF who had never heard them before and I are going to take her daughter, run away from life, follow the Subdudes, and become the Subdude-ettes. They re that good.

Brilliance like theirs turns into true sexy, and wow, they re middle aged, really middle aged, but I liked it.
They re also from New Orleans and very coincidentally recorded their latest CD Behind the levee, in the spring before Katrina. It did become more meaningful.

The largest most tragic physical event, probably, in USA history brought them the beginning of mass recognition that they had long deserved. Being obsessive I listen to their prior CD Miracle Mule, most of my waking hours.
But my best friend and I can t run away from life.

We re adults. We can however control our thinking, and don t have to miserable as the last issue of New Magazine suggest most New Yorkers are. And yes we want to be happy.

It might sell to say that New Yorkers love misery and there are all the books,
A to set off explosives in the early fall, in the Path trains that go from New York to New Jersey was discovered in the planning stages.
While I am very happy that this threat was stopped in the early stages, every possible terrorist plot I have read about was in the New York area. Why do states that never have threats get pork barrel aid?

I would think that the citizens of those states would want New York to have more money to fight terrorism. It s only logical. Guess that is the problem.

We have an non-logical, irrational federal government that will never forgive New York for thriving despite it.
What are we celebrating this Independence Day?
I m serious.

While I didn t agree with Ken s position on fireworks, I understood his intent. Actually all the posts have one central underlying theme. The fast approaching death of the Constitution.

We have an administration that would like you to believe every lie that they tell. And they just can t stop lying.
Yet they tell us we re not moral enough or rather don t fit their morals.

And what are their morals? Love of God and Country? Who put God into the Constitution?

The First Amendment explicitly states that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the the free exercise of ..
on saying The Lords Prayer when I meant religious oratory.

By bringing back religious Christians through religion in public places, Obama and people who believe as he do is saying that it s more important to cut into The First Amendment than to be true to beliefs and to respect minorities in this country. Obama should know that. If the Democrats follow this reasoning, I will vote for a third party candidate, no matter how much I like the candidate or dislike the Republicans.

That might not sound rational, but there is no place for religion in public.
And I m sick of hearing, not from people who read BIO, but the Faux News people etc how much Jews and other religions are pandered to. Where?

The Democrats accept our money, take our volunteer efforts, expect us to vote for them even if religion in public places becomes acceptable? Not to me, not ever.
I think that many Christians, practicing or not, don t understand that to people born into non-Christian religions, hearing the Lords Prayer, being recited in a public building is insulting.

As one of the approximately 18% non-Christians in the USA I must disagree with Senator Barack Obama. I have met too many bloggers who honestly believe, somehow, that The First Amendment does establish a state religion that merely gives other religions rights.
Faith is private.

Faith is between a person and G-d. Faith is something that should never be brought into public arenas. As a member of a minority group, Obama should understand that the Constitution is the only thing that stands between minority groups and the rule of the majority group.

I find this personally vile and sickening. If he thinks this gives him a better chance to become the country s first Black President, he is so wrong, because every person who believes in the Constitution and The Bill of Rights will stand up and against him.
By making the statement he did, he is giving power to the Falwell s and the Robertson s.

Take away one little little piece of The First Amendment and the door opens for the entire First Amendment to be looked at and revised. Do most Evangelicals and other church going Americans want The first Amendment to be tampered with? I doubt it.

What about the Americans who attend Mosques, Temples, Synagogues or don t have a religion? Are we less important? No, just fewer in numbers.

The moment the door is opened to prayer in public places the door opens to diminishing the rest of our rights. He is pandering just as the people that he speaks against do.
I think that Maureen Dowd is brilliant on politics but frigging clueless when it comes to regular women.

She has no idea what it s like for the average Executive Asssistant in a city say like New York where rents went up 7.2% for a two year lease yesterday, but the average raise is from three to five percent.
She has no idea what it s like to raise a teenage daughter on a salary that would be laughable in most small cities, but because say my best friend didn t join the 9-5 workforce until seven years ago, she s stuck at a bad paying job for a tyrannical boss, and he knows that.

Why doesn t Maureen Dowd explore that issue? Not funny enough? Maureen Dowd consistently confuses status for achievement.

Only a Times OP-ED columnist, Oprah, or Anna Wintour is good enough for her.
News Channel lost 19% of its viewers in the second quarter of 06. Every single program lost viewers.

I m a bit dense today. Just realized that if today is June 28, the second quarter won t end for another two days. Since today is 6/28, the real figures are probably worse.

If for some reason you watch Faux News, even if to laugh at it, or see what the enemy is thinking, don t watch it.
Could it be that Americans are waking up? Becoming smarter?

Thinking for ourselves?
I usually try to keep up with mainstream advertising news as I believe that everything is interconnected. But I missed this in The New York Times that talked about JWT buying all advertising in The Huffingon Post for a week.

I have nothing against people making a living through blogs. However somebody from The Huffington Post sent me an email and asked me to play a very nice video with a good poem. I sent the person an email in response and asked what they would do for me.

My blog is the world s largest blog sidebar billboard. I will always plug a cause that I believe in, and always link to and plug other bloggers.
I in no way mean to infer or to imply that my father was toxic.

I had physically based problems that were hard to diagnose. My father did exaberate them, but when he realized what he had done, he hurt more than I did. We also were a family that was caught in the midst of turblent and quickly changing times.

It s not easy being a parent today. I often wonder what it was like to have been a parent in the 60 s and 70 s and have absolutely no experience with drugs or any of the things that were just beginning to be common. Even rock music was strange to my parents.

We tend to put mores of today on people in the past and that is very unfair.
Saturday, July 19, 1969 was a momentous day for Ted who would soon learn that his chances of becoming president were less than nil. The astronauts were to land on the moon the next day for the first .

It was my nineteenth birthday.
Nothing against Beyonce, Bruce and The Dixie Chicks. Though personally I m not crazy about Beyonce.

I love blogging, obviously. Do it enough. But I would never be a volunteer blogger in a blog that makes big bucks.

While Kos profits from The Daily Kos TV station, the bloggers do what to eat? Or does Kos believe that because he was first, he should be bowed to? And nobody else make money?

I understand that this is an imaginary scenario. It s not one that I would imagine though.
The thought of a Daily Kos TV station staffed by all volunteers is as revolting to me as Fox News is.

If Kos was to give all the money away .Let s get real. Many of us dream of getting rich off blogging.

But I would never get rich off the blood and time of other bloggers.
You didn t think I would stay away for this did you?
Okay.

I can already see how how hardcore Bush worshippers are going to play this.
I answered one comment that asked if we felt so badly about this why don t we do away with ourselves or move out of the country?
Like most New Yorker s I m pragmatic, that s how we survived the days when making fun of New York was a national sport Ford to city: Drop dead a headline in The Daily News from 76 or 77.

Sometimes I confuse Felix Rohaytyn with G-d; he was the architect, so to speak, of Big Mac bonds which brought NY back from disaster, and helped make NY what it is now. So while the Mayor is a very important job, some call it the most important next to the President, the Mayors weren t the only people to run the city by any standard.
Yet the Mayor is the chief spokesperson for the city, and the chief policy maker.

Since Royatyn s day nobody has suceeded him, so I do have to say that being Mayor of New York has become an increasingly important job, especially since 9/11. Nobody will ever make me like RudyG. I do admire the job that he did right after the attack.

It wasn t as if the Federal Government was there for us, and Pataki, he s the person in the picture that I never recognize.
Have never done an addendum to a BIO post before, but I am totally serious about moveon.org not being in touch anymore.

A friend said:
But they get the mainstream press.
Yes they do. After everybody else has done the dirty work.

I believe that all organizations such as moveon, such as the daily Kos, have a limited lifespan. After that they become fat, and content with having others do the work as they get the money and the glory.
For the past nineteen months or so my friends eyes have been glazing over when I have tried to tell them about the dangers of the radical right.

Something I became too familiar with too quickly when I began to blog.
I m really curious. Many people interviewed in this article dislike the war in Iraq, the governments mishandling of Katrina and more but plan on voting for President Bush because he s religious, and they like his life narrative: from troubled drinker to family man.

Duh, I mean they want him to remain president. Always forget that he won in 2000.
Would you vote for a person based on his/her faith?

On his/her tales of redemption?
Wednesday was s 21st birthday. If you don t know the Empress of Wonderlandornot you re missing one of the best minds, and uh more, on the Internet.

Please visit : An Unforgivable Hell on Earth as well as her site.
When the anti-terrorism cuts were announced, it was the cut in aid to New York that upset me. Then I thought, no national parks?

What about The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island? That s when I became truly angry. When my great-grandparents and their children came to America, their first stop was Ellis where they were deloused, and inspected for every conceivable condition plus much more.

They didn t care as they were in America where the streets were paved with gold. Though my family first lived in the Lower East Side, those streets were indeed paved with gold, the gold of freedom. For people who had never been allowed to be citizens before, own land, have a profession, let alone vote, this alone was a dream come true.

of the Government to concede that The Statue of Liberty is a national monument or icon. If they re going for icons what is The Empire State Building? What s Wall Street?

What s Times Square?
I could go on and on and on .Highly populated, and important to all, tax coffers areas.

And they are places worth both keeping and defending. We have been told that both the subways and Penn Station, a very important train hub, can t be secured. Penn Station s, two blocks from the Empire State Building, in Herald Square.

My best friend works above Penn Station. I have nightmares about that area. If anything happens to Lucia it s on the governments head.

And if they have solutions, let s hear them.
I assume that the Federal Government takes the expression pork barrel aid seriously, and doesn t want to sully New Yorkers who are Kosher, observe Halal laws or are vegetarian with its dirty money. That makes as much sense as any of the reasons given.

The only thing that got me out of bed this morning was the thought of Karl Rove being indicted. Hasn t happened yet.
Yesterday was a rainy yucky day.

I had planned to spend the day watching movies but stupidly became immersed in still another blame it on the baby boomer fight.
Want to blame everything on baby boomers, fine. That s your right.

But remember something, we were born into one world and came of age when every single thing that we had been taught to believe in was changing. We weren t the cause. We were too young to have been the leaders of the anti-war movement though many of us were involved.