Birthday Headlines for Joe

Ugh...what kind of a world am I leaving for my children to inherit?

DELAY WINS GOP PRIMARY
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/07/delay.election/index.html

SOUTH DAKOTA BANS MOST ABORTIONS
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/06/sd.abortion/index.html

CONGRESS VOTES TO RENEW PATRIOT ACT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030701082.html?sub=AR


SENATE PANEL BLOCKS EAVESDROPPING PROBE
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030701549.html?nav=hcmodule

Gitmo Prosecutor Denies Detainees Tortured (but he can see why some investigative techniques could be viewed that way.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030702073.html

Happy Freakin' Birthday, Joseph.....from a world gone to hell and a mother driven to despair.

I'm sorry, Son, I really am. You don't know this part of me, but I once marched and chanted and passed out flowers in a Chicago park and got gassed by orders of a Democratic mayor. I was much younger than you are now when all this took place. You see, I was a part of the "Baby Boomer" generation....We were the generation that was going to "make a difference." We fought and marched (and a few of us died) for freedom, for peace, for civil rights, for woman's rights, for the rights of children, for the rights of the physically and mentally handicapped, for animal rights, for liberty, for justice, and for honesty. We railed against Lyndon Johnson, against The Viet Nam War, against segregation, against prejudice, against political corruption and cover-up. We were Anti-War and Pro-Choice. We fought to take specifically-based religious prayers out of the public schools and put back into the churches where they rightfully belonged. We were all about freedom of religion and human rights. We lobbied for sex education, not only in the home but also in the school. We supported the belief that all women had the right to make an educated personal choice in the way they kept their bodies through the use and the teaching of ALL birth control methods, not just the abstinance method that is federally funded today. We supported Roe VS Wade, we campaigned for Jimmy Carter, we campaigned against Richard Nixon, we demonstrated for an end to the Viet Nam war, we called for justice to be served in memory of the victims of Mai Li, we argued for the humane treatment of our own incarcerated population, we argued against the death penalty and for rehabilitation. And when it came to prisoners of war, well, we then believed in The Geneva Convention. We set up clinics and shelters for the mentally ill, for the physically ill, for the poor, for the homeless and for the hungry. Some few of us joined the SDS, many, many more of us joined The Peace Corps.

If you look at the majority of the Baby Boomers who are currently running this country, the ones who are making the rules, the ones who are voting (or not voting, as the case may be) for those people who do do those things, you'd never know it, but once upon a time some of those people truly believed in the concepts of freedom for everyone and that the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were inalienable for all of us.

We were the children of Camelot and we thought we were winning.....until we grew up and somehow turned into the very machine we had raged against....and from the sounds of today's headlines, we've not only become that machine, we're well on our way to perfecting it.

Happy Birthday, Joey, from your mom - one of the few remaining imperfections.