JABbering Stooge

Zen and the Art of Winger Distillation

2006-05-08T15:44:00.000-07:00

Shorter George Will: You fools have forgotten the horrors of 9/11! Go see United 93, or the terrorists win!

Request for Change of Venue filed

2006-05-08T15:33:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not involved in any court proceedings. However, I AM considering changing the means of delivering my polemics. I have found Blogger/Blogspot to be too unreliable and too restrictive for me to use any longer.

Replacement blogging software candidates include bBlog, WordPress, and Blogsome (which, incidentally, is at least partially based on WordPress). Further suggestions/comments are appreciated, but I expect to make the decision sometime within the next week.

Once the decision is made, I will begin porting all my posts here to the new blog location and placing a forwarding URL in my blog here.

In the long term, I intend to use my m4d web development skillz to build my own blog from scratch, but that is going to wait until I can find someone with better graphic design skills than me to help me out. This move will have to do until then.

More wisdom from Babylon 5

2006-05-04T22:38:00.000-07:00

The fine folks at Sadly, No! have done it again. This time they present a real doozy from the bowels of WingNutDaily.

In response to the first few paragraphs, Brad R. asks:

Since prophecies inevitably come true no matter what, is there really any point to opposing the National ID Act? I mean, aren't you just pissing God off by interfering with His Divine Plan?

As I noted in the comments, Mira Furlan's character in Babylon 5 provided the best assessment of prophcy that I can think of in the third-season episode "Ceremonies of Light and Dark" when she said:

Prophecy is a poor guide to the future. You only understand it when the events are already upon you.

But then another thought occurred to me as I read the other comments, particularly this one regarding the Christo-Fascist Zombie Brigade's twisted "interpretation" of the Book of Revelation:

In any case, this whole Mark of the Beast comes way, WAY after many other prophecies occur that most certainly haven't occurred. FIRST comes the Rapture, where all kids and Good Christians (not all Christians, even, are good enough for this Rapture, by the way) are zapped into Heaven. SECOND comes the rise of a demagogue, who charms the world and causes a one-world faith, a one-world currency, a one-world government, etc. THIRD comes a whole slew of judgements, which are things like plagues, famines, wars, etc. FOURTH comes the Anti-Christ, who rises from the death of the demagogue. It is the Anti-Christ who puts the Mark of the Beast on his followers. Therefore, there's no way that the Real ID act is suggestive of a Mark of the Beast.

The thought that comes to mind is this: if the RealID Act is indeed the Mark of the Beast(©1978 Tim LaHaye Industries) as the Fundies claim, then they missed the Banana- Rapture-Boat that they insinuated was reserved for them and them alone (because only they are "Good Christians").

About that Iran thing...

2006-05-03T22:31:00.000-07:00

I know that everyone else in the left-wing portion of the blogosphere has weighed in on the coming nuclear holocaust in Iran.

For instance, the fine folks at Sadly, No! reposted an excellent assessment of the situation entitled Is your entire country on crack?.

Crooks and Liars posted a video of former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter soundly debunking the rationale for nuking Iran.

But Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon had the best post title on the subject: Someone tell the Bircher President that Iran's not flouridating their water.

The whole furor, of course, started with AMERICAblog's John Aravosis highlighting a Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker stating that Bush was determined to go to war with Iran and that he was going to use nuclear (as opposed to nukyular) weapons.

But perhaps most telling of all is a briefing paper by the Oxford Research Group entitled Iran: Consequences of a War. Especially chilling is the conclusion, which states:

A US military attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure would be the start of a protracted military confrontation that would probably involve Iraq, Israel and Lebanon as well as the United States and Iran, with the possibility of west Gulf states being involved as well. An attack by Israel, although initially on a smaller scale, would almost certainly escalate to involve the United States, and would also mark the start of a protracted conflict.

Although an attack by either state could seriously damage Iran’s nuclear development potential, numerous responses would be possible making a protracted and highly unstable conflict virtually certain. Moreover, Iran would be expected to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and engage in a nuclear weapons programme as rapidly as possible. This would lead to further military action against Iran, establishing a highly dangerous cycle of violence.

The termination of the Saddam Hussein regime was expected to bring about a free-market client state in Iraq. Instead it has produced a deeply unstable and costly conflict with no end in sight. That may not prevent a US or an Israeli attack on Iran even though it should be expected that the consequences would be substantially greater. What this analysis does conclude is that a military response to the current crisis in relations with Iran is a particularly dangerous option and should not be considered further – alternative approaches must be sought, however difficult these may be.

But be sure to read the whole thing: it is worth a read, and the contents are chilling. Especially in light of the knowledge that Bush certainly won't read it and is determined to start a war, come hell or high water.

All of this is eerily similar to the runup to Operation Iraqi Liberation (and yes, the use of "liberation" instead of "freedom" is intentional). In both cases, The Most Holy George W. Christ has demonstrated an obsessive desire - one that brooks no dissent - to attack a Middle Eastern country that had nothing to do with 9/11. In both cases, he has already determined - without even bothering to try - that diplomacy simply will not work and action needs to be taken 45 days ago, even as he protests that military action is an absolute last resort. In both cases, he is cherry-picking intelligence to justify military action.

In light of all this, I find I need to consult with a certain Vorlon Ambassador:

The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.

NBC on Benedict Arnold I: "No, really! He's a moderate! Honest!"

2006-05-03T20:07:00.000-07:00

It seems that NBC's Stephen Weeke gets Weeke-kneed over homophobic, misogynist Prada™-wearing pontiffs who meddle in the internal politics of sovereign nations. That's the only explanation I can think of for the fawning coverage he gives of Cardinal Ratzinger's first anniversary as the new Pope.

Let's take a look at the massive, steaming pile of dung that passes for analysis at NBC.

Asked a year ago what they might have envisioned after a year of Cardinal Josef Ratzinger’s papacy, many liberal Roman Catholics might have imagined a bleak picture of a repressive church, and conservative Catholics might have described a church re-invigorated by a thorough house-cleaning of wayward thought and behavior.

Let's check the tale of the tape, shall we? Repressive church? Check. Purge of "wayward" (read: "librul") thought and behavior? Check.

This, of course is immediately followd by:

Neither of these scenarios has come to pass, as Pope Benedict XVI proves to be a much different person as the pope than he was as a cardinal.

Say wha? Run that by me again?

Neither of these scenarios has come to pass

This is a Pope who has interfered in American politics, blamed the media for the Catholic Church's Pedophile Priest Shell Game™ (and is currently hiding behind diplomatic immunity in said shell game), was personally responsible for the ouster of liberal theologian Hans Kueng (Kueng was subjected to the Vatican's equivalent of disbarrment in 1979), is considering canonizing Pope Pius XII - author of the Reichskonkordat that legitimized Hitler's murderous regime, promoted Archbishop William Levada, who has his own sordid history of covering up sex scandals in the Catholic Church, to succeed him at the Inquisition CDF and of course, is currently purging the Church of any liberal and homosexual seminarians.

And yet you, Mr. Weeke, are suggesting that this is somehow not indicative of a repressive church that is intolerant of dissent? Are you being utterly mendacious, believing that your readers are stupid schmucks who'll believe any tripe you type? Or are you simply a lazy, self-absorbed ignoramous who can't be bothered with little things like actual research?

And speaking of lack of research, Weeke soon followed with another whopper - this time blindly parroting former The Tablet editor John Wilkins' overly-generous assessment of Ratzinger's first papal encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God is Love, or more literally, God is Charity).

Wilkins:

His first encyclical about love doesn’t point the finger at anybody.

Weeke:

The soft tone of the document — a meditation on love and the greater need for charity in an unjust world — surprised many who were ready to buttonhole Benedict as a doctrinal hardliner.

Yeah, right. The lie is that just because Papa Ratzi put in some nice thoughts ("In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant.") or made some pretty turns of phrase, that's how he's going to reign as Pope. At the time of the encyclical's release, the media was all atwitter with the usual "conventional wisdom" about how any new Pope's first encyclical somehow magically "sets the tone" for his pontificate. The problem with believing that is the same as blindly believing a poltician's campaign promises - if it's politically expedient, they'll drop those promises like a bad habit. I believe that actions speak louder than words, and looking at the history of this Pope, his actions have done everything possible to encourage the notion that "the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence" and absolutely nothing to discourage it.

Frankly, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for Benedict Arnold I to live up to the grossly deferential expectations that Weeke and Wilkins seem to have for him. This is, after all, the Pope who said that "Religion constructed on a 'do-it-yourself' basis cannot ultimately help us" and also said that "These people (meaning scientists who actually try to find out the why and the how of it rather than curling up into fetal position and constantly mumbling "goddidit" every time they come accross some novel aspect of the universe), ‘fooled by atheism,’ believe and try to demonstrate that it’s scientific to think that everything is free of direction and order."

But that's not all! We then get this not-so-subtle dig at Algore T3h Evil Librul Robot of D00|\/|!!!1! (+1 Damage to polluting businesses)

Benedict’s tightly controlled physical poise, which often presents as timidity, seems to be have developed into an appealing stage-presence of its own, akin to how Al Gore’s robotic lack of movement became funny in itself.

I bet Coca-Cola is wishing that it had Stephen Weeke as it's PR director when New Coke™ came out. Maybe then they wouldn't have needed to bring back the original formula.

Are we getting Enroned in CenTex?

2006-04-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

Remember the California blackouts in 2000/2001? It's happening in Texas now.

Yesterday, we had rolling blackouts here in central Texas as record-high triple-digit temperatures beat down on the city. The official recorded temperature was 100 degrees, and in some parts of the Austin TV stations' viewing areas, got as high as 106 - in April, no less (and they say that global warming is a myth!).

As a result, pressure on the energy grid (of which 15% was already down for seasonal maintenance) forced the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to institute rolling blackouts yesterday and consumers are being asked to reduce their energy use between 3 and 7 PM today. According to the Austin American-Statesman, the outages were felt across much of Texas, including Houston and Dallas. And yet, ERCOT spokesman Paul Wattles claimed that doing the rolling blackouts helped prevent "region-wide outages." Earth to Paul Wattles: when an energy crunch affects something like 60% of your coverage area, that IS a region-wide outage! (ERCOT's grid covers 80% of Texas, and is essentially separate from the national grid - connected in only three places.)

Of course, as with the California blackouts, conservatives will jump on this to lay every last micron of blame at the feet of environmenalists and people who want the energy industry to be regulated. They'll break out the usual strawman arguments. Envirionmentalists don't want ANY increase in production capacity (because they're evil, terrorists who hate capitalism and want us to return to nature, conservatives will say with a Cheney-esque sneer). The regulation proponents want to drive energy companies out of the state (the same argument they made to make malpractice lawsuits illegal in 2003) - because reglation propoents are evil communists who hate competition and want big government to control EVERYTHING conservatives will say sneeringly (and these are the same people who want big government in a woman's uterus, your web browser, your telephone, your e-mail, your medical records, your political history, etc. etc. etc.).

The answer to both these charges is simple. The problem with the power grid in this country is NOT lack of power generation. The problem is that we've got First-World generating capacity but Third-World transmission infrastructure - the transmission lines can't handle the amount of energy that's being sent over them, especially at peak usage hours - that much was made clear in the 2003 Northeastern Blackout. And besides, even if power generation were an issue, the environmentalists argue that there are more eco-friendly ways of getting that generating capacity - wind and solar power and bio-diesel/ethanol for now (which have gotten a lot more efficient in recent years, but are just not getting the focus they need, especially under this administration which is heavily beholden to the oil/nuclear fission lobby) and nuclear fusion power and fuel cells later on down the road.

As for energy regulation, it is necessary, as in all market activity to prevent corrupt CEOs and accountants from gaming the system for their own personal gain at the expense of their employees and the American public in general. I would think that the Enron/WorldCom/Tyco debacle in 2002/2003 would've clearly illustrated this necessity, but clearly, some people are resistant to education that contradicts their ideological beliefs.

Oh, and speaking of energy prices, oil is now $71/barrel. Here in Austin, average gasoline prices have always lagged behind the national average...until now. One year ago, the average price of unleaded gas in Austin was $2.095/gallon, while the national average was $2.216/gallon. Today, Austin's average price per gallon is only four cents lower than the national average - $2.733/gallon in Austin vs. $2.773/gallon nationwide.

So the question, then, is this: are we getting Enroned in Central Texas? You decide.

I've got your class warfare right here...

2006-04-10T14:30:00.000-07:00

This is interesting. According to Wikipedia, the song One Tin Soldier is a 60s anti-war folk song. My first encounter with the song was in church camp in the summer of 1995. I grew up, more or less, in the Disciples of Christ denomination, and our church, along with several other Disciples Churches in central and south Texas (as far south as Corpus Christi) sent their high school-age kids to three such events during the year - two weekend camps (one in the fall, around October, one in the Spring around March) and one week-long camp in early June. From the first time we sang the song that summer, the song struck a chord with me, if you will. Now that I know that it was an anti-war ballad, it has become all that more important to me.

In case you're wondering here are the lyrics:

Listen children to a story that was written long ago
'bout a kingdom on a mountain and the valley folk below.
On the mountain was a treasure buried deep beneath a stone,
and the valley people swore they'd have it for their very own.

CHORUS:
Go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of heaven, (you can) justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowin' come the judgment day
on the bloody morning after one tin soldier rides away.

So the people of the valley sent a message up the hill
asking for the buried treasure, tons of gold for which they'd kill.
Came an answer from the kingdom: "With our brothers we will share
all the secrets of our mountain, all the riches buried there."

REPEAT CHORUS

Now the valley cried with anger; mount your horses, draw your sword,
and they killed the mountain people, so they won their just reward.
Now they stood beside the treasure on the mountain, dark and red,
turned the stone and looked beneath it. "Peace on earth" was all it said.

REPEAT CHORUS

Tom DeLay: Theocratic, Nazi Thug (TNT)

2006-04-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

John Kelso is rapidly becoming one of my favorite columnists at the Austin American-Statesman. His Friday column, "Tom DeLay: He would have cut and run at the Alamo" (The dead-trees version carries the headline "Hammer's scared of being nailed"), ridicules DeLay for his cowardly cutting and running from his re-election campaign against Democratic challenger Nick Lampson. Here's the money-shot:

Sure, Tom DeLay is a human piñata these days. But he's been whackin' his opponents with a stick for candy for quite some time. So now it's his turn.

But DeLay is apparently not done whacking his opponents for candy. Not by a long shot, as evidenced by the despicable behavior exhibited by his minions on Thursday at a press conference where Lampson was to call on Governor Goodhair to announce a special election for May 13th to fill DeLay's seat until November. Not simply content to heckle Lampson or stage a peaceful counter-protest, these thugs descended en masse on the press conference, verbally and physically harrassed Lampson supporters, and assaulted a 69-year-old retired CPS worker. The media even caught footage of the assault - click here and scroll down to the very bottom for one such video. It's very revealing. One DeLay supporter in the video even denies the blatant thuggery being orchestrated by anyone. Oh Really?

----- Original Message -----

From: Cress Ann Posten

To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;

Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 7:26 PM

Subject: Attention All Who Support Tom DeLay....

Attention all who support Tom DeLay...

Tomorrow morning (Thursday, April 6), Nick Lampson is holding a press conference to demand that Governor Perry immediately schedule a special election to replace Tom DeLay.

Hmmm. Exactly who is Nick Lampson to demand that Governor Perry circumvent the law?

Chris Homan is organizing a rally to show support for Tom tomorrow morning, (Thursday, April 6).

Meet tomorrow morning (Thursday, April 6) at 9:45am on the first floor of the parking garage attached to the Marriott Town Center, in Sugar Land.

***IMPORTANT NOTE***--Please call the campaign office at (REDACTED) and let them know if you can attend, or email Leonard Cash (click on link to his name below) so that they can get a head count.

----- Original Message -----

From: chris homan

To: ‘Cress Ann Posten’

Cc: ‘Leonard Cash’

Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 6:10 PM

Subject: FW: LAMPSON CALLS FOR MAY 13 SPECIAL ELECTION

We would meet tomorrow morning at 9:45 am on the first floor of the parking garage attached to the Marriott. Please get folks to call our campaign office (REDACTED) and let us know they can do it - or e-mail Leonard Cash (in the cc field above) so that we can get some head count. Let’s give Lampson a parting shot that wrecks his press conference.

Tell me, is this how conervative Republicans "show support" for hardened criminal Tom DeLay?

(Source: KPRC Channel 2 in Houston, TX)

Oh, and just for your edification, here's the woman who denied that this was a planned assault on democracy by DeLay's campaign manager:

(Source: KPRC Channel 2 in Houston, TX)
Oh, nobody organized this. We're just a bunch of poor, persecuted conservative Christians who just spontaenously decided to do our part to kill all the evil, Satanic "libruls."

Even worse, DeLay's campaign manager, Chris Homan said that there's more where this came from. A promise of future thuggery by a prominent member of a prominent Republican's campaign staff...why does this sound like domestic terrorism?

If this is the America you want, by all means, do continue to vote for the party of corruption, xenophobic theocracy and homophobia.

On the other hand, if you're sick and tired of reactionary thugs driving our country over a cliff, be sure to check out Nick Lampson's site and send a few bucks his way. If you live in TX-22, consider volunteering and voting for him.

Technorati Tags: Tom DeLay, Nick Lampson

Yet another evil librul milestone

2006-04-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

I just noticed on my Karl Rove Countup calendar, courtesy of Take Back the Media and other places, that Bush's rubber-stamp Congress has gone 1000 days without investigating the illegal, treasonous, politically-motivated outing of CIA NOC Valerie Plame. An outing that, if "Scooter" Libby is actually telling the truth this time instead of blowing smoke out his ass to save his own hide, was approved by the Leaker-in-Chief himself.

DeLay's pot to McKinney's kettle...you know the rest...

2006-04-06T01:23:00.000-07:00

Oh, this is rich. Tom DeLay, the ethically-challenged Dr. Vahzilok of the Christo-Fascist Zombie Brigade who recently announced that he will resign his House seat in June because of possible impending indictment on official corruption charges in relation to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, has announced that he will seek to file an ethics complaint against Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney for her assault on the Capitol Police officer who detained her for trying to sneak in to the Longworth House Office Building.

Responding to a reporter's question about McKinney at a press conference, DeLay said, "If nobody in this House files an ethics charge, I am...Her behavior is outrageous. And it’s not the only time."

And Jesus, weeping profusely, said, "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

Seriously, Tom. Who are you trying to kid?! Do you honestly expect us to believe that McKinney's actions are more outrageous than wasting the FAA's time on a personal vendetta? More outrageous than money laundering? More outrageous than defending as "represent[ing] everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America" sweatshops in Saipan using wage-slave labor that has to go into prostitution on the side and are forced to have abortions if they become pregnant - one of many Abramoff-funded junkets? More outrageous than strong-arming K-Street into raising money for and contributing only to Republicans? More outrageous than blackmailing Rep. Nick Smith into voting for the expensive, Big Pharma-kickback-laden Medicare prescription drug plan? More outrageous than ordering the government to meddle in the private dispute between the family and husband of a blind, brain-dead woman, and then subsequently inciting violence against the judges who decided to follow the law for once rather than the personal agenda of a theocrat from Texas?! And that's just for starters. I could write a book just on the scandals, outrages, borderline and outright criminal behavior that DeLay has engaged in, and I probably still wouldn't scratch the surface!

But wait, the hypocrisy and double standards don't end there! DeLay also claimed that "Had it been Tom DeLay, the Ethics Committee would have met the next day."

Excuse me?! Somebody call out the WHAAAAmbulence for Mr. DeLay! Mr. Law-and-Order-Holier-Than-Thou-Ethics-Guru tried to have the House ethics rules changed to allow his pompous white ass to stay majority leader in the event that he should ever be indicted for ANYTHING WHATSOEVER! Fortunately for the survival of American democracy, the maneuver failed thanks to a rare show of Democratic backbone. But that didn't stop DeLay from trying to evade the long arm of the law. He then stacked the ethics committee with Congresscritters who had donated to his legal defense fund. To date, the ethics committee has not met even once since then.

It gets even more nauseating from there. The ever-unhinged Michelle Malkin provides us with this gem of a DeLay quote about the DeLay-McKinney flap:

Everything is racism to her.

To turn the tables a bit, "Everything is Christophobia to Tom DeLay." Thoughout all of his legal and ethical troubles, DeLay has constantly insisted that he is a political martyr second only to Jesus Christ Himself. DeLay was a headline speaker at all three of the "look at us poor persecuted Christians" Just Us Sunday masturbatory orgies, and was the keynote speaker at the recent "War on Christians and the Values Voters in 2006" wankfest where religious conservatives compared themselves to Jews in the Nazi death camps.

News flash to DeLay and his fellow travelers: 85% of Americans self-identify as Christians! The fact that you are not allowed to send gays, Muslims and liberals to the Zyklon-B showers does not mean that you are being fed to the lions! I really don't know why this is so hard to understand, but there it is.

These modern-day Pharisees may be surprised when they get to heaven and find their names absent from "The Book of Life." Fine. I'll engage in much schadenfreude when the time comes. But these people need to be voted out post haste. They are too dangerous to leave in power any longer.

At least I didn't dive into the fart joke ditch

2006-04-05T14:30:00.000-07:00

They've been having a field day making fun of the ambiguous Homeland Security warning signs over at AMERICAblog. John Aravosis has even resurrected an old website that makes fun of some early images.

In that spirit, AMERICAblog has asked readers to come up with appropriate captions for the following set of images:

Here are mine:

1) No, the Abramoff files are not here. Move along, Citizen.

2) Medical attention works the same way in real life as in an MMORPG: a big symbol appears and you instantly revive in front of a blocky building.

3) Ph34r my cartoon anger!

4) Organic chemistry is bad. It produces a bunch of gibberish symbols that cause bad gas and hurricanes.

5) Look, ma! I'm making this guy choke himself with my evil librul mind control rays and Katrina footage!

6) No hunting or fishing, unless you are Dick Cheney.

7) If the rising sun takes up half the sky, pull over immediately. You've been taking too many drugs.

8) Pedophilia in a car gives DHS officials a stiffy.

9) Believing everything PowerLine says is a sign that you are gullible. I've got a bridge to sell you.

New Memes: Now with minty fresh scent!

2006-04-04T02:14:00.000-07:00

Via NanceGreggs at Democratic Underground, with some embellishments added:

Fellow Americans,

REMEMBER WHEN you displayed your flag on the front porch on the 4th of July, and you didn’t have to worry about whether it would be misinterpreted as support for a corrupt president and his administration?

REMEMBER WHEN ‘Support the Troops’ meant equipping our military with everything necessary for battle, instead of just being a catchy phrase that looked good on a bumper-sticker?

REMEMBER WHEN 'Support the Troops' extended to the time after they left military service so that they could get the care they needed, rather than abandoning them to the not-so-tender mercies of dog-eat-dog capitalism?

REMEMBER WHEN your tax dollars paid for things like improved education and social programs, instead of making Halliburton shareholders millionaires?

REMEMBER WHEN the Federal Government had a special commission to investigate war profiteering and fraud because it considered an outrage that corporations would try to take advantage of our men fighting and dying for our country?

REMEMBER WHEN you watched movies about WWII, and it was the enemy who tortured captured American soldiers, instead of American soldiers torturing the people they’d allegedly ‘liberated’?

REMEMBER WHEN you heard something on the TV news or read something in a newspaper, and you didn’t have to go to the internet to find out just how much of it was fact, and how much of it was ‘spin’?

REMEMBER WHEN a politician was caught with his hand in the cookie jar and he resigned in disgrace, instead of excusing his own behaviour by claiming that his political opponents were equally as guilty of wrongdoing?

REMEMBER WHEN ‘Made in the USA’ labels on products were the norm, and not a total oddity?

REMEMBER WHEN ‘Made in the USA’ labels were actually made in the USA?

REMEMBER WHEN you hitchhiked through Europe as a teenager, and you DIDN’T have to replace the American flag on your knapsack with a Canadian flag in order to be a welcomed guest in a foreign country?

REMEMBER WHEN organized crime figures had to make phone calls from the corner phone booth, because they were the only people who had to worry about wire-taps?

REMEMBER WHEN you were considered to be a worker of value because you were an American with a good work ethic, and not because you were a Pakistani or an Indian who would do the same job ‘on the cheap’?

REMEMBER WHEN telling a fellow politician on the floor of the House to ‘go f*ck himself’ was considered behaviour unbecoming an elected official, instead of being accepted as the way a Vice President behaves himself?

REMEMBER WHEN you could pretty well count on the fact that if the president said it, it was based on sound intelligence and was probably true?

REMEMBER WHEN your president spoke in public, and his words weren’t the punch-line to late night TV-show jokes?

REMEMBER WHEN you could rely on your elected representatives to put your interests ahead of the corporations that filled their campaign coffers, or the lobbyists who gave them great basketball tickets?

REMEMBER WHEN you didn’t even KNOW what religion the people you voted for were, because it didn’t really matter? Remember when you didn’t know what party your neighbour belonged to, because that didn’t really matter either?

REMEMBER WHEN Supreme Court justices were chosen for their judicial acumen, rather than their loyalty to a particular ideology?

REMEMBER WHEN Supreme Court justices recused themselves from a case if there was even the slightest hint of a conflict of interest?

REMEMBER WHEN Supreme Court justices actually upheld their pledges to Congress that they would recuse themselves from cases where they had financial interests?

REMEMBER WHEN Supreme Court justices weren't inclined to display rude gestures in response to criticism, especially right after receiving Communion?

REMEMBER WHEN the pension you’d worked for your whole life wasn’t in danger of being wiped out by corrupt CEOs, assisted by respected accounting firms that made that corruption almost impossible to detect?

REMEMBER WHEN you could brag that as an American, you were guaranteed things like free speech and due process of law, without checking the nightly news to see whether those rights were still in effect?

REMEMBER WHEN the president upheld the law of the land, instead of coming up with ‘legal loopholes’ to support the idea that he’s above the law?

REMEMBER WHEN the worst thing the president did was get a blowjob from a consenting adult who wasn't his wife?

REMEMBER WHEN Congress actually performed its duty to provide a check on Presidential power?

REMEMBER WHEN you could say, “I’m a proud American,” without qualifying it with a list of all of the things your government is doing that you’re not exactly proud of?

REMEMBER WHEN you saw news stories about people so poor they had to beg on the streets in order to feed their children, and you shook your head in disgust and thought, “What kind of uncivilized country would allow that to happen,” because it wasn’t your own country?

REMEMBER WHEN you actually thought that the people in charge of running your country were smarter than you were?

REMEMBER WHEN your parents worked all their lives to ensure you a better life, instead of worrying about how bad the life they’d be leaving their children might be?

REMEMBER WHEN the importance of clean drinking water and breathable air were unquestionable mandates, and not some crazy hippie agenda to be weighed against corporate profits?

REMEMBER WHEN questioning your government’s policies was seen as ‘participating in the process’, and not ‘giving aid and comfort to the enemy’?

REMEMBER WHEN the ‘enemy’ was a country or military force that posed a threat to American democracy, and not a nation of innocent civilians who whose destruction was dismissible as ‘collateral damage’?

REMEMBER WHEN your country went to war based on facts beforehand, instead of constantly-changing suppositions after-the-fact?

REMEMBER WHEN ‘patriotism’ was judged by your words and actions, and not by whether you were a member of the party currently in power?

REMEMBER WHEN the ‘American Dream’ was attainable through diligence and hard work, and not the luck of the ‘outsourcing’ draw?

REMEMBER WHEN profitable corporations were content with simple tax dodges, and didn’t have to have government subsidies as part of the bargain?

REMEMBER WHEN incredibly wealthy Americans bragged about their philanthropic work, instead of bragging about their tax cuts?

REMEMBER WHEN you went to the polls and voted, and didn’t have to rush home and watch the news in order to find out if your vote was counted?

REMEMBER WHEN the election of a president was considered the result of democracy in action, and not the result of Diebold executives doing the job they were expected to do?

REMEMBER WHEN you sang ‘God Bless America’ as a kid, and never thought you’d grow up to wonder if, in view of your country’s actions, asking God’s blessing was asking a bit too much?

I REMEMBER WHEN ... and I wonder if these ideas will become ancient history by the time those of us old enough to recall them are dead and gone.

UK Register sets up MST fic gag

2006-04-04T01:29:00.000-07:00

In the fanfiction subgenre of MST fics, one of the common clichés is to have one of the MSTers respond to the general theme of the piece (or a specific section) by suggesting "worse" ideas/topics for the original author to write about, immediately followed by another MSTer saying something along the lines of "Don't give him/her any ideas!" For example:

SCIMITAR: Only three things can do this to Ksa.
REI: And they are?
SCIMITAR: Child porn, bad spelling, and Sakuya.
RANMA: Well, I haven't seen Peter this mad since Nintendo canceled bringing `Earthbound 2' to the states.
RYOGA: Well, at least Tank cop hasn't made any lemons with Sakuya in the-URK!
(Ksawarrior is now holding Ryoga by the neck, floating three feet
off the ground.)
KSA(really P.O.ed): Don't give him ideas. (Drops Ryoga, and returns to his seat.)

In that vein, it seems that the UK Register has done exactly that in publishing an April Fool's Day gag article suggesting that President Bush, as part of the War on Terrorism, was preparing an executive order preventing him from relinquishing power on Jan. 20, 2009.

Grist for the conspiracy mill? Under ordinary circumstances, maybe. However, as some astute Bartcoppers pointed out, there are a couple of items that, coupled with the date of publication, make it clear that this was printed as a goof:

The URL for the article, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/01/gwot_cha/, is not one that falls in the Register's normal directory structure for serious articles about events here in the U.S. - read the directory name, "gwot_cha," fast enough, and it almost sounds like "gotcha!"

Many of the names cited as sources in the article are names of actors who have starred in Three Stooges short films, such as Christine McIntyre, Jock Mahoney, Philip Van Zandt and Bud Jamison.

Poorly though out April Fool's gag? Soitanly! N'yuck! N'yuck! N'yuck! N'yuck! However, given the amount of criminality coming out of this administration, seeing them actually put it into practice is not out of the realm of possibility.

Please don't give the Bushies any ideas, UK Register editors!

In wingnuttia

2006-04-03T16:04:00.000-07:00

The fine folks at Sadly, No! (2005 Koufax Award runner-up for Most Humorous Blog) bring us this choice bit of wingnuttery from the pen keyboard of Fred Hutchison over at Alan Keyes' asylum of whackjobs and conspiracy theorists known as "Renew America." I thought that I would add a few comments of my own.

First off, a bit of hypocrisy on the part of Herr Huchison:

Homosexuals are difficult to categorize and analyze

They're difficult to categorize and analyze? Yet here you are, "categorizing and analyzing" them (though "caricaturing and demonizing" would be more accurate).

Secondly, regarding his "7 Steps to Become T3h 3vil!", all seven steps apply to Reich-wingnuts to varying degrees:

1) The first floor down into the darkness involves denial that one is a sinner.

The Christo-Fascist Zombie Brigade (© 2004-2006 Marc Maron) is guilty of this one 24/7. They believe that simply because they and they alone "follow Christ," they are without sin.

2) From the stage-one denials, the journey into darkness proceeds downwards to a second denial--the denial that evil exists.

The right denies that evil exists on the right - that's the exclusive property of lefties.

3) Then comes the descent into the delusion that those who fight evil are themselves evil.

This goes hand-in-hand with the above: because they delude themselves into believing that only lefties are t3h 3vil!!!1!, "libruls" are evil for opposing evil on the right.

4) Next comes the hatred of those who fight evil.

See LGF, FreeRepublic, RedState.com, etc.

5) The fifth floor down into darkness is to believe--or to be willing to tell the lie--that evil things are good, and good things are evil.

Things the right calls good: Torture, killing abortion providers, killing homosexuals, killing liberals, killing Muslims, pollution, etc.

Things the right calls evil: Being homosexual, women being anywhere other than barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, being a liberal, being a non-Christian, etc.

6) The sixth stage is to hate the victims of evil or to hate those whom the good guys are protecting.

See Pope Benedict Arnold I on the child abuse scandal. See also the vilification of the ACLU for their defense of homosexuals.

7) The seventh stage of evil is serial killing, terrorism, and genocide.

Three words: The Bush Doctrine.

As Glenn Reynolds would say: "Heh."

2006-03-20T00:53:00.000-08:00

I was amused by a letter to the editor in the yesterday's edition of the Austin American-Statesman (unfortunately, it was only in the dead-trees version, not the online version). It went thusly:

Follow the leader

Re: William Rusher's March 16 column, "Throwing in the towel":

Rusher concedes that our invasion of Iraq was based on faulty intelligence; that the administration's occupation strategy was flawed; that William Buckley's assessment of Bush's failure "may" be correct; and that terrorist bombings and sectarian violence constitute bad news.

But Rusher suggests that we ignore bad news. After all, factual events are only reported because journalists hate Bush. Failure in Iraq will not be caused by lack of leadership, but only because of Americans' unwillingness to support that lack of leadership. President Bush is Buzz Lightyear, and we are expected to follow him to infinity...and beyond.

Victor (REDACTED)
Austin

Certainly puts a new spin on that codpiece-enhanced flight suit that Bush wore on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, doesn't it?

Indeed. (And disturbing, if true.)

That's a nice thought, but...

2006-03-20T00:29:00.000-08:00

Last week, in a speech at Georgetown University, former Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor cautioned students against condoning "those who would strong-arm the judiciary," warning that such tactics would cause the United States to "[fall] into a dictatorship."

That's great, Justice O'Connor, but it would be nice if you actually practiced what you preached. By declaring your intention to only retire under a Republican administration, and saying "that's terrible" of the early call of Florida for Gore in the 2000 election, and not subsequently recusing yourself from Bush v. Gore, you personally handed the reins of power over to those who would do just that - turn this once-great country into a dictatorship.

Fun with semantics

2006-03-09T03:49:00.000-08:00

While we're adding entries to the Wingnut Debate Dictionary (They can debate? News to me.), allow me to add a couple of my own:

1.)The Liberalcaust: eliminationist rhetoric that blames The Left for all the problems of the world from The Fall of Man to male impotence and suggests that the only way to set things right (in more ways than one) is to "kill all the liberals." Also known as "The Final Solution to the Liberal Problem."

2.)Liberalenfrei: the state of the world after the Liberalcaust is implemented.

3.)Ignoratio Hovindi: the tendency to claim you're going to give a particular argument against evolution before going off on wild tangents that have nothing to do with the argument you're trying to make, interspersed with creationist book-hawking. From Hovind, Kent.

4.)Plurium Hovindum: the tendency, both written and oral debate, to offer without proof multiple rapid-fire assertions in the hopes that the respondant won't have enough time to answer all of them, making the arguer the winner by default. Also known as "Cheney's Shotgun" or "The Gish Gallop." From Hovind, Kent.

The Sadly, No! post

2006-03-06T23:11:00.000-08:00

I've recently become a fan of the fine folks at Sadly, No! I've even left comments there on occasion. So I thought it might be a good idea to share with you some thoughts I had on a couple of posts there.

First, there was this post about the Jyllands-Posten cartoon controversy. Responding to a report that a Pakistani cleric had offered a $1 million bounty (paging Dr. Evil!), Brad R. lays this gem on us:

Y'know, as much as I bitch about the Christian Right in this country, at least they don't do shit like this

残念ですが、それじゃねェ～ぞ! (In case you're wondering, the Japanese roughly translates as "Sadly, No!")

The other bit that I wanted to write about was the hilarious fisking of Michael Westfall's extra-crispy bucket of right-wingnuttery about Willie Nelson's musical tribute to Brokeback Mountain. I want to point out this line in particular:

We are handing our youth over to this anti-family smut on a silver platter without even a fight!

Yeah, that's right! Christians are just bending over and taking it up the rear, alright! Why they'd never dictate to America what belief system to follow or what books are verboten or what science is allow...oh wait.

Okay, so maybe right-minded Christians would tell you what you can and can't think, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'd try, by legislative fiat or force of arms, to insert government into a woman's uter...oh wait.

Okay, so maybe conservative Christians would tell you what you can believe and read and would relegate women to brood-mare status, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'd go around beating the living daylights out of homosexuals, blowing up gay bars or protesting military funerals because of America's "acceptance" of the "gay agenda," or even walk into a gay bar in Massachusetts and, upon finding out that it is indeed a gay bar, start shooting up the pla...oh wait.

Okay, so maybe fundamentalist Christians would order you to think and believe as they do, belittle women and generally terrorize people whose sexual orientaitons they don't like, but it's not like they'd stockpile warehouses full of munitions and WMDs with fake DoD/UN credentials in preparation for the day when they righteously smite the evildoers in their...oh wait.

Just out of curiosity, Mr. Westfall wouldn't happen to be armed, would he? If so, maybe we can get Homeland Security, the Pentagon and the NSA to stop wasting their time on Quakers, vegans and those who pay more than the minimum on their credit card bills and go after some real terrorists.

Man I'm such a slacker...

2006-02-28T21:03:00.000-08:00

I almost missed out on posting for this entire month. So to make up for it, here's about a month's worth of posts in one.

My first year of blogging: A look back

So last Wednesday was the one-year anniversary of my descent into the role of a blogger. I would like to take this time to look back at the highlights of the past year.

Feb. 22, 2005: First day of blogging; I laid down the general theme of my blog and what I hoped to accomplish. I also revealed my inner geek by pointing to a music video of the song "Every OS Sucks."

March 4, 2005: The first time one of my print editorials is republished on my blog. The subject: JeffyLube's noxious presence in the White House Press Secretary's daily briefings and the inadequacy of the "librul" media in covering it versus their incessant, rabid coverage of "Rathergate."

March 15, 2005: I cover the Austin American-Statesman's horrendous coverage of the launch of Austin's Air America Radio affiliate, suggesting that they would not do the same to conservatives.

March 21, 2005: Part two of my editorial series on the folly of the "librul" media (part one was coverage of Gannongate) appears on my blog. In this editorial, I accuse the GOP of succumbing to groupthink as standard operating procedure, with abusing the always-fawning media as one of the tools that they deploy in that effort (in particular, the payola and propaganda scandals).

March 21, 2005: My First Photoshop - Target: Tom DeLay. 'Nuff said.

March 24, 2005: Politics and sports collided on my blog as I talked about the representatives of the "Theocracy NOW!" crowd in the NCAA basketball tournament. It was not to be the last time, either.

April Fool's Day, 2005: A two-fer. I posted about Sean Hannity's growing unhingedness regarding the Terri Schiavo case, and I caught the wave going around about the O-Zone song "Dragostea Din Tei," also known as the "Numa Numa Song."

April 12, 2005: I suggested that the junior senator from Texas doesn't know jack about statistics, and asked readers (all two of them) to send him a copy of "Statistics for Dummies" (and send Ann Coulter a copy of "Islam for Dummies").

April 18, 2005: A day before the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, I posted my second Photoshop, this time in response to Time magazine's glowing profile of Ann Coulter.

April 20, 2005: My editorial on the elevation of perennial U.S. election-meddler Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger appears on the blog. The Catholic church would quickly learn to regret its decision several times in the following months.

April 22, 2005: I start a series of posts on the hostile takeover of the Air Force Academy by the religious right's Jihad Squad.

April 28, 2005: Congressman James "Bill Lumbergh" Sensenbrenner (R - WI) comes to my attention by childishly denigrating Democrats in a report on scuttled amendments to anti-abortion legislation. His justification? An even more childish temper tantrum about Democrats' legitimate complaints about the bill. It would not be the last time he would abuse his power as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

May 13, 2005: My first post to elicit a negative response from another blogger. The blogger who runs PBSWatch had some nasty things to say about the part of the post dealing with the ruling in Nebraska declaring the state's ban on gay marriage unconstitutional. I responded in kind, and the comment war was on. Unfortunately, one of the side effects of my upgrade(?) to Haloscan for comments later in the year was the removal of all prior comments, though I think I may be able to recover them if I jigger with Blogger a bit.

June 2, 2005 brought a plethora of posts. First I covered a couple of instances of serious concern to those fighting the "Theocracy NOW!" crowd. Then I made a couple of posts involving anime - first one where I used the character of Ruri Hoshino from Martian Successor Nadesico to call Rep. Spencer Bachus a baka for wanting to censor Bill Maher, and then to announce my plans to attend A-kon 16 that weekend. In between, I talked about a lighting-sparked fire at a local landmark - The Oasis Restaurant.

On June 10, the day James Sensenbrenner abused his authority yet again, I cataloged a whole slew of examples of Republican hypocrisy.

June 21, 2005: Another twofer - a report on my outing at DemocracyFest 2005 and some commentary on the sheer, unadulterated hatred that the Jihad Squad has for anyone who isn't a straight male conservative Christian.

I ended my momentous month of posting on June 23, 2005 with a response to Karl "Democrats love terrorists" Rove and Republican Congresscritters accusing Democrats of hating on Christians (even as they hate on non-Christians).

July started off with yet more lamentations on the sorry state of the "librul" media in light of the London transit bombings.

The highlight of my July 14, 2005 series of posts was my commentary on Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement and the coming fight to replace her (and eventually, former Chief Justice William Rhenquist).

I also covered the death of James "Ye cannot change the laws of physics, cap'n!" Doohan on July 20, 2005.

August 2, 2005: Yet another twofer. I used my (pre-templating) strikeout span tag to put the truth in President Bush's mouth in the transcript of his speech giving John "Short Temper Theater" Bolton a recess appointment as U.N. ambassador. Then I live-blogged the special election in Ohio in which Jean "Murtha is a Traitor...No I wasn't calling him a traitor, I just made up a quote from another guy who called Murtha a traitor" Schmidt narrowly beat out Iraq War vet Paul Hackett (under potentially suspicious circumstances).

I would have to say that the next highlight was my August 12, 2005 smackdown of Bill O'Reilly and Michelle Malkin's tag-team smear job on Cindy Sheehan.

August 23, 2005 consisted of two highlight-worthy posts. First was a rather long post decrying how greed (one of the seven deadly sins) has become the ultimate virtue in American society, heavily encouraged by the thugs who have hijacked the Republican party. Next was my first editorial of the 2005-2006 school year - a preview of upcoming political events in the fall.

Then on August 31, 2005, I commented on the American Legion's terrorist threats against anti-war protesters and how it seemingly violated Section 802 of the PATRIOT Act.

September started with a report on the inaugural protest of the "Bring Them Home Now" tour. It was shortly followed by another editorial, this time about Hurricane Katrina.

That was followed by a couple of posts "fisking" really stupid scribblings by right-wingers - first letter writers in the Austin American-Statesman regarding Hurricane Katrina, then a right-wing columnist in the student newspaper at Texas State.

September ended with a post about the Wal-Marting of Japan.

October was a relatively highlight-free month. The only two posts worth mentioning were a post about two recent incidents of anti-First Amendment activities on the part of corporations and a post celebrating my alma mater's strong showing in the DARPA Grand Challenge.

In November, I performed yet another fisking of a right-winger column in the student newspaper, wrote an editorial that was rejected because it appeared on my blog prior to publishing, posted yet again about the onward march of religious McCarthyism, and finished with an editorial about the so-called "War on Christmas."

December and January were light posting months. In December I fisked the inevitable response to my column on the "War on Christmas" and celebrated my birthday. The only highlight from January was my post-New Year's post, which marked the first time written Japanese appeared on my blog (And I promise you, it won't be the last! :-P).

One last brain fart....

2006-01-31T15:38:00.000-08:00

I thought I should share with you these images that I think will tell you louder than words what I think of some of the recent goings on.

Chris Matthews on the latest tape of Osama bin Laden:

Saddam's new legal tactic:

Pre-Essay Miscellany

2006-01-31T06:43:00.000-08:00

Some random thoughts before I start in on my State of Our Democracy essay:

I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that the very instant Scalito is seated in Sandra Day O'Connor's seat at least one case aimed at overturning Roe v. Wade and/or Griswold v. Connecticut will start working its way through the courts.

Michael Kinsley had a funny column in today's Statesman: "Let's kick the Democrats," which mocks the double standards that are almost omnipresent in the Republican punditry.

The long-delayed series on the state of our democracy

2006-01-31T00:33:00.000-08:00

Okay, I've been rather lax on keeping my promise to discuss the state of democracy in this country (between time commitments with work and school, and the video/audio crack that is World of Warcraft, I haven't gotten around to it until now). But now, over one month after I first promised, and just in time for the Liar-in-Chief's State of the Union Address, I will indeed be devoting the next several posts to delivering my own State of Our Democracy. Here's how it will work:

Introduction: Is America Headed for Fascism? - An overview of what I think is the current state of American democracy, complete with specifying how I will lay out my argument.

Part One: The First Seven Characteristics of Fascism - This covers the first seven characteristics of fascist regimes, as defined by Laurence Britt: Powerful and Continuing Nationalism, Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights, Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause, Supremacy of the Military, Rampant Sexism, Controlled Mass Media and Obsession with National Security.

Part Two: The Last Seven Characteristics of Fascism - Self-explanatory. These seven characteristics are: Religion and Government are Intertwined, Corporate Power is Protected, Labor Power is Suppressed, Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts, Obsession with Crime and Punishment, Rampant Cronyism and Corruption and Fraudulent Elections.

Part Three: Raging Against the Dying of the Light - This section details what we liberals need to do to restore America to what it once was.

Conclusion: There is nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America. - Says all you need to know. This section contains my final thoughts on the subject.

If all goes according to plan, I should have the introduction up by the time I go to work today. Part One will go up later tonight, if not overnight due to the State of the Union. Part Two will go up tomorrow after I get home from my internship. Part Three will go up Thursday after I get home from work, and the conclusion will go up after I get home from my internship on Friday.

After that, I plan on discussing Orson Scott Card. That should take me into my first anniversary as a blogger. :-)

From there, I will start formulating and articulating a positive liberal agenda for the Dems to run on in '06.

Senator Nikita Krushchev (R - SC): "We will bury you"

2006-01-25T22:51:00.000-08:00

To hear the Kool-Aid™-drinkers tell it, Senator Lindsey Graham Nikita Krushchev (R - SC) "highlighted the exaggerated absurdity" of the "mean-spirited" Democrats and their presumption that they had the right to ask questions of Bush's Litmus Test-Approved nominee, Judge Sam Alito.

In channeling the former Soviet Union leader, Graham said, "I’ll just tell you right now we welcome that debate on our side...We’ll clean your clock."

Allow me to run that by you again, for full effect:

The only thing that was missing was the completely unhinged banging of the South Carolina senator's genuine fake leather footwear on the table.

Naturally, in an attempt to justify their massive circle-jerk wankery over anything less than an "up-or-up" vote over the Alito nomination, conservatives will inevitably cite the elevation of Clinton appointees Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer, claiming that because Republicans "rolled over" for these two, Democrats should sit down, shut up and forget about things like "checks and balances" and "advise and consent" - only Republicans are allowed those things.

Yes, that's right, to be a good conservative these days, you have to believe that every single Clinton appointee was always given timely hearings and that the vote was always 100-0 in favor of confirmation. (Jesse "Senator No" Helms? Who's he? Senator Hatch abused the "blue slip" rule? Pshaw! That's another "librul" lie!)

The Marathon Match is over

2006-01-04T03:52:00.000-08:00

For those of you who missed it, Penn State beat Florida State in this year's Orange Bowl 26-23 in, get this, TRIPLE OVERTIME. The game was defined almost as much by miscues and missed opportunities as it was by the coaches who lead their respective teams. However, the Forever Game is finally over, and Bobby Bowden's FSU Seminoles went down in flames in the end.

Frankly, given Bowden's self-righteous asshattery regarding the hostile takeover at the Air Force Academy, I wouldn't be surprised if he blamed the loss on "anti-Christian" referees. If so, he can eat it for all I care.

Gimme some of that Auld Lang Syne

2006-01-02T21:35:00.000-08:00

Warning: The following post requires Japanese-compatible fonts installed for your browser.

I know I've been remiss in posting - especially since I promised a reaction to recent events (forthcoming in a future post about the state of democracy in America).

In the meantime I just wanted to wish everyone (even the NSA spies) a happy new year, or in Japanese, 明けましておめでとうございます(Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu)!

One of my biggest hopes for the new year is that the Democrats win back the House and/or the Senate so that we can finally start putting some checks on this criminal administration and cleaning out the crooks in congress (starting with Tom DeLay).

Furthermore, I would like to start seeing liberal Christians like those in the Christian Alliance for Progress taking back their religion from the whackos in the Taliban Wing of the Republican Party. From what I can tell, they're already off to a good start.

And while we're on the subject of religion, I recently took the "Belief-o-Matic" quiz linked to by our firends at the Clue Factory. Here are my results:

Unitarian Universalism - 100%
Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants - 92%
Liberal Quakers - 91%
Secular Humanism - 89%
Neo-Pagan - 79%
New Age - 69% (W00t!)
Theravada Buddhism - 68%
Reform Judaism - 65%
Nontheist - 62%
Baha'i Faith - 62%
Taoism - 56%
Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) - 56%
New Thought - 55%
Mahayana Buddhism - 50%
Scientology - 48% (Apparently, I don't know the history of psychology like Tom Cruise does)
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) - 43% (Orson Scott Card's religion - more on that later)
Orthodox Quaker - 40%
Sikhism - 38%
Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant - 36%
Orthodox Judaism - 30%
Jainism - 28%
Islam - 23%
Jehovah's Witness - 22%
Seventh Day Adventist - 18%
Hinduism - 16%
Eastern Orthodox - 15%
Roman Catholic - 15%

Okay...I'll accept that on the face of it. However, I do have one complaint. The quiz does not seem to distinguish among branches of Islam the way it does Christian, Jewish or even Buddhist sects. If Iraq's demographics are any indication, Islam is hardly as monolithic as its detractors make it out to be.

T-plus 26 years and counting

2005-12-21T13:21:00.000-08:00

As of 8:35 PM tonight, that's how long I will have been living on this planet, struggling to find my place in this crazy, mixed up world.

In other news, I plan on posting my reaction to recent revelations (Snoopgate, etc.) in the next day or so. I think the two readers who read this blog (one of whom almost assuredly works for the NSA) will find it rather interesting.

And speaking of interesting, MSRNC reports that one of the FISA court judges has resigned in protest over Bush's illegal domestic spying activities. More to come on that as well.

But for now, I'm off to party!

I just noticed something

2005-12-12T03:45:00.000-08:00

I took a good look at the picture I just posted a few minutes ago. The billboard space is owned by Lamar Advertising - the same company that violated their contract with the DNC to put up billboards critical of Rep. Jean Schmidt's cowardly attack on Rep. John Murtha in strategically located places in Ohio's 2nd district.

Must be nice to have double standards.

Is this really a good idea?

2005-12-12T03:34:00.000-08:00

I know that John Aravosis over at AMERICAblog has already touched on this, but I just wanted to get my two cents in. MSRNC and the Washington Post are both reporting that some psychologists are considering draft guidelines declaring extreme pathological bias as a mental illness.

Rebellious Peasant's T. Harris makes an excellent point about the pros and cons of the idea, but I can't help but worry that, should the draft guidelines be accepted, they will quickly be abused by the political establishment against their pet scapegoats. Just look at the rhetoric of the right wing today. Michael Savage regularly calls liberalism "a mental disorder," even devoting a book-length screed to the idea - this just feeds his fantasies. One can easily imagine a scenario where one of his fellow travellers in a position of power within the Republican party, say Tom DeLay, gets legislation passed having liberals committed to mental institutions for "pathological anti-American, anti-Christian and anti-Capitalist biases." And I'm sure Stalin would be laughing his ass off from hell watching the whole thing go down.

This doesn't help conservatives, either, because the abuses can run both ways. If I'm "pathologically biased against conservatives, etc." because I dare to hold opinions the GOP doesn't like, then the bozo who erected this billboard

could just as easily be declared "pathologically biased against non-Christians."

So no, I don't think that this is a good idea.

What O'Reilly, Hannity and Gibson REALLY mean by a "War on Christmas"

2005-12-07T11:03:00.000-08:00

A very revealing Flash animation can be found here.

Combined with the antics of "The God Warrior" on a recent episode of Trading Spouses, and you can see why I get nervous everytime the Taliban Wing of the Republican Party mutters darkly about "godly fumigations" of the "termites" in America.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse

2005-12-07T00:39:00.000-08:00

It does. Get a load of Just Us Sunday III - Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land This Time It's Not Just Us Sunday II!

Some people just don't get it.

2005-12-07T00:31:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. It's finals time again, and much of my time is consumed with studying for "examination hell." However, I do have time to respond to an editorial that appeared last week in response to my editorial on the War on Non-Christians. Enjoy!

Christians should be free to express their beliefs in America

Nathan Seltzer
Guest Columnist

James Baker’s article in The University Star’s Tuesday edition twisted the facts and misrepresented evidence to try to accuse Christians of fascism.

I would argue that I am not the one twisting facts and misrepresenting evidence, but that you are. We’ll see who’s right at the end, won’t we?

He accuses the "religious right" of trying to turn America into some type of fascist state because some Christians want to — gasp — practice their religion.

Well, that didn’t take long. Nowhere in my editorial did I suggest that Christians practicing their religion was not allowed under the First Amendment. And yes, this whole persecution complex for political gain thing is the sort of tactic a fascist would employ. So just who is "twisting the facts and misrepresenting the evidence" here?

It seems that the country, which was founded on Christian principles by predominantly Christian individuals, has deemed it appropriate to discuss and celebrate any religion except Christianity in public schools in the name of cultural diversity.

The claim that the United States was founded upon Christian principles is patently false. Not just for the reasons I described in my editorial. Consider the following: there is no mention of ANY divine being ANYWHERE in the Constitution (how's THAT for Constitutional literalism?). Congress met in session on Christmas Day the first year the Constitution was in effect. In fact, Christmas wasn’t even recognized as a federal holiday until 1870. Article XI of the Treaty of Tripoli (which according to Clause 2 of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution has the same force as anything else that’s in the Constitution) explicitly states that "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..."

As for the bizarre claim that "any religion except Christianity" can be celebrated in public schools, that simply is not true. You can still pray and celebrate your own religion in public school, so long as it is on your own time, and so long as there is no coerced participation by captive audiences, which is why the "making kids wear Muslim garb during Ramadan" example below also fails the constitutionality smell test.

Islamic religion and Muslim holidays are discussed in public schools, with some schools in California even going so far as to have the children dress up in traditional Muslim garb during Ramadan.

Merely discussing the Muslim religion and its holidays, particularly as part of a comparative religions ELECTIVE course, does not cross the line, so no enforcement is needed. However, the part about having children dress up in traditional Muslim garb during Ramadan DOES cross the line. And believe it or not, but the ACLU and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State WERE ON RECORD OPPOSING THE ACTIVITY weeks before Pat Robertson began whining about it.

However, any mention of God or Jesus or even breathing the word "Christmas" in public schools is somehow deemed a violation of the separation of church and state.

Huh? Again, when did that ever happen? Just because you’re repeating the same "Christians are being persecuted" canard doesn’t make it any more true than last time.

I shudder to think what would happen if a teacher brought a nativity scene to school.

It would be the end result of the school being sued into bankruptcy by the Alliance Defense Fund’s 800-plus lawyers for having the audacity to have even one square inch missing a nativity scene.

Any Christians who challenge this view are deemed fascists by hardliner, antireligious zealots like Baker who somehow get the ear of the media with their hate-filled diatribes.

I didn’t paint all Christians with the fascist brush – just the modern-day Pharisees posing as Christians in the fringe right wing of the Republican party. Yet somehow I’m the "hardliner, antireligious zealot." I don’t know what skills are required over in the mass communications department, but clearly reading comprehension and critical thinking aren’t among them.

By accusing Christians of hatred, Baker makes the faulty assumption that the people he hates hate him back.

Well, according to the rhetoric of the religious right, I have no morals, I’m damned to hell unless I "shape up," I’m a termite who needs to be exterminated, and I’m not to be allowed to take part in governing the country of which I am a citizen. Nope, no hatred there.

Baker mentions the Christmas theme as being "Peace on Earth, good will toward men" but failed to mention that this message comes from the Christian Bible, which is not even allowed to be read in public schools.

The reason I brought up the "Peace on Earth, good will toward men" line (Luke 2:14) was specifically to point out the hypocrisy of those who claim, ever so loudly, to follow Christ (and that they are the only true Christians), who seem to have a hard time actually following his teachings. Matthew 6:5-6 in particular seems to send them for a loop.

How can anyone say Christianity is becoming the state religion when so few freedoms are granted to Christians to practice their religion in public institutions?

Still free to pray silently to oneself? Yep. Still free "to pray standing in the streets, that you may be seen of men?" Yep. Still free to gather with likeminded fellows to study your holy texts and pray together? Yep. Still free to force others to pray with you in your manner? Nope. Seems to me that the only "right" that has been "taken away" is your "right" to use your beliefs as a cudgel against anyone who believes differently from you. But what do I know? I’m just an evil, terrorist, traitor, spawn-of-Satan who needs to be shot on sight.

On top of all this, Baker says that Christian groups are seeking to make sure that religious diversity is "snuffed out by judicial or legislative fiat".

See below. And sometimes, they seem to need to feel the need to snuff out religious diversity by force of arms, as I will discuss below.

Far from seeking to snuff out religious diversity, campaigns such as Jerry Falwell’s "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign" seek to legally protect Christians who wish to practice their faith without being told they can’t pray or read the Bible as they see fit.

I don’t think I need to dignify this ridiculous (not to mention, repetitive) talking point with a response.

These campaigns have never and will never force Christianity on the unreceptive.

Tell that to KU Religious Studies professor Paul Mirecki, who had the shit beat out of him for saying religiously incorrect things about Intelligent Design and religious fundamentalism. Tell that to the victims of Eric Rudolph. Tell that to Matthew Shepard.

And I could go on and on. Florida state Senator Daniel Webster introduced an amendment excising language that recognizes a separation between church and state in the state constitution. Lawyer-author Edwin Vieira approvingly noted Stalin’s method for "dealing with" uncooperative judges.

Do you honestly believe that the likes of Dobson, Falwell and Robertson would be satisfied with mere "parity?" Robertson has called for a "godly fumigation" of the "termites" in office – anyone who isn’t his brand of Christian. And while you’re at it, look at the other Robertson quotes on that link and tell me that he won’t "force Christianity on the unreceptive."

Jerry Falwell has said that "if you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being." He has also said that "if we are going to save America and evangelize the world, we cannot accommodate secular philosophies that are diametrically opposed to Christian truth." Will he be satisfied with mere "parity?"

James Dobson talks about ideological differences as if it were an actual Civil War going on – one that he intends to win at all costs. He has also endorsed anti-abortion terrorist Randall Terry in his bid for Congress. This is the same Randall Terry who said, "I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good. Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism." Will they be satisfied with mere "parity?"

At the same time, living in the United States does mean that members of all religions can approach you and discuss their faith or attempt to convince you of their beliefs.

Which is already protected under the First Amendment. Therefore, there is no need for any of this "Religious Freedom Amendment" BS. What part of this is so difficult to understand?

Christians seek to spread their faith, not through legislation, but through word of mouth.

Liberal Christians, maybe, but not these modern Pharisees that conservatives keep trying to convince us are the only true Christians, as I pointed out above.

Christmas is about celebrating all that Christ’s birth has meant for us. It is about love, family, friends and togetherness. Even if you don’t believe in Christ, these other themes are universal.

Then why do religious conservatives keep acting like converting the heathens to Christianity by the sword is the only thing that matters, even at this time of year? Does it not strike you as mildly hypocritical that conservative Christians keep spewing the same hateful rhetoric that Osama bin Laden does?

Don’t allow the hate-speak and misinformation that is being spread to close your heart and mind to the spirit of the holidays.

Pot to kettle: You’re black!

Seltzer is a pre-mass communication junior.

Yeah, our mass communications department needs some work...

In the crosshairs

2005-11-29T22:45:00.000-08:00

It appears that my post about the American Legion making terrorist threats against anti-war protesters struck a nerve. A recent check of my Site Meter statistics reveals that someone in the Legion (of Doom to Libruls) came across my humble little corner of cyberspace while googling the string "poll american legion."

Whoever uses the computer(s) in the subnet registered for the Indianapolis, Indiana branch of the Legion must have a lot of time on their hands to check on un-American activities like dissent. Either that or they're planning some not so nice things involving the person of anyone who thinks that The Most Holy George W. Christ doesn't walk on water.

If I wind up sleeping with the fishes at some point in the near future, you'll know why. In the meantime, I intend to keep fighting the good fight, and not let the bastards get me down.

UPDATE: 11/30/05 9:23 PM
I decided to remove the partial IP address of the site because it opens the Legion up to some not-so-nice things from hackers. After having criticized a conservative for doing something similar, I felt it would not be appropriate for me to stoop to that level - not to mention hypocritical, even in an effort to deter any retaliatory action on the part of the American Legion. Because unlike the Bush administration, I believe that the ends don't always justify the means.

Another day, another editorial

2005-11-29T22:10:00.000-08:00

I managed to get one more editorial published before the end of the semester. My last one should've been published, but the opinions editor for the paper I write for came up with this new rule that bloggers can't post anything they want submitted for publication to their blogs until after publication. Personally, I think it's a BS rule, but I don't make editorial decisions, and I have taken more than enough space even mentioning the subject. So without further ado, here is my editorial in its origninal glory (the hacked-to-pieces version is available here - entitled, appropriately enough, "'Tis the season to vilify"):

The War on Non-Christians heats up

At this supposedly festive time of year, there are some people for whom the holiday’s thematic message of “peace on Earth, goodwill towards men” falls on deaf ears. Motivated by a desire to turn the United States into the Christian version of Iran, these religious fascists would like nothing more than to replace the good message of the (highly commercialized) season with their own vitriolic message of “hate anyone who isn’t a conservative Christian.”

Last January, I predicted that with George W. Bush’s re-election as president, the atmosphere would get increasingly noxious for those who aren’t Mullah Jerry Falwell’s ardent followers. For my efforts, I received a bilious RNC talking points-laden hate mail in the following issue of the University Star. From there, the rhetoric ratcheted up over Terri Schiavo, with former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay issuing threats to the judges involved. At a gathering of conservative minds called “Remedies to Judicial Tyranny,” Edwin Vieira approvingly noted Stalin’s solution to problematic judges (“Death solves all problems: no man, no problem”) even as he railed against Justice Anthony M. Kennedy for “[upholding] Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law.” A liberal church in Pasadena, California has had its tax-exempt status threatened for a sermon criticizing the war in Iraq, even as conservative churches engaging in political advocacy from the pulpit skated by IRS scrutiny.

Which brings us to the coming Christmas season. The Alliance Defense Fund has mobilized its 800 plus lawyers in a bid to challenge the absence of nativity scenes from even one square inch of American soil. Fox “News” commentator John Gibson has devoted a whole book-length screed to the idea that somehow, Christmas is under siege by evil spawn-of-Satan liberals. Additionally, the Liberty Council, apparently at the behest of Jerry Falwell, has begun a “Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign,” complete with pulpit advocacy plans that I’m sure will once again evade IRS scrutiny, to be enhanced by the actions of the Christian Educators Association International’s 8,000 public school teachers.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind these modern Pharisees posing as Christians that “Christmas,” as it is practiced in the United States, has not been exclusively Christian for a very long time. Retail and department stores have taken advantage of the huge profit potential in all the jostling and shouting to buy presents for loved ones and using it to push crass consumerism on John Q. Public. Just look at how Christmas-themed ads have been starting earlier and earlier as the years go by – this year they seemed to start even before Halloween. This operation is so slick that they’ve even got buzzwords to denote the rush of brick-and-mortar shopping the day after Thanksgiving (“Black Friday”) and online shopping the following Monday (“Cyber Monday”). The concept has even been immortalized in a song by Australian artist Eric Bogle called “Santa Bloody Claus.”

But even if there weren’t that aspect to it, there are bigger Constitutional issues at work here. The First Amendment protects against the establishment of a state-sanctioned religion that all must submit to – if pagans or Muslims somehow managed to pass a constitutional amendment making their religion the official state religion, you could imagine the howls of protests from the religious right, yet somehow when it’s the conservative interpretation of Christianity being proposed as the state religion they are strangely silent. It also protects freedom of practice of one’s religion – which is why churches can get away with hiring practices that would be unacceptable if used by private enterprise.

And speaking of pagans and Muslims, when we as Americans began accepting immigrants from non-Christian parts of the world, the First Amendment’s protections became even more important. For as James Madison put it, “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.” The Founding Fathers even recognized the value of a diversity of religion. Thomas Jefferson noted that “If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such being exists...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.”

Jefferson also took pains to point out that “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” In other words, it does me no harm merely for someone else to be a Buddhist, Muslim, Jew, Hindu or Atheist. But to the religious right, merely the idea that there are other religions is offensive, and must be snuffed out by judicial or legislative fiat. And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is the most injurious notion of all.

We're on vacation, rest and relaxation!

2005-11-23T09:35:00.000-08:00

I am leaving in a few minutes to go visit family in San Angelo for Thanksgiving. I'll be back on Saturday. Until then, Happy Turkey Day, everyone!

Religious McCarthyism Update

2005-11-22T00:01:00.000-08:00

We have a couple of things to update you on in the right wing's jihad against all things non-Christian tonight, so let's get started.

NMSU handicaps itself to placate Jihad Squad

From The Progressive Magazine's McCarthyism Watch: Muslim-American Running Back off the Team at New Mexico State

That's right - kicked off the team for belonging to the wrong religion!

Let's take a deeper look at this miscarriage of justice, shall we?

Muammar Ali, NMSU'S BEST RUNNING BACK WITH 561 YARDS RUSHING has his career ruthlessly cut short by NMSU Head Coach Hal Mumme. Granted, NMSU is the laughing stock of the country when it comes to football, but you'd expect Mumme to be smarter than to put his team at a disadvantage for petty political/religious reasons, right? First, Ali is relegated to fifth string and disallowed from travelling with the team (after only one game) under suspicious circumstances. Finally, on October 9, he "received a message on his phone answering machine at his home that his jersey was being pulled and that he was released," according to a letter from his attorney. At the same time, two other Muslim athletes were kicked off the football team, presumably for the same reason that Ali was booted.

So what were those suspicious circumstances that led to this travesty? Well, apparently, Coach Mumme requires a recitaiton of the Lord's Prayer after each practice and before each game. However, Ali and his fellow Muslims prayed according ot their own faith after one summer practice, so the coach calls Ali into his office and "[questions him] repeatedly about Islam and specifically, its ties to Al-Qaeda."

Great, just great. Each and every last Muslim is a potential terrorist in the eyes of Coach Mumme. The only thing missing is Coach Mumme encouraging his Christian athletes to splatter pig's blood all over the lockers of Ali and their other Muslim teammates. Tell me again how the GWOT/GSAVE/G-WHATEVER isn't a crusade against Islam?

Frankly, I'm surprised that Charles Johnson and his Brownshirt circle-jerk crew over at Late German Fascists Little Green Footballs hasn't caught on to this story yet. I'm sure they could wax orgasmic over treating Muslims like pond scum.

Fortunately, we have an antidote for this poison.

Reform Judaism Leader Calls Religious Right on the Carpet

Rabbi Eric Yoffie just did a very brave thing in today's political environment - he spoke truth to power about the rabid rightists on the Jihad Squad (see here, here and here for excerpts).

Some of my favorite points from the speech:

The Jihad Squad believes that "unless you attend my church, accept my God and study my sacred text, you cannot be a moral person."

"We are appalled when 'people of faith' is used in such a way that it excludes us, as well as most Jews, Catholics, and Muslims. What could be more bigoted than to claim that you have a monopoly on God and that anyone who disagrees with you is not a person of faith?"

"We cannot forget that when Hitler came to power in 1933, one of the first things that he did was ban gay organizations. Yes, we can disagree about gay marriage. But there is no excuse for hateful rhetoric that fuels the hellfires of anti-gay bigotry."

"When they cloak themselves in religion and forget mercy, it strikes us as blasphemy. We need beware the zealots who want to make their religion the religion of everyone else."

But most importantly, "our liberalism flows directly from our religious commitments."

Of course, this all makes way too much sense for the Jihad Squad. I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that if the Late German Fascists ever find out about this, they'll call Rabbi Yoffie something akin to "a terrorist-loving, America-hating, [insert anti-Arab/Muslim slur here]-fellating [insert anti-Semitic slur here] who needs to go over to Iraq so he can play drop-the-soap with his butt-bumping buddy Osama."

Testing 1..2..3..

2005-11-14T11:20:00.000-08:00

Ordinarily, I don't make posts like this when I update my blog template, such as to add links, or when I upgraded(?) my comments to HaloScan. But I wanted to test a change to the stylesheet portion of the template. Used to be, when I wanted to make a particular stylistic change, such as the feature, mark through some text to make it look ridiculous suggest improvements, or to perform the textual equivalent of shouting at the top of my lungs, I'd have to go back to a prior post that had one of those features and copy/paste the style information into the new post. By adding to the stylesheet the definitions of the styles for these features, I hope to eliminate that necessity, making my work that much easier.

Cretinism vs. Evilution

2005-11-11T21:31:00.000-08:00

Here's a couple of gems for you on the evolution/creationism debate:

Pat Robertson: Open mouth, insert foot

Pat Robertson must really like the taste of his own foot. It's the only possible reason I can imagine why he keeps putting it in his mouth.

First, he "totally concurs" with Jerry Falwell's blaming Americans first for 9/11.

Then he calls for the nuking of the State Department building in Foggy Bottom.

And as if calling for the immolation of the nation's top diplomats on an atomic pyre wasn't enough, Robertson then demanded that Bushie bring him the head of Hugo Chavez.

But all of that pales in comparison with his comments for the voters in Dover, PA who decided that science was more important than succumbing to theocracy and voted out all of the bums who supported "Intelligent Design" on the local school board.

Sidebar: Now that the voters have spoken, what happens to the lawsuit?

Funnily enough, Robertson's threats sound vaguely familiar. All that was missing was the inclusion of a possible meteor strike.

Benedict Arnold I meddles in U.S. political affairs again

Not content just to meddle in U.S. electoral politics as he did in 2004, Pope Benedict Arnold I reversed the direction of the Catholic Church under John Paul II's leadership in regard to the evolution/creationism debate.

Where Karol Wojtyla was content to incorporate the Theory of Evoution into the Catholic faith to some degree, Ratzinger, in his "infinite wisdom," declared the idea to be complete balderdash, saying "These people, ‘fooled by atheism,’ believe and try to demonstrate that it’s scientific to think that everything is free of direction and order."

I'm really starting to get tired of this Nazi masquerading as a religious figure.

Payback's a five-letter word

2005-11-09T14:41:00.000-08:00

Freedom for Me, but not for Thee

I must say that I am in shocked awe at the destructive capabilities of the thugs who have hijacked the Republican Party. It has taken them a mere pair of decades to do what no external military force could in all of America’s 229-year history – they have reduced our once firm democratic institutions to rubble and made a mockery of the American ideals of freedom and tolerance for differing opinions. I shall present a small sample of the continuing litany of crimes against democracy being perpetrated in your name below.

First of all, there is the case of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California. The church, one of the most liberal in that part of the state, has been threatened by the IRS with the loss of its tax exempt status because the former pastor, Rev. George F. Regas, gave a sermon critical of Operation Iraqi Liberation. While the church has cooperated with the investigation, the IRS seems interested in little more than making an example of All Saints Episcopal, flatly rejecting the church’s protestations of innocence and promising retribution unless the church admitted to "intervening in an election."

While some might argue that this is the liberals’ comeuppance for "trying to get God out of the public square," that would only be the case if the IRS had been consistent in its bullying of churches that get involved in politics. Ask yourself why the IRS isn’t threatening the Catholic Church’s tax exempt status given Pope Benedict Arnold I’s blatant interference in the 2004 election. Ask yourself why the churches in California that supported Proposition 73, which requires parental notification for minors to get an abortion, or the churches here in Texas that supported Proposition 2 aren’t undergoing similar scrutiny.

The reaction of religious conservatives has been equally farcical. Where was the sanctimonious whining of Mullah Jerry Falwell and Ayatollah Pat Robertson about "poor persecuted Christians?" Is the American Center for Law and Justice or the Thomas Moore Law Center preparing a lawsuit against the "godless" IRS, or are they, by their silence, admitting that this is a partisan political ploy designed to stifle dissent from the pulpit?

Then there’s the problem of the American Legion making terroristic threats against anti-war protesters. At its annual convention in Hawaii, coming as it did at the height of Cindy Sheehan’s Crawford protest, the Legion unanimously approved a resolution calling for the end of all anti-war protests by "any means necessary." As anyone even partially educated in English and logic knows, that doesn’t necessarily rule out the use of force.

The problem the American Legion faces, however, is that their actions violate Section 802 of the PATRIOT Act, which expands the definition of domestic terrorism to include activities that "involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State" and "appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population." Oh, wait. I forgot that the PATRIOT Act only applies to liberals and "swarthy males," as Ann Coulter put it. My bad.

Finally, there is the issue of political balance on the Armed Forces Radio network. Progressive talk radio host Ed Schultz had worked out a deal with the Defense Department to broadcast part of his show, just as it does with Rush Limbaugh’s radio program. However, after Schultz criticized the Defense Department, and in particular, Assistant Secretary of Defense Alison Barber over President Bush’s blatantly scripted photo op with American troops stationed in Iraq, Barber herself told Schultz that the deal was off.

It took an intense grassroots effort coupled with the spoken and written indignation of Democratic senators fresh from a new spine injection to convince the Defense Department that that was a "bad idea." Unfortunately, that concession may only be paper-thin, as a letter to Senator Carl Levin states that "local programmers decide which programs are actually broadcast." In other words, while it may be official policy to ensure a diversity of opinion on the radio our soldiers listen to, I wouldn’t hold my breath that there will be anything other than the Fox News version of "fair and balanced" on the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service.

In the Spring 2003 edition of Free Inquiry magazine, Lawrence Britt described fourteen characteristics common to historical and hypothetical fascist regimes. In light of the above, and many more instances like it, we’re already at least halfway there.

Your vote is your voice (if Diebold allows it)

2005-11-08T11:39:00.000-08:00

Today's the big day. I want to encourage all readers to get out and vote. I encourage all to vote his/her conscience, but if you want my advice, here is how I would vote:

California: Vote AGAINST any proposition supported by Gov. Schwarzenegger.

Texas: Vote AGAINST Proposition 2.

Maine: Vote AGAINST the referendum to repeal the state's anti-discrimination legislation.

New Jersey: Send Jon Corzine to the governor's mansion.

Virginia: Ditto for Tim Kaine.

Ohio: Vote FOR the amendment to create a bipartisan commision to draw congressional districts and to oversee elections.

If all these things come to pass, we have a decent shot at taking back this country from the thugs who have hijacked it.

My prediction for the fight: pain

2005-11-06T17:15:00.000-08:00

Last week, the student newspaper at Texas State included in its Wednesday issue an election guide discussing the statewide ballot initiatives and local elections that Texans will be voting on this Tuesday. The feature peace was a point-counterpoint on Proposition 2, complete with boxing-themed graphics. Though the newspaper's website declined to post the debate, I have it archived in my personal web space (anti-Proposition 2, pro-Proposition 2). I would like to take this opportunity to rip the pro-Proposition 2 piece to shreds.

Texans have the opportunity to vote on amendments to add to the Texas Constitution this week and then on Nov. 8. The one being discussed around the dinner table is Proposition 2, an amendment that will define marriage as being between one man and one woman. Some people can discuss this issue around the table, while others end up in a food fight.

Is Bousman suggesting that only liberals would end up in a food fight, and that conservatives would be ultra-polite?

On opening day of early voting, the area surrounding The Stallions was full of people against Prop. 2. They had a pledge drive for people to vote against the measure. Even Associated Student Government, which is supposed to represent all of Texas State and not just the left side of the university, has passed a resolution to state that the university opposes Prop. 2.

Ummm...last time I checked, The Stallions was a First Amendment Zone where anyone who wanted to could speak his/her mind without fear of retaliation. That said, the Associated Student Government does indeed represent all students (not just the right side of the university).

People were comparing the so-called struggle for same-sex marriage to the civil rights movement, seeing how fast they could make Martin Luther King Jr. spin in his grave. This all begs the question: Will the supporters of Prop. 2 demonstrate in support of it, or will we hide as usual?

It amuses me that someone would think they can read into the mind of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and tell me with a straight face that he wanted to treat homosexuals like second-class citizens, especially with the FBI investigating him for being too liberal.

Yes, I am for Prop. 2. But why would I be for a measure that would not supposedly intrude on my personal beliefs? Same-sex couples just want to be married, right? Let’s take a stroll down History Lane to answer the questions asked by many.

The first three reasons why many, including myself, support Prop. 2 will be left short to focus on my fourth reason.

Oh this should be interesting.

The first reason is because marriage has been defined as being between a man and a woman for years on end.

LOGICAL FALLACY: Appeal to Tradition.

The second reason is that polygamists have already begun to demand their rights to marry. What’s next?

LOGICAL FALLACY: Slippery Slope. Besides, there are perfectly good reasons for not allowing polygamy that don't apply to homosexuality.

The third reason why is because the nation was founded upon Christian principles; therefore the founders would vote an emphatic “YES” for Proposition 2. The framers of the Constitution believed that laws should be centered on the precepts of the Bible.

This is patently false. If it were true, why would founders such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison say the things that they did? Why did Congress meet on Christmas Day in 1789? For that matter, why was Christmas not declared a federal holiday until June 26, 1870 (five years after the Civil War)?

And according to Genesis 18-19; Romans 1:18-32, and I Corinthians 6:9, homosexuality is a sin, not something one is born with.

Every time someone brings up Bible quotes "condemning" homosexuality, I am tempted to break out my copy of the "Letter to Dr. Laura."

Incidentally, Bousman might want to get his nose out of his (heavily redacted) Bible for more than 0.00000000000000001 seconds and mosey on over to this article which suggests that, scientifically speaking, homosexuality may not be a choice after all.

What our country needs now more than ever is to return to the principles it was founded upon. Same-sex marriage would do just the opposite.

Considering that the country was founded upon religious freedom (because, you see, the colonists were more often than not fleeing religious persecution, and wanted to make sure that it didn't happen to them in their new refuge), Bousman's position, and the amendment itself, are inherently contradictory of that principle.

The main reason why I am for Prop. 2 is because I don’t want the government and the homosexual lobby forcing same-sex marriage upon the church.

So, let’s get this straight (no pun intended). Because you don’t want to be forced into something you don’t believe in, you want the government to force others to believe something they may not necessarily believe in (i.e., that merely being homosexual is a stoning offense)? Can you possibly get more hypocritical than that?!

You don’t believe that can happen? You don’t believe the gay lobby is after that? Think again. All we have to do is look at the news that the mainstream media refuses to report to know this. Starting in Switzerland, a pastor was arrested for referring to scripture and stating from his pulpit that homosexuality is a sin. His crime? Hate speech. Canadian pastors have been fined a large amount for doing what this pastor did.

Here we go again with the persecution complex. I had a hard time finding evidence of this one, trying several different search strings in Google. It didn’t help that the pastor in question was Swedish, not Swiss, as Bousman indicated (the link I found is here; alternate sourcing here).

Now, to the United States. It wasn’t long ago that gay activists tried to get the non-legislative branch of government – the Supreme Court – to pass a law prohibiting the Boy Scouts from considering sexual orientation when hiring scout leaders.

Ahh, yes. If you can’t beat ‘em with logic, resort to bashing the courts. Did Tom DeLay teach you that one?

The gay lobby did not respect the fact that the Boy Scouts are religious and opposed the lifestyle. Luckily, the high court did something right for a day to vote in favor of the Boy Scouts.

And the Boy Scouts don’t like anyone who isn’t a straight conservative Christian. As far as I’m concerned, that makes it even. But we’re talking about larger principles here. Religious the Boy Scouts may be, they present themselves to the public as a non-sectarian group open to all boys who wish to participate. If they point to some minority group and say “everyone but you,” they are falsely presenting themselves. Would you be so defensive of the Scouts if they were hiding behind their religious beliefs to exclude, say, blacks or Asians? We regulate private enterprise to make sure they aren’t discriminating against minorities in hiring because it’s the right thing to do. Why should the Scouts be any different?

This past January, the governor of Illinois signed a bill into law making it illegal for church officials to discriminate against employees based on their sexual orientation. United States Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-New York, has introduced a bill in Congress to make it a federal law.

We give churches in this country lots of advantages that even other non-profits don’t get simply for the sake of religious freedom (it’s very expensive for any organization that runs off the generous donations of its membership to do much charity work – just ask any church administrator) – yet this is somehow not enough for religious conservatives. I sometimes wonder if they would be satisfied with anything less than turning this country into the Christian equivalent of Iran.

The church would have to rip out certain parts of their Bibles to comply with such a law. You don’t hear the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State going up in arms about this. I wonder why.

I don't think "the church," as Bousman puts it, has any leg to stand on, seeing as they've already effectively ripped out certain passages from their Bibles in accordance with their unholy alliance with the Republican party and the conservative movement. Particularly conspicuous by absence from conservative Bibles are Micah 6:8, Matthew 25:34-46, Matthew 6:5-6 and the Beatitudes, among others I could name.

Last week, in San Antonio, Pastor Narciso Mendoza demanded to know where the city council stood on Proposition 2. They refused to answer, and Pastor Mendoza refused to leave, demanding the city government do their job and represent the people instead of themselves, by answering the question. Mayor Phil Hardberger had the police arrest him on $900 bail. Where is the "First Amendment loving" American Civil Liberties Union when you need them?

Sorry to burst your “poor, persecuted Christian” bubble, there Brett, but Pastor Mendoza engaged in civil disobedience which, while a valid form of protest (cf., Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.), is bound to get you arrested. Just ask Cindy Sheehan. Is Bousman going to demand restitution for Sheehan’s arrest, or is he merely projecting onto the ACLU the same callous contempt he may be harboring for any liberal arrested for civil disobedience?

The ASG says they represent the students at Texas State by declaring opposition to Proposition 2. The only deal is that some Texas State students support it. If you support it, here are some ways you can let the ASG know you support the measure.

Send an e-mail to ASG President Jordan Anderson at [REDACTED] or flood them with phone calls at [REDACTED], and let them know your tuition is paid here as well.

Oh yeah, that's just great. Encourage the thugs on campus to flood the ASG with hate mail and death threats. I believe that sort of thing has been tried before.

Another way is you can demonstrate in favor of the proposition. Make some signs and go out there anytime this week as early voting is taking place. Especially go out there on Nov. 8, the last voting day, and show your support. Be diplomatic, but firm. Be bold, but not cocky. Be willing to have a conversation with anyone who supports, opposes or is undecided about the proposition. Ignore those who want to scream in your face. Don’t believe those who say the wording is too confusing. Read the complete language of the amendment in this election guide. Most importantly, know why you support Proposition 2.

Brett Bousman is a history and mass communication senior.

Those are some good suggestions for those who wish to support Proposition 2. It would be nice if they were actually followed. (I'm not holding my breath.)

Racists, religious nuts unite to bash gays

2005-11-02T00:24:00.000-08:00

In any sane universe, a KKK endorsement would doom any political cause. But in the Bizarro World that is Texas, it can only help to bring out the GOP's theofascist base in droves to vote for it - dollars to doughnuts they think the Klan's endorsement of Proposition 2 is some nefarious "librul plot to allow the queers to recruit our kids into a Satanic lifestyle."

Fortunately, humor columnist John Kelso has just the antidote - reenact that scene from Braveheart where the Scots moon the English.

Incidentally, the web site that Kelso points readers to is here.

UPDATE (11/6/05): It seems that I was a bit prescient in my prediction that Prop. 2 supporters would see KKK support as a "librul plot." My brother, who hates all things liberal, said as much after watching last night's news report on the KKK rally.

Overthrowing the rotten-apple cart

2005-11-01T23:42:00.000-08:00

Someone must've finally gotten around to giving the co-dependent Democrats their long-needed spine injection. Invoking an arcane Senate rule, Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) forced the Senate into closed session to discuss the long-DeLayed Phase 2 report on Plamegate.

The upshot is that this throws Bush's nomination of Scalito completely off the news cycle - sort of a procedural "f--- you" to Bush for his return to a complete disregard for advise and consent in the wake of conservatives scuttling the Harriet Miers nomination (she wasn't Nazi enough for them).

Needless to say, the Republicans were not happy that the Democrats dared to do something other than shut up and meekly take their daily @$$-reaming. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) spent his face time lying about the progress (or lack thereof) of the report.

But Bill Frist (R-Insider Trading) takes the cake with his comments:

Since I’ve been majority leader, I have to say, not with the previous Democratic leader or the current Democratic leader, have I ever been slapped in the face with such an affront to the leadership of this grand institution.

Yeah, how dare those evil, terrorist, spawn-of-Satan Democrats actually stand up for a change? How dare they place national security above petty partisan politics?

For the next year and a half I can’t trust Sen. Reid.

Guess what, Cat Killer - none of the grassroots level Dems EVER trusted you from the get-go.

The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership.

Oh, quit whining. I assmue you know how to abuse the Senate rules better than Sen. Reid allegedly does. You could've easily spiked the closed session by illegally declaring any and all statements that do not verbally fellate Commander Codpiece irrelevant and abruptly resume normal Senate operations. I mean, it's not like the Republicans have abused power in that fashion before, right?

They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas.

Yeah, and they're a bunch of poopy-heads, too! >_<x

Speaking of local fascism...

2005-11-01T02:19:00.000-08:00

Bill O'Reilly's really been on a Gestapo kick of late:

From the October 28 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

CALLER: Bill, this is the time of war. She [Plame] was a WMD analyst. She wasn't monitoring troop movements in India or something like that. She was working on this country's most pressing concern. This is an important issue, and I got one point about the media. If you want true, no-spin facts about this case, you can't do better than mediamatters.com.

O'REILLY: Ah! All right. Anyway, we get another nut on the air. That's the worst part of doing this. Ninety percent of the callers are good, and then you get nuts. Now, we should go to their house. We should all go because I can get their addresses when they call in. We can trace them back, and we should all go over and surprise them.

From the June 20 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: And when he [Durbin] went out there, his intent was to whip up the American public against the Bush detainee policy. That's what his intent was. His intent wasn't to undermine the war effort, because he never even thought about it. He never even thought about it. But by not thinking about it, he made an egregious mistake because you must know the difference between dissent from the Iraq war and the war on terror and undermining it. And any American that undermines that war, with our soldiers in the field, or undermines the war on terror, with 3,000 dead on 9-11, is a traitor.

Everybody got it? Dissent, fine; undermining, you're a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they're undermining everything and they don't care, couldn't care less.

And then there's O'Reilly's penchant for cutting off, shouting down, belittling and bullying any guest who so much as gives voice to any opinion he doesn't like (which is basically anyone who disagrees with him in the slightest).

But Ann, I thought you liked fascism!

2005-11-01T02:00:00.000-08:00

Noted plagiarist Ann Coulter is at it again. Appearing on the October 27 edition of The Big Story with John Gibson, Coulter dropped this nugget of wisdom:

COULTER: I think that is not going to inure to the Democrats' benefit, to be having this obviously political prosecution of a political enemy. No, that just shows them to be the fascists that they are.

Compare and contrast with this little-known Coulterism:

"My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that's because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism." - MSNBC February 8, 1997

Hypocrisy, thy name is Ann Coulter!

Possible JeffyLube sighting at DeLay hearing?

2005-10-22T07:50:00.000-07:00

MSRNC has a partial transcript of Rita Cosby giving Tom DeLay air time to give voice to his paranoid delusions of persecution.

Accompanying the partial transcript is the following picture:

Tell me that isn't JeffyLube in the right foreground.

Fight for the glory of Carnegie...

2005-10-10T12:06:00.000-07:00

Saturday made me proud to be a Carnegie Mellon alumnus. In case you're wondering, the second running of the DARPA Grand Challenge was run this past Saturday. The goal of the challenge is do design an autonomous vehicle to traverse an under-300 mile, off-road course in the Mojave Desert in under 10 hours.

Last year none of the entries was able to complete the 150-mile course. The vehicle that travelled the farthest was known as "Sandstorm," created by a team from Carnegie Mellon.

This year, the race was shortened to 132 miles and the prize money doubled to $2 million. Four contestants were able to finish in the time allotted: Stanford University's "Stanley" (First Place - 6 hours 53 minutes, effective speed 19.1 mph), Carnegie Mellon's "Sandstorm" (The same one that went the farthest of all entries last year, Second Place - 7 hours 5 minutes, effective speed 18.6 mph) and "H1ghlander" (Yes, that's an attempt at l33t, Third Place - 7 hours 14 minutes, effective speed 18.2 mph) and The Gray Team's "Kat-5" (Fourth Place - 7 hours 30 minutes, effective speed 17.5 mph).

Interestingly enough, CMU's coverage of the event notes that the Standford Racing Team was lead by two Carnegie Mellon luminaries - Professor Sebastian Thrun and Dr. Mike Montemerlo, who earned his doctorate at CMU. So technically, CMU or someone related to CMU took the top three positions at the event.

But more importantly than institutional accolades is the fact that the success of this challenge brings an automated highway system that much closer to reality.

Freedom has struck an iceberg and is taking on water

2005-10-07T16:07:00.000-07:00

A couple of examples of recent stories about how the right wing is flushing freedom down the toilet for your perusal.

Albertsons to customers: You're too stupid to decide for yourself what magazine content is appropriate.

Acting on orders from the Religious Reich, or perhaps worried about losing the fundamentalist dollar for not having Bible displays every five feet, the Albertsons chain of grocery stores has pulled the October issue of Seventeen from its shelves because...wait for it...an article tried to teach young girls the basics of keeping their nether regions healthy!

The article in question, "Vagina 101" contained an illustration of female genitalia, labeling the various parts that make up a woman's reproductive organs, accompanied by two pictures of live vaginas with the caption "These are normal," in an effort to help girls learn to identify signs that they might need to see a gynecologist pronto.

But the facts don't matter to the Puritans among us who don't want anyone to be able to make rational decisions about the health of their reproductive organs. I just wish that Albertsons wasn't so quick to bend over and drop their collective pants for the "Theocracy NOW!" crowd.

Worse, Albertsons doesn't seem to care about the vast majority of the rest of their customer base, arrogantly declaring that they and they alone have the right to determine what you may buy. Fine, but we the people will send you packing by refusing to do business with fascist companies like yourself.

They won't be losing any business from me because I don't shop there to begin with - the company I work for is so much better in every way. But any readers of this blog who shop at Albertsons would be wise to reconsider. (I have readers? HA! That's rich!)

Albertsons' actions are also sorely lacking in consistency. If they were actually serious about getting "explicit" images and text out of their stores, they would also drop Cosmopolitan, FHM, Redbook, etc.

Finally, I have to agree with the following sentiment from a fellow blogger:

Let's see - teen pregnancy continues to be an issue, teen access to birth control is increasingly difficult, and teen STD rates are on the rise. Cutting off access to a fluffy teen magazine offering a vaginal owners manual solves these problems...how?

Imagine, all this over some "graphic content."

Hey Albertsons, I've got your "graphic content" right here!

Southwest Airlines decides it can do without liberal money

This comes from the McPaper. Read it and weep for our democracy. Let me point out a couple of salient paragraphs.

"I have cousins in Iraq and other relatives going to war," she said. "Here we are trying to free another country and I have to get off an airplane in midflight over a T-shirt. That's not freedom."

But wait, it gets worse.

Heasley said no one from Southwest said anything about the shirt when she waited two hours near the gate at Los Angeles International Airport. And neither the pilot, nor other crewmembers, said anything when she boarded the aircraft, Heasley added.

After the plane stopped in Reno at noon Tuesday, she and her husband, Ron, moved to the front of the plane. Passengers began complaining about the T-shirt as they boarded.

So they kick her off the plane in Reno thanks to the bullying of a bunch of thugs. But here's the money shot:

Before leaving the plane, she said she was told the airline would reimburse her for the tickets for the last leg of the flight. After they got off the plane, they were told they'd be reimbursed only for the taxes on the tickets. McInnis said customer services officials are looking into the matter.

That's right, not only do they bend over for fascist thugs, but then they rub salt on the wound by flat-out lying to Mrs. Heasley about restitution for their rudeness and utter disrespect. You'd think that in at a time when the airline industry is really struggling - two major arilines filed for bankruptcy in the last month - they'd be trying to get all the revenue they can scrounge up. They simply can't afford to effectively declare that only "Patriotically Correct" money is legal tender.

Freedom is on the march...RIGHT OVER A CLIFF!

Another thing about DeLay

2005-10-02T22:33:00.000-07:00

Beneath all the well-established talking points about the DeLay indictment - all of which are debunked at Think Progress - perhaps the most bizarre is the one that doesn't get so much press coverage.

The claim is that Earle is so partisan that he even goes after conservative Democrats - the only opposition to liberal Democrats in the "dark" days before DeLay "saved" Texas from "librul oppression." (See the comments at UrbanGrounds on the subject for a repetition of the "shout down a liberal point")

DeLay's defenders are trying to have it both ways with this claim, because during the whole redistricting fiasco, the oft-repeated claim made by those supporting the gerrymandering was that Democrats had legislated Republicans out of politics for over 130 years - something that simply wasn't true. But then, since when was consistency something right-wingers valued?

Punch-drunk on DeLay's Kool-Aid

2005-10-02T21:35:00.000-07:00

In case you were wondering what the local Freeperati were up to in the aftermath of the DeLay indictment, they were busy writing letter-length screeds standing up for their boy who, in their eyes, walks on water and can do no wrong. The complete sludge is available here.

In the eyes of these people, a Republican could be caught on video tape molesting both a dog and a toddler, and it'd be O.K. - they'd either be claiming that the video was forged by evil "libruls" or that the dog and toddler were terrorists bent on doing evil and needed to be taught a lesson (besides, they'd claim, the Geneva Conventions don't apply because they say so). But if a Democrat so much as jaywalks, they'll call for his head. No wonder why the congressional Republicans tried to change their own ethics rules so that DeLay could keep his leadership position - under the cover of post-election wrap-up, no less (thankfully, the public outrage forced them to 86 the idea).

Has it become any clearer yet why the thugs in charge need to be voted out in '06?

The Wal-Marting of Japan

2005-09-30T07:18:00.000-07:00

This just in from MSRNC. Wal-Mart is planning on buying a controlling interest in Japanese retailer Seiyu.

Seiyu Chief Executive Noriyuki Watanabe said becoming “a full member of the Wal-Mart family” will offer a stable financial base, allowing Seiyu to accelerate remodeling stores and opening new ones. It will also bring cheaper prices, he said.

Sure it will bring cheaper prices - by abusing the labor! I fully expect the phenomenon of karoshi to expand to Japan's retail sector before too long.

They folded again

2005-09-30T00:52:00.000-07:00

As usual, the co-dependent Democrats folded like so many lawn chairs and confirmed Manchurian Candidate John Roberts to be the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The final vote was 78-22, which means fully half of the so-called opposition refused to come to work, giving the thugs in charge the up-or-up vote they demanded.

But it gets worse. Bush is expected to nominate a successor for Justice O'Connor very quickly - if for no other reason than to get all the other bad news off the front page. Watch for him to nominate Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen, Charles Pickering, or maybe even Katherine Harris. Heck, Augusto Pinochet would be right at home in this administration - especially with the partisan hacks they've got calling liberals every nasty name under the sun (and then some).

Sidebar: It can't exactly be called bad news for Bush if it hasn't derailed his fascist agenda in the slightest, can it?

Meanwhile, it seems that all the elected Dems know how to do is bend over, drop their pants, and take it up the backside whenever a Republican so much as looks at them funny. It makes me sick that our side just keeps taking, taking, taking abuse after abuse with little more than a "Thank you, sir. May I have another?"

Technorati tags: John Roberts, President Bush, Supreme Court

Why am I not surprised?

2005-09-22T04:14:00.000-07:00

David Horowitz has created a monster with his whining that the nation's schools haven't made it their job to indoctrinate students in pro-right-wing prolefeed. Adherents to his philosophy seem to keep popping up in editorial sections across the country with uncanny regularity. Case in point, a recent guest editorial in the campus newspaper. In the interest of providing a public service, I will provide a running commentary on the article.

You say you want a revolution
Rachel Anne Fletcher, Guest Columnist

It is said that real revolution and change begins on college campuses and among students. Usually peaceful, these student-led demonstrations are the pulse for seemingly apathetic youths. However, these protests can lead to violent confrontations — such as the recent anti-government demonstrations at the University of Tehran in Iran to the historic 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre where hundreds were killed.

Is the author suggesting that protestors started the violence in both cases? I should hope not, since it is objectively clear that law enforcement instigated the violence in Tiananmen Square. As for the University of Tehran demonstrations, it is unclear whether the author means the one that took place on the 20th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, or something more recent. However, this ambiguity doesn't help the author because, again, in both cases, law enforcement initiated the violence.

Sometimes protests, like the anti-Vietnam War protests, can even change the entire political landscape of a country and shape the way wars are viewed for years to come. This right to protest and free speech is an American landmark outlined in the first amendment.

Why do I sense a "but..." coming on here?

Yet I am fearful of current students as the advancers of change and the future leaders of tomorrow. On a majority of college campuses students are presented with only one side of the story. With the emphasis now on certain individual rights, what about the other established rights that are being pushed aside to accommodate for this new era of understanding?

Aha. Now we see the author's biases exposed. Any time you see something similar to the bolded and italicized statement above, you know a person is going to launch into one of those "The evil libruls are stifling academic freedom!" screeds that make David Horowitz proud.

Lately there has been a backward movement where the “politically correct” left has the right to free speech on college campuses. Take a recent incident at William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J. Jihad Daniel received a mass e-mail (think about the VPSA e-mails we constantly get) inviting him to attend a movie and informational session about lesbians. The 68-year-old student was grotesquely offended and sent a heated e-mail back requesting that he receive no further e-mails about “Connie and Sally” or “Adam and Steve.”

You know, usually when I get e-mails from the various vice-provosts, I just treat it like spam and delete on contact. Obviously, Mr. Daniel felt differently. However, I think that all involved would've been better off if he had chosen to re-read his missive before hitting the "Send" button. Unfortunately, he didn't, and here we are discussing some complete stranger's personal life. Go figure.

Daniel received a reprimand from the school for his “derogatory” comments. Daniel took his case to The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group that lobbies for student rights. FIRE filed a complaint with the university stating that Daniel’s first amendment rights were being denied; but the New Jersey attorney general sided with the university.

The thing is, the concept of "Your rights end at the other person's nose" doesn't apply only to Democrats. You can't go around threatening people because you don't like what they have to say.

Don't get me wrong. I think the professor overreacted by treating the e-mail as a threat - though entirely understandable given the overheated rhetoric that has been eminating from the right wing lately (go here and here for examples). (BTW, Mr. Daniel's e-mail and the professor's response are available for your perusal here). But we can't have the facts get in the way of Jihad's little jihad against all things liberal, now can we?

If the senders have the right to send a controversial and potentially offensive message campuswide, why can’t Daniel send comments in a private e-mail?

See above.

Have we become so obsessed with political correctness and the emotional well-being of others that we have lost our right to be offended? An e-mail such as the one Daniel received might have offended me, but with the current atmosphere on campuses I would not have an outlet to express my opinion for fear of being discriminatory.

And now we've reached the most ridiculous part of the editorial. This semester opened with two op-ed pieces from Texas State University finance professor Rick Borghesi - one defended Bush's irresponsible deficits, and the other derided as mythology the phenomenon of global warming. The University Star has at least two conservatives in its editorial stable. Finally, and most damning, evil "backward" liberals like myself wouldn't even be commenting on this screed if the paper hadn't bothered to publish it. So don't go crying to me about the lack of an outlet for conservatives.

Case in point two: Professor Timothy Shortell of Brooklyn College in New York City posted online antireligious and anti-Christian comments; likening Christians to “rabid animals” and “retards.” This created a firestorm after the online essay was discovered because Shortell is the leader of the sociology department.

Never mind that Shortell decided against taking chairmanship of the sociology department when all was said and done. No, anyone committing the thoughtcrime of believing that Christianity, especially as practiced by the right wing, is not the end-all, be-all religion ought to be demonized as vitriolically as possible and blacklisted from any future job in academia - much like what is almost certain to happen with a certain Colorado University professor.

Professors continually use their position of leadership to exert influence over students whether morally or politically. While it is their right too, I believe that anti-Christian comments, online or not, is still a form of discrimination.

Fair enough. But I would remind you that fair and valid criticism of certain aspects of Christian theology, or fair and valid criticism of the actions of those who claim to follow Christ should not be dismissed out-of-hand as verbally feeding Christians to the lions, much as you might like to believe it so.

In addition, if Shortell can post these comments online without reprimand then why is Daniel scolded for a private e-mail? Have we gone so far in our pursuit of religious equality that Christianity is now oppressed?

And the persecution complex crops up again. I mean, really. If Christianity is so oppressed, how come conservative Christian groups get to dictate what books high school kids get to read in English class in their annual book burning banning crusades? If conservatives are so downtrodden, why do we see them blacklisting professors on college campuses across the country? If conservatives are so oppressed, why do they feel empowered to fire employees for putting the "wrong" bumper stickers on their cars? If Christianity is so oppressed, why do conservative Christians, rather than actual scientists, get to harangue students on what is and isn't science?

Probably the most poignant example of campus hypocrisy is from the mecca of liberal absurdity — San Francisco.

Ah, I see. Making even the mildest criticism of Christianity is verboten, but liberal politics and non-Christian religions are fair game? Must be wonderful to believe in double standards.

Last March. a group of Air Force and Army recruiters were forced to leave a San Francisco State University campus career fair early because of excessive demonstrations by Students Against War. SAW surrounded the table and began hostilely protesting the recruiter’s presence forcing them to leave.

As usual, the author's description of what happened is either woefully inadequate, or deliberately misleading. Here's the local newspaper's account of the incident:

One recent battle in the war over recruitment was waged March 9 and 10 at San Francisco State University, when the military rented a booth at the university's two-day spring career fair. Students Against War showed up the first day with more than 150 protesters to picket air force and army recruiting tables. According to SAW member David Carr, protesters staged a peaceful teach-in around recruiters' tables until they left.

When two activists returned to the student center to pass out flyers the following day, police forcibly removed them from the building. In a letter to activists, university officials wrote that the protesters – who face possible suspension from school, while SAW and other groups face unspecified sanctions – were removed because their activities disrupted a university-sponsored event.

That's right, the ISO and SAW were trying to exercise their First Amendment rights, and the university comes down on them like a ton of bricks. The treatment was so harsh that it effectively derailed any further activities on the part of any organization that so much as dared to express an opinion even slightly to the left of Sean Hannity.

The author also fails to note, or simply doesn't care, that the International Socialist Organizaiton and Students Against War have offered a solution to the whole situation:

1 - No disciplinary action should be taken against individual students or student groups for involvement in, or endorsement of, the March 9th 2005 protest in Jack Adams Hall.

2 - The University should seek to uphold its own nondiscrimination policy and pursue a legal challenge to the Solomon Amendment.

3 - The University should provide a forum for debating the issue of military recruitment on campus. This debate should include military recruiters, SFSU President Robert Corrigan and speakers chosen by Students Against War.

4 - Furthermore, the administration will uphold the right to free speech on the SFSU campus and not limit First Amendment activity to unconstitutional "free speech zones."

Let's continue:

SAW, along with The International Socialist Organization at SFSU, later hosted Lynne Stewart to speak at the university. Stewart is a convicted aide to terrorist Abdel Rahman who is responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing. Along with honoring a known terrorist, SAW passed out pamphlets advocating the support of the Iraqi insurgents against America, while the International Socialist Organization openly advocates the overthrow of the United States government.

Ah, yes. The old abusive ad hominem fallacy.

If this alarming trend of biased liberal education and favoritism continues, I believe we will reach a stage in our quest not to offend others where we are so politically correct and have so many alleged rights that we will end up with no liberty at all.

Actually, if current trends remain unchanged, we will be in an ultra-right-wing fantasy land, especially in academia - we've already seen the beginnings of it with the blacklists against "liberal" professors.

I am not arguing these students’ right to protest the military — or even their right to advocate the overthrow of the American government and suggest treason.

Funny thing, that. The Founding Fathers were considered traitors by the British back in the day. Didn't Thomas Paine once say "Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing?" And was it not Thomas Jefferson who said that a revolution was necessary every 20 years? [begin sarcasm]But what do a bunch of dead white guys know?[end sarcasm]

These students can honor terrorists as much as they like. However, I believe it absurd that the same people who are dying overseas to protect the protesters right to hold their ludicrous views are the people they will not allow on their campus. I am advocating that not only the left-wing nuts have the right to free speech but the right-wing nutjobs as well. I think every nut should have their say if we are to embrace the true American spirit.

All that verbiage, and only now do you even mention "right-wing nutjobs" - without naming names? That kinda undermines your credibility - as though you only mention right wing nuts in order to seem "fair and balanced."

The other shoe is dropping.

2005-09-17T01:35:00.000-07:00

Remember how I said earlier that there had to be something more to Bush accepting responsibility for the snafu that was the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina? Here it is.

According to an article in the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, MS, Torture Czar Alberto Gonzales' minions at the Justice Department are trying to pin the blame for the hurricane's destructive force on "enviro-wackos."

Just like how the PATRIOT Act is only being used against liberals and "swarthy males," this latest effort by the Bush administration to pass the buck elsewhere as quickly as possible can only hurt our country.

Consider: Forty years ago, Hurricane Betsy, a Cat. 4 just like Katrina, made a direct hit on New Orleans. Unlike Katrina, however, there were "only" 76 deaths and $8.5 billion (in constant 2000 dollars) in damage. What was different, other than a FEMA gutted by the appointment of partisan hacks? For starters, the wetlands hadn't yet been bulldozed to put in the next dozen bars.

Think about it. Wetlands absorb the water, wind and storm surge from approaching hurricanes. That energy is absorbed, weakening the hurricane, thus reducing loss of life and damage in the target area. Take those wetlands away, and the whole suffers. Too bad this concept is too difficult for the right wing to understand.

Epistles from the Reality-Challenged Zone

2005-09-17T00:27:00.000-07:00

Yep. We have plenty of right-wingers even here in "The People's Republic of Austin." As much as the Austin American-Statesman shills for Bush and the GOP, they can't tilt far enough rightward for these folks.

Let's look at a few of these Emmy winners, shall we?

The real dividers

Liberals continually refer to President Bush as a "divider" as opposed to a "uniter."

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, virtually every state ( red and blue ) in the United States offered up personnel, money, food, supplies, shelter, etc. in a truly unified effort.

Yes, but the contributions of the blue states wasn't enough for some people, was it?

However, the standard bearers of the liberals — Sens. Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton and the media, including Ben Sargent locally — offered up the usual criticism and blame and, per the norm, no solutions.

Actually, we have offered solutions. The problem is that neither the "librul" media nor the Republicans in charge want to do anything other than denigrate the solutions as "evil communism."

So, one more time, the real "dividers" of this country have stood up again with nothing of substance to offer.

So advocating that enforcement of the Bankruptcy Bill be delayed, if not indefinitely enjoined against, for the victims of the hurricane is "standing up with nothing of substance to offer?" Demanding that pork be cut out of the Transportation Bill in light of the disaster is "standing up with nothing of substance to offer?" Insisting that the oil companies not gouge consumers (something that even Megalomanaical Phone Sex Enthusiast Bill O'Reilly has suggested) is "standing up with nothing of substance to offer?" Well, you know the old adage: "Better to keep silent and let people think you a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Louisiana and New Orleans have been controlled by Democrats for more than a century. One would think that Louisiana would be the poster-child for the Democratic Party. Sadly, it is.

Oh, this is rich - you're complaining about "dividers with nothing of substance to offer," yet here you are BEING A DIVIDER WITH NOTHING OF SUBSTANCE TO OFFER! What a riot!

DICK (REDACTED)

Austin

What a DICK.

Bush unfairly criticized

I would like to remind your readers that President Bush did not create Hurricane Katrina.

No more so than Clinton's Almighty Penis created Hurricane Katrina, as you right-wingers are so desperate to prove.

It was not an intricate ploy by the Bush administration to divert attention from the war. It was not an evil plot to destroy this predominately black city by "the man." Bush did not build the levees. He did not force people to live in the below-sea-level city. This disaster was an act of God.

Gee. With all those strawmen, I could build quite a bonfire.

Are we holding Bush accountable for Katrina because he is a Christian and a servant of God? Sometimes I wonder if he is being persecuted because of his religion.

Ahh, yes. The old persecution complex that crops up about every five seconds from religious conservatives. Just because we aren't gassing all the Muslims, homosexuals, and liberals does not mean that Christians are being thrown to the lions, if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor. In fact, I think you'll find that liberal Christians would take offense that you presume to speak for them.

Some in our country will use any excuse to attack our president — even this devastating situation.

This from the side of the aisle that uses the victims of 9/11 every waking moment to slander anyone who disagrees with them in the slightest as unpatriotic America-haters.

"Use any excuse to attack our president," you say? I wonder who was blaming Clinton for everything from 9/11 to sunspots to male impotence for the last decade (even the periods when Clinton wasn't president).

I am disgusted that they have chosen to take advantage of these innocent victims again by placing all the blame for the devastation in New Orleans on Bush. Perhaps they should turn their attention away from Bush and focus on God. After all, God is the one who controls the wind and the waves.

To quote a certain cartoon moron, "Are you threatening me?"

AMY (REDACTED)

Round Rock

And then we have this latest missive from Right Wing World:

The real 'deep secret'

Journalist after journalist has righteously proclaimed that Katrina exposed the "deep secret" of America and its shame.

The real secret that was exposed is what happens to a people after decades in a liberal city run by Democrats.

Exposed is what happens to children who grow up deprived of an education from a school system in which more than 70 of the 120 or so schools are rated as failing abysmally, while often receiving twice the money as superb private schools.

Exposed is what happens when 60 percent of all the children born are born to unwed mothers. Exposed is what happens to a city when criminal justice breaks down, the murder rate is 10 times the national average, and law-abiding people who provide much of the tax base move out in fear.

Exposed is what happens to a people when a liberal government promises to take care of their every need so that city becomes one of the largest, most economically dysfunctional welfare cities in the United States.

JAN (REDACTED)

Austin

So, Dick, what was that about only Democrats being "dividers with nothing of substance to offer?"

What's the temperature in hell right now?

2005-09-13T13:46:00.000-07:00

Bush is actually accepting responsibility for the whole FUBAR-ed situation that his utter incompetence created.

Unfortunately, this looks too good to be true. We've been bitten by too many gift horses lately for me to believe that this isn't more than what it appears. Bush's brain wouldn't let his charge be so exposed like this unless he had a katana readied to decapitate the Democrats behind his back.

Question for conservatives

2005-09-06T02:40:00.000-07:00

Why is it that whenever liberals refuse to blindly believe that every single thing Israel does is 100000000000000% right and good, they're labelled anti-Semitic, but when a conservative lobs anti-Semitic slurs at Alan Dershowitz, such as this:

One writer called me “a jew prick that takes it in the a** from ruth ginzburg [sic].” Another said I am “an ignorant socialist left-wing political hack ... You’re like a little Heinrich Himmler! (even the resemblance is uncanny!).” Yet another informed me that I “personally make us all lament the defeat of the Nazis!”

there is utter silence from the right?

Just wondering.

Final thoughts on Katrina

2005-09-06T02:15:00.000-07:00

Frankly, I'm surprised that the wingnuts have gone a whole week without blaming Clinton's Almighty Penis for Hurricane Katrina. Though I suspect that they're content to let the MSM do the dirty work for them.

Better late than never

2005-09-06T01:54:00.000-07:00

Strumming the Guitar While New Orleans Drowns

I miss having a real leader rather than a pretender to the throne as Leader of the Free World. I miss those heady days when the most pressing issues were what to do with the budget surplus and the mainstream media’s running tally of the number of women the president had boinked. But most importantly, I miss having a federal government that actually worked, even in the midst of a natural disaster of epic proportions.

Sadly, none of the leadership qualities we expect out of those we send to Washington – ostensibly to represent us – is present in the current crop of politicians – especially in today’s Republican party. Instead, what we get is graft, corruption, denial and recrimination.

Which brings me to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Before I begin, I would remind any right-wingers sharpening their pencils to scream at me about politicizing a natural disaster that Neal Boortz has already used the tragedy to rail against gun control, pinning the blame for the looting and rapes on “Democrats and liberals [who] have been dedicated to the idea that only government should have guns.” Meanwhile, right-wing “Christian” group Repent America’s director Michael Marcavage was busy channeling Jerry Falwell – blaming homosexuals and abortion for the destruction wrought by the hurricane.

Want to know how badly this administration FUBAR-ed disaster mitigation efforts? In 1995, Congress passed, and Clinton approved, an Army Corps of Engineers project known as the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA), spending $430 million to shore up levees and build pumping stations and providing an additional $50 million in local aid, according to an August 31 Editor & Publisher article. Bush, apparently convinced that everything Clinton did was evil and had to be reversed, ended up diverting much of the remaining $250 million slated to be spent on SELA to tax cuts for the upper 1% and to the war in Iraq – which, incidentally, is also where much of the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama National Guard were when Katrina made landfall last Monday.

State and local governments, knowing that they would quickly be overwhelmed, requested federal aid on August 28, and began evacuating those left behind in the storm – mostly those who were too poor or too sick to leave – the day after the levees broke. While the speed of evacuation certainly was not exemplary, it was a far cry better than FEMA, who apparently was sitting on its posterior waiting for Bush to give the go-ahead to take charge of the situation – when they weren’t actively sabotaging the state and local efforts by cutting the emergency communications lines and turning back relief supplies, according to Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard.

And where was President Bush during all of this? Our little Nero was strumming on the guitar while New Orleans drowned.

For comparison purposes, when Hurricane Floyd struck North Carolina in 1999, Bill Clinton: a) wasn’t on vacation, b) didn’t have the North Carolina National Guard tied up in Kosovo, c) activated both FEMA and the National Guard prior to landfall so that they could hit the ground running, and d) didn’t wait five days to visit the affected areas. Imagine the outcry if he’d shown the same callous attitude that Bush has.

Sadly, the response to Hurricane Katrina is merely the latest example of Republican malfeasance. This is the same party that has written laws that facilitated the crimes at Enron and WorldCom. This is the same party that put consolidating power over educating Texas’ children. This is the same party that screams "Support the Troops" even as they cut VA benefits and underfund VA facilities. This is the same party that would turn this country into a theocracy. This is the same party that would bring about Grover Norquist’s dream of a government small enough “to drown in the bathtub.”

As a fellow blogger put it, “Don’t expect good government from a party that believes government is bad.”

Technorati tags: Hurricane Katrina

Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition

2005-09-03T22:10:00.000-07:00

Pat Robertson's prayers have been answered. Rehnquist is dead. Look for Bush to nominate Jay Sekulow as his successor.

I do have to say however, that this couldn't have been timed better - it gets the heat off of Bush for depriving New Orleans of the means to deal with the catastrophe caused by Hurricane Katrina.

Technorati tags: Supreme Court, Rehnquist, Pat Robertson, Katrina

Camp Casey World Tour Report

2005-09-02T22:52:00.000-07:00

Wednesday was the first day of the Bring Them Home Now Tour that started by pulling the stakes up from Camp Casey in Crawford and will culminate in a massive demonstration in Washington, D.C. on September 21. The first stop for the Southern Tour (of which Mrs. Sheehan is a part) was here in Austin. As part of my preparation for participating in the event, I made a sign from the following image that I cobbled together using Fireworks and Photoshop:

My sign got many positive comments from those in attendence. The only critique I got was that I put too many words in Michelle Malkin's mouth - I needed to make it more "sound-bite" friendly. But otherwise, those who saw it thought it was very clever.

My day started with going down to campus to use their computers to make the image. On the way back, I stopped by the brick-and-mortar version of the Unemployed Democrats store and picked up a couple of bumper stickers and a "No Nonsense in November" t-shirt.

After that, I had a harrowing adventure getting to CompuSigns to make an actual sign out of my little Crossing Over image. They were willing to give me what I wanted...just not on the same day. After convincing them that I needed the sign post-haste, they agreed to have it done by 4:15 PM - though they warned me that the image quality would be a bit degraded. I told them it didn't matter, and judging from the comments I got, I was right.

While waiting for my sign, I went across the street to BookPeople to pass the time. 4:15 rolled around quickly, and I picked up my sign on time. Best $40 I ever spent.

Deciding that I needed to park somewhere that didn't have a three-hour time limit on how long you were allowed to park (as is the case with both BookPeople and the downtown Whole Foods), I wandered over to one of those open-air pay-to-park lots on 7th and Neches and walked from there to the Capitol, where everyone was gathering. I arrived on the scene at 10 till 5. Here was the scene a few minutes after I arrived:

We milled about under the scrutiny of local news media until about 6 o'clock, when the bus transporting Mrs. Sheehan arrived on scene to enormous fanfare.

Interestingly, while we were waiting for Cindy's arrival, the drivers of several Captial Metro busses honked approvingly at us (at least, I think it was approvingly). Up until that point, I didn't see any pro-war people - except for maybe one bozo who kept riding back and forth on his motorcycle with an ugly glare aimed our way.

With the arrival of Mrs. Sheehan, we marched towards City Hall, many of us chanting anti-war slogans all the way down. We found at least two- or three-hundred more already at City Hall waiting for us. (Those of us who marched from the Capitol got the best view, IMHO, because those already at City Hall were seated further back, stadium-style.)

Here was my view of the events:

In addition to local activists regalling us with clever musical swipes at the regime in power, the lineup included several Gold Star Families for Peace members (including Mrs. Sheehan), Texas' famous populist Jim Hightower and an Austin member of Iraq Vets Against the War. During one of the applause lines, I made sure that Mrs. Sheehan got to see my sign. After staring at it for a moment to read it, she smiled in knowing approval.

Contrary to my brother's fears, the rally at City Hall went without a hitch. In fact, we couldn't even hear the pro-war crowd's banal barking for most of the rally - except for during a few brief moments of silence between speakers (and also during a moment of silence to commemorate those who died for this massive lie). All in all, I had a good time - I even managed to give my sign to Mrs. Sheehan as the convoy was starting to pull away. So those of you on the path of the Southern Tour - if you see a "Crossing Over with Michelle Malkin and Bill O'Reilly" sign, that's my contribution to the cause! :-}

As promised, I'll post my thoughts on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina either later today or tomorrow.

Goin' down to South Park

2005-09-01T22:22:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to comment on Hurricane Katrina, but I'm still collecting my thoughts on the subject. Word of warning though, some of what I have to say will be fairly caustic - and none of it complimentary of the thugs currently in power - but I feel it needs to be said. In the meantime, to pre-emptively soften the blow, I will use this post to entertain(?) you and use the next one to report on recent local news.

One of my recent posts earned some comments (you'll notice that I recently upgraded to Haloscan for my comments) from someone over at Mind Nuggets. Clicking through to her blog, the latest entry included a link to a site that allows you to custom-build your own South Park character, in a American Chopper-meets-Trey Parker-and-Matt Stone sort of way.

And so, without further ado, here is what I came up with after playing around for a bit on the site:

Bringing lots of sauce....

2005-08-31T02:15:00.000-07:00

I just thought of something in relation to the content of my last post. Thomas Cadmus and his American Legion cronies may be guilty of a Section 802 violation of the PATRIOT Act. Section 802 amends Section 2331, Title 18 of the United States Code to read as follows:

(5) the term 'domestic terrorism' means activities that--

(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;

(B) appear to be intended--

(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and

(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.

Inciting American Legion members to politically-motivated violence most certainly "[involves] acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State" and is without a doubt "intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population."

Sauce for the goose is just as good for the gander, as they say.

Oh wait - that's right, the Patriot Act only applies to liberals and "swarthy males."

Funny, you'd think that the American Legion, which bills itself as a "patriotic, mutual-help, war-time veterans organization," would be well aware of the following clause in the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

But, alas, our faith in the Legion's dedication to the principles of the Founders has been sorely misplaced. According to an AP-Ipsos poll, 87% of Americans can understand this vital principle. Why can't the American Legion? I guess they're too busy advocating theocracy in America - another First Amendment violation. (D'oh!)

Of course, in Right Wing World, I'm a troop-hater for daring to criticize the American Legion.

Technorati tags: American Legion, Iraq War, Patriot Act

A new double standard

2005-08-25T01:30:00.000-07:00

Gag me with a spoon on this one. MSRNC is reporting that Sami Habbas, a Palestinian-American who served his country in the U.S. Army, received a credit card offer from JPMorgan Chase & Co. that began with three words: "Dear Palestinian Bomber."

A cursory glance at the article reveals the following:

The information came from a list Chase purchased from a vendor, said Kelly J. Presta, Chase Card Services executive vice president. Chase Card Services, the Delaware-based credit card line of JPMorgan Chase & Co., said it doesn’t know how that name was attached to Habbas’ address but it is investigating.

In other words, JPMorgan Chase goofed by trusting the accuracy of a third-party spam list. GREAT JOB, GUYS! Naturally, this implies that someone with a serious bug up their posterior about the Arab/Muslim community punk'd Mr. Habbas. As to who might've done it, I'd look over at the hatriots over at (Moslems)FreiRepublic, who wasted no time dragging the poor fellow through the mud rhetorically.

There were several "jokes" about stereotypical Palestinian "terrorists:"

tsk tsk..

It was supposed to go to Palestinian Baby Boomer,, not Bomber
1 posted on 08/24/2005 3:13:31 PM PDT by NormsRevenge

To: NormsRevenge

But isn't that an honor in Islamic culture?

3 posted on 08/24/2005 3:18:37 PM PDT by thoughtomator (Hey Senator! Leave those kids alone!)

To: NormsRevenge

"The Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C., called the letter "racially insensitive." In a letter sent to Chase, the Muslim civil liberties group asked for an investigation and a formal apology."

- Had this guy actually been a bomber, CAIR would have called him a martyr. Ironic isn't it?

8 posted on 08/24/2005 3:26:46 PM PDT by Tempestuous

To: NormsRevenge

"I told them, 'I'm not Mr. Bomber, I'm Mr. Jihadist! Mr. Bomber lives two houses down from me.'"

14 posted on 08/24/2005 3:39:46 PM PDT by WestVirginiaRebel (Idiots and the Internet don't mix, no matter how hard Michael Moore tries.)

To: NormsRevenge
Habbas/ Hammas --I can see the confusion.
15 posted on 08/24/2005 3:47:16 PM PDT by Rakkasan1 (DON'T BICKER, DRINK LIQUOR-DON'T THINK, JUST DRINK.)

To: NormsRevenge
"I thought it was a joke or something," he said. "I'm very sad - devastated."

Why is everybody always "saddened", "hurt", and "devastated"? For the love of God, doesn't anybody ever just get pissed off anymore? I would have had a lot more respect for this guy if he had just said, "This insult really pissed me off". Of course, he'd probably end up saying "These infidels have made me so mad I could just explode."
19 posted on 08/24/2005 4:07:57 PM PDT by fr_freak

To: NormsRevenge

I don't get the problem. Is he not Palestinian?

23 posted on 08/24/2005 5:01:05 PM PDT by SampleMan

But the most egregious of the "Arabs/Muslims = Terrorists" posts was this gem by vox humana:

To: NormsRevenge

The Department of Homeland Security should have the same mass mailing software that J P Morgan Chase & Co. used to generate the Palestinian Bomber's address. Just think how easy it would be to locate all the terrorists!

22 posted on 08/24/2005 4:38:55 PM PDT by vox humana

Excuse me while I .

But that's not the worst of it. The Rush Limbaugh "Why should Blacks be heard? They're 12% of the population. Who the hell cares." Contingent made itself known in this post:

To: Tempestuous

Why does anyone care what CAIR thinks? Aren't they just another watchdog group? What are they going to do declare a boycott? It's not like hardcore Islamics make up a sizable econonomic block in the U.S.

11 posted on 08/24/2005 3:33:57 PM PDT by Borges

Finally, the double-barf moment: A Freeper delcares that Mr. Habbas doesn't know the meaning of the word "discrimination."

To: SoCal Pubbie

Hey, Pali: a lot of Jewish widows, widowers (I'm one) and orphans are saddened and devastated too. For far more terrible reason than your self-absorbed self.

7 posted on 08/24/2005 3:26:20 PM PDT by elcid1970

Look, numbskull, the Nazi pogroms against Jews started in exactly the same way that you and your ilk are smearing every single Arab and/or Muslim as a terrorist. Why that doesn't seem to bother you is something you ought to have checked out with a professional.

Which leads me to my main point. In today's political environment, it's okay for these holier-than-thou types to smear, slander and stereotype an entire Middle Eastern ethnic/religious community, yet if I were to post this

in response to Pat Robertson's nutty remarks about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, I'd be called an evil, terrorist, traitor, anti-Christian, Spawn-of-Satan, lesbian, Nazi hooker who has been abducted by aliens and forced into weight-loss programs by these very same people!

And by the way, it isn't just Arabs and/or Muslims that the Freeperati Pogroms have been activated against, either. Liberals are also being targeted.

Puffy McMoonface's substitute, Trent Duffy, "said that President Bush believes that those who want the U.S. to begin to change course in Iraq do not want America to win the overall 'war on terror,'" according to the Editor & Publisher.

Think Progress, the blog of the Center for American Progress, has an interesting tidbit about Rummy calling the anti-war movement a bunch of Commies and Stalinists.

And then there's David Sirota, who brings up MSRNC's Nora O'Donnell and her "contribution" to the debate over Iraq.

Finally, we have the national commander of the American Legion making terrorist threats against anti-war protestors.

Back in the saddle again

2005-08-23T14:41:00.000-07:00

Seeing in a Mirror Dimly: A Preview of the Fall ’05 Political Season

As summer fades into autumn, students’ minds are filled with anticipation of the coming school year. This is entirely natural, as we humans often attempt – sometimes blindly – to prognosticate on the future in the hopes of a better world. With this in mind, I would like to offer a preview of the upcoming political season here in Texas and around the country.

Our first political milestone is Labor Day weekend, which heralds the return of Congress to Capitol Hill. On the agenda are the nomination of Manchurian Candidate Judge John Roberts to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, a defense spending measure that got shoved aside before the August break so that Congress could pander to the NRA, and how best to (not) deal with rising gas prices.

While little was known initially about Judge Roberts, what has come out about him since then – in spite of considerable stonewalling by the Bush administration – is enough to give anyone who cares about a democratic society pause. Meanwhile, the same Republicans who constantly scream at Democrats about “supporting the troops” (by not exercising their First Amendment rights) have shafted the soldiers once again by ignoring their needs in order to appease a gun lobby so drunk with power, they want to deprive businesses like ConocoPhillips of their private property rights. This is also the same Congress that recently passed energy legislation that gave a huge gift to oil and gas companies that comes directly from the pockets of consumers. So no, the current government is no friend of the little guy.

September also marks the return of the Texas Legislature to yet another session of trying to fund education – something that should’ve been done by now. They had the perfect opportunity to do so two years ago, but apparently, legislating the Democrats out of Texas politics took higher priority.

Eventually, September will pass into October, where things get interesting. Iraqis theoretically will go to the polls in a bid to ratify their new constitution which, given the wording of the current draft, stands to turn Iraq into an ideological clone of Iran.

Freedom is on the march, indeed.

Additionally, the grand jury that has been empanelled to look into the Valerie Plame affair is supposed to come to an end, and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will have to make a decision at that point about what to do next. However, there are reports that the testimonies of both Karl Rove and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby have been inconsistent, while those of Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and NBC reporter Tim Russert are completely consistent. I suspect that we may be seeing a series of indictments come out of the special prosecutor’s office at that time, especially given Fitzgerald’s dislike of being lied to. Expect things to get rather dicey for President No Accountability at that point.

And while that political circus is going on, we head into November, at which time Texans are expected to go to the polls in droves to vote on an amendment to the Texas state constitution outlawing gay marriage. Will Texans vote to stay in the 21st century, or will Texas become the latest state to implement the “Christian” version of sharia law? Only time will tell.

After Texas decides whether or not to regress to the 13th century, there isn’t much of consequence left in the 2005 political season, other than yet another round of whining from the American Inquisition about the lack of nativity scenes on every square inch of American soil. From there, it’s off to the 2006 races.

Greed is not good

2005-08-23T02:31:00.000-07:00

There are a couple of recent stories that should serve as object lessons in why the concept of homo economicus drives corporations to screw consumers in favor of the almighty dollar, and why there needs to be a referee in a capitalist society.

Object Lesson #1: Big Pharmaceuticals

First of all, let's look at the recent jury decision handed down in the Merck liability lawsuit. The jury in the case found the pharmaceutical company liable for $253.4 million in damages in the death of Carol Ernst's husband.

The size of the award is not what is most impressive about the verdict, however. What is most impressive is that this was a Texas jury - not exactly known for sticking up for the little guy - in a case that was supposed to be easy for Merck to dodge accountability on just on the merits of the case.

(BTW, don't expect Mrs. Ernst to see one dime of the award. Even assuming that the verdict is upheld on appeal - unlikely, given the makeup of the appeals courts in this part of the country - the lawyers' fees are likely to eat up most, if not all of the award money.)

It is apparent that what tipped the balance in this case was the revelation that Merck had a long history of trying to hide information about risks associated with taking Vioxx, including a series of training manuals known as "Dodgeball Vioxx," which taught marketers how to "dodge" questions about the drug's safety. Even worse, evidence suggests that Merck knew about the dangers of Vioxx as far back as 1996. Also, in spite of concerns that Merck's advertising materials "have not presented any risk information concerning the contraindications, warnings, precautions or adverse events associated with Vioxx’s use," the FDA approved Vioxx in 1999.

If anything, this case should demonstrate how far Merck and other big pharmaceutical companies are willing to go to rush a product onto market and avoid accountability if anything should happen to consumers of the product. Furthermore, it raises red flags about the FDA's utter inability to enforce safety guidelines at best, and vulnerability to being bought by special interests at worst.

But then, this should come as no surprise to anyone. This is, after all, an industry has turned the business of medicine from a human health concern to a consumeristic enterprise where people are encouraged to consume as many drugs as humanly possible, weather they need to or not. (An exercise for the reader: next time you watch TV or listen to the radio, count how many commercials exhorting you to take this or that "miracle drug" in a given hour. Also, try to see if you can make sense of the safety information provided in a given commercial.)

This is also an industry with a history of engaging in anticompetitive practices such as abusing the patent system to keep generic drugs off the market. Why then, are we surprised to see greed take precedence over being a good corporate citizen?

Given this pattern of behavior in the pharmaceutical industry, another recent story takes on a whole new, frightening dimension.

On August 3rd, the BBC reported that American and British scientists, using computer models, suggested that if the H5N1 "bird flu" virus mutated into a human communicable disease, an outbreak could quickly reach pandemic levels and be about as deadly as the 1918 Spanish flu which claimed 20 to 40 million lives.

However, these same scientists reported that the computer models suggested that the outbreak could be contained if two critical conditions were met.

First, an outbreak would have to be identified while confined to about 30 people. There is a major impediment to this condition being met in that the disease in its current, non-human-transmissible form, is confined to East Asia - from Indonesia in the south to Russia in the north. Most of the governments in this area are notorious for not being forthcoming with information that might cast the government in a bad light.

The second necessary condition would be to immediately dispense enough of the antiviral drug to treat those 30 people AND the 20,000 people nearest to the infected population - about 3 million courses of treatment. A major impediment to this is the fact that we don't know how much time it will take before the virus becomes human-transmissible - thus we may not have enough time to develop an appropriate anti-viral drug and/or produce enough to contain any outbreak.

But let's suppose for a moment that an outbreak is confirmed while confined to 30 people, and there is enough anti-viral on hand to contain the outbreak. Will the drug companies do the ethical thing, and immediately begin dispensing anti-viral durgs, or will they do the profitable thing and let it spread? Remember, the more people infected, the more who will want to buy the drug at exorbitant prices. I think you're intelligent enough to figure it out.

Object Lesson #2: Mad Cow Disease

Bowing to pressure from consumer advocacy groups such as Public Citizen, the USDA released a report that said food inspectors filed 1,036 noncompliance reports between January 2004 and May 2005, essentially accusing U.S. meat plants of shirking their responsibilities as corporate citizens to ensure product safety.

While the meat industry continues to insist that there is no problem, it was the lax enforcement of safety standards that lead to the first instance of mad cow disease in this country. Furthermore, if mad cow-infected beef enters the food supply, it raises the specter of people contracting a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease.

But then there's this gem from the USDA:

The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said its federal meat inspectors strictly enforced the regulations to keep BSE out of the human food supply.

"These data demonstrate inspection program personnel took immediate action when they determined that regulators were not being strictly followed. The analysis demonstrates public health was protected," the agency said in a statement posted on its Web site.

This from an agency that spiked a positive mad-cow test result for seven months.

No wonder why Montana governor Brian Schweitzer called the USDA "a bunch of stooges" that are "in bed with the meat companies." I wish him luck in the inevitable lawsuit by the beef industry.

And so, as we can clearly see, greed is most definitely not good, despite all the protestations to the contrary of the free-market fundamentalists espousing laissez-faire capitalism.

Eggs Benedict steps in it again

2005-08-17T13:45:00.000-07:00

Oh boy. Remember how Pope Benedict Arnold I declared the pedophile priest scandal to be a figment of the evil "librul" media's imagination? (This, of course, was after he was caught meddling in the politics of sovereign nations.) Well, it turns out that he was involved in helping cover up the problem in Texas. As usual, he's tried to avoid accountability by claiming diplomatic immunity.

As always, conservative Catholics put their fingers in their ears and scream at the top of their lungs "LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU EVIL LIBRULS TRASHING RELIGION AS ALWAYS!" But hey, at least the Pope likes cats, right?

Muslims are the ultra-vioent ones, indeed

2005-08-17T13:21:00.000-07:00

As opponents of the Gaza Strip withdrawl continue to instigate Israeli-on-Israeli violence, we get yet another story of an Israeli gunman killing Palestinians.

In the West Bank, an Israeli settler grabbed a gun from a security guard in the Shilo settlement and started shooting Palestinians, killing three and wounding two before being arrested. The killings aroused fears of Palestinian retaliation and the disruption of the evacuation mission.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon denounced the attack as "Jewish terror aimed at stopping the withdrawl." Quite frankly, in my eyes, The Butcher of Qibya, Sabra and Shatila has as much moral authority to condemn Israeli-on-Palestinian violence as Yasser Arafat had to condemn Palestinian-on-Israeli violence - which is to say, none.

So don't come to me with this BS about how only Muslims are ultra-violent. Between this, terrorism against abortion providers and homosexuals by the "Christian" Right, and the antics of Osama bin Forgotten and his crew, is it any wonder why I hate organized religion as a whole?

Anti-Sheehan gun nut's distant cousin offers closer spot for Camp Casey

2005-08-16T19:18:00.000-07:00

Well, at least there are some decent people in the Mattlage family.

Protest campsite moving closer to Bush ranch
Relative of man who fired shotgun offers space to antiwar demonstrators

REUTERS

CRAWFORD, Texas - Antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, is moving her camp closer to President Bush’s Texas ranch.

The piece of private property was offered by a relative of a man who had fired a shotgun in frustration over the protests, a source in the Sheehan camp said. The property owner is also a veteran.

"A neighbor of President Bush’s has offered us his land," the source said. "It’s got plenty of acreage for us, it’s private land, we would have legal permission to be on it, it’s much closer to the ranch — in fact it’s across the street from his (Bush’s) church."

Strategically located near places Bush has to go if he wants to impress his theofascist base, on land being offered to them by the sane relative of a wingnut gunman? Who could resist?

The source said Fred Mattlage made the offer saying "I’m a veteran, I support what you all are doing and I want to offer you my land."

So...what was that about "some vets' families think Sheehan is an evil, terrorist, traitor, Spawn-of-Satan who needs to be shot on sight" again, Bill?

They've soiled their armor again

2005-08-15T22:41:00.000-07:00

The co-dependent Democrats have done it again. It appears that they're going to give John Roberts the "up or up vote" that Bush has been throwing tantrums about. Way to cut yourselves out of the national dialogue on where this nation is headed. Just a few more cave-ins by you guys and we'll be a one-party state. Oh, wait... We already are.

Liberals are the ultra-violent ones, indeed

2005-08-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

Man fires shotgun in view of Camp Casey; Blogger embarrassed to be from Texas

Full report at MSRNC.

There are so many things wrong with the situation that I don't know where to begin. How about the fact that this man, Larry Mattlage, shot off, in more ways than one, during a religious service?

CRAWFORD, Texas - A man fired a shotgun into the air as about 60 anti-war protesters held a religious service on the road to President Bush’s ranch.

Then there were his ominous comments about "dove-hunting season," and the ironic contrast with his claim that he wasn't threatening anyone.

"I ain’t threatening nobody, and I ain’t pointing a gun at nobody," Mattlage said. "This is Texas."

He said he fired his gun in preparation for dove-hunting season but when asked if he had another motive, he said, "Figure it out for yourself."

But what is really outrageous is the rather lenient treatment he received from the Secret Service.

Sheriff’s deputies and Secret Service agents in the area of the demonstration site Sunday rushed to the home of Larry Mattlage after the shots were fired but did not arrest him.

Let's get this straight. The Secret Service, charged with protection of the President of the United States of America, hears gunshots barely five miles from Bush's Crawford ranch, and THEY DON'T EVEN ARREST THE GUY?! They don't have any qualms about hassling student artists over disfavored artwork and other anti-Bush paraphernalia. They have even gone so far as to arrest on disorderly conduct charges those who manage to sneak into Bush's carefully scripted photo-ops and heckle The Most Holy. But strangely enough, they have no problem with Bush supporters who are a little loose with their gun control and people who pose as Secret Service in order to keep Bush's speaking tours "ideologically pure."

As Mr. Mattlage put it, "figure it out for yourself."

Former (Republican) OKC Mayor supports man caught with pipe bomb on plane
Turns out that potential pipe-bomber Charles Dreyling has friends in high places. His landlord, former Oklahoma City mayor Kirk Humphreys (R - OK), has personally vouched for Dreyling, who is now free on bail.

If you compare Dreyling's situation to that of say José Padilla, whose arrest as an "enemy combatant" comes without any evidence that he did anything more than THINK about terrorist activity, it's obvious that there's a double standard at work here. If you're a member of the "wrong" race and/or "wrong" religion, you'd better think that every single thing the U.S. does is 1000000000% perfect, or it's off to Gitmo for you. If you're a conservative Republican extremist with good connections, and you get caught with actual bombs, don't worry - you'll just get a slap on the wrist and "Isn't that cute?"

One more shot across the bow

2005-08-12T06:48:00.000-07:00

I just remembered something about the O'Reilly/Malkin exchange. Malkin isn't the only one presuming to speak for a newsmaker's dead relative. O'Reilly, in his infamous "Shut up! Cut his mic!" blow-up somehow read the mind of Jeremy Glick's dead father - freshly killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

O'REILLY: You are mouthing a far left position that is a marginal position in this society, which you're entitled to.

GLICK: It's marginal -- right.

O'REILLY: You're entitled to it, all right, but you're -- you see, even -- I'm sure your beliefs are sincere, but what upsets me is I don't think your father would be approving of this.

GLICK: Well, actually, my father thought that Bush's presidency was illegitimate.

Later in the interview, O'Reilly takes it one step further.

O'REILLY: Shut up. Shut up.

GLICK: Oh, please don't tell me to shut up.

O'REILLY: As respect -- as respect -- in respect for your father, who was a Port Authority worker, a fine American, who got killed unnecessarily by barbarians...

GLICK: By radical extremists who were trained by this government...

O'REILLY: Out of respect for him...

GLICK: ... not the people of America.

O'REILLY: ... I'm not going to...

GLICK: ... The people of the ruling class, the small minority.

O'REILLY: Cut his mic. I'm not going to dress you down anymore, out of respect for your father. We will be back in a moment with more of THE FACTOR.

A Plethora of Updates

2005-08-12T06:04:00.000-07:00

O'Reilly and Michelle Malkin Ghoulishly Slander Dead Iraq War Vet's Mom - Presume to Speak for the Dead

Where to begin? Not long after Cindy Sheehan, mother of dead Iraq War veteran Casey Sheehan, begin demanding answers from Commander Codpiece, the right-wing smear machine began in earnest to drag her good name through the mud.

Most prominent in the attacks were Loofah Boy Bill O'Reilly and Agitprop Specialist Michelle Malkin.

The most salient (and utterly despicable) parts of the interview are as follows:

O'REILLY: Well, I have to say that she obviously does because she's the lead story on Michael Moore's Web site on an almost daily basis. And she knows -- I mean, Michael Moore isn't a subtle guy. Everybody knows where he stands.

Yes, in O'Reilly's world, anyone Michael Moore likes or agrees with is an evil, terrorist traitor who needs to be shot on sight.

So I mean, I think Mrs. Sheehan bears some responsibility for this and also for the responsibility of other American families who have lost sons and daughters in Iraq, who feel that this kind of behavior borders on treasonous.

You know, you got to think about those people as well. What about their feelings?

Because apparently, the only people who are allowed to have feelings are those with Britney Spears' faith in the president.

But then Loofah Boy throws in this "When did you stop beating your wife?" kind of leading question:

Do they have a right to this opinion without being scorned?

The answer that O'Reilly wants the listener to give is, of course, "No." Because daring to hold any opinion even slightly to the left of Attila the Hun makes one an "America-hater" in Right Wing World. Never mind if you have the temerity to even express such an opinion.

It was Malkin, however, who provided the ultimate irony when she declared with a straight face that Sheehan was "turning her private pain in to a public circus." Like that hasn't happened before (*cough* MISSING WHITE GIRL IN ARUBA! *cough* TERRI SCHIAVO! *cough*).

Later, on her blog, Malkin became especially creepy - presuming to speak for Sheehan's dead son.

Naturally, when called on for their rude, catty, utterly unprofessional behavior, both Malkin and Mr. No Spin entered a "Tornado-Spin Zone." Malkin claimed that her channeling of "Crossing Over" host John Edward was more a slap at Michael Moore than Cindy Sheehan. Note to Malkin: the target of your missive is irrelevant - to paraphrase The Most Holy George W. Christ's predecessor, "IT'S THE PRESUMING TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD, STUPID!"

Meanwhile, O'Reilly demurs, "Both Michelle and I were respectful to Mrs. Sheehan." Query: HOW IS CALLING MRS. SHEEHAN AN AMERICA-HATING, MICHAEL MOORE-LOVING TREASONOUS NUTJOB IN ANY WAY "BEING RESPECTFUL"??!

If I may speak frankly, Mr. O'Reilly, Ms. Malkin - BITE ME. I have had just about enough of this sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, self-righteous, self-important judgement-from-on-high from the right about who is and who isn't being properly patriotic.

Let's play a little "Guess the Quote." Who said:

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Give up? The answer is here.

NARAL Repents Stretching the Truth - Pulls Ad

You see, this is the difference between the left and the right. When the left gets caught stretching the truth and gets called on it, they will own up to their mistake and correct it. The right eagerly leaps from lie to lie and, should anyone dare to call them on it, circle the wagons and act like something is wrong with those who accuse them of lying.

What was that about only Muslims being terrorists?

Off the Reuters wire:

OKLAHOMA CITY - An Oklahoma man told federal investigators he forgot a pipe bomb he built for fun was in his luggage when tried to board an airplane, according to court documents released Thursday.

Charles Alfred Dreyling Jr., 24, was charged Thursday with trying to carry the bomb aboard a Delta Airlines flight from Oklahoma City to Atlanta on Wednesday, according to the documents.

Perhaps the most disturbing part about this is that he claims to have built the bombs "for fun." I guess blowing stuff up is what passes for entertainment in Red-state America. I'm sure he had something constructive in mind to use the bombs for. I guess I should be glad that he didn't have a sodium cyanide bomb, a well-stocked arsenal with 500,000 rounds of ammunition and fake D.O.D./U.N. credentials.

Rumsfeld and Co. Plan to Dance on 9/11 Victims' graves - by invitation only

This comes to us from the Moonie Times. I won't comment on it to spare you reading anything worse than my rant about Malkin and O'Reilly's tag-team smear job.

Toon Time

Finally, I close this post with a Ted Rall cartoon:

It should come as no surprise for me to say that I agree with the thrust of the cartoon. However, as I mentioned in a post on the Bartcop forum, the end result is unrealistic. The Muslim never get to say "Now it's your turn" because by that time the "white Christian conservative" has jumped in and is screaming at the top of his lungs, "YOUR CONDEMNATION IS FAKE! YOUR CONDEMNATION IS FAKE! DIE [Insert Anti-Arab Racial Slur here] DIE!"

Peter Jennings - End of an era

2005-08-08T00:40:00.000-07:00

Last night, the sun set on an era of television journalism. Peter Jennings, who has been in failing health since being diagnosed with lung cancer in April, has passed away.

Jennings, along with Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather, formed a triumvirate of nightly news broadcasting that I quite literally grew up around. Around our household, we'd tune in to one of the big three networks to get our dose of news for the day. And now, with Brokaw retired, Rather bullied into submission by the rabid right, and Jennings' death, it feels like a chapter has closed on American history - an era of honest journalism. Today's news media is more like a propaganda arm of the GOP. They buried the Jeff Gannon story and virtually ignored Traitor-gate until recently, and during the previous administration, gleefully jumped on even the flimsiest story if it meant trouble for The Big C. Thus it seems particularly salient that Jennings, the last honest journalist, has ridden off into the proverbial sunset, simultaneously sunsetting any semblance of a free press.

Why I Want No Part of Organized Religion

2005-08-08T00:17:00.000-07:00

Militant Israeli Guns Down Arabs in Protest of Gaza Pullout

On Friday, an Israeli army deserter, Eden Nathan Zaada opened fire on a bus full of Israeli Arabs killing four and wounding 22 (among the wounded were 7 non-Arabs).

Obviously, there is a certain segment of the Israeli population that is not happy with "Butcher of Sabra and Shatila" Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw the Gaza settlements. The best thing that could've happened for this faction would be for someone to off some "Ragheads" in an effort to provoke a violent response from the Palestinian street, thereby forcing Sharon to reconsider withdrawing the settlements. Based on the actions of Zaada, he was at the least a member of this faction. One can only hope that this gambit doesn't succeed, and cooler heads can prevail.

However, seeing as how Israel is the third rail of American politics, I can only imagine that someone, somewhere will try to call me anti-Semitic simply because I do not blindly believe that Israel's hands are clean in this matter.

Let me make myself exceedingly clear: Both sides are guilty as sin. Neither deserves our support. Unfortunately, we sacrifice our position as an honest broker by acting as though only the Palestinians are to blame for the unfortunate situation. In my mind, the best solution is - after admitting the awful truth above - to force both sides to come to an enforcable agreement that allows a two-state solution.

So to recap, here is why I am not a member of any organized religion:

Christianity: Modern day Pharisees like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson; Home-grown terrorists such as Eric Rudolph, James Kopp, etc.; The Christian Identity movement

Islam: Osama bin Forgotten; The Taliban; 9/11

Judaism: I wasn't born Jewish; The Likud Party - like abused children, they would do to the Palestinians what the Nazis tried to do to the Jews

Hinduism: One word: Kashmir

As you can probably tell, the recurring theme to my reasons for not liking organized religion is that it is too often used as a cudgel by wackos who presume to speak for the religion against groups that are disfavored by these same wackos.

Eggs Benedict Steals One from Bush

2005-08-04T12:04:00.000-07:00

According to a recent L.A. Times article quoted at thoughtcrimes.org, Pope Benedict Arnold I has applied the Bush/Rove idea of rewarding failure and corruption by appointing William Levada, formerly Archbishop of Portland, OR and later Archbishop of San Francisco, to succeed him as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. (As I mentioned in an earlier editorial, the CDF is what the Inquisition became when it was no longer PC to be the Inquisition.)

What is especially shameful about this promotion is the fact that in a 1994 child support case involving then-Seminary student Arturo Uribe is that Levada blamed the plaintiff for failure to use birth control that resulted in the pregnancy that the child-support case revolved around. It's bad enough that this "defense" contradicts Catholic doctrine decrying contraception - a doctrine that, as prefect of the CDF, Levada is charged with defending. What makes the situation worse is the fact that this incident fits in with the larger pattern of the Catholic church's efforts to avoid any accountability for the sexual largesse of its leadership by any means necessary - whether blaming the victims, as in this case, or by playing Three-card monte with its membership, as in the pedophile priest scandal.

In any case, it's high time that liberal Catholics (and there are a fair number out there) cleaned house and installed leadership that exercises its affirmative moral duty to hold itself to the same strict standard that it holds its followers to. It's become painfully obvious that conservative Catholics are either unable or unwilling to do so.

GOP "Christians Only" Jihad Continues

2005-08-03T16:48:00.000-07:00

This story was covered in today's New York Times (registration required). (Incidentally, if you don't want go through the registration process for most of the news web sites, check out BugMeNot.com.)

As Bush prepares to ram his ultra-conservative nutjob onto the Supreme Court, the religious thugs who have hijacked the GOP prepare another pandering photo-op to rally support for said nominee. According to the article, headliners for the theofascist thugs' "Just Us Sunday II" include the ever-sleasy Tom "I AM the federal government" DeLay, Zell "It's my governorship and I'll embezzle if I want to" Miller, Watergate felon Chuck Colson, James "Embryonic Stem Cell Research = Holocaust" Dobson and Bill "Gays should apologize for just existing!" Donohue.

Further down, you find that one of the attendees, Pat "Let's Nuke the State Department" Robertson, is wishing for the death/retirement of more Supreme Court justices - specifically, the left-leaning justices.

In related news, Puss'n Boot Hill Frist has been disinvited from "Just Us Sunday II" for not goosestepping to the theofascist drumbeat.

Blogging the OH-2 Congressional Race

2005-08-02T19:10:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be keeping a running total of the returns in the Hackett-Schmidt race as they happen.

Source: WCPO in Cincinnati

7:00 PM CDT - No results yet.

7:30 PM CDT
56 of 753 precincts reporting

Candidate	Votes	Percentage	Difference
Paul Hackett (D)	6,562	51%	Ahead 286
Jean Schmidt (R)	6,276	49%	Behind 286

8:00 PM CDT
175 of 753 precincts reporting

Candidate	Votes	Percentage	Difference
Paul Hackett (D)	13,512	51%	Ahead 710
Jean Schmidt (R)	12,802	49%	Behind 710

8:15 PM CDT
305 of 753 precincts reporting

Candidate	Votes	Percentage	Difference
Paul Hackett (D)	23,957	51%	Ahead 1,111
Jean Schmidt (R)	22,846	49%	Behind 1,111

Looks like the gap is widening, and according to Majority Report producer Josh Orton, the early returns have been coming from rural areas - areas expected to go heavily for Schmidt. If these trends continue, Hackett's got this one in the bag - even with all the Rethuglican dirty tricks. However, we still have to see what the tale of the absentee ballots entails. This could be an interesting race.

8:30 PM CDT
580 of 753 precincts reporting

Candidate	Votes	Percentage	Difference
Paul Hackett (D)	42,342	48%	Behind 2,792
Jean Schmidt (R)	45,134	52%	Ahead 2,792

Holy crap. Schmidt is now ahead. It's not over yet, though. The urban centers are still tabulating their results. Let's hope for the best.

8:48 PM CDT
662 of 753 precincts reporting

Candidate	Votes	Percentage	Difference
Paul Hackett (D)	48,811	50%	Behind 870
Jean Schmidt (R)	49,681	50%	Ahead 870

This is starting to remind me of that scene in Independence Day where they're trying to see if Jeff Goldblum's PowerMac virus managed to bring down the alien invaders' shields.

9:23 PM CDT - No change in results. This is weird. We've been getting updates fairly regularly up till now. Now we go 30 minutes without an update...

9:47 PM CDT - Okay, I've had reports that they're having to do hand counts in some precincts (most especially in heavily-Rethuglican Clermont county). Still in wait and see mode.

10:00 PM CDT
753 of 753 precincts reporting

Candidate	Votes	Percentage	Difference
Paul Hackett (D)	54,401	48%	Defeated by 3,573
Jean Schmidt (R)	57,974	52%	Won by 3,573

Virus ineffective. Get your people out of there. Still, for a district that was supposed to be a shoe-in for Schmidt (who probably won't accept a concession speech or, if she does, will be smugly condescending, calling Hackett every nasty name in the book), and in spite of yet more apparent fraud by the Rethuglicans, Hackett acquitted himself admirably in this election, and certainly proved the DLC wrong about the viability of running as Republican-Lite.

Plane Crash in Canada - None Killed

2005-08-02T16:22:00.000-07:00

Earlier today, an Air France Airbus A340 crashed after being struck by lightning while trying to land at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. Thankfully, no one was killed in the crash. However, look for Freepers and L-dotters to mock the double-whammy of a French airplane crashing in Canada, if their antics following the crash that took the life of Senator Paul Wellstone is any indication. 1

1: Freeper/L-dotter reaction to Senator Wellstone's death is documented on page 75 of Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News.

Bush: Ideology Trumps Science

2005-08-02T15:44:00.000-07:00

Shortly after using abusing his recess appointment power to install as U.N. Ambassador jam John "Short Temper Theater" Bolton down the U.N.'s throat, Bush addressed a gathering of reporters for various Texas newspapers. During the round-table conference, he was asked for his opinion on the teaching of evolution in school. The Most Holy decreed "You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."

Never mind that "Intelligent Design" does not provide testable predictions that can be verified via the scientific method (and therefore, not scientific, and thus not valid for inclusion in kids' science classes!). Never mind that the vast majority of scientists and peer-reviewed journals have outright rejected "Intelligent Design" as unscientific. One decree from The Most Holy, coupled with massive legislative lobbying efforts by the anti-science crowd, and there goes the teaching of one of the most important theories of the last couple of centuries - RIGHT OUT THE WINDOW!

Hopefully, Paul Hackett will be elected and will serve as a sign that America is mad as hell about this misadministration that has declared war on half the country, and we're not gonna take it anymore. Maybe then we can finally do something about the train wreck this country has become.

Bush's End Run On Truth Serum

2005-08-02T15:13:00.000-07:00

The following represents my depiction of how Bush's end run around the Senate would've gone if he'd been on truth serum at the time.

THE MOST HOLY GEORGE W. CHRIST: Nearly five months ago, I nominated John Bolton to be America's Ambassador to the United Nations destroy the United Nations and what remains of the tatters of America's reputation in the world. I chose John because of his vast experience in foreign policy, his integrity and his willingness to confront difficult problems head-on short temper, utter incompetence, and willingness to put party loyalty far, far above national security - much like my good friend "Turd Blossom." I told lied to the nation when I told them that John Bolton would provide clear American leadership for reform at the United Nations. I should've told them that he would insist upon results American hegemony above all.

The United States Senate held thorough confirmation hearings, and a majority of United States senators agree that he is the right man for the job worry about the damage he will do to America's national security interests. Yet, because of partisan delaying tactics by a handful of senators my strongarm tactics didn't work on those pantywaist, terrorist-loving traitors that refuse to shut up, bend over and take it up the posterior like a man, John was unfairly denied the up or down up vote that he deserves I demand by my right as Reichsfurher President.

As a result, America has now gone more than six months without a permanent ambassador to mole in the United Nations. This post is too important to leave vacant any longer, especially I needed something to distract from Rove's treason during a war, and I believe that a vital debate about U.N. reform how best to destroy a forum that has contributed so much to our security is the best way to do that. So today I've used abused my constitutional authority to appoint John Bolton to serve as America's Ambassador to the United Nations. [snicker] John Bolton will be an important member of my State Saber-Rattling Department team, led by Condoleezza Rice.

I'm sending Ambassador Bolton to New York with my complete confidence that he will ruin American foreign policy and set back the peace process by centuries. Ambassador Bolton believes passionately in hates the goals of the United Nations Charter, to advance peace and liberty and human rights. His mission is now to help the U.N. reform itself to renew its founding promises for the 21st century fly a hijacked airplane into the U.N. Secretariat building. He will speak for me on critical issues facing the international community. And he'll make it clear that America values the potential of the United Nations to be a source of hope and dignity and peace demands supremacy over the rest of the world, and no force on Earth can stop us.

As he embarks on his new assignment, Ambassador Bolton will bring tremendous wisdom venom and expertise ineptitude. Over the past two decades, John Bolton has been one of America's most talented corrupt and successful unsuccessful diplomats. He's been a tireless defender of our nation's values of the Republican party line, and an unpersuasive advocate for freedom and peace partisan hack with anger management issues. As a senior leader at the State Department in the 1980s and 1990s, he brought people together to achieve meaningful results at the United Nations -- from resolving payment issues, to helping rally the coalition in the Persian Gulf War, to repealing a shameful resolution that equated Zionism with racism bullied subordinates who dared to actual analysis that discredited the RNC's talking points -- actions that led to Iran's nuclear ambitions and North Korea's rise as a nuclear power on his watch, in addition to nearly scuttling our talks with Libya on WMDs. And over the past four years as Undersecretary of State, he's shown valuable leadership harmed our efforts on one of the most urgent challenges of our time: preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Ambassador Bolton takes up his duties at a time of opportunity for the United States and the United Nations. Under the glorious, godly leadership of Ambassador Bolton and myself, America and the U.N. are is working to spread destroy democracy, relieve exacerbate the problem of hunger, and assist laugh at the victims of disaster. We've delivered hope despair to millions suffering from HIV/AIDS and other deadly diseases because we choose to continue burying our heads in the sand in the name of a God that acts like a third-world dictator. We've helped to lay the groundwork for two landmark events in the history of liberty: the free fixed elections of Afghanistan and Iraq. Ambassador Bolton will work to build on that progress by helping undermining the U.N. and continuing to find effective new ways to match its good intentions with good results expand our neofascist theocracy to every corner of the globe.

As the newest member of America's diplomatic corps, Ambassador Bolton will defend threaten our nation's interests with character and resolve the arrogance and contempt for freedom that were instilled early in life came through his later education. John's father was a firefighter; his mother was a homemaker who took her son to the public library to show him the value of education. I know that Jack and Virginia Bolton would be proud horrified today to see the boy they raised in Baltimore appointed to serve as our permanent representative to the United Nations and wonder where the hell they went wrong.

I'm grateful to John's wife, Gretchen, for being here with us and to the entire Bolton family for their service and sacrifice.

Mr. Ambassador, thank you for agreeing to serve your nation once again, and congratulations.

Science marches on, in spite of ourselves

2005-07-27T23:08:00.000-07:00

There was an interesting article on MSRNC today about a potential cancer treatment being developed at MIT (Forgive me while I pause to grumble about MIT getting all the cool discoveries - remnants of my time as a Carnegie Mellon student). I'll let you peruse the article without further comment, except to say that this sort of thing would not be possible without the kids who have become the MIT researchers being taught all the things that the anti-science crowd want thrown out of science.

(By the way, if you really believe the claptrap that "evolution hasn't produced any useful advances," I suggest you Google "genetic algorithms" or even "antibiotic resistance". Study of evolution helps explain a lot about both topics.)

More on Traitor-gate: GOP shoots the messenger...AGAIN!

2005-07-27T22:18:00.000-07:00

Those of you who were watching Beat the Press on July 17 saw Tim Russert limply try to extract from GOP spokesman Ken Mehlman a promise that the GOP would respect (Republican) federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's decision, even if it meant indictments for those involved in Traitor-gate. I think that now it should be obvious why Mehlman danced around the issue: the Rethuglican attack dogs have come out in force to smear not only Fitzgerald, but also former CIA agent (and also a Republican) Larry Johnson, who gave the Democratic Radio address over the weekend.

According to the Brad Blog, both Jeffy Lube and Gary Schmitt of the Project for the New American Century were first out of the gate to attack Johnson with near verbatim recitation of the new talking point that...um...Johnson had a "9/10 mindset" regarding terrorism.

Unfortunately, this doesn't help the right, since all one has to do is look back a few years to see who was really interested in fighting terrorism, and who was more interested in rooting around inside the President's zipper and sniffing the First Lady's panties (Okay - shameless self-promotion, I know - I'm sorry).

Meanwhile, Fitzgerald's investigation is itself being investigated by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Now why on earth would the Republican-dominated Senate Select Committee on (Lack of) Intelligence want to probe someone who is investigating treason on the part of a Republican administration? Something stinks to high heaven here.

Rove/Libby Treason Hits Home

2005-07-27T20:37:00.000-07:00

Though it pains me to admit this, the true human cost of Bush's Iraq quagmire has been something of an abstract excercise for me and those don't yet know someone who knows someone who was killed for the giant pack of lies that Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were willing to commit treason for. Sure, I could shout from the rooftops about all the hell this was causing the families left behind, torn apart by blood and distance; those soldiers who did make it back scarred physically and/or mentally having to pick up the pieces of their lives, but it never really impinged on me the way it does for those with more direct experience of war and loss - until today.

Buried in the Metro and State section of today's Austin American-Statesman was an article about a local Marine who was killed - Cpl. Steven Gill, who was killed by an IED in Iraq last week. I first heard his name mentioned on the news the other night, but for some reason the name didn't register in my mind until I read that he was a fellow Westwood High School graduate (though a year behind me) and that he had received a black belt in Kuk Sool Won, the very same martial art that I study. It all came back to me; he was a good friend of one of my friends - they often went to the same Kuk Sool class. I last saw him back in October (I remember it because it was the night of a total lunar eclipse), when he, some other acquaintences and I hung out at my friend's place after my friend and I had gotten off of work for the evening.

Although I didn't know him very well, I was around him enough to know that he was definately someone worth knowing, and that (at least to my perception) he always carried a boundless energy, engaging sense of humor and strong sense of personal honor wherever he went. His death is a tragedy that should not have happened, and probably wouldn't have happened if Bush had kept his eye on the ball and gone after bin Laden like he'd promised in the aftermath of 9/11.

I would not presume to speak for his family and friends. However, in my eyes, the blood of Steven Gill and all the other soldiers who have died and will continue to die needlessly in this war, along with the thousands of injured soldiers and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians will be on the hands of Karl Rove, "Scooter" Libby and anyone else involved in the illegal, treasonous outing of Ambassador Wilson's wife as a CIA operative. Furthermore, if any American citizen dies at the hands of a suitcase nuke that would've been otherwise stopped had Valerie Plame's cover not been blown, their blood will also be on the hands of the traitors that Bush and his GOP flunkies continue to protect.

R.I.P. - James Doohan (3/3/1920 - 7/20/2005)

2005-07-20T09:57:00.000-07:00

A younger James Doohan as "Scotty" (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

James Doohan in later years (AP file photo courtesy of CNN)

James Doohan, a World War II vet better known for his role as Scotty on Star Trek, died early this morning at 5:30 Pacific Time after a long bout with Alzheimer's disease. He was 85 years old.

We here at JABbering Stooge wish him godspeed in whatever awaits him beyond the veil of death, and wish to give our condolences to his family and friends.

Sorry Dubya, We Won't be distracted from Treason-gate

2005-07-20T00:08:00.000-07:00

Wow. Bush's choice of nominee certainly was a dog-and-pony show worthy of Karl "I'm a Traitor and I'm O.K." Rove. For the benefit of those who had something better to do the last week, at 9 P.M. Eastern Time last night,President Bush announced, after a day of allowing the press to speculate that he would tap the slightly less wacko Edith Clement to replace retiring justice Sandra Day O'Connor, that he had decided instead to nominate Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. to replace O'Connor.

While this is clearly a perfect fecesstorm (say that three times fast!) to distract the press and the co-dependent Democrats from Rove and "Scooter" Libby's two-minute treason drill, I sill think that the Sacless Party can still salvage something from this - if they play it smart.

So let's start with why Judge Roberts is such a bad idea. Here's just a small listing of documentation on him that should make any neutral observer think twice before advocating for his promotion to the highest court in the land (all links courtesy of AMERICAblog).

FEC records of Roberts' political donations: Roberts gave significant buckaroos to various PACs and candidates, almost exclusively Republican - this suggests a certain ideological tilt that is very worrisome, if not outright inappropriate, for one who sits on the highest court in the land - supposedly representing all Americans.

Women's Rights:
1) As Deputy Solicitor General in Bush I's administration, Roberts co-wrote a brief in the case of Rust v. Sullivan that stated "[w]e continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled..."
2) In the same position as the above, Roberts wrote an amicus brief defending anti-abortion terrorist group Operation Rescue in Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic.
3) In a 1999 radio interview in which he ranted about the evils of every single federal law on the books (okay, not quite, but pretty close), he singled out the Violence Against Women Act, stating that "We have gotten to the point these days where we think the only way we can show we're serious about a problem is if we pass a federal law, whether it is the Violence Against Women Act or anything else."

Religious Freedom: As Deputy Solicitor General (boy, he sure was busy then, wasn't he?), Roberts submitted an amicus brief in Lee v. Weisman that, according to People for the American Way, "while [acknowledging] that coerced participation in a religious ceremony [at graduation] was improper...'A voluntary decision not to witness a civic acknowledgment of religion...cannot be considered a response to coercion.'" In other words, Roberts was arguing that a graduating student cannot exercise his/her First Amendment rights to protest an illegal mingling of church and state at a public ceremony! Additionally, the brief instructed the court to throw out the Lemon test in favor of the much more lenient standard derived under Marsh v. Chambers.

Roberts decides against veterans: When the D.C. Circuit Cort found in favor of veterans who had been tortured in Iraq in Acree v. Republic of Iraq, Judge Roberts wrote a dissent claiming that the Emergency Wartime Supplemental Appropriations Act (EWSAA) "'deprived the courts of jurisdiction over suits against Iraq' for damages resulting from torture and other terrorist acts" according to PFAW; a decision that would've made restitution to vets tortured in Iraq virtually impossible.

And that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Read up more on Judge Roberts (here, here and here), and weep for democracy should he ever be confirmed.

However, the nomination of Judge Roberts is only a small part of the larger picture - one in which the President and his flunkies have repeatedly placed party loyalty and partisan politics far, far, far ahead of doing what is best for America. It is with this in mind that I suggest the following talking point to our spineless leadership, in the hopes that they can get back on the subject of Karl Rove's treason.

I am deeply saddened that President Bush has squandered an opportunity to build bipartisan consensus by nominating a far-right ideologue who has shown repeated disregard both for settled case law and for the ideals upon which our country was founded.

This act of naked contempt for the President's critics, shamelessly designed to divert attention from the discussion of possible criminal activity on the part of the executive branch, is just one more example of his devotion to party politics over his supposed devotion to the people who entrusted him with executive authority. It is also part of a larger pattern of active deception that perfectly illustrates what the Downing Street Minutes were about - a rush to judgment and blatant disregard for the safety of the American people in order to "win" a petty domestic squabble. This is behavior most unbecoming of a head of state, and possible grounds for removal from office.

I fully intend to send this to all who may listen. We shall see if they follow up on my advice...

Update: Silly me, I forgot to give a hat tip to fellow Bartcopper Liioni for the statements in the chatroom that were the genesis of this post.

Sen. McCain not up on fatwas, either

2005-07-18T23:36:00.000-07:00

Senator John McCain (R - AZ) was on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno tonight. During the interview, he happened to repeat the Tom Friedman/Tucker Carlson talking point that no Muslim group has ever declared a fatwa against Osama bin Forgotten.

Unfortunately for McCain, the facts tell a different story. As I mentioned before, Spain's leading Muslim clerics issued a fatwa against bin Laden on the anniversary of the Madrid train bombings. Furthermore, University of Michigan History Professor Juan Cole pointed out on his blog several instances of prominent Muslims either condemning or outright declaring fatwas against bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda terrorists. And last, but not least, we learn from the McPaper (by way of AMERICAblog) that, according to a poll conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, "three-quarters of those in Morocco and roughly half of those in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia said Islamic extremism posed a threat to their countries." Granted, there are still some disturbing trends in some Muslim countries, particularly in regards to support for Osama bin Laden. Still, if the trend continues, we may yet see some positive change in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, it may all come to naught if Westerners perceptions of Muslims don't change. In particular, I would like to point out the following. According to the article, "fears about radical Islam were tied to perceptions of Muslim communities within those countries. Resident Muslims were seen as having a strong and growing sense of Islamic identity, a situation most of those surveyed saw as a bad thing." Yet strangely enough, "in the United States and most Western nations majorities said they had favorable views of Muslims."

In other words, we like Muslims, just as long as they shut up about their religion and don't wear it on their sleeves - preferably if they try and act Christian. Meanwhile the American Inquisition gets to be as loud and proud as it wants to be.

I'm sure the Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves.

"Christian" Love - GOP Pharisee-style

2005-07-18T22:52:00.000-07:00

Before we dive into a special edition of what Stephanie Miller refers to as "Right Wing World," I would like to add a brief disclaimer. Notice that the word "Christian" is in quotes, and that I refer to them as "Pharisees" - as I believe that the theocrats who have hijacked the GOP are actually undermining the message of a certain Nazarene carpenter, rather than promoting it as they claim. In particular, I'd like to focus on a couple of recent remarks that made the news cycle.

Unrepentant Rudolph Issues Pro-Terrorism Rant

From the AP wire via MSRNC:

Defiant serial bomber gets expected life term
Injured nurse wishes death sentence on convicted abortion clinic attacker

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - An unrepentant Eric Rudolph declared Monday that abortion must be fought with "deadly force" as a judge sentenced him to life in prison for setting off a remote-controlled bomb at an abortion clinic that killed an off-duty police officer and maimed a nurse.

*snip*

"What they did was participate in the murder of 50 children a week," he said, shackled at the ankles and wearing a red jail uniform. "Abortion is murder and because it is murder I believe deadly force is needed to stop it."

Assuming his life sentence came with the option for parole, the above two bolded sentences ought to make any parole board worth its salt say "No parole for you! Come back, one year!" as it indicates that, should he ever be released back into society, he would be a likely repeat offender.

So tell me, why haven't Mullah Falwell, Ayatollah Robertson, Imam Dobson and the rest of the American Inquisition issued a fatwa against this unrepentant terrorist? Do they, by their silence, embrace religious terrorism as readily as they claim that each and every last Muslim supposedly embraces terrorism?

(Haraz Ghanbari/AP file photo courtesy of MSNBC)

Unrepentant terrorist Eric Rudolph smirks as he contemplates the many "abortionists" and "fags" he'll get to murder the instant some moronic parole board sets him free.

Colorado Rethuglican Declares Jihad Against Muslims

As I'm sure you've probably read from AMERICAblog by now, Congressman Tom Tancredo (R - CO) told Florida talk radio host Pat Campbell that if Al-Qaeda or any other Muslim extremist group nukes us, we should play tit-for-tat and "take out their holy sites" (i.e., Mecca).

You know, it's bad enough that we're turning our military into an arm of the theocrats who have hijacked the GOP, but nutty statements like this only serve to convince the Arab/Muslim world that we really have declared jihad against them. Not that that matters to the Ann Coulters of the world...

Welcome to Bizarro World America - Where Muslims are the New Jews...

Bow-Tie Carlson not up to speed on fatwas

2005-07-14T11:11:00.000-07:00

Last night on MSRNC's The Situation with Tucker Carlson, Carlson was interviewing Sabiha Khan of the Council on American-Islamic Relations regarding a California National Guardsman's viciously anti-Muslim flyer. In the interview, Carlson had this to say about the Muslim world's opinion of Osama bin Forgotten:

CARLSON: OK, OK, well, to some extent, I think you're right. That reminds me of a fascinating column by Tom Friedman the other day in the “New York Times” in which he pointed out that no Muslim group in the world -- and I think you researched this—has issued a fatwa against Usama bin Laden yet.

I guess that in the minds of Carlson and Thomas Friedman, the Spanish imams who issued a fatwa against bin Forgotten on the one-year anniversary of the Madrid train bombings don't count as "a Muslim group."

No wonder why the right hates science

2005-07-14T00:40:00.000-07:00

An oldie, but goodie from the local fishwrap (registration required):

Born gay?
Growing body of research points to biological explanations for sexual orientation.
By Sandy Doughton

THE SEATTLE TIMES

Sunday, July 03, 2005

SEATTLE — As the culture wars rage over gay rights, a flock of sheep at Oregon State University may help answer a key question behind the controversy: Is homosexuality a matter of choice or biology?

*snip*

Sheep aren't people, but the Oregon work adds to a growing body of research that bolsters biological explanations for sexual orientation across species — including humans.

In other words: BEING GAY ISN'T A CHOICE! (Not that that will stop the scienceophobes of the right from continuing to bleat otherwise - just look at the persistence of anti-evolution rhetoric).

The social and political implications of the research are impossible to ignore, leading to unease on both sides of the gay-rights debate. If science proves homosexuality is innate, is there any basis to deny gays equal treatment — including the right to marry? But if scientists unravel the roots of sexual orientation, will it some day be possible to "fix" people who don't fit the norms, or abort fetuses likely to be born gay?

Now there's an unanticipated possibility that'll send righties for a loop - do you send homos to a genetic "re-education camp" or do you "murder" them before they're born? I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.

And last fall, Italian scientists offered a possible explanation for the persistence of gay genes — even though evolution tends to weed out traits that discourage reproduction. The team from the University of Padua found that mothers and aunts of gay men had more offspring than female relatives of heterosexuals, suggesting genes that influence homosexuality in men may increase fertility in females.

'Nuff said.

The Hill: Abramoff duo quits U.S.

2005-07-14T00:27:00.000-07:00

This is interesting. According to The Hill (yes, I know, I just got done complaining about their preferential treatment of Bush, but this is important news that even AMERICAblog has yet to report on), Sam Hook and his wife, Shana Tesler, two of embattled DeLay associate Jack Abramoff's fellow lawyers from his days at Greenberg Traurig have fled the country, deciding that Israel looked rather nice this time of year.

Although their attorney, Alyza Lewin insists that "Pursuant to longstanding plans that predate any investigation, Shana Tesler and Sam Hook have relocated to Israel" and that "One thing had nothing to do with the other," one can't help but wonder if this had something to do with their decision:

Former White House counsel Lanny Davis said that the pair’s relocation could hamper the Justice Department investigation because it would be harder to enforce subpoenas abroad.

"Whether you are able to enforce a subpoena in a foreign country depends upon specific treaty commitments," Davis said, "but in general the answer is no... Even if you could try to enforce it through a treaty, it would be extremely difficult."

Well gee, isn't that conveeenient?

Thoughts on SCOTUS

2005-07-14T00:10:00.000-07:00

If MSRNC is correct in its prediction, Bush is expected to name his nominee to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on or around July 26. Whatever happens - or doesn't happen - in the next two weeks will in all likelyhood affect how the nomination fight turns out. With this in mind, here are my thoughts on the subject.

While President Bush is not explicitly bound to uphold the filibuster compromise, his continued stonewalling, eerily reminiscient of his "consultation" with the U.N. prior to the invasion of Iraq, is hardly what a neutral observer would consider adequate consultation with the Senate. If anything, the Democrats have held to their end of the bargain by suggesting to president Bush names of nominees that they could accept - much like when Orrin Hatch suggested Ruth Bader Ginsberg to President Clinton instead of Clinton's preferred nominee, then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

Speaking of the infamous 3/5 Filibuster Compromise, Part II, Section A. of the compromise states that "each signatory must use his or her own discretion and judgement in determining whether such [extraordinary] circumstances exist." Arbitrarily precluding ideological leanings of nominees from such a consideration, as certain members of the Gang of 14 (almost exclusively Republicans) have openly stated, effectively blocks signatories from exercising their own discretion and judgement. Thus the Gang of 14 members who want to remove ideological considerations are in violation of the 3/5 Filibuster Compromise.

Almost every time the Democrats have reached out their hands in a show of bipartisan unity, this administration has arrogantly slapped them away. Are we seriously to expect that they'll treat something as serious as a Supreme Court nomination any differently? Remember what this means for the president's role in the consultations with the Senate demanded by the "advise and consent" clause of the Constitution, and compare it to how Clinton treated the Republican minority in 1993, and all the good it did him.

While we're on the subject of the seriousness of this nomination process, would it kill Sens. Larry Craig (R - ID) and Rick "Liberalism caused the pedophile priests" Santorum (R - PA) to act like grownups for once?

The Hill seems awfully sympathetic to the president - the title of the article is "Bush makes nice on his court pick," and opens with the following gag-inducing paragraph: "President Bush and his administration have engaged in unprecedented efforts to solicit the views of Republican and Democratic senators as the White House considers whom to nominate to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court." Yeah, unprecedented if you ignore the fact that Clinton solicited advice from Orrin Hatch (man, I'm starting to sound like a broken record - or Puffy McMoonface).

Given the fact that many on the right still see the 2004 election as a "mandate" (with Jeff Gannon) to ram their destructive agenda through and anyone daring to think otherwise should just shut up about the whole thing, it is unlikely in the extreme that they will accept anything less than Jerry Falwell's wet dream - an ideological clone of Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada. Unfortunately, this attitute dates back to 1981, when St. Ronnie of Tampico, IL, patron saint of Republicans nominated O'Connor for the Supreme Court. Falwell himself declared that "All good Christians should be concerned" about the nomination of O'Connor - to which Barry Goldwater replied: "Every good Christian should line up and kick Jerry Falwell's ass."

What's in a list?

2005-07-08T03:04:00.000-07:00

I suppose I only have myself to blame. For some weird (and possibly masochistic) reason while I was on break on Wednesday night, I decided to turn the breakroom TV at work to MSRNC, when what to my wandering eyes should appear, but Joedy "Dead Intern" Scarborough and - well, not tiny reindeer, but former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg. As you can expect, Scarborough did nothing but lob softballs at the partisan hack posing as an honest journalist, who used the questions as a launching off platform for demonizing anyone who disagrees with Dear Leader in the slightest. And his new book is no different.

In talking about the book, Goldberg had this to say:

Whatever your politics are out there, you had to have noticed over the years, over the recent years, that America has gotten nastier, less civil, more selfish and, most of all, I think, more vulgar. I mean, people walk down the street and they are dropping the F-bomb as if nobody is hearing them. And they don't care if people are hearing them.

Strangely enough, I agree with Goldberg. (see links)

But the brain droppings continue:

It is somebody's fault. In this case, I am naming 100 people who I think are at fault for cheapening our culture. And I'm telling you, Joe...

And later:

So, I don't think these people, who—who, by the way, think they are smart simply because they are famous, I don't think they are adding much to the conversation by being as mean-spirited and nasty as they are.

Perhaps Mr. Goldberg should look in a political mirror sometime before he makes asinine statements like those above...

Goldberg has a problem here. The vast majority of his book by far attacks only Democrats, so how does he avoid the hypocrisy charge that he complains about Democratic name-calling while engaging in some name-calling of his own? Why it's the old, reliable Zell Miller Defense:

SCARBOROUGH: Bernie, you know, you are a self-described—well, you are not a self-described liberal, but you voted for Democrats your entire life. And yet...

GOLDBERG: Well, no, not my—not my entire life, not my recent life.

SCARBOROUGH: Most of your life. Right.

GOLDBERG: My earlier life.

SCARBOROUGH: But most of your life.

And failing that, he tries the Colorado University/University of Texas Young Republicans' defense of their professor blacklists: "B-b-but...They're not blacklists! There are (token) conservatives on them, too! (Okay, so they only receive VERY mild criticsm compared to the vitriol projectile vomited at the liberal professors, what does that matter? Why do you hate America?)"

Here are some of the conservatives that "Democrat" Bernard Goldberg "chastizes":

GOLDBERG: Well, I will tell you, I go after one radio talk show host, not Rush Limbaugh, who I think is very civil (You mean, Mr. "Don't kill all the librals" is civil?! - Ed.)

I mean, it is one thing to be a conservative talk show host. And, frankly, I agree with many of the things he says.

But when everybody is a stupid idiot whom he disagrees with, I don't think that is a good thing. (Don't know who this is supposed to be - probably Loofah Boy or The Savage Weiner - Ed.)

SCARBOROUGH: You also go after preachers.

GOLDBERG: I go after one who said that, if a gay guy looked at me funny, I would kill him and tell God he died by accident.

But none of that saves him, as the book is still full of anti-anyone who disagrees with The Most Holy George W. Christ nastiness. As the Fourth Estate's Golden Boy points out:

GOLDBERG: If they were my parents, I wouldn't be talking to them.

SCARBOROUGH: Yes, unbelievable.

Now, in your book, you write number 85 is—quote—“the dumb celebrity.” A short list includes Cameron Diaz.

GOLDBERG: Right. Right.

SCARBOROUGH: Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit, Kate Hudson, Margaret Cho and Janeane Garofalo. Number 84 is called the vicious celebrity. You list Alec Baldwin, Wallace Shawn, Sean Penn and Janeane Garofalo.

And number 83, titled the dumb and vicious celebrity, you list Linda Ronstadt, Martin Sheen, David Clennon, Janeane Garofalo.

Why you are picking on our good friend Janeane Garofalo?

GOLDBERG: Because she gives me too much ammunition.

Hey Bernie, guess what? I can make inane, sophomoric lists that serve no purpose other than to demonize the other side, too! Watch!

10 People Who Threaten Democracy

Vicious Conservative Pundits (Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh)

Conservative Shock Troops (FreeRepublic and Lucianne.com)

"Fair and Balanced" News Organizations (Faux News, MSRNC, any Rupert Murdoch publication and The Moonie Times)

Government Officials Who Lie Us Into War (George W. Bush and Dick Cheney)

People Who Illegally Out CIA agents (Karl Rove?)

Conservative Think Tanks (American Enterprise Institute, Hoover Institute, etc.)

White-collar crooks (Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Halliburton, etc.)

Dumb, Lying, Angry Partisan Hacks Posing As Reporters (Brian Wilson, Brit Hume and Bernard Goldberg)

Angry Partisan Hacks Posing As Reporters (Brian Wilson, Neil Cavuto, Jeffy Lube and Bernard Goldberg)

Partisan Hacks Posing As Reporters (Jeffy Lube, Wolf Blitzer, Neil Cavuto and Bernard Goldberg)

See how easy that is? And see how it adds absolutely NOTHING to the discussion? And yet somehow it's okay to write a book about it....amazing.

"What Liberal Media?" Part 3.14159...

2005-07-08T00:22:00.000-07:00

Sorry if the next couple of posts are a bit behind the news cycle. I've been doing that uniquely American thing of working multiple jobs to make ends meet.

So yesterday morning, London had a bit of a 9/11 of its own, in that Al Qaeda, or an Al Qaeda-related organization set off three bombs in London's subways and one on one of the ubiquitous double-decker buses.

The reaction to the bombings was swift and severe all around the world. However, to hear the "librul" media in the U.S. tell it, all Muslims were either conspicuously silent or rejoicing at the news. For all the feet of film and server hard disk electrons CNN devoted to the story, not one iota went towards covering the reaction in the Muslim world. Even the reliable water-carrier for anti-Muslim bigots, Faux News, neglected to look into the matter. Only MSRNC mentioned anything about the reaction of the Muslim street - a whole seven hours after the attack. And what they had to say about it wasn't pretty. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I enter into the record Exhibit A:

Amy Robach: Jacob, where did the statement originally appear?

Jacob Keryakes: Well, the statement was published on an Islamic web site. Minutes later, it was removed from the web site itself because it contained an error in one of the Quaranic verses and al-Qaida doesn't usually do that, but the same statement was published (later) on a secular web site.

The statement was signed by a group calling itself "The Secret Organization or the Secret Wing of al-Qaida in Europe."

They are claiming they warned the British government before and now they have fulfilled their promises and carried out what they have warned. They're also warning governments like Denmark and Italy saying you have to withdraw your troops from Iraq and Afghanistan otherwise the same thing will happen to you.

Robach: You've been following the Arab coverage of this explosion in London and certainly they're making reference to this claim of responsibility as well. How would you characterize coverage?

Keryakes: Well, they have been careful so far in saying who's behind it. But different analysts came on Al-Jazeera and said that from the way the series of attacks took place, there might be an Islamic group behind it. This is a well-organized attack.

The second thing is (that) some of the analysts are saying, "It's time for us to examine ourselves. We are breeding terrorism and we have to address this, we have to correct our mistakes."

Robach: Did they make reference at all to that statement and what they believe this group might be, if they actually exist? Are they responsible? Did they at all look into the statement, the web site and the group itself?

Keryakes: Yes, they did make reference to the statement itself but they said "We cannot verify it so far."

Notice the part in bold and italics. For Amy Robach (the same Amy Robach who indirectly impugned the patriotism of anti-Bush protestors recently) and Jacob Keryakes to obsessively focus on the presentation style of Al-Jazeera makes it sound like the Arab news station is covering up the culpability for those responsible.

Furthermore, only citing Al-Jazeera leaves the impression that Al-Jazeera speaks for every single solitary Muslim on Earth. This only serves to help those conservatives that regularly projectile vomit about how evil all Muslims are (*cough* Ann Coulter *cough* Michael Savage *cough* Rush Limbaugh *cough* Sean Hannity *cough*).

As Exhibit B of how pathetically docile the Fourth Estate has become when it comes to Republican outrages, one is forced to go to the English Wikipedia to find any "Fair and Balanced" coverage of the Muslim street's reaction to the attack.

Of note are the following comments:

Sydney - 8 July 2005 - The Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network (AMCRAN) joins other civil rights and Muslim organisations in condemning the apparent acts of terrorism in London.

"Such attacks are barbaric and totally inconsistent with any kind of civil tradition, whether it be secular or religious," AMCRAN co-convenor Dr Waleed Kadous, said. "Such disrespect for life is a symbol of barbarity."

"Regardless of who committed these acts, we unequivocally and unambigiously condemn these attacks."

"We would like to express our condolences to the people of London, and let them know that we stand with them, and that we will support them in the pursuit of those involved in these criminal acts and their punishment under the law."
-AMCRAN official press release (Remember, Sydney is about 12 hours ahead of GMT)

The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the attacks, stating "We join Americans of all faiths, and all people of conscience worldwide, in condemning these barbaric crimes that can never be justified or excused. American Muslims offer their sincere condolences to the loved ones of those who were killed or injured in today's attacks and call for the swift apprehension and punishment of the perpetrators."

The Islamic Circle of North America released a statement saying, "The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) is shocked and horrified at the several attacks on the people of London during the rush hour mass transit. We join everyone in condemning such acts of terror and senseless violence. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their loved ones at this tragic moment. We trust that the authorities will determine those responsible for these barbaric acts and bring them to justice quickly."

Leading Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim scholar Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah stated, "These crimes are not accepted by any religion. It is a barbarism wholly rejected by Islam."

The Muslim Council of Britian had the following to say on the subject:
"These evil deeds makes victims of us all. It is our humanity that must bring us shoulder to shoulder to condemn, to oppose and to overcome those who would spread fear, hatred and death." Later, the MCB also said that "This criminal attack is condemned in the strongest possible terms. No good purpose can be achieved by such an indiscriminate and cruel use of terror."

Will the "liburl" media ever report these statements? Better check the temperature in hell, first.

Gratuitous Heinlein Reference

2005-06-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

I really can't grok where this country is going, and even if I did, I don't think I'd want to. Here are just a few examples:

Karl Marx Rove: Dems want to coddle terrorists

Let's start off with Bush's brain: Karl Rove. At a speech at the New York Conservative Party's annual dinner, just north of ground zero (gee, Karl, opportunistic much?), Rove had the following "words of wisdom" about his ideological opponents:

Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers...Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war.

Of course Rove would derisively dismiss the idea of preparing indictments against terrorists, that's how Clinton caught the blind sheik, who perpetrated the 1993 WTC bombing, which undermined the need for the draconian measures the Republicans snuck into the PATRIOT Act! As for therapy, I defy Rove to provide ONE SINGLE, SOLITARY INSTANCE of a liberal opining that we need to get these guys therapy.

Incidentially, Crooks and Liars has the following to say about the September 14, 2001 Congressional Resolution:

It passed the House 420-1 and passed the Senate 98-0, with nary a mention of indictments, therapy, or calls for understanding.

And then there's that "understanding" bit. I guess Mr. Rove would consider Sun Tzu a "librul" for this statement:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Conservatives refuse to even try to "know their enemy" - anyone who disagrees with a conservative like Mr. Rove is Varelse to him (Ann Coulter is especially guilty of this), which may explain why we're losing at least as often as we're winning in Iraq.

Sun Tzu also had this to say:

When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.

Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

And indeed, that is exactly what is happening in Iraq! We're spending tremendous amounts of blood and treasure in this quagmire of an illegal occupation - a seige, if you will, and people are starting to take advantage of it (North Korea, China, etc.).

But none of this matters to Karl Rove, who insists that it's the Democrats who are to blame for our troubles in Iraq:

"No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals," Rove said [in response to Sen. Durbin's comments about Gitmo].

Never mind that Democrats are complaining about Bush trying to win this war on the cheap by not equipping our troops properly and then slashing their benefits upon their return - "dulling their weapons and damping their ardor," as it were. And never mind that Democrats seem to be the only ones in this country who care about whether or not we uphold the Geneva Conventions, a treaty that we are Constitutionally bound to uphold, NO MATTER WHAT. Because to do otherwise invites identical treatment towards our soldiers in the event that they get captured.

And we wonder why China sees us as a bunch of hypocrites when we bitch at them about their atrocious human rights record.

Demanding accountability in the military and the executive branch = "conducting geurrilla warfare on our troops"

Now we're getting this garbage from our elected officials.

"While our men and women in uniform put their lives on the line each day to defend our safety and to protect our freedoms, I am sure the least they expect is the backing and the support of their leaders at home," said Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Republican Conference.

"To the contrary," Pryce added, "what we've seen from Democrat leaders is a growing pattern of jumping at any chance to point the finger at our own troops, bending over backwards to promote the interests of terror-camp detainees while dragging our military's honored reputation through the mud."

No, Rep. Pryce, our military's honored reputation was "dragged through the mud" when Alberto "Geneva Conventions? What Geneva Conventions?" Gonzales authorized torture in his January 25, 2002 memo, yet no one has taken him to task for the memo. Indeed, he's been lionized in conservative circles for issuing it!

Not to be outdone, Rep. Joe Wilson (R - SC) - not to be confused with Ambassador Joe Wilson, who uncovered the forgery of the Niger yellowcake documents, and whose wife, Valerie Plame was outed in retaliation - had this gem for CNS to lovingly parrot report on:

[It] is just inconceivable and truly incorrigible that in the midst of the war, that the Democratic leaders would be conducting guerrilla warfare on American troops.

To quote the Republicans' patron saint, Ronald Reagan, "There you go again." Looking for accountability in both the military in general, and the executive branch in particular, is "conducting guerrilla warfare on our troops." Dissent = treason. Black is white. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. You are getting sleepy.

Somewhere, George Orwell is throwing his hands up in despair and saying "I give up!"

Self-fulfilling prophecy: Anti-accountability GOP think tank declares Red Cross has "lost its way"

According to the New York Sun, "A new study conducted for Republican senators alleges that the International Committee for the Red Cross has 'lost its way' by abandoning its guiding principle of impartiality and is now working in 'direct opposition to the advancement of U.S. interests.'"

Apparently, this is because they dared to tell the truth about what's going on at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, etc., etc., etc.

I mean, look who issued the report: the Republican Policy Committee.

So in order to avoid any sort of accountability, they'll pay a biased think tank to come up with the conclusions they want to hear. Someone should tell these people that starting with your conclusion is not a valid method of scientific inquiry. Not that they'd listen.

Just a brief reminder

2005-06-22T15:46:00.000-07:00

It was one year ago today that Dick Cheney told Senator Leahy to perform a certain anatomically impossible activity.

Why do Republicans hate non-Christians?

2005-06-21T17:23:00.000-07:00

According to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the increasingly ironically-named U.S. House of Representatives voted to strip from the $408.9 billion defense spending bill an amendment by David Obey (D-WI) that "criticized the Academy for allowing, 'coercive and abusive religious proselytizing,'" and "called for the military to provide a plan to Congress 'no later than 60 days' following the enactment of the appropriations bills for ensuring the Academy 'maintains a climate free from coercive religious intimidation and inappropriate proselytizing by Air Force officials and others in the chain-of-command...'" (this was also reported in the Washington post here).

And what do the co-dependent Democrats get for this insolence? More abuse from Republicans with nothing better to do than act out on a paranoid delusional persecution complex such as Rep. John Hostettler (R-American Inquisition):

...the long war on Christianity in America continues today on the floor of the House of Representatives...continues unabated with aid and comfort to those who would eradicate any vestige of our Christian heritage being supplied by the usual suspects, the Democrats.

Later in his obviously prepared remarks, Hostettler seethed:

Like a moth to a flame, Democrats can't help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians.

Earlier in the session, Duncan Hunter (R-There was no toture at Gitmo because the inmates were fed on the taxpayer dime) defended his amendment (similar to the Obey amendment, but much milder in language) by saying:

We don't prejudge that there is abusive proselytizing.

Question for Rep. Hunter: given what we know about what has been going on at the Air Force Academy:

Cadets who skip out on weekly religious services are frog-marched back to the barracks - known as "Heathen Flight."

Jewish cadets are called "Christ killers" to their faces by upperclass cadets.

Cadets are told that they will burn in hell if they don't accept Jesus as Lord and Savior by upperclass cadets.

When Captain MeLinda Morton, a Lutheran chaplain at the AFA complained about these and other incidents, she was subsequently hauled off to Okinawa. Meanwhile, the general responsible for the anti-anyone-who-is-not-a-straight-conservative-Christian-male atmosphere at the Academy was promoted for his role in creating the hostile environment.

When you look at all the evidence, how could you do anything BUT come to the conclusion that Rep. Obey did?

And as for Rep. Hostettler, I wonder if he considers the Christian Alliance for Progress to be one of those Christian-hating organizations involved in "a long war against Christianity." For that matter, by Hostettler's twisted paranoid delusional logic, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson would also be included in this "conspiracy against Christianity," for reasons hi-lighted earlier.

By the way, I wonder what Hostettler and DeLay would think of this quote:

If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such being exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to-wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814

Texas Senators only half racist

2005-06-21T14:58:00.000-07:00

AMERICAblog just mentioned today that Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison has FINALLY signed onto the anti-lynching resolution.

So why does the junior senator from Texas persist in being part of the Republican Lynch Mob? Only he can answer that question.

Do you really need to ask?

2005-06-21T14:47:00.000-07:00

MSRNC has as today's poll "Do you agree with the jury's verdict against Edgar Ray Killen?" - as if that needed to be asked. Yet, strangely enough, it seems that it did need to be asked, because at the time I voted (MSRNC, unlike CNN, forces you to vote in order to see the results), 17% said "No" and 8% voted "Can't decide." Makes you wonder who those 17% are...

But what's worse, that's not how the question is presented on MSRNC's frontpage: the link reads "Was the Edgar Ray Killen verdict fair?" It's as if MSRNC is invoking the Michael Savage defense of the Serbs to play up sympathy for Killen.

DemocracyFest 2005

2005-06-21T03:34:00.000-07:00

While I didn't get to go to all three days of DemocracyFest 2005, I did get to go to the main event - a star-studded rally at Stubb's BBQ that started at 6:30 PM for DemocracyFest attendees, with regular folks like me gaining entrance an hour later. The whole event was amazing - lots of good food, good music, and good politics.

Highlights include:

Columnist Molly Ivins, who was already speaking by the time I was allowed into the event. While listening to her speak, I decided to get food, so I didn't actually see her in action, but I was able to snap this photo:

Later, I was able to get closer to the stage and capture the following images:

Radio commentator and populist agitator Jim Hightower

Dallas county sheriff Lupe Valdez

My State Representative (who I worked to help elect), Mark Strama

Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-TX)

But the highlight of the evening was the (earlier than scheduled) appearance of one Howard Dean, head of the DNC.

Several audience members (myself included) were handed signs that read "Dean Speaks for Me," which we all waved vigorously at every applause line (in particular, his counter-jab at Darth Cheney's "only Dean's mom liked him" line).

In a stirring speech that included a jab at "Tex" Sensenbrenner's DeLay-esque fund-raising trips ("See? He can make lists, too!"), Dean laid out a multi-faceted strategy to take back our country (which, of course, our local fishwrap, the Austin American-Statesman didn't cover in it's one-paragraph blurb buried inside the Metro & State section):

A strong national defense, bolstered by a consistent, humane foreign policy that recognizes the validity of the "Flies, Honey, Vinegar Principle."

Solving the health care crisis in this country, because people can't be very productive unless they have access to the same health care our congresscritters and the CEOs enjoy.

A sane, balanced economic policy that widens the circle of prosperity to all who participate in the economy (from the fancy-pants elitist CEO on down to the lowly worker).

Reclaim the morals debate, because the only people Jesus didn't like were hypocrites (I'm looking at you, James Dobson!) and because Jesus cared for the poor, and thought that one should pay their taxes ("Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's," and all that rot).

Afterwards, Dean had a brief, impromptu autograph session - signing everything from copies of his book You Have the Power to the dinky little paper "Dean Speaks for Me" signs. The session was necessarily brief because Dean had a plane to catch (places to go, clones of his mom to see...).

With the exciting part of the festivities concluded, I left the party.

End of an Era

2005-06-21T02:30:00.000-07:00

Congressman J. J. "Jake" Pickle died on Saturday following a long bout with prostate cancer. The Austin Democrat (originally from the West Texas town of Roscoe) was best known for helping LBJ pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (along with several other measures that JFK tried and failed to get passed) and the Social Security Reform Act of 1983. Additionally, he helped found local radio station KVET.

As my congressman during my formative years, I must say that I could not have asked for a better person to represent me in the years prior to my political awakening. He wasn't perfect (no one ever is), but you could tell that he cared for his constituents.

My congressman in the years since Pickle's retirement in 1994 (until the unfortunate redistricting fiasco), Lloyd Doggett, was clearly influenced by Pickle's desire to fight on behalf of all his constituents.