Hunting Sitting Ducks

In-coming e-mail is reminding us why we **** Republicans

2010-02-21T16:10:00.001-08:00

Breathtaking Hypocrisy

---------------------Original Message---------------------
From: Governor Tim Kaine, Democrats.org
Subject: Breathtaking hypocrisy

Friend --

It's a breathtaking display of public hypocrisy.

At least 116 Republican governors, senators, and representatives have spent the past year railing against the Recovery Act, while simultaneously requesting funds to create jobs in their districts and taking credit for projects at ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

As the independent PolitiFact put it, they're trying "have their cake... and vote against it too." They know the Recovery Act is creating jobs, but they think attacking it will bring them victory in the 2010 elections.

Not so fast. We're preparing to meet every hypocritical attack with press conferences in states across the nation and a rapid-response program to fact check every lie. But we need your help to make it happen.

Please donate $5 or more today to support our campaign against Recovery Act hypocrisy.

Today is the anniversary of the President signing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that has saved or created at least 2 million jobs, cut taxes for 95 percent of working families, and made loans to over 42,000 small businesses. And as a former governor, I can tell you it also provided critical relief for state governments facing record budget shortfalls.

But don't take it from me. Listen to Rep. Joe Wilson, who told the Department of Agriculture that the money he was seeking "would provide jobs and investment" for his South Carolina district. Or take it from Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty, who balanced his state budget with the same funds he's so often attacked on TV.

Even the GOP leadership that went all out to kill the bill has gotten into the game -- Sen. Mitch McConnell has bragged about funding for a military project in Kentucky, while Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor sought funds for a high-speed rail project in Virginia to create jobs.

President Obama has made it clear he knows that we're not out of the woods yet, and he's focused on creating jobs. Honesty with the American people is one of the obligations of leadership.

In stark contrast, Republicans are engaged in a hypocritical campaign of attacks -- and they're proving what we've said all along: Their opposition is about politics, pure and simple.

We're going to prove that it's not winning politics -- but we need your support to expose their hypocrisy:

https://my.democrats.org/hypocrisy

With your help, we'll be ready for the fight ahead.

Thanks,

Governor Tim Kaine

the Rapture?

2009-03-13T18:44:00.000-07:00

American fundamentalist so-called Christians were up in arms today (Friday the 13th) upon the release by the Chinese News Agency of this photograph showing ordinary Chinese citizens being lifted up to heaven in the "Rapture". Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family was quoted as saying "There must be some mistake - are you sure that wasn't simply 'photoshopped'? Said D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries: "This cannot be - I repeated 'I accept you Jesus as my personal lord and savior' every freaking day for the last 45 years - I was PROMISED!!!" Pat Robertson expressed even more surprise and shock: "WHAT THE FUCK!!!" Homosexual activists and Hollywood's commie homo-lovin' sons of guns could not be reached for comment.

We invite our reader(s) to submit their own captions for this interesting photo, which we found at the WaPo's Gallery feature.

Fun Facts For Free Thinkers

2009-01-27T14:02:00.001-08:00

Harper’s Index

Number of news stories from 1998 to Election Day 2000 containing “George W. Bush” and “aura of inevitability”: 206

Amount for which Bush successfully sued Enterprise Rent-A-Car in 1999: $2,500

Year in which a political candidate first sued Palm Beach County over problems with hanging chads: 1984

Total amount the Bush campaign paid Enron and Halliburton for use of corporate jets during the 2000 recount: $15,400

Percentage of Bush’s first 189 appointees who also served in his father’s administration: 42

Minimum number of Bush appointees who have regulated industries they used to represent as lobbyists: 98

Years before becoming energy secretary that Spencer Abraham cosponsored a bill to abolish the Department of Energy: 2

Number of Chevron oil tankers named after Condoleezza Rice, at the time she became foreign policy adviser: 1

Date on which the GAO sued Dick Cheney to force the release of documents related to current U.S. energy policy: 2/22/02

Number of other officials the GAO has sued over access to federal records: 0

Months before September 11, 2001, that Cheney’s Energy Task Force investigated Iraq’s oil resources: 6

Hours after the 9/11 attacks that an Alaska congressman speculated they may have been committed by “eco-terrorists”: 9

Date on which the first contract for a book about September 11 was signed: 9/13/01

Number of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and North African men detained in the U.S. in the eight weeks after 9/11: 1,182

Number of them ever charged with a terrorism-related crime: 0

Number charged with an immigration violation: 762

Days since the federal government first placed the nation under an “elevated terror alert” that the level has been relaxed: 0

Minimum number of calls the FBI received in fall 2001 from Utah residents claiming to have seen Osama bin Laden: 20

Number of box cutters taken from U.S. airline passengers since January 2002: 105,075

Percentage of Americans in 2006 who believed that U.S. Muslims should have to carry special I.D.: 39

Chances an American in 2002 believed the government should regulate comedy routines that make light of terrorism: 2 in 5

Rank of Mom, Dad, and Rudolph Giuliani among those whom 2002 college graduates said they most wished to emulate: 1, 2, 3

Number of members of the rock band Anthrax who said they hoarded Cipro so as to avoid an “ironic death”: 1

Estimated total calories members of Congress burned giving Bush’s 2002 State of the Union standing ovations: 22,000

Percentage of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU: 50

Minimum number of laws that Bush signing statements have exempted his administration from following: 1,069

Estimated number of U.S. intelligence reports on Iraq that were based on information from a single defector: 100

Number of times the defector had ever been interviewed by U.S. intelligence agents: 0

Date on which Bush said of Osama bin Laden, “I truly am not that concerned about him”: 3/13/02

Days after the U.S. invaded Iraq that Sony trademarked “Shock & Awe” for video games: 1

Days later that the company gave up the trademark, citing “regrettable bad judgment”: 25

Number of books by Henry Kissinger found in Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz’s mansion: 2

Number by then–New York Times reporter Judith Miller: 1

Factor by which an Iraqi in 2006 was more likely to die than in the last year of the Saddam regime: 3.6

Factor by which the cause of death was more likely to be violence: 120

Chance that an Iraqi has fled his or her home since the beginning of the war: 1 in 6

Portion of Baghdad residents in 2007 who had a family member or friend wounded or killed since 2003: 3/4

Percentage of U.S. veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have filed for disability with the VA: 35

Chance that an Iraq war veteran who has served two or more tours now has post-traumatic stress disorder: 1 in 4

Number of all U.S. war veterans who have been denied Veterans Administration health care since 2003: 452,677

Number of eligibility restrictions for admission into the Army that have been loosened since 2003: 9

Percentage change from 2004 to 2007 in the number of Army recruits admitted despite having been charged with a felony: +295

Date on which the White House announced it had stopped looking for WMDs in Iraq: 1/12/05

Years since his acquittal that O. J. Simpson has said he is still looking for his wife’s “real killers”: 13

Minimum number of close-up photographs of Bush’s hands owned by his current chief of staff, Josh Bolten: 4

Number of vehicles in the motorcade that transports Bush to his regular bike ride in Maryland: 6

Estimated total miles he has ridden his bike as president: 5,400

Portion of his presidency he has spent at or en route to vacation spots: 1/3

Minimum number of times that Frederick Douglass was beaten in what is now Donald Rumsfeld’s vacation home: 25

Estimated number of juveniles whom the United States has detained as enemy combatants since 2002: 2,500

Minimum number of detainees who were tortured to death in U.S. custody: 8

Minimum number of extraordinary renditions that the United States has made since 2006: 200

Date on which USA Today added Guantánamo to its weather map: 1/3/05

Number of incidents of torture on prime-time network TV shows from 2002 to 2007: 897

Number on shows during the previous seven years: 110

Percentage change since 2000 in U.S. emigration to Canada: +79

Number of the thirty-eight Iraq war veterans who have run for Congress who were Democrats: 21

Percentage of Republicans in 2005 who said they would vote for Bush over George Washington: 62

Seconds it took a Maryland consultant in 2004 to pick a Diebold voting machine’s lock and remove its memory card: 10

Number of states John Kerry would have won in 2004 if votes by poor Americans were the only ones counted: 40

Number if votes by rich Americans were the only ones counted: 4

Portion of all U.S. income gains during the Bush Administration that have gone to the top 1 percent of earners: 3/4

Increase since 2000 in the number of Americans living at less than half the federal poverty level: 3,500,000

Percentage change since 2001 in the average amount U.S. workers spend on out-of-pocket medical expenses: +172

Estimated percentage by which Social Security benefits would have declined if Bush’s privatization plan had passed: –15

Percentage change since 2002 in the number of U.S. teens using illegal drugs: –9

Percentage change in the number of adults in their fifties doing so: +121

Number of times FDA officials met with consumer and patient groups as they revised drug-review policy in 2006: 5

Number of times they met with industry representatives: 113

Amount the Justice Department spent in 2001 installing curtains to cover two seminude statues of Justice: $8,650

Number of Republican officials who have been investigated by the Justice Department since 2001: 196

Number of Democratic officials who have been: 890

Number of White House officials in 2006 and 2007 authorized to discuss pending criminal cases with the DOJ: 711

Number of Clinton officials ever authorized to do so: 4

Years since a White House official as senior as I. Lewis Libby had been indicted while in office: 130

Number of U.S. cities and towns that have passed resolutions calling for the impeachment of President Bush: 92

Percentage change since 2001 in U.S. government spending on paper shredding: +466

Percentage of EPA scientists who say they have experienced political interference with their work since 2002: 60

Change since 2001 in the percentage of Americans who believe humans are causing climate change: –4

Number of total additions made to the U.S. endangered-species list under Bush: 61

Average number made yearly under Clinton: 65

Minimum number of pheasant hunts Dick Cheney has gone on since he shot a hunting companion in 2006: 5

Days after Hurricane Katrina hit that Cheney’s office ordered an electric company to restore power to two oil pipelines: 1

Days after the hurricane that the White House authorized sending federal troops into New Orleans: 4

Portion of the $3.3 billion in federal Hurricane Katrina relief spent by Mississippi that has benefited poor residents: 1/4

Percentage change in the number of Louisiana and Mississippi newborns named Katrina in the year after the storm: +153

Rank of Nevaeh, “heaven” spelled backward, among the fastest growing names given to American newborns since 2000: 1

Months, beginning in 2001, that the federal government’s online condom fact sheet disappeared from its website : 17

Minimum amount that religious groups received in congressional earmarks from 2003 to 2006: $209,000,000

Amount such groups received during the previous fourteen years: $107,000,000

Percentage change from 2003 to 2007 in the amount of money invested in U.S. faith-based mutual funds: +88

Average annualized percentage return during that time in the Christian and Muslim funds, respectively: +11, +15

Number of feet the Ground Zero pit has been built up since the site was fully cleared in 2002: 30

Number of 980-foot-plus “Super Tall” towers built in the Arab world in the seven years since 9/11: 4

Year by which the third and final phase of the 2003 “road map” to a Palestinian state was to have been reached: 2005

Estimated number of the twenty-five provisions of the first phase that have yet to be completed: 12

Number of times in 2007 that U.S. media called General David Petraeus “King David”: 14

Percentage change during the first ten months of the Iraq war “surge” in the number of Iraqis detained in U.S.-run prisons: +63

Percentage change in the number of Iraqis aged nine to seventeen detained: +285

Ratio of the entire U.S. federal budget in 1957, adjusted for inflation, to the amount spent so far on the Iraq war: 1:1

Estimated amount Bush-era policies will cost the U.S. in new debt and accrued obligations: $10,350,000,000,000 (see page 31)

Percentage change in U.S. discretionary spending during Bush’s presidency: +31

Percentage change during Reagan’s and Clinton’s, respectively: +16, +0.3

Ratio in 1999 of the number of U.S. federal employees to the number of private employees on government contracts: 15:6

Ratio in 2006: 14:15

Total value of U.S. government contracts in 2000 that were awarded without competitive bidding: $73,000,000,000

Total in 2007: $146,000,000,000

Number of the five directors of the No Child Left Behind reading program with financial ties to a curriculum they developed: 4

Amount by which the federal government has underfunded its estimated cost to implement NCLB: $71,000,000,000

Minimum number of copies sold, since it was released in 2006, of Flipping Houses for Dummies: 45,000

Chance that the buyer of a U.S. home in 2006 now has “negative equity,” i.e., the debt on the home exceeds its value: 1 in 5

Estimated value of Henry Paulson’s Goldman Sachs stock when he became Treasury Secretary and sold it: $575,000,000

Estimated value of that stock today: $238,000,000

Salary in 2006 of the White House’s newly created Director for Lessons Learned: $106,641

Minimum number of Bush-related books published since 2001: 606

Number of words in the first sentence of Bill Clinton’s memoir and in that of George W. Bush’s, respectively: 49, 5

Minimum number of nicknames Bush has given to associates during his presidency: 75

Number of associates with the last name Jackson he has dubbed “Action Jackson”: 2

Number of press conferences at which Bush has referred to a question as a “trick”: 14

Number of times he has declared an event or outcome not to be “acceptable”: 149

Rank of Bush among U.S. presidents with the highest disapproval rating: 1

Average percentage of Americans who approved of the job Bush was doing during his second term: 37

Percentage of Russians today who approve of the direction their country took under Stalin: 37

You know the world is coming to an end ...

2009-01-26T13:19:00.000-08:00

... when the fuzzy-headed knee-jerk liberal finds himself agreeing with the National Review:

2009: A year to defend free speech
Or lose it.

By Geert Wilders & Robert Spencer
Wednesday, January 21, was a black day for freedom, and the beginning of an all-out assault on free speech in the Netherlands. The Amsterdam Court of Appeals ordered the prosecution of Geert Wilders (one of this article’s co-authors) for his statements about Islam. To participate in public debate is now a dangerous activity. This is the Netherlands today—and it could be the entire Western world tomorrow.

The prosecution of Wilders was unexpected, though in retrospect one can see that something like it has been in the offing for a while. The year 2008 marked 60 years since the United Nations first promulgated its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet instead of celebrating this notable anniversary by reaffirming human rights, the world in 2008 saw certain fundamentally important human rights nearly disappear under intense pressure from Islamic countries that oppose freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the equality of all people before the law. Islamic efforts to create exceptional privileges for Muslims in the area of human rights have been advancing for quite some time, and they made great strides in 2008. Now, with the Amsterdam court’s judgment, we see the outcome of such efforts.

The Islamic bloc has been on record for two decades as opposing free speech. In 1990, foreign ministers of the 57 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), currently the largest voting bloc in the United Nations, adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. It states clearly that Islamic law—sharia—is the only true source of human rights. Few analysts in 1990 understood that this was tantamount to declaring the legitimacy of institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims, and signing the death warrant of freedom of speech and freedom of conscience as well. And not just in Muslim lands: The OIC and allied organizations have been aggressively pursuing efforts to extend elements of sharia into the West, though few people realize it even today.

Due to the relentless efforts of the OIC, passage of a resolution on combating defamation of religions is now a yearly ritual in the United Nations. First introduced in the General Assembly in 2005, the resolution has been adopted with landslide votes every year since. While this resolution is non-binding, the OIC has declared its intention to seek a binding resolution—one that would require UN member states to criminalize criticism of Islam, as the OIC defines such criticism. This is a clear indication of the progressing Islamization of the United Nations.

On March 28 of last year, the UN hit rock bottom. Its Human Rights Council—whose members include such stalwart defenders of freedom as China, Cuba, Angola, and Saudi Arabia—adopted a resolution that severely modified the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression. Instead of simply reporting on cases in which the right to free expression is being violated, the special rapporteur will now also have to report on cases in which that right is being “abused”—including when individuals use their freedom of speech to criticize Islam, or the particular elements of Islam that jihadists use to justify violence and Islamic supremacism. In essence, this means that the function of the special rapporteur has changed 180 degrees—from safeguarding the rights of individuals who hold unpopular or controversial ideas, to trying to limit the freedom of individuals to express such ideas.

As the Canadian delegation noted, “instead of promoting freedom of expression the Special Rapporteur would be policing its exercise.” This is fundamentally inconsistent with the very foundation of the human-rights tradition, as are measures combating “defamation of religions.” Such measures aim to protect institutions and ideas from criticism, instead of protecting individuals from the consequences of criticizing them. The very concept of freedom of speech has thereby been turned on its head.

Now the full force of this initiative has been directed against those who are sounding the alarm about the Islamization of the West. How could this have happened? Where was the opposition from Western nations? The silence in Europe has been deafening. Only recently did the French ambassador finally speak out, on behalf of the European Union, against the UN initiative to outlaw defamation of religions. He stated that the EU would not accept integration of the notion of defamation of religions into the framework of human rights, since the primary purpose of human rights is to protect people, not religions.

Still, talk is cheap. If we want to preserve our universal human rights, we have to show determination in 2009 to defend them from the OIC’s attempts to erode them. The Amsterdam Appeals Court decision only indicates how urgently needed this action is today. But opposing the OIC would require strong, positive acts, which would be a departure from the current pattern. In the case of the resolution on the mandate of the special rapporteur, European countries did nothing but abstain from voting on the resolution. Even Canada, which spoke out strongly against the resolution, abstained rather than voting against it. The United States also abstained; in fact, no nation voted against the resolution at all.

This was an absolute disgrace. The free nations of the world should have voted with their feet instead and resigned from the Human Rights Council immediately. Civilized states have no business participating in a forum that has been hijacked by the Islamic-supremacist agenda to replace fundamental human rights with the barbaric strictures of sharia.

They should also boycott the 2009 Durban Review Conference (Durban II), because there is every indication that this “UN World Conference Against Racism” will be turned into an anti-Israeli and pro-Islamic platform under the direction of the OIC and will end up actually promoting racism and intolerance. In October 2008, the Second Preparatory Session of the 20-state Preparatory Committee for Durban II convened in Geneva, with Libya, that paragon of human rights, as chair, and Pakistan and Iran among the vice-chairs. This Preparatory Session produced a “Draft Outcome Document for the Durban Review Conference 2009,” recommending that UN member states make “defamation of Islam”—not just of “religion,” but of Islam in particular—a criminal offense on the local, national, and international levels. This “defamation,” the document declared, must no longer enjoy the protection that it has up to now under the “pretext” of “freedom of expression, counter terrorism or national security.” In other words, the Durban II Preparatory Session wants to criminalize investigations of the ideology, beliefs, motives, and goals of Islamic jihad terrorists, so that effectively the only people linking Islam with violence will be the jihadists themselves, and the Free World will be mute and defenseless before their advance.

If Geert Wilders is silenced, all those who oppose attempts to impose Islamic legal norms upon the West will be silenced also. European nations and the United States should stop appeasing Islam and start fighting together against the rapidly increasing Islamization of Europe. This is a struggle for human rights and human dignity, and for the great heritage of Western civilization that has given so many things to the world, yet whose children and heirs seem curiously embarrassed and reluctant to defend it.

Enough is enough. We must defend our freedom, or we will most certainly lose it.

—Geert Wilders is a Dutch parliamentarian, leader of the Party of Freedom, and maker of the film Fitna. Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and author of the bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth about Muhammad.

And we are finding ourself agreeing with this.

Effective Immediately: Return to the Moral High Ground

2009-01-23T11:58:00.000-08:00

All it took, at long last, was a few strokes of a pen.

Scribble scribble. "There we go," President Obama said yesterday as he ordered the closure, within a year, of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Scribble scribble. "There you go," he said, as he definitively banned torture.

And with that, the United States reclaimed its place among nations that respect the rule of law and human dignity.

"This is me following through on not just a commitment I made during the campaign," Obama said, "but I think an understanding that dates back to our Founding Fathers, that we are willing to observe core standards of conduct not just when it's easy, but also when it's hard,"

Here are a some excerpts from Obama's executive order Ensuring Lawful Interrogation: "Executive Order 13440 of July 20, 2007, is revoked. All executive directives, orders, and regulations inconsistent with this order, including but not limited to those issued to or by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from September 11, 2001, to January 20, 2009, concerning detention or the interrogation of detained individuals, are revoked to the extent of their inconsistency with this order. . . .

"From this day forward, unless the Attorney General with appropriate consultation provides further guidance, officers, employees, and other agents of the United States Government . . . may not, in conducting interrogations, rely upon any interpretation of the law governing interrogation . . . issued by the Department of Justice between September 11, 2001, and January 20, 2009. . . .

"Consistent with the requirements of the Federal torture statute, 18 U.S.C. 2340 2340A, section 1003 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, 42 U.S.C. 2000dd, the Convention Against Torture, Common Article 3, and other laws regulating the treatment and interrogation of individuals detained in any armed conflict, such persons shall in all circumstances be treated humanely and shall not be subjected to violence to life and person (including murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture), nor to outrages upon personal dignity (including humiliating and degrading treatment), whenever such individuals are in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States. . . .

"Effective immediately, an individual in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government, or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States, in any armed conflict, shall not be subjected to any interrogation technique or approach, or any treatment related to interrogation, that is not authorized by and listed in Army Field Manual 2 22.3 . Interrogation techniques, approaches, and treatments described in the Manual shall be implemented strictly in accord with the principles, processes, conditions, and limitations the Manual prescribes."

Go to original

Christian Bias in Military?

2008-12-30T09:13:00.000-08:00

Soldier alleges military pattern of Christian bias

An atheist soldier suing over prayers at military formations claims a larger pattern of religious discrimination exists in the military, citing attempts to convert Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan and an evangelical bias in a suicide prevention manual.

The expanded lawsuit filed Monday by Spc. Dustin Chalker and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation in U.S. District Court in Kansas City also claims the military doesn't take complaints of religious discrimination seriously enough.

The Defense Department has identified fewer than 50 complaints about alleged violations of religious freedoms during the past three years, with 1.4 million personnel in uniform, spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said.
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She declined to comment on a pending lawsuit but noted that the military has policies against endorsing any religious view.

The revised lawsuit criticizes the Army's 2008 manual on suicide prevention, quoting it as promoting "religiosity" as a necessary part of prevention and describing "connectivity to the divine" as "fundamental."

The lawsuit cites comments from a chaplain and a second soldier in Christian missionary publications about attempts to convert Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the two soldiers' desire to distribute Bibles.

The lawsuit also notes that in 2007, the Air Force sponsored "Team Faith," which performs motocross stunt shows to "lead extreme sports athletes to Christ."

The original lawsuit filed in September alleged Chalker had to attend events at Fort Riley where Christian prayers were given. Foundation president Mikey Weinstein said Chalker tried to pursue his complaints within the Army but was told they were "unfounded."

On the Net:

U.S. District Court, Kansas

Military Religious Freedom Foundation

Department of Defense

What will these crazy Christians think of next?

Correspondences

2008-12-26T15:12:00.000-08:00

"All for Jesus. All for Jesus. All for Jesus. All for Jesus" Republican Candidate Sam Brownback's stump speech in Iowa.

"Between science and God, I'll stick with God if the two are in conflict." Republican Candidate Mike Huckabee

"Freedom requires religion." Republican Candidate Mitt Romney

"I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation." John McCain

"Just before us is a nuclear countdown with Iran, followed by the final battle: the battle of Armageddon . . . . The end of the world as we know it is rapidly approaching. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad. The best is yet to be." Televangelist and McCain endorser John Hagee

"Americans must be 'Christocrats' -- citizens of both their country and the Kingdom of God"; "And that is not a democracy; that is a theocracy"; "That means God is in control, and you are not." Televangelist and McCain supporter Rod Parsley

March 13, 2008 - Sam Brownback (R-KS) introduced S. Res. 483, a resolution "recognizing the first weekend of May 2008 as 'Ten Commandments Weekend,'" which has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The resolution has one co-sponsor -- Joe Lieberman. "The Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation" John McCain, September 2007

"Our national leaders, are sending soldiers out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan." Sarah Palin, on the Iraq war

If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier -- so long as I'm the dictator. George W. Bush, Dec. 19, 2000

"I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!" Rev. Jerry Falwell

"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.... We need believing people." Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933

"Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society." D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge Ministries and Bush advisor.

"The really dangerous American fascist... is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective, toward which all their deceit is directed, is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection." U.S. Vice President Henry A. Wallace, quoted in the New York Times, April 9, 1944

"What did the Fascist regimes in Italy, Germany, and Spain have in common? They consisted of a highly militarized state, backed by corporation and a wealthy elite, that rose to power through a false populism that exploited the public's fear of foreigners and 'moral degenerates'. This precisely defines the formula that Karl Rove designed to consolidate the Bush administration's power in the recent election." Sean Donahue, Nov. 2004

"I've heard the call. I believe God wants me to run for president." George W. Bush, quoted in George Magazine, September, 2000

"I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany." Adolf Hitler

"A person who is guided by God will never be misguided by anyone." Osama Bin Laden

"We're being guided by God." Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson

"George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States. He was appointed by God." Lt. Gen. William Boykin, the defense undersecretary in charge of hunting down top terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan

"Nothing [Bush] does can be challenged on moral grounds, however unethical or evil it might appear, because all of his actions are directed by God. He can twist the truth, oppress the poor, exalt the rich, despoil the earth, ignore the law--and murder children--without the slightest compunction, the briefest moment of doubt or self-reflection, because he believes, he truly believes, that God squats in his brainpan and tells him what to do." Chris Floyd, CounterPunch, 7/30/03

"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God." George Bush Sr., to a reporter in 1988

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider to be God-fearing and pious." Aristotle, 343 B.C.

"He [God] is using me, all the time, everywhere, to stand up for a biblical worldview in everything that I do and everywhere I am." House Majority Leader Tom DeLay

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier -- so long as I'm the dictator." George W. Bush, Dec. 19, 2000

"Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this." Lt Gen William Boykin, speaking of G. W. Bush, New York Times, 17 October 2003

"He [Rumsfeld] leads in a way that the Good Lord tells him is best for our country." Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

"God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith, that he was sent to us by God to save Germany." Hermann Goering, speaking of Hitler

"Government authorities, police and the military = God's Ministers" Frank Bussey, director of Military Ministry at Fort Jackson

"Our purpose for Campus Crusade for Christ at the Air Force Academy is to make Jesus Christ the issue at the Air Force Academy and around the world. They're government paid missionaries when they leave here." Scot Blom, Campus Crusade for Christ director assigned to work at the Air Force Academy

"...bring lost soldiers closer to Christ, build them in their faith and send them out into the world as Government paid missionaries." Military Ministry, a subsidiary of the Campus Crusade for Christ

Thanks to Ray for showing me this

Vatican rehabilitates Galileo Five Hundred Years Too Late

2008-12-23T15:49:00.000-08:00

Vatican rehabilitating Galileo

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer Nicole Winfield, Associated Press Writer Tue Dec 23, 2:45 pm ET

VATICAN CITY – Galileo Galilei is going from heretic to hero.

The Vatican is recasting the most famous victim of its Inquisition as a man of faith, just in time for the 400th anniversary of Galileo's telescope and the U.N.-designated International Year of Astronomy next year.

Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute to the Italian astronomer and physicist Sunday, saying he and other scientists had helped the faithful better understand and "contemplate with gratitude the Lord's works."

In May, several Vatican officials will participate in an international conference to re-examine the Galileo affair, and top Vatican officials are now saying Galileo should be named the "patron" of the dialogue between faith and reason.

It's quite a reversal of fortune for Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who made the first complete astronomical telescope and used it to gather evidence that the Earth revolved around the sun. Church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

The church denounced Galileo's theory as dangerous to the faith, but Galileo defied its warnings. Tried as a heretic in 1633 and forced to recant, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, later changed to house arrest.

The Church has for years been striving to shed its reputation for being hostile to science, in part by producing top-notch research out of its own telescope.

In 1992, Pope John Paul II declared that the ruling against Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension."

But that apparently wasn't enough. In January, Benedict canceled a speech at Rome's La Sapienza University after a group of professors, citing the Galileo episode and depicting Benedict as a religious figure opposed to science, argued that he shouldn't speak at a public university.

The Galileo anniversary appears to be giving the Vatican new impetus to put the matter to rest. In doing so, Vatican officials are stressing Galileo's faith as well as his science, to show the two are not mutually exclusive.

At a Vatican conference last month entitled "Science 400 Years after Galileo Galilei," the Vatican No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said Galileo was an astronomer, but one who "lovingly cultivated his faith and his profound religious conviction."

"Galileo Galilei was a man of faith who saw nature as a book authored by God," Bertone said.

The head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture, which co-sponsored the conference, went further. Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi told Vatican Radio that Galileo "could become for some the ideal patron for a dialogue between science and faith."

He said Galileo's writings offered a "path" to explore how faith and reason were not incompatible.

The Rev. John Padberg, a church historian and the director of the Institute of Jesuit Sources at St. Louis University, said he suspected the Vatican's new emphasis on Galileo's faith came from the pope himself.

"Pope Benedict XVI is ardently convinced of the congruence of faith and reason, and he is concerned, especially in the present circumstances, of giving reason its due place in the whole scheme of things," he said.

While it is widely accepted that Galileo was a convinced Catholic, Padberg questioned whether he could ever be accepted as some kind of a poster child for the faith and reason debate. "That's going to be a long shot for an awful lot of people, on both sides, by the way," he said.

Benedict, a theologian, has made exploring the faith-reason relationship a key aspect of his papacy, and has directed his daily newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, in particular, to take up the charge.

On Monday, the newspaper published a piece on the possibility of alien life on other planets as well as one on the popes who were "friendly" to astronomy.

Benedict clearly is: In his Sunday blessing, he noted that the Vatican itself has its own meridian — an obelisk in St. Peter's Square — and that astronomy had long been used to signal prayer times for the faithful.

But the Vatican's embrace of Galileo only goes so far.

There were plans earlier this year to give Galileo a permanent place of honor in the Vatican to mark the anniversary of his telescope: a statue, to be located inside the Vatican gardens, donated by the Italian aerospace giant Finmeccanica SpA.

The plans were suspended after some Vatican officials voiced "problems" with the initiative, said Nicola Cabibbo, the president of the Pontifical Council for Science. He declined to elaborate.

Finmeccanica spokesman Roberto Alatri said the Galileo statue was just an idea that never got off the ground.

Italian news reports suggested the Vatican simply didn't want to draw so much permanent attention to the Galileo episode, which 400 years on, still rankles some.

"The dramatic clash between Galileo and some men of the Church left wounds that are still open today," the Vatican's chief astronomer, the Rev. Jose Funes, wrote recently in Osservatore. "The Church in some ways has recognized its errors.

"Maybe it could do better. One can always do better," he wrote.

___

On the Web:

International congress "The Galileo Affair: A historical, philosophical and theological re-examination" is at http://www.stensen.it

Vatican Observatory is at http://www.vaticanobservatory.org

Now,if the Vatican could just undo all the damage it did to the "heretics" it burned at the stake (alive and dead), tortured, imprisoned, from whom it took all property, even doing so posthumously by appropriating the "heretic"'s survivors. In our mind, the RCC has still got a lot of 'splainin' to do ... and apologizing and atoning and ...

Democracy flowers in Iraq, thanks to US Presence

2008-12-22T10:06:00.001-08:00

December 22, 2008

Iraqi Journalist Who Threw Shoes at Bush Was Tortured in Jail, His Brother Says

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

BAGHDAD — The television reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush was burned by a cigarette in the hours after his arrest on Dec. 14 and was beaten so badly by Iraqi security personnel that one of his teeth was knocked out, the reporter’s brother said Sunday after a visit to the jail.

The reporter, Muntader al-Zaidi, 29, has been jailed since hurling his shoes at Mr. Bush during a news conference here last week. Mr. Zaidi has not been formally charged, but he faces up to seven years in prison if convicted of the crime of aggression against a foreign leader during an official visit.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki did not return phone calls seeking comment on Sunday about the allegations, but the Maliki government previously denied that Mr. Zaidi had been mistreated while in custody.

It was Mr. Maliki’s security detail that detained Mr. Zaidi after he hurled his shoes. Mr. Zaidi was seen being beaten before he was pulled from the room where the news conference by Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki was held.

On Sunday before the torture allegations were made public, Mr. Maliki said that he had received a letter from Mr. Zaidi saying that a terrorist had persuaded him to throw the shoes.

“A person urged him to commit this act, and this person is known to us as a person who beheads people,” Mr. Maliki said, without divulging the person’s name.

Mr. Zaidi’s family has maintained that he was acting out of his own frustration with the American invasion.

The visit by one of Mr. Zaidi’s brothers was the first by either a relative or a lawyer that the reporter had been allowed since being jailed. He has not been seen publicly since his arrest.

During an interview broadcast Sunday on Al Baghdadia, the Cairo-based satellite television network for which Mr. Zaidi works, his brother Uday, 33, said that Mr. Zaidi had been stripped to his underwear before being placed in a cell and tortured during the 24-hour period after his arrest.

“He told me he was sleeping on the floor of the cell when a very large man came in and dumped cold water on him and began hitting him with a thick cable,” Uday al-Zaidi said in the TV interview.

He said his brother had told him that he was brutally beaten by several men and burned on his right ear by a cigarette. Uday al-Zaidi said that on Sunday his brother had bruises on his face, stitches on the bridge of his nose and swelling in his legs, arms and hands.

His jailers had periodically demanded that he state in a videotaped confession that he had been ordered to commit the act by enemies of the prime minister, Uday al-Zaidi said his brother had told him.

Uday al-Zaidi said his brother had said: “After the torture and the cold-water shower, I told them to bring me a blank sheet of paper and I would sign it, and they could write whatever they wanted. I am ready to say I am a terrorist or whatever you want.”

But Muntader al-Zaidi told his brother that the men had stopped beating him and did not force him to write or sign anything. The journalist said that a letter to the prime minister written by him from jail expressing regret for the attack had not been coerced, his brother said. It was unclear if this was the same letter Mr. Maliki referred to.

Uday al-Zaidi said his brother told him that he had bought the shoes — used — at a market in Cairo.

For THIS we liberated Iraq? How many Americans and Iraqis and "coalition troops" have died so that this great democracy can flourish?

The Line Between Contraception and Abortion

2008-12-19T14:03:00.000-08:00

We're having fun over at the Washington Post this afternoon, participating in a discussion of "The Line Between Contraception and Abortion". Feel free to stop by and join in the discussion!

Bristol-Levi Update

2008-12-19T08:49:00.000-08:00

We know that our reader has been on the edge of his/her seat recently, wondering how things are going for the lovely damsel Bristol Palin and her handsome knight Levi Johnson. We are therefore mightily pleased to be able to bring you this item from the Anchorage Daily News:

Levi Johnston's mother hit with drug charges
Arrested: her son was in the spotlight as father of Bristol Palin's baby.

By ZAZ HOLLANDER
zhollander@adn.com

WASILLA -- A 42-year-old Wasilla woman was arrested Thursday at her home by Alaska State Troopers with a search warrant in an undercover drug investigation. Sherry L. Johnston was charged with six felony counts of misconduct involving a controlled substance.

Johnston is the mother of Levi Johnston, the Wasilla 18-year-old who received international attention in September when Gov. Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd, announced their teenage daughter was pregnant and he was the father. Bristol Palin, 18, is due on Saturday, according to a recent interview with the governor's father, Chuck Heath.

Troopers served the warrant at Johnston's home at the "conclusion of an undercover narcotics investigation," said a statement issued Thursday by the troopers as part of the normal daily summary of activity around the state.

Troopers charged Johnston with second-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance -- generally manufacturing or delivering drugs -- as well as fourth-degree misconduct involving controlled substances, or possession.

Troopers released no other information, including the kind or amount of drugs, because details could jeopardize an ongoing investigation, spokeswoman Megan Peters said.

Asked how long the investigation had proceeded before Johnston's arrest, Peters would only say "a while."

The Palmer District Attorney's office had no comment.

Sherry Johnston was arrested around noon and booked at Mat-Su Pretrial Facility, according to a booking officer there. She was released on a $5,000 unsecured bond just after 2 p.m.

No charging documents had been filed at Palmer courthouse by the end of the day, a clerk said.

Levi Johnston sat with Bristol and the rest of the Palin family in St. Paul, Minn., during Gov. Palin's speech to the Republican National Convention, and he joined the family on the stage afterwards.

When asked about the arrest, Palin's spokesman, Bill McAllister, issued the following statement by e-mail: "This is not a state government matter. Therefore the governor's communications staff will not be providing comment or scheduling interview opportunities."

Johnston didn't come to the door of her home on Caribou Loop Road outside Wasilla on Thursday afternoon. A teenage boy who answered the door said he couldn't provide any information.

A commentator at the Anchorage Daily News offers this comment:

"And this is news why? Oh, wait, it's because her son knocked up the governor's daughter. What a sorry excuse for a news story. If this was anyone else, it would be a small blurb in the police blotter."

All true. And yet, some say that apples don't fall far from the tree .... We're just worried that Sherry may not be out of the slammer in time to attend Bristol's and Levi's wedding - now that would be a tragedy, the Johnsons and the Palins bein' all jiggy with family values, n' stuff.

Come to think of it, when is that wedding? The baby is apparently due tomorrow, Saturday, December 20, 2008 ... and the kid's parents aren't even living under the same roof, let alone married? I'm sure, however, that all their friends on the "right" will be rushing to give them a hand (not a hand-out) to get on their feet. We expected it to be four feet, rather than two, however. Surely, the Johnsons and the Palins won't disappoint.

Biblical Marriage

2008-12-18T16:11:00.000-08:00

Talking Points for the Religious Right's efforts to legislate "Biblical Marriage", with references to the textual support found in the Bible:

A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)

B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)

C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)

D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)

E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)

F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)

G. In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)

Thanks to "inbox_blues" in comments to Joe Solmonese's piece "Obama's Inaugural Mistake" in today's Washington Post.

I am the Walrus

2008-12-18T10:56:00.000-08:00

Iraq officials arrested for reviving Baath party

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Twenty-three officers from Iraq's Interior Ministry have been arrested on suspicion of trying to rebuild former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's Baath party, a ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

Major-General Abdul Karim Khalaf said the officers were arrested under suspicion of being part of the al-Awda ("Return") party, seen as a new incarnation of the once omnipotent Baath party that was outlawed following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

"They are now being interrogated under the supervision of the Iraqi judiciary," Khalaf told Reuters. He said being a member of al-Awda was equivalent to being a Baath member.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that an elite counterterrorism force, reporting directly to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, arrested up to 35 officials, some of whom were accused of plotting a coup against the government.

Asked whether those arrested were suspected of plotting a coup, Khalaf repeated they were suspected of being members of the al-Awda party.

Read the rest here.

Coup coup ka joo.

Bipartisan Report: Rumsfeld Responsible for Detainee Abuse

2008-12-11T10:36:00.000-08:00

Senate Committee Finds Officials Made Decisions That Led to Offenses Against Prisoners

A bipartisan Senate report released today says that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials are directly responsible for abuses of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and charges that decisions by those officials led to serious offenses against prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere.
The Senate Armed Services Committee report accuses Rumsfeld and his deputies of being the principal architects of the plan to use harsh interrogation techniques on captured fighters and terrorism suspects, rejecting the Bush administration's contention that the policies originated lower down the command chain.

Read the rest of the WaPo story here.

We're not holding our breath waiting for those credulous sycophants for the military to apologize for their knee-jerk commentaries that it really was a few bad apples who were responsible for this.

So-Called Christians Come to the Defense Of Alleged Torturers Of Teen

2008-12-02T20:11:00.000-08:00

TRACY, Calif. — A Girl Scout leader and her husband were arrested after an emaciated, terrified and nearly naked 17-year-old showed up at a gym with a chain locked to his ankle, saying he had just fled his captors, authorities said Tuesday.

Police were also seeking a third suspect and had an outstanding felony warrant against her for an earlier alleged assault against the teen.

The boy, who authorities said ran away from a Sacramento foster home last year, came into the In-Shape Sports Club in Tracy on Monday wearing only boxer briefs and covered in what appeared to be soot, gym manager Chuck Ellis said. Tracy is about 70 miles south of Sacramento.

Ellis said the teen was scared someone was going to come after him and asked to be hidden.

"He said, 'Don't let them get me, don't let them get me,'" Ellis said. "He was totally terrified."

The boy said he had been held captive for nearly a year, said Ellis, adding that he looked as if he was only 10 to 12 years old.

Authorities said they believe the boy had been chained to a car seat but picked up a dropped key, unlocked himself and fled when the car stopped.

Police arrested Kelly Layne Lau, 30, and Michael Schumacher, 34, late Monday after questioning the couple. A subsequent search of their nearby home found further evidence implicating them, said Tracy police spokesman Matt Robinson, who would not describe what officers found.

Read the rest here.

We here at HSD are investigating rumors that the Moron Church, the primary proponent of California's recent Proposition H8, as well as Focus on the Family, The Family Research Council are pooling their resources to mount a publicity campaign arguing that custody of the boy should be restored to Kelly Layne Lau and Michael Schumacher rather than run the risk that a homosexual couple might be seen as better guardians for the boy than Lau and Schumacher or 43-year-old Caren Ramirez, suspected of being the boy's aunt.her

Thank you Sarah Palin

2008-11-27T21:48:00.000-08:00

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

You know the end of the world is near ...

2008-11-10T09:24:00.001-08:00

... when there is a Bob Marley Resort in the Caribbean with rooms that start at $450 per night.

Swan song for losers in the marketplace of ideas

2008-10-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

Predictably, the nattering nabobs of right-wing nut-job-dom are bloviating all over the ether about voter fraud.

Grim is doing it. Cassandra is doing it. Fred Flintstone is doing it. The “yidwithlid” is doing it, and doing it. Kenneth R. Timmerman is doing it (whoever the hell that is). Diamond Tiger is doing it. Susan Duclos is doing it. Zebulon Pike is doing it. John Boner is doing it. Faultline is doing it. The NY Post is doing it. My Aisling is doing it.

We can understand how the right’s reactionary wheels might be coming off, seein’s how it looks at this point as if BHO and Joe will get the gold next Tuesday, but all this hysteria about voter fraud is just the swan song for a philosophy which is NOT winning in the marketplace of ideas.

http://cronespeaks.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/the-real-story-of-voter-fraud/

to be continued ...

Batter my heart, three-person'd God

2008-10-28T21:32:00.000-07:00

Our surfing tonight has taken us a ways afield from our usual haunts for this page ... but since we've gone there, we offer this:

by John Donne

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

from Poetry Foundation

Night Fantasies: works of Crumb, Ligeti, Debussy, Carter, Berg, Schumann, Messiaen, and others

2008-10-28T21:12:00.000-07:00

Night Fantasies from The Chamber Music Society on Vimeo.

In November, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center will present an imaginatively programmed festival entitled Night Fantasies: works of Crumb, Ligeti, Debussy, Carter, Berg, Schumann, Messiaen, and various others, on a nocturnal theme. Klaus Lauer, of the Römerbad festival in Germany, serves as guest curator. To spread word, CMS has created a striking short video of musicians in Manhattan at night. The soundtrack is the "God-music" from Crumb's Black Angels, with a slight admixture of Chopin and Ligeti.

Opening at ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn tomorrow: Darmstadt's Essential Repertoire festival, celebrating American experimental and minimalist music of the postwar era.

We found this at The Rest Is Noise. This doesn't have anything to do with hypocrisy, but we like it anyway.

Dear Red States

2008-10-28T20:24:00.000-07:00

Dear Red States:

If you manage to steal this election too, we've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us.

In case you aren't aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly:

You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss. We get 85% of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue. You get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22% lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80% of the country's fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92% of the nation's fresh fruit, 95% of America's quality wines, 90% of all cheese, 90% of the high tech industry, 95% of the corn and soybeans (thanks Iowa!), most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92% of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite too, thank you.

Additionally, 38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the war, the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory, 53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61% of you believe you are people with higher morals than we lefties.

Finally, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.

Peace out,

Blue States

One of our friends sent this along today. Although we have seen things like it before, we found this one so amusing and the timing seemed right, so we thought we'd share it with our reader. We just want to go on the record, however, as stating that we do not use pot or weed (though we did give it a try 30-odd years ago or so, and at that time we did inhale).

More GOP socialism for the little guy ...

2008-10-27T17:48:00.000-07:00

The U.S. government is considering direct financial assistance to facilitate a possible merger between General Motors Corp (GM.N) and Chrysler LLC, a private sector source familiar with Treasury discussions told Reuters on Monday

The South Will Rise Again

2008-10-27T14:32:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Law enforcement arrested two men in Tennessee who had plans to rob a gun dealer to shoot Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and "as many non-Caucasians" as possible, an official said on Monday.

An official from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said police found the men in the Jackson, Tennessee area with a number of guns, including a sawed-off shotgun, in their car.

"They wanted to go to a place where they could shoot as many non-Caucasian as they could," the official said, noting that the men first planned to rob a gun dealer. "They also had a plot to assassinate Sen. Obama."

Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, is leading Republican John McCain in opinion polls ahead of the November 4 election.

Original

The first one now shall later be last for the times they are a-changin’

2008-10-24T11:15:00.000-07:00

Civil War on the Right - Washington Post

Polls Point to Struggle for McCain - Washington Post

As an Issue, Taxes Favor Obama - Washington Post

New York Times: Editorial: Barack Obama for President - New York Times

Rebranding the U.S. With Obama - New York Times

Polls Show Obama Gaining Among Bush Voters - New York Times

The GOP Has Finally Imploded - New Republic

North Carolinians Have Fallen for Obama - The Nation

Obama is the better choice - Financial Times

Obama's First 100 Days by Patrick Buchanan

Francis Fukuyama at The American Conservative

Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn at The American Conservative

Scott McConnell at The American Conservative

Robert Pape at The American Conservative

To be continued as time permits ...

US drops charges against 5 Guantanamo prisoners

2008-10-21T10:05:00.000-07:00

The Pentagon said Tuesday it has dropped war-crimes charges against five Guantanamo Bay detainees after the former prosecutor in their cases complained that the military was withholding evidence helpful to the defense.

None of the men will be freed, and the military said it could reinstate charges later.

Can someone please explain to me how this is anything different than what Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Shah of Iran, the Taliban did and are doing?

Ya' just can't make this shit up ...

2008-10-17T14:24:00.000-07:00

Lyle Denniston reports on Scotusblog: "The Justice Department, in a new plea Thursday for the courts to keep 17 Guantanamo Bay prisoners out of the country, said that those detainees pose a risk 'distinct to this Nation'" by virtue of "the fact that the U.S. is the country that has been holding them captive for six years."

In other words, blogs Marty Lederman, the government is saying: "These detainees would not be a threat to U.S. persons -- except that the Pentagon has unlawfully detained them at Guantanamo, incommunicado and without any justification, for more than half a decade . . . and so they naturally would be inclined to harm Americans in retaliation for such unjust treatment."

From Dan Froomkin's column in WaPo today.

Duh - what did Dubya and his co-conspirators THINK would be the result of all this? Oh yea - forgot - they DIDN'T think.

Repubs Reward McCain Contributor With Lucrative Contracts

2008-10-16T14:23:00.000-07:00

Top Republican fund-raiser, Harry Sargeant III, has made tens of millions of dollars in profits over the last four years because his contracting company vastly overcharged for deliveries of fuel to American air bases in Iraq. Read the sordid details here. War has always been good for business.

2008-10-16T10:58:00.000-07:00

John McCain Associates With Domestic Terrorists Too

2008-10-13T14:09:00.000-07:00

Does John McCain "pal around with terrorists?"

Certainly McCain's continuing "association" and relationship with the convicted Watergate burglar and domestic terrorist G. Gordon Liddy might suggest that is the case, if we are to apply the standards drawn by the McCain campaign.

In 1998, Liddy gave a fundraiser in his Scottsdale, Arizona home for McCain's senatorial re-election campaign -- the two posed for photographs together; and as recently as May, 2007, as a presidential candidate, McCain was a guest on Liddy's syndicated radio show. Inexplicably, McCain heaped praise on his host's values. During the segment, McCain said he was "proud" of Liddy, and praised Liddy's "adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great." From the program:

LIDDY: Your experience in the Hanoi Hilton is remarkable. I mean, I put in five years in a prison [for masterminding the Watergate burglary, and associated crimes], but it was here in the United States, and they didn't torture - the only torture that I had was being forced to listen to rap music from time to time.

McCAIN: Well, you know, I'm proud of you. I'm proud of your family. I'm proud to know your son, Tom, who's a great and wonderful guy. And it's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon. And congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great.

Which of Liddy's "principles and philosophies" was McCain referring to? Liddy's advocacy of break-ins? Firebombings? Assassinations? Kidnappings? Taking target practice with figures nicknamed Bill and Hillary?

During the same period that Bill Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, Gordon Liddy was making plans to firebomb a Washington think tank, assassinate a prominent journalist, undertake the Watergate burglary, break into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, and kidnap anti-war protesters at the 1972 Republican convention.

Thanks to Carl Bernstein for sharing this; read the whole thing here. No word yet on whether McCain and Liddy were sleeping together, as Palin has been doing with HER favorite domestic terrorist.

Oy Gevalt! Hypocrite of the Day Award to John McCain

2008-10-13T13:57:00.000-07:00

Sigh: McCain and his friends at…ACORN
By Michelle Malkin • October 13, 2008 01:14 PM

If you want to know why see-sawing John McCain has had to be goaded, prodded, begged, and dragged into spotlighting Barack Obama’s radical ACORN roots, here’s your answer:

Turns out John McCain had no problem calling ACORN members his friends during his ill-fated illegal alien shamnesty crusade.

Ugh.

Here’s a February 2006 press release trumpeting McCain’s appearance at a pro-shamnesty rally organized by a coalition led by ACORN. As the release notes, he made a second appearance for the group in NYC. Read it and gag:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Major Rally in Miami to Support Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Senator John McCain and many others to speak at the rally at Miami Dade College Wolfson Campus

Miami, Florida – February 20, 2006 ― Leaders from a diverse array of sectors will hold a rally in Miami on Thursday, February 23, 2006, in support of comprehensive immigration reform in an effort to keep immigration reform at the forefront of the public debate. Leaders from both political parties, immigrant communities, labor, business, and religious organizations will gather to call on Washington to enact workable reform.

The rally will feature Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) as the headline speaker along with elected officials, immigrants and key local and national leaders. Sen. McCain is one of the chief sponsors of the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act; bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform legislation introduced last Congress and scheduled for consideration by the Senate in the coming weeks. A similar rally with Sen. McCain is planned for New York City on February 27.

WHO: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-FL), Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL.), and immigrant, religious, community, business and labor leaders.

WHAT: Comprehensive Immigration Reform Rally

WHEN: Thursday, February 23, at 6:00 p.m.

WHERE: Miami Dade College – Wolfson Campus

Chapman Conference Center
Bldg 3000
300 NE 2nd Avenue

EDITOR’S NOTE: Miami Press Availability: Sen. McCain will be available for interviews starting at 4:15 p.m. on location, Feb. 23.

The Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act was introduced in the Senate by Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and John McCain (R-AZ) and in the House by Representatives Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Luis Gutierrez (D-IL). It addresses border security and illegal immigration while bringing the 11 million undocumented immigrants out from the shadows and onto a path to legal permanent status; setting up legal channels and realistic caps for workers and family members to enter in the future; providing for tough enforcement; and enabling more immigrants to learn English and prepare for citizenship.

The rally in Miami is being sponsored by the New American Opportunity campaign (NAOC) in partnership with ACORN, Catholic Legal Services - Archdiocese of Miami, Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, Florida Immigrant Coalition, Miami Dade College, People for the American Way/Mi Familia Vota en Acción, Service Employees International Union, and UNITE HERE.

We won't bother to provide the last bit of Malkin's item today, because we don't agree with her (surprise surprise) but we will give you the link, out of simple fairness and thanks that she is bringing this up!

" ... a dry laundry list of previously announced government actions, punctuated by listless platitudes ..."

2008-10-10T14:37:00.000-07:00

President Bush Discusses the Economy
Rose Garden

10:25 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Over the past few days, we have witnessed a startling drop in the stock market -- much of it driven by uncertainty and fear. This has been a deeply unsettling period for the American people. Many of our citizens have serious concerns about their retirement accounts, their investments, and their economic well-being.

President George W. Bush addresses his remarks on the economy Friday morning, Oct. 10, 2008, in the Rose Garden at the White House. President Bush said that he understands that the startling drop in the stock market over the past few days has been a deeply unsettling period for the American people, but they need to know that the United States government is acting, and will continue to act to resolve this crisis and restore stability to our markets. White House photo by David Bohrer Here's what the American people need to know: that the United States government is acting; we will continue to act to resolve this crisis and restore stability to our markets. We are a prosperous nation with immense resources and a wide range of tools at our disposal. We're using these tools aggressively.

The fundamental problem is this: As the housing market has declined, banks holding assets related to home mortgages have suffered serious losses. As a result of these losses, many banks lack the capital or the confidence in each other to make new loans. In turn, our system of credit has frozen, which is keeping American businesses from financing their daily transactions -- and creating uncertainty throughout our economy.

This uncertainty has led to anxiety among our people. And that is understandable -- that anxiety can feed anxiety, and that can make it hard to see all that is being done to solve the problem. The federal government has a comprehensive strategy and the tools necessary to address the challenges in our economy. Fellow citizens: We can solve this crisis -- and we will.

Here are the problems we face and the steps we are taking:

First, key markets are not functioning because there's a lack of liquidity -- the grease necessary to keep the gears of our financial system turning. So the Federal Reserve has injected hundreds of billions of dollars into the system. The Fed has joined with central banks around the world to coordinate a cut in interest rates. This rate cut will allow banks to borrow money more affordably -- and it should help free up additional credit necessary to create jobs, and finance college educations, and help American families meet their daily needs. The Fed has also announced a new program to provide support for the commercial paper market, which is freezing up. As the new program kicks in over the next week or so, it will help revive a key source of short-term financing for American businesses and financial institutions.

Second, some Americans are concerned about whether their money is safe. So the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the National Credit Union Administration have significantly expanded the amount of money insured in savings accounts, and checking accounts, and certificates of deposit. That means that if you have up to $250,000 in one of these insured accounts, every penny of that money is safe. The Treasury Department has also acted to restore confidence in a key element of America's financial system by offering government insurance for money market mutual funds.

Thirdly, we are concerned that some investors could take advantage of the crisis to illegally manipulate the stock market. So the Securities and Exchange Commission has launched rigorous enforcement actions to detect fraud and manipulation in the market. The SEC is focused on preventing abusive practices, such as putting out false information to drive down particular stocks for personal gain. Anyone caught engaging in illegal financial activities will be prosecuted.

Fourth, the decline in the housing market has left many Americans struggling to meet their mortgages and are concerned about losing their homes. My administration has launched two initiatives to help responsible borrowers keep their homes. One is called HOPE NOW, and it brings together homeowners and lenders and mortgage servicers, and others to find ways to prevent foreclosure. The other initiative is aimed at making it easier for responsible homeowners to refinance into affordable mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration. So far, these programs have helped more than 2 million Americans stay in their home. And the point is this: If you are struggling to meet your mortgage, there are ways that you can get help.

With these actions to help to prevent foreclosures, we're addressing a key problem in the housing market: The supply of homes now exceeds demand. And as a result, home values have declined. Once supply and demand balance out, our housing market will be able to recover -- and that will help our broader economy begin to grow.

Fifth, we've seen that problems in the financial system are not isolated to the United States. They're also affecting other nations around the globe. So we're working closely with partners around the world to ensure that our actions are coordinated and effective. Tomorrow, I'll meet with the finance ministers from our partners in the G7 and the heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Secretary Paulson will also meet with finance ministers from the world's 20 leading economies. Through these efforts, the world is sending an unmistakable signal: We're in this together, and we'll come through this together.

And finally, American businesses and consumers are struggling to obtain credit, because banks do not have sufficient capital to make loans. So my administration worked with Congress to quickly pass a $700 billion financial rescue package. This new law authorizes the Treasury Department to use a variety of measures to help bank [sic] rebuild capital -- including buying or insuring troubled assets and purchasing equity of financial institutions. The Department will implement measures that have maximum impact as quickly as possible. Seven hundred billion dollars is a significant amount of money. And as we act, we will do it in a way that is effective.

The plan we are executing is aggressive. It is the right plan. It will take time to have its full impact. It is flexible enough to adapt as the situation changes. And it is big enough to work.

The federal government will continue to take the actions necessary to restore stability to our financial markets and growth to our economy. We have an outstanding economic team carrying out this effort, led by Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, SEC Chairman Chris Cox, and FDIC Chair Sheila Bair. I thank them and their dedicated teams for their service during this important moment in our country's history.

This is an anxious time, but the American people can be confident in our economic future. We know what the problems are, we have the tools we need to fix them, and we're working swiftly to do so. Our economy is innovative, industrious and resilient because the American people who make up our economy are innovative, industrious and resilient. We all share a determination to solve this problem -- and that is exactly what we're going to do. May God bless you.

END 10:33 A.M. EDT

About this, WaPo's Dan Froomkin said:

"The president seems checked out. His approval ratings are in the toilet. His credibility is shot. He's arguably responsible for this mess in the first place. And his presence and his words have led to more fear and panic, not less. Bush still seems to be operating in a fantasy world where people look to him for direction. His eight-minute speech in a sunny Rose Garden this morning consisted of a dry laundry list of previously announced government actions, punctuated by listless platitudes."

... some sobering stats on reading in the USA ...

2008-10-10T09:07:00.000-07:00

Over at my LAFQ pages, there is a discussion today of reading stimulated by the award yesterday to French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature. In searching for some facts to back up a statement I made there, I came across a site with some sobering stats on reading in the USA, which I offer here for your entertainment (to those of you, at least, who can read).

Education Statistics

Five to six year olds have a vocabulary of 2,500-5,000 words.

33% of children in California will not finish high school.

Disadvantaged students in the first grade have a vocabulary that is approximately half that of an advantaged student (2,900 and 5,800 respectively).

The average student learns about 3,000 words per year in the early school years (8 words per day).

The educational careers of 25 to 40 percent of American children are imperiled because they don't read well enough, quickly enough, or easily enough.

14% of all individuals have a learning disability.

54 percent of all teachers have limited English proficient (LEP) students in their classrooms, yet only one-fifth of teachers feel very prepared to serve them.

It is estimated that more than $2 billion is spent each year on students who repeat a grade because they have reading problems.

Since 1983, more than 10 million Americans reached the 12th grade without having learned to read at a basic level. In the same period, more than 6 million Americans dropped out of high school altogether.

Literacy Statistics

Over 50% of NASA employees are dyslexic. They are deliberately sought after because they have superb problem solving skills and excellent 3D and spatial awareness.

Over one million children drop out of school each year, costing the nation over $240 billion in lost earnings, forgone tax revenues, and expenditures for social services.

More than 20 percent of adults read at or below a fifth-grade level - far below the level needed to earn a living wage.

More than three out of four of those on welfare, 85% of unwed mothers and 68% of those arrested are illiterate. About three in five of America's prison inmates are illiterate.

Approximately 50 percent of the nation's unemployed youth age 16-21 are functional illiterate, with virtually no prospects of obtaining good jobs.

44 million adults in the U.S. can't read well enough to read a simple story to a child.

It is estimated that the cost of illiteracy to business and the taxpayer is $20 billion per year.

Dyslexia affects one out of every five children - ten million in America alone.

Children who have not developed some basic literacy skills by the time they enter school are 3 - 4 times more likely to drop out in later years.

60 percent of America's prison inmates are illiterate and 85% of all juvenile offenders have reading problems.

U.S. adults ranked 12th among 20 high income countries in composite (document, prose, and quantitative) literacy.

21 million Americans can't read at all, 45 million are marginally illiterate and one-fifth of high school graduates can't read their diplomas.

Nearly half of America's adults are poor readers, or "functionally illiterate." They can't carry out simply tasks like balancing check books, reading drug labels or writing essays for a job.

To participate fully in society and the workplace in 2020, citizens will need powerful literacy abilities that until now have been achieved by only a small percentage of the population.

Reading Statistics

46% of American adults cannot understand the label on their prescription medicine.

15% of all 4th graders read no faster than 74 words per minute, a pace at which it would be difficult to keep track of ideas as they are developing within the sentence and across the page.

It is estimated that as many as 15 percent of American students may be dyslexic. (but check out the factoid above about NASA employees!)

One-third of 500,000 = 22? There are almost half a million words in our English Language - the largest language on earth, incidentally - but a third of all our writing is made up of only twenty-two words.

56 percent of young people say they read more than 10 books a year, with middle school students reading the most. Some 70 percent of middle school students read more than 10 books a year, compared with only 49 percent of high school students.

15 percent of the population has specific reading disorders. Of these 15 percent as many as 1/3 may show change in the brain structure.

50 percent of American adults are unable to read an eighth grade level book.

The average reader spends about 1/6th of the time they spend reading actually rereading words.

In a class of 20 students, few if any teachers can find even 5 minutes of time in a day to devote to reading with each student.

Students who reported having all four types of reading materials (books, magazines, newspapers, encyclopedias) in their home scored, on average, higher than those who reporter having fewer reading materials.

In 1999, only 53 percent of children aged 3 to 5 were read to daily by a family member. Children in families with incomes below the poverty line are less likely to be read aloud to everyday than are children in families with incomes at or above the poverty line.

Good readers in 5th grade may read 10 times as many words as poor readers over a school year.

Forty-four percent of American 4th grade students cannot read fluently, even when they read grade-level stories aloud under supportive testing conditions.

When the State of Arizona projects how many prison beds it will need, it factors in the number of kids who read well in fourth grade.

Out-of-school reading habits of students has shown that even 15 minutes a day of independent reading can expose students to more than a million words of text in a year.

According to the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 37 percent of fourth graders and 26 percent of eighth graders cannot read at the basic level; and on the 2002 NAEP 26 percent of twelfth graders cannot read at the basic level. That is, when reading grade appropriate text these students cannot extract the general meaning or make obvious connections between the text and their own experiences or make simple inferences from the text. In other words, they cannot understand what they have read.

First grade children with good word recognition skills were exposed to almost twice as many words in their basal readers as were children who had poor word recognition skills.

* * *

It's been a while since I posted notes on what I've been reading lately (over the last 6 months or so). I'll try to get a reading list together, for my own entertainment as well as yours (the one person out there who stops by here from time to time, usually at his father's urging) to see what I've posted.

In the meantime, my comment over at LAFQ on the best gift we can give our kids ...

Vous qui avez de rejetons ... le meilleur cadeau que vous puissiez leur offrir ce n'est pas le X-Box 360, ni le Wii, c'est plutôt la faculté de lecture, le temps ... une vingtaine de minutes chaque nuit à lire qqch qu'ils aimeront ... ce sera un cadeau qui enrichira leurs vies à jamais ... qui leur donnera un choix futur plus étendu de boulots, l'appréciation et le goût des divertissements approfondis d'à travers tout le monde ... une vie plus riche, quoi ... et qui parmi nous ne voudrions pas vouloir donner la meilleur vie possible à nos gosses si dûment adorés?

Actually, there are a few important gifts we can give our kids ... but that will have to be a discussion for another day.

While we're talking about reading and Nobel Prizes, check out this fun page at the Nobel site that asks Nobel Laureates what THEY read when they were young. I plan to get into this when I have a moment, to see what looks interesting to me!

It's the Second Coming!!!

2008-10-10T08:29:00.000-07:00

Scientists have confirmed the second case of a "virgin birth" in a shark

In a study reported Friday in the Journal of Fish Biology, scientists said DNA testing proved that a pup carried by a female Atlantic blacktip shark in the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center contained no genetic material from a male.

The first documented case of asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, among sharks involved a pup born to a hammerhead at an Omaha, Neb., zoo.

"This first case was no fluke," Demian Chapman, a shark scientist and lead author of the second study, said in a statement. "It is quite possible that this is something female sharks of many species can do on occasion."

The aquarium sharks that reproduced without mates each carried only one pup, while some shark species can produce litters numbering in the dozen or more. The scientists cautioned that the rare asexual births should not be viewed as a possible solution to declining global shark populations.

Read the rest here.

We'd better watch out for the Messiah's teeth if this is for real.

Danger in Islam creeping into American life ...

2008-10-09T21:22:00.000-07:00

An expert on terrorism is warning the United States should be fighting Islamization, which she believes already is under way. And author Brigitte Gabriel should know: She watched it happen in her native Lebanon.

"Lebanon used to be the only majority Christian country in the Middle East," Gabriel told radio talk show host Andrea Shea King in a recent hour-long interview. "Most people today do not know that. We were the majority, the Muslims were the minority, but as the years went by, the Muslims became the majority because of their birth rate, but also because of our open-border policy.

"We welcomed everyone into our country," Gabriel said, and people didn't realize that the "minority," the Muslims in the society, "was not tolerant" and "did not believe all people were equal."

"They tried to impose their way of thinking on us, and they succeeded," she said.

The result, Gabriel said, was that a radical terrorist organization tied to Islam, Hezbollah, now rules in Lebanon.

As WND reported, Gabriel is fearful that terrorists believe now is the time to strike at America, while it is distracted by financial tension and election turmoil. She expressed the concerns during an interview with KSFO's Barbara Simpson, when she also discussed her new book, "They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It."

Read the entire article at Monkey In The Middle.

Sarah Palin in long-term sexual relationship with member of domestic terrorist group

2008-10-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

In 2004, America's malleable mainstream media allowed itself to be manipulated by artful Republican operatives into devoting weeks of broadcast attention and drums of ink to unfairly desecrating John Kerry's genuine Vietnam heroics while obligingly muzzling serious discussion of George W. Bush's shameful wartime record of evasion and cowardice.

Last week found the American media once again boarding Republican swift boats against this season's Democratic candidate armed with unfair and hypocritical attacks artfully designed by GOP strategists to distract attention from the cataclysmic outcomes of Republican governance. Vice Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin has taken to faulting Senator Barack Obama for his casual acquaintance with a respected Illinois educator Bill Ayers, who forty years ago was a member of the Weathermen, a movement active when Obama was eight and which he has denounced as "detestable." Palin argues that the relationship proves that Obama sees "America as being so imperfect that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

The Times dedicated a page one article to Obama's relations with Ayers and CNN's Anderson Cooper obliged Palin by rewarding her reckless accusations about Obama's patriotism with a major investigative report. Fox, meanwhile, is still riveting its audience with wall to wall coverage of this pressing irrelevancy.

But if McCarthy-era guilt-by-association is once again a valid political consideration, Palin, it would seem, has more to lose than Obama. Palin, it could be argued, following her own logic, thinks so little of America's perfection that she continues to "pal around" with a man--her husband, actually--who only recently terminated his seven-year membership in the Alaskan Independence Party. Putting plunder above patriotism, the members of this treasonous cabal aim to break our country into pieces and walk away with Alaska's rich federal oil fields and one-fifth of America's land base--an area three-fourths the size of the Civil War Confederacy.

AIP's charter commits the party "to the ultimate independence of Alaska," from the United States which it refers to as "the colonial bureaucracy in Washington." It proclaims Alaska's 1959 induction as a state "as illegal and in violation of the United Nations charter and international law."

AIP's creation was inspired by the rabidly violent anti-Americanism of its founding father Joe Vogler, "I'm an Alaskan, not an American," reads a favorite Vogler quote on AIP's current website, "I've got no use for America or her damned institutions." According to Vogler AIP's central purpose was to drive Alaska's secession from the United States. Alaska, says current Chairwoman Lynette Clark, "should be an independent nation."

Vogler was murdered in 1993 during an illegal sale of plastic explosives that went bad. The prior year, he had renounced his allegiance to the United States explaining that, "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government." He cursed the stars and stripes, promising, "I won't be buried under their damned flag...when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home." Palin has never denounced Vogler or his detestable anti-Americanism.

Palin's husband Todd remained an AIP party member from 1995 to 2002. Sarah can be described in McCarthy-era palaver as a "fellow traveler." While retaining her Republican registration, she attended the AIP's 1994 convention where the party called for a draft constitution to secede from the United States and create an independent nation of Alaska. The McCain Campaign has reluctantly acknowledged that she also attended AIP's 2000 Convention. She apparently found the experience so inspiring that she agreed to give a keynote address at the AIP's 2006 convention and she recorded a video greeting for this year's 2008 convention. In other words, this is not something that happened when she was eight!

So when Palin accuses Barack of "not seeing the same America as you and me," maybe she is referring to an America without Alaska. In any case, isn't it time the media start giving equal time to Palin's buddy list of anti-American bombers and other radical associates?

VO
Sarah Palin is an f'ing hypocrite as well as a MILF.

Military sees a future with Obama, only an aging past with McCain ...

2008-10-09T16:48:00.000-07:00

QUANTICO, Va. -- One of the largest U.S. marine bases in the world is located in Quantico, a tidy town with scant election fanfare. Everyone who lives here just assumes Republicans have a lock on the military vote. And so when Obama signs began to appear, tongues began to wag.

"At first I was worried about how my neighbors would view it," said former marine corporal Dawn Jennings, 31, who bravely put an Obama sign in the center of her front yard. Jennings told OffTheBus that Quantico is the "kind of place where they'll ask you to remove an Obama bumper sticker from your car."

Barack Obama is promising to make college affordable for all Americans, and this appeals to Jennings. "I can't imagine telling my two kids, "No college for you, because I voted for McCain." She emailed all of her military friends, encouraging them to register two new voters. "It's time to take a stand," said the marine vet. "I want us to be like Michigan -- I'd love to see John McCain quit campaigning in Virginia, too."

Jennings isn't the only Obama supporter in Quantico -- not by a long shot -- and this should raise a red flag for the McCain camp. In hotly contested states with large military populations, these voters can make an impact because they turn out to vote in higher percentages (79/64) than the general public, according to a Rand study.

John McCain assumes he has the military vote -- but does he?

Military Voter Surveys Can Be Misleading

The Military Times recently released its annual survey of subscribers, which shows McCain-Palin enjoying a commanding lead over Obama-Biden (68/23 percent). But this is not a random sample, by any stretch of the imagination. Military Times subscribers are significantly older than the active military population. Nearly half of those surveyed are retirees, and minorities are under-represented.

"Everyone I talk to wants change but on base you can't say certain things. At a bar or a party, everyone tells me they're voting for Obama," said Thomas Singleton, 27, a former military telecommunications specialist who was speaking to OffTheBus outside the National Museum of the Marine Corps. Perched on a hill in Quantico, the museum's stunning roof line can be seen for miles. Its design -- a 200-foot tilted mast atop a huge glass atrium -- was inspired by the famous Iwo Jima flag raising of World War II.

"My military friends are tired of being lied to," said Singleton. "They're told to deploy for six months, but it ends up being a year. And when they come home, they can't find a job. One of my friends is staying in the Army only because he can't find a civilian job."

The genuine patriotism these young people feel is complicated by events in Iraq, and grumblings about military miscalculations. "I was proud to go to Iraq, but when I got there all we did for weeks was play cards. We were unprepared. We had the wrong supplies," said Skye Spann, 27, a former medical specialist. "It didn't seem like we had a clear mission."

Read the rest here to find out about deployed troops giving four times the money to Obama than to McSame

Of course, some of our "friends" on the "right" will begin bloviating that the personnel quoted are not representative. Blah blah blah ... if it makes you feel better, go ahead - but don't hold your breath waiting to be correct ... on second thought, maybe you should hold your breath.

Voter purges in 6 states may violate law

2008-10-09T09:33:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK - Tens of thousands of eligible voters have been removed from rolls or blocked from registering in at least six swing states, and the voters' exclusion appears to violate federal law, according to a published report.

The New York Times based its findings on reviews of state records and Social Security data.

The Times said voters appear to have been purged by mistake and not because of any intentional violations by election officials or coordinated efforts by any party.

States have been trying to follow the Help America Vote Act of 2002 by removing the names of voters who should no longer be listed. But for every voter added to the rolls in the past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of the records shows.

Read the rest here.

The article says that neither Democrats or Republicans are particularly to blame in this. What the hell - I'm so damned accustomed to the Republicans blaming Democrats for everything that I think I'll go ahead and blame the damned Republicans for this - after all, as Karl Rove (or was it Leon Trotzky) said "A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth". F**k 'em - whether or NOT they can take a joke.

David Brooks on Sarah Palin: a "fatal cancer to the Republican party"

2008-10-08T23:02:00.000-07:00

"[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.

"Obama has the great intellect. I was interviewing Obama a couple years ago, and I'm getting nowhere with the interview, it's late in the night, he's on the phone, walking off the Senate floor, he's cranky. Out of the blue I say, 'Ever read a guy named Reinhold Niebuhr?' And he says, 'Yeah.' So i say, 'What did Niebuhr mean to you?' For the next 20 minutes, he gave me a perfect description of Reinhold Niebuhr's thought, which is a very subtle thought process based on the idea that you have to use power while it corrupts you. And I was dazzled, I felt the tingle up my knee as Chris Matthews would say.

"And the other thing that does separate Obama from just a pure intellectual: he has tremendous powers of social perception. And this is why he's a politician, not an academic. A couple of years ago, I was writing columns attacking the Republican congress for spending too much money. And I throw in a few sentences attacking the Democrats to make myself feel better. And one morning I get an email from Obama saying, 'David, if you wanna attack us, fine, but you're only throwing in those sentences to make yourself feel better.' And it was a perfect description of what was going through my mind. And everybody who knows Obama all have these stories to tell about his capacity for social perception.

Brooks predicted an Obama victory by nine points, and said that although he found Obama to be "a very mediocre senator," he was is surrounded by what Brooks called "by far the most impressive people in the Democratic party."

"He's phenomenally good at surrounding himself with a team," Brooks said. "I disagree with them on most issues, but I am given a lot of comfort by the fact that the people he's chosen are exactly the people I think most of us would want to choose if we were in his shoes. So again, I have doubts about him just because he was such a mediocre senator, but his capacity to pick staff is impressive."

sometimes "cute" isn't enough; for those times, there's Master Flow Chart ...

2008-10-08T09:07:00.000-07:00

2008-10-07T14:51:00.000-07:00

ah .. the hypocrisy ...

2008-10-06T21:11:00.000-07:00

Media Gives Palin a Pass
By Richard Cohen

Reading William Kristol's column in The New York Times, I discover that Sarah Palin and I have something in common. Kristol, who was once Dan Quayle's chief of staff and therefore, shall we say, has a Mister Rogers approach to certain politicians, got Palin on the phone and reported Monday that she does not "have a very high opinion of the mainstream media." This is where we are in agreement. On account of Palin, neither do I.

In the debate, she mischaracterized Barack Obama's tax plan and his offer to meet with foreign adversaries. She found whole new powers for the vice president by misreading the Constitution, if she ever read it at all. She called one moment for the federal government to virtually disappear and a moment later lamented the lack of its oversight of the financial markets. She asserted that she "may not answer the questions the way that either the moderator or you (Biden) want to hear" because, apparently, the rules don't apply to her on account of her being a soccer mom. Fer sure.

Not enough? OK. Palin also said that she "and others in the legislature" called for the state of Alaska to divest itself of investments in companies that do business with Sudan. But, as the indefatigable truth-hunter at The Washington Post found out, the divestiture effort was not led by Palin. In fact, her administration opposed the initiative and Palin herself only came around to it after the bill had died.

In spite of it all, much of the media saw a credible performance. I could quote the hosannas of some of my colleagues, but I spare them the infamy that will surely follow them to their graves. (The debate's moderator, Gwen Ifill, used the occasion to catch up on some sleep.) Many of them judged Palin simply as a performer and inferred that this would go over well in homes with aboveground swimming pools.

A perfect example is The Wall Street Journal, a paper whose (conservative) editorial page has been absolutely fixated on a strict (Scalian) reading of the Constitution. Did it wonder what in the world Palin meant by the authority she found in the Constitution to increase the role of "the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate"? What? Oh, never mind. The Journal chivalrously never brought up the matter. Palin is excused from knowing the limits of the office she seeks.

In effect, columnists, bloggers, talk-show hosts and digital lamplighters everywhere have adopted the ethic of the political consultant: what works, works. It did not matter what Palin said. It only mattered how she said it -- all those doggones, references to her working-class status (net worth in excess of $2 million), promiscuous use of the word "maverick," repeated mentions of "greed and corruption on Wall Street" (Who? Be specific. Give examples. Didn't anyone here go to school?) and, of course, that manic good cheer. Palin knows that the standard is not right or wrong, truth or lie, but the graph that ran under both debaters on CNN, measuring approval, disapproval or, maybe, the blood sugar levels of certain people in their focus group. Things have changed. Might used to make right. Now a wink does.

Since I began with the Times' conservative columnist of the moment, I will end with its conservative columnist of years past -- the estimable William Safire. Back in 1996, he called Hillary Clinton "a congenital liar." It was a head-snapping characterization that, alas for Clinton, has defined her for the ages and which she stubbornly vindicates from time to time.

But what about Palin? Can you imagine the reaction of the press corps if Clinton had given the audience a hi-ya-sailor wink? Can you imagine the feverish blogging across the political spectrum if Clinton had claimed credit for stopping a bridge that, in fact, had set her heart aflutter? What if she showed she didn't know squat about the Constitution, if she could not tell Katie Couric what newspapers or magazines she reads or if she claimed intimacy with foreign relations based on sighting Russia through binoculars?

Ah, but the scorn, approbation and ridicule that would have descended on Clinton -- I can just imagine the Journal editorial -- have been spared Palin. Much of the mainstream media, grading on a curve suitable for a parrot -- "greed and corruption, greed and corruption, greed and corruption " -- gave her a passing grade or better. I agree with Palin. It's the mainstream media that flunked.

Don't these Republicans realize that they don't deserve to be taken seriously until they 'fess up to being hypocrites? What a bunch of losers.

Turdblossom Speaks ...

2008-10-05T15:42:00.000-07:00

... and he says that Obama today has enough electoral college votes to be the next president of the US of A. He's no less the dick for it, however.

speaking ill of the dead?

2008-10-02T17:24:00.000-07:00

Someone said one should not speak ill of the dead. Presumably that admonition does not apply when it is the truth one speaks.

William F. Buckley was a cheap, hypocritical bastard: he expressly disinherited an undisputed grandson his son Christopher sired out of wedlock. As one commentator on the page I'm linking to asked: "would WFB have preferred that his son's paramour had aborted the child?"

NOT ONE 'BUCK'LEY FOR YOU! WILL'S WILL: GRANDSON, 8, DEAD TO ME

Ah the "rich" - giving the rich, and Catholics, a bad name every chance they get. "Rest in peace" or "good riddance"? You decide.

maybe there's something to racial profiling after all

2008-10-02T10:10:00.000-07:00

Bill Maher comments on white people:

And finally, New Rule: A candidate for president should not be judged by the color of his skin. And to - and to anyone who thinks differently, I say, please do not reject John McCain just because he's white. I think the recent news from Wall Street has made us all less tolerant, and only reinforced the stereotype that white people are shiftless, thieving welfare queens.

Now, take a look at these pictures. Here are the CEO's of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG and the Lehman Brothers. I know the first thing that jumps out about these faces is they all happen to be white, and they all happen to be responsible for stealing. But, what you have to understand is that these whites are a product of a society that made them that way.

It was the neighborhoods and the schools they went to: Harvard, Yale, the Wharton School of Business.

They never learned the value of doing real, actual work. And the first step to fixing that is better role models so kids growing up white today don't think the only way out of Westchester is corporate crime.

Or a government handout. Or sailing.

So, I get it. The temptation is to look at McCain and vote against him because you don't see an individual; you just see another typical welfare "whitey."

And it's true. He spent his entire life shuffling from one low-paying government job to another. Well, except those years he spent in prison. Typical. And, between you and me, he's not very articulate.

Oh, he may have some street smarts, but he's not what you'd call an "educated" man. He freely admits he's ignorant about the economy. And apparently the only thing his white running mate knows how to do is crank out one baby after another.

And now, of course, her teenage is pregnant out of wedlock, because she learns it at home!

But, that doesn't mean we should assume all white people are like that just because so many of them are. I believe there is hope. I believe even the stupidest, greediest, laziest whites can break the cycle of dependence, like this November when we finally move George Bush out of public housing.

Political correctness be damned ...!

Capitalism sure is fragile if subprime borrowers can ruin it

2008-10-01T22:18:00.000-07:00

The GOP Blames the Victim

Two weeks ago, I wrote that the breakdown of the nation's financial industry was undeniably a self-induced injury; that it would finally force conservatives to own up to the wrongheadedness of their deregulatory project; that they couldn't possibly blame the disaster on any of their traditional bogeymen.

But I had forgotten about conservatives' extraordinary instincts for blame-evasion. This is a movement, after all, that blandly recasts its greatest idols as traitors once their popularity has crashed; that routinely sloughs off responsibility for . . . well . . . anything since, by its logic, conservatism has never really been tried in the first place. Consider in this respect Mitt Romney's remarkable speech to the Republican convention a few weeks ago, in which he rallied his party against Washington -- a place his party has controlled, to one degree or another, for nearly three decades -- by listing the city's various institutions and crying, "It's liberal!"

Or consider the way the House Republicans torpedoed the bailout bill a few days ago. The real reason they did it was almost certainly to evade responsibility for an unpopular measure but the announced reason seemed designed to convince the nation's 7-year-olds -- because Nancy Pelosi said something mean.

On economic questions the standard exculpatory maneuver is even simpler. When some free-market scheme blows up, one needs only find an institution of government in close proximity to the wreckage and commence accusing.

Thus we hear from some on the right that the disaster on Wall Street was the handiwork not of those with unbridled pecuniary motives but of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were government-sponsored enterprises and therefore partially exempt from market discipline and of theoretical necessity the sole culprits.

THOMAS FRANK of the WSJ points out a few problems with the GOP blame-game over the sub-prime mortgage melt-down.

read the whole thing here

L-O-freaking-L!!!

2008-09-30T14:20:00.000-07:00

we just can't resist wallowing in sublime BDS-ecstasy - we just can't!!!

Those who have left us - Paul Newman

2008-09-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

Paul Newman dead at age 83

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it ...

2008-09-26T12:49:00.001-07:00

"It's a miracle!"

2008-09-25T13:18:00.000-07:00

Evolutionists Flock To Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain

Darwinic pilgrims claim the image fills them with an overwhelming feeling of logic.

DAYTON, TN—A steady stream of devoted evolutionists continued to gather in this small Tennessee town today to witness what many believe is an image of Charles Darwin—author of The Origin Of Species and founder of the modern evolutionary movement—made manifest on a concrete wall in downtown Dayton.

"I brought my baby to touch the wall, so that the power of Darwin can purify her genetic makeup of undesirable inherited traits," said Darlene Freiberg, one among a growing crowd assembled here to see the mysterious stain, which appeared last Monday on one side of the Rhea County Courthouse. The building was also the location of the famed "Scopes Monkey Trial" and is widely considered one of Darwinism's holiest sites. "Forgive me, O Charles, for ever doubting your Divine Evolution. After seeing this miracle of limestone pigmentation with my own eyes, my faith in empirical reasoning will never again be tested."

Added Freiberg, "Behold the power and glory of the scientific method!"

Since witnesses first reported the unexplained marking—which appears to resemble a 19th-century male figure with a high forehead and large beard—this normally quiet town has become a hotbed of biological zealotry. Thousands of pilgrims from as far away as Berkeley's paleoanthropology department have flocked to the site to lay wreaths of flowers, light devotional candles, read aloud from Darwin's works, and otherwise pay homage to the mysterious blue-green stain.

Capitalizing on the influx of empirical believers, street vendors have sprung up across Dayton, selling evolutionary relics and artwork to the thousands of pilgrims waiting to catch a glimpse of the image. Available for sale are everything from small wooden shards alleged to be fragments of the "One True Beagle"—the research vessel on which Darwin made his legendary voyage to the Galapagos Islands—to lecture notes purportedly touched by English evolutionist Alfred Russel Wallace.

"I have never felt closer to Darwin's ideas," said zoologist Fred Granger, who waited in line for 16 hours to view the stain. "May his name be praised and his theories on natural selection echo in all the halls of naturalistic observation forever."

Despite the enthusiasm the so-called "Darwin Smudge" has generated among the evolutionary faithful, disagreement remains as to its origin. Some believe the image is actually closer to the visage of Stephen Jay Gould, longtime columnist for Natural History magazine and originator of the theory of punctuated equilibrium, and is therefore proof of rapid cladogenesis. A smaller minority contend it is the face of Carl Sagan, and should be viewed as a warning to those nonbelievers who have not yet seen his hit PBS series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.

Still others have attempted to discredit the miracle entirely, claiming that there are several alternate explanations for the appearance of the unexplained discoloration.

"It's a stain on a wall, and nothing more," said the Rev. Clement McCoy, a professor at Oral Roberts University and prominent opponent of evolutionary theory. "Anything else is the delusional fantasy of a fanatical evolutionist mindset that sees only what it wishes to see in the hopes of validating a baseless, illogical belief system. I only hope these heretics see the error of their ways before our Most Powerful God smites them all in His vengeance."

But those who have made the long journey to Dayton remain steadfast in their belief that natural selection—a process by which certain genes are favored over others less conducive to survival—is the one and only creator of life as we know it. This stain, they claim, is the proof they have been waiting for.

"To those who would deny that genetic drift is responsible for a branching evolutionary tree of increasing biodiversity amid changing ecosystems, we say, 'Look upon the face of Darwin!'" said Jeanette Cosgrove, who, along with members of her microbiology class, has maintained a candlelight vigil at the site for the past 72 hours.

"Over millions of successive generations, a specific subvariant of one species of slime mold adapted to this particular concrete wall, in order to one day form this stain, and thus make manifest this vision of Darwin's glorious countenance," Cosgrove said, overcome with emotion.

"It's a miracle," she added.

Quiz from Maggie's Farm (courtesy of Villainous Company)

2008-09-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

1. Which of the following countries had the highest economic growth since 2000?

a. France
b. Japan
c. Germany
d. U.S.A.

2. Which of the following countries has the highest GDP per capita?

a. U.K.
b. Germany
c. Japan
d. U.S.A.

3. Which of the following countries had the highest household consumption in 2005?

a. U.K.
b. Canada
c. France
d. U.S.A.

4. Which country spends the most per capita on health services?

a. U.K.
b. Germany
c. Canada
d. U.S.A.

5. What percentage of the U.S.A.’s population is covered by health insurance?

a. 55%
b. 65%
c. 75%
d. 85%

6. In which of the following countries does the richest 20% of households have the highest share of national income?

a. U.S.A.
b. U.K.
c. Israel
d. 65 other countries

7. Which of the following countries had the highest investment per capita in fixed assets in 2005?

a. Germany
b. U.K.
c. China
d. U.S.A.

8. Which period had the lowest unemployment rate?

a. Euro Zone (2000 – 2008)
b. Reagan Presidency
c. Clinton Presidency
d. Bush Presidency

9. Which period had the lowest debt interest payments as percentage of GDP?

a. Euro Zone (2001 – 2008)
b. Reagan Presidency
c. Clinton Presidency
d. Bush Presidency

Here are the answers and sources:

1. d. U.S.A (from the IMF)
2. d. U.S.A. (World Bank)
3. d. U.S.A. (World Bank)
4. d. U.S.A. (WSJ 9-3-08)
5. d. 85% (U.S. Census Bureau)
6. d. 65 other countries (World Bank)
7. d. U.S.A. (World Bank)
8. d. Bush Presidency (Department of Labor)
9. d. Bush Presidency (IMF)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

And our own addition to the quiz:

10. Which period had the highest per capita debt and interest payments ?

1. Barak Obama presidency (2009 – 2016) - still paying off Bush's war debt for Operation Iraqi Liberation

2. Michelle Obama presidency (2017 – 2021) - still paying off Bush's war debt for Operation Iraqi Liberation

3. Chelsea Clinton Presidency (2022-2030) - still paying off Bush's war debt for Operation Iraqi Liberation

4. Sasha Obama Presidency (2031-2039) - still paying off Bush's war debt for Operation Iraqi Liberation

5. Robert F. Kennedy IV Presidency (2040-2048) - still paying off Bush's war debt for Operation Iraqi Liberation

Bush Administration Lobbyies For Corporate Socialism

2008-09-23T16:52:00.000-07:00

Congress Not Swayed By Bush Administration Pleas Of Catastrophe on Big Bailout

Refusing to be pushed, Republicans and Democrats alike rebuffed dire warnings Tuesday from the government's top economic officials of recession, layoffs and foreclosed homes if Congress doesn't quickly approve the administration's emergency $700 billion financial bailout plan.

Congressional leaders still predicted passage — with significant changes — but Wall Street's nerves were hardly soothed. The Dow Jones industrials sank 161 points and now are off more than 500 this week after initially surging on the bailout announcement last week.

Deepening market trouble was just one piece of the economic havoc that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told senators would ensue if Congress lags in acting on the administration's proposal to rescue tottering financial institutions.

"I share the outrage that people have," Paulson said. "It's embarrassing to look at this. I think it's embarrassing to the United States of America. There is a lot of blame to go around."

But without the bailout plan, Paulson and Bernanke sketched out a dire scenario for senators at a contentious daylong hearing: Neither businesses nor consumers would be able to borrow money, and the world's largest economy would grind to a virtual halt.

In public and in private meetings, both Democrats and Republicans said big changes are needed, presaging a difficult road ahead for the measure.

The legislation the administration is promoting would allow the government to buy bad mortgages and other rotten assets held by troubled banks and financial institutions. Getting those debts off their books should bolster those companies' balance sheets, making them more inclined to lend and easing one of the biggest choke points in the credit crisis. If the plan works, it should help lift a major weight off the national economy that is already sputtering.

Democrats were determined to wrest concessions from the administration on domestic spending and middle-class economic aid. And they said Republicans had to share in the politically tricky task of pushing through a financial bailout six weeks before the elections at a time when millions of everyday Americans are economically strapped.

"It's their problem. It's their bill. And they're going to have to figure out if they can support it," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said of Republicans.

"Nobody wants to have to do this," agreed Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader. He said he was hopeful of a quick agreement, despite withering criticism from conservative GOP lawmakers who recoiled at the prospect of federal intervention.

Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., said, "This massive bailout is not a solution. It is financial socialism and it's un-American."

Read the rest here.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

2008-09-22T16:13:00.000-07:00

Ex-Official: $9 Billion in Iraq Reconstruction Funds Lost to Fraud

A former top Iraqi official told U.S. senators today that roughly $9 billion in American money meant for reconstruction projects was involved in waste, fraud and abuse.

Salom Adhoob, a former chief investigator at Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity -- which is considered the equivalent of the FBI in the United States -- said at a hearing of the Democratic Policy Committee today that he and his agency had done investigations showing the money was misused in fraud and abuse. In one case, he said the Iraqi Ministry of Defense helped create front companies to funnel the money.

So much for Republican fiscal management and responsibility. The $9 billion could be lost to bribes, embezzlement, theft, ... who knows. I doubt that the Bush administration or the Pentagon or any of those responsible for putting the USA into this war will lift a finger to explain this mismanagement.

Read the rest here.

Hypocrisy Alert

2008-09-22T08:41:00.000-07:00

Over at "Villainous Company", the self-proclaimed "princess" has her panties in a bunch over Obama, AGAIN, lambasting him for one thing and another, doing her articulate best to portray him as a smearer of ... stuff you smear, a liar, a Führer of digital brownshirts, a ghost-producer and/or financier of YouTube videos.

In typical "princess" fashion, Cass remarks that "This is not to deny that McCain deserves much of the criticism he has received for his distortions about Obama. But not all of it." She is never one to direct her readers' attention to McCain's distortions, or the distortions worked by other Rethugs - Cass's term, mind you, not ours.

She is also not one to acknowledge the on-going Rethug hypocrisy of blasting Obama (and the Dems generally) on their positions on abortion (with which, BTW, HSD is in some disagreement), when it is an acknowledged fact that the Rethugs will NEVER do anything to reduce the availability of abortion in America (besides palaver and cast aspersions) because too many Republican voters think abortion should be a matter of choice between a woman and her doctor. The Rethugs long ago sold their souls to Satan on this issue, however, in exchange for his promise to deliver the Evangelical/Christian/Christianist vote ... . and they hypocritically (quelle surprise!) avoid discussion of practical means of helping women avoid pregnancy.

More on this once we have a chance to go back and rifle through Big Brother's, uh ... VC's ... dusty archives for past pronouncements of princess-ly poppycock.

FLASH: Rethugs Not the Only Prevaricators *

2008-09-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

Closing the Whopper Gap

The symmetry of sin is suddenly looking more equal. Last week, I flayed John McCain for dishonesty -- flagrant and repeated dishonesty -- about Barack Obama's proposals. Obama was by no means blameless, I argued, but his lapses were nowhere near as egregious as his opponent's. I stand by everything I wrote.

But a series of new Obama attacks requires a rebalancing of the scales: Obama has descended to similarly scurrilous tactics on the stump and on the air. On immigration, Obama is running a Spanish-language ad that unfairly lumps McCain together with Rush Limbaugh -- and quotes Limbaugh out of context. On health care, Obama misleadingly accuses McCain of wanting to impose a $3.6 trillion tax hike on employer-provided insurance.

Obama has been furthest out of line, however, on Social Security, stooping to the kind of scare tactics he once derided.

Read it and weep, gentle readers ... here.

* Of course, the Rethugs have perfected the art of prevarication, and the Dems are still apprentices.

Bone-Headed American Attitude to Foreign Languages Results In Lack of Military Preparedness

2008-09-21T22:26:00.000-07:00

For Military, Slow Progress in Foreign Language Push

WASHINGTON — Three years ago, the Defense Department set out to increase sharply the number of military personnel who speak strategically important languages. Progress has been slow, and the military has not determined how to reach its goal — or what exactly that goal is.

Figures from the department indicate that only 1.2 percent of the military receives a bonus paid to those who can speak languages judged to be of critical importance for the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as other areas of strategic concern.

The military has struggled for years to develop a clear objective for language training.

In July, at a hearing of the House subcommittee charged with assessing the military’s progress in language training, the chairman, Representative Vic Snyder, Democrat of Arkansas, said: “I think the Pentagon has a sense that they’re moving in the right direction. I just don’t think they have a sense yet of what that endpoint is.”

John Nagl, a retired lieutenant colonel who is co-author of the Army’s new counterinsurgency field manual, said in an interview that the military had been moving too slowly, and he questioned the military’s assertion that language needs were difficult to assess since they were subject to changing global security conditions.

The military by now should “have a pretty good idea of what countries we’re fighting in,” he said.

Dr. Nagl, a fellow with the Center for a New American Security, said the Army understood the value of having more foreign language speakers in its ranks. But, he said, it had not “done the math on what it means” and had yet to “build the programs and provide the leader development to get there.”

Read the rest of this discouraging story here.

Time Mag says "McCain Plays the Race Card"

2008-09-19T13:07:00.001-07:00

You decide.

When politicians interject race into a campaign, they seldom do it directly. Consider McCain's new ad, which the campaign says it will be airing nationally:

When politicians interject race into a campaign, they seldom do it directly. Consider McCain's new ad, which the campaign says it will be airing nationally:

This is hardly subtle: Sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman.

Let me stipulate: Obama's Fannie Mae connections are completely fair game. But this ad doesn't even mention a far more significant tie--that of Jim Johnson, the former Fannie Mae chairman who had to resign as head of Obama's vice presidential search team after it was revealed he got a sweetheart deal on a mortgage from Countrywide Financial. Instead, it relies on a fleeting and tenuous reference in a Washington Post Style section story to suggest that Obama's principal economic adviser is former Fannie Mae Chairman Frank Raines. Why? One reason might be that Johnson is white; Raines is black.

And the image of the victim doesn't seem accidental either, given the fact that older white women are a key swing constituency in this election.

After the McCain campaign introduced the ad, the Obama campaign responded with this statement:

Statement from Frank Raines on the ad: "I am not an advisor to Barack Obama, nor have I provided his campaign with advice on housing or economic matters."

"This is another flat-out lie from a dishonorable campaign that is increasingly incapable of telling the truth. Frank Raines has never advised Senator Obama about anything -- ever. And by the way, someone whose campaign manager and top advisor worked and lobbied for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shouldn't be throwing stones from his seven glass houses," said Obama-Biden campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

At Politico, Ben Smith reports:

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers notes that Obama didn't contradict the claim when it first appeared in the Post.

But that's not really the point of the ad, is it?

UPDATE: The McCain campaign has now put out an ad on Jim Johnson. Please see my post above.

Time's author says she has updated her post, but I couldn't find it. Maybe you can.

So ... what do YOU think?

WSJ Slams McCain for Conduct Unbecoming a President

2008-09-19T13:07:00.000-07:00

McCain's Scapegoat

John McCain has made it clear this week he doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does. But on Thursday, he took his populist riffing up a notch and found his scapegoat for financial panic -- Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

To give readers a flavor of Mr. McCain untethered, we'll quote at length:

"Mismanagement and greed became the operating standard while regulators were asleep at the switch. The primary regulator of Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) kept in place trading rules that let speculators and hedge funds turn our markets into a casino. They allowed naked short selling -- which simply means that you can sell stock without ever owning it. They eliminated last year the uptick rule that has protected investors for 70 years. Speculators pounded the shares of even good companies into the ground.

"The chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the President and has betrayed the public's trust. If I were President today, I would fire him."

Wow. "Betrayed the public's trust." Was Mr. Cox dishonest? No. He merely changed some minor rules, and didn't change others, on short-selling. String him up! Mr. McCain clearly wants to distance himself from the Bush Administration. But this assault on Mr. Cox is both false and deeply unfair. It's also un-Presidential.

Take "naked" shorting, in which an investor sells a stock short -- betting that it will fall in price -- without first borrowing the shares he is selling from an investor who owns them. The SEC has never condoned the practice, and since 2005 it has clamped down on short selling in any stock that shows evidence of naked shorting. The SEC further tightened its rules against naked shorting just hours before Mr. McCain excoriated Mr. Cox for doing nothing.

Read the original here.

NEWS FLASH!! Palin for President; McCain for Vice-President!

2008-09-18T15:45:00.000-07:00

Gov. Sarah Palin is now talking about "a Palin and McCain administration."

We knew it would come to this: you just can't keep a food womyn down.

candidates flummoxed by meltdown - news at 11 - not

2008-09-18T08:39:00.003-07:00

Financial crisis fails to get its just due with TV talking heads

It's hard to know where to start in dissecting the inane debate on the economic crisis that has dominated the presidential race in recent days.

Commentators, particularly of the cable television variety, have probed Sarah Palin's (suspect) chops for running a Fortune 500 company, recounted John McCain's (nonexistent) role in inventing the BlackBerry and repeated Barack Obama's (nebulous) bleatings about "change."

Armed with these scraps of near-news, horse-race junkies -- like the terminally hopped-up Chris Matthews of MSNBC -- then launched new rounds of soulless palavering.

Can Obama capture economically disadvantaged whites? Is the bloom off the Palin rose? Can Washington veteran McCain sell himself as a populist reformer? Can Jill Biden dance the samba?

OK, no one actually raised that last one. But they might as well have, given the substance-lite quality of the political coverage as the nation faces its most unsettling financial storm in memory.

Click title above to read the whole thing ... or here if it is too much trouble to scroll back up

The Lying Game

2008-09-18T08:39:00.002-07:00

Time's Joe Klein says McCain is lying. Miss Dispepsia says he's not, but Obama is. Obama's said says McCain is lying. "Historians" are saying that McCain's campaign is not the sleaziest. Stoneman says McCain is lying. It looks like the National Review is splitting hairs.

Bristol-Levi Watch

2008-09-18T08:39:00.001-07:00

A report from the Sarah Palin pep-rally at the Anchorage convention center on Saturday September 13, 2008:

... sitting three-quarters of the way up the bleacher was Bristol Palin and her eighteen-year-old impregnator, Levi Johnston. Once I noticed them, I kept my eye on Bristol and Levi. What I learned provoked an odd empathy for the awful pickle Wasilla High School's hockey stick wielding homeboy now finds himself in.

Bristol and Levi sat shoulder-to-shoulder. But not once did they look at each other, speak to each other, or in any way acknowledge each other's physical presence. Not once. For an entire hour. Instead, Bristol stared straight ahead and Levi had the glazed look of a trapped feral animal.

Then when Sarah wound up her autograph signing and the people sitting in front of him on the bleacher began climbing down, Levi stood up and, without looking at or speaking to his betrothed, turned in the opposite direction and walked away.

What I took away from that is that the People Magazine spin about how excited the happy couple is about their upcoming nuptials and Levi's "Bristol" finger tattoo is the Karl Rovian nonsense that anyone who thinks about it for a scintilla of a second intuitively knows that it is. If McCain-Palin lose, my easy bet is that there will be no nuptials. But if they win, the hand Levi dealt himself by having had the poor luck to knock up the daughter of the Vice President of the United States (at the time who could have known?) will have to be played out.

Pader Johnston has disconnected the Johnston family's land line. So I can't call him to ask what kind of deal he cut. But if Levi was my kid, the deal I would have cut would, at an absolute minimum, have been: $500,000 for from now to the November election. If McCain-Palin win, a $ 1 million signing bonus to take the trip down the aisle. Then, for the duration of the McCain-Palin administration, $100,000 a month for every month Mr. and Mrs. Johnston live under the same roof, and $50,000 a month for every month that they remain married but do not.

That's chump change for the RNC. And if, in the best case for the nation, it turns out to be only a $500,000 payday for sixty days of work, that's a life changing grubstake for an eighteen-year-old kid and more than enough to enable Levi to make his child support payments.

Read the original: From pep rallies to secret emails to Troopergate, a Sarah Palin primer

American legal influence is waning

2008-09-18T08:39:00.000-07:00

U.S. Court Is Now Guiding Fewer Nations

WASHINGTON — Judges around the world have long looked to the decisions of the United States Supreme Court for guidance, citing and often following them in hundreds of their own rulings since the Second World War.

But now American legal influence is waning. Even as a debate continues in the court over whether its decisions should ever cite foreign law, a diminishing number of foreign courts seem to pay attention to the writings of American justices.

“One of our great exports used to be constitutional law,” said Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. “We are losing one of the greatest bully pulpits we have ever had.”

from one of our correspondents ...

2008-09-17T13:03:00.000-07:00

I'm a little confused...

* If you're a minority and you're selected for a job over more qualified candidates you're a "token hire."

** If you're a conservative and you're selected for a job over more qualified candidates you're a "game changer."

* Black teen pregnancies? A "crisis" in black America.

** White teen pregnancies? A "blessed event."

* If you grow up in Hawaii you're "exotic."

** Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you're the quintessential "American story."

* Similarly, if you name you kid Barack you're "unpatriotic."

** Name your kid Track, you're "colorful."

* If you're a Democrat and you make a VP pick without fully vetting the individual you're "reckless."

** A Republican who doesn't fully vet is a "maverick."

* If you spend 3 years as a community organizer growing your organization from a staff of 1 to 13 and your budget from $70,000 to $400,000, then become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new African American voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, then spend nearly 8 more years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, becoming chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, then spend nearly 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of nearly 13 million people, sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you are woefully inexperienced.

** If you spend 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, then spend 20 months as the governor of a state with 650,000 people, then you've got the most executive experience of anyone on either ticket, are the Commander in Chief of the Alaska military and are well qualified to lead the nation should you be called upon to do so because your state is the closest state to Russia.

* If you are a Democratic male candidate who is popular with millions of people you are an "arrogant celebrity" or "uppity".

** If you are a popular republican female candidate you are "energizing the base".

* If you are a younger male candidate who thinks for himself and makes his own decisions you are "presumptuous".

** If you are an older male candidate who makes last minute decisions you refuse to explain, you are a "shoot from the hip" maverick.

* If you are a candidate with a Harvard law degree you are "an elitist-out of touch" with the real America.

** If you are a legacy (dad and granddad were admirals) graduate 5th from the bottom ranking from Annapolis, with multiple disciplinary infractions you are a hero.

* If you manage a multi-million dollar nationwide campaign, you are an "empty suit".

** If you are a part time mayor of a town of 7000 people, you are an "experienced executive".

* If you go to a south side Chicago church, your beliefs are "extremist".

** If you believe in creationism and don't believe global warming is man made, you are "strongly principled".

* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

** If you have been married to the same woman with whom you've been wed to for 19 years and raising 2 beautiful daughters with, you're "risky".

* If you're a black single mother of 4 who waits for 22 hours after her water breaks to seek medical attention, you're an irresponsible parent, endangering the life of your unborn child.

** But if you're a white married mother who waits 22 hours, you're spunky.

* If you're a 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton, the right-wing press calls you "First dog."

** If you're a 17-year old pregnant unwed daughter of a Republican, the right-wing press calls you "beautiful" and "courageous."

* If you kill an endangered species, you're an excellent hunter.

** If you have an abortion you're not a Christian, you're a murderer (forget about it if it is the result of raped or incest.)

* If you teach abstinence only in sex education, you get teen parents.

** If you teach responsible age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

a little simplistic, but you get the point!

Color us cynical ...

2008-09-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

A team of British and American scientists has found, in the first large study of humans exposed to a chemical widely used in everyday plastics, that people with higher levels of bisphenol A, also known as BPA, had higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and liver abnormalities. The research, "Association of Urinary Bisphenol A Concentration With Medical Disorders and Laboratory Abnormalities in Adults" and "Bisphenol A and Risk of Metabolic Disorders" is being published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The North American Metal Packaging Alliance, which represents can manufacturers, has already dismissed the JAMA study article as an "unsubstantiated scientific leap" and called for additional research.

The Food and Drug Administration is holding a public hearing today in Rockville to discuss whether BPA is safe for continued use in food packaging and liquid containers. Despite more than 100 studies by government-funded scientists and university laboratories that have linked BPA exposure to health effects in animals, the FDA has deemed it safe, largely on the basis of two studies funded by the chemical industry.

Color us cynical, but we’re not holding our breath wondering whether the Bush Administration will provide a cheerleading section for the packaging industry’s certain rejection of the findings: we’re only wondering what color the cheerleaders’ outfits will be – probably grey pinstripe, white shirt, and red tie.

So-Called Conservatives Are Turning Away From Palin

2008-09-16T10:12:00.000-07:00

David Brooks is doing it. Ross Douthat is doing it. Richard Cohen is doing it. Carly Fiorina is doing it.

If the birds and the bees can do it, I guess conservatives can do it too.

Are the Wingnuts onto something, or are they just working themselves into a new paranoid frenzy?

2008-09-15T09:48:00.000-07:00

A new wingnut frenzy is rolling across the internets - Amir Taheri is accusing Barack Obama of having attempted, for political purposes, to meddle in American foreign policy during his recent trip to Iraq: chiming in with the same refrain are "Betsy Newmark", who styles herself "an AP history and government teacher in Raleigh, NC", and Cassandra over at Villainous Company, who describes herself as "a dyspeptic Marine wife/tech wench". Betsy links to Amir Taheri to support her accusation; Cass links to Betsy to support hers.

Amir Taheri does not have the greatest track record for truthfulness, however, so it remains to be seen whether this is legit, or just more so-called conservative foaming at the mouth. We'll leave our fuzzy-headed knee-jerk liberal inclinations to the side for the moment, and let this story develop over the next few days.

Oy gevalt! There is no rest for the weary blogger! Even John McCain is being accused of violating the Logan Act (18 U.S.C.A. § 953 [1948]). The Logan Act is a federal statute making it a crime for a citizen to confer with foreign governments against the interests of the United States. Specifically, it prohibits citizens from negotiating with other nations on behalf of the United States without authorization.

Click here for other info on Amir Taheri, and here and here.

Well, dear reader, it looks as though (if my sources check out) Obama did not violate the Logan Act. Here, in a discussion of the similar claim made against Nancy "She Needs To Grow a Pair" Pelosi:

The Logan Act, originally enacted in 1799 and amended in 1994, prohibits unauthorized U.S. citizens from interfering in relations between the United States and foreign governments. Despite numerous judicial references to the Act, the Congressional Research Service has discovered no prosecutions under the Logan Act in its more than 200 years of existence. It has, however, served as the basis for several political challenges, not unlike those now being launched against Speaker Pelosi.

In 1975, Senators John Sparkman and George McGovern were accused of violating the Logan Act when they traveled to Cuba and met with Cuban officials. In considering that case, the U.S. Department of State declared:

"The clear intent of this provision [Logan Act] is to prohibit unauthorized persons from intervening in disputes between the United States and foreign governments. Nothing in section 953 [Logan Act], however, would appear to restrict members of the Congress from engaging in discussions with foreign officials in pursuance of their legislative duties under the Constitution. In the case of Senators McGovern and Sparkman the executive branch, although it did not in any way encourage the Senators to go to Cuba , was fully informed of the nature and purpose of their visit, and had validated their passports for travel to that country."

The circumstances of Speaker Pelosi's trip to Syria were similar. The Bush administration was well aware of the "nature and purpose" of the proposed trip, and while President Bush discouraged it and is now harshly criticizing it, the executive branch took no action to prevent Pelosi from leaving the country. Indeed, the White House has not mentioned the Logan Act in relationship to Pelosi's trip.

Some other Americans accused of, but never prosecuted for violating the Logan Act include Ross Perot for his efforts to locate U.S. POWs in Southeast Asia and former Speaker of the House Jim Wright for his relations with the Sandinista government. In 1984, Reverend Jessie Jackson's trips to Syria, Cuba and Nicaragua drew accusations of Logan Act violations from President Reagan. And who can forget Jane Fonda's many controversial trips to Southeast Asia in protest of the Vietnam War? Yet, as far as the Congressional Research Service has been able to determine, no American has ever been prosecuted under the Logan Act.

It will be interesting to see what those accusing Obama of violating the Logan Act come up with to prove their accusations. I'm guessing that BHO received permission from the US Government to make his visit, and was probably briefed on the situation before he went. Having temporarily tranquilized my fuzzy-headed jerking knee, however, I welcome any information on this point.

Update: Wingnuts all over have just got their panties in such a bunch over this. If it weren't so infuriating watching them vent their mostly ignorant spleens, it would be enormously entertaining watching them work themselves into a state of unbridled hysteria. I suspect that their motive in this, apart from ODS, is to distract themselves and their readers from the fact that their candidates are doing so poorly overall.

RFK Jr. comments on Sarah Palin's book list

2008-09-15T08:57:00.000-07:00

Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that "some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in pubic premises before the snow flies."

Following the Palin acceptance speech New York Times columnist Frank Rich provided an analysis of the political significance of quoting Pegler. Mr. Rich noted that "Pegler was a rabid Joe McCarthyite who loathed F.D.R. and Ike and tirelessly advanced the theory that American Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe (“geese,” he called them) were all likely Communists." He suggested that Palin's use of a quote from "once powerful right-wing Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler" was intended to send a subtle but unmistakable signal to far right wing supporters.

We are not necessarily individually guilty of the crimes or offenses of the writers we admire. On the other hand, some people deserve NOT to be encouraged, and either to be shunned or to be mentioned or quoted only with qualifiers that point out that not everything the writer has said or done is worthy of admiration. Without knowing more about the depth of Palin's admiration for Pegler (and frankly, having heard other things about and from Palin causes me to wonder how much she's even read Pegler or whether some "handler" simply gave her a line to use) I have some trouble tarring her with the "Pegler-spattered brains brush".

On the other hand, running for presidential office is serious business and that warrants one being careful about what one says, especially with everybody hanging on every word, looking for slip-ups (slips-up?). I'm willing, on reflection to revise somewhat my previous comment that this Pegler business qualifies Sarah Palin as an f'ing crazy whacko. I still think she's a whacko though, for other substantive reasons.

... I can see Russia from my house!

2008-09-14T15:37:00.001-07:00

more on "Sarah the Barracuda"

2008-09-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

Andrys Basten's blog has a lot of links to internet info regarding Sarah the Barracuda you might want to check out.

Who Gets To Decide What's "Fair"?

2008-09-12T08:56:00.000-07:00

One of the more articulate wingnuts out there is again dredging up that tired old meme about "Supreme Court justices [throwing] out what the Constitution has to say when formulating rulings and [substituting] their individual sense of 'fairness'", suggesting (yawn) that in doing so, they'd be "substituting their individual policy preferences for those of our duly elected leaders in the state and federal legislatures?"

What the self-proclaimed "blog princess" continues to ignore (it's got to be intentional, because otherwise she's a pretty sharp cookie) is that some of the greatest advances in freedom in this country have come from judicial decisions that acknowledged that there are fundamental values woven into the Constitution that are not necessarily spelled out in it (and that in the past have even been specifically denied in it) that rise above the four corners of the document and raise us up above most other countries in the world as better people and better citizens.

It's popular among certain commentators to suggest that so-called "activist judges" took constitutional power away from "the people" when they decided Brown v. the Board of Education, Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe v. Wade (admittedly a difficult case), Lawrence v. Texas. A number of other cases could also be cited (and when I get the time, maybe I will). Why does it seem, however, that the examples given by these same commentators usually have to do with protecting some political minority from the efforts of a political or religious majority to suppress the minority's "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness".

These are complex issues, for sure, but oversimplifying them does nobody any good. As a constitutional scholar one told me "for every problem there is a simple and erroneous solution". People on the left and the right are guilty of oversimplification. Some of us expect more, however, and we are entitled to more.

Lipstick on a Wing Nut

2008-09-11T23:09:00.000-07:00

By Katha Pollitt

This article appeared in the September 29, 2008 edition of The Nation.

John McCain chose the supremely under-qualified Sarah Palin as his running mate partly because she is a woman. If you have a problem with that, you're a sexist. She talks incessantly about being a mother of five and uses her newborn, Trig, who has Down syndrome, as a campaign prop. If you wonder how she'll handle all those kids and the Veep job too, you're a super-sexist. "When do they ever ask a man that question?" charges that fiery feminist Rudy Giuliani. Indeed, Palin, who went back to work when Trig was three days old, gets nothing but praise from Phyllis Schlafly, James Dobson and the folks at National Review, who usually blame all the ills of modern America on those neurotic, harried, selfish, frustrated, child-neglecting, husband-castrating working mothers. Even stranger, her five-months-pregnant 17-year-old, Bristol, gets nothing but compassion and respect from Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and others who have spent their careers slut-shaming teens for having sex--and blaming their parents for letting it happen.

If there were an Olympics for hypocrisy, the Republican Party would have more gold medals than Michael Phelps. And Palin would be wearing quite a few of them. It takes chutzpah for a mother to thrust her pregnant teen into the world's harshest spotlight and then demand the world respect the girl's privacy. But then it takes chutzpah to support criminalizing abortion and then praise Bristol's "decision" to have the baby. The right to decide, and privacy, after all, are two of the things Palin wants to deny every other woman, and every other family, in America. Palin's even said she would "choose life" if her daughter was pregnant from rape. Can't you just hear Bristol groaning, "Mo-om...!"

The Republicans bashed Barack Obama as a "celebrity," but now they've got a star of their own, so naturally the rules have changed. Nothing would suit them better than for the media to spend the next two months spellbound by the wacky carnival on ice that is the Palin family: Todd, aka the First Dude, the kids, Levi the hunky bad-boy dad-to-be--well, maybe not him so much after his expletive-adorned MySpace page briefly came to light ("I'm a fuckin' redneck"; "I don't want kids"--whoops). The snowmobiles, the moose burgers, the guns, the hair, the glasses that are flying off America's shelves (starting at $375 a pair, and she has seven). Fretting over the work/family issue alone should take up enough column inches to employ all the female journalists in America from now to next Mother's Day. And don't forget that op-ed staple, What Does This Mean for Feminism?

Well, I'm not playing. I don't care about Sarah Palin's family. I don't care if she's a good mother. I don't care if she's happily married, or who shops and who vacuums, or who takes care of the kids while both parents are at work. I don't want her recipe for caribou hot dogs, either. Life chez Sarah and Todd might make an adorable sitcom (Leave It to Jesus?) or a scathing tell-all a decade or so down the road (Governor Dearest?). Either way, so what? This is an election, not The View. As for feminism's meaning, what can you say after you've said that her career shows that even right-wing fundamentalist women have taken in feminism's message of empowerment and that's good, but that Palin's example suggests women can do it all without support from society and that's bad?

Count me as a feminist who never believed that being PTA president meant you could be, well, President. The more time we spend on dippy ruminations--how does she do it? Queen Bee on steroids or the hockey mom next door? how hot is Todd, anyway?--the less focus there will be on the kind of queries that should come first with any vice presidential candidate, and certainly would if Palin were a man. Questions like:

§ Suppose your 14-year-old daughter Willow is brutally raped in her bedroom by an intruder. She becomes pregnant and wants an abortion. Could you tell the parents of America why you think your child and their children should be forced by law to have their rapists' babies?

§ You say you don't believe global warming is man-made. Could you tell us what scientists you've spoken with or read who have led you to that conclusion? What do you think the 2,500 scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are getting wrong?

§ If you didn't try to fire Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Baker over her refusal to consider censoring books, why did you try to fire her?

§ What is the European Union, and how does it function?

§ Forty-seven million Americans lack health insurance. John Goodman, who has advised McCain on healthcare, has proposed redefining them as covered because, he says, anyone can get care at an ER. Do you agree with him?

§ What is the function of the Federal Reserve?

§ Cindy and John McCain say you have experience in foreign affairs because Alaska is next to Russia. When did you last speak with Prime Minister Putin, and what did you talk about?

§ Approximately how old is the earth? Five thousand years? 10,000? 5 billion?

§ You are a big fan of President Bush, so why didn't you mention him even once in your convention speech?

§ McCain says cutting earmarks and waste will make up for revenues lost by making the tax cuts permanent. Experts say that won't wash. Balancing the Bush tax cuts plus new ones proposed by McCain would most likely mean cutting Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Which would you cut?

§ You're suing the federal government to have polar bears removed from the endangered species list, even as Alaska's northern coastal ice is melting and falling into the sea. Can you explain the science behind your decision?

§ You've suggested that God approves of the Iraq War and the Alaska pipeline. How do you know?

About Katha Pollitt

Pollitt's writing has appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Ms. and the New York Times. her most recent collection of Nation columns is "Virginity or Death!." Her volume of personal essays, Learning to Drive and Other Life Stories, has just come out from Random House. For more, visit her web site at www.kathapollitt.com. more...

She's fu*king crazy ...

2008-09-11T22:42:00.000-07:00

EXCERPTS: Charlie Gibson Interviews Sarah Palin
Republican VP Candidate Speaks with ABC News' Charlie Gibson in Exclusive Interview

Sept. 11, 2008—

The following excerpts are from the ABC News exclusive interview with Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in Fairbanks, Alaska, conducted by "World News" anchor Charlie Gibson on September 11, 2008

Sarah Palin on Experience:

GIBSON: Governor, let me start by asking you a question that I asked John McCain about you, and it is really the central question. Can you look the country in the eye and say "I have the experience and I have the ability to be not just vice president, but perhaps president of the United States of America?"

PALIN: I do, Charlie, and on January 20, when John McCain and I are sworn in, if we are so privileged to be elected to serve this country, will be ready. I'm ready.

GIBSON: And you didn't say to yourself, "Am I experienced enough? Am I ready? Do I know enough about international affairs? Do I -- will I feel comfortable enough on the national stage to do this?"

PALIN: I didn't hesitate, no.

GIBSON: Didn't that take some hubris?

PALIN: I -- I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can't blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we're on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can't blink.

So I didn't blink then even when asked to run as his running mate.

GIBSON: But this is not just reforming a government. This is also running a government on the huge international stage in a very dangerous world. When I asked John McCain about your national security credentials, he cited the fact that you have commanded the Alaskan National Guard and that Alaska is close to Russia. Are those sufficient credentials?

PALIN: But it is about reform of government and it's about putting government back on the side of the people, and that has much to do with foreign policy and national security issues Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy, that I worked on as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, overseeing the oil and gas development in our state to produce more for the United States.

GIBSON: I know. I'm just saying that national security is a whole lot more than energy.

PALIN: It is, but I want you to not lose sight of the fact that energy is a foundation of national security. It's that important. It's that significant.

GIBSON: Did you ever travel outside the country prior to your trip to Kuwait and Germany last year?

PALIN: Canada, Mexico, and then, yes, that trip, that was the trip of a lifetime to visit our troops in Kuwait and stop and visit our injured soldiers in Germany. That was the trip of a lifetime and it changed my life.

GIBSON: Have you ever met a foreign head of state?

PALIN: There in the state of Alaska, our international trade activities bring in many leaders of other countries.

GIBSON: And all governors deal with trade delegations.

PALIN: Right.

GIBSON: Who act at the behest of their governments.

PALIN: Right, right.

GIBSON: I'm talking about somebody who's a head of state, who can negotiate for that country. Ever met one?

PALIN: I have not and I think if you go back in history and if you ask that question of many vice presidents, they may have the same answer that I just gave you. But, Charlie, again, we've got to remember what the desire is in this nation at this time. It is for no more politics as usual and somebody's big, fat resume maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment, where, yes, they've had opportunities to meet heads of state ... these last couple of weeks ... it has been overwhelming to me that confirmation of the message that Americans are getting sick and tired of that self-dealing and kind of that closed door, good old boy network that has been the Washington elite.

Sarah Palin on God:

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don't know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's words when he said -- first, he suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words.

But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side.

That's what that comment was all about, Charlie. And I do believe, though, that this war against extreme Islamic terrorists is the right thing. It's an unfortunate thing, because war is hell and I hate war, and, Charlie, today is the day that I send my first born, my son, my teenage son overseas with his Stryker brigade, 4,000 other wonderful American men and women, to fight for our country, for democracy, for our freedoms.

Charlie, those are freedoms that too many of us just take for granted. I hate war and I want to see war ended. We end war when we see victory, and we do see victory in sight in Iraq.

GIBSON: I take your point about Lincoln's words, but you went on and said, "There is a plan and it is God's plan."

PALIN: I believe that there is a plan for this world and that plan for this world is for good. I believe that there is great hope and great potential for every country to be able to live and be protected with inalienable rights that I believe are God-given, Charlie, and I believe that those are the rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That, in my world view, is a grand -- the grand plan.

GIBSON: But then are you sending your son on a task that is from God?

PALIN: I don't know if the task is from God, Charlie. What I know is that my son has made a decision. I am so proud of his independent and strong decision he has made, what he decided to do and serving for the right reasons and serving something greater than himself and not choosing a real easy path where he could be more comfortable and certainly safer.

Sarah Palin on National Security:

GIBSON: Let me ask you about some specific national security situations.

PALIN: Sure.

GIBSON: Let's start, because we are near Russia, let's start with Russia and Georgia.

The administration has said we've got to maintain the territorial integrity of Georgia. Do you believe the United States should try to restore Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia?

PALIN: First off, we're going to continue good relations with Saakashvili there. I was able to speak with him the other day and giving him my commitment, as John McCain's running mate, that we will be committed to Georgia. And we've got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable and we have to keep...

GIBSON: You believe unprovoked.

PALIN: I do believe unprovoked and we have got to keep our eyes on Russia, under the leadership there. I think it was unfortunate. That manifestation that we saw with that invasion of Georgia shows us some steps backwards that Russia has recently taken away from the race toward a more democratic nation with democratic ideals.That's why we have to keep an eye on Russia.

And, Charlie, you're in Alaska. We have that very narrow maritime border between the United States, and the 49th state, Alaska, and Russia. They are our next door neighbors.We need to have a good relationship with them. They're very, very important to us and they are our next door neighbor.

GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?

PALIN: They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.

GIBSON: What insight does that give you into what they're doing in Georgia?

PALIN: Well, I'm giving you that perspective of how small our world is and how important it is that we work with our allies to keep good relation with all of these countries, especially Russia. We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it's in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

Sarah Palin on Russia:

We cannot repeat the Cold War. We are thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War, without a shot fired, also. We've learned lessons from that in our relationship with Russia, previously the Soviet Union.

We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it's in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?

PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.

GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.

PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO.

Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but...

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to -- especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.

We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.

GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn't have to lead to war and it doesn't have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

Sarah Palin on Iran and Israel:

GIBSON: Let me turn to Iran. Do you consider a nuclear Iran to be an existential threat to Israel?

PALIN: I believe that under the leadership of Ahmadinejad, nuclear weapons in the hands of his government are extremely dangerous to everyone on this globe, yes.

GIBSON: So what should we do about a nuclear Iran? John McCain said the only thing worse than a war with Iran would be a nuclear Iran. John Abizaid said we may have to live with a nuclear Iran. Who's right?

PALIN: No, no. I agree with John McCain that nuclear weapons in the hands of those who would seek to destroy our allies, in this case, we're talking about Israel, we're talking about Ahmadinejad's comment about Israel being the "stinking corpse, should be wiped off the face of the earth," that's atrocious. That's unacceptable.

GIBSON: So what do you do about a nuclear Iran?

PALIN: We have got to make sure that these weapons of mass destruction, that nuclear weapons are not given to those hands of Ahmadinejad, not that he would use them, but that he would allow terrorists to be able to use them. So we have got to put the pressure on Iran and we have got to count on our allies to help us, diplomatic pressure.

GIBSON: But, Governor, we've threatened greater sanctions against Iran for a long time. It hasn't done any good. It hasn't stemmed their nuclear program.

PALIN: We need to pursue those and we need to implement those. We cannot back off. We cannot just concede that, oh, gee, maybe they're going to have nuclear weapons, what can we do about it. No way, not Americans. We do not have to stand for that.

GIBSON: What if Israel decided it felt threatened and needed to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities?

PALIN: Well, first, we are friends with Israel and I don't think that we should second guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves and for their security.

GIBSON: So if we wouldn't second guess it and they decided they needed to do it because Iran was an existential threat, we would cooperative or agree with that.

PALIN: I don't think we can second guess what Israel has to do to secure its nation.

GIBSON: So if it felt necessary, if it felt the need to defend itself by taking out Iranian nuclear facilities, that would be all right.

PALIN: We cannot second guess the steps that Israel has to take to defend itself.

Sarah Palin on 'the Bush Doctrine':

GIBSON: We talk on the anniversary of 9/11. Why do you think those hijackers attacked? Why did they want to hurt us?

PALIN: You know, there is a very small percentage of Islamic believers who are extreme and they are violent and they do not believe in American ideals, and they attacked us and now we are at a point here seven years later, on the anniversary, in this post-9/11 world, where we're able to commit to never again. They see that the only option for them is to become a suicide bomber, to get caught up in this evil, in this terror. They need to be provided the hope that all Americans have instilled in us, because we're a democratic, we are a free, and we are a free-thinking society.

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush -- well, what do you -- what do you interpret it to be?

PALIN: His world view.

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.

PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.

GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?

PALIN: I agree that a president's job, when they swear in their oath to uphold our Constitution, their top priority is to defend the United States of America.

I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people.

GIBSON: Do we have a right to anticipatory self-defense? Do we have a right to make a preemptive strike again another country if we feel that country might strike us?

PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend.

GIBSON: Do we have the right to be making cross-border attacks into Pakistan from Afghanistan, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government?

PALIN: Now, as for our right to invade, we're going to work with these countries, building new relationships, working with existing allies, but forging new, also, in order to, Charlie, get to a point in this world where war is not going to be a first option. In fact, war has got to be, a military strike, a last option.

GIBSON: But, Governor, I'm asking you: We have the right, in your mind, to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government.

PALIN: In order to stop Islamic extremists, those terrorists who would seek to destroy America and our allies, we must do whatever it takes and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target.

GIBSON: And let me finish with this. I got lost in a blizzard of words there. Is that a yes? That you think we have the right to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government, to go after terrorists who are in the Waziristan area?

PALIN: I believe that America has to exercise all options in order to stop the terrorists who are hell bent on destroying America and our allies. We have got to have all options out there on the table.

This woman is fu*king crazy - my 16 year-old son has more foreign policy experience than this whacko. Gibson tossed her a few softballs, and she flubbed every single one of them. Only a deluded lunatic can continue to think this person is a proper candidate for the Vice Presidency. Un-f*cking-believable.

Silly Website of the Day

2008-09-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

'cuz we know you're in the mood for something like this ...

Silly Website of the Day

Remembrances of 9/11

2008-09-11T09:36:00.000-07:00

Throughout the day, we intend to post links to other sites that demonstrate the best and the worst of the 9/11 remembrances we come across, and comments we post there, if any.

THE WORST

Islam in Britains 9/11 Hate Campaign from "Radarsite"

Radarsite's Roger Gardner apparently wants total US government control over the whole world. There is a word for that - fascism - and we can congratulate RG and others like him for bringing the word back into our vocabulary. Some remembrance of 9/11 - RG is letting the terrorists win, by talking like they do about world domination. I bet he won't post this, either.

A Newt One - by Snooper - This guy ought to be re-named "Stupor", he is such an unthinking idiot.

THE BEST

9/11 Tribute - Heartache Still Lingers from "PA Pundits The Relentless Pursuit of Common Sense"

And In This Way By Robert Bateman from WaPo

In Memoriam: September 11, 2001

STILL UNDECIDED

War of Words from Villainous Company

seven years ago today ... and today

2008-09-11T09:13:00.001-07:00

Oil - the new Republican sexual lubricant!

2008-09-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

Report Says Oil Agency Ran Amok - Interior Dept. Inquiry Finds Sex, Corruption

Government officials in charge of collecting billions of dollars worth of royalties from oil and gas companies accepted gifts, steered contracts to favored clients and engaged in drug use and illicit sex with employees of the energy firms, federal investigators reported yesterday.

read the rest

pigs get fed; hogs get slaughtered

2008-09-10T21:59:00.000-07:00

Iraq Cancels Six No-Bid Oil Contracts

An Iraqi plan to award six no-bid contracts to Western oil companies, which came under sharp criticism from several United States senators this summer, has been withdrawn, participants in the negotiations said on Wednesday.

Iraq’s oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, told reporters at an OPEC summit meeting in Vienna on Tuesday that talks with Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, Total, BP and several smaller companies for one-year deals, which were announced in June and subsequently delayed, had dragged on for so long that the companies could not now fulfill the work within that time frame. The companies confirmed on Wednesday that the deals had been canceled.

While not particularly lucrative by industry standards, the contracts were valued for providing a foothold in Iraq at a time when oil companies are being shut out of energy-rich countries around the world. The companies will still be eligible to compete in open bidding in Iraq.

Read the rest

Smoking White-Hot Brilliance

2008-09-10T21:32:00.000-07:00

Olbermann is my new hero.

This is Your Brain on Viagra

2008-09-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

Click for larger Image

Fascinating Read over at WaPo today ...

2008-09-07T11:11:00.000-07:00

".... By mid-2006, [Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the U.S. commander in Iraq], a stout four-star general with wire-rim glasses, had been the commander in Iraq for two years. As American military units rotated in and out, Casey remained the one constant.

"He had concluded that one big problem with the war was the president himself. Since the beginning, Casey felt, the president had viewed the war in conventional terms, repeatedly asking how many of the various enemies had been captured or killed. Casey later confided to a colleague that he had the impression that Bush reflected the 'radical wing of the Republican Party that kept saying, 'Kill the bastards! Kill the bastards! And you'll succeed.'

"Casey was troubled by the thought that the president didn't understand the nature of the fight they were in. The large, heavily armed Western force was on borrowed time, he believed. The president often paid lip service to winning over the Iraqi people, but then he would lean in with greater interest and ask about raids and military operations, grilling Casey about killings and captures."

Go to original

la marotte du jour

2008-09-06T15:46:00.000-07:00

Parmi les Républicains, la grossesse c’est une tradition vénérée et non pas simplement la marotte du jour !

Among Republicans, pregnancy is a venerable tradition, and not just the fad of the week!

la marotte du jour

Palin Extra-Marital Affair? Perish the Thought!

2008-09-03T22:44:00.000-07:00

Our friends on the "right" side of the aisle were bemoaning the fact that the "Main Stream Media" refused to pick up and run with the National Enquirer's lead about John Edward's extra-marital affaira few weeks ago.

Now, they're bemoaning the fact that the National Enquirer has picked up what it feels is the scent of a Sarah Palin extra-marital affair.

These people are NEVER happy. Sheesh!

tagging along with the Bristol Palin bandwagon

2008-09-03T22:34:00.000-07:00

We've been tagging along with (rather than jumping on) the Bristol Palin bandwagon over at the WIZARD, fkap. Check it out.

Also here.

Bush rushes to the defense of his supporters over consumers

2008-08-30T11:54:00.000-07:00

Court: US can block mad cow testing

"The Bush administration can prohibit meat packers from testing their animals for mad cow disease, a federal appeals court said Friday. ... The dispute pits the Agriculture Department, which tests about 1 percent of cows for the potentially deadly disease, against a Kansas meat packer that wants to test all its animals."

"Larger meat packers opposed such testing. If Creekstone Farms Premium Beef began advertising that its cows have all been tested, other companies fear they too will have to conduct the expensive tests."

Those poor other companies - having to compete in a free market against others with better ideas. Fortunately for agri-business, the Bush Administration and Republican appointee Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson are ready to rush to the defense of the big trade monolith against "attacks" by ... the little guy. What's a Republican administration for, after all, if not to protect the monied interests over the desires and health of consumers.

A few words from BHO

2008-08-28T22:17:00.000-07:00

John McCain, has worn the uniform of our country with bravery and distinction, and for that we owe him our gratitude and our respect. And next week, we'll also hear about those occasions when he's broken with his party as evidence that he can deliver the change that we need. But the record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but, really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than 90 percent of the time?

. . .

... what is that American promise? It's a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have obligations to treat each other with dignity and respect. It's a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, to look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road. Ours -- ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology. Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who's willing to work. That's the promise of America, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation, the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper. That's the promise we need to keep. That's the change we need right now.

. . .

If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander-in-chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have. For -- for while -- while Senator McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats that we face.

When John McCain said we could just muddle through in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights.

You know, John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell, but he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives.

And today, today, as my call for a timeframe to remove our troops from Iraq has been echoed by the Iraqi government and even the Bush administration, even after we learned that Iraq has $79 billion in surplus while we are wallowing in deficit, John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war.

That's not the judgment we need; that won't keep America safe. We need a president who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past.
You don't defeat -- you don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq. You don't protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington. You can't truly stand up for Georgia when you've strained our oldest alliances.

If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice, but that is not the change that America needs. We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country. Don't tell me that Democrats won't keep us safe. The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans, Democrats and Republicans, have built, and we are here to restore that legacy.

As commander-in-chief, I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will only send our troops into harm's way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home. I will end this war in Iraq responsibly and finish the fight against Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts, but I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression.

I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation, poverty and genocide, climate change and disease.

And I will restore our moral standing so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, and who yearn for a better future.

These -- these are the policies I will pursue. And in the weeks ahead, I look forward to debating them with John McCain.

. . .

[W]hat I will not do is suggest that the senator takes his positions for political purposes, because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and each other's patriotism. The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and independents, but they have fought together, and bled together, and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a red America or a blue America; they have served the United States of America. So I've got news for you, John McCain: We all put our country first.

America, our work will not be easy. The challenges we face require tough choices. And Democrats, as well as Republicans, will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past, for part of what has been lost these past eight years can't just be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits. What has also been lost is our sense of common purpose, and that's what we have to restore.

. . .

You have shown what history teaches us, that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens -- change happens because the American people demand it, because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time. America, this is one of those moments. I believe that, as hard as it will be, the change we need is coming, because I've seen it, because I've lived it. Because I've seen it in Illinois, when we provided health care to more children and moved more families from welfare to work. I've seen it in Washington, where we worked across party lines to open up government and hold lobbyists more accountable, to give better care for our veterans, and keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. And I've seen it in this campaign, in the young people who voted for the first time and the young at heart, those who got involved again after a very long time; in the Republicans who never thought they'd pick up a Democratic ballot, but did. I've seen it -- I've seen it in the workers who would rather cut their hours back a day, even though they can't afford it, than see their friends lose their jobs; in the soldiers who re-enlist after losing a limb; in the good neighbors who take a stranger in when a hurricane strikes and the floodwaters rise.

You know, this country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores. Instead, it is that American spirit, that American promise, that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend. That promise is our greatest inheritance. It's a promise I make to my daughters when I tuck them in at night and a promise that you make to yours, a promise that has led immigrants to cross oceans and pioneers to travel west, a promise that led workers to picket lines and women to reach for the ballot.

[we'll offer some words from John McCain when he provides them]

Dems winning culture war - culture of life ...

2008-08-27T13:58:00.000-07:00

Catholics Have New Reasons to Rethink Abortion Politics

Both John McCain and the Democrats are giving Catholics reasons to reconsider which party can and will do more to reduce the number of abortions in America.

When on August 11, McCain told the Weekly Standard that he welcomed pro-choice Republicans, he articulated openly what has been obvious for some time: the GOP uses the issue to get votes, but will not outlaw abortion. In other words, it is foolish to think that voting for Republicans is the "Catholic" thing to do.

On the other hand, no less an expert than Prof. Douglas Kmiec, once professor of law at Catholic University, and a former Reagan Administration lawyer who wrote briefs for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, now says the Democrats have a stronger approach to reducing abortions.

Kmiec is a veteran of the pro-life cause and his reasoning is best explained in his own words, not in the shortened space of this column. Nonetheless, coming as it does so close to McCain's embrace of pro-choice Republicans, Kmiec's redefined position represents a significant shift in the abortion aspect of the "culture wars."

As I understand him, Kmiec recognizes that as long as Roe v. Wade stands, there can be no legislation or executive orders outlawing all abortions. But even putting together a majority of Supreme Court justices willing to overturn Roe v. Wade will not end abortion, said this legal scholar on August 12. "We've been trying to find the elusive fifth vote on the Supreme Court for over 30 years. We have not found it and even if we did find it, overturning Roe will not save a single life but instead merely return the question to the states."

Kmiec has contributed to the drafting of a Democratic Party platform that includes pro-life positions just as McCain welcomes pro-choice Republicans, tempting one to suggest the proverbial skepticism that "There is not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties." However, Prof. Kmiec has not lapsed into a silent cone of neutrality on the abortion issue. He now suggests that the approach of the Democrats to abortion is better than the Republican one. By emphasizing pro-life programs like guaranteed health insurance, programs in pre-natal care and government support to families, says this pro-life warrior of many years, the Democrats have become the more effective political force against abortion. In his thinking, Roe v. Wade is already being "killed by a thousand cuts" with efforts at the state and local level that impose regulations and simultaneously improve the quality of social services. The overall result is to reduce the appeal of abortion.

read the rest ...

Fun Quotes from Denver

2008-08-27T10:11:00.000-07:00

Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel: "George Bush has put the middle class in a hole and John McCain has a plan to keep digging that hole with George Bush's shovel. Mr. President, we will be forever in your debt. . . . You would think the one thing President Bush was good at was inheriting things."

Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa.: McCain "calls himself a maverick, but he votes with George Bush 90 percent of the time. That's not a maverick, that's a sidekick."

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland: Bush "came into office on third base, and then he stole second, [...] and John McCain cheered him every step of the way.".

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: "It makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities, because these days they're awfully hard to tell apart."

Dubya Vindicates His Critics

2008-08-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

The Financial Times editorial board notes that "only a month ago the Bush administration was furiously opposed to a time-table [for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq], insisting it would reflect an admission of defeat and play into the hands of its enemies.

"Faced with a surge of Iraqi nationalism, however, it has agreed to a plan that looks embarrassingly closer to the position of Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, than to the 2013 withdrawal date supported by John McCain, his Republican rival."

The Boston Globe editorial board writes: "If Bush continues refusing to accept the timetable that Iraqis want, he will make a mockery of his claim to have invaded and occupied Iraq in order to spread democracy there. Iraqis have pretty well crushed Al Qaeda with American help, and they are beginning to sort out their factional power struggles. If they want a sure date for US withdrawal, they should get it. Otherwise, Bush will only vindicate those critics of the war who said he invaded Iraq to establish permanent military bases and gain control of the country's enormous oil reserves."

The USA Today editorial board writes: "Obscured by the Olympics and U.S. presidential politics, the situation in Iraq could be reaching another turning point. The United States needs to disengage in a way that preserves American security interests and hard-won gains. But if the Iraqi people want a timetable for U.S. withdrawal, and the American people want U.S. forces out, it will be increasingly awkward for Bush or his successor to argue that they should stay a day longer than they're welcome."

Bush's gold medal

2008-08-25T11:40:00.000-07:00

Shameless Hypocrite of the Day

2008-08-25T11:37:00.001-07:00

Wayne Slater blogged for the Dallas Morning News on Saturday: "Karl Rove weighed in this morning on Democratic vice presidential pick Joe Biden, saying his long experience in the Senate only reminds voters that Barack Obama doesn't have much. It was classic Rove: Attack an opponent's strength, make it a weakness.

"But Karl found himself in deep water when a FoxNews interviewer asked: Wasn't Dick Cheney picked to be George W. Bush's veep to balance the Texas governor's lack of experience? Did Cheney boost the ticket or just remind people of Bush's inexperience? Totally different, said Rove. Totally different."

Sometimes, we're just hungry ...

2008-08-22T21:12:00.000-07:00

Ratatouille

Why is Daddy still in Iraq?

2008-08-19T15:40:00.000-07:00

Money's list of America's best small cities

2008-08-18T21:39:00.001-07:00

Money magazine's list of America's best small cities

And the winners are...

Plentiful jobs, excellent schools, affordable housing - America's best small cities have all that and more. See the top 100 best places to live - including detailed city profiles, homes for sale and million-dollar homes.

1. Plymouth, MN
2. Fort Collins, CO
3. Naperville, IL
4. Irvine, CA
5. Franklin Township, NJ
6. Norman, OK
7. Round Rock, TX
8. Columbia/Ellicott City, MD
9. Overland Park, KS
10. Fishers, IN

McCain on Russia, the Electorate and the Election

2008-08-16T18:07:00.001-07:00

If Rove Were a Democrat

2008-08-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

This is the sort of ad we'd be likely to see:

Report: Troops donate overwhelmingly to Obama

2008-08-14T17:14:00.000-07:00

Today's WaPo carries this item:

Obama Tops in Donations from Troops
By Matthew Mosk

An analysis of political contributions from soldiers on the battlefield has produced some unexpected results.

The Center for Responsive Politics has found that the presidential candidate with a record as a bona fide war hero is garnering far less financial support from the troops than the Harvard-trained lawyer.

"Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain, and the fiercely anti-war Ron Paul, though he suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination months ago, has received more than four times McCain's haul," the report said.

The report also included this surprise: "Members of the armed services overall -- whether stationed overseas or at home -- are also favoring Obama with their campaign contributions in 2008.... Although 59 percent of federal contributions by military personnel have gone to Republicans this cycle, of money from the military to the presumed presidential nominees, 57 percent has gone to Obama."

The analysis of campaign records found Obama has raised more than $60,000 from 134 military service men and women who are deployed overseas. McCain has raised $10,665 from 26 donors.

I'm guessing that one reason for this trend is that military personnel currently deployed are overwhelmingly younger than not, and that they think it is time for a change.

Believe Me, It’s Torture

2008-07-02T12:28:00.001-07:00

Christopher Hitchens tested his belief that waterboarding is not torture and wrote about it here: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808. The Air Force this week declassified its training course on enhanced interrogation techniques, including the information that the course was a Communist Chinese torture manual used on American servicemen during the Korean War. The story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1215026775-I7jDEV6ekDU87c85n7fwpw. Check these things out and then let us know if you still think waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” aren’t torture.

"No marriage shall be valid in this state, ..."

2008-06-20T15:05:00.001-07:00

I propose a new state law (heck - while we're at it, let's make it a Federal law):

"No marriage shall be valid in this state, or in any state of the Union, that has not first been approved by the California/United States Ministry of Marriage and Family Life. This provision applies to all persons without regard to age, gender, citizenship or place of residence, and applies without regard to the date or place of marriage."

Would you approve? I doubt that anyone here would approve. Why not? Because (I think) most people are of the opinion that her or his marriage (whom to marry) is her or his own personal business. Yet, most places do have some restrictions on marriage relating to age (below age "n" requires parental consent); degree of consanguinity of the parties; absence of disease; maybe a few others.

What restrictions are tolerable and why?

Noteworth Quote

2008-06-18T15:44:00.000-07:00

``The Republicans will make a fundamental, if not fatal mistake, if they seek to win the election by demonizing Barrack Obama. Don't underestimate the extraordinary, substantive moment that Barack Obama's nomination represents in our country.''

Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, in Tokyo, June 18, 2008

The U.S. Congress Votes Database 110th Congress / Bills / H RES 1258

2008-06-11T15:07:00.000-07:00

Impeaching George W. Bush, President of the United States, of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Read more information on this bill from the Library of Congress.

The House voted today by a comfortable margin to refer 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush to the Judiciary Committee, as the measure's chief sponsor vowed to bring the issue up again if the panel does not agree to hold hearings.

On a 251-166 vote, the chamber elected to refer Rep. Dennis Kucinich's (D-Ohio) resolution to the Judiciary panel. All 227 Democrats present voted in favor of the referral, along with 24 Republicans -- a big boost from the four GOP lawmakers who voted for referral of charges against Vice President Cheney back in November.

Democrats Voting For:

Neil Abercrombie, Gary Ackerman, Thomas Allen, Jason Altmire, Robert Andrews, Michael Arcuri, Joe Baca, Brian Baird, Tammy Baldwin, John Barrow, Melissa Bean, Xavier Becerra, Shelley Berkley, Howard Berman, Marion Berry, Timothy Bishop, Sanford Bishop, Earl Blumenauer, Dan Boren, Leonard Boswell, Rick Boucher, Allen Boyd, Nancy Boyda, Robert Brady, Corrine Brown, G.K. Butterfield, Lois Capps, Michael Capuano, Dennis Cardoza, Russ Carnahan, Christopher Carney, André Carson, Kathy Castor, Donald Cazayoux, Ben Chandler, TRAVIS Childers, Yvette Clarke, William Clay, Emanuel Cleaver, James Clyburn, John Conyers, Jim Cooper, Jim Costa, Jerry Costello, Joe Courtney, Bud Cramer, Joseph Crowley, Henry Cuellar, Elijah Cummings, Lincoln Davis, Danny Davis, Susan Davis, Artur Davis, Peter DeFazio, Diana DeGette, Rosa DeLauro, William Delahunt, Norman Dicks, John Dingell, Lloyd Doggett, Joe Donnelly, Michael Doyle, Chet Edwards, Keith Ellison, Brad Ellsworth, Rahm Emanuel, Eliot Engel, Anna Eshoo, Bob Etheridge, Sam Farr, Chaka Fattah, Bob Filner, Bill Foster, Barney Frank, Gabrielle Giffords, Charles Gonzalez, Bart Gordon, Gene Green, Al Green, Raul Grijalva, Luis Gutierrez, John Hall, Phil Hare, Jane Harman, Alcee Hastings, Brian Higgins, Baron Hill, Maurice Hinchey, Ruben Hinojosa, Mazie Hirono, Paul Hodes, Tim Holden, Chris Van Hollen, Rush Holt, Mike Honda, Darlene Hooley, Steny Hoyer, Jay Inslee, Steve Israel, Jesse Jackson, Sheila Jackson-Lee, William Jefferson, Eddie Johnson, Hank Johnson, Stephanie Jones, Steve Kagen, Paul Kanjorski, Marcy Kaptur, Patrick Kennedy, Dale Kildee, Carolyn Kilpatrick, Ron Kind, Ron Klein, Dennis Kucinich, Nicholas Lampson, James Langevin, Rick Larsen, John Larson, Barbara Lee, Sander Levin, John Lewis, Daniel Lipinski, Zoe Lofgren, Nita Lowey, Stephen Lynch, Tim Mahoney, Carolyn Maloney, Edward Markey, Jim Marshall, Jim Matheson, Doris Matsui, Carolyn McCarthy, Betty McCollum, Jim McDermott, James McGovern, Mike McIntyre, Jerry McNerney, Michael McNulty, Kendrick Meek, Gregory Meeks, Charles Melancon, Michael Michaud, George Miller, Brad Miller, Harry Mitchell, Alan Mollohan, Gwen Moore, Dennis Moore, James Moran, Patrick Murphy, Christopher Murphy, John Murtha, Jerrold Nadler, Grace Napolitano, Richard Neal, James Oberstar, David Obey, John Olver, Frank Pallone, Ed Pastor, Donald Payne, Ed Perlmutter, Collin Peterson, Earl Pomeroy, David Price, Nick Rahall, Charles Rangel, Silvestre Reyes, Laura Richardson, Ciro Rodriguez, Mike Ross, Steven Rothman, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Dutch Ruppersberger, Tim Ryan, John Salazar, Loretta Sanchez, Linda Sanchez, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, John Sarbanes, Jan Schakowsky, Adam Schiff, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Allyson Schwartz, Robert Scott, David Scott, Jose Serrano, Joe Sestak, Carol Shea-Porter, Brad Sherman, Heath Shuler, Albio Sires, Ike Skelton, Louise Slaughter, Adam Smith, Vic Snyder, Hilda Solis, Zachary Space, Jackie Speier, John Spratt, Pete Stark, Bart Stupak, Betty Sutton, John Tanner, Ellen Tauscher, Gene Taylor, Bennie Thompson, Mike Thompson, John Tierney, Edolphus Towns, Niki Tsongas, Tom Udall, Mark Udall, Nydia Velazquez, Peter Visclosky, Timothy Walz, Maxine Waters, Diane Watson, Melvin Watt, Henry Waxman, Anthony Weiner, Peter Welch, Robert Wexler, Charles Wilson, Lynn Woolsey, David Wu, John Yarmuth

Republicans Voting For:

Kevin Brady, Michael Castle, Mario Diaz-Balart, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, David Dreier, Vito Fossella, Rodney Frelinghuysen, Wayne Gilchrest, Ralph Hall, Tim Johnson, Walter Jones, Peter King, Steven LaTourette, Frank LoBiondo, Donald Manzullo, Tim Murphy, Ron Paul, Jim Ramstad, David Reichert, Christopher Shays, John Shimkus, Michael Turner, Heather Wilson, Frank Wolf