Rule of Thumb

Whenever Bush makes a promise, here's a rule of thumb: The opposite of whatever he says is true. "I'm a uniter, not a divider." Oh, really? This country hasn't been so cleaved since the Civil War. How did that happen? Must've been an accident. "I don't believe in nation-building." Then how come we toppled two foreign governments one right after the other and are pouring a billion a week into them, with more to follow? "We're a peaceful nation." Then why did we attack and occupy an entire country halfway around the planet who never laid a finger on us? "We now know Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction." Whoa. Then why did we call the dogs off, after the election? "There's definitely a link between Saddam and al-Qaeda." Yeah, Kevin Bacon. Why don't we just call it Six Degrees of Usurpation? That link must be wandering around Dick Cheney's bunker, chasing its own tail. What're words, anyway? Who needs 'em? A good bomb in the ass will do the trick. Fuck 'em. "Permanent tax cuts will stimulate growth and create jobs." Breadlines, anyone? How do you like your outsourcing, well done, charred, or burned to a crisp? "We have to fix Social Security, there's a crisis, and privatization is the only cure." Let's fix what ain't broke, and besides, I never met a cure I didn't like -- except the one that killed me. "Big Government is bad" -- which is why the Patriot Act is good. "The United States is committed to fighting terrorism, wherever it may be." Have you got a mirror? Mine was rammed up my ass by a U.S. border guard, then kicked while they attached electrodes to my nipples and balls. "This is not the America I know" -- you just didn't know when you knew it. Good thing you changed America. I'm thinking about torturing my neighbor's cat. On second thought, I love my neighbor, I love cats, maybe I shouldn't? Oh what the hell, go for it! "I swear on this bible to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America." How about we switch the words around to "hold up"? Last I checked, the Constitution was being held hostage behind closed doors by Dick Cheney in an undisclosed location. Poor old Constitution; it's quaint. Better change the words in it. What's a Constitution, anyway?

It goes on and on. A photo op with Bush means the kiss of death for whatever he's championing for the photo op. "Relief effort" means no one gets a dime, nowhere, nohow. No Child Left Behind means No Child Gets an Education, Ever. The Bush Doctrine means invade, conquer and divide until you create a civil war that promises nothing but years of unending death, misery and horror unto infinity. "It's not about oil." Then what is it about? Oh right, freedom. Bush has been saying "freedom" a lot lately. That must mean everybody is enjoying tons and tons of freedom, and if they're not, then we BOMB THE SHIT OUT OF 'EM. That'll teach the sons of bitches. Freedom is untidy. Freedom is a good word too. Some people are free to say it. Other people have to pay for it. Here's a letter that speaks to the point:

To the Editor [NYT]:

While President Bush was on the podium using the word "free" and "freedom" repeatedly, protesters outside the gate were corralled by police lines.

The president said that when people stand for freedom, the United States would stand with them, but when I tried to stand peaceably and alone, holding a sign that said "Zero Tolerance for Torture," I was told by a police officer to stay on the sidewalk. I asked, "Why do I have to move?," since the street had been opened for pedestrian traffic. In response, he took my arm and pushed me to the curb, where a police line of 10 officers held me there.

It was evident that my freedom of expression and movement does not hold the same importance as that of those affiliated with the administration, who were allowed to walk and talk freely.

Jessica Corsi
Washington, Jan. 21, 2005

I love words, don't you? They can mean anything at all.

- Michael 6:10 PM - [PermaLink] -

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More news on Devil worship and the red states: Family Scuffles, Pastor Says Jeans a Demon

BRISTOL, Tenn. (AP) - When scuffling sisters brought their family squabble into the Assemblies of Jesus Church, the preacher says the devil came, too. The Rev. Clarence June Love was just about to begin his Sunday service to a congregation of less than a dozen on Jan. 9, when sisters Reba Storey, 46, and Mary Steele, 64, entered the hall to talk to their 88-year-old mother, Maude Yates.

The sisters claim they wanted to tell their mother that Storey was going to have surgery. They say they came to church because another sister, 69-year-old Rosa Harrison, who is also the preacher's girlfriend, won't let them see Yates, who lives in a nursing home.

But what caught Love's eye when the sisters entered his church were their blue jeans - forbidden for women in some Pentecostal churches. The 83-year-old preacher came down from his pulpit.

"You're not wearing pants in my church, you demon," Storey claimed the preacher said. "I said, 'I'm glad I serve a God who can work through my pants.'"

That's when, according to Storey, Love allegedly grabbed her and hustled her to the door.

- rob 11:55 AM - [PermaLink] -

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Did Bush mistakenly "out" himself... not as a gay but as a devil worshiper?

Norwegians Confused by Bush Salute

OSLO, Norway - Many Norwegian television viewers were shocked to see U.S. President George W. Bush and family apparently saluting Satan during the U.S. inauguration.
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The president and family were photographed lifting their right hands with their index and pinky fingers raised up, much like a horn.

But in much of the world those "horns" are a sign of the devil. In the Nordics, the hand gesture is popular among death metal and black metal groups and fans.

"Shock greeting from Bush daughter," a headline in the Norwegian Internet newspaper Nettavisen said late Wednesday above a photograph of Bush's daughter, Jenna, smiling and showing the sign.
Bush, a former Texas governor, was simply greeting the Texas Longhorn marching band as it passed during a Washington D.C. parade in the president's honor, explained Verdens Gang, Norway's largest newspaper.

And when the rest of the world gives Bush the finger they're just showing their old college salute

- rob 11:53 AM - [PermaLink] -

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ALERT! Moyers Transcript

This is a must read.

. . . the very concept of media is insulting to some of us within the press who find ourselves lumped in with so many disparate elements, as if everyone with a pen, a microphone, a camera, or just a loud voice were all one and the same. … David Broder is not Matt Drudge. “Meet the Press” is not “Temptation Island.” And I am not Jerry Springer. I do not speak for him. He does not speak for me. Yet ‘the media” speaks for us all.

. . . what we’re talking about is nothing less than rescuing a democracy that is so polarized it is in danger of being paralyzed and pulverized.

Alarming words, I know. But the realities we face should trigger alarms. Free and responsible government by popular consent just can’t exist without an informed public. That’s a cliché, I know, but I agree with the presidential candidate who once said that truisms are true and clichés mean what they say (an observation that no doubt helped to lose him the election.) It’s a reality: democracy can’t exist without an informed public. Here’s an example: Only 13% of eligible young people cast ballots in the last presidential election. . . . We’re talking here about one quarter of the electorate. The Carnegie Corporation conducted a youth challenge quiz of l5-24 year-olds and asked them, “Why don’t more young people vote or get involved?” Of the nearly two thousand respondents, the main answer was that they did not have enough information about issues and candidates. Let me rewind and say it again: democracy can’t exist without an informed public. So I say without qualification that it’s not simply the cause of journalism that’s at stake today, but the cause of American liberty itself. As Tom Paine put it, “The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.” He was talking about the cause of a revolutionary America in 1776. But that revolution ran in good part on the energies of a rambunctious, though tiny press. Freedom and freedom of communications were birth-twins in the future United States. They grew up together, and neither has fared very well in the other’s absence. Boom times for the one have been boom times for the other.

In earlier times our governing bodies tried to squelch journalistic freedom with the blunt instruments of the law – padlocks for the presses and jail cells for outspoken editors and writers. . . . But they’ve found new ones now, in the name of “national security.” . . . Add to that the censorship-by-omission of consolidated media empires digesting the bones of swallowed independents, and you’ve got a major shrinkage of the crucial information that thinking citizens can act upon.

And so in the zesty progressivism of early New Deal days, the Federal Communications Act of 1934 was passed. . . . The aim of that cornerstone of broadcast policy, mentioned over 100 times in its pages, was to promote the “public interest, convenience and necessity.” The clear intent was to prevent a monopoly of commercial values from overwhelming democratic values – to assure that the official view of reality – corporate or government – was not the only view of reality that reached the people. Regulators and regulated, media and government were to keep a wary eye on each other, preserving those checks and balances that is the bulwark of our Constitutional order.

What would happen, however, if the contending giants of big government and big publishing and broadcasting ever joined hands? Ever saw eye to eye in putting the public’s need for news second to free-market economics? That’s exactly what’s happening now under the ideological banner of “deregulation.” Giant megamedia conglomerates that our founders could not possibly have envisioned are finding common cause with an imperial state in a betrothal certain to produce not the sons and daughters of liberty but the very kind of bastards that issued from the old arranged marriage of church and state.

Never has there been an administration so disciplined in secrecy, so precisely in lockstep in keeping information from the people at large and – in defiance of the Constitution – from their representatives in Congress. Never has the so powerful a media oligopoly – the word is Barry Diller’s, not mine – been so unabashed in reaching like Caesar for still more wealth and power. Never have hand and glove fitted together so comfortably to manipulate free political debate, sow contempt for the idea of government itself, and trivialize the people’s need to know. When the journalist-historian Richard Reeves was once asked by a college student to define “real news”, he answered: “The news you and I need to keep our freedoms.” When journalism throws in with power that’s the first news marched by censors to the guillotine. The greatest moments in the history of the press came not when journalists made common cause with the state but when they stood fearlessly independent of it.

Which brings me to the third powerful force – beyond governmental secrecy and megamedia conglomerates – that is shaping what Americans see, read, and hear. I am talking now about that quasi-official partisan press ideologically linked to an authoritarian administration that in turn is the ally and agent of the most powerful interests in the world. . . . You need not harbor the notion of a vast, right wing conspiracy to think this more collusion more than pure coincidence. Conspiracy is unnecessary when ideology hungers for power and its many adherents swarm of their own accord to the same pot of honey. Stretching from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to the faux news of Rupert Murdoch’s empire to the nattering nabobs of no-nothing radio to a legion of think tanks paid for and bought by conglomerates – the religious, partisan and corporate right have raised a mighty megaphone for sectarian, economic, and political forces that aim to transform the egalitarian and democratic ideals embodied in our founding documents. Authoritarianism.

Just a few months ago the FCC, heavily influenced by lobbyists for the newspaper, broadcasting and cable interests, prepared a relaxation of the rules governing ownership of media outlets that would allow still more diversity-killing mergers among media giants. The proceedings were conducted in virtual secrecy, and generally ignored by all the major media, who were of course interested parties. In June Chairman Powell and his two Republican colleagues on the FCC announced the revised regulations as a done deal. . . .

There were also editors who felt responsible to audiences that would dive deep. In 1787 and ‘88 the little New-York Independent Advertiser ran all eighty-five numbers of The Federalist, those serious essays in favor of ratifying the Constitution. They still shine as clear arguments, but they are, and they were, unforgiving in their demand for concentrated attention. Nonetheless, The Advertiser felt that it owed the best to its readers, and the readers knew that the issues of self-government deserved their best attention. I pray your goal of “media reform” includes a press as conscientious as the New-York Advertiser, as pungent as Common Sense, and as public-spirited as both. Because it takes those qualities to fight against the relentless pressure of authority and avarice. Remember, back in l79l, when the First Amendment was ratified, the idea of a free press seemed safely sheltered in law. It wasn’t. Only seven years later, in the midst of a war scare with France, Congress passed and John Adams signed the infamous Sedition Act. The act made it a crime – just listen to how broad a brush the government could swing – to circulate opinions “tending to induce a belief” that lawmakers might have unconstitutional or repressive motives, or “directly or indirectly tending” to justify France or to “criminate,” whatever that meant, the President or other Federal officials. No wonder that opponents called it a scheme to “excite a fervor against foreign aggression only to establish tyranny at home.” John Ashcroft would have loved it.

Can we think of a single executive of today’s big media conglomerates showing the kind of resistance that Sulzberger, Graham, and Erwin Knoll did? Certainly not Michael Eisner. He said he didn’t even want ABC News reporting on its parent company, Disney. Certainly not General Electric/NBC’s Robert Wright. He took Phil Donahue off MNBC because the network didn’t want to offend conservatives with a liberal sensibility during the invasion of Iraq. Instead, NBC brought to its cable channel one Michael Savage whose diatribes on radio had described non-white countries as “turd-world nations” and who characterized gay men and women as part of “the grand plan to cut down on the white race.” I am not sure what it says that the GE/NBC executives calculated that while Donahue was offensive to conservatives, Savage was not.

Pressured by a vociferous and relentless right wing campaign and bullied by the Republican National Committee – and at a time when its parent company has billions resting on whether the White House, Congress, and the FCC will allow it to own even more stations than currently permissible – CBS caved in and pulled the miniseries about Ronald Reagan that conservatives thought insufficiently worshipful. . . . Granted, made-for-television movies about living figures are about as vital as the wax figures at Madame Tussaud’s – and even less authentic – granted that the canonizers of Ronald Reagan hadn’t even seen the film before they set to howling; granted, on the surface it’s a silly tempest in a teapot; still, when a once-great network falls obsequiously to the ground at the feet of a partisan mob over a cheesy mini-series that practically no one would have taken seriously as history, you have to wonder if the slight tremor that just ran through the First Amendment could be the harbinger of greater earthquakes to come, when the stakes are really high. And you have to wonder what concessions the media tycoons-cum-supplicants are making when no one is looking.

As Alexis de Tocqueville noted, these many blooming journals kept even rural Americans amazingly well informed. They also made it possible for Americans to exercise one of their most democratic habits – that of forming associations to carry out civic enterprises. And they operated against the dreaded tyranny of the majority by letting lonely thinkers know that they had allies elsewhere. Here’s how de Tocqueville put it in his own words:

It often happens in democratic countries that many men who have the desire or directed toward that light, and those wandering spirits who had long sought each other the need to associate cannot do it, because all being very small and lost in the crowd, they do not see each other and do not know where to find each other. Up comes a newspaper that exposes to their view the sentiment or the idea that had been presented to each of them simultaneously but separately. All are immediately in the shadows finally meet each other and unite.

Past and present are never as separate as we think.

When Joseph Pulitzer, a one-time immigrant reporter for a German-language paper in St. Louis, took over the New York World in 1883 he was already a millionaire in the making. But here’s his recommended short platform for politicians:

1.Tax luxuries

2. Tax Inheritances

3. Tax Large Incomes

4. Tax monopolies

5. Tax the Privileged Corporation

6. A Tariff for Revenue

7. Reform the Civil Service

8. Punish Corrupt Officers

9. Punish Vote Buying.

10. Punish Employers who Coerce their Employees in Elections

Also not a bad mission statement. Can you imagine one of today’s huge newspaper chains taking that on as an agenda?

The deregulation pressure began during the Reagan era, when then-FCC chairman Mark Fowler, who said that TV didn’t need much regulation because it was just a “toaster with pictures,” eliminated many public-interest rules. . . . It was like turning out searchlights on dark and dangerous corners. A crowning achievement of that drive was the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the largest corporate welfare program ever for the most powerful media and entertainment conglomerates in the world – passed, I must add, with support from both parties.

And the beat of “convergence” between once-distinct forms of media goes on at increased tempo, with the communications conglomerates and the advertisers calling the tune. . . . The goal? To corner the market on new ways of selling more things to more people for more hours in the day. And in the long run, to fill the airwaves with customized pitches to you and your children. That will melt down the surviving boundaries between editorial and marketing divisions and create a hybrid known to the new-media hucksters as “branded entertainment.”

As these huge media conglomerates increase their control over what we see, read, and hear, they rarely report on how they are themselves are using their power to further their own interests and power as big business, including their influence over the political process.

. . . the newspaper industry is in the middle of the most momentous change in its three hundred year history – a change that is diminishing the amount of real news available to the consumer. A generation of relentless corporatization is now culminating in a furious, unprecedented blitz of buying, selling and consolidating of newspapers, from the mightiest dailies to the humblest weeklies.

You’d better get used to it, . . . because the real momentum of consolidation is just beginning – it won’t be long now before America is reduced to half a dozen major print conglomerates.

Out across the country there is simultaneously a near blackout of local politics by broadcasters. The public interest group Alliance for Better Campaigns studied forty-five stations in six cities in one week in October. Out of 7,560 hours of programming analyzed, only 13 were devoted to local public affairs – less than one-half of 1% of local programming nationwide. Mayors, town councils, school boards, civic leaders get no time from broadcasters who have filled their coffers by looting the public airwaves over which they were placed as stewards. Last year, when a movement sprang up in the House of Representatives to require these broadcasters to obey the law that says they must sell campaign advertising to candidates for office at the lowest commercial rate, the powerful broadcast lobby brought the Congress to heel. So much for the “public interest, convenience, and necessity.”

One journalist alone can’t extract from an employer a commitment to let editors and not accountants choose the appropriate subject matter for coverage. But what if news councils blew the whistle on shoddy or cowardly managements? What if foundations gave magazines such as the Columbia Journalism Review sufficient resources to spread their stories of journalistic bias, failure or incompetence? What if entire editorial departments simply refused any longer to quote anonymous sources – or give Kobe Bryant’s trial more than the minimal space it rates by any reasonable standard – or to run stories planted by the Defense Department and impossible, for alleged security reasons, to verify? What if a professional association backed them to the hilt? Or required the same stance from all its members? It would take courage to confront powerful ownerships that way. But not as much courage as is asked of those brave journalists in some countries who face the dungeon, the executioner or the secret assassin for speaking out.

But too much is at stake for our spirits to flag. Earlier this week the Library of Congress gave the first Kluge Lifetime Award in the Humanities to the Polish philosopher Leslie Kolakowski. In an interview Kolakowski said: “There is one freedom on which all other liberties depend – and that is freedom of expression, freedom of speech, of print. If this is taken away, no other freedom can exist, or at least it would be soon suppressed.”

It’s your fight now. Look around. You are not alone.

- Michael 9:18 AM - [PermaLink] -

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Your tax dollars at work:



FEMA FOR KIDS: TSUNAMI GAME

Fun for everyone!

- rob 4:15 PM - [PermaLink] -

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A look back on an historic four years: How so much go wrong so fast

By the Numbers: The U.S. After 4 Years of Bush

Poverty Rate
2000: 11.3% or 31.6 million Americans
2003: 12.5% or 35.9 million Americans
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Value of the Dollar
1/19/01: 1 Dollar = 1.06 Euros
1/19/05: 1 Dollar = 0.77 Euros

Budget
2000 budget surplus $236.4 billion
2004 budget deficit $412.6 billion
That's a shift of $649 billion and doesn't include the cost of the Iraq war.

- rob 3:55 PM - [PermaLink] -

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I was only joking when I said we should "tax the women folk" (see poll)

New Doubts On Plan For Social Security

Perhaps most provocatively, Thomas said lawmakers should debate whether Social Security benefits should differ for men and women, because women live longer. "We never have debated gender-adjusting Social Security," he said. A House leadership official said that not even Republicans on Thomas's committee would vote for that idea. Thomas also said the system might take into account the need of blue-collar workers to retire younger than office workers.

And it should be noted that the extremely wealthy die sooner then the average person due to the stress of being so dang rich, so their benefits would also have to increase.

- rob 2:15 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Thanks to a phunkster:

Dispatch from a Red State

Attorney meets the 'jury pool from hell'

Right after jury selection began last week, one man got up and left, announcing, "I'm on morphine and I'm higher than a kite."

When the prosecutor asked if anyone had been convicted of a crime, a prospective juror said that he had been arrested and taken to a mental hospital after he almost shot his nephew. He said he was provoked because his nephew just would not come out from under the bed.

Another would-be juror said he had had alcohol problems and was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover officer. "I should have known something was up," he said. "She had all her teeth."
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The case involved a woman accused of hitting her brother's girlfriend in the face with a brick. Ballin's client was found not guilty.

Yes it is unfair to say this is a Red state thing, but I'll admit to you, though we say we are "Fair and Balanced" in our page title, we, like everyone else who says they are "Fair and Balanced", are not actually Fair and balanced.

- rob 1:53 PM - [PermaLink] -

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50 years after George W. Bush's death the monuments reappear.

Moscow Plans First Stalin Monument Since 1960s

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow plans to erect a new statue of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, returning his once-ubiquitous image to its streets after an absence of four decades, a top city official said Wednesday.
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In another sign of Stalin's growing appeal, state television channels have shown a number of prime-time television shows in recent months depicting him in a positive light.

- rob 1:52 PM - [PermaLink] -

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If you want to do something do express you anger about tomorrow's coronation, why not do nothing?

Not One Damn Dime!

- rob 1:32 PM - [PermaLink] -

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When it comes to Social Security it is important to remind everyone that There Is No Crisis.

Go see: Social Security: There Is No Crisis -

- rob 1:25 PM - [PermaLink] -

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A moment this weekend that gave me a feeling of hope:

Standing on the corner in the 20 degree weather (sub zero with wind chill) a 7 year old girl and her younger sister were selling hot chocolate: Proceeds to go to Unicef to aide the Tsunami victims.

Most expensive hot chocolate my children had all year, and happily so.

- rob 10:33 AM - [PermaLink] -

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My sadness and anger at our times is for lost opportunities... It is sorrow at the loss of progress. Is it all Bush, hell no. Does he make himself an easy target by having his administration embody, profess, prosthletize, and apologize for many of the growing wrongs? Yes.

Martin Luther King - Letter from Birmingham Jail

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "An Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this 'hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
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But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that an men are created equal ..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we viii be. We we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime---the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jeans Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
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Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom, They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jai with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.

I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham, ham and all over the nation, because the goal of America k freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation-and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

- rob 5:00 PM - [PermaLink] -

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What? Only 34?!!?!

The scandal sheet
Print it out, send it to Harry Reid, or just read it and weep. Here are 34 scandals from the first four years of George W. Bush's presidency -- every one of them worse than Whitewater.

Consider the raw materials of scandal that this administration has produced: False claims about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction. Torture in Abu Ghraib. The virtually treasonous exposure of a CIA agent by White House officials. And those are just the best-known examples.


After all, how many citizens can name all the ongoing investigations of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm? Who remembers that the administration illicitly diverted $700 million from Afghanistan to Iraq? Or that, on Capitol Hill, Senate Republicans stole strategy memos from Democrats, while a House Republican said he was offered a bribe during a crucial vote? Even a conscientious citizen cannot be expected to keep score, so Salon has compiled a list.

Read it. (you'll have to watch on ad though if you aren't a premium member [it was a short ad]).

- rob 4:07 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Making Votes Count: One Last Election Lesson

The November election may feel like ancient history, but it is still going on in North Carolina. The state has been unable to swear in an agriculture commissioner because a single malfunctioning electronic voting machine lost more ballots than the number of votes that separate the two candidates. The State Board of Elections, the candidates and the public are sharply divided on how to proceed. The mess North Carolina finds itself in is a cautionary tale about the perils of relying on electronic voting that does not produce a paper record.

When the returns came in for the agriculture commissioner race, two things were clear: the Republican, Steve Troxler, and the Democrat, Britt Cobb, were just 2,287 votes apart, and a voting machine in Carteret County had lost 4,438 votes. The machine had mistakenly been set to keep roughly 3,000 votes in its memory, which was not enough. And in a spectacularly poor design decision, it was programmed to let people keep "voting" even when their votes were not being saved.
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North Carolina's plight underscores a basic point about elections: because there are often problems, there must be a mechanism for a recount. If the Carteret County voting machine had produced a voter-verified paper record each time a vote was cast, these paper records could have been be counted and the matter would be resolved. But electronic voting machines that do not produce paper records make recounts impossible.

The one positive thing to come out of the agriculture commissioner race fiasco is that it has prompted North Carolina to reconsider its use of paperless electronic voting. As the state ponders the issue, it should look to Ohio. Kenneth Blackwell, the Ohio secretary of state who did so many things wrong as elections supervisor last year, recently did one very important thing right. He directed all of the state's counties to adopt paper-based optical-scan voting systems. If Carteret County had voted on machines that produced a paper record, North Carolina would not have the constitutional crisis it has now - it would have an agriculture commissioner.

- rob 4:04 PM - [PermaLink] -

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As Jan. 20 Nears, Terror Warnings Drop
Faulty Intelligence, Dated Information Led to Cautions

No, the election led to cautions.... Actual title of article should be: Ad the Campaign Fades, Terror Warnings Drop

In April, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced that al Qaeda terrorists might strike during this week's presidential inauguration festivities in Washington. The warning was part of a drumbeat sounded by U.S. officials throughout 2004 that terrorists were seeking to launch attacks both during and after the election season.

Is any reporting going to call them on this? Fear was important to the campaign... and they manufactured it. Wholesale.

- rob 3:30 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Yesterday was Monday.

The Top Ten Conservative Idiots, No. 182 - Democratic Underground

4. George W. Bush
Back in 2000 when George W. Bush was running for president, he told delegates at the Republican National Convention that, "Behind every goal I've talked about tonight is a great hope for our country. A hundred years from now this must not be remembered as an age rich in possession and poor in ideals. Instead, we must usher in an era of responsibility." Well, last week our Great Leader was proud to announce that the "era of responsibility" is... wait for it... yes! It's over! Did you blink and miss it? According to the Washington Post, "President Bush said the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and" - get this - "that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath." There you have it - the era of responsibility ended the moment Dubya got re(s)elected. But I guess all that grand talk of an "era of responsibility" was kinda quaint anyway. Referring to his opinion that his administration could now be excused of any culpability in the Iraq disaster, Bush said, "We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections." Ah yes, from the "era of responsibility" to an "accountability moment." Impressive.
...
10. George W. Bush
And finally, the inauguration is almost upon us; the bloated, farcical coronation of King George II which is reportedly going to cost more than any inauguration in history, despite the fact that we're at war, the government's broke, and George is telling the rest of us to "sacrifice." But don't worry - you see, this is an unprecedented inauguration in more ways that one. For the first time ever, the White House is "refusing to reimburse the District for most of the costs associated with next week's inauguration, breaking with precedent and forcing the city to divert $11.9 million from homeland security projects," according to the Washington Post. "It's an unfunded mandate of the most odious kind. How can the District be asked to take funds from important homeland security projects to pay for this instead?" said a spokesman for Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee. Quite. But never mind that - there's far more important inauguration news to report. It turns out that Kid Rock, the "rap-rocker" - or "rock-rapper," if you prefer - has been kicked off the inauguration's youth concert bill after outraged fundies found out who he was. (You must check out this World Net Daily article - it's an absolute scream.) Apparently the Bush family weren't too happy after they discovered these lyrics from a 1990 Kid Rock album:

Pimp of the Nation, I could be it
As a matter of a fact, I foresee it
But only pimpin' hoes with the big tush
While you be left pimpin' Barbara Bush

So will Bush take revenge against Kid Rock for calling his mom an ugly ho? Let's face it, Dubya invaded and occupied an entire country because its ruler tried to kill his dad, so at the very least, Kid Rock can probably expect a good beating. See you next week!

- rob 1:17 PM - [PermaLink] -

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thanks to a phunkster:

Proof that Clinton wanted to promote the "homosexual agenda":

US military wanted 'sex bomb'

Declassified documents reveal the Pentagon toyed with the idea of an aphrodisiac chemical weapon in 1994.

The gas would have made enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. The weapon's developers said homosexual behaviour among troops would deal a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale.

Also considered was a "nude bomb" until they realized Maxwell Smart got that first.

- rob 12:50 PM - [PermaLink] -

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over heard during the Dr. Rice confirmation hearings:

Rice: "I wouldn't presume to give the President advice."

Well, doesn't that just explain everything?

Ms. Rice you are aware that your present position is called the National Security Advisor???

- rob 12:46 PM - [PermaLink] -

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The Coronation of America's First Tyrant King

The $80 million (don't believe that $40 million figure, that's PR) pomp and circumstance about to unfold as U.S. troops without honor -- um, make that armor -- get blowed up real good every single day has been bought and paid for by the same deregulated industry that rigged the election in the first place, thanks to the undemocratic machinations of single-party rule in every branch of government, including the unofficial -- make that official -- fourth branch: News Corporation, Clear Channel, and a host of other communication conglomerates in clear violation of FCC mandates. But why stop at the FCC? How about the FDA, the SSA, OSHA, and all the rest of the erstwhile hugely successful government programs WE pay for? Who the hell has the political will or authority to tell them No? When you buy off the Supreme Court and pack every single federal bench with radical ideologues and religious fundamentalists, you can get away with anything. It's called being a "strict constructionist" as opposed to those evil "activist" judges who favor "Big Government". You know that stroke your dad had last week from a medication his doctor prescribed because his knees hurt from playing too much tennis from trying to keep in shape? Remember that cancer that killed your mother because of the medicine her doctor prescribed due to the early onset of osteoperosis? Remember how your schizophrenic brother finally killed himself by jumping out a 20-story window after taking that pill the doctor prescribed to keep him from killing himself? Thank you FDA, it's nice to know that you're regulating yourself and keeping Americans safe from harm and physical injury.

And why shouldn't they regulate themselves without mandatory oversight? After all, it is the law, legislated by the all-Republican all-the-time House and Senate, our "morals and values" leaders, who lead by example. That's why we have the Patriot Acts, I and II, a morality play starring Big Brother, whose sole purpose is to break down any wall separating the executive branch from amassing unlimited, unprecedented power, which used to be illegal (an American president was almost impeached for it, until he had to resign after firing his cabinet). Not any more! Thank you, U.S. Department of Justice. Wait a minute, didn't Orwell call it that? It's so confusing!

So what, you say, why shouldn't the executive branch have all the power it could ever want -- including the power of the purse, which used to be Congress's domain (after all, what does it really matter, since they're all best friends, and have all the same best friends) -- without answering to anyone; we're at war against an evil enemy, somewhere anyway, and we have to jail and torture and murder anybody with the same religion, because they all believe the same thing: that their God is bigger than our God. Or did I get that backward? Oh well.

The other great thing about the Patriot Act is that not only is it unpatriotic not to support it, but it also gives the right of your medical privacy to banks and insurers and credit card companies to share, who have unlimited access to every purchase you ever made in your entire life, and they can raise your rates based on this private information, without a cap, for however much they want, retroactively! Isn't privatized health insurance great? That too used to be against the law, and once was considered unethical, like torture. Those were quaint beliefs, though, according to the new attorney general. There must be spies who must be tortured, like that 15-yr.-old girl who was raped and could only get an abortion if she published the names of every person she ever had sex with in the newspaper. Didn't end up really mattering, since the papers dragged her name through the mud anyway during the court case. Thank you, Jeb Bush. Anyone for a second helping of compassion? It's reassuring to know that you're on the side of traditional values. It makes the community safe from terrorists -- I mean, doctors who perform legal abortions.

How about those pesky liberal senators trying to stop coal and mining industries from poisoning the air and the water? Americans have the right to die of asthma, get inoperable brain tumors and become infertile. It's in the Constitution, and if it isn't yet, it should be, like a ban on certain people who love each other. I'll take my water black. I like it that way. Same with the air. And if you don't think so -- there isn't anything you can do about it. Speaking of which, if you've invested your life savings in an energy industry -- like Enron stock, for example -- the CEOs, those upstanding captains of industry with so much integrity and accountablity, are completely protected from any meaningful litigation when they lie about their assets in their financial reports, sell off all their stock and run away with every penny of the investors' money, to the tune of $60 billion. It's all legal now! (Well not really, you pay a small fine.) From now on, we should call it rightdoing! All they have to do is fly the U.S. president -- or "candidate" anyway -- around in a private jet for free and spend quality time with him on the links arranging fraud. Golf is such a great game, especially how it historically discriminates against groups. Some people are addicted to it.

The Pentagon and defense contractors are addicted to each other. That's been true for a long time. Nothing illegal about that. I don't remember, though, actually bombing a country that didn't do anything to us so that they could make billions from rebuilding it at fantastically inflated prices, putting U.S. soldiers' lives at risk every minute of every long day for years and years and years to do the dirty work for them. I guess that's what they mean by a standing army: the actual fellows who profit can't stand doing the work. And they sure as hell ain't payin' for it. WE ARE. That's why John Kerry is a flip-flopper. How dare he question this noble enterprise? Clearly the man is unsuited to be president of the United States.

Not like the Emperor, who always wears his suits in plain sight, representing all the American people. I can't see them, though. Where are they? He isn't wearing any. I better go see a doctor, I must be blind. Come to think of it, maybe I won't.

- Michael 4:07 PM - [PermaLink] -

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