4/25/2007

Message from Planet Bush: My pain is bigger than yours

On the Today Show this morning, Laura Bush comes up with a total jaw-dropper. When it comes to Iraq...

"no one suffers more than their President and I do."



Now we know for sure. Either she is off her meds or she is a bonafide sociopath.

Just imagine what kind of an asshole you would have to be to say something like that.


4/24/2007

Oy, oy, oy....no wait....OY!

Chickenhawk George accepts a purple heart from a Vietnam Vet. Is your brain completely broken now?


Rove hears music, has yet to face it

On the other hand, with regards to the post below, there is always room for hope: Rove's activities to be investigated by the Office of the Special Counsel. It's about time. It's time to take the lid off this rotting administration.

ps. Maybe in the process they can get to the bottom of this. Turns out GOP operatives hosted Ohio's election returns - and the returns are so very corrupt.


The F word loud and clear

Fascist. We are too steeped in personal freedom to contemplate it. Naomi Wolf argues in the Guardian that there are 10 essential ingredients to a fascist state - and Dubya seems to be using them as a "to do" list. That's old news.

Most days I believe that the American process is will circle back to sanity again. I have a lot of faith that it will. Some days, like today, it's harder than others.

There are so many prominent characters out there who espouse beliefs that are nothing but distilled hatred, nothing but marching orders disguised as thoughtful analysis.

Witness:

Rush Limbaugh: Limbaugh: Cho was a liberal -- Liberal as bogeyman. In another complete mystery, Limbaugh comes up with a song called, "Barack The Magic Negro" and played it live on air. I would love to be a fly on the wall when Limbaugh discusses this "content" with his editors. I would like to record his editors approving this stuff.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA): ‘I Hope It’s Your Families That Suffer’ From A Terrorist Attack if the US doesn't torture and detain the innocent in order to get at potential terrorists. In his view, it's worth it.

Tom Delay: Reid And Pelosi Are ‘Very, Very Close To Treason’. Evidently, he thinks they should be locked up. Not that he is particularly relevant anymore, yet he continues to get airtime.

There really isn't anyway to sugarcoat it. These folks are prominent Republicans with loud, far-reaching voices. And they are fascists.


4/20/2007

Dinesh D'Souza wasn't invited to the party...

Pharyngula is absolutely right, Dinesh D'Souza is a contemptible ghoul. He seems to imply that, because the Richard Dawkins wasn't invited to speak at the Memorial Service for the Virginia Tech students, all atheism is discredited. He writes

o no one's surprise, Dawkins has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it's difficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil. The reason is that in a purely materialist universe, immaterial things like good and evil and souls simply do not exist. For scientific atheists like Dawkins, Cho's shooting of all those people can be understood in this way--molecules acting upon molecules.

If this is the best that modern science has to offer us, I think we need something more than modern science.



May I add, to no one's surprise, D'Souza has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community, either. What this tells me is that they have no interest in hearing from lunk heads who twist an incomprehensible tragedy into a bigoted, senseless diatribe. Hey hotshot, did you stop to think for a second that one of the people that was killed may have been an atheist?

What a putz.


McCain in the membrane

I think we can all admit it now. John McCain is just slightly unhinged.


4/19/2007

Supreme Victory for Rhetoric

Well, it's official. The Supreme Court doesn't care about women's health: "High Court Upholds Curb on Abortion." Thank you, Roberts. Thank you, Alito. You've confirmed what we all knew when you were appointed.

I know the decision's pure crap, but for an expert legal opinion on why it's crap, read the dissent.


4/17/2007

FOX trashes Vonnegut

Here's an obituary done by FOX News that is about as low as it gets. It's like they are taking a dump in his casket.

Question: If he's so irrelevant why burn serious news time crapping all over him five minutes after he is dead?

Answer: They don't want their base reading his books.


4/12/2007

Republicans want us out of Iraq too

The Nation recently reported a poll that indicates 59% of Republicans want to get out of Iraq. We will be in Iraq for a long time yet, but at least it looks likely that bi-partisan progress on withdrawl can be made.


4/10/2007

Christian Taliban at home in Bush's White House

In 2004, the Independent ran a story on Patrick Henry University, a right-wing-fundamentalist Christian college that managed to place over 100 interns in the Bush White House.

Now it seems that a college founded by the radical cleric, Pat Robertson, has supplied
over 150 graduates to the Bush Administration. In particular, one Monica Goodling, who is currently taking the fifth regarding her role in engineering the firing of seven DOJ attorneys.

It will take a long time and a lot of work to dethrone the Christian Taliban. But it's gotta be done. These folks don't believe in the same secular constitution and Jeffersonian Democracy that has basically defined freedom in the world for the last 220 years.


FOX News debate a non-starter

Obama Ditches CBC/Fox Debate

Good. It's about time everybody stopped pretending it's a real news outlet instead of a venomous spigot of propaganda. Presidential candidates shouldn't attend debates sponsored by the Weekly World News, either.

Don't get me wrong. I am not advocating any particular news outlet. CNN, MSNBC and most of the network biggies are just as complicit in the metastasis of the objective beat reporter into the cancer of bullying, shouting, jingoistic "infotainment." It used to be that you had to scrounge for the agenda in the news. Now you have to scrounge for the truth.

Rock on John Edwards and Obama. Now, if ALL the candidates could just tell ALL the news outlets to take a hike, maybe set it up so that the debates could be mediated by a jr. high school speech teacher or something. We could let the media just show up and turn on the recorders and cameras and get the hell out of the way.


4/06/2007

Bill O'Reilly Loses His Mind

Please, take a moment and watch Bill O'Reilly have a stroke. For once I admire Geraldo. His mustache quivers with indignation.


4/03/2007

Substantial common ground

I just read PEW's Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007.

What especially caught my eye was the downward trend in iparty identification:

Even more striking than the changes in some core political and social values is the dramatic shift in party identification that has occurred during the past five years. In 2002, the country was equally divided along partisan lines: 43% identified with the Republican Party or leaned to the GOP, while an identical proportion said they were Democrats. Today, half of the public (50%) either identifies as a Democrat or says they lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 35% who align with the GOP.


4/02/2007

I pledge allegiance, to the spin...

I am so sick of headlines like this one:

Democrats To Widen Conflict With Bush

No they aren't. They are going attempt to take some baby steps back to our basic American Values and the values of free people everywhere. Habeas Corpus? Yes, please. Close the stain on the legacy of American Democracy known as Guantanomo Bay Prison, which is where our country toss suspicious looking people that haven't been charged? Yes, please. An end to illegal government spying? Definitely. A return to government transparency? Please, thank you, can I have some more?

A couple of days ago, I read Glenn Greenwald's excellent, but depressing, commentary on the state of the American Media. Watching Chris Mathews, Richard Stengel, Norah O'Donnell and Gloria Borger yuck it up about whether or not getting Rove to tell the truth about his role in the DOJ attorney firings scandal is good or bad politically is a little like watching them chuckle about whether the child-diddling priests from Boston should be charged... HA! HA! Those kooky parishoners! I think they are just a little full of themselves, don't you Nora? HA!

You see, in a case like that, they would be talking about the facts of the case, not the political ramifications of action or inaction. Nobody is widening a conflict with Bush. He is an after thought compared to the real stakes - preserving some shred of liberty and decency for our country in the face of a set of values that does not hold them dear at all.