Tag Archives: GOP

Not a homosexual, Craig is a hypocrite

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Larry Craig offers his handWhen he says “I did nothing wrong,” does conservative Senator Larry Craig mean:
I did not lead the attack against gay rights as well as carp on and on about Bill Clinton’s impropriety?

Was Larry Craig peering into your stall in the bathroom? No. He was sizing up a man who appeared to be lingering there while others pooped and went. Smells something of entrapment to me. I can see airport travelers complain about hearing sex acts in neighboring bathroom stalls, but not for fear of unwarranted solicitation. Why are policemen detailed to interrupt a time-honored last resort among few social options for closeted lonely guys?

I believe Senator Craig when he says he’s not gay. To a homophobic conservative, the idea of a male partner may seem dirtier than a quick lewd act to feed his nagging alter-ego.

That said, I’m damn glad he’s unmasked for the humanity-hater he is. The GOP plays by no rules. We should celebrate the rare occasion it works for the common good.

Here he is calling Bill Clinton a “nasty, bad, naughty boy.”

How about a 3rd party for THE BOYARS?

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Boyars kissing up to the CzarGrassroots Democrats! What have you got to say for your party? Sixteen Democrats crossed over to approve the expanded surveillance act. Why? Republicans stick together, why can’t the Democratic Party leadership? Twas 16 with 6 not voting, giving Bush’s measure the needed votes. Perhaps the 16 drew the short straw and were cast across the aisle to pass the measure, cast by the Democratic leadership who got to stay off the record.
 
The point is, the Dems, just like the GOP, continue to back Bush. They refuse to bring the war to a close, they enforce corporate monied rule. That’s the way it works, while the media has us scratching our heads wondering why those darned Dems do dat?

I have an idea. Let’s create a third party, and let THEM have it. The Monied Party, the Landlord Party, oh let them name it. It will be so them. Let them deal with the dismal prospects the media gives a hypothetic new party. Why shouldn’t the American people get to keep their established parties?

Republican and Democratic caucuses, vote to eject your political representatives. Retake your party. Your reps in Washington are not representing you. Get rid of the traitors. Expel them.

Standing politicians, voting for Bush or Pfizer, or Exxon or Dow, or the AMA or Prudential, or GE or General Dynamics, or Wal-mart or the Waltons, or Disney or Murdoch, give them their own party. The Boyar Party I’d call it. From historical depictions, Boyars look like the kind of folk who wouldn’t give you or me the time of day. I cross my fingers we elect a Czar with the guts to nail their hats to their heads.

Then set about to find candidates who will represent YOU. Don’t stand by for table scraps from candidates who can’t say in public what they pretend to promise you in private. It doesn’t happen, they get to Washington and they betray all of us. Ditch ’em.

Gazette spinning for Lamborn

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This table on the front page of the Gazette today purported to compare the postal expenditures of several Colorado congressmen. It accompanied the headline LAMBORN RACKS UP MAILING CHARGES.
Table purporting to compare mailing expenditures 
If you didn’t read the text, but glanced briefly at this list, might you conclude that GOP Representative Doug Lamborn spent LESS than his constituents? Can you see how they did that?
 
Although ranked in order of excess, the Gazette used improperly justified asterisks to skew the columns and make the lower figures appear bigger. When this wasn’t sufficient, they appended decimals. The Gazette elected further to use proportional- spacing to make Lamborn’s $41,691 look smaller even than Salazar’s $2,004.

Repugnican win in 2008

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I predict a Republican win in 2008, sorry to say, with really little we can do about it unless we can silence the media forked tongues. This country is headed for an election in 2008 we the people can’t win, and it won’t take black box voting, purged voter registers, or harassment at the polls to do it. Rove’s crew, the corporate interests and the GOP are lining up opposition candidate(s) who can’t win.

Barack, Hillary. Give me a break. In 2004 we couldn’t get Joe public to vote in great enough number to remove our certifiable idiot in chief, and this time he’s going to vote for a black president? Americans are still not ready to give gay partners equal treatment under the law, do you mean to tell me they’re ready for a woman president?

And those of us who can scrape together a third party coalition, are we going to do any better than split the vote between the Democratic Party stooge and a third party hopeful? The corporate media will blame the former for defeatism in Iraq and lambaste the latter as unelectable. Unless the power can be pulled from the traitors-to-democracy at the microphones, the average American lout will cast his lot with the Republican mafia/mormon/moron don du jour.

Super bowl Janet Jackson and Republican morality.

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This is something I published a couple of years ago. Every bit as relevant as today. And every bit today as then, some things are timeless.
This one contains a “dirty” word, so you might go ahead and set your browser Content Filter to profanity blocking. Better to censor yourself than try to censor me.

But now, once again, we are going to have the hyperbole and rampant commercialism pushed onto our senses, over and over and over and endlessly and I bet you thought I was going to say over again and again and again and repeatedly.

I don’t know the exact date of the Super Bowl. Just that it’s about a couple of weeks. I know the Chicago Bears are going to be one team, because of the hype I got as soon as I opened one of my email servers.

I am sure everybody is going to get lots and lots of Emails saying Bears or ? you choose… or New Poll: Who will it be Bears or ?

There will be jockeying to find out what the commercials are going to be for the half-time show, there will be much breathless wide-eyed awe and stories about what the commercials and so much (ok, I lied, there are more than one “dirty” word in this) all kinds of who-seriously-gives-a-fat-rat’s-ass-about-it bullshit, to lead us up to the Big Game.

A lot of the commercials are going to be for beer. And other drugs, especially alcoholic drugs.

You know the ones, they say at the end of it “(name of brewer/distiller) urges you to DRINK (notice they put this word last) responsibly”.

It is dope dealing at its finest. The crack house and the opium den and the weed corner are blown away (sick dope reference) by this magnum opus of Purveyance of Demon Rum.

And it is on a Sunday, a Pagan holy day, co-opted by Christianity, for worship of our respective God or gods. Pastors in Churches across the land are going to schedule their services, especially the evening services, around this latter-day Circus Maximus. And their morning services too, because the worshipers are going to have to rush to the store after services so they can score their dope and munchies for the BIGGGGG DEALLLLL…….

So I got the Super Bowl part embedded in our consciousness, right?

Now to the Republican Morality part, for a quick tease, then to Janet Jackson and the Infamous Titty Incident, then back to a slightly longer rant on Republican “Morality”.

The owners of the NFL teams, virtually all of them, are supporters of the Republican party. And the R’s pay it back in spades by supporting legislation that makes the PUBLIC TREASURY pay for the stadia, (yes, I spelled that last word right, I’m practicing my Latin, are you?) the security, the traffic control, and in-stadium dope I mean Beer Sales. That last because some stadia, like the ill-fated Cotton Bowl in Dallas, are in dry precincts. Which is the real reason the Cowboys don’t play in Dallas, for decades it has been in Irving, and next year it won’t be in Dallas County even.

The cities have to pay for the construction of the stadia out of bond money, and they are always told that it will boost the local economy.

Also here in Colorado, there was a guy running for Senator, you might recognize the name Pete COORS. And yes, he is heir to the beer fortune.

On to The Titty Incident.

Janet Jackson, during the half-time 3 years ago or was it 4, I lose count of things like football. Got her costume deliberately torn at the end of a song and exposed part of her (gasp! the HORROR!!) breast. Now, I didn’t get to see this. I don’t watch football. The homo-eroticism of 22 very large gentlemen throwing their bodies at each other doesn’t do it for me.

There was much scandal. Much public outcry. Much Breast Beating in the halls of Congress, (yeah, I know, that last joke was horrible but I had to get it off my chest) even the Commander in Chimp of the United States saying that he hadn’t watched the incident, but it was a lovely breast.

Ok so I might have taken a little liberty with that last statement, but I don’t keep abreast of the off the wall statements of Mr Bush, every time I try to watch one of his speeches my brain tries to escape by crawling out my left ear.

The Moral Outrage sweeping the country was amazing, especially in the R party.

Like Mr Coors.

 During the 04 super bowl, and I know I know, the Super Bowl calendar starts from S.B. I and S.B.II and so forth, with the not-very-subtle Roman numerals numbering system. Instead of A.D. or C.E., measured from the birth of Christ or the birth of Christianity, depending on your faith viewpoint. But I don’t worship the oblong ball. So it matters naught to me how the Hell many S.B. there were.

Mr Coors was OUTRAGED about this public impropriety. How dare they interrupt his half time show where he had a commercial or two over the years, with scantily clad women whose costumes showed a substantially higher percentage of overall Breast Acreage than Ms Jackson did, telling the poor saps watching that somehow they would have a shot at touching these breasts if they only buy his brand of Dope. For people who keep up with such things, these are the modern version of the Vestal Virgins performing their religious duty at the modern Circus Maximus, the Cheerleaders, who get paid a paltry amount for their Services on the field, but get much more opportunity working in commercials. Like for Mr Coors.

Since this was an Election Year, when all the Noble Laws about the Half Time show being lagged 4 seconds or so just to protect America from such an awful sight ever again….

And the Republican NFL team owners who pimp out these Vestal Virgins as part of their Circus, were also outraged, that Ms Jackson would Dare To Expose America to a sight of substantially less breast-age than their own cheerleaders and even most of the Female fans and even some of the (ewwweewwww) male fans show during every game. I mean, one team has its fans wear cheese on their heads, and paint their naked upper torsi green and yellow, and show over and over again one in particular a set of udders that would make a topless dancer envious (or nauseous) and who happens to be a guy (I think)

So this year we will be (or you will be, I plan to be out riding my bicycle, while the streets are practically deserted for four or five hours) watching a heavily subsidized, heavily censored, erotic commercial enterprise, knowing that the GOP Big Brother apparatus will be protecting us from such unseemly behaviour ever again occurring.

Obama outta my face

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Barack Obobblehead
Democrats are storming Congress, threatening the Neocon oligarchy, and the MSM directs its spotlights to a sideshow: Obama! Do you worry about who’s running for president in 2008? There’s supposed to be plenty change afoot right now in the center ring.
 
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

And please do not choose the 2008 straw men for us. Do not tell voters that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are the Democrats’ best offerings. Obama is an impressive individual, certainly a non-commital politician, so let’s give him a few years to prove his effectiveness. He only became a senator in 2004. As yet we only know he’s qualified for the Tony Robbins circuit. Let’s let Obama look us up in 2016. Until then we’ve got to pick someone electible, not someone the GOP/media wants to sell us as our Last White Hope.

George Bush’s latest sales pitch to the American public highlighted for me the extreme entrenchment of corporate media. They ran nothing but interference for Bush, prepping their audiences to receive Dubya’s message well lubed. It didn’t work, and I hope the networks’ glad-handling showed.

The will of the people is overtaking congress and the land, and the media are going to proclaim otherwise until we pry the microphones from their cold dead buttholes.

The guilty among us

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Jose Padilla kept in sensory deprivation
Continuous sensory deprivation has rendered Jose Padilla effectively useless to his own defense lawyers.

A sense of optimism before the 2004 elections had me anticipating a reckoning for the perpetrators of the Iraq war. Not just the Neocon architects, but everyone who had supported their murderous, larcenous enterprise. Not just the Bush cronies in the media or think-tanks or GOP hierarchy. I fantasized that every American even smiling in pictures beside the president or a cohort would be held to account. I imagined leveling a war reparations tax on all Republicans, a stupidity tax so to speak. Make those who supported the war pay for it.

With no sea change yet in sight, I’ve lowered by sights. Save the flag waivers for later, let’s address the other foot soldiers, the foot soldiers. Our troops in Iraq are the war’s hands-on perpetrators, each and every one should be held to account. There might be no justice we can enforce as yet, but let the soldiers know it will come. It won’t be a hard case to prove. Kill indiscriminately? Violate humanitarian law? Too thick to understand right from wrong? Sorry Charley.

Support the troops. Give them a good swift reprimand.

Military prison guards at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo,may have been trained to behave terribly, maybe their orders explicitly state to do terrible things, maybe they some bring stateside experience from regular US prison practice. It’s no excuse. Being ignorant of the law, being dumb at crew-cutted doorknobs, does not excuse anyone from responsibility. They are all part of the reign of terror and they will burn with it as soon as justice is given a match.

Oh, Lord, not Kumbaya!

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Campfire songsMy muse is upset because everyone is making fun of Kumbaya.
 
Relax, Kumbaya is safe. The story you read in the Gazette, Oh Lord, not Kumbaya, syndicated from the Dallas Morning Herald, is a rather underhanded loaded question. You know the classic example: “When did you stop beating your wife?” Whether you never stopped or never started, the load is delivered, you do. (But you don’t.)

The DMH article asked “How did Kumbaya become such a joke?” and then lists instances of the joke being made: A GOP ad, a Christian Science Monitor quip. They are able to find an early instance in an obscure 80’s comedy Volunteers spoofing the Peace Corps. It seems to me SNL has made fun of everything, that wouldn’t make the ridicule universal.

I was tipped off when my friend paraphrased the article as having said Kumbaya was an “international joke.” What international? The rest of the world isn’t making fun of our spirituals, certainly not our peaceniks. The lambast is purely English-speaking and it’s coming from corporate mouthpieces who want to ridicule any tools of grassroots community efforts.

Television has no interest in sing-a-long songs. People singing together and not looking at the TV doesn’t serve them at all. But for people communing together, a melody and lyric like Kumbaya is very powerful, especially because everybody knows it already. When protestors assembled with Cindy Sheehan last year in Crawford, we sang Kumbaya among others. We wound up singing all the patriotic songs too because they were the only ones we all knew.

And so the media is determined to keep the heat on hippies and idealists, religious or not, by making fun of them, and concluding that the derision is universal. The press laughs with each other’s jokes and then report the humor to be statistically unanimous.

The Dallas reporter asked several etymologists “why did Kumbaya become an idiom for idiocy?” And none of the etymologists knew. Maybe that’s a tip off it isn’t.

Hopefully one day the press will stop trying to paint people who hope for peace and goodwill to all mankind as idiots.

Colorado Springs Left Behind

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Tim LaHaye’s prophesy came true in reverse. A Democratic revolution swept the national elections, even the State of Colorado, but the Colorado Springs faithful were left behind.
 
Republican congressman Doug LambornAmerica now has a Democratic House of Representatives and Senate. Colorado has a Democratic house, senate and governor. El Paso County even has more Democratic representatives. But who did Colorado Springs elect to fill GOP Congressman Joel Hefley’s seat? A screaming idiot of a Republican, the ninny-voiced former state senator Douglas P. “Pea-brain” Lamborn. In the midst of a sea change of reform, area voters opted for not just another throwback, but a candidate even Hefley and fellow Republicans could not stoop to endorse.

Colorado Springs constituents seem to be angling for a merit badge in consistency, even if it costs them their economy, jobs, health, security, lives, everything. They’re dyed in the wool, against-their-own-self-interest conservatives. Not easily differentiated from pure idiots. While the rest of the class learned the lessons of Bush and the GOP, graduating to the next stage, throwing the bums out, Colorado Springs, proud Republicans, are held back.

So long GOP, hello SOP

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Blue campaign mugThe GOP is dead, long live the SOP.
 
That’s my take. If the Dems don’t immediately show the American people their determination to turn Bush’s machinations around, we’re going to see that Democrats and Republicans are the SOP, the Same Old Party.

I could be wrong, because the new congress is getting no help from the media. Post election headlines proclaim the Democratic landslide, but add that the stench of corruption persists over the Legislative Branch. When last did you hear Congress described so? Was Reagan the president? Was it when Congress was in the hands of Democrats? I bet if you close your eyes, you’re picturing Tip O’Neill.

The GOP is the party of big business and big media. It acts at the behest of corporations, and the corporate owned television networks. Naturally the talking heads on TV have to complain if anyone threatens to redo the undoings of the GOP.

The only liberal bias in the media is a presumed intellectual bias. The media personalities look like they’re smart enough that they must be progressive thinkers. That’s an interesting presumption, don’t you think? It’s based on an obvious truth. Smart, honorable people are humanitarian, compassionate, social reformers. The ugly truth is that media people are actually actors, courtiers, con-men and shills running a confidence scam. They are well paid and in the tax bracket of the usual GOP beneficiaries.

It’s fitting that the press and pundits and poll takers are already berating the new congress. It gives me a little optimism that the Dems may act.

Come tell Cheney not to torture!

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Meet at Lake Avenue and Second StreetCome protest Vice President Dick Cheney’s campaign stop at the Broadmoor. This is your chance to tell him you don’t think the US decision to use torture is a “no-brainer.” (Read about one of the first US female casualties in Iraq. A recent FOIA has revealed her death was a suicide, covered-up. Her motive? She did not want to participate in US methods of torture.)

CSAction Activist Alert from Mark Lewis:
On Friday, November 3 at the Broadmoor Hotel, “The Dick” cheney will come to do a fund raiser for lamborn, who is close to loosing the 5th congressional district seat to Fawcett. The supporters will start arriving at 4 pm (according to the local GOP office) and must be inside for the security sweep at 6pm just before cheney arrives up Lake Avenue.

We need to be there in force to “welcome” cheney (that’s Mr. Dick to you) with orange hunting vests, signs about halliburton, war profiteers, Abu Ghraib, POWs, Gitmo, Iraq, “Who would Jesus torture?”, maybe a “water board” display?

Maybe the same location as the 2004 NATO protest at 2nd and Lake, where the motorcade will have to slow for the “round about” and where there is parking in the church lot?

The sat trucks will go live at 5 for TV coverage, so we need to be in place at least by then. Spread the word.

Oliver North and Bizarro World

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Oliver North is in Nicaragua advising voters there not to vote for Daniel Ortega for President this November 5. He is one of a series of benevolent GOP thugs who have gone down there the last couple of weeks to help ‘bring democracy’ to that country. And part of democracy, according to the GOP, is to intervene in the affairs of foreign, and supposedly sovereign, states.
 
Here is what MSN says that he told Nicaraguans…. Ollie told them that they had suffered enough from the influence of outsiders! Now that’s Bizarro World! He was referring to Hugo Chavez, and not the GOP of the USA, of course. But it’s too bad that the Nicaraguans can’t arrest this war criminal and have him shot. In fact, it’s too bad that Americans can’t do the same. Our national security certainly is not helped by allowing terrorists like Ollie to run loose.

The absentee election reform solution

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Here is the Democratic Party plan to combat black box voting. Mail in your ballots. That’s the plan to overcome the GOP control over the registration of the voters, over the administration of the voting, over the programming of the electronic voting machines, over the electronic counting of the votes, over the poll taking at the voting centers, over the reporting of the voting results and over the concession by the losing party. The Democratic party plan to enforce an inviolate paper trail? Encourage the use of absentee ballots.

Sit down, it’s already too late to request an absentee ballot if you don’t have one already. And asking for an absentee ballot on the cusp of the deadline increases the chance that you will be struck from the list of voters permitted to vote on election day, as well as receive no ballot in the mail.

The call to encourage absentee ballots was not made very loudly, presumably so as not to diminish confidence in the voting process thereby losing more prospective votes than the Democrats could save. But in the end, whose purpose will that serve? How will we overcome GOP election fraud if we do not cry foul?

Election 2000 was rigged, as was 2002 and 2004. What are the indications that 2006 will be otherwise? Are there now fewer Diebold voting machines? Fewer Republican election officials?

The press reports that a landslide of voters are disenchanted with Bush and the war in Iraq. Yet it’s predicted that many of the candidates are neck and neck. It’s being forecast that Decision 2006 will be a tough call. Wow. Well. Kick in a few more bucks to your party. Is the election really going to be anybody’s call? Or is that anybody making the call already a Republican?

Rove wants to project a sense of humor

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Bushies laughing at Fundies? What a strange story. We learned recently that the Bush White House has been referring to its right-wing fundamentalist base as “nuts.” Rove leaked it, but denies it. Sixty Minutes interviewed an Evangelical leader who professed concerted offense. The GOP biting the hand that feeds it? And right before the election? For whose ears might this story be intended?

Evangelical Christians may be grievously put off, but who else are they going to vote for? Will this gaffe be enough to drive them into the arms of Democratic representatives? Do you think so? The nuts are no doubt used to being called plenty worse by their own grandmothers.

As long as Bush delivers the Evangelical goods, expanding the reach of Christianity by conquest or by killing the heathens outright, the Fundies couldn’t care what names Bush calls them. By gosh, the foul-mouthed idiot has practically delivered Armageddon, that crafty little dry-drunk bastard, who is he calling “nuts?!”

This bit of Rovean egg-on-self is for the benefit of disaffected conservative voters. Voters who might be drawn back to the Bush cabal with even this weak hint of common sense in the Republican administration.

Of course there are signs of intelligence in the GOP. They’re slick as foxes. Unfortunately, they’re in the henhouse and we’re the hens.

Judging Decision 2006

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I was once a trainee in a work group, where my brash behavior caught the ire of the team. “Don’t you realize Eric that each of us has a voice on your evaluation? Aren’t you worried that your insufficient reverence (I’m paraphrasing) will reflect in each of our assessments?” Everybody stared at me across the conference table. They were high level engineers and each was smiling.

“Well I said, hoping to obscure my fool-hardiness with diplomacy, “I’m not concerned with your evaluations actually.” This was the diplomacy of speaking frankly. ” I’m on the management fast-track program. I’ve already been evaluated, I’m here because the company saw my potential. I believe that administrators are going to look at your observations in terms of whether you recognize the qualities they already like. It will be a test of your management potential more than anything.” Two weeks later, and I can’t say I wasn’t sweating it, my evaluation was filled with unrestrained praise.

I relate this story, of course because I come out fabulous, but too because I’m thinking of the upcoming elections.

If the American public reelects the GOP, reconstitutes in effect the party of lies, corruption, war-profiteering, racketeering, election-fixing, treason, war crimes, and pedophilia, it’s going to reflect on the American voter.

Someone in Europe is going to have to put together a website to answer our “sorry everybody” with “No, we’re sorry, you ignorant, ignoble fools!”

Joe Lieberman and Jesse James

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One of my favorite poems by Richard Brautigan ends thus

“My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James
for all the time they stole from me.”

 
I feel the same way about people who exert their authority to bore or obstruct.

Brautigan’s sentiment reflects I think not just the severity of the crime of boring a child, but also the crime of using a position of authority to subject a child to your boring ass, made worse by behaving self-righteously about it.

The association to Jesse James is not as merely to a thief, but to a capital criminal, having stolen youth, deserving to meet death by hanging, or any looming ignoble death, hastily arranged by unanimous consent.

Boring teachers are the least of it. I believe we could find universal condemnation of any bureaucrat who stands in the way of disclosure which would serve the public good, we’ve passed laws to punish not just bureaucrats who would impede justice.

Petty officials, loathsome hypocritical pedophiles -now we know it’s not just hyperbole, steely-eyed patronizing prigs. Such are men like Joe Lieberman. Today’s news is that Diebold does not deny the rumors of Lieberman’s likely win in November. Alarm bells are going off because Lieberman has been promised the chairmanship of two key subcommittees, both of which laymen Democrats had been thinking would be used to bring the Bush GOP to accounts. What would Harry Reid be doing in giving Lieberman those seats? Aren’t the Democrats running on the promise of setting matters straight? It’s said that Reid fears Lieberman would otherwise defect to the dark side. What part of Lieberman’s voting record offers us any representation otherwise?

Our Senator Salazar has been campaigning for Lieberbush, even though Lieberman was forced by his loss in the primaries to run as an independent. Party loyalty is one thing, but it’s not about political parties is it? Don’t tell grassroots party members they mustn’t discredit the party platform with extremism, yet at the same time reach to support an extreme right Democrat who’s finally thrown off his cloak in order to stay on the ticket. Lieberman needs to be kicked out of the party is what needs to happen.

When you just as easily eschew party affiliation to lobby for the opposition, because the candidate is an incumbent, you are lobbying for the status quo. No one is sent up to Washington on the opposition party ticket to fight for things as they are. What a mess. And the Democrats are riding what high horse? The high horse Bush rode in on?

The ped-o-file

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You know those vilesome DemocratsThere must be a file somewhere to which political strategists turn if they need a media diversion.
 
Is it filled only with pedophiles?
 
Unpopular war? Bring in Michael Jackson. Really atrocious Zionist behavior? Reel in JonBenet’s wannabe. Congress renounces human rights? Paging Representative Foley.

Apparently Foley had been chasing congressional pages for some time and the GOP knew about it. That’s the point isn’t it?

The GOP lack of concern for the protection of America’s high school pages is less relevant to me than the Republican choice to play the Foley card now. They’re sacrificing one of their own, but look, suddenly the Republican congressman from Florida is not one of their own! According to Fox News, and the AP, Mark Foley is… a Democrat. And Hastert too! Look at that! Those dirty child-buggering Democrats! And right before an election!

Let me say, too, how I think this reflects on the congressional pages. We’re told these are the cream of the crop of America’s high school students. What kind of cream is it that rises to Washington eager to be playthings for politicians? Do we excuse their precociously licentious misbehavior as owed to being star-struck? What kind of high-gradepoint cream is that? Star-struck by pedophilic attention. Are our highschoolers so bright that they recognize immediately how to get ahead in Washington, selling your ass to your elders?

Intelligence report disrupts Republican game plan

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I don’t think so.

This headline, like that of the New York Times is making hay of the CIA leak that the Iraq War has heightened the threat of terrorism. But we all knew that, didn’t we?

We knew it before, we knew it after. The American public knew it, before and after the last election. What does it serve to make it official with a CIA source?

It’s something for the Democrats to pounce on. They’re going to do the honors with the bullhorn, the Republicans won’t have to. Decrying the rise of terrorism emphasizes the THREAT OF TERRORISM, and hands the issue to the GOP. Yes they messed it up, but who can we trust to protect us? It’s going to be the GOP.

It may look to us like egg on their faces, but that’s Republican cake and they’re planning to eat it.

Justice delayed, denied, for now

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Not to worry, not to worry. The Bush and GOP plan to indemnify themselves from responsibility for their war crimes will be to scant avail. Let them pass whatever bill they want.

It’s true, justice delayed is justice denied. And it is depressingly ungratifying to see criminals legislate themselves legitimacy. But the representatives at the United Nations have settled for this delay before.

Not long ago our nation was at war with the people of Vietnam. Our imperialist interventions eventually turned toward the people of Cambodia and Laos in illegal acts of aggression. There was absolutely no other nation powerful enough to bring us to account, and because of our veto power on the Security Council, any number of Nations United could not condemn us or stop us.

The U.N. delegates settled for delayed justice. They said, in effect, we may not stop you now, but that doesn’t make what you are doing right or legal. They agreed that there would be no statute of limitations for breaches of international law, neither should any nation be able to exclude itself from the law’s jurisdiction.

In 1968 the U.N. General Assembly made explicit the universal jurisdiction of the war crimes conventions. The Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity ensured that nobody could consider themselves beyond the reach of international rule of law.

Article 1, part (b) defines the universal illegality of war crimes, “even if such acts do not constitute a violation of the domestic law of the country in which they were committed.”

Article 4 reads that no nation’s laws can redefine what are understood to be war crimes, that “statutory or other limitations shall not apply to the prosecution and punishment of the crimes referred to in articles 1 and 2 of this Convention and that, where they exist, such limitations shall be abolished.”

The torturers and warmongers can delay their appointment with the hangman, but the scurryng around to jerrymander the law is a good sign. Bush and co are showing the discomfort of knowing that justice awaits.

Discovery Channel editorial interest

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My first brush with the Discovery Channel came when contemplating which cable stations would be considered kid suitable. The Discovery Channel seemed one of the few obvious shoe-ins. Along with Disney…
 
I remember looking over the kids’ shoulders at some of the Discovery programming. Not necessarily for kids, and not necessarily informative. Make-over shows? Decorating? Are they interested in the Discovery of everything? Crown molding?

After Disney’s Corporation’s unwavering support for the yellow GOP Path to 9/11, it became time to question what Disney is doing, and what might they be feeding our kids?

Remember the disquieting implication of Lion King? Monarchy (and monotheism) as the natural order? Now that odd acculturation is not looking very haphazard.

Running opposite Path to 9/11 was Koppel on Discovery: the Price of Security. If absent the anti-Democrat partisanship, its tone was still very pro-establishment. Marvel at the pyrotechnics, question nothing. Discovery (Only four letters of separation from Disney) is corporate media, after all, and like National Geographic and Disney, considered subliminally above reproach.

Then I saw the new Discovery documentary about Waco. Not the city formally known as Waco, the Mount Carmel inferno now known as “Waco.” This time, Discover the truth: Assault on Waco with everything learned post-1993 reclassified. What up Discovery?

As if the media had not sufficiently contained the story while it happened, soon after they fixed it from any further development with the official verson Ambush in Waco.

After Branch Davidian survivors made their individual ways across the university lecture circuit, another side of the story began to emerge. Incredible government lies were exposed in the 1997 award-winning documentary Waco: the Rules of Engagement. Further disturbing revelations emerged in the 1999 Waco, a New Revelation.

Thirteen years later, under a new administration, with a madman of another sort in Waco, under “the shadow of 9/11” and rationalizations being made for an authoritarian federal dictatorship, the folks at Discovery Channel want to exculpate the original feds-gone-wild? Now that we have an executive branch breaking the law, Discovery Channel wants to revisit past transgressions and make them right?
 
What next? Ruby Ridge: ballistic foster-child making? The Philadelphia Move: fiery urban renewal? Vietnam: should we have killed more of them? Elections 2000-04: benevolent despotism in action? 		  When citizens still thought the media could be on their side

Gay marriage

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Lovely coupleWho says gays and lesbians can’t marry? Of course they can marry. They absolutely can. They simply have to marry EACH OTHER! C’mon gay men, admit it, a large athletic woman around the house would come in DAMN HANDY! Lawn mowing, house painting, lightbulb changing…not to mention protection from would-be muggers. And you dykes. Fashion advice? Culinary prowess? Feng Shui? Sounds brilliant to me!

Things in the boudoir won’t be that thrilling you say? Oh, grow UP! Even straight couples get bored after a year or two. Is sexual incompatibility enough reason to deep six an otherwise beautiful union? I think not.

Surely I jest. Take heart! You’ve made some headway here. A majority of the American public supports the idea of legal civil unions for gay and lesbian pairs. Civil unions would give you many of the rights and responsibilities associated with traditional marriage. The sticking point seems to be the idea of full-fledged “marriage.”

Once again, falling back on my handy Catholic upbringing, I’ll shed a bit of light on this. Marriage is considered by many to have spiritual significance in addition to its legal ramifications. To most it is a sacrament which, in Latin, means “something holy.” It is a visible sign, in the form of a religious ceremony, of invisible grace–God’s protection and favor. Christians, most notably Roman Catholics, believe that all seven sacraments were instituted by Jesus in the New Testament.

True or not, this explains why, according to a recent poll, 54% of Americans favor gay civil unions while only 35% support gay marriage. Most Christians, and fully 84% of Americans identify themselves as Christian while 60% identify as “committed Christian” (the scarier ones) are not going to be easily convinced, if they can EVER be convinced, that God is prepared to confer his special favor on a homosexual union. They are okay if the state confers a little of ITS protection and favor…but God Almighty? NO WAY.

So I’m sorry, gays and lesbians, I know that you would love to feel that God approves of your lifestyle…but asking me to give you a legal/spiritual rite of passage is actually asking for MY approval. There are quite a few who, like me, don’t feel comfortable speaking for God. So please don’t ask us what he thinks. Take it up with him privately. If he’s the God that I think he is, you’ve got nothing to worry about.

Now, in the spirit of cooperation, I have something to ask of you too. Would you please STOP TALKING about gay marriage already! Especially in an election year. You are scaring people right into the big flabby bosom of the GOP by allowing them to portray the Democratic party as the gay marriage party! The anti-family values party! You’re taking the focus off of the war in Iraq, off poverty, off education, race relations, welfare reform, healthcare, global warming…the crazy cowboy in the White House. Let me tell you, the Republicans are lovin’ you for it! So please please please take civil unions for the time being and shut the hell up.

The close election portent

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Hmm. Another bad sign.

I saw CNN running a promo for its election season coverage, a teaser purporting to remind us to stick with CNN when the election is upon us.

At face value, is that not odd? Wouldn’t we be judging our news source based on its reporting of today’s news, instead of its relative foresight of tomorrow’s excitements? Also, are we not already CNN watchers if we are seeing the ads? This is not like advertizing one TV show to viewers of another. It’s like promoting the second half of the Superbowl during the first half. Pointless, I’d say, unless we have something to spin with the promotion.

CNN’s election 2006 hook? The CNN tagline was “Election 2006: How close will it be?”

How close will it be?

Has anyone said it will be close? At present the GOP is getting a trouncing. All the Republican yahoos have egg on their faces and the public wants to run the bums out. It’s happening all over, if not so widely celebrated on mainstream news.

Nevertheless, someone thinks the election in November will be close. Who? My guess it’s Diebold.

I’m guessing that Diebold would like to pave the way for an election result they can live with. To do this they first have to create an anticipation that the election will be close. Too close to call in fact. Then it won’t be such a surprise when the winners are… Republicans! By a nose!

When our media anchors began to report that the Mexican election was going to be very close, the fix was in. How chilling it was to hear. Until then everybody’s favorite Obrador had been leading throngs of supporters through the streets of Mexico City, leading a peaceful revolution against the entrenched pro-US corruption government. Mexico was following the populist flow of the Latin American justice and equality movement.

Then apparently the election was looking to be close. What, were there suddenly just as many entrenched corrupt bureaucrat voters as there were oppressed masses? Where would that voter parity come from, if not electronic ghost votes?

And now the Mexican election is being decided by their supreme court. Sound familiar?

The fundraising portent

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I don’t know, I got the same feeling before the last election…

In 2004 Bush was messing up. It was becoming plain as day what a smug, incompetent shyster he was. A landslide for anybody-but-Bush seemed virtually assured. And yet-

And yet you’d hear that Bush was still raising money, finding backers, hosting dinners for rich people ready to bet Bush was going to win again.

Who puts money on a losing horse? Especially people who know how to handle money. It wasn’t a good portent.

What do you think nowadays when you hear that Bush still raises thousands at a fundraiser? Are people giving money to the GOP as a thank you for the job Bush has done? The huge tax break for the rich for example, or the defense contracts, or the oil revenue windfall?

Really? Do you think so? They paid for those favors the last go-round. The GOP hasn’t backed a single bit of legislation that wasn’t for constituents who weren’t already big GOP contributors.

More certainly Bush is still able to raise money because the rich are angling for new mega-billion dollar favors to come. These people know that to earn money you have to spend money.

The most disquieting aspect about this fund-giving to the GOP is that the rich are counting on further GOP victories. They’re not in the business of throwing their money away. They’re not betting that the GOP will stay in power, they’re anteing up. If they thought the Democrats would be winning in November the rich would register their bribes with the Democratic party.

That Bush is holding closed-door affairs while on the public payroll is the least of his offenses. Throughout his presidency, Bush cannot have acted with more discourtesy toward our Constitution. He is guilty of impeachable offenses and it doesn’t take a judge to see it. Every solitary person who hosts a fundraiser for him, or who gives him money, is behaving so selfishly un-American, I’d call it treason.

It’s graft, it’s undemocratic, and it’s cynically counting that you and I will not be able to see through the media blackout on the issues, the rigged voting system, and the false two-party choice.

Are the fundgivers scared? It appears not a whit. That scares me. Big win for the Democrats in November? They don’t think so.