Quote of the Day

From the far-right AgapePress:

A black church leader, Bishop Wellington Boone, said homosexual marriage is not a civil rights issue, because he cannot 'become white'...

Though apparently he's had no problem becoming a bigot. Read More......

Censorship?

Ok, strangest thing just happened. I had ABC on, and "A Beautiful Mind" was about to come on when they put up a warning, like one of those "viewer discretion is advised" things. But this one said: "Due to current sensitivities and adult content, viewer discretion is advised."

Ok, first off, I have no idea what adult content there is in this movie. I saw it. Didn't seem very violent or sexual. Second, what the hell are "current sensitivities"? That must be a euphemism for the war in Iraq, but what the hell does that have to do with "A Beautiful Mind"? I am completely confused. Anyone? Read More......

Republican Web site defends WWII Japanese internment

First I thought this site was a joke. Then I thought these guys were just kooks with a Web site. Now I'm not so sure. According to USA Today, "GOPUSA.com, a Web site run by Bobby Eberle, a Houston engineer with no previous journalism experience, scored an interview with President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove." Karl Rove doesn't just do interviews with any old kid's Web site.

Here's what the GOPUSA article said, then a look at who they are:

We Don't Expect Americans To Act Like That? -- Debbie Daniel -- GOPUSA:

We took 120,000 Japanese Americans - two thirds were citizens of the United States - and locked them up during World War II. We put them inside barbed-wire fencing; we didn't strip them of their clothes - we stripped them of their dignity; took them from their homes; caused many to lose their businesses, because we could not take a chance that any one of them might hurt us. None did, but we still couldn't take that chance . . . we were at war.

Emotions were high; we had just been hit like never before, but now we've been hit worse, and we're afraid of humiliating the prisoners?

Bad, huh? Even worse, that paragraph comes in the middle of an essay justifying the torture at Abu Ghraib. These are the people we're fighting against, folks. God I need to write a book exposing these monsters. And by the way, someone needs to now ask Karl Rove if he agrees with this essay.

Among GOPUSA.com's board members:

Bobby Eberle:
- delegate to the Republican convention of 2000
- In 1999, Bobby was recognized with a unanimously approved resolution of commendation by the Republican Party of Texas for service and dedication to the Republican cause.
- He served as President of the Houston Young Republicans, the Director of Club Development of the Texas Young Republican Federation, and as a three-term State Chairman of the Texas Young Republican Federation. On the national level, Bobby served as Chairman of the State Chairmen's Association. Most recently, Bobby served as Vice Chairman at Large of the Young Republican National Federation, Inc.
- Bobby is a member of Texas Christian Coalition and Texas Right to Life

Bill Fairbrother
- Bill currently serves as Chairman of the Williamson County
- At the 2000 Republican Party of Texas Convention, Bill was elected by his fellow county chairs to serve as the Texas Republican County Chairmen's Association's liaison to the State Republican Executive Committee. He was also selected as an alternate delegate to the RNC Convention in Philadelphia.

Kerri Houston
- Based in Dallas, she is director of American Conservative Network, a state outreach project of The American Conservative Union (ACU).

Richard Powell:
- He is a former policy advisor to Texas Governor Rick Perry, Read More......

50,000 Christians to secede from US if gay marriage spreads

I'll send ten bucks to help. And I'll double it to twenty if they take 100,000.

ChristianExodus.org:

ChristianExodus.org is researching three candidate states: Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina. These states were chosen because of their relatively small populations, their coastal access and their Christian-conservative citizenry. In addition, each of these states possesses a rich history of standing up for its rights. Our board of directors considers the values of these three states to be very similar to the values held by our membership.

The Commitment Levels
Three different commitment levels are offered to our members, because ChristianExodus.org recognizes the current uncertainty surrounding the issue of gay marriage. Additionally, many people are at different levels of discontent with our current situation. Therefore, we primarily desire to accumulate 50,000 members committed to immediate independence (Commitment Level 1).

However, it is evident that the forceful implementation of gay marriage will devastate our nation beyond repair and many Christians will join our ranks at that time. Commitment Level 2 is offered for just this reason.

Lastly, many people will find it impossible to move, and ChristianExodus.org is uncertain as to what extent Christians will rise up after gay marriage is legalized against their will. It is possible that a cry will go up from all over the Bible Belt and many different states will call for dissolution of the Union. In this case, we want to have built a large registry of voters committed to independence for their own states. Commitment Level 3 allows members to send a direct message to their state legislators BEFORE gay marriage becomes a reality in their state.

I love that their "candidate states" include Alabama and Mississippi. No great coincidence that these are two of the worst civil rights abusing states in history. Also interesting that a lot of these Christian wackos are the same people who want to put fences up around the US borders to keep those darn foreigners out. Does that mean we can put fences up around Alabama and Mississippi once they secede? Please? Read More......

Study: Bush drops ball on controlling terrorist nukes

A new Harvard study, funded by conservative defense hawk Sam Nunn's non-profit think thank, says the Bush administration has given only lip service to actually controlling the spread of nuclear weapons to terrorists. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Then vote these bozos out.

Washington Post:

"What's missing is a sense of urgency," said former senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), who heads the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative, which funded the 111-page study. Nunn believes President Bush must focus on removing bureaucratic hurdles and work more pointedly with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"If one of the great cities of the world goes up in smoke, and you look back on these obstacles, it will make our retroactive rear-view mirror look at September 11th look like a waltz," Nunn said yesterday in an interview. "It would be so obvious that the obstacles should have been overcome by the presidents." ....

The administration on average has requested less money to control nuclear materials and technology than was sought in the final Clinton administration budget, adjusted for inflation.

Although 16 percent more money has been spent than if the Clinton numbers had continued, 'essentially all' of the increase was injected by congressional initiative, write [study authors] Bunn and Wier, who reviewed federal spending on nonproliferation as an analyst at the Office of Management and Budget.

Read More......

Merrill Lynch CEO strong-arms employees to give $ to Bush

Washington Post:

At Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., a suggestion from chief executive E. Stanley O'Neal is not to be taken lightly.

O'Neal eliminated 24,000 jobs, froze pay and steadily pushed out competitors for executive power, including colleagues who had championed his rise up the corporate ladder. 'Ruthless,' O'Neal has reportedly told colleagues, 'isn't always bad.'

So it came as no surprise that when O'Neal sent letters to senior executives at Merrill Lynch in early June asking them to contribute to President Bush's reelection campaign, the response was prompt and generous.

Between June 12 and June 30 of last year, the Bush-Cheney campaign was inundated with 157 checks from Merrill Lynch executives and at least 20 from their spouses; 140 checks were for the maximum allowed by law: $2,000.

Total take generated by the O'Neal letter: $279,750 in less than three weeks.

Time to tell Merrill Lynch to to go hell. If they like Bush so much, they can have him - but we don't need to give them our business.

- Feel free to use this link to tell Merrill Lynch's corporate communications folks that if they want to whore for Bush, they can do it on their own.

- You can also contact Erik Hendrickson, a member of Merrill Lynch's media relations staff, here: Erik Hendrickson - phone 212.449.7293 - erik_hendrickson@ml.com

- Michael O'Looney of Media Relations at 212.449.9205 - michael_olooney@ml.com

- Tina Madon of Investor Relations at 866.607.1234 - Investor_relations@ml.com Read More......

Bush approval numbers in a free fall

Ouch! Two weeks ago he was at 44% and now 41%. Read More......

HRC says Repubs using gay marriage as crass electoral issue

I'd mentioned earlier about signs that the Republicans were using gay marriage in Missouri as a crass way to bump up Republican turn out in the fall election. Well, the Human Rights Campaign (the US' largest gay civil rights lobbying organization) apparently backed me up today in an email update they sent out about gay marriage:

Playing Politics: Republicans are tampering with Constitution to bring out their base

The GOP push for the Federal Marriage Amendment is not an attempt to “protect marriage,” but a political ploy to ensure conservative turnout in the fall.

An article in Roll Call this morning (“Senators Target Gay Marriage”) exposes the real motivation behind the GOP push for a hasty vote on the FMA. The article says that even though Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) says he does not have the votes needed to pass the FMA in the Senate, he has “vowed to force a vote on the issue before the election, to compel Senators to take a position on the issue.” Santorum is clearly not concerned about having a thoughtful debate but rather using the FMA as a tool to drive conservative voters to the polls in November.

Bob Novak’s comments about the FMA on “Face the Nation” yesterday further indicate that the FMA is being seen by Republicans as a way to curry favor with conservative voters in an election year. Novak said: “I know it is not popular with the chattering class in Washington, but it would help him with these conservatives he needs if the President stepped up his effort to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment.” We hope more reasonable voices within the GOP will speak out against tinkering with our founding document for political purposes.

Read More......

Bush allegedly outsourced fundraising jobs to India

From Misleader.org:

According to a new report, the Bush Administration has taken its strong support for outsourcing further than previously thought -- opting to move key political operations offshore. India's Hindustan Times reports that, during a 14 month period from 2002 to 2003 when the Republican Party was playing up patriotism, its fund-raising and vote-seeking campaign was performed in part by two call centers located in India1.

According to the report, the Republican National Committee shipped the India operation its voter database for 125 local staff to use to "solicit political contributions ranging between $5 and $3,000 from thousands of registered Republican voters." While the contract for running the campaigns was originally awarded to Washington-based Capital Communications Group, "for cost and efficiencies gains, the company outsourced the work to HCL Technologies that in turn sent it offshore."

Public pressure has forced President Bush has to downplay his support for outsourcing. But this new story is consistent with his Administration's actions in support of shipping American jobs overseas. Late last year, the New York Times reported that the Bush Commerce Department co-sponsored a conference at the lavish Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York that was designed to "encourage American companies to put operations and jobs in China"2. Then, this year, the President's top economic adviser said outsourcing was "a plus for the economy"3.

Sources:
"Bush campaign ran from Noida call center", Hindustan Times, 05/16/2004.
"In business, Washington pursues two China policies", International Herald Tribune, 12/11/2003.
"Bush Econ Advisor: Outsourcing OK", CBS News, 02/13/2004.

Read More......

Saudi Envoy: Iraq War Was 'Colonial' and About Oil

First, he has a point. But putting that aside for a moment, why are we allies with these jerks?

Reuters:

"No matter how exalted the aims of the U.S. in that war, in the final analysis it was a colonial war very similar to the wars conducted by the ex-colonial powers when they went out to conquer the rest of the world ...," Prince Turki said....

"What we read and hear from our commentators in America and sometimes congressional sources, if you remember going back a year ago, there was the issue of the oil reserves in Iraq and that in a year or two they would be producing so much oil in Iraq that, as it were, the war would pay for itself," the envoy said.

[He] indicated that there were those in America who were thinking in those terms of acquiring the natural resources of Iraq for America.

Read More......

Your letters to the NC GOP

I'd asked you folks a few days ago to send letters to the North Carolina Republican party in protest over their throwing gay Republicans out of the state convention. And did you send letters. I've posted a sampling of what you sent (names removed) below:

Opposing discrimination is not disloyal but the American way

I am so offended by your refusal to allow the Log Cabin Republicans at the convention and by Pres. Bush's stand on the marriage amendment that I am resigning from the Republican Party. You people are the ones how are "not normal". I am a gay man in Greensboro, long time Republican, have 4 children who know I am gay and are very supportive of me. I expect no less from my political party.

Your name will always be associated with the backwards and hateful reputation of the south that includes slavery, segregation, and homophobia.

I recently read with disbelief and disgust statements by an official of the North Carolina Republican Party that gay and lesbian Republicans were not welcome at the party convention or in the State GOP. I urge you to repudiate these statements. They reflect a bigotry and intolerance which I would hope is never acceptable in the Republican Party. As a Republican, I am embarrassed for my party. As one of an estimated one million gay Republican whose vote the party needs this year, the statements appear suicidal.

How sad to see a group of relatively intelligent individuals do such a stupid and hateful thing as to ban gays and lesbians from your organization, It appears to those of us who do have a brain and can think clearly that your actions as fundamental Christians are little different from the fundamentalist Islamic extremists who are devastating the world with their belief that Â?if you donÂ?t think the way we doÂ? you be damned forever.

We serve our country in the military, we own homes and pay taxes which support the school children and we work harder to make a contribution to the work place. God does not choose which people to love and which ones not to love, God loves all because he created us all. Equality is what you should be supporting, not bigotry. You should be helping to unite Americans, not divide them.

I'm speechless. You're a moron, and a hateful one at that. We planned our annual conference in Ashville in October. It is now cancelled.

We find it difficult to fathom the Republican Party in North Carolina is exclusive rather than inclusive and is not actively soliciting the votes from all to re-elect the incumbent Republican office holders. Rest assure, you will not be getting my vote this fall!

Being a fellow Southern, born in VA, you should all be ashamed of yourselves for further damaging the South's reputation (as full of uneducatbigotsots). The issues of equal rights of gays is a veimportantant civil rights issue. Have you learned nothing from the past? Just last week on the anniversary of integration, we watched archived clips in horror as black students were bashed for simply trying to get an equal,fair education. Now it's gays being denied equal opportunities and liberties that our constitution promises!

We are all human beings, we are all living on this planet so that we may better serve one another and lift one another to the light of God. Gay human beings have a place on this Earth just as you do. How dare you even INSINUATE anything to the contrary.

How "compassionately conservative" of you all.

If you are among that sad group of North Carolinians who still insist on drawing lines between people and perpetuating that "Old South" stereotype of the judgmental, condemnatory, ignorant blowhard, I sincerely hope you take a long, hard look at the people you think you represent. Are they really "normal" people, or are they a group of perceptive individuals who have adapted to living unique lives among those few who still judge and condemn anything that isn't exactly like them, down to the molecule?

Read More......

O'Reilly knocks Limbaugh

FOX's Bill O'Reilly implicitly criticized Rush Limbaugh the other day. You'll recall that Limbaugh said the Abu Ghraib prison abuse was no big deal, and was just like frat hazing. Note particularly O'Reilly's use of the term "far right" in a negative way. I've been on his show a number of times, and we actually get along quite well (I know, I know). O'Reilly really REALLY doesn't like the far right/religious right. (It didn't help when they first told him he was an embarrassment to Catholics, then launched an email campaign against him in which lots of them told him he was going to hell.) Anyway, whatever your views of O'Reilly, I think that those who simply write him off, assuming he'll never agree with you on an issue, are making a mistake.

South Bend Tribune:

O'Reilly was equally harsh in his opinion of what he called the 'thugs'' involved in the prisoner abuse scandal.

'It's awful and it embarrassed all of us, particularly the fine military people who are putting their lives on the line every day. I'm furious and I want them punished.''

And he criticized those who attempt to downplay the significance of the abuse. 'This is not hazing, as some on the far right would tell you. These are human rights violations.''

Read More......

Mary Bonauto, a long term strategist

An interesting article on Mary Bonauto, the lead attorney for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders. She's been successful by looking at the big picture and achieving her goals, driving home the point that it's about equality.

"Bonauto recalled how she used to go into court and see the judges look at her thinking, "Oh, she's a lesbian." Now, she said, "I go to court, and the judges are hearing me say this is about equality."

"If you ask people, should marriage be between a man and a woman, you'll probably find a majority in some places who will say yes," Bonauto said. "But if you ask, should a World War II veteran who's been with his male partner for 49 years, should that partner be thrust into poverty because when the World War II vet dies, the veterans benefits aren't available to the survivor anymore?

"You'll find an awful lot of people who say that's wrong," Bonauto said. "That's what the federal DOMA means to me, and that's, I think, the face that we need to put on it. Because that's exactly the kind of catastrophic consequences it will impose on people.

"Let this federal government discrimination speak for itself," Bonauto said. "I don't think the American people will like it. But they need to see it first." - SF Chronicle

Read More......

US goes to UN again, is Bush serious this time?

After treating the UN with complete contempt for the past three years, it will be interesting to see how serious Bush is this time at the UN. I do not see him giving up much control over the situation in Iraq but then again, maybe he wants to drag others into the mess so he can blame them for his problems. Read More......

Bush & the leader myth, debunked again

How can anyone ever have believed that any comparison between Bush and Churchill or FDR was even remotely valid? As an American living overseas and wondering where the President was after 9/11, I have always grumbled at any suggestion that Bush was a leader. Never, never, never would we have expected Churchill, FDR or even Bush the elder to disappear into a cave in Nebraska for a few days. To even try and compare Bush to other leaders is a joke. With the D-Day anniversary coming up, it is time for people to really examine what kind of a leader Bush truly is.

"Charging ahead, we are learning, does not automatically make the world better. Given the faulty intelligence on weapons of mass destruction that justified the Iraq war, the peculiarities of the pre-emptive strike against Saddam's regime, the casualties in the aftermath and the poor planning for a post-Saddam order, invoking the Great Men of World War II is fraught, for their legacies are so large Bush risks seeming small in their long shadow." - Newsweek

Read More......