Memo to Senate Democrats

If you had any balls, you'd offer an amendment to every piece of legislation that gives out federal dollars to the states (the highway bill, Medicare, etc.) and link that money to each state NOT having segregationist laws on the books. I.e., you have racist laws on the books, you don't get a dime of federal money for that program.

Oh how I'd love to watch the GOP try to defend segregationist laws, or in the alternative, how fun would it be making the GOP slap the red states that remain racist? That's what a REAL party would do.

And let's face it folks, we're not getting a lot of electoral votes from Alabama anytime soon. Might as well force the Republicans' hand with the rest of the country, and in the end, force them to alienate their racist base. Read the rest of this post...

Thursday night open thread

Suck a lemon for Jesus. Read the rest of this post...

Alabama decides to keep racist law on the books

Screw these red state crackers. There isn't a slur good enough, strong enough, hard enough, vicious enough to describe the racist, bigoted assholes in Alabama who refused - REFUSED - to remove segregation era language from the state constitution.

Why the hell isn't that state being boycotted by EVERYONE right now? Where is the outrage? How could any, ANY businesses or organization step foot in that state? Is it any wonder black Americans feel disenfranchised when segregationist laws are STILL on the books and the rest of us, well most of us, do NOTHING to change that fact?

I've had it with these people. They have the nerve to lecture us about their values. About how important it is to put the Ten Commandments in our courts. About how they're on the front lines of defending morality against the gays. And they can't even find it in their hearts to free the God damn slaves 140 years later.

These people are pigs. And the Republicans are pigs for catering to them. Yes, I'm sure some Alabamians are nice people. And most of them are probably black. Read the rest of this post...

Fundies to Bush - Gonzales isn't anti-choice enough

OK, so he wrote the memo justifying torture and worked for the law firm representing Enron, but apparently he couldn't pull off the right-wing triple-play. CNN looked at Bush's choice for AG, Alberto Gonzales' tenure on the Texas Supreme Court:

As a member of the court, Gonzales ruled with the majority that some teenage girls should not be required to get parental permission for an abortion.

Just more proof the white house will throw the fundies under the bus as soon as convenient. Not that I'm complaining...
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Red versus Blue redux

From today's Boston Herald (the, ahem, conservative paper in Beantown):

Under current federal tax and spending, there is a massive net outflow of money from the blue to the red states. The blue states pay much more in federal income tax, and receive far less in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security - not to mention farm subsidies, highway funds and infrastructure grants.

And this includes the multi-billion dollar debacle in Massachusetts known as the Big Dig, which, by the way, is still leaking.
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Bush critic at CIA resigns, and starts talking

The good news is that he's now free to talk, and talk he is going to do.

Michael Scheuer, whose book "Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror" was signed as "anonymous" and published this summer, will resign effective Friday after 22 years at the Central Intelligence Agency.

In a statement, Scheuer said the CIA had not forced him to resign, "but I have concluded that there has not been adequate national debate over the nature of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and the forces he leads and inspires, and the nature and dimensions of intelligence reform needed to address that threat."

He intends to speak to the media over the next several weeks, including an appearance on the CBS show "60 Minutes" on Sunday.

Scheuer's statement said senior leadership had allowed the intelligence officers working against al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to be made scapegoats for pre-Sept. 11 failures.

Scheuer was chief of the CIA Counterterrorist Center's unit which focused on bin Laden from 1996 to 1999 and remained a CIA analyst after that.

"The Atlantic Monthly" in its December issue published a letter sent by Scheuer to U.S. congressional intelligence committees that said the key pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures were mainly the result of bad decisions by senior officials.

"While the 11 September attacks probably were unstoppable, it was decisions by human beings -- featuring arrogance, bad judgment, disdain for expertise, and bureaucratic cowardice -- that made sure the Intelligence Community did not operate optimally to defend America," Scheuer said in the letter.

Let the heads roll. Read the rest of this post...

Red State Art

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Right wing freaking over Kinsey movie too

Bottom line. Kinsey says sex is good. Right winger say sex is bad (when you're having it, when they're having it, it's actually quite kinky). Read the rest of this post...

ABC stations pull "Saving Private Ryan"

Apparently America's Taliban objected to the fact that the movie is graphic and offensive. You think? It's about WWII you morons. I love how these fake Christians are all gung-ho about a real war in Iraq, but a fake one on the silver screen is somehow offensive. I guess they're only for wars they can't see.

Though, not that I think about it, this all makes sense. I mean, war veteran Max Cleland was offensive to this crowd. And war hero John Kerry was offensive. So it's only a matter of time that the far right would find every soldier offensive.

I hope there are some military folks out there reading this. This movie was to air tonight to honor Veteran's day. It's now being pulled because the religious right - those folks who President Bush sucked up to in order to get reelected - found it offensive. When honoring our vets becomes such an offensive thought that it can't be done on TV, you need to think again about who you voted for and why.

This is the America you folks wanted. And now it's the America you're getting. Read the rest of this post...

Christian "Values" Trump Patriotism on Veterans Day

On a day when we should be honoring those from past physical wars, the Culture War takes center stage. From Reuters:

Fearful of the FCC crackdown on indecent broadcasts, at least 18 ABC affiliates plan to pre-empt the network's unedited broadcast of the film 'Saving Private Ryan' at 8 Thursday night.

The pre-emptions come despite the network's decision to warn viewers during each commercial break about the graphic violence and language in Steven Spielberg's Oscar-nominated World War II epic. ABC has aired 'Ryan' twice before without any pre-emption, to commemorate Veterans Day in 2001 and '02, though some stations cited past complaints from viewers that they also factored into their decisions.

I've seen this movie, it is nasty and harsh, just like war. Just like it was the last two times it's run on ABC. What's new? The rise of Christian Fundamentalism and their reaches into our White House.

The Culture War is joined folks. Patriotism and Fundamentalism are not compatible. Sounds crazy? Come talk to me in two years and we'll see how much we disagree then. Read the rest of this post...

Will Ralph Nader's Ego Please Sit Down?

This man is just a complete media slut. Let me just remind everyone this is the same man who took money from Republicans to get on the ballot in some states. From AFP:

Ralph Nader, an independent presidential candidate this year, has called for recounts of November 2 voting results saying that amid allegations of irregularities, he wanted to ensure that every ballot was counted.

Nader, who this year drew about one percent of the vote nationally, told a press conference Wednesday he was speaking out for the 'thousands' of US voters asking for recounts and not on his own behalf.

Since he took money from Republicans, I no longer believe that anything he does is for anything other than to feed his own ego. Read the rest of this post...

Bush campaign allegedly pressured reporters to kill Mehlman/gay story

The Raw Story has the details.


Who me? Read the rest of this post...

Big GOP political consultant blasts Bush & religious right

This is VERY ineresting. Not only is Arthur Finkelstein a big GOP political consultant. Not only is he gay. But Finkelstein is notorious for working for some pretty nasty Republicans. He helped out on Jesse Helms' campaign, that's how bad we're talking. So for Finkelstein now to come out and blast Bush and the religious right for their gay-baiting, among other things, that's big and laudable.

Yes, he's still working with Republicans (though Pataki, his current client, is certainly better than the previous ones). BUT. This is a man once worked for the bad guys and now gets it, AND is willingly to come out publicly and SAY IT. That is a big deal. And it's a big step for him. And it's evidence that all was not lost on Novemeber 2. From the moderate Republicans who abandoned Bush to the conservative gays who took a walk, Bush hardly solidified his support in this election. He may have shored up his evangelical base, but he also may very well have ignited a civil war in the party.

From Pam's House Blend:

Gov. Pataki's top political adviser has trashed President Bush, attacked the "Christian right," and said Bush's re-election means Pataki can't become president in 2008.

The shocking comments by Arthur Finkelstein appeared in the Israeli daily newspaper Maariv, which also quoted the nationally known GOP consultant as saying that in the presidential election, "the Republican Party became the Christian right, the most radical in modern history ever."

Finkelstein, the one-time political guru to former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, is also described by Maariv writer Boaz Gaon as "hating" Bush.

In the story, which ran last Friday, Finkelstein accused Bush of trying to "dictate to America how to live and what to believe in."

Finkelstein, who has helped run several Israeli elections, is also described as claiming Bush is more interested in banning abortion than he is in winning the war in Iraq.

And Finkelstein, who told a Boston newspaper several years ago that he is homosexual, described Bush's campaign strategy as being more interested in banning gay marriages than in improving the American economy....

"Bush's victory not only establishes the power of the American Christian right in this candidacy, but in fact established its power to elect the next Republican president."

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What if we spent $220 billion on things like this?

This AP story talks about the opening of the first hydrogen fueling station in the US:

About four miles east of the U.S. Capitol, in an industrial section of town, sits a gas station that looks like any other. But it's not, because on Wednesday it became the first in North America to have a hydrogen dispensing pump.

Shell executives, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and District of Columbia Mayor Anthony A. Williams unveiled the technology, which the Bush administration hopes will help reduce the country's dependence on imported oil.

'This will be, in fact, the first step toward the real transition in the economy from the carbon-based economies of the past to a hydrogen economy of the future,' Abraham said.

So let me get this right. The Bush administration thinks that this is a way to get us off foreign oil, but spent the $220 billion in Iraq anyway. What if we had spent the $220 billion in the war in Iraq on things like this instead? How much farther along would we be in ending our dependence on foreign oil? Now if that's liberal thinking and not the ultimate conservative position, call me a crazy liberal. Read the rest of this post...

Who is running for office in Iraq?

I'm not trying to sound flip, honest. I'm just asking a question -- who are the political candidates asking for voters' support in Iraq? I'm looking for that info, and I haven't been able to find out. All I know is who's not participating -- and why not.

But seriously, we're supposedly going to see an election of some sort before the end of January, and I'm wondering, who's campaigning? What issues are they running on? I really tried to find out, but the best report I could find -- and honestly, I'm not trying to sound flip -- was from Ed Helms in Fallujah.
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Mahmoud Abbas takes the reigns

The architect of the Oslo accords was elected Chairman of the PLO, which could be a positive move but it still remains to be seen whether or not he will have general support from the Palestinian people. The positive news is that he has been against terror and violence and should be a great candidate to take the Palestinian people into the future. His biggest battle could be rooting out corruption within the Palestinian leadership and I think that bringing peace with Israel might be easier than eliminating corruption.

The Palestinian people deserve better than what Arafat gave them. Lining pockets while your people suffer and live in poverty is not what I consider heroic. I hope to see the West unite in their support towards Palestinian leaders who promote peace and not violence. We're also going to have to step up our pressure on Sharon to back down and also work for a peaceful settlement. Let's hope that Mahmoud Abbas has the chance to give them the future that they should have had years ago.
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