Bush asks churches to engage in illegal political campaigning

Oh yeah, make my day. And let's go after the religious right's and the Catholic Church's tax credits next. They can either be churches or they can be Republican party election operatives - it's their choice. But they can't be both and stilll get tax exempt status.

President Bush's re-election campaign is trying to recruit supporters from 1,600 religious congregations in Pennsylvania - a political push that critics said Wednesday could cost churches their tax breaks.

An e-mail from the campaign's Pennsylvania office, obtained by The Associated Press, urges churchgoers to help organize 'Friendly Congregations' where supporters can meet regularly to sign up voters and spread the Bush word.

'I'd like to ask if you would like to serve as a coordinator in your place of worship,' says the e-mail, adorned with the Bush-Cheney logo, from Luke Bernstein, who runs the state campaign's coalitions operation and is a former staffer to Sen. Rick Santorum, the president's Pennsylvania chairman....

The director of a nonpartisan watchdog group called the campaign's church appeal "a breathtakingly sad example of mixing religion and politics."

"I have never in my life seen such a direct campaign to politicize American churches — from any political party or from any candidate for public office," said Rev. Barry W. Lynn of the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "By enrolling churches in an election scheme like this, I think the Bush-Cheney campaign is actually endangering those churches' tax exemptions without even the courtesy of telling them that they run a risk."

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Worst President. Ever.

My friend Carmen made this for his door - feel free to download it, print it out, and paste it everywhere.

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Is Bush being implicated in Plame CIA leak probe?

ABC News has a quick little blurb tonight, noting that the White House said today that they have hired a lawyer to represent the president should the president be asked to testify in the investigation of who leaked to journalist Robert Novak that Victoria Plame was an undercover CIA agent. This news, comint out of nowhere, is hard to shrug off as just standard practice. If it were standard practice, it would have happened 6 months ago. Something is up. Wonder if George baby had some loose lips? Read the rest of this post...

13 Patriots and a Liar

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Bush Freed Terror Suspect

And the lame excuse they gave is that they didn't want to risk intelligence sources and methods by trying the guy in a court of law. But of course, all they had to do was declare him an enemy combatant, and they wouldn't have to try him in an open court. So that's clearly not what's up here. I'm wondering if this is part of some secret deal with the Syrians, possibly to have the Syrian torture the hell out of the guy, or part of a quid pro quo - they get this guy and we get...

Either way, Bush now seems to be setting terrorists free when the price is right. I'm sure he'll say Bill Clinton made him do it. Read the rest of this post...

Philly launches campaign for gay tourism

Having lived in Philly for ten years, I can't believe that they are inviting anyone to come and visit, but hey, times change. Hell, they might even stop throwing snowballs at Santa Claus. The new slogan is "Philadelphia - Get Your History Straight and Your Nightlife Gay." The marketing guys estimate gay tourism to be worth $54 BILLION annually. Read the rest of this post...

Democrat Wins Election for Janklow's Seat

Glad she won for the party's sake, but she's still a bigot. The woman supports the anti-gay constitutional amendment, and I'm sorry, but at some point if the Democrats don't stand for anything - and are still willing to accept bigots in the party - then what's the point? Read the rest of this post...

Michael Moore's Anti-Bush Film Set for June 25 U.S. Debut

Excellent... Read the rest of this post...

The Empty Closet

Good op ed about gay heroes and traitors who are born to nasty right-wing parents.

Jamiel Terry and David Knight could have chosen, like Mary Cheney, to remain silent, invisible and loyal to their bigoted fathers. Instead, they chose to be loyal to the millions of oppressed lgbt people who so often become family to each other when their biological relatives reject them.

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Ignore that man behind the glory hole

Fascinating anti-gay op ed by "ex"-lesbian Anne Paulk. Not fascinating for the content - it's all lies - but fascinating for what it doesn't say.

What the op ed fails to mention anywhere, even in Anne's bio at the end, is that she claims to be an "ex"-lesbian, that she's married to a man who claims to be an "ex"-gay, that the man she's married to was caught in a sleazy gay bar a few years back hitting on a 27 year old guy, and that the groups she's worked with are NOT groups who work with f"amilies dealing with gay issues," but rather they're groups whose sole mission is to promote quack science to "cure" gay people.

So the question remains, why is Anne hiding the fact that she's affiliated with the "ex"-gays? The "ex"-gay lie isn't even mentioned anywhere in her op ed, which is telling, because it means for some reason anti-gay bigots don't think it would play well with that audience.

One final point. Anne has a bit of a conflict of interest in writing this article since her own husband was caught cheating on her, at least emotionally, in a gay bar. That would probably make any woman a bit angry at "the gays." Read the rest of this post...

Bush to compare war on terror to WWII...again

"He'll say we're fighting the broader war on terror throughout the world, but much like in World War II, when Europe became the critical front in that war, the greater Middle East is the critical front in the war on terror," the official said.

"Events in Europe determined the Cold War; this is kind of the equivalent of that in the Middle East," he added. - Reuters

So is he going to talk about Iraq being like post-war Germany again? Sheesh, that one didn't really float the last time. I'm not very keen to push Vietnam-Iraq comparisons either because while there are similarities, there are just so many differences. This new attempt to compare WWII, where the world powers were all actively involved and working together, is another sorry attempt at Operation Comeback. If this is all Bush has to say, the guy is going to be history. Does he really want to try and draw parallels to a time of world cooperation? This guy burned his bridges long ago and no country is going to want to extend a helping hand and help him build a coalition like the WWII Allied coalition.

WWII Vets don't see the connection either. Flag waving just doesn't do it and filling up the tank of the SUV doesn't seem to have a positive impact.

“Does anybody really use less gas so there would be more? No. There are all kinds of things that affect our lives that would help out in this trouble," he said. "But, nobody is really sacrificing anything now, except the poor buggers that are over there. They are. But flying all these flags doesn’t mean one single thing." - MSNBC

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The lesser of 3 evils

We had a chance to blast North Korea, that has nuclear weapons, Iran, that is lying in order to get nuclear weapons, and Iraq, that apparently wasn't even trying to get nuclear weapons. Who do we waste over $100 billion, countless American lives, an increased chance of terrorism, and the stability of the world over? Guess. Read the rest of this post...

Judicial Activism

Now any judge that doesn't do the religious right's bidding is a "left-wing judicial activist." (I also thought it was kind of cool they way they wove "Clinton" into this - touche.)

We ought to be very concerned about this. First they used this bullshit lie to try to discredit the Republican majority of the US Supreme Court, then to try to discredit the Republican majority of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and now to try to discredit the judiciary overall. These people want nothing less than to destroy the system of checks and balances delineated in our Constitution so they can install their own fundamentalist state by legislation. Be afraid, be very afraid. This is what happens when lefties sit back while righties make absurd charges, unchallenged. Read the rest of this post...

Fundamentalist zealot or drag queen?

You decide. Read the rest of this post...

Online password security evolving

Interesting read about some of the new developments for online password security. It's still expensive to create a secure environment but some banks in Scandinavia are leading the way with disposable passwords. Our Nordic friends are always on the bleeding edge of new technology! I have not yet tried www.bugmenot.com but it sounds like a great way to share passwords for non-financial sites. Read the rest of this post...

Zimbabwe clamping down on the internet

Joining the ranks of other paranoid dictatorships like Myanmar and China, Mugabe is now trying to block internet content coming into Zimbabwe. When I was there a year ago, he was forcing news weather reports to go through his office because he did not want the public to know that southern Africa was mired in drought. With over half of the population starving because of the food crisis, Mugabe and his cronies continue to live well and enforce their rule with violence. Mugabe tries to make this a black versus white issue but the reality is that this is just another brutal dictatorship that wants to maintain its power. He is an equal opportunity murderer, killing anyone who gets in his way and starving everyone, black and white. Unfortunately for the population they don't have any oil reserves so people like Bush are not paying very much attention to the crisis. Read the rest of this post...

Drunk US official feeds Chalabi secret information

So who was the drunk that told Chalabi about the US cracking the Iranian spy code? Looking over the history of Chalabi, it should have been clear that the guy is a snake and only out to put other peoples money into his pocket. Assuming that code breaking knowledge is considered Top Secret and passing it on to a state enemy like Iran is illegal, are we going to see any criminal prosecution or will this also be swept under the carpet? Chalabi is no fool, telling Washington insiders who are blinded by their ideology and their hatred of the left, exactly what they wanted to hear. He even practically laughs at the incompetence of those that bought into his lies and paid him handsomely, blaming them for failing to corroborate his "evidence." Read the rest of this post...

Operation Comeback by Bush, but is it too late?

I guess the good news to Operation Comeback is that Bush's speech at the War College last week was supposed to be his first step. Whew! I feel better now because that was a real dud. Interesting to see that voters are hearing about economic recovery but nobody can see it or feel it. Between stagnant salaries and increasing inflation, voters must be ticked off about reading about corporate profits and CEO salaries jumping up. Add to that the tax cut that helped the same group of people and blew by the rest, voters must be wondering who truly is looking out for them. Read the rest of this post...