Late night open thread

Till the sun rises over Paris. Read the rest of this post...

Religious right unapologetic about plan to kidnap Muslim Indonesian tsunami orphans and raise them as Christians

You have to love the religious right. Now they're putting out stories calling the Indonesian people "anti-American" because the Indonesians have a problem with religious right groups kidnaping Muslim orphan tsunami victims and raising them as Christians. Apparently the religious right wasn't sorry at all for their little recruiting plan.

Check out this incredible act of hubris from Gary "Butch" Bauer:

Christian activist Gary Bauer of Campaign for Working Families is outraged by the Indonesian government's demands and restrictions on foreign and particularly American relief workers. "There's an old saying in Washington that, in this city, no good deed goes unpunished," he notes, "but I think that phrase would more accurately be applied to the Islamic world."

Bauer also takes issue with the mainstream media's apparent slant in its reporting on the World Help rescue effort. In a recent newsletter he noted that several papers, including the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun, seemed to be focusing on what the activist described ironically as "a new danger facing the orphans of Indonesia -- Christianity." In other words, he says what apparently concerned the mainstream media most was the fact that a Christian ministry headed by a graduate of "Reverend Jerry Falwell's Liberty University" had "airlifted 300 tsunami orphans from disease-infested Banda Aceh to Jakarta, where a Christian children's home was prepared to receive and raise them."

I think there ought to be a rule that any religion that has to kidnap children in order to indoctrinate them into their faith isn't allowed to publicly talk about how they're being oppressed. Read the rest of this post...

Martin Frost: Do we really need a DNC chair who brags about how much he backs President Bush?

Martin Frost, one of the guys up for DNC chair, ran for election by stressing his closeness to President Bush and his policies, and trying to hide the fact that he's a Democrat.

Yeah, that's what we need, a Democrat who's afraid of being a Democrat.

Now that my blog is back, it's time for us to weigh in on this entire DNC process. If they choose someone who doesn't represent us, then we stop giving them money. But the trick is to first stop them from picking a Dem in Name Only (DINO). Read the rest of this post...

MLK day evening open thread

Let it all out. Read the rest of this post...

Motion Picture Association of America thinks US soldiers have potty mouths

Apparently our soldiers in Iraq are too crude for children. Does that mean that they're too crude for Iraqi children too?

Chris Blackwell's Palm Pictures today announced that it plans to appeal the Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) "R" rating for its upcoming release about American soldiers in Iraq, GUNNER PALACE.

The MPAA has given the film an "R" rating based solely on "language". Co-Director Michael Tucker spent two months in Iraq living with the Army's 2/3 Field Artillery. With total access to all operations and activities, GUNNER PALACE reveals the inside story of 400 American soldiers (aka: "Gunners") carrying out their mission from a bombed-out pleasure palace originally built by Sadaam Hussein and later home to his son Uday. In the film, soldiers are shown experiencing and responding to the war around them.

More importantly, the Motion Picture Association of America is pre-emptively censoring itself as a cave to the religious right. They're sending a message to the country that our soldiers fighting in Iraq are somehow too dirty and disgusting and vulgar for impressionable high school age kids to see. Which is funny, when you think about it, since the military is allowed to try to entice high school kids to join the military after they reach the age of 17. So, it's okay to try to convince underage kids to JOIN the military once they graduate, but don't you dare show them WHAT THEY'LL ACTUALLY BEING DOING ONCE THEY JOIN.

How's that for screwed up values. Read the rest of this post...

Halle- fucking-lujah

Jesus, finally. Thanks everyone for hanging in there. Man. And thanks very much to some unnamed friends at Google who cared enough to put a fire under those bastards at Blogger.

Alright, back to business. Welcome back :-) Read the rest of this post...

Condi: the Peter Principle in Action

Read this paragraph from today's New York Times and ask yourself one question: Is there any foreign policy issue Condi hasn't fucked up?:

Her critics have faulted her handling of terrorist warnings before Sept. 11 and her management of fractious internal disputes and flawed intelligence reports in advance of the war with Iraq and the military occupation that followed. They have also faulted her response to the threat of nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea and her overall role in a foreign policy that has strained the United States' relations with longtime allies and perhaps spawned new enemies around the world.

So, the solution: promote her. YIKES. Read the rest of this post...

WMDs not moved out of Iraq

Despite flimsy excuses by the pro-war GOP, no evidence has been found according to congressional or intelligence officials. Can we now stop the "let's invade Syria because we're now confident that they have the weapons just like we were confident Iraq had them" crowd and get a real energy and Middle East policy?
Read the rest of this post...