Steve Gilliard, 1964-2007

It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog, passed away June 2, 2007. He was 42.

To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.

Please keep Steve's friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.

Steve meant so much to us.

We will miss him terribly.

AC360: Even Stopped Clocks are Right Twice a Day

Labels: wingnuttery

“Jump in the urinal
And stand on your head.
I’m the one that’s alive.
You’re all dead.”

-- Doggerel/quote from “Ubik” by Phillip K. Dick, and also the vibe that came reeking unmistakably off of the Great GOP Reagan Salad Toss last night.

"They stood earnestly in a row, combed, primped and prepped, as Nancy Reagan gazed up at them with courteous interest.

"But behind the hopeful candidates, a dwarfing shadow loomed, a shadow almost palpable in its power to remind Republicans of the days when men were men and the party was united. His power is only increased by his absence. But enough about Fred Thompson."

"Three of the candidates indicated that they did not believe in it.

None is a front-runner but even so there will be American scientists who will feel deeply depressed that serious politicians in 2007 can be disputing the entire thrust of modern knowledge about how the world was formed and how it, well, evolved. "

(“ Starting with you, Governor, would the day that Roe v. Wade is repealed be a good day for America.

Romney: Absolutely.

Moderator: Senator?

Brownback (?): It would be a glorious day of human liberty and freedom.

Moderator: Governor?

Gilmore (?): Yes, it was wrongly decided.

Moderator: Governor?

Huckabee (?): Most certainly.

Moderator: Congressman?

Hunter (?): Yes.

Moderator: Governor?

(Unknown): Yes.”

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.
Former Gov. James Gilmore, R-Va.
Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, R-N.Y.C.
Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R- Ark.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas
Former Gov. Mitt Romney, R- Mass.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Col.
Former Gov. Tommy Thompson, R-Wis. .

"Friends, this is clean-up time, and we're discounting all our silent electric Ubiks by this much money. Yes, we're throwing away the bluebook. And remember: every Ubik on our lot has been used only as directed."

"Wake up to a hearty, lip-smacking bowlful of nutritious Ubik toasted flakes, the adult cereal that's more crunchy, more tasty, more ummish. Ubik breakfast cereal, the whole-bowl taste treat! Do not exceed recommended portion at any one meal."

"If money worries have you in the cellar, go visit the lady at Ubik Savings and Loan. She'll take the frets out of your debts. Suppose, for instance, you borrow fifty-nine postcreds on an interest-only loan. Let's see, that adds up to- "

“And remember: every Ubik in our lot has been used only as directed.”

“The best way to ask for beer is to sing out Ubik.”

“Your husband will say, Christ, Sally, I used to think your coffee was only so-so. But now, wow! Safe when taken as directed.”

“Remember: Ubik is only seconds away. Avoid prolonged use.”

“So try Ubik. And be loved. Warning: use only as directed. And with caution.”

“If money worries have you in the cellar, go visit the lady at Ubik Savings and Loan.”

“So if looming political annihilation and the end of your theocrat sprint towards Democracy’s end-zone is giving you the collywobbles, remember there is nothing as full of electorally refreshing, memory-wiping, pig-people-pleasing, Elmer Gantrifying, hyperpatriot yumminess as good ol’ fashioned American-made Ubik.

“Remember, Ubik/11/2001 changed everything, and you are either with Ubik or with the terrorists”*

Labels: 2008 race, GOP, wingnuttery

The Waning of the GOP

By William F. Buckley Jr.

The political problem of the Bush administration is grave, possibly beyond the point of rescue. The opinion polls are savagely decisive on the Iraq question. About 60 percent of Americans wish the war ended — wish at least a timetable for orderly withdrawal. What is going on in Congress is in the nature of accompaniment. The vote in Congress is simply another salient in the war against war in Iraq. Republican forces, with a couple of exceptions, held fast against the Democrats’ attempt to force Bush out of Iraq even if it required fiddling with the Constitution. President Bush will of course veto the bill, but its impact is critically important in the consolidation of public opinion. It can now accurately be said that the legislature, which writes the people’s laws, opposes the war.

...

But beyond affirming executive supremacy in matters of war, what is George Bush going to do? It is simply untrue that we are making decisive progress in Iraq. The indicators rise and fall from day to day, week to week, month to month. In South Vietnam there was an organized enemy. There is clearly organization in the strikes by the terrorists against our forces and against the civil government in Iraq, but whereas in Vietnam we had Hanoi as the operative headquarters of the enemy, we have no equivalent of that in Iraq, and that is a matter of paralyzing importance. All those bombings, explosions, assassinations: we are driven to believe that they are, so to speak, spontaneous.

Labels: Bush Iraq, wingnuttery

Richard Ryan Wargo, 10301 Evangeline, Shreveport, was booked into Parish Prison on counts of terrorizing, communicating false information of planned arson, simple possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

State District Judge Mike Erwin set the $1 million bond Thursday.

[...]

The warrant says a classmate of Wargo?s told an LSU police officer the two students were talking when Wargo made the threat.

Wargo told the other student that he was interested in committing an act of terrorism, and that it would be a "national event," the warrant says. He asked if the other student was interested in participating, the warrant says.

When asked if the act of terrorism was politically motivated, Wargo nodded his head, and said, ?Hillary Clinton,? the warrant says.

Labels: 2008 race, Hillary, wingnuttery

Obama placed under Secret Service protection
Raw Story
Published: Thursday May 3, 2007
The US Secret Service will provide a security detail for Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) as he continues his presidential campaign, the Department of Homeland Security announced today.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff authorized the security detail after consulting with Congress, CNN reported today. No further details about Obama's protection were announced.

It is unclear whether any specific threats against the senator led to the Secret Service protection. The Secret Service commonly provides security details assigned to high-profile presidential candidates.

Obama's campaign clashed earlier this year with a self-described pedophile who posted pictures of Obama's daughter online. The Smoking Gun published a letter from Obama's attorney to the man, Lindsay Ashford, demanding the pictures be removed, as RAW STORY reported previously.

Text of Secret Service statement follows:

#

Secretary Chertoff has, after consultation with the congressional advisory committee, authorized the United States Secret Service, to protect presidential candidate Senate Barack Obama.

As a matter of procedure, we will not release any details of the deliberations or assessments that led to protection being initiated. For security reasons we will not release the timing, scope or details of any protective operations.

#

Labels: 2008 race, obama, wingnuttery

Labels: Bush, wingnuttery

The Republican Party walks into the American people’s living rooms, and says, "We're the Family Value’s Party, and we'd like to represent you."

The American People say, "Sorry, but we’re a little leery of Family Values parties. They tend to be scams run by demagogues.”

Republican Party says, "But this is really special."

The American People says, "Okay, well what's the act?"

The Republican Party replies, "Well after the worst attack on American soil in history, we hijack the nation's grief and rage to plunge us into a war with entirely the wrong country.

“Then we let the actual terrorist responsible for the attack to sit in a comfy chair on the edge of the stage and laugh and laugh and laugh for the duration of the performance.

“The Mainstream Press then comes out, bends over and we take them violently and repeatedly from behind by jamming giant lies up their poop chutes, which come spurting out of their mouths the next day as 'authoritative reporting'. Then we cite our own regurgitated lies as independent ‘proof’ that we're right.

“Meanwhile Fox News and Hate Radio will peel the flesh from the fallen soldiers (whose flag-draped coffins are to be kept strictly hidden during the entire act. Out of, y’know, respect), wrap themselves in their skin, the Flag and the Bible and spend the rest of the act as a kind of Rich White Greek Chorus, screaming that anyone who is not in the act is a traitor.

“They will also hypnotically repeat ‘9/11/Iraq/Saddam Hussein/Osama bin Laden’ over and over and over again until any distinctions between them become magically invisible.

“We then wheel a brain-dead body on the stage named Terri Schiavo, and proceed to use it to defile both the institution of marriage and the sanctity of life…in the name of the Jesus. And then the President himself will interrupt one of his many vacations to make a special guest appearance and sign a special law to do this.

“Our ‘maverick’ candidates then come out, set fire to their remaining principles, and slither though their own shit to kiss Jerry Falwell’s pasty, pestilent ass.

“Then a kick-line of severely wounded veterans of our illegal war hobble across the stage, are locked into tiny rooms crawling with rats and roaches, and are left to sit in their own waste.

“The stage will be ringed by White Male Conservative Fundamentalist Evangelical on tall pulpits who will repetitively rant about the feminists, queers, Darwin and the ACLU oppressing and destroying Christian America while urinating continuously on the proceedings. To spice it up a little, every now and then one of the White Male Conservative Fundamentalist Evangelical preachers will smoke meth and/or orally pleasure some young gentleman volunteer from the audience.

“The daughter of the Vice President will stand under the shower of Conservative urine and sing a merry song about her great love of the Family Values of her Father and her Party.

”Then ‐ live and on stage -- she and her lesbian lover will then give birth to a child out of wedlock.

“Every six minutes a voice will shout from offstage ‘Who is to blame for this horror show?’ and everyone on stage will shout back ‘Slick Willie!’ in unison.

“Every four minutes a spotlight will pick out various Family Values leaders in the wings engaged in various acts of including but not limited to sex with a gay prostitute, sex as a gay prostitute, attempting to solicit gay sex from young boys, embezzling funds from disabled veterans, stealing from native Americans, looting and then busting out various massive corporations, rigging elections, selling soldiers tainted food and toilet water at premium prices, attacking senior citizens for hating soldiers and loving “teh gay”

(Or did you forget?)

“And so forth…”

The American People look very uncomfortable, but the Republican Party continues…

“This will be followed by a series of what we call Ironic Soliloquies.

“First, one of our Faith Based 'scientists' will sodomize a baby polar bear with the worlds 'Global Warming' painted on its fur.

“Second, the head of the agency in charge of responding to national emergencies will let an entire American city die. No expense will be spared in making this as realistic as possible, including the mocking of the dead, the dying and the devastated as being 'lazy and stupid'...

“Third, the top Law Enforcement Officer in the country will torture a series of bound prisoners live, soak the writ of Habeas Corpus in kerosene and set in alight, smash the machinery of democracy, all while singing a rockin’ cover of 'I Don’t Remember'.



“The Secretary of Defense will then fuck an entire country into the ground, destroy the military, lie until his ass actually falls off, and mock anyone who asks honest questions.

“Then, for laughs, the Vice President will shoot a guy. An old guy. In the face.

“The old guy will then profusely apologize for getting in the way of the Vice President’s buckshot.”

The Republican Party pauses, smiling, and then continues:

"This is the best part: the President of the United States then comes back onstage in a flight suit and a massive codpiece, struts over the dead and wounded, over our ruined national reputation, over our failing schools, over our crippling debt, and praises every one of us for the brilliant job we have done, and passes out Presidential Medal’s of Freedom.

“Then a giant banner reading ‘Mission Accomplished’ drops out the ceiling, and 29% of the audience applauds wildly as we all get up and take a bow."

The Republican Party looks at the American People and says, "Well, that's the act. What do you think?"

The American People just sit there stunned for a long time. Finally they say, "That's a hell of an act. What do you call yourselves?"



"The Aristocrats!"

Labels: Bush, wingnuttery

Labels: Bush Iraq, wingnuttery

Not the way to make friends and influence people

Jen here. For those of you not familiar with the work of Mike Daisey, he's a wonderful monologuist and the author of "21 Dog Years: Doing time at Amazon.com." He's also a helluva nice guy and was a tangential but a very welcome part of the New York New Media scene back in the Netslaves days.

This past Thursday, some Christian group decided that they didn't like Mr. Daisey's language and content in his latest piece, Invincible Summer. So, they stormed the stage and destroyed his only working copy of the notes for that night's performace, and walked out without saying a word.

There's no doubt that this was planned--it was a sold out show and over 80 ChristoZombies attended.

Other than thanking these retards for giving him material for his next monologue and book (and no doubt shitloads of free publicity--he's already been on TV a few times (search Mike Daisey on YouTube)--I think he's re-opened the dialogue on the place of religion in public policy discourse in his own way, especially its role in "liberal" cities like Boston.

When it all boils down, a lot of "public policy" on tolerance in the US and on college campuses isn't about keeping angry mobs from burning down the houses of worship of unpopular minorities--it's about allowing a certain degree of intolerance by verbal minorities to be enshrined in public policy. Lip service to creationism, restrictions on sex education and contraception access, and blue laws of all stripes are all sleeping Nosferatus with spikes in their hearts, rumbling in the shallow grave of America's Puritan past.

In the particular case at hand, one of the Nosferatu-infected rats gnawed its way out of the coffin and jumped up into the horrified view onto the dinner table of the genteel academically tolerant who were suddenly forced to see what they were really "defending."

What do I mean like this? Well, after 9/11 and the Danish Cartoon Fiasco I asked where the moderate Muslim groups were; where was the outcry. Now I ask: What does the Harvard Campus Crusade for Christ have to say about this? Local Catholic League? Any on-campus, tuition-and-tax-dollar funded group that in its spare time in between "cleansing souls" is busy bombing clinics, bashing gays, and censoring what we read and see? No? How about the regular Priest/Pastor on the street; the leaders of moderate congregations, the vast majority of churchgoers? Last time I checked, Boston had a few churches of various stripes up there. Will this be on anyone's sermon sheet today?

I don't expect much feedback from these folks. Why not? Because for the fundies and clinic bombers, these six-fingered split-palette drooling raving demented freaks are the MONEYMAKERS, just like the geeks at a travelling carnival. They are the ones who get donations (and the gibbering footsoliders that collect them) that make it back into the "mainstream" sides of religious institutions--you know, the nice polite, scrubbed folks who do polite little canned speeches at Earth Day celebrations, Yom Hashoa memorial services, and so forth.

(Side note: This is why I only donate items or service to my local shul, NOT money. The shul school needs software, I get a list and order it for them. They need a computer set up, I do it. I NEVER give ANY money unless it's for a direct and immediate material thing (ie Seder meal for myself) because I don't believe in sending my money, no questions asked, to Israel or to ANY radical religious group, even my own. I encourage all people who identify with ANY faith to do the same.)

So far, no news on what particular ChristoFascist group was responsible, or if charges can or will be pressed. However, I can't help but wonder what the result would be if 80 performance artists all attended a Church service, and got up in the middle of Mass and destroyed the alter as a sort of performance art.

I encourage everyone to go see Mike's show if you can, and if not, buy his book and/or throw him a few bucks, just by way of moral support.

And to the people who did this: Please take your stupid, inbred, repressed selves the fuck out of any city that has at least one institution of higher learning-the grown-ups are trying to talk.

Labels: christianity, civil liberties, wingnuttery

Labels: VTech, wingnuttery

Wolfowitz girlfriend planned the Iraqi government
by leevank

Tue Apr 17, 2007 at 08:05:02 PM PDT

As if the tangled web of Paul Wolfowitz and his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, weren't already sordid enough, now comes word that while he was Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Pentagon ordered Science Applications International Corp., a Pentagon contractor, to enter into a subcontract with Ms. Riza under which she spent approximately a month in the spring of 2003 "studying ways to form a government in Iraq."

Here's the way Reuters describes the arrangement:

leevank's diary :: ::
SAIC said Riza's subcontract lasted from April 25 to May 31, 2003. She was paid expenses but no salary during her trip to Iraq, at her request, according to the contractor. [NOTE: The article doesn't make it clear whether she was paid a salary for the portion of time under the contract in which she wasn't actually in Iraq, but was presumably drafting whatever report she prepared -- if she actually prepared one.]

Melissa Koskovich, a spokeswoman for SAIC, said the contractor "had no role in the selection of the personnel who comprised the Iraq Governance Group under this contract."

Defense sources said the Pentagon was reviewing the matter.

I'd be fascinated to know who, other than Ms. Riza, constituted the "Iraq Governance Group," and what work product Ms. Riza actually delivered. It's not enough that Wolfowitz had a major role in leading this country into an unnecessary war that I think may well turn out to be the most serious foreign policy blunder in this country's history. No, he couldn't leave bad enough alone, but had to get his girlfriend a job planning the most screwed-up occupation and transfer to a new government in perhaps the entire history of military occupations.

I've got a suggestion for Mr. Wolfowitz: After you get fired by the World Bank, why don't you and your honey move to Baghdad and form your little love nest somewhere outside the Green Zone, where you can have lots of togetherness while living in the middle of the great success that you've created? Maybe the Iraqis will be so impressed by this great love affair between a Jewish man and an Arab Muslim woman that they'll realize the foolishness of their silly sectarian quarrels, and Iraq will become the shining beacon of tolerance and democracy that you told us it would be. Of course, things might not turn out that way, but since you're willing to take big risks with other people's lives, I'm sure you won't hesitate to take some risks with your own.

Labels: Iraq, wingnuttery, wolfowitz

All I can say is that wasn’t the Newt I gave a standing ovation to at the Oxford Union in 1985(I very rarely give standing ovations), nor the one who appeared at the National Review Institute Summit a couple of months ago. He seemed off his game somewhat, and was perhaps trapped by a desire to seem reasonable on the issue, which Kerry exploited to the full.

Labels: environment, global warming, wingnuttery

Labels: wingnuttery

Labels: fox, wingnuttery

Labels: Iraq, Vietnam, wingnuttery

el altavoz anterior newt gingrich de la casa comparó la educación bilingüe sábado con "la lengua de vivir en un ghetto" y de imitación los requisitos que las balotas se impriman en idiomas múltiples.


"el gobierno debe parar el asignar de que por mandato los varios documentos estén impresos en de 700 idiomas dependiendo de quién demuestre aleatoriamente para arriba" al voto, dijeron gingrich, que está considerando el buscar del nombramiento presidencial republicano en 2008. él hizo los comentarios en un discurso a la federación nacional de mujeres republicanas.

"la gente americana cree que el inglés debe ser la lengua oficial del gobierno... debemos substituir la educación bilingüe por la inmersión en inglés así que la gente aprende que el lenguaje común del país y ella aprenden la lengua de la prosperidad, no la lengua de vivir en un ghetto," gingrich dicho a las aclamaciones de la muchedumbre de más de 100.

la "ciudadanía requiere pasar una prueba en historia americana en inglés. si eso es verdad, después no tenemos que crear balotas en ninguna lengua excepto inglés, "él dijo.

peter zamora, co-silla de la coalición hispánica washington-based de la educación, que apoya la educación bilingüe, dicha, "el tono de sus comentarios era muy odioso. el español es hablado por muchos individuos que no vivan en el ghetto."

él dijo que la investigación ha demostrado "que la educación bilingüe es el mejor método de enseñar inglés a los altavoces no-ingleses." los español-locutores,él dijo, saben que necesitan aprender inglés. "no hay resistencia al inglés que aprende, realmente, entre inmigrantes, entre ciudadanos nativo-llevados. cada uno desea aprender inglés porque es lo que usted necesita para prosperar en este país."

Labels: gingrich, racism, wingnuttery

Labels: wingnuttery

Peanut Butter Disproves Evolution
by "GrrlScientist"

According to this creationist video, peanut butter, which has been subjected to high temperatures to render it sterile, disproves that life can come from non-life. The silliness of this argument reminds me of Kirk Cameron's 'banana proof' of creationism.

Labels: science, wingnuttery