A Piece of Ass

Gap Between Rich and Poor Grows

2005-10-23T17:59:00.000-07:00

For the fifth straight year the gap between the richest American’s and the rest of the work force continued to grow. Recently released I.R.S numbers for 2003 show that only Americans in the top 1% of the income bracket, or those who make over $327,000 per year saw a significant income increase. The bottom 99% of the workforce only saw their incomes increase by less the 2%, which didn’t even match the overall inflation rate of 2.3%.

The wealth disparity is so large that the top tenth of the richest 1% made more money then the poorest third of American workers combined. In contrast, the 1979 I.R.S report showed that the poorest third made more then the top tenth 1% of our wealthiest citizens. Between 2003 and 2004 the poverty rate of U.S. workers also increased by 1.1 million citizens, bringing the total number of Americans living at or below the poverty line up to massive 37 million. Meanwhile the number of Americans without healthcare of any kind increased to 45.8 million in 2004.

What’s happening to the U.S. workforce? Why is the gap between rich and poor, or even the middle class and mega wealthy growing so wide? A major problem is that the federal minimum wage is stuck at a sickly $5.15 an hour, with some states adding a dollar or two on top of that wage. With the current cost of living in certain regions of the country such as the Northeast, the minimum wage is not enough to survive on. The average house cost in Rhode Island is close to $300,000 with most houses going for well over that price. The cost of gas has skyrocketed in recent years, and the price of goods and services have increased, yet the workers wages remain stagnant, not even increasing high enough to match the inflation rate as the I.R.S points out. It’s not just those working for minimum wage or slightly above that are suffering the crunch, all workers white collar and blue collar alike aren’t seeing their wages increase much. However, as New York University economist Edward N. Wolf points out, most of the wage increases have come in the from of stock market gains and sharp rises in pay for chief executives. American workers can’t afford homes in their own states any longer, nor the gas to fill their cars, but we can all take comfort that the CEO’s of the country have seen their salaries go up by 9.5% in single year!

While the bulk of American’s flounder, the Bush administration continues to push its tax cuts for the wealthy and seeks to make them permanent. Even in the light of a growing massive deficit and the declining welfare of a majority of its citizens, the powers that be will not remove the damaging tax cuts or even consider raising the minimum wage to a livable standard. The administration and its wealthy masters are playing a dangerous economic game at their own risk. Even Alan Greenspan as quoted by the Christian Science Monitor recently stated at a Joint Economic Committee hearing that, "The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself.... The Fed chief than added that the 80 percent of the workforce represented by nonsupervisory workers has recently seen little, if any, income growth at all."

As Greenspan stated, Democratic Capitalism itself is threatened by the ever-increasing income gap. This problem has gone far beyond partisan jabs and political bickering, the entire structure of the system is on the verge of collapse. A nation that has such incredible wealth owes a certain level of security to all its citizens. It needs to be mindful that the poverty numbers decrease and do not increase, that its citizen’s wages rise above the inflation rates or at the very least match those rates. A nation such as this owes healthcare to its citizens so that they do not get struck with massive medical bills when an untimely emergency strikes them from their work or family life. And last, this country’s leaders need to understand that this is a nation of the people and by the people, not of the billionaires, and for the corporate elite.

Travis Roberts
Blacksheep01@gmail.com

Scott McClellan Enters the Spin Cycle

2005-10-16T21:10:00.000-07:00

But it was Scott McClellan who took the brunt of Bush's tomfoolery at the White House press conference which followed the teleconference. (source) Unfortunately for Scott, he didn't know that the reporters already knew that the event was staged. (source) Hilarity ensued:

Q: Scott, why did the administration feel it was necessary to coach the soldiers that the President talked to this morning in Iraq?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: I'm sorry, I don't know what you're suggesting.

(snip)

Q: ...we asked you specifically this morning if there would be any screening of questions or if they were being told in any way what they should say or do, and you indicated no.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: I don't think that's what the question was earlier today. I think the question earlier today was asking if they could ask whatever they want, and I said, of course, the President was - and you saw -

Q: And I asked if they were pre-screened.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: You saw earlier today the President was trying to engage in a back-and-forth with the troops...

(snip)

Q: But I also asked this morning, were they being told by their commanders what to say or what to do, and you indicated, no. Was there any prescreening of -

SCOTT McCLELLAN: I'm not aware of any such - any such activities that were being undertaken...

Worst. Press Secretary. Ever.

By the way, don't miss this Keith Olbermann segment on Bush's teleconference travesty - I promise you won't be disappointed!

Olbermann Part One
Olbermann Part Two
Olbermann Part Three

Videos hosted by CanOFun.com.

Worst Photo-Op Ever

2005-10-16T20:41:00.000-07:00

What's a president to do when faced with growing public discontentment and crashing poll numbers? If you're George W. Bush, the answer is clear: try to focus the nation's attention away from what a jackass you are, and regain some of that pre-election military mojo.

Which is exactly what Our Great Leader attempted to do last week, holding a live teleconference with some troops from the 42nd Infantry Division, all of whom coincidentally happened to agree with all of the Bush administration's current talking points on Iraq. (source)

Here's George, participating in a totally spontaneous back and forth chat with the troops:

Wait a minute... the president appears to have dyed his hair. And lost some height. And turned into a woman.

Okay, you got me. That's not George W. Bush, that's Allison Barber of the Defense Department. And what was she doing there? Unfortunately for the Bush administration, the answer was revealed by the raw satellite feed streamed to news outlets before the teleconference began. The feed showed Ms. Barber carefully coaching the troops on what Bush was going to say, the techniques they should use when responding, and giving them an opportunity to rehearse their answers. (source) Some choice quotes:

"Master Sergeant Lombardo, when you're talking about the president coming to see you in New York, take a little breath before that so you can actually be talking directly to him. You've got a real message there, okay?"

(snip)

"If the question comes up about partnering how often do we train with the Iraqi military who does he go to?"

(snip)

"...if we're going to talk a little bit about the folks in Tikrit the hometown and how they're handling the political process, who are we going to give that to?"

(snip)

"But if he gives us a question that's not something that we've scripted, Captain Kennedy, you're going to have that mic, and that's your chance to impress us all."

Hmmm. "Not something we've scripted," eh?

Funnily enough, even though the event was totally stage-managed and pre-packaged, Our Great Leader still managed to make a complete hash of it. (source) Bush forgot about the satellite delay and talked across soldiers, stumbled over words and phrases (as usual), offered a completely disingenuous invitation for the troops to drop by and visit him any time they're in Washington, and at one point lost his earpiece. I mean, check out this exchange:

THE PRESIDENT: Let me ask you something. Were you there when I came to New York?

SERGEANT LOMBARDO: Yes, I was, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: I thought you looked familiar.

SERGEANT LOMBARDO: Well, thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: I probably look familiar to you, too.

You know, sometimes I think the word "asshat" was invented specifically for George W. Bush.

The Rogue Democrat: On Science

2005-10-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

Life first appeared on this planet 3.8 billion years ago. You have no way of comprehending how mind-numbingly vast an expanse of time that is. If you could reduce each one of those years into a single second, you'd still be left with over 120 years.

Needless to say, a lot can happen in that amount of time. In that unimaginable collection of time, your ancestors at one point were uni-cellular, lived underwater, had scales, scampered about in the night and lived in caves. The hundreds of millions of generations between you and that first bacteria 3.8 billion years ago can be charted in continuous successions of pairs lucky enough to find each other, healthy enough to reproduce and fortunate enough to live just as long to repeat the process.

Of the species that once lived on Earth, 99.99 percent are gone now. And you have been presented with unbelievably favorable circumstances to be among the 0.01 percent of species still around.

These are facts, undeniable in the fossil record. But there are some people who choose to ignore facts and create a conflict between science and religion. But there shouldn't be a conflict because there's no such thing as science.

Pick up an object in front of you and let go. It falls to the ground. There, you're a scientist! You just observed something and formulated a theory. Things fall down: The Simplified Theory of Gravity. What you just did is no different that what scientists have done for centuries to figure out how stars burn or build nuclear submarines.

The very same rules that allow that submarine to traverse the ocean are the rules that govern how the sun generates heat and how that thing you dropped fell and how the trillions of atoms in your body don't fly apart and reduce you to a fine powder.

And yet many people create a conflict between science and religion. Many people of faith see science as a competing religion. And, in my opinion, I think some of them are afraid the scientists are winning.

They see scientists who cure diseases, put men on the moon and level cities with atomic weapons and become jealous. All of our miracles in recent years have been scientific ones. But how those miracles came about is no different than how you figured out how things fall down. There's nothing more than that. And it should be nothing to marvel at.

Science as a thing doesn't exist. Science is a process, not a set of statements. In that process (which we are still progressing), there are things that are not observable, and therefore, not knowable. Over the centuries, people of faith have filled in the gaps of those unknowable things with their own faith. That is why over the years we have believed that the earth is the center of the universe, demons cause disease and Intelligent Design exists.

The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is observable and falsifiable. Intelligent Design (ID) is not. It's not science. It's not even a theory. It's an idea, and it's based on poor thinking. One of the claims of ID proponents is that such complex biological systems such as your eye or the flagellum of a bacterium are not capable of being produced by chance.

That's a falsifiable claim. And it's been falsified. Scientists have plenty of data on how multi-cellular organisms with radial symmetry and no central nervous system developed light-sensitive cells to tell day from night. These cells are extraordinarily similar to the rod and cone cells in our retinas that allow us to see. It is only a short stretch to see how those cells could evolve over hundreds of millions of years into our eyes.

The core tenant of any theory is that it must make a prediction that is supported by evidence. That right there means that ID is not a theory. The best claim that ID can make is that because scientists don't know everything (yet), they can fill in the gaps with God. That is the same circular logic that led to people believing that demons caused disease and that you could cure them by drilling a hole in their head.

And yet proponents of ID believe it should be taught in our nation's science classrooms along with evolution. That's like teaching alchemy in chemistry class, astrology in astronomy class or flat-earth theory in geography class.

Would you like direct evidence of evolution? Go to BISC and get some bacteria. Put them on a slide and spray them with Lysol. Then watch as the bacteria that survived are now immune to the Lysol. You just watched evolution in action.

It's not as impressive as watching a rabbit give birth to a duck, but considering that life has been evolving for 3.8 billion years in such continuous steps as our Lysol-resistant bacteria, it becomes that much clearer how complex things such as your brain came about. Now I hope you use it.

The Rogue Democrat: The Neocon Agenda Failure

2005-09-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

It sure sucks to be a conservative right now. President Bush's approval rating is again at an all time low, with the latest Gallup poll showing his approval at 40 percent and his disapproval at 58 percent. Of those polled, 59 percent said it was a mistake to go into Iraq and 63 percent believe we should pull all or some of our troops out now.

This is damning evidence of the failure of the neoconservative agenda. One of the main points for the neocons is to convince the people that their policies are what the people want; they're just following through on our mandate. But when the people make it painfully clear that the actions of our neocon leaders are anything but welcome, they have to shift the spin machine into overdrive.

"It's just that damn liberal media!" they yell. "The liberals are just using this catastrophe to hurt the president politically!" Because God forbid we blame people when they screw up. "These crazies in Washington are on the radical fringe!"

If there are any crazies on the radical fringe in Washington, it's the rally held by Kristinn Taylor of Free Republic. With headline speaker (and convicted felon) G. Gordon Liddy, her rally was supposedly about supporting the troops and honoring their sacrifices. But the funny thing is, they believe the best way to support the troops is to keep them in Iraq and make sure more of them come home sans limbs or in body bags.

The odd part about it is, the people at this rally were so oblivious to a little thing called reality, Taylor "said organizers were prepared for 20,000 people to attend the pro-military rally" when only a few hundred showed up.

Meanwhile, across town (and in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle) a slightly larger rally took place in which speakers applauded the troops for their sacrifices and prayed for their safety. They promoted peace, protested George W. Bush's decision to invade and occupy Iraq, and pressured the administration into ending the bloodshed in Iraq by bringing our troops home. And they had slightly more than 20,000 people. Approximately 100,000 to be exact.

When you have hundreds of times as many people at a rally promoting bringing the troops home versus your rally which wants to keep them in harm's way, how can you call them "a radical fringe"? The same people at that rally must dress up and go to Star Trek conventions. It seems to me they're on the same level of reality.

This was especially evident in their bashing of Gold Star Mothers for Peace founder Cindy Sheehan. It seems these people honestly believe she is more responsible for soldiers dying in Iraq than Bush is. And I must admit I laughed when one of the speakers addressed the dozens gathered and called the 100,000 across the Mall, "out of the mainstream."

This is good news for America. Now that more and more are seeing how the Bush administration has failed the people of the United States time and time again, it makes it that much harder for the neocons to push their agenda on the populace. The people are seeing the agenda for what it is: a wolf in sheep's clothing. While pretending to be a mandate from the people, it is actually coming from the true radical fringe.

The thing is, if the architects behind the war in Iraq actually cared about the troops (or victory, for that matter), they would have a working exit strategy. Every day that goes by that the Pentagon doesn't release an exit strategy is another damning reason Donald Rumsfeld should be without a job. As Defense Secretary, he has failed miserably.

From the false assertions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to his reports that Iraqi citizens would greet us as liberators with sweets and roses as if we were a Valentine's Day date, he has neglected his duty countless times. If Bush wanted to save his political skin, he would fire Rumsfeld promptly.

Bush has already gotten slight praise for his taking responsibility for Katrina (not from me, though); maybe if he sacked Rumsfeld and hired someone who knew more about defense than handing out contracts, we might actually win the day in Iraq and bring our troops home that much sooner.

That is, if there actually is the possibility of a victorious outcome. Things aren't going particularly well over there, and the proposed Iraqi constitution is a massive blight in a war supposedly fought for freedom. Article 2 states that "Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation ... No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam."

In an interview in the Christian Science Monitor, Iraqi Ambassador to the U.S. Rend Rahim is worried about this development, and said that this passage could give way to "some interpretations [that] allow for men to beat their wives, give men more inheritance rights than women and consider a woman's testimony to be worth less than a man's when it comes to legal disputes."

Safia Taleb al-Suhail, the Iraqi woman who sat next to Laura Bush at the 2005 State of the Union Address, said in August, "When we came back from exile, we thought we were going to improve rights and the position of women. But look what has happened: we have lost all the gains we made over the last 30 years. It's a big disappointment." But don't worry; Bush says "Freedom is on the march."

But nothing is too big to spin when it comes to neocons, as evidenced on the Aug. 28 episode of Meet the Press, in which director of PNAC's Middle East Initiative Reuel Marc Gerecht said to David Gregory:

"Actually, I'm not terribly worried about this. I mean, one hopes that the Iraqis protect women's social rights as much as possible. It certainly seems clear that in protecting the political rights, there's no discussion of women not having the right to vote. I think it's important to remember that in the year 1900, for example, in the United States, it was a democracy then. In 1900, women did not have the right to vote. If Iraqis could develop a democracy that resembled America in the 1900s, I think we'd all be thrilled. I mean, women's social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy. We hope they're there. I think they will be there. But I think we need to put this into perspective."

So as you can see, freedom is on the march in Iraq, but only if you have a penis. But Gerecht's comments do strike me as almost wistful. It seems maybe he wishes America was more like it was in 1900.

So now that the anti-war movement is the mainstream, you can hold your head high, America. The neocon-driven nightmare is almost over, just as long as you keep fighting the good fight. As environmentalist Edward Abbey once said, "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government."

The Rogue Democrat: Hell has frozen over

2005-09-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

An amazing thing happened last week. During a Sept. 13 meeting with the president of Iraq, President Bush said, "Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government, and to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility." Later that night, reports started coming in that Hell was under a sheet of ice.

In the second debate during the 2004 election campaign, Bush was asked what he thought was the single biggest mistake of his presidency and he couldn't think of anything.

This is the same administration that has ducked and dodged responsibility since their start in 2001, placing blame on everyone but themselves, including those who were victims of the administration's blunders.

But Bush is a shrewd one, and this latest stunt has paid off. The mass media, doing their job for a change and calling the President on his crap, has been so impressed by Bush's little gesture that they're getting off his back; as if they felt bad for being so hard on him.

Who cares if an entire city is under five feet of toxic waste with hundreds of dead bodies floating around due to his incompetence? The poor guy took responsibility! So it seems that once again, journalism (the reason we have a mass media) has taken a back seat so we can again watch the talking heads kiss Bush's ass.

But don't worry about me. I know that a few platitudes aren't going to wipe the slate clean. Why's that? Because I have a little something called memory, which I tend to use, this being college and all.

My memory is full all the things Bush hasn't accepted responsibility for over the past four and a half years. I'd list them all, but I don't think the Cigar has the budget to publish a 30-page paper.

But while Bush was pretending to be president for a change, the republicans in the Senate were doing what they do best: being apathetic.

You'd imagine that after the worst natural disaster in a century and the massive recovery failure to follow, Congress would be able to put aside partisanship and get down to business finding out what screwed up. Even Bush himself said that Katrina "exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government." Wouldn't that light a fire under them?

Apparently not. When Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) proposed an independent, non-partisan commission (in the same vein as the very successful 9/11 Commission) to find out what went wrong in the Gulf, the republicans in the Senate killed the proposal. I guess they really don't care about finding the truth. Or maybe they have something to hide.

But unfortunately for Mr. Bush, a couple words won't fix anything. So he had to do something in order to a) make things better and b) get his approval rating out of the toilet.

So on Sept. 15, he proposed "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen." When his colleagues on Capitol Hill heard this, they estimated that it would cost more than the war in Iraq, which has already cost this country over $195 billion.

So the first thing on the minds of the fiscal conservatives should be, "how are we going to pay for this?" We could have easily with a little something called the Clinton surplus, but that's deader than Zoomba pants and jelly shoes. (I like giving the fashion column a two-for-one deal.)

Right now government expenditure is so much higher than revenue, it's pointless to discuss it. For fiscal year 2004, the government spent $412 billion it didn't have. With Hurricane Katrina relief soon to hit the ledgers, we will have gotten to the point where talking numbers is irrelevant. The entire cost of the project will be borrowed from foreign banks, and it will be the responsibility of our children to pay off the debt.

Now don't you wish Bush never passed those tax cuts for the rich? We might as well pass another one now. And don't worry about paying off all the money we're borrowing. We'll just borrow more from other banks to pay off the interest.

It's a Ponzi scheme on a global scale. And luckily for us, we'll all be dead before we have to actually pay for any of this. Bush's fiscal irresponsibility astounds me.

But I would like to bring up one more thing about the actual response. The only federal official to get the boot after the government's shameful showing was FEMA Director Michael Brown. The man pushed the term incompetence to a new level.

But it appears now that the feds sacked the wrong guy. According to federal documents leaked to the Knight Ridder wire service, "The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief." The document is quite complicated, but I would like to summarize it for your benefit.

Michael Brown didn't have the authority to start a response in the Gulf until Michael Chertoff gave him the authority. And Chertoff didn't give him that authority until Aug. 30, a full day and a half after Katrina made landfall. So what was Chertoff doing the entire time? Neither the White House nor the Department of Homeland Security have given any reason as to why Chertoff sat idle. But I must say, Chertoff found the perfect fall guy. Sorry, Brownie.

But I would like to end on something other than Katrina and discuss another major issue facing the federal government: the confirmation of John Roberts. Bush has nominated him for Chief Justice, the highest position in the Judicial Branch. So you'd think we'd learn a lot about him at his hearings. But so far, we haven't. I would like to give a few samples of the answers he has given the Senate Judicial Committee:

"I'm not going to comment." "I can't address that." "I feel the need to stay away from the discussion." "I don't remember." "I do not feel it appropriate for me to comment." "I don't want to discuss anything." "I can't answer that." "I don't know." "It's a matter I can't talk about." "I can't answer that." "I don't remember." "I don't recall." "I think I should stay away from discussions of particular issues."

I've gotten more detail from the instructions for Easy Mac.

Eventually, Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) got upset with Roberts' lack of answers and told him so. Arlen Spector (R-PA), chairman of the committee, then told him, "They may be misleading, but they're his answers."

I think Spector hit the nail on the head. Roberts' confirmation shouldn't be the breeze the talking heads are saying it will be. He's getting a lifetime appointment to a job where he can overturn laws in Congress; he should have to answer honestly some simple questions. And yet some pundits think that he's perfect for the job precisely because he is so secretive. I think they must have worked for Dick Cheney.

The Rogue Democrat: Bush and Brown mishandle response to Katrina

2005-09-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

Does anything more need to be said about the massive failure of the Bush administration to respond properly to Hurricane Katrina? I think so. It needs to be said because one of the reasons given to Bush's narrow reelection was his crisis management skills. What happened to them the last two weeks?

The biggest problem is the typical administration response to incompetence: Deny its existence (Or it may just be they can't get past the first stage of grief in the Kübler-Ross model, denial). When House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told Bush to fire FEMA Director Michael Brown, he replied, "Why would I do that?"

"Because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week," Pelosi responded. The President of the United States then asked, "What didn't go right?"

Now as much as I hate to admit it, Bush is the President of the United States. He is supposed to be the most powerful man on earth and yet his information-gathering infrastructure is again lacking. I like to think that the same people who told Bush everything was fine in the Gulf were the same people who told him Saddam had sought to acquire uranium from Nigeria.

We all know Bush doesn't read any newspapers (by his own admittance), but when a massive human tragedy occurs on his watch and he's too busy clearing brush from his ranch to notice, something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

But when it finally is time to swing into action, what is a non-aware (or possibly non-caring) president to do? Fly in 50 firefighters from Atlanta for a photo-op. And so far, the only quote I could find from Our Great Leader regarding actual tragedy was about Trent Lott's house: "Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house ... there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." Because that's what Bush likes to do when times get rough.

But if you really need to know what went wrong, how's this for an answer: Everything FEMA has done for the last two weeks. But since you're not Bush, you already knew that. So many reports have come in about FEMA refusing aid from Amtrak, out-of-state firefighters, Wal-Mart, the Coast Guard and even the Red Cross. Even FEMA's Web site reads, and this is a direct quote, "First Responders Urged Not To Respond."

Now how could you bungle a response to a disaster that bad? What people are to blame? Well we can't blame Bush of course. He took Truman's "The Buck stops here" and passed it halfway between Abu Ghraib and Valerie Plame.

But there are the Bush buddies at FEMA (which stands for Federal Emergency Management Agency, by the way) who have no idea how to handle emergencies. Deputy Director and Chief of Staff Patrick Rhode was a staffer with the Bush-Cheney campaign. Deputy Chief of Staff Scott Morris did public relations for them.

And then we get to the Director of FEMA himself, Michael Brown. Not counting the lies on his credentials, his most impressive job was commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association. Because when you want a guy skilled in disaster response, you think horses. And the really sad part is, Brown did such a horrible job at the IAHA, he was fired.

Bush and his cronies have told us so many times that national security is his number one priority that you'd think something like his appointment to FEMA would be important. But this guy screwed up so bad, even the mass media noticed. The same people who brought you the Michael Jackson trial and American Idol actually took note of something important for a change!
And when Bush was actually pressed to comment on Brown's incompetence, he shook his hand in front of the cameras and said, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!" (Remember what I said about Bush's detachment from reality?) It only took two weeks and thousands to die, but someone finally took charge and sent Brown back to Washington, where he promptly resigned and was replaced with someone actually qualified for the job, former firefighter R. David Paulison.

The thing is, many Americans voted for Bush in 2004 because they thought he would be able to keep us safe. He wouldn't just talk tough; he'd be a man of action and take the fight to the terrorists and we'd all be safe in our homes and SUVs and never have to worry about anything.

But when we finally are faced with disaster on a massive scale again, we don't get Bush shouting into a bullhorn. We get him stumbling through his words as he rambles about Trent Lott's house or tells a bureaucratic flunky he's doing a good job. Now that the wheels are coming off the wagon, I wonder how many regret that decision they made back in November.

As I said earlier, the mass media is finally doing its job and calling the administration on their ineptitude in this tragedy. One of the best ways they're doing this is by showing talking heads spout out-of-touch crap that is at best insensitive and at worst downright idiotic.

The crown must go to former first lady Barbara Bush, who was interviewed on American Public Media's Marketplace. When asked about the evacuees in Houston she said, "What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this-this is working very well for them." I certainly hope this isn't going to become part of this administration's doctrine.

Lastly, I would like to say that our thoughts and prayers are still with the victims of Hurricane Katrina and their families. Anything you can do to help ease their suffering is greatly appreciated.

Idiotic Like a Fox

2005-07-10T23:10:00.000-07:00

On Fox News, coverage of last week's terrorist bombings in London was, as you would expect, deplorable. Fox News anchors could barely contain their glee as news of the destruction filtered in. To Brit Hume, the death of dozens of Londoners meant one thing - money in the bank. (source)

"My first thought when I heard," said Brit, live on air, "just on a personal basis, when I heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought, 'Hmmm, time to buy.'"

Really? Funnily enough, my first thought when I heard what Brit Hume had to say was, "Hmmm, what an enormous asshole."

How the Bush Administration (Doesn't) Fight Terror

2005-07-10T22:32:00.000-07:00

"Our strategy in the war on terror is based on a clear understanding of the enemy, and a clear assessment of our national interest." - Dick Cheney, July 2003 (source)

"Either we take the war to the terrorists and fight them where they are – at this moment in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere – or at some point we will have to fight them here at home." - Donald Rumsfeld, August 2003 (source)

"America is more secure. The world is safer." - George W. Bush, January 2004 (source)

"...we are making ourselves more secure, because we cannot fight the terrorists in New York; we've got to fight them out there." - Condoleezza Rice, February 2004 (source)

"The question is do we fight them over there - or do we fight them here. I choose to fight them over there." - Gen. Tommy Franks, September 2004 (source)

"The number of serious international terrorist incidents more than tripled last year, according to U.S. government figures, a sharp upswing in deadly attacks that the State Department has decided not to make public in its annual report on terrorism due to Congress this week." - The Washington Post, April 2005 (source)

"I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." - Dick Cheney, May 2005 (source)

"In total, for the year from the handover of sovereignty on June 28, 2004, until June 23, 2005, there were at least 479 car bombs, killing 2,174 people and wounding 5,520. ... Last month was the most violent for Iraqi civilians since the U.S.-led invasion to remove Saddam Hussein from power in March 2003." - Associated Press, June 2005 (source)

"There is only one course of action against them: to defeat them before they attack us at home." - George W. Bush, June 2005 (source)

"...the Iraq insurgency poses an international threat and may produce better-trained Islamic terrorists than the 1980s Afghanistan war that gave rise to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda." - classified CIA report, June 2005 (source)

"This shows that president Bush is doing exactly the right thing, or they wouldn't be making these kinds of attacks." - CSPAN caller, July 2005

"There were nearly 3,200 terrorist attacks worldwide last year, the Bush Administration said yesterday, using a broader definition that increased fivefold the number of incidents that Washington had previously tallied for 2004." - The London Times, July 2005 (source)

Somebody wake me up when these people figure out what the hell they're doing.

Willis Stephens Made Me Giggle

2005-07-09T21:14:00.000-07:00

These are trying times for technophobes. Last week New York State Assemblyman Willis Stephens (R-Obviously) was reading the comments of about 300 members of his constituency on a local community message board. Mr. Stephens then wrote an email to one of his aides to inform them that he was "watching the idiots pontificate."

But how do we know what the assemblyman wrote in a private communication to one of his aides? Because unfortunately for Mr. Stephens, instead of sending the comment to the aide he accidentally posted it on the community message board, where it was promptly read by his constituents and shortly thereafter delivered to the media. (source) Whoops.

I Wonder If Jon Huntsman Knows What Nepotism Is

2005-07-09T20:40:00.000-07:00

While we're on the subject of really stinky things stinking up a storm, let's pay a visit to Utah's governor's mansion and say hello to Gov. Jon Huntsman (R-It's Utah What Do You Expect). Gov. Huntsman recently hired a new director of international trade and diplomacy, one Layne Palmer, at a salary of $60,000 per year. (source) According to Palmer, his qualifications include the fact that he has "traveled extensively" and been involved in "entrepreneurial activities." Sounds, um, fishy.

And it is fishy. Before being hired as Utah's director of international trade and diplomacy, Palmer's previous job was managing NAPA Auto Parts in Tremonton. But to be fair, Palmer does have other qualifications - for example, he's the father of Gov. Huntsman's executive assistant, Jami Palmer. What a happy coincidence!

Paul Krugman: Free to Choose Obesity?

2005-07-08T23:32:00.000-07:00

The obvious model for those hoping to reverse the fattening of America is the campaign against smoking. Before the surgeon general officially condemned smoking in 1964, rising cigarette consumption seemed an unstoppable trend; since then, consumption per capita has fallen more than 50 percent.

But it may be hard to match that success when it comes to obesity. I'm not talking about the inherent difficulty of the task - getting people to consume fewer calories and/or exercise more may be harder than getting people to stop smoking, but we won't know until we try. I'm talking, instead, about how the political winds have shifted.

Public health activists were successful in taking on smoking in part because at the time corporations didn't know how to play the public opinion game. By today's standards, the political ineptitude of Big Tobacco was awe-inspiring. In a famous 1971 interview on "Face the Nation," the chairman of the board of Philip Morris, confronted with evidence that smoking by mothers leads to low birth weight, replied, "Some women would prefer having smaller babies."

Today's food industry would never make that kind of mistake. In public, the industry's companies proclaim themselves good guys, committed to healthier eating. Meanwhile, they outsource the campaigns against medical researchers and the dissemination of crude anti-anti-obesity propaganda to industry-financed advocacy groups like the Center for Consumer Freedom.

More broadly, the ideological landscape has changed drastically since the 1960's. (That change in the landscape also has a lot to do with corporate financing of advocacy groups, but that's a tale for another article.) In today's America, proposals to do something about rising obesity rates must contend with a public predisposed to believe that the market is always right and that the government always screws things up.

You can see these predispositions at work in an article printed last month in Amber Waves, a magazine published by the Department of Agriculture. The article is titled "Obesity Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences," suggesting that government efforts to combat obesity are likely to be counterproductive. But the authors don't actually provide any examples of how that might happen.

And the authors suggest, without quite asserting it, that because people freely choose obesity in a free market, it must be a good thing.

"Americans' rapid weight gain may have nothing to do with market failure," the article says. "It may be a rational response to changing technology and prices. ... If consumers willingly trade off increased adiposity for working indoors and spending less time in the kitchen as well as for manageable weight-related health problems, then markets are not failing."

How can medical experts who see obesity as a critical problem deal with an ideological landscape tilted in the direction of doing nothing?

One answer is to focus on the financial costs of obesity, and the fact that many of these costs fall on taxpayers and on the general insurance-buying public, rather than on the obese individuals themselves. (To their credit, the authors of the Amber Waves article do mention this issue, although they play it down.)

It is more important, however, to emphasize that there are situations in which "free to choose" is all wrong - and that this is one of them.

For one thing, the most rapid rise in obesity isn't taking place among adults, who, we hope, can understand the consequences of their decisions. It's taking place among children and adolescents.

And even if children weren't a big part of the problem, only a blind ideologue or an economist could argue with a straight face that Americans were rationally deciding to become obese. In fact, even many economists know better: the most widely cited recent economic analysis of obesity, a 2003 paper by David Cutler, Edward Glaeser and Jesse Shapiro of Harvard University, declares that "at least some food consumption is almost certainly not rational." It goes on to present evidence that even adults have clear problems with self-control.

Above all, we need to put aside our anti-government prejudices and realize that the history of government interventions on behalf of public health, from the construction of sewer systems to the campaign against smoking, is one of consistent, life-enhancing success. Obesity is America's fastest-growing health problem; let's do something about it.

Quid Pro Quo on a Boat for Duke Cunningham

2005-07-07T23:38:00.000-07:00

Avast! Federal agents boarded Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham's yacht last week, but they weren't looking for booty - they were trying to find out if he lives there or not. It turns out that Duke Cunningham is apparently in a spot of bother - he's under investigation by "the U.S. Attorney's Offices in San Diego and Washington, D.C., the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and the Internal Revenue Service." (source) Crikey.

The California Republican is in trouble because of a dubious real estate deal he made in 2003. Cunningham apparently sold his home to defense contractor Mitchell J. Wade for $1.675 million; just two months later, Wade put the house back on the market for $700,000 less than the amount he paid for it. Wade's reward? Well, his company tripled its contracts with the Defense Department. But of course, whether or not this has anything at all to do with the fat profit he handed to his friend the congressman is really anyone's guess. Although if I had to guess, I'd say that it stinks worse than stilton cheese stored in a hobo's sock.

Flag Fellaters

2005-07-07T22:59:00.000-07:00

Since last Monday was Independence Day, I should probably mention that two weeks ago the House of Representatives endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration. (source) This is the umpteenth time the House has tried this, and so far the measure has never made it past the Senate. But in these times, the flag desecration amendment may actually stand a chance.

So the next time you see someone flying a ratty, tattered Stars & Stripes from the window of their car, make sure to let them know that they are un-American. Next time your neighbor hangs Old Glory in the front yard and leaves it there for the wind to rip to pieces, remind them that they are helping the terrorists. Next time you see someone wrapping their head or their tits or their ballsack in the Star Spangled Banner, tell them that not only are they desecrating the flag, but they look like a clown.

And the next time you see someone burning a flag in the street... ha ha! Yeah right - that happens all the time.

Hypocritical Cowardly Young Republicans for the War

2005-07-06T23:28:00.000-07:00

Of course, there are good reasons why the military is suffering from recruitment problems - despite personal pleas from the president himself, the fact is that many young people who support the war simply want other people to fight it for them. Take the Young Republicans of South Carolina, for example. While the war rages in Iraq and violence is on the rise in Afghanistan, the South Carolina GOP recently held a contest to see who could do the best impersonation of Howard Dean "scream." (source) Question: why weren't those young Republicans down at the local recruiting office instead?

Maybe it's because they just don't give a fuck. Max Blumenthal recently attended the College Republican National Convention and asked attendees why they weren't joining the military. (source) Collin Kelley, who said that he's "'sick and tired of people saying our troops are dying in vain,' ... rubbed his shoulder and described a nagging football injury from high school." Edward Hauser, who said "I support our country. I support our troops," also announced that, "I know that I'm going to be better staying here and working to convince people why we're there [in Iraq]. I'm a fighter, but with words."

I'll let Max tell you about Cory Bray himself:

By the time I encountered Cory Bray, a towering senior from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, the beer was flowing freely. "The people opposed to the war aren't putting their asses on the line," Bray boomed from beside the bar. Then why isn't he putting his ass on the line? "I'm not putting my ass on the line because I had the opportunity to go to the number-one business school in the country," he declared, his voice rising in defensive anger, "and I wasn't going to pass that up."

And besides, being a College Republican is so much more fun than counterinsurgency warfare. Bray recounted the pride he and his buddies had felt walking through the center of campus last fall waving a giant American flag, wearing cowboy boots and hats with the letters B-U-S-H painted on their bare chests. "We're the big guys," he said. "We're the ones who stand up for what we believe in. The College Democrats just sit around talking about how much they hate Bush. We actually do shit."

No Cory, you actually are shit.

Racing for Recruitment

2005-07-06T22:28:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush ended his speech on Thursday with a call to "those watching tonight" to consider military service. Because you see, it turns out that while a substantial number of people in this country support what Bush is doing in Iraq, a significantly smaller number are interested in putting themselves or their children on the line for it.

Which is why the Pentagon has come up with a great new way to reassure the country that the military isn't in the middle of a recruitment disaster. Last week it was revealed that in June the Army met their recruitment goal "for the first time since January," according to the New York Times. (source) Huzzah! It turns out that the Army recruited around 6,100 new members. But don't get too excited...

At the start of May, the goal was 8,050 new recruits. (source) By the end of May that goal was reduced to 6,700. And the number of new recruits that actually came in during May was just over 5,000. So faced with this recruitment crisis the Pentagon did what any sensible organization would do - it simply lowered the target even further. June's target was 5,650 recruits.

But according to Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, there's only one number that really matters: 80,000. "The Army's fiscal 2005 goal was, is and remains 80,000 recruits," he said earlier this month. Unfortunately CBS News pointed out recently that "with only four months left in the budget year, the Army is at barely 50 percent of its goal. Recruiters would have to land more than 9,760 young men and women a month, on average, to reach the 80,000 target by the end of September." (source)

But don't worry - faced with these dire statistics Donald Rumsfeld is stopping at nothing to solve the problem. (source) Why, just last week he was in Daytona Florida to, uh, act as Grand Marshal for the 47th running of the Pepsi 400.

Photo: Reuters

Robin Hayes Knows Something You Don't

2005-07-05T23:47:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, while a majority of America have caught on some elected Republicans are still desperate to stoke the falsehood that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. Not long after Dubya's speech, Rep. Robin Hayes (R-Of Course) told CNN that the "evidence is clear" that the evil Iraqi dictator was behind the terrorists' plans. (source)

After being told that no investigation has ever found any evidence that Hussein and bin Laden were in cahoots, Hayes said, "I'm sorry, but you must have looked in the wrong places." Well, that's true - if you call the 9/11 commission's final report "the wrong places" and the festering imagination of Sean Hannity "the right places."

But Hayes wasn't done there. "Saddam Hussein and people like him were very much involved in 9/11," he said. Oh, okay - I get it now! Saddam Hussein and "people like him" ... right, right, I see. Well I guess they all had brown skin and dark hair and talked funny, so yeah. I see what you're saying. I guess we'll just have to kill them all then.

9/11 24/7

2005-07-05T23:17:00.000-07:00

The other great theme of Bush's speech, was, of course, 9/11. It's common knowledge that Bush's favorite way to score political points is to hump the pantlegs of the 3000 Americans who died on his watch, but last Tuesday he took it to ridiculous new extremes.

In a speech about a war on a country which had nothing to do with 9/11, Bush managed to conjure up the image of the twin towers no fewer than five times:

"The troops here and across the world are fighting a global war on terror. The war reached our shores on September the 11th, 2001..."

"After September the 11th, I made a commitment to the American people: This nation will not wait to be attacked again. We will defend our freedom. We will take the fight to the enemy..."

"The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September the 11th..."

"They are trying to shake our will in Iraq, just as they tried to shake our will on September the 11th, 2001..."

"After September the 11th, 2001, I told the American people that the road ahead would be difficult..."

All this in a speech about the quagmire in Iraq. Now what was it that Bush said previously about Saddam Hussein and 9/11? Ah yes:

"We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with... September 11th." - George W. Bush, 2003 (source)

Hmm. Well it sounds like Dubya is a little mixed up. Maybe Disappearing Dick Cheney is more of a voice of reason on the subject of Iraq and 9/11:

"We will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who've had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11." - Dick Cheney, September 2003 (source)

"The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11." - Dick Cheney, October 2004 (source)

Oh well, I guess not.

See, here's the thing folks. You want to know why things are going badly in Iraq? It's because George W. Bush and his administration are, not to put too fine a point on it, FULL OF SHIT. Commander Cuckoo Bananas could have used his speech last week to tell some real, hard truths about the war in Iraq. Instead he filled it with yet more blather and spin, and attempted - again - to use 9/11 for political point-scoring. The good news is that the American people seem to have finally caught on. (source)

Paul Krugman: Girth of a Nation

2005-07-04T20:03:00.000-07:00

The Center for Consumer Freedom, an advocacy group financed by Coca-Cola, Wendy's and Tyson Foods, among others, has a Fourth of July message for you: worrying about the rapid rise in American obesity is unpatriotic.

"Far too few Americans," declares the center's Web site, "remember that the Founding Fathers, authors of modern liberty, greatly enjoyed their food and drink. ... Now it seems that food liberty - just one of the many important areas of personal choice fought for by the original American patriots - is constantly under attack."

It sounds like a parody, but don't laugh. These people are blocking efforts to help America's children.

I've been looking into the issues surrounding obesity because it plays an important role in health care costs. According to a study recently published in the journal Health Affairs, the extra costs associated with caring for the obese rose from 2 percent of total private insurance spending in 1987 to 11.6 percent in 2002. The study didn't cover Medicare and Medicaid, but it's a good bet that obesity-related expenses are an important factor in the rising costs of taxpayer-financed programs, too. Fat is a fiscal issue.

But it's also, alas, a partisan issue.

First, let's talk about what isn't in dispute: around 1980, Americans started getting rapidly fatter.

Some pundits still dismiss American pudge as a benign "affliction of affluence," a sign that people can afford to eat tasty foods, drive cars and avoid hard physical labor. But all of that was already true by 1980, which is roughly when Americans really started losing the battle of the bulge.

The great majority of us (yes, me too) are now overweight, and the percentage of adults considered obese has doubled, to more than 30 percent. Most alarmingly, obesity, once rare among the young, has become common among adolescents, and even among children.

Is that a bad thing? Well, obesity clearly increases the risks of heart disease, diabetes, back problems and more. And the cost of treating these weight-related diseases is an important factor in rising health care spending.

So there is, understandably, a movement to do something about rising obesity, especially among the young. Bills that would require schools to serve healthier lunches, remove vending machines selling sweets and soda, and so on have been introduced in a number of state legislatures. By the way, Britain - with the second-highest obesity among advanced countries - has introduced stringent new guidelines on school meals.

But even these mild steps have run into fierce opposition from conservatives. Why?

In part, this is yet another red-blue cultural conflict. On average, people living outside metropolitan areas are heavier than urban or suburban residents, and people in the South and Midwest are heavier than those on the coasts. So it's all too easy for worries about America's weight to come off as cultural elitism.

More important, however, is the role of the food industry. The debate over obesity, it turns out, is a lot like the debate over global warming. In both cases, major companies protect their profits not only by lobbying against policies they don't like, but also by financing advocacy groups devoted to debunking research whose conclusions they don't like.

The pro-obesity forces - or, if you prefer, the anti-anti-obesity forces - make their case in part by claiming that America's weight gain does no harm. There was much glee on the right when a new study, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, appeared to reject the conventional view that obesity has a large negative effect on life expectancy.

But as officials from the C.D.C. have pointed out, mortality isn't the only measure of health. There's no question that obesity plays an important role in many diseases that diminish the quality of life and, crucially, require expensive treatment.

The growing availability of such treatment probably explains why the strong relationship between obesity and mortality visible in data from the 1970's has weakened. But the cost of treating the obese is helping to break the back of our health care system.

So what can we do?

The first step is to recognize the industry-financed campaign against doing anything for the cynical exercise it is. Remember, nobody is proposing that adult Americans be prevented from eating whatever they want. The question is whether big companies will have a free hand in their efforts to get children into the habit of eating food that's bad for them.

Independunce Day 2: Spin Cycle

2005-07-03T23:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, but what about the substance of the speech? Well, a curious thing happened last Tuesday night - Bush came up with yet another rationale for the Iraq war. And it's the most ridiculous one yet.

Forget what you were told before. Forget you were told that Saddam was involved in 9/11; (source) threatened to attack us with his chemical and biological weapons; (source) came this close to building a nuclear bomb; (source) could strike the United States with unmanned aerial vehicles. (source) Forget you were told that the Iraqi people were begging us to liberate them, and would dance in the streets once our troops arrived. (source) Forget you were told that the whole thing would take six weeks - six months at a maximum. (source) Forget you were told that it would hardly cost us a dime. (source)

And forget that any of this was Bush's fault. Sure, his administration was pumping 24/7 lies and misjudgments and propaganda down the American people's throats - but he was just trying to protect us from the WMDs. I mean, the terrorists.

So now where are we? Well apparently Iraq is a real live training ground for terrorists. (source) Apparently, by invading a country which had nothing to do with 9/11 (except in the mind of George W. Bush and friends), we have stoked the flames of jihad and emboldened radical Islamists all over the world. Apparently Iraq is home to more and more foreign fighters, (source) although - and this is a piece of luck - we can now "fight them over there instead of fighting them over here." Assuming they have no concept of multi-tasking, that is.

And so we must stay the course, and defeat the terrorists. Or, as David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org put it: "Apparently the disaster that Bush has created in Iraq is now the justification for having created it." (source)

Here's one of the highlights of Bush's speech:

BUSH: The lesson of this experience is clear: The terrorists can kill the innocent, but they cannot stop the advance of freedom. The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September the 11th, if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi, and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like Bin Laden. For the sake of our nation's security, this will not happen on my watch. (source)

I'll tell you what - if we've learned anything since 9/11, it's how not to fight a war on terrorism. It seems that the only people who haven't noticed that the war is creating more terrorists and making the world a more dangerous place are the people in charge of running the war. That's not good. With all the tough lessons the Bush administration has learned in the last two years, you'd think they'd be experts by now - or at least have some kind of plan. But no, the lesson they appear to have learned is that if something's a really shitty idea, you should never stop doing it.

And what about bringing freedom to the Iraqi people? Here's what Bush had to say about that:

BUSH: In the past year, we have made significant progress. One year ago today, we restored sovereignty to the Iraqi people. In January 2005, more than 8 million Iraqi men and women voted in elections that were free and fair, and took time on - and took place on time. We continued our efforts to help them rebuild their country.

Well that's good to know. But hold on a minute. From earlier in the speech:

BUSH: The commander in charge of coalition operations in Iraq - who is also senior commander at this base - General John Vines, put it well the other day. He said: "We either deal with terrorism and this extremism abroad, or we deal with it when it comes to us."

So that's the bottom line. "We'll fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here." Hey Iraqi people, you don't mind if we use your country to fight the terrorists that we brought there do you? You'll get that "freedom" we were talking about right after we've killed every last one of you, er, I mean, them.

Independunce Day

2005-07-03T23:19:00.000-07:00

So what was up with the stony silence which greeted Bush's speech last week? Many were expecting a re-run of the "Mission Accomplished" extravaganza with a throng of soldiers cheering on Our Great Leader - look, the troops love him! How can he be such a screw up when he commands such respect from the armed forces?

Funny that... because on Tuesday night Bush was greeted with absolutely no applause whatsoever. No cheering. No "Hoo-ahs." Nothing. There was some talk that the soldiers had been ordered not to applaud because this was a somber, serious policy speech (which of course it wasn't, but I'll get to that in a minute). However, the White House acknowledged that the speech was intended to run for 40 minutes, which included breaks for applause. (source) Bush zipped through it in 28 minutes.

There was one pause for applause towards the end of the speech, when Bush read the line, "We will stay in the fight until the fight is done." But according to the New York Times, "Terry Moran, an ABC White House correspondent, said on the air on Tuesday night that the first to clap appeared to be a woman who works for the White House, arranging events." (source) Oh well.

Benedict Karl Rove

2005-07-03T22:43:00.000-07:00

It looks like Karl "Bush's Brain" Rove is about to finally learn the meaning of karma; he was implicated last week as the man who leaked the name of covert operative Valerie Plame. (source)

On NBC's "The McLaughlin Group" last week, MSNBC analyst Lawrence O'Donnell revealed that "least two authoritative sources have confirmed that one name is top White House mastermind Karl Rove," according to Editor & Publisher. (source)

If true, Rove is guilty of a crime which former RNC chief Ed Gillespie has agreed is "worse than Watergate." (source) And here's how George H.W. Bush described those who out CIA agents:

Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors. (source)

So there you have it. Is Karl Rove the most insidious of traitors? Is he guilty of a crime "worse than Watergate?" And, incidentally, what did the president know and when did he know it? Looks like things are about to get interesting...

Sex and Candy

2005-07-02T23:42:00.000-07:00

And now a quick update on Our Great Leader's quest to return honor and dignity to the White House. While I was in Wisconsin two weeks ago, you may have seen that the National Republican Congressional Committee welcomed porn king Mark Kulkis to its President's Dinner with open arms; Kulkis brought porn star Mary Carey with him to the dinner. (source)

According to World Nut Daily, Carey "made no secret prior to the event of wanting to have sex with Karl Rove, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Pat Buchanan and Alan Colmes – in addition to at least one player from every team in the NBA." (source) But last week it was revealed that Carey also had her sights set on... the Bush twins. Honestly.

"Oh my God, his daughters!" she said. "I'd love to party with his daughters. I'd love to meet them. I totally want to have sex with them." So let's not forget NRCC communications director Carl Forti's comment on Carey's appearance at the dinner: "They've paid their money. No matter what they do, the money is going to go to help elect Republicans to the House."

Is that the rancid perfume of freshly-squeezed hypocrisy I smell wafting through the streets of Washington DC? Either that or the sewers are backed up again.

Young Republican Chickenhawks

2005-07-02T23:05:00.000-07:00

Maybe this will clear things up a bit. Last week, the Defense Department began an extremely dubious project with "a private marketing firm to create a database of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in some branches," according to the Washington Post. (source)

Potential recruits eh? Well I surely can't think of a better bunch than the attendees at the upcoming Young Republican National Convention. Unfortunately, recruiting these brave war-supporters may not be as easy as you think. Crooks and Liars recently attempted to place an ad in the official program of the Young Republican National Convention (using an assumed name, of course). (source) The ad read:

Our nation is at War!

We are in a desperate struggle for all we believe in.
Our military is suffering a manpower crisis.
Why are you here when your country needs you in Iraq?
Talk is cheap. America needs more from you.
College, family, and careers can wait.
Heed your nation's call and enlist in the infantry today.

Makes sense, right? Surely the Young Republican National Convention is prime pickings for the nation's military recruiters - fresh-faced young men and women who are not only ripe for military service, but wholeheartedly support the war!

Their response:

We are sorry but we must regretfully reject this advertisment. We feel that the tone of the message is too negative.

Aww, poor darlings. Well, if they don't want a reminder of the human cost of the Iraq occupation spoiling their little shindig, that's their business. I'm sure they don't need, you know, reality to get in the way of making tough-sounding speeches and toasting Donald Rumsfeld. Huge props to Crooks and Liars for exposing these chickenhawks.

Paul Krugman: America Held Hostage

2005-07-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

A majority of Americans now realize that President Bush deliberately misled the nation to promote a war in Iraq. But Mr. Bush's speech on Tuesday contained a chilling message: America has been taken hostage by his martial dreams. According to Mr. Bush, the nation now has no choice except to keep fighting the war he wanted to fight.

Never mind that Iraq posed no threat before we invaded. Now it's a "central front in the war on terror," Mr. Bush says, quoting Osama bin Laden as an authority. And since a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would, Mr. Bush claims, be a victory for Al Qaeda, Americans have to support this war - and that means supporting him. After all, you wage war with the president you have, not the president you want.

But America doesn't have to let itself be taken hostage. The country missed the chance to say no before this war started, but it can still say no to Mr. Bush's open-ended commitment, and demand a timetable for getting out.

I know that this argument will be hard to sell. Despite everything that has happened, many Americans still want to believe that this war can and should be seen through to victory. But it's time to face up to three realities. First, the war is helping, not hurting, the terrorists. Second, the kind of clear victory the hawks promised is no longer possible, if it ever was. Third, a time limit on our commitment will do more good than harm.

Before the war, opponents warned that it would strengthen, not weaken, terrorism. And so it has: a recent C.I.A. report warns that since the U.S. invasion, Iraq has become what Afghanistan was under the Soviet occupation, only more so: a magnet and training ground for Islamic extremists, who will eventually threaten other countries.

And the situation in Iraq isn't improving. "The White House is completely disconnected from reality," said Senator Chuck Hagel, referring to upbeat assessments of progress. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

Mr. Hagel claims to believe that we can still win, but it's hard to see how.

More troops might help, but pretty much the whole U.S. Army is already in Iraq, on its way back from Iraq or getting ready to go to Iraq. And the coalition of the willing is shrinking.

Helping Iraqis rebuild their country could help win hearts and minds. But for all the talk of newly painted schools, the fact is that reconstruction, originally stalled by incompetence and corruption, is now stalled by the lack of security. When Ibrahim al-Jafaari, the Iraqi prime minister, visited Washington, he was accompanied by Iraqi journalists. One of them asked Mr. Bush, "When will you begin the reconstruction in Iraq?"

Meanwhile, time is running out for America's volunteer military, which is cracking under the strain of a war it was never designed to fight.

So what would happen if the United States gave up its open-ended commitment to Iraq and set a timetable for withdrawal?

Mr. Bush claims that such a step would "send the wrong signal to our troops, who need to know that we are serious about completing the mission." But what the troops need to know is that their country won't demand more than they can give. He also claims that it would encourage the insurgents, who will "know that all they have to do is to wait us out." But the insurgents don't seem to need encouragement.

It's far more likely that if the Iraqi government knew that our support had an expiration date, it would both look to its own defenses and, more important, try harder to find a political solution to the insurgency.

The Iraq that emerges once U.S. forces are gone won't bear much resemblance to the free-market, pro-American, Israel-friendly democracy the neocons promised. But it will pose less of a terrorist threat than the Iraq we have now.

Remember, Iraq wasn't a breeding ground for terrorists before we went there. All indications are that the foreign terrorists now infesting Iraq are there on the sufferance of a homegrown insurgency that finds them useful for the moment but that, brutal as it is, isn't interested in an apocalyptic confrontation with the Western world. Once we're no longer targets, the foreign terrorists won't be welcome.

The point is that the presence of American forces in Iraq is making our country less safe. So it's time to start winding down the war.

Red State Chickenhawks

2005-06-30T23:10:00.000-07:00

Anyone else sick of being told by Bush voters that people who don't support the war are helping the terrorists? Anyone else sick of brave Republican warmongers finding all kinds of reasons not to join the military, despite the growing recruitment crisis? You may be interested to know that a breakdown of the Iraq war dead shows that more come from states that voted for John Kerry. In general, the bluer the state, the more dead soldiers. Check out these maps:

Now with the ol' Red vs. Blue map superimposed:

For some reason I expected to see more of the staunch Bush-voting "heartland" Republicans out west doing their bit for the cause...

Moral Values in a Stranglehold

2005-06-30T22:37:00.000-07:00

Back in September 2003, everyone's favorite carnivore Ted Nugent was being sued for child support by the mother of a child he fathered out of wedlock in 1995. Well, last week he was ordered to do cough up to the tune of $3,500 a month. For you family values conservatives who are keeping score, Nugent has been married to his wife since 1989, and they have four children together.

Funnily enough, The Nuge's bio on his website says that he was once awarded "Father of the Year" at his children's school. (source) I guess they forgot to put the word "Deadbeat" at the beginning.

F*** Your Couch, Darkness!

2005-06-29T22:06:00.000-07:00

It used to be said that Americans liked George W. Bush because they felt they could hang out with him - you know, have a drink, shoot the shit... well that's all well and good, but don't try it at his house.

Last week Bush got bent out of shape when, during a Q&A session with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyn in the Oval Office, two members of the South Korean press corps "sprawled on a couch to get a good position for the remarks." According to the Houston Chronicle, "The generally loquacious Bush delivered his comments in short, abrupt sentences with a tone of impatience. So profound was his air of injury that at one point, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, standing against a wall, stepped forward to peer at the offending sound technicians." (source)

Why was Bush so offended? Because apparently he's got a pole shoved so far up his ass that "touching the furniture in the Oval Office is strictly forbidden." Geez, and I thought the Democrats were supposed to be stuck-up. Don't touch the furniture? Okay grandma, whatever you say!

Tom DeLay Goes Crazy. Again.

2005-06-29T21:32:00.000-07:00

Looks like Tom DeLay is taking another of his regular vacations to Cloud Cuckoo Land. Last week Tom defended the situation in Iraq by comparing it to, um, Houston. Speaking to reporters, he said: "You know, if Houston, Texas, was held to the same standard as Iraq is held to, nobody'd go to Houston, because all this reporting coming out of the local press in Houston is violence, murders, robberies, deaths on the highways. And if you took that as the image of what is a great city that has an incredible quality of life and an incredible economy, it's amazing to me. Go to Iraq. And see what's actually happening there." (source)

Tell you what Tom - you go to Iraq. And while you're there watch out for the two-a-day suicide bombings, the innumerable roadside IEDs, and the rocket propelled grenades which have so far succeeded in killing more than 1700 of our young men and women, not to mention thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians. And if that sounds like Houston to you, then your problem is even worse than I originally thought.

Donald Rumsfeld and His Rose-Colored Glasses

2005-06-28T23:26:00.000-07:00

But you don't just have to take the CIA's word for it - there are plenty of other people who can back up the story of what's really going on in Iraq. People like General John Abizaid, the top American military commander in the Persian Gulf, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that the insurgency "was basically undiminished from six months ago," according to the Army Times. (source)

At the same Committee hearing, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once again attempted to paint a rosy picture of Iraq's future, saying, "Iraqis are building an economy and it's growing. The insurgency remains dangerous, particularly in several parts of Iraq, but terrorists no longer can take advantage of sanctuaries like Falluja. And coalition and Iraqi forces are capturing or killing hundreds of violent extremists on a weekly basis and confiscating literally a mountain of weapons." (source)

But Rumsfeld's (and Cheney's) remarks were contradicted by General Abizaid, who said, "I believe there are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq than there were six months ago." When even Republican senators like Chuck Hagel are starting to see the writing on the wall, (source) you know there's trouble brewing.

Dick Cheney: "Don't Worry, Be Happy!"

2005-06-28T22:50:00.000-07:00

So, how are things going in the war that conservatives allegedly prepared for? Well, according to Dick Cheney, the Iraq insurgency is in its "last throes." (source) Unfortunately, considering that every single statement Cheney has made on Iraq - from weapons of mass destruction to troops being greeted with flowers - has been utterly wrong, I wouldn't hold out too much hope.

In fact, the situation in Iraq may not be just worse than Cheney is making it out to be, but much worse. While our troops are gamely attempting to hold back the insurgents, the CIA predicts that "the Iraq insurgency poses an international threat and may produce better-trained Islamic terrorists than the 1980s Afghanistan war that gave rise to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, officials said on Wednesday." (source)

In case you've forgotten, the Islamic terrorists that fought the Russians in the 1980s were on our side. Ronald Reagan even created "Afghanistan Day" in their honor. (source) And let's see... who was running the government back then? Oh yes - Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and friends.

A U.S. counterterrorism offical said last week that "You have everything from bombings and assassinations to more or less conventional attacks. The urban warfare experience, for people facing fairly tight police and military activity at close quarters, should enable them to operate in a wider range of settings."

Well that's just great.

Paul Krugman: The Chinese Challenge

2005-06-27T22:33:00.000-07:00

Fifteen years ago, when Japanese companies were busily buying up chunks of corporate America, I was one of those urging Americans not to panic. You might therefore expect me to offer similar soothing words now that the Chinese are doing the same thing. But the Chinese challenge - highlighted by the bids for Maytag and Unocal - looks a lot more serious than the Japanese challenge ever did.

There's nothing shocking per se about the fact that Chinese buyers are now seeking control over some American companies. After all, there's no natural law that says Americans will always be in charge. Power usually ends up in the hands of those who hold the purse strings. America, which imports far more than it exports, has been living for years on borrowed funds, and lately China has been buying many of our I.O.U.'s.

Until now, the Chinese have mainly invested in U.S. government bonds. But bonds yield neither a high rate of return nor control over how the money is spent. The only reason for China to acquire lots of U.S. bonds is for protection against currency speculators - and at this point China's reserves of dollars are so large that a speculative attack on the dollar looks far more likely than a speculative attack on the yuan.

So it was predictable that, sooner or later, the Chinese would stop buying so many dollar bonds. Either they would stop buying American I.O.U.'s altogether, causing a plunge in the dollar, or they would stop being satisfied with the role of passive financiers, and demand the power that comes with ownership. And we should be relieved that at least for now the Chinese aren't dumping their dollars; they're using them to buy American companies.

Yet there are two reasons that Chinese investment in America seems different from Japanese investment 15 years ago.

One difference is that, judging from early indications, the Chinese won't squander their money as badly as the Japanese did.

The Japanese, back in the day, tended to go for prestige investments - Rockefeller Center, movie studios - that transferred lots of money to the American sellers, but never generated much return for the buyers. The result was, in effect, a subsidy to the United States.

The Chinese seem shrewder than that. Although Maytag is a piece of American business history, it isn't a prestige buy for Haier, the Chinese appliance manufacturer. Instead, it's a reasonable way to acquire a brand name and a distribution network to serve Haier's growing manufacturing capability.

That doesn't mean that America will lose from the deal. Maytag's stockholders will gain, and the company will probably shed fewer American workers under Chinese ownership than it would have otherwise. Still, the deal won't be as one-sided as the deals with the Japanese often were.

The more important difference from Japan's investment is that China, unlike Japan, really does seem to be emerging as America's strategic rival and a competitor for scarce resources - which makes last week's other big Chinese offer more than just a business proposition.

The China National Offshore Oil Corporation, a company that is 70 percent owned by the Chinese government, is seeking to acquire control of Unocal, an energy company with global reach. In particular, Unocal has a history - oddly ignored in much reporting on the Chinese offer - of doing business with problematic regimes in difficult places, including the Burmese junta and the Taliban. One indication of Unocal's reach: Zalmay Khalilzad, who was U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan for 18 months and was just confirmed as ambassador to Iraq, was a Unocal consultant.

Unocal sounds, in other words, like exactly the kind of company the Chinese government might want to control if it envisions a sort of "great game" in which major economic powers scramble for access to far-flung oil and natural gas reserves. (Buying a company is a lot cheaper, in lives and money, than invading an oil-producing country.) So the Unocal story gains extra resonance from the latest surge in oil prices.

If it were up to me, I'd block the Chinese bid for Unocal. But it would be a lot easier to take that position if the United States weren't so dependent on China right now, not just to buy our I.O.U.'s, but to help us deal with North Korea now that our military is bogged down in Iraq.

Monolithic Partisanship

2005-06-26T23:31:00.000-07:00

But Karl Rove wasn't the only one making outrageous statements last week. Rep. John Hostettler (R-Obviously) said on the House floor that "Like a moth to a flame, Democrats can't help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians."

Never mind the fact that a majority of Democratic voters identify themselves as Christian (compared with a super-majority of the, yes, pretty monolithic Republican party). No, John Hostettler felt perfectly comfortable using his time on the House floor to slander and smear Democrats as Christian-haters. According to the Associated Press, "Democrats leapt to their feet and demanded Hostettler be censured for his remarks. After a half-hour's worth of wrangling, Hostettler retracted his comments." (source)

But where's the media outrage? Where are the loud, public demands for an apology from talk-radio hosts and prominent politicians?

Don't be silly - Hostettler is a Republican.

Darth Rove Divides And Conquers

2005-06-26T22:49:00.000-07:00

The media kicked up an awful stink about the supposedly "outrageous" comments made by Democrats such as Howard Dean and Dick Durbin recently. But like so many other so-called news stories of the recent past, the media have made sure to kick Democrats and turn a blind eye to Republicans. Take the Dick Durbin incident, for example. He makes a comment about Nazis, and the next thing you know Bill Frist is saying that Durbin called Guantanamo Bay a "death camp." Frist wasn't just taking Durbin's comments out of context, he was literally making quotes up out of whole cloth. (source) Durbin apologized - but where was the outrage from Republicans and the media when Sen. Rick Santorum recently compared Democrats to Hitler? (source) They were looking the other way, as usual.

The same goes for Howard Dean, who not long ago said that the Republican party is "a pretty monolithic party ... it's pretty much a white, Christian party." (source) Which happens to be true, (source) except that's not really the point - Republicans and the media got a great deal of entertainment frothing at the mouth about the "out-of-control" DNC chairman and his wild and wacky ways.

But last week presidential adviser Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove said this:

Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. [Conservatives] saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war. (source)

It's a shame the war they prepared for was the wrong one - against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. (source) And it's a shame that they didn't prepare for what would happen after the initial invasion. (source) But nevertheless, it seems that it's just dandy for a high-profile Republican to make such a divisive comment. "Therapy" for terrorists? What a nut.

Unfortuantely, when Dean made his statement Democratic leaders fell all over themselves to condemn him. But when Karl Rove made his remarks, the Republicans said, "hey, what's the problem?" (source) In fact, they even went so far as to accuse the Democrats who criticized the remarks for making "partisan attacks." Rove's comments certainly didn't sit well with the 9/11 widows, but he apparently doesn't care what they have to say. (source)

Perhaps the most disingenous defense of Rove's comments have come from conservatives who claim that Democrats fell into Rove's "trap" - because he didn't say "Republicans" and "Democrats," he said "conservatives" and "liberals." Considering that the right-wing's favorite sport is to throw out the word "liberal" every time they refer to Democrats, are we suddenly supposed to believe that for the first time in his life, Karl Rove did NOT mean "Democrats" when he said "liberals?" Give me a break.

And to think that George W. Bush made a promise in 2000 to change the tone in Washington. (source)

Paul Krugman: Losing Our Country

2005-06-10T20:39:00.000-07:00

Baby boomers like me grew up in a relatively equal society. In the 1960's America was a place in which very few people were extremely wealthy, many blue-collar workers earned wages that placed them comfortably in the middle class, and working families could expect steadily rising living standards and a reasonable degree of economic security.

But as The Times's series on class in America reminds us, that was another country. The middle-class society I grew up in no longer exists.

Working families have seen little if any progress over the past 30 years. Adjusted for inflation, the income of the median family doubled between 1947 and 1973. But it rose only 22 percent from 1973 to 2003, and much of that gain was the result of wives' entering the paid labor force or working longer hours, not rising wages.

Meanwhile, economic security is a thing of the past: year-to-year fluctuations in the incomes of working families are far larger than they were a generation ago. All it takes is a bit of bad luck in employment or health to plunge a family that seems solidly middle-class into poverty.

But the wealthy have done very well indeed. Since 1973 the average income of the top 1 percent of Americans has doubled, and the income of the top 0.1 percent has tripled.

Why is this happening? I'll have more to say on that another day, but for now let me just point out that middle-class America didn't emerge by accident. It was created by what has been called the Great Compression of incomes that took place during World War II, and sustained for a generation by social norms that favored equality, strong labor unions and progressive taxation. Since the 1970's, all of those sustaining forces have lost their power.

Since 1980 in particular, U.S. government policies have consistently favored the wealthy at the expense of working families - and under the current administration, that favoritism has become extreme and relentless. From tax cuts that favor the rich to bankruptcy "reform" that punishes the unlucky, almost every domestic policy seems intended to accelerate our march back to the robber baron era.

It's not a pretty picture - which is why right-wing partisans try so hard to discredit anyone who tries to explain to the public what's going on.

These partisans rely in part on obfuscation: shaping, slicing and selectively presenting data in an attempt to mislead. For example, it's a plain fact that the Bush tax cuts heavily favor the rich, especially those who derive most of their income from inherited wealth. Yet this year's Economic Report of the President, in a bravura demonstration of how to lie with statistics, claimed that the cuts "increased the overall progressivity of the federal tax system."

The partisans also rely in part on scare tactics, insisting that any attempt to limit inequality would undermine economic incentives and reduce all of us to shared misery. That claim ignores the fact of U.S. economic success after World War II. It also ignores the lesson we should have learned from recent corporate scandals: sometimes the prospect of great wealth for those who succeed provides an incentive not for high performance, but for fraud.

Above all, the partisans engage in name-calling. To suggest that sustaining programs like Social Security, which protects working Americans from economic risk, should have priority over tax cuts for the rich is to practice "class warfare." To show concern over the growing inequality is to engage in the "politics of envy."

But the real reasons to worry about the explosion of inequality since the 1970's have nothing to do with envy. The fact is that working families aren't sharing in the economy's growth, and face growing economic insecurity. And there's good reason to believe that a society in which most people can reasonably be considered middle class is a better society - and more likely to be a functioning democracy - than one in which there are great extremes of wealth and poverty.

Reversing the rise in inequality and economic insecurity won't be easy: the middle-class society we have lost emerged only after the country was shaken by depression and war. But we can make a start by calling attention to the politicians who systematically make things worse in catering to their contributors. Never mind that straw man, the politics of envy. Let's try to do something about the politics of greed.

Gay Old Time at Ford Motors

2005-06-09T23:01:00.000-07:00

Did you know that Ford motor cars are the gayest cars in town? Yes sir - Ford is now the Liberace of motor vehicle producers. Forget that tough old image of midwestern steelworkers hauling I-beams in their F-350's. Grimy steelworkers, sweating from a hard day's toil... looking incredibly rugged in their tight-fitting dungarees... counting the minutes till the whistle blows at the end of the day and they can jump into the communal shower with their buddies... but I digress.

According to the latest champions of the radical right-wing, BoycottFord.com, "If one looks for the company which has done the most to affirm and promote the homosexual lifestyle, he would be hard-pressed to find a company which has done more than Ford Motor Company." (source) And therefore they are requesting that everyone should, well, boycott Ford.

If you need proof that Ford is a haven of homosexual hi-jinks, BoycottFord.com is more than willing to assist you. For example, check out this picture from a Volvo ad (Volvo is owned by Ford) which ran in the, um, Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras program book.

Just look at that car's giant boner. BoycottFord.com says, "Taking things to a new level, Volvo's risque ad phallicly shows an emergency brake handle as if it is an erection, with the headline, 'We're just as excited as you. Happy Mardi Gras from everyone at Volvo Car Australia.' At the bottom is an obligatory rainbow stripe."

Now, this is just a thought, but I might suggest that if one does not want to view such imagery, one might avoid reading the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras program book.

Anyway, this boycott against the enormously gay Ford Motor Company got us thinking. Why specifically target Ford? After a special investigation, we discovered that Ford are most certainly not the only car company indulging in blatant homoerotic imagery. Just check out the slogans of some other famous car manufacturers:

Saturn: "A Different Kind Of Car"

Jaguar: "Unleash A Jaguar"

Toyota: "Oh What A Feeling"

Chevrolet: "Like A Rock"

Subaru: "Driven By What's Inside"

Dodge: "Grab Life By The Horns"

Come on, BoycottFord.com! It's not just Ford! These companies are all doing the devil's work! They must be stopped immediately, stopped I tell ya!

Rob's Return Fun Fact: Stuck for what to drive? The members of BoycottFord.com recommend Volkswagen.

The Racist Junkie Vulgar Pigboy Stands Up for YOU

2005-06-09T22:46:00.000-07:00

On his radio show last week, Rush Limbaugh put forth a curious criticism of the Democratic party proposal to make election day a national holiday: (source)

OXYCONTIN BOY: The two to three big opportunities so far mentioned by Howard Dean - pension portability and changes to election laws. ... So portability of pensions. What's the second one? Oh, yeah, Election Day a holiday. And well, you know - I don't know why they need to do that. Most of their voters don't work anyway, so I don't know how that's going to help them that much. At least in a percentage basis.

Funny really. I mean, you'd think Rush would be falling head-over-heels to promote this idea. Because if Democrats don't work then surely we have a huge advantage on election day over all those fully-employed Republicans who are so busy pulling themselves up by the bootstraps that they can't get to the polls.

So why isn't Rush Limbaugh trying to fix the injustices of election day? Why isn't Rush Limbaugh trying to level the playing field between layabout welfare-grubbing Democrats who can roll out of bed and head to the polls around noon, and industrious Republicans who must surely have difficulty getting there during their lunch break - if they're lucky enough to have a lunch break at all?

Come on, Rush! STAND UP AND BE COUNTED! Right these wrongs! Election day MUST become a national holiday! Otherwise it's simply not fair to decent, hard-working Republicans!

I'm sure that we can expect Mr. Limbaugh to come to the same conclusion and start advocating for a national election holiday in the very near future.

Rob's Return Fun Fact: The Excellence In Broadcasting network is, in reality, a figment of Rush's drug-addled imagination.

The Department of Homeland Security Makes the Kessel Run in Less Than Twelve Parsecs

2005-06-08T22:53:00.000-07:00

Stop the presses! The Department of Homeland Security made a dramatic sweep last week and netted several dozen cells of domestic... filesharers? Yup - according to CNET News, "Agents shut down a popular Web site that allegedly had been distributing copyrighted music and movies, including versions of 'Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.' Homeland Security agents from several divisions served search warrants on 10 people around the country suspected of being involved with the Elite Torrents site, and took over the group's main server." (source)

Now, the issues of pirating music and movies aside, would it be impertinent of me to ask what the fuck Homeland Security is doing targeting filesharers? Of course, it's not like they haven't done anything this off-mission before - remember when Tom Delay sent Homeland Security after the "runaway Democrats?" (source)

Yes, you thought you were getting a vast, bloated government bureaucracy to stop evildoers from harming America - and instead you've gotten a vast, bloated government bureaucracy that stops evildoers from distributing Revenge of the Sith. Brilliant.

Rob's Return Fun Fact: Ironically, former head of Homeland Security Tom Ridge had a small role in Star Wars Episode III. If you look to the left of General Grievous just before his signature battle with Obi Wan Kenobi, you can see Ridge wrestling a gundark.

Moral Values Nuked

2005-06-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

Back in 2000, Carey Lee Cramer hit the headlines with an anti-Al Gore campaign ad which echoed the famous 1964 Lyndon B. Johnson "Daisy" ad. Cramer's remake featured his then 9-year-old stepdaughter picking daisy petals, and ended with a nuclear explosion. The ad attempted to demonstrate the moral depravity of Al Gore by spreading a rumor that he sold nuclear technology to China in return for campaign contributions.

But it turns out that Cramer's stepdaughter had more immediate problems to worry about than being blown up by a Chinese nuke marked "property of Al Gore." Last week Cramer was "charged in Hidalgo County with multiple counts of molesting the girl and another young relative," according to The Monitor. (source) His ex-wife (the girl's mother) thinks that he even molested her daughter during the making of the commercial.

Rob's Return ~~Fun~~ Fact: Conservatives are constantly droning on about morals and values, and then they get caught molesting children. Er, what's up with that?

Poppycock at the Pentagon

2005-06-07T22:50:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, as Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Co. sit pretty in Washington D.C., life is getting ever-tougher for the men and women of the U.S. armed forces. Just last week Army officers reported that they "don't have enough troops to hold the ground they take from insurgents" in northwest Iraq. According to Military.com, "From October to the end of April, there were about 400 soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division patrolling the northwest region, which covers about 10,000 square miles." (source)

Of course, it can't help that "The regular Army missed its recruiting goals for three straight months entering May, falling short by a whopping 42 percent in April. The Army was 16 percent behind its year-to-date target entering May, with a goal of signing up 80,000 recruits in fiscal 2005, which ends Sept. 30," according to Reuters. (source) The Pentagon is now postponing the release of military recruiting figures in an attempt to save face.

Why is recruiting so tough these days? Clearly people are not too keen on signing up when they know they'll be headed straight into the middle of a bloody conflict - and especially now that the Downing Street Minutes have conclusively proven that Bush lied to the American people and to Congress in order to get his war. (source) (Incidentally, John Conyers still needs your signatures.)

But there are other reasons: the Associated Press reported last week that "With thousands of reservists and National Guard members being called to duty, some families are not only left without a spouse's income but also their health insurance. The military provides Tricare, but with low reimbursement rates, many physicians hesitate accepting the government insurance. That has made access to health care difficult for reservist families." (source) Meanwhile, the analysts who were behind the deeply flawed intelligence reports which Bush used to push the country to war have, for the third year running, received job performance awards. (source) Nice.

But don't worry - Bush and Co. has a plan to fix the recruiting crisis. According to the UK Guardian, the Pentagon has "stopped battalion commanders from dismissing new recruits for drug abuse, alcohol, poor fitness and pregnancy in an attempt to halt the rising attrition rate." (source)

Drug abuse, alcohol, poor fitness, and... pregnancy? Ah, you just can't beat the "culture of life."

Rob's Return Fun Fact: According to the official Pentagon website, it is "one of the world's largest office buildings. It is twice the size of the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, and has three times the floor space of the Empire State Building in New York. The National Capitol could fit into any one of the five wedge-shaped sections." Since 2001, one of those wedge-shaped sections has been used exclusively to store the Bush administration's hubris.

Six Flags Guantanamo Bay

2005-06-07T22:10:00.000-07:00

And on the subject of not spending taxpayers' money to destroy life, let's turn now to the uproar caused by Amnesty International's recent report on Camp X-Ray, or "Six Flags Guantanamo Bay," as the Bush administration would apparently prefer we call it.

Amnesty's "exhaustive 300-page report" made a "substantive assertion that U.S. handling of 'war on terror' prisoners erodes our country's moral authority," according to the Miami Herald. (source) But unfortunately administration officials were able to deflect much of the criticism by focusing on Amnesty's use of the word "gulag" to describe the Guantanamo Bay prison.

George W. Bush called the report "absurd," Dick Cheney said he was "offended," (source) and Donald Rumsfeld appeared to lose the plot completely, saying "there's so much transparency in Gitmo and so much oversight" (source) - which explains why we don't know who's there and what they're there for.

And after all the fuss about Newsweek's report of mishandled Korans, the dynamic trio had egg on their faces when the Pentagon was forced to admit last week that Korans were mishandled - including one incident where a guard's urine "splashed onto a detainee and his Koran." According to the New Zealand Herald, "Southern Command said a guard urinated near an air vent and 'the wind blew his urine through the vent' and onto a detainee and his Koran." (source) Strange toilet arrangements they have down there at Gitmo.

It's okay though, because the White House is putting the blame for all this right where it belongs... on "the few isolated incidents of mishandling by a few individuals that violated military policies and practices," according to Scott McClellan. Now where have I heard that before? Ah yes - that's exactly what they said about our other house of fun, Abu Ghraib prison.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think it sounds like the administration doth protest just a tad too much? I mean, you'd think they might take some of the Amnesty report recommendations on board if they were actually serious about not provoking the Arab world during these difficult times. But then, when you have a president who thinks that it's his job to "catapult the propaganda," (source) I guess we shouldn't expect too much.

Rob's Return Fun Fact: During downtime, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld enjoy a spirited game of Risk in the White House basement - except they play on an oversized board using drugged mice for armies, which they crush with hammers. Actually, they don't use a board at all. And they're not really playing Risk. They just like to crush mice with hammers.

The Pot Calls the Stem Cell Black

2005-06-06T20:54:00.000-07:00

Bush's grandest press conference hypocrisy came in response to this question:

Q: Last week you made clear that you don't think there's any such thing as a spare embryo. Given that position, what is your view of fertility treatments that routinely create more embryos than ever result in full-term pregnancies? And what do you believe should be done with those embryos that never do become pregnancies or result in the birth of a child?

Okay, let's start with a few facts about IVF treatment. First of all, as noted in the question above, IVF treatment creates more embryos than ever result in full-term pregnancies - a LOT more. Couples have the option to decide what to do with the left-over embryos. They can have them frozen, or have them destroyed. (source)

There are currently about 400,000 frozen embryos in storage, and about 9,000 of the 400,000 frozen embryos are available for "adoption" by other people. People who adopt these embryos can get them implanted and attempt to have a so-called "snowflake" baby, which is somewhat Aryan-sounding but that's another story.

But guess what? Typically clinics will transfer up to four embryos to the uterus for possible implantation. (source) And three out of four of those embryos die without developing into a fetus. So every time people try to have a snowflake baby, they're killing three other "babies."

Why, Tom DeLay should be outraged! In fact, to be completely consistent with the so-called "culture of life" position, radical right-wingers like Delay and Santorum and Bush should be trying to make IVF treatment illegal.

So bearing that in mind, let's take a look at George W. Bush's answer to the question:

BUSH: As you know, I also had an event here at the White House with little babies that had been born as a result of the embryos that had been frozen - they're called "snowflakes" - indicating there's an alternative to the destruction of life.

But the stem cell issue, Dick, is really one of federal funding. That's the issue before us. And that is whether or not we use taxpayers' money to destroy life in order to hopefully find a cure for terrible disease. And I have made my position very clear on that issue - and that is I don't believe we should.

Now, I made a decision a while ago that said there had been some existing stem cells and, therefore, it was okay to use federal funds on those because the life decision had already been made. But from that point going forward, I felt it was best to stand on principle - and that is taxpayers' money to use - for the use - for the use of experimentation that would destroy life is a principle that violates something I - I mean, is a position that violates a principle of mine.

So according to Our Great Leader, it's commendable for modern science to destroy three "lives" while artificially creating one life, but it's morally evil to do the same thing in order to cure millions of people who are already alive.

Hey, that's okay George. Keep on bending over for James Dobson and the rest of the radical pro-ignorance nutcases who have taken over the Republican party. I'm sure the millions of Americans who suffer from diabetes or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease will forgive you when you veto the bill that could cure them.

Rob's Return Fun Fact: Not many people know that George W. Bush was himself a snowflake baby, as were all of his brothers and sisters. This is because their father, former president George H.W. Bush, was so sexually repulsed by his wife that the couple could not conceive through natural means.

Don't blame us, we voted for the guy who could talk!

2005-06-06T20:07:00.000-07:00

There were actually a couple of great quotes from Our Great Leader's recent Rose Garden press conference (source) - for example, how about this fantastic solution for the Social Security "crisis":

BUSH: One idea is make sure that low-income seniors get benefits such that, when they retire, they're not in poverty.

Hey, that's brilliant. I can't believe nobody thought of that before. Then there was this critically-acclaimed quote:

BUSH: It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of - and the allegations - by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble - that means not tell the truth.

Bzzt. Actually George, disassemble means to take something apart. It's what you're doing to Iraq. It's what the corporate media isn't doing to you and your administration every single day of the week.

It should probably be noted, however, that Bush is at least making something of an effort to use polysyllabic words. In fact it appears that he's even been doing a bit of that fancy book-learnin' - and on the Internets no less. An astute blogger pointed out that "dissemble" (the word Our Great Leader was trying to use) was actually the Word Of The Day on Dictionary.com the day before Bush's press conference. (source) So give him a point for trying.

Rob's Return Fun Fact: George W. Bush's relaxed, folksy vernacular is not natural, but an affectation accomplished through years of training. Behind closed doors Bush actually speaks with an upper-class northeastern accent. To achieve his famous easy-going speaking style, Bush drinks six shots of Jim Beam every hour on the hour.

Tricky Dick's Buddies

2005-06-05T23:01:00.000-07:00

I'd like to say a special thank you this week to Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat, for waiting until just before my return to the blog to reveal himself. Thanks to Mr. Felt I can now do a special retrospective entry on Richard Nixon. From burglary to espionage to subverting the Justice and State Departments, as well as the U.S. intelligence services, Nixon and his administration were not just criminals, but experts in the field of conservative idiocy.

Of course, there are some people who say that Felt is not actually an American hero but a dastardly traitor who betrayed his country by telling the truth when the patriotic thing to do would have been to to, um, cover-up the government's very real crimes. But since those people are Pat Buchanan, Robert Novak, and G. Gordon Liddy, we can pretty much ignore their ramblings.

So the question remains, who will be the new Deep Throat? Who will come forward to blow the whistle on the Downing Street Minutes, Valerie Plame, Enron, election theft, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Halliburton, the August 6th PDB, Donald Rumsfeld's cozy relationship with Saddam Hussein, the failure to capture Osama bin Laden, the dubious corporatization of Social Security, the...

Oh, wait a second, we already know about all those things.

Rob's Return Fun Fact: I can exclusively announce that the missing 18-and-a-half minutes from Nixon's Oval Office tape recordings reveal who shot John F. Kennedy, the current location of Adolf Hitler, what the aliens REALLY want, and the recipe for Pat Nixon's famous rhubarb crumble.

Worst Photo-Op Ever

2005-06-05T22:48:00.000-07:00

Now, of all the things you might see in the first entry since my sabbatical from this chronicle of conservative idiocy, this is probably the last thing you would expect:

Yup - it's everyone's favorite party chairman, Howard Dean. Not exactly a person one would consider to be a conservative, nor an idiot. But there's a very good reason for this picture to be in this first entry today. See, our old friend Bret Schundler is running for governor in New Jersey again this year. What does that have to do with Howard Dean? Take a look at this picture from Bret's campaign website Bret2005.com:

Notice anything... familiar... about that picture? If you guessed, "Wait a second, it's just a picture of Bret Schundler badly Photoshopped onto a crowd of Howard Dean's supporters," then you'd be absolutely correct. Let's take a look at the composite shot:

Personally I like the way you can still see Howard Dean's thumb behind Schundler's left elbow.

Unfortunately Schundler's ass-brained attempt to make himself look popular has since been deleted from his campaign site, (source) but you can still see a screen-grab here.

Rob's Return Fun Fact: Bret Schundler legally changed his name in 1986. His real name is Dick Wadd.

Paul Krugman: Too Few, Yet Too Many

2005-05-30T18:16:00.000-07:00

One of the more bizarre aspects of the Iraq war has been President Bush's repeated insistence that his generals tell him they have enough troops. Even more bizarrely, it may be true - I mean, that his generals tell him that they have enough troops, not that they actually have enough. An article in yesterday's Baltimore Sun explains why.

The article tells the tale of John Riggs, a former Army commander, who "publicly contradicted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by arguing that the Army was overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan" - then abruptly found himself forced into retirement at a reduced rank, which normally only happens as a result of a major scandal.

The truth, of course, is that there aren't nearly enough troops. "Basically, we've got all the toys, but not enough boys," a Marine major in Anbar Province told The Los Angeles Times.

Yet it's also true, in a different sense, that we have too many troops in Iraq.

Back in September 2003 a report by the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the size of the U.S. force in Iraq would have to start shrinking rapidly in the spring of 2004 if the Army wanted to "maintain training and readiness levels, limit family separation and involuntary mobilization, and retain high-quality personnel."

Let me put that in plainer English: our all-volunteer military is based on an implicit promise that those who serve their country in times of danger will also be able to get on with their lives. Full-time soldiers expect to spend enough time at home base to keep their marriages alive and see their children growing up. Reservists expect to be called up infrequently enough, and for short enough tours of duty, that they can hold on to their civilian jobs.

To keep that promise, the Army has learned that it needs to follow certain rules, such as not deploying more than a third of the full-time forces overseas except during emergencies. The budget office analysis was based on those rules.

But the Bush administration, which was ready neither to look for a way out of Iraq nor to admit that staying there would require a much bigger army, simply threw out the rulebook. Regular soldiers are spending a lot more than a third of their time overseas, and many reservists are finding their civilian lives destroyed by repeated, long-term call-ups.

Two things make the burden of repeated deployments even harder to bear. One is the intensity of the conflict. In Slate, Phillip Carter and Owen West, who adjusted casualty figures to take account of force size and improvements in battlefield medicine (which allow more of the severely wounded to survive), concluded that "infantry duty in Iraq circa 2004 comes out just as intense as infantry duty in Vietnam circa 1966."

The other is the way in which the administration cuts corners when it comes to supporting the troops. From their foot-dragging on armoring Humvees to their apparent policy of denying long-term disability payments to as many of the wounded as possible, officials seem almost pathologically determined to nickel-and-dime those who put their lives on the line for their country.

Now, predictably, the supply of volunteers is drying up.

Most reporting has focused on the problems of recruiting, which has fallen far short of goals over the past few months. Serious as it is, however, the recruiting shortfall could be only a temporary problem. If and when we get out of Iraq - I know, a big if and a big when - it shouldn't be too hard to find enough volunteers to maintain the Army's manpower.

Much more serious, because it would be irreversible, would be a mass exodus of mid-career military professionals. "That's essentially how we broke the professional Army we took into Vietnam," one officer told the National Journal. "At some point, people decided they could no longer weather the back-to-back deployments."

And we're already seeing stories about how young officers, facing the prospect of repeated harrowing tours of duty in a war whose end is hard to imagine, are reconsidering whether they really want to stay in the military.

For a generation Americans have depended on a superb volunteer Army to keep us safe - both from our enemies, and from the prospect of a draft. What will we do once that Army is broken?

Faux News

2005-05-28T21:47:00.000-07:00

And finally, I'd like to end on a ray of hope before I go out into the world and actually attempt to enjoy my Memorial Day weekend: it was revealed last week that the apparently-oh-so-popular Fox News Channel is currently suffering a bit of a ratings drop. (source) Actually "drop" might not be the right word - "death spiral" is probably more appropriate. Yes, it turns out that April marked the sixth consecutive month in which Fox News suffered a ratings decline during Monday-to-Friday prime-time hours. Here's how it pans out:

Oct. 2004: 1,074,000
Nov. 2004: 891,000
Dec. 2004: 568,000
Jan. 2005: 564,000
Feb. 2005: 520,000
Mar. 2005: 498,000
Apr. 2005: 445,000

Eeww. So what's the cause? Is the nation sick of being lied to 24 hours a day? Or are fans of America's Worst News Channel finally leaving their persistent vegetative states and departing for the next life? Mind you, we probably shouldn't get too excited. After all, this information did come from CNN, and we all know how awesomely reliable they are.

Pork in the Land of Ice and Snow

2005-05-28T21:08:00.000-07:00

Thank God for conservatives and their small-government ways! Praise the Lord for Republicans and their valiant efforts to slash wasteful spending! And three cheers for Ted Stevens of Alaska and his... million dollar bus stop? Yes, it turns out that Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Santa Claus) has appropriated a whopping $1.5 million of taxpayer money - that's your money, remember! - to improve a bus stop outside the Anchorage Museum of History and Art. (source)

Expressing some uncertainty about the idea of spending so much money on a bus stop, Anchorage's director of public transportation Tom Wilson said, "We have a senator that gave us that money and I certainly won't want to appear ungrateful ... [But] if it only takes us $500,000 to do it, that's what we will spend." Well that's good to know I guess - I mean, considering that $500,000 is fifty times the usual cost of bus stop renovations in Anchorage and all.

Paul Krugman: Running Out of Bubbles

2005-05-27T20:33:00.000-07:00

Remember the stock market bubble? With everything that's happened since 2000, it feels like ancient history. But a few pessimists, notably Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley, argue that we have not yet paid the price for our past excesses.

I've never fully accepted that view. But looking at the housing market, I'm starting to reconsider.

In July 2001, Paul McCulley, an economist at Pimco, the giant bond fund, predicted that the Federal Reserve would simply replace one bubble with another. "There is room," he wrote, "for the Fed to create a bubble in housing prices, if necessary, to sustain American hedonism. And I think the Fed has the will to do so, even though political correctness would demand that Mr. Greenspan deny any such thing."

As Mr. McCulley predicted, interest rate cuts led to soaring home prices, which led in turn not just to a construction boom but to high consumer spending, because homeowners used mortgage refinancing to go deeper into debt. All of this created jobs to make up for those lost when the stock bubble burst.

Now the question is what can replace the housing bubble.

Nobody thought the economy could rely forever on home buying and refinancing. But the hope was that by the time the housing boom petered out, it would no longer be needed.

But although the housing boom has lasted longer than anyone could have imagined, the economy would still be in big trouble if it came to an end. That is, if the hectic pace of home construction were to cool, and consumers were to stop borrowing against their houses, the economy would slow down sharply. If housing prices actually started falling, we'd be looking at a very nasty scene, in which both construction and consumer spending would plunge, pushing the economy right back into recession.

That's why it's so ominous to see signs that America's housing market, like the stock market at the end of the last decade, is approaching the final, feverish stages of a speculative bubble.

Some analysts still insist that housing prices aren't out of line. But someone will always come up with reasons why seemingly absurd asset prices make sense. Remember "Dow 36,000"? Robert Shiller, who argued against such rationalizations and correctly called the stock bubble in his book "Irrational Exuberance," has added an ominous analysis of the housing market to the new edition, and says the housing bubble "may be the biggest bubble in U.S. history."

In parts of the country there's a speculative fever among people who shouldn't be speculators that seems all too familiar from past bubbles - the shoeshine boys with stock tips in the 1920's, the beer-and-pizza joints showing CNBC, not ESPN, on their TV sets in the 1990's.

Even Alan Greenspan now admits that we have "characteristics of bubbles" in the housing market, but only "in certain areas." And it's true that the craziest scenes are concentrated in a few regions, like coastal Florida and California.

But these aren't tiny regions; they're big and wealthy, so that the national housing market as a whole looks pretty bubbly. Many home purchases are speculative; the National Association of Realtors estimates that 23 percent of the homes sold last year were bought for investment, not to live in. More than 30 percent of new mortgages are interest only, a sign that people are stretching to their financial limits.

The important point to remember is that the bursting of the stock market bubble hurt lots of people - not just those who bought stocks near their peak. By the summer of 2003, private-sector employment was three million below its 2001 peak. And the job losses would have been much worse if the stock bubble hadn't been quickly replaced with a housing bubble.

So what happens if the housing bubble bursts? It will be the same thing all over again, unless the Fed can find something to take its place. And it's hard to imagine what that might be. After all, the Fed's ability to manage the economy mainly comes from its ability to create booms and busts in the housing market. If housing enters a post-bubble slump, what's left?

Mr. Roach believes that the Fed's apparent success after 2001 was an illusion, that it simply piled up trouble for the future. I hope he's wrong. But the Fed does seem to be running out of bubbles.

Misogyny at St. Jude Educational Institute

2005-05-26T23:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a conundrum for conservatives - what do you do with a teenage girl who becomes pregnant, but rather than having an abortion decides to keep the baby, and not only that but goes on to complete high school? Last week, St. Jude Educational Institute answered the question by barring student Alysha Cosby from taking part in her own graduation ceremony because she was pregnant. (source)

So let me get this straight - if she'd gotten an abortion, she could have participated (or perhaps if she'd gotten comprehensive sex education, but that's another story). But the shame of a pregnant high school graduate was just too much for St. Jude's to bear? Fortunately Cosby decided to take matters into her own hands, attended the graduation ceremony, waited until the last student had been called, and then called her own name and walked across the stage. Props.

Oh, and by the way - in case you were wondering, the male student who got Alysha pregnant was not barred from participating in the ceremony. What a surprise.

Tom Daschle to the Rescue!

2005-05-26T23:02:00.000-07:00

Looks like brand new senator John Thune (R-Out Of His Depth) is going to feel the pain from Our Great Leader's Great Military Base Closure. Bush persuaded Thune to run against Tom Daschle, and you'd think he'd want to reward Thune for defeating the Senate Minority Leader last year. Sorry - that's not the way Dubya runs things. During his campaign Thune consistently promised to defend Ellsworth Airforce Base from closure, but a mere six months later Ellsworth is on the chopping block and Thune is looking like a bit of a fool. In fact, he's now so desperate to save his political ass that he might have to ask Daschle to step in and help him rescue the base. American News reported last week that "Thune said he's open to any help Daschle can offer. Daschle has experience, knows how the system works and has been through the process before." (source) In fact, South Dakota would probably be a lot better off if he was still their senator, eh? Oh well.

Meanwhile, In Psychoville...

2005-05-25T20:42:00.000-07:00

Radical right-wingnut radio show host Glenn Beck made this interesting statement live on air last week: (source) "Hang on, let me just tell you what I'm thinking. I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out - is this wrong? I stopped wearing my What Would Jesus - band - Do, and I've lost all sense of right and wrong now. I used to be able to say, 'Yeah, I'd kill Michael Moore,' and then I'd see the little band: What Would Jesus Do? And then I'd realize, 'Oh, you wouldn't kill Michael Moore. Or at least you wouldn't choke him to death.' And you know, well, I'm not sure."

But don't worry - you see, according to a reply a blogger received from OTB Games, a Beck advertiser: (source) "We remain firmly behind Glenn Beck ... [his] comments were meant to be funny."

A-ha-ha-ha. Ha.

Norm Coleman Gets His Ass Handed to Him

2005-05-25T20:02:00.000-07:00

Picture an SUV rolling over an ice cream sandwich, and you'll have a good idea of what happened to Norm Coleman (R-Cheeseball) last week at a Senate hearing on the so-called "oil-for-food" scandal. The freshman senator has been doing his best to become this century's Joe McCarthy by creating long lists of people whom he is convinced were in cahoots with Saddam Hussein (including, apparently, the former secretary to Pope John Paul II and the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office). Unfortunately, one of those people called his bluff last week and Coleman learned the hard way that British politicians are quite a bit tougher than the home-grown variety. Scotsman George Galloway, famous anti-war member of the British Parliament, came to Washington D.C. to confront Coleman... and handed him his ass on a platter. (source) From:

I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country...

...to:

I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning. Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies...

...it was quite a sight to behold.

Hitler, Hitler Everywhere

2005-05-24T22:49:00.000-07:00

Now let's get away from the Bush administration's giant hypocrisy and move on to the giant hypocrisy of Republicans in general. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Fecal Matter) insisted last week that if the Democrats won't let Republicans change Senate rules so they can ram through their radical right-wing judges (Congressional Record, May 18, 2005, Page S5410), then the Democrats are no better than Adolf Hitler. Whaaa? It's true. Perhaps over-reaching just a tad, Santorum said, "The audacity of some members to stand up and say, how dare you break this rule. It's the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942, 'I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine.'" (source)

Yes, yes, I know it doesn't make any sense, but the comparison to the Nazis is most certainly there. So let's rewind for a moment. MoveOn.org held a competition to make an anti-Bush ad, and one of the 1,500-plus entries happened to compare Bush to Hitler, and conservatives across the country shat their pants because they thought the comparison was so offensive that it must be the End Times and they'd missed the Rapture? Let's ask a prominent Republican what he thinks about the "Hitler Comparison": (source)

"This is the worst and most vile form of political hate speech." - RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie

Fair enough. Now, what about when Sen. Robert Byrd made the "Hitler Comparison" in reverse, suggesting in March that the Republican plan to end the filibuster was reminiscent of the Nazis? Let's ask another prominent Republican: (source)

"Senator Byrd's inappropriate remarks comparing his Republican colleagues with Nazis are inexcusable. These comments lessen the credibility of the senator and the decorum of the Senate. He should retract his statement and ask for pardon." - Sen. Rick Santorum

Sen. Rick... Santorum? Whoops.

More Funny Pictures

2005-05-24T21:33:00.000-07:00

Oddly enough, Bush took a different tack when a British newspaper published photos of Saddam Hussein in his skivvies last week. Perhaps it was because the newspaper in question is owned by Rupert Murdoch, but apparently Bush thinks that Newsweek is the only publication to blame for violence in the Middle East. Oh, Our Great Leader was angry all right - so angry in fact that he is going to probe Saddam in his underpants. (source) Easy there. You know what I mean.

See, the White House is apparently very concerned, because the pictures of Saddam might violate the Geneva Conventions. Ha ha! Good one! But, like the photos from Abu Ghraib, Bush doesn't think that this rises to the level of Newsweek's crime of, uh, reporting what a bunch of other people had already reported. In fact, taking a clear dig at Newsweek, Bush announced Friday that "I don't think a photo inspires murderers." (source)

Oh really... well, what about this one?

Or this one?

Or this one?

Okay, the last one's not a photograph, but I think you get the point. You can find these photos and more on the White House website's hilariously-titled "Iraq: Denial and Deception" page. (source)

Paul Krugman: America Wants Security

2005-05-23T23:16:00.000-07:00

It was a carefully staged Norman Rockwell scene. The street was lined with American flags; a high school band played "God Bless America."

Then, under the watchful gaze of Wal-Mart's chief operating officer, Maryland's governor vetoed a bill that would have obliged large businesses to spend more on employee health care.

The news here isn't that some politicians wrap their deference to corporate interests in the flag. The news, instead, is that Maryland's State Legislature passed a pro-worker bill in the first place. In fact, the bill passed by a veto-proof majority in the Maryland Senate, and fell just short of that margin in the House.

After November's election, the victors claimed a mandate to unravel the welfare state. But the national election was about who would best defend us from gay married terrorists. At the state level, where elections were fought on bread-and-butter issues, voters sent a message that they wanted a stronger, not weaker, social safety net.

I'm not just talking about the shift in partisan alignment, in which Democrats made modest gains in state legislatures, and achieved a few startling successes. I'm also talking about specific issues, like the lopsided votes in both Florida and Nevada for constitutional amendments raising the minimum wage.

Since the election, high-profile right-wing initiatives, at both the federal and state level, have run into a stone wall of public disapproval. President Bush's privatization road show seems increasingly pathetic. In California, the conservative agenda of Arnold Schwarzenegger, including an attempt to partially privatize state pensions, has led to demonstrations by nurses, teachers, police officers and firefighters - and to a crash in his approval ratings.

There's a very good reason voters, when given a chance to make a clear choice, increasingly support a stronger, not a weaker, social safety net: they need that net more than ever. Over the past 25 years the lives of working Americans have become ever less secure. Jobs come without health insurance; 401(k)'s vanish; corporations default on their pension obligations; workers lose their jobs more often, and unemployment lasts much longer than it used to.

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showed what the pollsters called an "angry electorate." By huge margins, voters think that politicians are paying too little attention to their concerns, especially health care, jobs and gas prices.

At the state level, many, though by no means all, politicians are responding to those concerns. The push to raise the minimum wage is a useful political barometer: seven states have raised the minimum in just the last two years.

True, there are limits on what state governments can do: they fear that if they do too much for workers, they'll drive business and jobs away. I'd argue that the fear is often exaggerated. For example, Wal-Mart may avoid states that force it to provide health insurance, but given the hidden subsidies the company receives - one way or another, taxpayers end up paying a lot for uninsured workers - this may not be such a bad thing. Still, any major strengthening of the safety net will have to come at the federal level.

Why, then, is Washington so out of touch?

At a gala dinner in his honor, Tom DeLay cited his party's recent achievements: "bankruptcy reform, class-action reform, energy, border security, repealing the death tax." All of these measures are either irrelevant to or actively hostile to the economic security of working Americans.

Yet as Mr. DeLay boasted, many Democratic members of Congress also voted in support of these measures. In so doing, they undermined their party's ability to claim that it stands for something different.

So where will change come from?

Everyone loves historical analogies. Here's my thought: maybe 2004 was 1928. During the 1920's, the national government followed doctrinaire conservative policies, but reformist policies that presaged the New Deal were already bubbling up in the states, especially in New York.

In 1928 Al Smith, the governor of New York, was defeated in an ugly presidential campaign in which Protestant preachers warned their flocks that a vote for the Catholic Smith was a vote for the devil. But four years later F.D.R. took office, and the New Deal began.

Of course, the coming of the New Deal was hastened by a severe national depression. Strange to say, we may be working on that, too.

Mass Media Morons

2005-05-22T23:51:00.000-07:00

Hey Newsweek! Don't think you're getting off easy! Yes, you're on my shit list too, for acting like a bunch of weak-assed Bush appeasers. As soon as Scott McClellan snapped his fingers, Newsweek retracted their story and began bowing and scraping for forgiveness from the White House. Despite Newsweek's peers in the news business begging them to resist, they bent over and took the administration's punishment with a smile on their faces. (source)

Not only that, but Scott McClellan insisted last week that simply apologizing wasn't enough: "It's a good first step," he simpered, but then announced that Newsweek "now has a responsibility to spread the word to the Muslim world that U.S. interrogators 'treat the Quran with great care and respect,'" according to CNN. (source) How d'you like them apples Newsweek? Welcome to Bush's America, where replacing the ugly truth with useful lies is now the definition of "responsible journalism." Game, set, and match.

Hip, Hip... Hypocrisy!

2005-05-22T23:20:00.000-07:00

What does it take to inflame the entire Muslim world? Would it be George W. Bush referring to his Iraq adventure as a "crusade?" (source) Could it be Ann Coulter suggesting that we should "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity?" (source) Might it be the photos of American soldiers abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison? (source) Or is it perhaps the appalling mishandling of the Iraq occupation itself? (source)

Don't be silly! Sure, all those things are a bit of a problem, but they pale in comparison to the evil machinations of Newsweek magazine. Last week Newsweek reported that guards at Guantanamo Bay prison had flushed a Koran down the toilet in order to intimidate detainees. (source) The story came from an anonymous senior government official who told journalist Michael Isikoff that he had seen investigative reports on the matter. Newsweek ran the story past the Pentagon - twice - who corrected part of the article but didn't say anything about the Koran flushing.

The next thing you know, riots are breaking out all over the Muslim world and the White House is putting the blame squarely on... Newsweek. "There has been some lasting damage that has been done to our image... and it's going to take some work to repair that damage," said Scott McClellan, apparently with a straight face. (source) "The report has had serious consequences. People have lost their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged." (But you know, covering prisoners in shit, piling them in naked pyramids, attacking them with dogs, and beating them to death - well, that's just a bit of lighthearted fun.) (source)

Scottie went on: "They can also talk about policies and practices of the United States military. Our United States military goes out of its way to treat the holy Koran with great care and respect." Okay...

"An Iraqi holds a copy of the holy Koran allegedly desecratedby US forces in Ramadi. Several Britons who had been heldat US military prisons in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bayalleged that they had seen their US guards desecratethe Koran ... AFP/Ahmad al-Rubaye" - Yahoo News (source)

(Thanks to ReBelleNation for that catch.) (source) Of course, once the White House had moved into full-bore-blame-someone-else mode, conservative organizations geefully pounced on Newsweek. According to Reuters, "A conservative media watchdog group, Accuracy in Media, said in a news release that 'blood is on the hands of Newsweek magazine' for the story. AIM editor Cliff Kincaid expressed incredulity that 'nobody at Newsweek has been fired or even reprimanded.'" (source) Four words for you, AIM: weapons of mass destruction.

Mind you, while the White House and friends were hyperventilating over the evildoers at Newsweek, people who ought to know the real situation on the ground were being ignored. According to the State Department's own website, "The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff says a report from Afghanistan suggests that rioting in Jalalabad on May 11 was not necessarily connected to press reports that the Quran might have been desecrated in the presence of Muslim prisoners held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Air Force General Richard Myers told reporters at the Pentagon May 12 that he has been told that the Jalalabad, Afghanistan, rioting was related more to the ongoing political reconciliation process in Afghanistan than anything else." (source)

But there's an important element to this story which the Bush Administration, in its rush to scapegoat Newsweek, has overlooked - this isn't the first time that this story has been reported. In fact, you can go all the way back to March 2003 to find reports of the Koran being vandalized - and, yes, flushed. (source) In fact, the Red Cross sent confidential reports to the Bush administration in 2002 and 2003 documenting "credible information about U.S. personnel disrespecting or mishandling Korans at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility," according to the Chicago Tribune. (source)

At the end of the day, what the White House is really furious about is not that Korans were being vandalized, but that Newsweek reported it. And one thing's for damn sure - if Bush and Co. wants to pretend that everyone would be holding hands and singing kumbayah in the Middle East right now if only Newsweek hadn't come along and ruined everything, they really are cuckoo-bananas.

Republican Morality Watch, Case #217645

2005-05-11T00:13:00.000-07:00

So here we have Rep. Don Sherwood (R-Naturally) who allegedly choked a woman while giving her a back massage in DC apartment. (source) For those of you keeping track of our casefiles - yes, Sherwood is married. According to him, he has no involvement with the woman, Cynthia Ore, and has said so for some time. But that's not her story - evidently they've been knocking boots ever since they ran into each other at a Your Republicans gathering in 1999. Now I will be clear - there is no physical evidence that Sherwood choked Ore, and her police report reads that she "did not seem to be of sound mind" when the cops arrived after she dialed 911. So what's your call, Republicans? You have two choices: either a) your guy gets his rocks off by squeezing a tad to hard when he's rubbing down his mistress, or b) he's innocent of her accusations of choking, and he's only been cheating on his wife with an insane woman for six years. Which one is it? Oh, by the way: family values family values family values. Thank you.

Impeachable Offenses

2005-05-10T23:29:00.000-07:00

Why am I totally not surprised that most of the corporate media is far too afraid to touch this story? (source) A secret British memo released May 2 gives details on how George W. Bush warped intelligence reports to give him a case for invading Iraq, and about how high-level British and American officials had made up their minds to invade, even while assuring their governments and citizens that they had not. Yes, according to Knight Ridder: (source)

A highly classified British memo, leaked in the midst of Britain's just-concluded election campaign, indicates that President Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by summer 2002 and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy.

The document, which summarizes a July 23, 2002, meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair with his top security advisers, reports on a visit to Washington by the head of Britain's MI-6 intelligence service.

The visit took place while the Bush administration was still declaring to the American public that no decision had been made to go to war.

"There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable," the MI-6 chief said at the meeting, according to the memo. "Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD," weapons of mass destruction.

The memo said "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

So for those of you keeping score at home, we have counts of lying to the American public and lying to Congress. Those sure sound like impeachable offenses to me. But probably not - what I mean is, yeah he lied to Congress, lied to the people, led us into a war that has killed close to 1,600 American servicemembers so far (source) and untold thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, (source) is forcing us into bankruptcy (source) with an unnecessary war and a defense budget poised to total more than every other country's combined, (source) created thousands of new terrorists by turning Iraq into a breeding ground of fundamentalism, (source) and due directly to his lying and policies, America is most certainly less safe now than before 9/11...

...Those aren't impeachable offenses. Why not? He didn't get a blowjob.

Bugman and Robin

2005-05-09T23:59:00.000-07:00

This just in! Tom DeLay isn't in trouble any more! On May 5, he confessed his sins at the 54th Annual National Day of Prayer event in Washington, DC. So that means his slate has been wiped clean and he can go back to Capital Hill as if nothing ever happened. And his job there appears to be teaching his colleagues about the triumph of humility and responsibility, if you can swallow that. "Just think of what we could accomplish if we checked our pride at the door, if collectively we all spent less time taking credit and more time deserving it," he said, barely maintaining a straight face. "If we spent less time ducking responsibility and more time welcoming it. If we spent less time on our soapboxes and more time on our knees." (source) Um, OK, it would be... nice. Now are you actually going to pull through and do any of that yourself, dumbass?

Religious Nuts on Parade

2005-05-09T23:38:00.000-07:00

The Rev. Chan Chandler did something rather interesting May 6 by halving his congregation in a decision to remove all the sinners. And who are the sinners, you ask? According to Chandler, they're the members who cast votes for John Kerry in 2004. (source) Chandler, who is the pastor for the Waynesville Baptist Church in North Carolina, told his congregation that if they didn't vote for Bush they would have to publicly repent or be banned from the church, because he didn't like associating with those kinds of people. Well maybe they don't want to associate with you, Rev. Chandler. The Rev. subsequently booted nine people from the church - several of whom had been attendance at the church since the early 70's - while members of the congregation stood up and applauded. 40 more members promptly walked out in protest. But the strange part was, Chandler had the cajones to tell members of the press that "the actions were not politically motivated." I'm sorry, my brain just exploded. You know, I don't know what crazy-ass denomination of Christianity that falls under - you know, the denomination that excludes people and denounces them for not voting for a certain politician. And for the millionth time since an election based on "moral values", I'm left scratching my head as to why Jesus would approve any of this.

Wolf Blitzer Knows What Makes a Good Catholic

2005-04-19T23:49:00.000-07:00

This is a wonderful example of the disgusting conservative spin that is infesting the corporate media: on a recent edition of Inside Politics on CNN, Wolf Blitzer talked about the Pope's funeral with Crossfire hosts Paul Begala (the liberal) and Robert Novak (the traitor). He introduced them like this:

"While they were united today in mourning the death of the pope, U.S. Catholics are a diverse group, as illustrated by two of our Crossfire co-hosts, the conservative Robert Novak, the liberal Paul Begala. Both good Catholics - I don't know 'good' Catholics, but both Catholics. I'm sure Bob is a good Catholic, I'm not so sure about Paul Begala." (source)

Um... OK. Now I would like to know why Bob Novak would be a good Catholic, but not Paul Begala. I mean, Paul Begala does support things such as a woman's right to choose, which is counter to the church's official positions - but Robert Novak is a strong defender of stuff like the death penalty and Bush's invasion of Iraq, which were also against the church's official positions. So why did Wolfie-boy conclude that Novak was a good the Catholic and Begala the bad Catholic? I mean, besides the obvious fact that Blitzer is a biased fool?

Luckily, Paul Begala was upset with Wolf's slander and asked, "who are you to pass moral judgment on my religion, Mr. Blitzer?" and reminded him that "My eldest son is named John Paul, after the Pope." He continued by saying, "I'm serious, that annoys me. I don't think anybody should presume that a liberal is not a good Catholic." A sheepish Blitzer came back lamely by saying I was only teasing," and said, "Don't be so sensitive." What a lovely thing to say to a guy on the day of their religious leader's funeral, huh?

For The War, Against the Troops...

2005-04-19T23:18:00.000-07:00

I got into a discussion today with an old friend about how well the Republicans are treating our military. I should have brought up that on April 12, Senate Republicans blocked efforts by Democrats to add more funding to veterans' health care in a supplemental appropriations bill by voting along party lines 54-46 (source). According to the Marine Corps Times, the money - which the Republicans voted against - was to "cover costs of treating returning combat veterans for war-related injuries and to cover shortfalls in funding for VA programs." Thad Cochran (R-Naturally), Senate Appropriations Committee chairman, said he felt that the money was "not really an emergency need." So now I'm curious as to how the Republicans are going to explain all this to the injured veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Actually, I know what they'll do - they'll blame the Democrats.

Non-Terror Alert Alert

2005-04-18T23:01:00.000-07:00

When you think about how badly things have been going for George W. Bush and the Republicans right now (source), it's a shock that we haven't had a good ol' fashioned terror alert to scare us into submission and remind all of us how much better off we are living under a GOP regime. But the Bush administration doesn't seem to think that's a good idea at the moment - it was revealed last Friday that the State Department is throwing away a 19-year-old report on international terrorism.

Why would they do that? According to Knight Ridder, it's because "the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered." (source) I guess all the administration's counterterrorism policies are nipping the bud, eh? Evidently, the National Counterterrorism Center reported 625 "significant" terrorist attacks in 2004 compared with 175 attacks in 2003. The 2003 total was the highest in twenty years, and incidentally the 2003 report was the one the administration used to justify its anti-terror policies in the run up to the 2004 election.

Doesn't it just warm your heart to know that this administration is fighting to end terrorism by, uh, ignoring it?

Bugman Forever

2005-04-18T22:05:00.000-07:00

I assure you that I am not ragging on Tom DeLay day after day until he's booted from the Beltway - quite the opposite. If he keeps on going, I'll run out of superhero movie titles for the name of each day's entry. It's just that, well, it seems he's been going above and beyond to earn my ire lately. For example, The Hammer was doing his thing with the whole blaming Democrats - again - for all his ills, because if there's one tidbit about America the GOP wants you to know, it that personal responsibility is critical. Wait a tic, that's not right... what was that again? Oh yes - it's that everything is the Democrats' fault.

But this time around, however, it seems Tommy boy can't get by without a little help from his friends. In a private chat April 12 he urged his Republican buddies to blame the Democrats (and the "liberal media" of course) if any of them were to question his misfortunes in the ethics department (source). Unfortunately it appears that some Republicans are beginning to back off from the reek of impropriety emanating from the House Majority Leader: Rick Santorum said on April 10 he doesn't believe that DeLay is guilty of any crimes, but he should "lay out what he did and why he did it," (source) Newt Gingrich piped in that "DeLay's problem isn't with the Democrats; DeLay's problem is with the country," (source) Rep. Tom Tancredo said, "If he chose to resign as majority leader until these matters are resolved, that's probably not the worst idea," (source) Rep. Christopher Shays took it a step further, calling DeLay "an absolute embarrassment to me and to the Republican Party," and George W. Bush said, "I'm looking forward to working with Tom. He's been a very effective leader." (source) Which means DeLay is definitely in trouble.

(Off-topic for a second: if Rick Santorum is so concerned with Tom DeLay explaining himself, then maybe Santorum might also tell everybody why, when he was so concerned with Terri Schiavo's feeding tube he had to fly down to Florida, he went on a Wal-Mart corporate jet and raised $250,000 for his re-election campaign for 2006?) (source)

DeLay is also continuing his theme of criticizing the judiciary, stating that recent court decisions "are not examples of a mature society, but of a judiciary run amok." I guess that a mature society is one in which Tom DeLay gets complete control over the federal government and every judge in the land makes decisions he agrees with. However, he did apologize for his earlier comments about judges (see below) saying, "I probably said - I did, I didn't probably - I said something in an inartful way, and I shouldn't have said it that way, and I apologize for saying it that way." (source) So now all those judges who required extra security from the U.S. Marshals (source) can relax now. Tom DeLay didn't intend to egg on his fanatical nutjob supporters in such an "inartful" way. (source)

Warrior and the College Republicans Smackdown!

2005-04-17T23:07:00.000-07:00

The artist formerly known as "The Ultimate Warrior" (now just plain old "Warrior" for some reason) made a pro-wrestling-sized ass out of himself at the University of Connecticut on April 5, and choke-slammed the UConn College Republicans as a bonus. Former WWF (or is it WWE?) star Warrior had evidently been asked to speak by the College Repubs because... well, in all actuality no one really knows. But Warrior is a right-wing radical nutjob, so I presume that's all the reason they needed. (Kind of like how our local Repubs have asked Alan Keyes to URI.) Unfortunately, Warrior turned out to be a little too nutjobby even for the College Repubs, "screaming and stomping on the stage," according to liveaudiowrestling.com, and provoking the crowd into a frenzy (source). The evening went south when Warrior answered an Iranian student's question by saying he needed to "get a towel," and waxed philosophically on such topics as why "Queering don't make the world work." I find that a bit ironic coming from a fella who used to make a living by groping hundreds of greasy leotard-clad bodybuilders in public.

Anyway, as it turns out, the UConn College Republicans were just slightly embarrassed by their choice in speaker, and issued a deeply apologetic press release to their school paper the next morning (source). They went out of their way to make sure it be known that individual letters of apology would be sent to, "the Rainbow Center, AQUA, QUAD, the African American Cultural Center, the Asian American Cultural Center, the Puerto Rican/Latin American Cultural Center, the Iranian Students Association, and the Women's Center." And just in case you were wondering, the press release elaborated that "this is not a complete list of the groups that will receive a direct written apology from the College Republicans." Sweet Jesus.

But hold on to your hats, folks! There's more! The College Republicans' press release provoked a hilarious response on "From the Desk Of Warrior" stationary that announced (in the third person, no less!) that "All of the above notwithstanding, it is somewhat sad to see how utterly spineless the UConn College Republicans have turned out to be. Not a single UConn CR voiced any objection to Warrior after the event. The detailed emails between Warrior and the UConn CRs reveal that the CRS repeatedly encouraged Warrior to single out the Tent City Trash for some re-education. Yet, it now seems that the CRS have collectively decided to bow down and beg forgiveness from various extremist, anti-American, left-wing groups who infest the UConn campus. Perhaps the UConn CRS should refrain from engaging in political activism until such time as they develop enough backbone to be able to withstand not being liked by their opponents." (source) Now that's what I call a smackdown!

Conservative Coward Creeped

2005-04-17T22:48:00.000-07:00

On April 7, Minnesota State Senator Michelle Bachmann (R-Obviously) tried to force a vote on an amendment to the state constitution that would ban gay marriage; the Democrats said she end-run the rules of the Senate for political gain. It was also certainly dubious that she chose to do this the same day local gay community leaders were rallying for their rights on the Capitol grounds. According to Eleventh Avenue South, "Even Senate Republicans thought it was in poor taste to try to go around Senate rules on the same day GLBT citizens were making their voice heard. Her move was overwhelmingly defeated." (source) But one of Eleventh Avenue South's hawk-eyed readers just happened to see something rather odd that day - as it just so happened, Michelle Bachmann decided to see what was going on at the rally, but, obviously frightened of the big, scary homosexuals, thought it would be best to hide behind some bushes. But as luck would have it, the reader snapped some pictures:

Peek-a-boo! What a coward. But the funny thing is, the first time I saw that photo, I thought it was George W. Bush and Dick Cheney during Vietnam.

For Tickets to the Jeff Gannon Show...

2005-04-17T12:38:00.000-07:00

For those of you following the news, you know that our old buddy Jeff Gannon was slated to appear at a National Press club panel on journalism and blogging, and you have probably wondered why he was invited to be there considering he wasn't a journalist or blogger. Well as it turns out, Gannon was evidently asked to come for the purpose of providing hilarious comic relief. Some of Gannon's great gags from April 8 event included the suggestion that that simply reprinting administration press releases is the same as real journalism, and that the government had to pay Armstrong Williams to write a positive story on No Child Left Behind because nobody else would (source). Now that's some great material! He even held up one of those ridiculous maps that show county-by-county election results which the right-wing loves to use to show how "red" the country is, except - and this is comic talent that can't be learned, folks - all the red states were green, because apparently Gannon's printer had run out of ink (source). But the guffaw of the evening was surely this absolute howler: "You can hardly call Fox News conservative." Oh Jeff, you must write for Leno!

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is GOP

2005-04-17T12:13:00.000-07:00

So I took a trip to Six Flags New England yesterday. I rode almost every ride in the park and had a blast. But one thing that wasn't so much fun was paying for the gas for the trip. I'm positive most of you have noticed that the average price for gas has been approaching $2.50 a gallon lately, with several San Franciscan newspapers reporting in excess of $3 per gallon for regular unleaded.

Photo: San Francisco Chronicle

Now, you might want to know what the GOP was saying in 2000, when fuel was a full buck cheaper per gallon than it is right now:

Rep. Terry Everett: "The Clinton Administration has failed in its duty to develop a policy to deal with our national energy supply and is therefore directly accountable for the higher prices Americans are now paying at the gas pumps."

Dennis Hastert: "House Speaker Dennis Hastert accused the Clinton administration Friday of misleading members of Congress about the causes of skyrocketing gas prices in the Midwest."

Rep. Wally Herger: "Congressman Wally Herger recently denounced the Clinton-Gore Administration's complacency during the current gas price crisis. 'Northern Californians are being held hostage at the gas pump,' Herger said. 'The Clinton-Gore Administration has demonstrated a complete and total lack of leadership in preventing this problem. It is a clear failure of domestic and foreign policy.'"

Larry Kudlow: "The Clinton-Gore administration’s hapless and incoherent management of foreign policy is nowhere as evident as in their bungling on OPEC’s oil-price hike. ... While crude oil prices could drop to $25 per barrel, they will stay well above the average $20 real price of oil registered over the past ten years. And way above the $10 worldwide average marginal cost of producing new oil. Meanwhile gas prices at the pump are likely to be upwards of $2 per gallon well into the summer."

Glenn Spencer: "In recent weeks, gas prices have surged to their highest level in a decade. Prices for home heating oil and natural gas are expected to rise by about 30 percent this winter. ... With the Clinton-Gore administration's policies largely to blame for the pain being felt by consumers, Vice President Gore's camp has pulled out all the stops to shift blame away from his own administration."

Various Repubs: "Representatives Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Menomonee Falls), Tom Petri (R-Fond du Lac), Paul Ryan (R-Janesville), and Mark Green (R-Green Bay) today blasted Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and the Clinton-Gore Administration for their failure to implement a comprehensive energy policy to deal with staggering gas prices Wisconsin consumers continue to face at the pumps."

So gas is now 60-75% more expensive per gallon at the pumps and crude is about double per barrel what it was when these moaning minnies were griping about how much Bill Clinton and Al Gore sucked, but now that George W. Bush is in the White House - why, his shit don't stink. Maybe they're just waiting for him to "jawbone" (source) OPEC? Because it's either that or they don't actually care about gas prices now that he's, y'know, got the gays on the run.

Bugman Returns

2005-04-15T22:39:00.000-07:00

You can't keep a good Bugman down! When I was writing about John Cornyn earlier, I thought of this. Cornyn might not be able to blame the recent acts of violence against judges and their families as an obscene sort of revenge for their alleged judicial activism - but he might if Tom DeLay gets his way. I already wrote about DeLay's not-so-veiled threats against judges ruling in the Terri Schiavo case ("The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior") and he's recently kicked it up a notch. DeLay claimed that the judiciary has "run amok" and "overstepped its authority on countless occasions." (source) So what's your solution to fix it, Bugman? Whatever it is, it's not very clear. But he did say that "Our next step, whatever it is, must be more than rhetoric."

Myriad conservative leaders decided to pick up that ball and run with it, having a meeting in D.C. last week to confer on "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny." Phyllis Schafly and Michael P. Farris - chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association - both concurred that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy should be impeached because of his opinion that minors shouldn't be executed. But it was Edwin Vieira who seemed to be taking Tom DeLay's comments to their logical conclusion, quoting Joseph Stalin in his "bottom line" for dealing with judges. "[Stalin] had a slogan," said Viera, "and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem.'" (source) The full quote that Viera paraphrased, in case you were wondering, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." So, uh, is anyone else worried that leading conservatives are now using Joe Stalin as an example of how to deal with their enemies?

Damn Those Political Judges!

2005-04-15T22:10:00.000-07:00

So what's the deal with the recent wave of violence against judges? Over the past month, a judge's family was murdered and there was that incident where a man on trial for murder and rape grabbed a gun from the bailiff in court and shot the judge to death. What could be causing this crime wave? Don't worry, folk! Sen. John Cornyn will tell us! "I – I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection," he pontificated on the Senate floor last week, "but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that's been on the news. And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in – engage in violence." (source)

But don't worry - evidently Cornyn didn't mean it. According to the UK Guardian, he wrote a letter last week saying he was "not aware of evidence linking judges' decisions with possible violence. 'I certainly hope that people will not construe my remarks on Monday to state otherwise,' he said." (source) Oh, perish the thought. So in that case, you were talking about... what were you talking about, Senator? On the bright side, John Cornyn learned a lesson from the affair. And it's this: "The lesson I learned is that Washington is a very tough political environment and if people can take what you say out of context and use it against you, they will." (source) Seriously. He actually said that.

Forgery Shovelers

2005-04-14T23:07:00.000-07:00

While I'm on the subject of the Schiavo memo, I should mention that when the reports that said it was not in fact fake, and actually did come from the office of a Republican senator, was just slightly embarrassing to the fellows who'd been shoveling the forgery idea. Before we all knew it, the "Democratic fakery" story had been played out on right-wing talk radio - despite a copious lack of evidence I should add. Then the Washington Times ran a front page, above-the-fold report stating that the memo was most likely a dirty trick (source). The only backup the Times used to say the memo was faked was, and you'll love this, "A survey by The Washington Times found that every Republican said the memo was not crafted or distributed by him or her." Well, then. Case closed.

And I shouldn't forget ol' Rush Limbaugh, who announced on the air "it appears it's a forged memo all over again!" He was quoting the American Spectator, who also wrote, "It's Rathergate all over again, and the same vigilant entities that brought about the collapse of CBS News could now also cause heads to roll among Democratic Senate leadership staffers and further shame multiple news organizations that would appear to have fallen for another document hoax." Rush elaborated that, "The memo was made up by Democrat staffers." Whoopsie! AmericaBlog poster John Aravosis put up a great screenshot of the page on Rush's website which encourages the universe to "Listen to Rush Conduct Broadcast Excellence." Mr. Aravosis also took not of one of the American Spectator's previously mentioned vigilant entries, "blog of the year" Powerline - who lost his head accusing Democrats of forging the Schiavo memo - were still clinging like a louse to the idea that they could still turn the situation against the left by placing the blame on the media for fudging the story (source). Good one, morons.

Mel Martinez Covers His Ass

2005-04-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

For the past week or so, conservative pundits and bloggers have been going nuts over the possibility that the infamous "Terri Schiavo memo" - which encouraged Republican senators to try and make political hay out of her case - might have been faked and passed around by - boo! - Democrats in an attempt to make Republicans look bad. Because as we all know, Republicans are in no way capable of such political games. Yeah, and I'm the Queen of France. But everything went to Hell last week when it was reported that the memo did indeed come out of the office of first-term Repub senator Mel Martinez. Naturally, Martinez was completely in the dark about the memo - which is of course why he was, uh, carrying it around in his pocket - and promptly sacked his aide Brian Darling for taking "unilateral" action (source). After taking that in, I think you should know that the St. Petersburg Times said back in November 2004 that "When challenged, Martinez was too eager to assign blame to his staff or to groups he said he couldn't control. As a senator, he will need an office and a staff that speaks with the measured and centrist tone he says will be his own. He can't pretend to be above it all if the people he employs are not." (source) I guess Martinez didn't take that advice to heart. But in case you worrying about the future of poor Brian "Unilateral" Darling, fret not! He used to work for the Alexander Strategy Group, which is chaired by Edwin A. Buckham (who is the former chief of staff to - drumroll please! - Tom DeLay) who said last week that "He is still going to have a bright future in this town." I am Jack's sheer lack of surprise.

As Fair and Balanced as a Kick in the Teeth

2005-04-14T00:19:00.000-07:00

While I'm on the subject of Tom DeLay, how do you think his buddies over at Fox News have been handling his ethics violations? What do you think? This is FOX NEWS we're talking about! They've been completely disabusing the public of any notion that DeLay has any responsibility!

Almost all the Fox personalities have been going out of their way to help DeLay blame the media on all his problems. First there was Brit Hume, who said "Here in Washington, the press is after Tom DeLay again, but wait 'til you hear the facts," and, "speaking of Tom DeLay, the mainstream media were out after him again today." Then John Gibson said, "The liberal media is hammering 'The Hammer' - Tom DeLay under a microscope and under the gun. Is this simply a media hit job?" (In order to answer that Fair and Balanced® question, he interviewed right-wing National Review editor Rich Lowry.) Then our old pal Sean Hannity piped in about the "liberal allegations" against DeLay and asked, "Is he the target of a smear campaign?" (source)

So if you actually want to details about the charges being brought against Tom DeLay, steer clear of Fox News. They're too busy covering their friend's ass than to do something as revolutionary as report actual facts.

Without Delay, Out With DeLay!

2005-04-13T23:56:00.000-07:00

For my first post on current events, I have decided to talk about Senate Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

I may be going out on a limb here, but I think Tom DeLay is evil. But don't take my word for it. Check out the cheat sheet the Campaign for America's Future put up laying all of DeLay's scandals out; such as his fancy business trips funded by congressional lobbyists, exchanging campaign contributions for favors, using the FAA (a federal agency) for partisan purposes, alleged money laundering, ad nauseam. It was also revealed last week that since 2001, DeLay's wife and daughter have received personally more than half a million dollars from DeLay's political action committees (source). And according to the Washington Post, in 1997 DeLay took a trip to Russia "underwritten by business interests lobbying in support of the Russian government" (source). Of course, he ended up voting in favor of those business interests.

So what's a guy to do to beat the wrap? Um, try to change House ethics rules to clear the charges. Yeah, because that's going to make him look so much better. So now that his feet are being held to the fire, what's our poor downtrodden Congressman supposed to do? Blame someone else, of course! DeLay called the reports on his scandals "just another seedy attempt by the liberal media to embarrass me" (source). Do you hear violins? But my hat must be off to the GOP for backing DeLay through all this (source). I guess we'll all just have to wait and see how far standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Bugman and being led by an unethical megalomaniac gets the Repubs in 2006.

How about a nice Piece of Ass?

2005-04-13T22:39:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Piece of Ass, the exclusive blog for the College Democrats of the University of Rhode Island! In this blog we will post the latest political news to help keep all our members up-to-date, because knowledge and truth are the best weapons against this Administration.

We will also post opinion pieces by our members, minutes from meetings, and URI Dems social news. Stay tuned!