Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada) Calls for Bipartisan Resolve on Iraq

In a magnanimous call for political unity, Senator Ensign implores both sides of the isle to rise above petty political grievances and come together as Americans, do the right thing for our country, and support our president’s plans for Iraq. WTF! Why do airheads like Ensign, in their calls for nonpartisan solutions, always opt for promoting the failed policies of their party’s chief executive? What a pompous shitheel. How big a player was Ensign that he was comp’d a stint as a US senator by the big casinos?

An amendment offered by Senator John Ensign would have made health care more affordable and accessible by expanding the ability of people to use their Health Savings Account to pay for health insurance. “We need innovative solutions in health care, and I’m disappointed that Democrats played politics on an issue so critical to providing quality health care to Americans,” said Ensign. What Ensign didn’t say was that after these health savings accounts reach their maximum benefit payout, the poor sick bastards would then be thrown onto the Medicare heap with US taxpayers picking up the major costs. The logic behind Ensign's health savings accounts is of the kind behind the recent prescription drug bill that prevents the government from negotiating lower drug prices. You know these health savings accounts are of questionable value when you realize that Golden Rule Life Insurance Inc. is pushing them.

Bears Fans Embarrass Chicago

Speaking of Katrina--Chicago Bears fans are notorious for taunting opposing fans well beyond the limits of sportsmanship. During last weekend's NFC championship game, they approached the limits of human decency, as some apparently thought it would be clever to taunt New Orleans fans with Hurricane Katrina. Somebody hung a banner in Soldier Field saying: "Bears Finishing What Katrina Started."--and that was only the beginning. Another candidate for Quote of the Day (actually Quote of a Couple of Days Ago, but I just saw it this morning) comes from a commenter to the post linked above who said of Bears fans, "They should all die in a giant fire started by a cow."
J. A. Bartlett, Best of the Blogs

Today's Chuckle

The BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2006

3. George W. Bush

Charges: This spoiled, whiny pinhead is, regrettably, responsible for the nauseating fiasco he's made of America and the world. Employs an effective strategy of creating so many deplorable scandals that it's impossible for anyone to keep up, guaranteeing that most will slip by with little notice. Has managed to staff the entire federal regulatory system with obedient corporate drones intent on destroying it from within. More concerned with the fate of discarded embryos than the actual humans being shot at from both sides in an idiot war he conned us into. Is clearly annoyed to be president at this point. Dumber than Paris Hilton and almost as popular.

Exhibit A: "The point now is how do we work together to achieve important goals. And one such goal is a democracy in Germany."

Sentence: Trapped in a library with no picture books.

Why I Am Not a Conservative

When I say that the conservative lacks principles, I do not mean to suggest that he lacks moral conviction. The typical conservative is indeed usually a man of very strong moral convictions. What I mean is that he has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions.

—F. A. Hayek

I am not just your token black guy

DailyIllini.com
Briefly I want to address people who have only one or two black friends and tell them the simple fact that they are not large windows into the world of blackness. They just have their own little perspective (or lack thereof) and consequently are a little confused. Continue reading ...

Keep on Dancing Matt

National Sanctity of Human Life Day: Jan 21

President Bush, with the enthusiastic support of his anti-choice base, has waged a tireless war on women's reproductive rights and personal privacy. If President Bush were truly interested in protecting women's health and reducing the need for abortion, he would work to prevent unintended pregnancy. But his policies do exactly the opposite.

Since taking office in January 2001, George W. Bush has led a steady and unrelenting attack on freedom of choice and the right to privacy, using all the powers of his presidency. Through legislation, executive actions, and appointments, Bush has left no stone unturned in his war on freedom of choice. If left unchecked, the consequences for privacy rights – and even access to contraception – will be felt for generations to come.

If Bush was serious about the sanctity of human life he would be leading the charge to provide basic health care to the millions of American children in need.

Third-deadliest day of war for U.S. troops

Updated: 3:37 a.m. ET Jan 21, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq - At least 19 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq on Saturday, the deadliest day for American forces in two years and at a time of building congressional opposition to President Bush's decision to dispatch of more than 20,000 additional soldiers to the conflict.

The Saturday toll was the third highest of any day since the war began in March 2003, eclipsed only by 37 U.S. deaths on Jan. 26, 2005, and 28 on the third day of the U.S. invasion. Continue reading ...

Bush still refuses to accept that, for a majority of Americans, his Iraq war is no longer worth the sacrifice of another brave soldier.

America's Failing Promise

Once America’s factories were vast employment mills where even the unskilled could expect a comfortable life in return for an honest day’s labor. America will cease being America when the workingman’s Carhart no longer graces a mortgaged home.

The Electronic Hearth

I remember my father pulling all the tubes from our broken TV set while my mother, paceing nervously, cautioned my father not to electrocute himself in front of the children. Each glass tube was carefully extracted, wrapped in tissue, and nestled in an old shoe box for transport to the town’s only drug store where a tube tester much like this would uncritically decide whether our family would continue to fall asleep bathed in the magical glow of the Magnavox.

The Memory Hole

"Pin Boy in Bowling Alley. Clinton, Indiana." February 1940.
CREDIT: Rothstein, Arthur, photographer.

During WWII the pin boys were replaced by pin girls who could earn up to $5.00 an evening. Sure beats handing cheap food out of a drive-up window.

Dumb and Dumber

Apparently the only qualifications/requirements necessary to hold an important position in the Bush White House include a) being an ideological extremist who will never question the President and/or, b) a former Texas crony and/or c) totally unqualified for the position.

Get a load of this money-quote from the new Secretary of Defense:

At one point [Robert] Gates, just three weeks on the job, told lawmakers, “I would confess I’m no expert on Iraq.” Later, asked about reaching the right balance between American and Iraqi forces, he told the panel he was “no expert on military matters.”
Committee members pressed Gates, who replaced Donald H. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, on an exit strategy for the U.S.

Cafe Politico

Maho Beach, St Maarten

I could enjoy walking the beach all day under the tropical sun.

Michigan Winter

Michigan Winter

A Special Treat

Face to Face with Jeremy Isaacs:
An Interview with Allen Ginsberg (1995)

National Sanctity of Human Life Day, 2007

A [BOGUS] Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

Do you think the White House even gives a shit that it's beyond ironic and somewhere down the short road to demented to declare Sunday "National Sanctity of Human Life Day," that yearly tradition that celebrates fetuses in all their gooey glory? Do you think that they even recognize that, if you unilaterally start a war and refuse to end that war even as you cause death, destruction, and misery of amazing proportions to pregnant and non-enfetused women, you don't get to say that you declare a day that is "a reminder that we must value human life in all forms, not just those considered healthy, wanted, or convenient"? That if you advocate torture and degradation of non-enwombed humans you simply should have the self-respect and self-awareness not to proclaim, "Together, we can work toward a day when the dignity and humanity of every person is respected"?

Nah. Instead, the fools and tools of the religious right will cream themselves madly, like Michael W. Smith just called out the name of their town in a concert, at the idea that Bush is tossin' a little love their way.
The Rude Pundit

Is the U.S. becoming a police state?

Top 10 Signs of the Impending U.S. Police State

#2. "The Long War"

This little piece of clumsy marketing died off quickly, but it gave away what many already suspected: the War on Terror will never end, nor is it meant to end. It is designed to be perpetual. As with the War on Drugs, it outlines a goal that can never be fully attained -- as long as there are pissed off people and explosives. The Long War will eternally justify what are ostensibly temporary measures: suspension of civil liberties, military expansion, domestic spying, massive deficit spending and the like. This short-lived moniker told us all, "get used to it. Things aren't going to change any time soon."

Continue Reading ...

Today's Chuckle

The BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2006

30. Rush Limbaugh

Charges: It’s hard to believe this repulsive shit fountain is even human, until you remember that we share 70% of our DNA with pigs. Then again, to be any more hypocritical Rush would actually have to be a member of another species. After the Democrats took congress in November, Limbaugh said he felt "liberated" because "I no longer am going to have to carry the water for people who I don’t think deserve having their water carried," essentially telling his listeners he’d been lying to them all year. The dittoheads didn’t mind; that’s why they listen.

Exhibit A: If someone had taken a shotgun and blown Rush’s head clean off while he was wobbling his bloated body back and forth in an inconceivably cruel mockery of Michael J. Fox, whom he accused of faking his Parkinson’s symptoms for political effect, it would have been the greatest viral video of them all.

Sentence: Parkinson’s disease, of course, triggered by oxycontin abuse.

Read the full list ...

Grover Norquist, Christian conservatives fight lobby bill

Fearing the loss of their direct line to Bush, Americans for Tax Reform and several Christian activist groups want to block the Democrats proposed legislation that would limit the ability of big-money scam artists like Abramoff to bribe conservative lawmakers.

The Seattle Times: As the U.S. Senate debated an ethics bill tonight, anti-abortion groups and other organizations of social conservatives were unleashing a major cyber-lobbying effort to amend the bill, which they say is "written to isolate pro-family and conservative Christian organizations."

They were getting some help from a longtime friend of Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist whose scandal spurred the reform moves.

The groups say that proposed restrictions and regulation of "grassroots lobbying" would put heavy burdens on citizen groups wanting to lobby Congress. They worry that the section in question defines a constituent contacting a lawmaker as "grassroots lobbying." Continue reading ...

World Historical Incompetents

Had George W. Bush stayed as governor of Texas, or commissioner of Baseball-- the job he really coveted, or even a gladhanding Texas businessman-- which he was for many years, he might have had much less chance to destroy anything so great. His incompetence would not have been so magnified, and the country would not have had to pay so great a price. But sometimes, by bad chance or dumb luck, the wrong person at the wrong time with the wrong set of skills is handed enormous power, that if, badly wielded, will change the world forever in ways no one desired. Then the world witnesses something that is as unfortunate as it is unnecessary: a World Historical Incompetent.

Balkinization. Read more ...

3,024 US Dead and $1.2 Trillion Wasted in Iraq

While Bush has a long history of failures, his history of insider trading in Arbusto Energy, Spectrum 7 Energy, and Harken Energy stocks allowed him to reap millions in illegal profits spite of his poor management skills and lack of ethics. Now this lifelong failure has squandered the lives of 3, 024 brave Americans and robbed the treasury of $1.2 Trillion dollars. Bush’s born-again religious zealotry and amoral behavior has set a new benchmark for hypocrisy.

The way to come to grips with $1.2 trillion is to forget about the number itself and think instead about what you could buy with the money. When you do that, a trillion stops sounding anything like millions or billions.

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives. (NY Times) Continue reading ...

No Surprise Here - AFA Poll Slams Islam

In the last few years, America has become more aware of the Muslim religion and the growing number of Americans who are Muslims. Would you take a minute to give us your opinion of Islam and America.

Islam and America Poll - Give us your opinion!
Do you consider Islam to be a peaceful religion?	Yes	16,703		No	213,125
Do you consider Islam to be a tolerant religion?	Yes	9,810		No	219,545
Would America be a better country if it were a Muslim country?	Yes	2,080		No	227,137
Should America place equal emphasis on the Koran and the Bible?	Yes	6,383		No	222,292
Would it be good for America to have more Muslims in elected offices?	Yes	6,374		No	221,624
Would you vote for a Muslim for president?	Yes	5,769		No	222,566
As a general rule, are women treated better in America than in a Muslim country?	Yes	208,905		No	19,635
Is America too dependent on Muslim countries for oil?	Yes	219,735		No	8,762
Do Muslim countries do more than America to help the poor?	Yes	6,303		No	220,625

This American Family Association poll is as biased as would be a KKK poll on the benefits of the Civil Rights Act - and just as valid. Prejudice is the grist of small minds.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Beyond Vietnam

A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. Complete Speech

The Black Commentator

Barney Frank kicks Patrick McHenry around the House floor

Crooks and Liars

Barney came down on McHenry for breaking the rules and trying to implement an amendment. It's a new dawn in the House and the Republicans will not like it all that much…

The GOP could dish it out over the past 6 years but they don't like being on the receiving end. Go Barney.

American Samoa is a US territory where most US labor laws are exempt. Companies can produce goods that carry a Made in the US label while its workers toil in third-world conditions. American Samoa is considered a Democratic protectorate while the Northern Mariana Islands is considered a Republican protectorate. American Samoa was exemped from the federal mininum wage bill - N. Mariana was not. Interesting.

Army shuns system to combat RPGs

WASHINGTON - Rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs, are a favorite weapon of insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are cheap, easy to use and deadly.

RPGs have killed nearly 40 Americans in Afghanistan and more than 130 in Iraq, including 21-year-old Pvt. Dennis Miller.

“They were in Ramadi, and his tank was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade,” says Miller’s mother, Kathy. “Little Denny never knew what hit him.”

Last year, a special Pentagon unit thought it found a solution in Israel — a high-tech system that shoots RPGs out of the sky. But in a five-month exclusive investigation, NBC News has learned from Pentagon sources that that help for U.S. troops is now in serious jeopardy.

The system is called “Trophy,” and it is designed to fit on top of tanks and other armored vehicles like the Stryker now in use in Iraq.

The $70 million contract for that program had been awarded to an Army favorite, Raytheon. Raytheon’s contract constitutes a small but important part of the Army’s massive modernization program called the Future Combat System (FCS), which has been under fire in Congress on account of ballooning costs and what critics say are unorthodox procurement practices.

Officials also tell NBC News that according to the Pentagon’s own method of measuring a weapons system’s readiness, Trophy is “between a 7 and an 8” out of a possible score of 9. Raytheon’s system is said to be a “3.”

“There are some in the Army who would be extremely concerned that if the Trophy system worked, then the Army would have no need to go forward with the Raytheon system and the program might be terminated,” says Steven Schooner, who teaches procurement law at both George Washington University and the Army’s Judge Advocate General’s School. Continue reading ...

Somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon sits an Army General nearing retirement who’s looking for a cushy job at Raytheon managing their too late and too little substitute for the Israeli Trophy system that’s battlefield ready now. We’re being asked to sacrifice our children to a dismembered death by RPG attacks so that this bastard General can secure a comfortable retirement at Raytheon. Fuck him, fuck Raytheon, and fuck the double dip system that allows retired military brass to enter through the pentagon’s back door to push vaporware weapon systems.

American Heros

Senior Airman Elizabeth A. Loncki, 23
Senior Airman Daniel B. Miller Jr. , 24
Tech. Sgt. Timothy R. Weiner, 35

All three airman, members of the 775th Civil Engineer Squadron, were killed when a car bomb exploded while performing duties in Baghdad, Iraq, on January 7, 2007.

Rest in Peace

All the Kings Men Sign a Death Warrant on American GIs

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

There is no "new plan" for Bush to announce.

We have been seeing the same plan endlessly fail – and then endlessly repackaged over and over and over again.

There is, however, a new PR word – "surge" – that came out of the infamous Frank Luntz focus groups to try to make the stench of American men and women dying in Baghdad in greater numbers more palatable.

That is all that is new to Bush’s defiant legacy of failed leadership.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the escalation of troops was chosen, in large part, to defy the "Iraq Study Group": "As described by participants in the administration review, some staff members on the National Security Council became enamored of the idea of sending more troops to Iraq in part because it was not a key feature of Baker-Hamilton."

In short, more Americans will die because the psychiatrically impaired Bush needs to give the finger to his father.

What’s more, the last remaining loyalists surrounding Bush, Cheney and Rove have defied the unanimous opinion of the Joints Chief of Staff in pursuing the diabolical plan of escalating our military presence in the midst of a civil war. All the king’s men were only able to proceed with signing the death warrant on American GIs after firing dissenting generals who would not tow the party line, or bludgeoning others into keeping their mouths shut.

This betrayal of the lives of our GIs is a criminal act. It is an action that will result in unnecessary deaths for the sole reason of three men who cannot admit the horrendous mistake that they undertook that resulted in the deaths of 3000 GIs to begin with – men, women and even grandparents (reservists) who were killed in the sands and streets of Iraq.

For any media outlet to call this a "surge" or a "new plan" – or give it the veneer of credibility -- is to enable a felonious act of lunacy and egomania.

All the king’s men have betrayed their country and signed a death warrant on military personnel who believed that their commander-in-chief would only send them into harm’s way to protect our national security.

They never signed on to be cannon fodder for the folly of egregiously inept men, whose only concern is their own reputations, egos, and political positioning.

This is not a "new plan" -- just a variation on the theme of utter incompetence that has lasted years; it is indifferently upping the death count of men and women of whom we have asked so much, but never to die for the delusions of a mad monarch.

If there's ever been a time in American history when impeachment is the righteous path for removing a president so clearly complicit in criminal activities – this is it.

Georgia bill defines personhood at conception

American Life League

"American Life League is eager to lend support to the proposed legislation in Georgia which will define personhood as beginning at conception," said Judie Brown, president of American Life League. "Establishing personhood for the preborn child is the most fundamental step in reversing the decriminalization of abortion, which was established nationwide through the deadly Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions of 1973." Read more ...

As more fertilized eggs are lost through monthly menstrual cycles than through surgical abortions, Georgia stands to become the leader in preborn deaths unless they pass a companion bill outlawing menstruation.

"We encourage pro-lifers across the nation to support legislation that protects human life from the beginning by establishing personhood for the preborn child,” says Ms. Judie Brown, President of the American Life League.

Do you think Ms. Brown truly feels that the thousands of children living in abusive homes are less worthy of our protection than an undifferentiated clump of cells? If Ms. Brown’s religious beliefs state that life begins at conception, let her morn alone with the bloody sloughing of the preborn that is her natural birthright.

I started to wonder about sin, and why so much sin in the Christian tradition falls on women, centers around women's bodies. Elizabeth Wardle, Reflections from a Former Anti-Abortion Activist

Today's Chuckle

Happy Birthday Richard M. Nixon

Wonkette
Relax, everybody! That stench in the nation’s air is just a natural annual response to the anniversary of Richard Milhouse Nixon’s glorious birth.

RMN was unscrewed from his poor mother’s womb on this day in Nineteen Hundred and Thirteen. Join us after the jump for a fascinating look at this horrible little man who would be known as America’s Worst President if not for the grace of George W. Bush.

Here are some fun facts you might not know about the only man in history who was elected U.S. vice president and president twice: continue reading ...

Neocons Welcome Hearings

Playing Offense
Congressional hearings? Go on the offensive.
by Robert Kagan & William Kristol
01/15/2007, Volume 012, Issue 17

Administration officials are undoubtedly dreading the prospect of testifying, if only because time spent preparing and hours consumed by testimony will make it harder for them to do their jobs. But these hearings could have a real benefit. If the administration handles them properly, they can clarify for the American public the stark choice we face in Iraq: between a policy of withdrawal and defeat, and a policy aimed at success and victory.

We're now into our 5th year of the Iraq War, with an American death toll at 3013, and Dubya and his neocon advisors continue to push their failed policies. We'd like to hear Duyba explain to the American people how the continuation of his failed strategies will somehow turn the tide in what is now a civil war between the Shiia and Sunni factions.

This week the president will set forth his proposal. We hope and expect it will include a clear articulation of a new strategy for Iraq--a real effort, based on classic counterinsurgency doctrine, to secure the Iraqi population, first in Baghdad, and then in Anbar, along with substantial aid for economic development and jobs for Iraqis. This will be supported by a rapid increase in the size of the force in Iraq by around 30,000 troops, and will signal a sharp departure from the failed Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey minimalist approach.

That a surge of 30K troops, also known as the too little - too late option, represents the best strategy that Bush and his advisors like Kagan and Kristol can fabricate clearly illustrates that the neocons are out of ideas. How these supposedly intelligent advisors can suggest a continuation of the same failed strategy is a mystery.

For America's Sake

The following is an adaptation of remarks made by Bill Moyers to a December 12 gathering in New York sponsored by The Nation, Demos, the Brennan Center for Justice and the New Democracy Project. --The Editors

You could not have chosen a better time to gather. Voters have provided a respite from a right-wing radicalism predicated on the philosophy that extremism in the pursuit of virtue is no vice. It seems only yesterday that the Trojan horse of conservatism was hauled into Washington to disgorge Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist and their hearty band of ravenous predators masquerading as a political party of small government, fiscal restraint and moral piety and promising "to restore accountability to Congress...[and] make us all proud again of the way free people govern themselves." Continue reading ...

Chickenhawks, Your Country Needs You

The president must request a substantial increase in ground forces end strength. This increase is vital to sustaining the morale of the combat forces by ensuring that relief is on the way. The president must issue a personal call for young Americans to volunteer to fight in the decisive conflict of this generation. American Enterprise Institute

Drop your cocks and grab your socks! Here's an opportunity for all those testosterone rich bloggers t0 support Duyba's dream of bring democracy to Iraq. This is your golden hour. Drop your keyboards, join the Army or the Marines, and kick some insurgent butt. What's that you say? You'd enlist in a heartbeat if it wasn't for the fact that facial camoflage paint aggravates your acne condition. Yea right! It's all too clear. You cowards are big supporters of the Iraq war as long as it's not your fat asses being blown apart by IEDs.

A "coward" is someone who (a) fails to fight (b) in a war they consider to be necessary and just (c) notwithstanding their country's need for more fighters and (d) in the absence of a unique and compelling excuse for doing so.

Wal-Mart - The Only Thing Lower than Our Prices is Our Employees' Standard of Living.

Early this year, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., using a new computerized scheduling system, will start moving many of its 1.3 million workers from predictable shifts to a system based on the number of customers in stores at any given time. The move promises greater productivity and customer satisfaction for the huge retailer but could be a major headache for employees.

Unions have criticized Wal-Mart for its scheduling changes, saying the company is forcing people to be available to work more hours each week but to sacrifice a more regular schedule. Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com, funded by the United Food and Commercial Workers union, says the new scheduling system has "devastating implications" for employees. "What the computer is trying to optimize is the most number of part-time and least number of full-time workers at the lowest labor costs, with no regard for the effect that it has on workers' lives," he says. Continue reading ...

Senator Lindsey Graham Supports Surge

It's amazing how republicon politicians like Graham refuse to recognize that the American people have written off the Iraq War. An additional 20 to 40 thousand troops will not impact the religious carnage occuring in Baghdad. A majority of our troops now oppose Dubya's handling of the war.

The Army Times, 12-29-06
American military — once a staunch supporter of President Bush and the Iraq war — has grown in creasingly pessimistic about chances for victory.

For the first time, more troops disapprove of the president’s han dling of the war than approve of it. Barely one-third of service members approve of the way the president is handling the war, ac cording to the 2006 Military Times Poll. Continue reading ...

Christian Legal Theory

TALKING POINTS:
Why Homosexual "Marriage" is Wrong 9/16/2003
By Jan LaRue, Chief Counsel, Concerned Women for America

Homosexual marriage will devalue your marriage. A license to marry is a legal document by which government will treat same-sex marriage as if it were equal to the real thing. A license speaks for the government and will tell society that government says the marriages are equal. Any time a lesser thing is made equal to a greater, the greater is devalued. For example:

If the Smithsonian Museum displays a hunk of polished blue glass next to the Hope Diamond with a sign that says, "These are of equal value," and treats them as if they were, the Hope Diamond is devalued in the public's eye. The government says it's just expensive blue glass. The history and mystery are lost too.

Yes, and I guess that when government said blacks were just as equal under the law as whites it devalued all those poor crackers. By LaRue's logic, homos are dross when valued aganist white heteros regardless of their marital status.

Pat Robertson predicts 'mass killing'

In what has become an annual tradition of prognostications, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in "mass killing" late in 2007.

"I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear," he said during his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network. "The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that."

Robertson said God told him during a recent prayer retreat that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.

Robertson said God also told him that the U.S. only feigns friendship with Israel and that U.S. policies are pushing Israel toward "national suicide." More shit here

This is why our founding fathers built the wall between government and religion.

A Lynching...

From Baghdad Burning

It's official. Maliki and his people are psychopaths. This really is a new low. It's outrageous- an execution during Eid. Muslims all over the world (with the exception of Iran) are outraged. Eid is a time of peace, of putting aside quarrels and anger- at least for the duration of Eid.

This does not bode well for the coming year. No one imagined the madmen would actually do it during a religious holiday. It is religiously unacceptable and before, it was constitutionally illegal. We thought we'd at least get a few days of peace and some time to enjoy the Eid holiday, which coincides with the New Year this year. We've spent the first two days of a holy holiday watching bits and pieces of a sordid lynching.

America the savior… After nearly four years and Bush's biggest achievement in Iraq has been a lynching. Bravo Americans. Continue reading ...

The Hanging: Beyond Travesty

By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, January 5, 2007; Page A17

Of the 6 billion people on this Earth, not one killed more people than Saddam Hussein. And not just killed but tortured and mutilated -- doing so often with his own hands and for pleasure. It is quite a distinction to be the preeminent monster on the planet. If the death penalty was ever deserved, no one was more richly deserving than Saddam Hussein.

For the Iraqi government to have botched both his trial and execution, therefore, and turned monster into victim, is not just a tragedy but a crime -- against the new Iraq that Americans are dying for and against justice itself. Continue reading ...

Life in Michigan

Man Saved From Garbage Truck After Call

OAK PARK, Mich. (AP) - A man who awoke inside a garbage truck that was about to compact its load was rescued after making a frantic cell phone call to police, authorities say.

The man, who is unemployed but not homeless, was scavenging for bottles Thursday when he fell asleep in a Dumpster, said police Lt. Mike Pousak. He awoke when the container was unloaded into a truck.

He told police he didn't know which truck he was in but gave a dispatcher the location of the Dumpster he fell asleep in, Pousak said.

He had tried yelling for help but no one heard him.

Police soon lost contact with the man when his cell phone battery became dislodged, Pousak said. Police checked several trucks, including one in a parking lot.

"An officer went and pounded on the side of the truck and somebody pounded back," Pousak said.

The man appeared to be unhurt except for a scratch, Pousak said.

I guess it's less embarassing than drawing unemployment but it's not for me.

You Say You Want a Revolution

I do not want to overthrow the government. In case you misread that, I am going to type it again, this time more slowly: I Do Not Want To Overthrow the Government. I don't want black helicopters landing on the roof of my apartment building, and I don't want to be hunted by death squads through the jungles of Bolivia. I always pay my taxes. I think paying taxes is fun! If someone asks me if I enjoy the music of Rage Against the Machine, I usually say, "Oh, they were only okay." Whenever I see people using the metric system, I punch them in the pancreas.
However…

You Say You Want a Revolution
Chuck Klosterman, Esquire Magazine, January 2007, Volume 147, Issue 1

Tentacles of Rage

When, in all our history, has anyone with ideas so bizarre, so archaic, so self-confounding, so remote from the basic American consensus, ever got so far? —Richard Hofstadter

In company with nearly every other historian and political journalist east of the Mississippi River in the summer of 1964, the late Richard Hofstadter saw the Republican Party's naming of Senator Barry Goldwater as its candidate in that year's presidential election as an event comparable to the arrival of the Mongol hordes at the gates of thirteenth-century Vienna. Louis Lapham, Harpers Magazine, 2004. Tentacles of Rage

Exceptionalism

Exceptionalism is a worldview that is disturbingly impervious to reason, which is why you have abortion clinic workers reporting that when they have anti-choicers come in for abortions, they want special rights to use the backdoor or not have to sit in the lobby with those dirty abortion-having women while they wait to have abortions. Exceptionalism is what makes a lot of Americans bemoan the injustice of 9/11 in one breath and support the injustice of the Iraq War in the next. Exceptionalism is what allows right wing Israelis and their supporters to invoke the Holocaust when arguing for Israel’s right to kill and oppress.

quoted from an unknown source who should be recognized for his or her exceptional phrasing.

Attack Conservatism

Democrats can and should use the excesses of the Republicans they defeated as bludgeons against them. Katrina. Terri Schiaivo. Jack Abramoff. Mark Foley. George W. Bush. These names should be strung around Republicans’ necks as often as possible, so Americans don’t forget why they voted Democratic in the first place.

Republicant, blogger on Hullabaloo

Today's Chuckle

A driver is stuck in a traffic jam on the interstate. Nothing is moving.

Suddenly a man walks over. The driver rolls down his window and asks: "What's going on?"

"Terrorists down the road have kidnapped George W. Bush and they're asking for a $100 million ransom. Otherwise they're going to douse him with gasoline and set him on fire. We're going from car to car, taking up a collection."

The driver asks, "How much is everyone giving, on average?"

"Most people are giving about a gallon."