One Dog's Reaction to the GOP Jobs Bill

Why yes - that's a dog singing the blues!

Blood of a Patriot? WTF!

AUSTIN, Texas — The daughter of a man who crashed his small plane into a building housing offices of the Internal Revenue Service called her father a hero for his anti-government views but said his actions, which killed an IRS employee, were "inappropriate."

Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, spoke to ABC's "Good Morning America" from her home in Norway. Asked during a phone interview broadcast Monday if she considered her father a hero, she said: "Yes. Because now maybe people will listen." Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.

It was only a matter of time before some mentally unbalanced anti-government crank felt sufficiently motivated by the violent rhetoric of the Tea Bagger mob to carry out a terrorist attack. I guess this was his response to the bagger's popular sign, "The Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots." Sorry Samantha but your father is not a patriot - just another terrorist in the mold of Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, and Randy Weaver. The only mark left on this world by Mr. Stark is another bloodstain. The world's reservoir of hate dropped a level with his violent death.

If you must grieve, grieve for the family of IRS employee Vernon Hunter killed by your father's cowardly action. As the joke is told, "I'd piss on his grave if I didn't have to wait in line."

Swansea Love Story

"In 2009, Swansea drug agencies reported a 180 percent rise in heroin use, and it’s visible on the city’s streets. Early one morning we meet a young, homeless couple named Amy and Cornelius in a city centre alley. As heroin-addicted alcoholics, they’re smack in the middle of two of South Wales’s most ever-present epidemics."

This six-part series highlights the social damage resulting from the loss of jobs and hope in the city of Swansea.

Senator Shelby (R-Ala): Show Me the Money

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., had blocked more than 80 presidential nominations now before the Senate, but tonight he relented, saying he had simply been trying "to get the White House's attention" on two important national security issues related to his state. Johnathan Karl and Kristina Wong. ABC News.

It seems Sen Shelby wanted to throw some $40B in taxpayer funds to businesses in his home state.

Shelby is literally trying to undermine the federal government’s ability to do business effectively and have responsible, politically accountable leadership, in order to lobby on behalf of a foreign corporation, against an American corporation.

The Shelby affair has yet more layers of stunning hubris: the $40 billion project he is demanding action for is actually related to a bidding process in which a joint venture between Northrop Grumman and EADS —the European parent of Airbus— is competing against Boeing for a contract to build a new aerial refueling tanker. The Northrop/EADS venture plans to build the tanker in Mobile, Alabama, if it wins, but is threatening to withdraw its bid altogether unless the Air Force makes the conditions of bidding more favorable to its needs. Truth-First.com

Sen Shelby, like many of his fellow conservative legislators, decry wasteful federal spending at every opportunity. It would appear that Shelby has no reservations with spending billions on a project that benefits a foreign company that donated bags of money to Shelby's political slush fund. What a hypocrite.

It's Time to End Don't Ask - Don't Tell

To hear the voices of those predominately white, Christian-conservative politicians, you’d think the cold-steel discipline of our military barracks was about to be subverted by the degenerate onslaught of chintz curtains and over-stuffed throw pillows should we allow gay and lesbians to serve openly. They would have us believe that introducing homosexuals into the tight, close-quarters of military life would create an atmosphere charged with sexual tension. An atmosphere so heavy that our morally pure sons and daughters would be forced to sleep with eyes open lest their unguarded orifices be violated.

It’s a rehash of the same dark prejudices used to attack gay and lesbian teachers. To these homophobes, to be homosexual is to be unchained from the burdens of sexual propriety at best and, at worst, to be driven solely by lust, unthinking, like an animal in rut. Neither the classroom nor the barracks should be a home for predators regardless of sexual persuasion.

Our deepest quarrel with fundamentalists in this country, then, is not about Iraq, health care, abortion, or gay rights. It’s about the very possibility of trying to be true without needing the truth. It’s about being able to commit to a truth while always remembering that this truth could be partial, incomplete, and provisional—a steppingstone forward, not an edifice of certitude.
Nick Bromell, Scooter and Me,(The American Scholar, Jan 2007)

Hannity is Keynote Speaker for NRCC

"Fox News anchor Sean Hannity will deliver the keynote address at the National Republican Congressional Committee fundraising dinner next month. Officials said the television star would offer them insight into their quest to win back the House of Representatives this fall.

NRCC Chairman Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) hailed Hannity as fighting for conservative values when announcing his speaking slot for the March 23 dinner at the National Building Museum in Washington." TPM LiveWire

Hannity’s selection as the keynote speaker for the NRCC’s dinner illustrates the depths to which today’s GOP has fallen. Bill Buckley held some distasteful views but at least he had the intellectual heft to defend his views with coherent rebuttal. Hannity barely qualifies as an intellectual light-weight. His popularity on Faux News is clearly the result of his pandering to the racist, xenophobic, and anti-intellectual rabble only too willing to blame liberals and progressives for the abject failure of Neoconservative philosophy. Hannity is junk-food for the mind; no preparation required, easy to consume, and free of any nutritional content.