So, um, Florida and Ohio are in the process of initiating major overhauls of their election equipment. Seems the touchscreens and other technologies have led to lawsuits, disenfranchisement, and possibly outright fraud.
Gee, I wonder who benefited from that?
Have had a company sponsored week of meetings and haven't found the time to post, but this one just galls me.
As you know, I have a hard time thinking of any good thing that comes out of Florida. This just motivates me to keep loathing the place. A Tampa woman went to police to report a sexual assault and got jailed on an outstanding warrant.
Oh, and of course her compassionate conservative officials denied her a morning after pill. You know, because the spawn of her rapist should be allowed to be sent to whatever war the GOP is pushing in 2025.
And that folks, is how a red state operates.
I'm cynical enough to actually like this following idea. A small town in Canada has enacted rules for any immigrants coming to their town. Among them are that you can't kill your womenfolk or deny them to right to drive, vote, and basically live.
They swear they aren't racist in doing this, and I believe them.
Look, I'm likely a big "L" liberal type but I've been around immigrants all my life and though the first generation has a hard time adapting, most of them do, and further generations do a lot better fitting in with the culture as a whole. And no, conservative racists, this rule does not exclude Mexicans. You're just scared and cruel; no other excuse.
But for some reason, some religious groups and their ethnic populations want to bring their 4th century B.C. attitudes to the West, and this, frankly, has to stop.
Look, it is a secular world and, while you can be religious, to a point it is dangerous and counter productive for you to cram your belief system on the rest of us. This goes for the female-genetic-mutilation crowd to the women-can't-think-for-themselves-and-you'll-ignore-it-because-we-have-oil crowd and the "intelligent design" and blowing-up-abortion-clinics-is-god's-will morons. You are all complicit in driving our species towards ruin.
Stop it. Shut up. Get with the program and stop hurting people. For God's sake, you've pissed off Canadian citizens. This is a sign like you've never seen before.
“The Iranian people are more pro American than any American university faculty.”
- Bush's talking head Tony Snow, at a Grover Norquist breakfast on 01/24
Apparently, Tony Snow's interpretation of being American is having a psycho fundamentalist theocracy panting wantonly for nuclear weapons while blindly following a anti-Semitic dictator.
Which, come to think of it, may actually be what he means.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, Prime Minister al-Maliki has taken to threatening to arrest Sunni politicians who disagree with him. Apparently he IS learning from the Bush playbook after all. Next week: how to brand anyone who isn't with you a traitor without actually using the word.
A "Christian" delegate in the Virginia state house stated last week that black people "should get over" slavery. He also went on to wondering if Jews should apologize "for killing Christ." Now that's a Republican for you.
Turns out, his great-grandfather was a slave owner. Maybe he misses the old days?
In addition, Congressional Racist Tom Tancredo wants to abolish the Congressional Black Caucus. Think he's scared of the black man?
Antonin Scalia and his brethren in the Supreme Court are on the same meme. "Its water over the deck - get over it," is his reply to those who still question the Court's decision to intervene in the 2000 election and give Bush the presidency.
Those are the Republicans' answers to race, ethnicity and electoral fraud. I know some of you incredulously wonder why I loathe the GOP in general. Those are some pretty good reasons. I know many of you are decent human beings, but if you continue to vote for racists, scam artists, thieves, and subvertors of democracy, you ain't as nice as you think you are.
Speaking of not-so-nice, McCain is questioning the credentials of Gen. George Casey, recently kicked out of Iraq for questioning Bush's planning.
CBS covers how McCain is looking older and, more importantly, grumpier and meaner.
Plus, despite his attempts to appear vigorous, he apparently fell asleep during the State of the Union address. At least he didn't drool, I guess.
Speaking of getting over things, Muslims are complaining about the new season of 24 putting Muslims in a bad light. Well, see, there ARE Muslims looking for nuclear weapons, so it really isn't that far-fetched of a plot. Then there are the cabbies in Minneapolis who refuse to pick up fares carrying alcohol or who have dogs.
Look, you asshats are as bad as the pharmacists who won't fill birth control prescriptions. Don't impose your narrow-minded, constricting, smug religion on me if you job is to provide a civil service of some kind. There are already enough misguided rednecks who hate Muslims for stupid illogical reasons. Giving them rational ones does not make things better.
Speaking of, Bush wants people to control their own health care (i.e. try to avoid the issue entirely by dumping it on private companies). You know, except when it comes to women's health. Then he wants to legislate that into the ground.
Oh, here's something else we should consider about Mr. I'm Bipartisan All of a Sudden: arms sales to dictators has increased in the age of Bush.
One last thing to mention. Barack Obama has taken on FAUXNews directly for slandering him and trying to paint him as a radical, fundamentalism al-Qaeda type. He's even named names and put people on notice. This is far different from Harold Ford's "aw-shucks-racism-doesn't-exist" strategy which lost him the Senate seat in Tennessee last fall, and well beyond John Kerry's "ignore people discrediting your military service and they'll go away" strategy when his campaign got torpedoed by those Swift Boats Veterans for Slime idiots.
Keep up the good work Obama. You may get me to fully support you yet.
The acceptance of global warming is growing, even in places like Boise, where Al Gore recently sold out a concert hall. In fact, the West is becoming ready converts to the cause.
That said, in Federal Way, WA a parent who is likely from the "intelligent design" lunatic fringe has gotten a school board to restrict showing An Inconvenient Truth to students there. Oh, you can show it, but then you'd have to present some psycho humans-played-with-dinosaurs-14,000-years-ago spiel as actual fact.
Kind of like this moronic museum in Kentucky.
So, we weigh religious kooks against the mind of Stephen Hawking, who supports addressing the issues of global warming. Seriously, who the hell are you going to believe?
Even Big Business is on board, working with environmental groups. The list includes DuPont, Caterpillar, and Alcoa. More on that here.
Still poking your head in the sand waiting for the Rapture? The Weather Channel has a new site devoted solely to climate change at One Degree.
And while we quibble about the problem even existing, Japan is taking the lead in developing new conservation technologies.
I couldn't bring myself to watching Sparky McRapture deliver his State of Dillusion speech last night but I've watched snippets of it. Basically, lots of nice words and veiled threats, neither of which he can or will deliver on.
One major omission? Hurricane Katrina. Thankfully Sen. Webb did *not* when delivering the Democrat's response.
Here's a fact check list of Bush's speech. You know, since we shouldn't trust the bozo.
Since we're talking about Katrina, former horse trainer/FEMA Director Michael Brown has recently stated that the federal response was politically motivated to make Louisiana's Democratic governor Blanco look bad. So, basically, it was about race and politics. Either way, Bush wantonly killed American citizens to score political points.
And how goes the rebuilding? Not so good, by all accounts. The NY Times is carrying an article on why New Orleans may never get back to over half it's pre-Katrina size.
Apparently advocating torture while sporting a woody wasn't enough for Alberto Gonzalez. He now doubts whether we have habeus corpus protection.
For those of you who thought Bush actually meant it when he said he wanted to work with Democrats, here's your reality check.
Somedays you almost have to feel bad for Bush. His poll numbers are Nixonesque, his policies are falling apart, as is his support among formerly blindly following Congressional lackeys.
And then there's this:
Cancer death rates have been falling for the past couple years. This is, of course, a good thing.
Bush sees a chance to grasp some ray of hope and attach it to himself so he runs off to the National Institutes of Health and crows about how their increased funding helped make this happen.
He's right, it likely did help the process along.
But those funds came from Bill Clinton. Bush has been slashing budgets for cancer research. And yet he still tried to take credit for something he had no hand in at all. I doubt that fact was lost on the scientists in the audience. But we all know what Bush thinks of science in general so I doubt it phased him at all.
So there you go.
I don't know what it is about liberals. Rush Limbaugh is obviously a conservative blowhard. Conservative newspapers don't hide their slant. FOXNews is so in the pocket of the government it is where Bush looks for new talent when he runs off another lackey.
It is probably this lie about the "liberal media," which, when you realize that the Murdochs of the world run print and television, is so much BS. So, CNN has been wallowing in its own filth, trying to maintain a balance; while writing checks to conservative asshats like Robert Novak, Paula Zahn, and Glenn Beck. I mean Fox has Allan Colmes as a liberal punching bag, and who the hell is he anyway? I may not approve of their message, but their insidious nature is at least obvious. CNN is sucking up to fix some imagined slight it caused the American people because the Republicans say it did.
Idiots.
Anyway, last week I mentioned that Fox and its right wing bastard friends is trying to paint Barack Obama as some radical Muslim, with some help from the Hillary Clinton campaign. Talk about "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
To their credit, CNN has done their homework and disproved this evil meme resoundingly.
Thanks CNN, maybe you'll get off your ass and try to provide spreading the good word and shining the light on evil bastards again. Hey, I can hope, can't I?
Bush declared yesterday to be National Sanctity of Human Life Day. You know, a fob to his ultra-conservative, hateful, anti-abortion types.
So great, Bush wants every baby born. So how does he care about them once out of the womb?
I link you to a small photoessay on that very subject.
To all those who have given me crap all week, just a programming note: My team is in the Super Bowl and your's isn't.
FAUXNews is ramping up the fearmongering concerning Barack Obama. They ran a segment today questioning whether we should trust Obama since he was supposedly trained in a madrassa and is a Muslim.
There are a few things wrong with that entire premise, not the least of which is that we shouldn't damn people over their religion, much less their education, which plenty of Americans seem to have a weak concept of anyway.
And then there's the truth of the matter. One, not everyone who attends a parochial school becomes Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Ted Haggard. And not everyone who goes to a madrassa becomes Osama bin Laden. DO ANY OF YOU IMBECILES GRASP THIS CONCEPT?
Two, Obama is a practicing Christian. And apparently he actually follows the Word, unlike Bush and the evangelical crowd, who are just a pack of rabid, racist, sexist, homophobic, repressed child molesters and junkies.
I guess we should just get used to this if Obama is seriously going to run for President. And I should have known the Repugnican'ts would have their mudslinging program ready to go.
"You violated a host of laws that you as a congressman are sworn to enforce and uphold."
- U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, on sentencing Ney
Former GOP congressman Bob Ney has been sentenced to two and a half years in federal prison on corruption charges and bribe and generally with dealing with scumbag Jack Abramhoff. He is eligible for $29,000 a year in federal pension, even though he too is a rotten piece of crap.
Hopefully the Senate helps do away with this loophole that causes us to pay pensions to felons.
In another similar, but equally heinous vein, I heard a bit on Marketplace last night that I wanted to share. An anonymous citizen proposes that our recently retired legislators who constantly get big money to lobby against this country's best interest should be forced to make a choice: you can be a lobbyist or you can keep your pension. Today, you get to do both. Let's at least make it to where we are not paying for this form of scumbag behavior either.
Wal-Mart is starting an ad campaign to improve it's reputation amongst those Americans who are not the Jerry Springer/American Idol, mouthbreathing incest crowd. I'm not sure I am, or even should be, their target audience.
Meanwhile, Starbucks is about to find out why they call it Forbidden City, as the Chinese decided whether or not to let their products remain in one of the country's most revered locales.
Meanwhile, Toys 'R Us has had to deal with bad press concerning not awarding a prize to the first baby born in the new year. Turns out that baby was born to a Chinese mother who is not an American citizen, nor has papers. I wish I could find a story that quoted the grandmother of the second prize winning baby in Georgia. She's quite the little ultra-nationalist racist. They've since cleaned her mouth up, at least over the internet. And Toys 'R Us did the wrong thing by giving three kids a prize. Great for the kids, but not exactly an acknowledgement that they're right bastards.
More on the Democrat's legislative assault on the Bush theocorporate agenda. May the Senate wise up and follow suit.
"We are working on an agenda that the minority would not or could not do, and we're fulfilling our promise to the American people....And all the whining you can do, all of it you can produce will not deter us from it."
- Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Rules Committee to John Boehner and other GOP crybabies
We've heard a lot of bullshit Republican slogans since they decided to kick off a 21st century crusade, but the heart of their argument is that they are pro-American and anyone who doesn't agree with them is a stinking traitor.
You know I'm not making this up so don't try arguing the point.
So, after lying to get over 3,000 soldiers killed and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed (apparently you have to kill them to free them), Tom DeLay breaking ethics rules left and right and pocketing money all the way, Mark Foley being aided and abetted when trying to molest children, and Tom Tancredo doing everything but putting on a white robe and burning a cross in the Capitol building, I've got a good idea of what the Republicans stand for.
That and shooting their friends in the face with a shotgun. But I digress....
So, how are the Democrats doing? The answer: not so damn bad.
The NYT covers the House's First Hundred Hours. The major highlights?
How has the Senate reacted?
It's of course too early to tell if the Dems can keep cohesion, momentum, and sanity in place to get doing the good work required to restore this country to pre-Bush era safety, sanity, and honestly. But I like what I've seen so far.
Alright, I keep getting asked about what I read and what I could recommend to people.
I've created a few lists here and there but with little motivation to polish it up the way I want to.
Thankfully, the internet has complied and found the solution to my little problem. Head here to my shelf at Shelfari, a new service that allows you to list books you like. I've added a few and haven't done much past that.
Sign up yourself if you wish to and we can compare notes.
Great, another project.
I don't often visit Kuro5hin anymore, as the site has been struggling along for years. But I do get their headlines on my Slashdot page so I decided to check it out. I hope you link, read, and enjoy.
The same day Barack Obama announces he intends to consider running for President and the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we get the Republican response.
Ladies and gentlemen: GOP racist candidate Tom Tancredo.
And if that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about the Republican Party, you seriously are not paying attention.
Barack Obama has announced that he is exploring the idea of running for President. Now, personally, I wish the guy would take some more time, get some experience and then run. That said, seeing as he's probably the only person that could stop Hillary Clinton from getting the nomination (sorry Edwards), it may just be that he should run.
Not that it is going to be easy for him. Yahoo! applies his image to links to stories about bin-Laden. Wolf Blitzer at CNN does the same damn thing. More here.
Conservatives are on the attack as well, comparing his style of dress to Iranian President Ahmedinejad and pointing out his Muslim heritage. They pick on his middle name, "Hussein," as if he is somehow tied to Saddam Hussein somehow. It may just be that the conservatives just can't say anything more complicated than "Bush." I don't know. Either way, it is cheap, antagonistic, and likely racially motivated. "A black man with a Muslim connection! Oh no!"
And just for fun, folks are picking on his "Dumbo" ears.
Personally, it smacks of jealousy and cheap shots.
Meanwhile FOX affiliates tries to link Obama with sex offenders.
Since he's getting hit from the right wingers, you figured he'd get help from the left. Not so. Traditional black American groups are giving him the cold shoulder too.
That said, Obama has been honest about his past and realistically concerned for his and his family's safety. He knows the GOP stalwarts are liable to gun him down if it looks like he may be able to order the white man around some day.
Frigging racists. I swear, it is like living with the Neanderthals in charge.
One more thing before I head to bed.
You know that damned Visa Check Card commercial, the one where one guy with a few bucks in his pocket totally destroys the order of a lunch line?
Yeah, does that piss you off as much as it does me?
I mean, I like spending cash. One, I know immediately how much of it I have. Two, I'm not creating a paper trail that I, or the FBI or GOP, has to follow in order to figure out my finances. If I buy a cup of coffee, I damn well better be able to cover - and not get any flack about - it with a few bills. It is called being responsible and I do so little of it as it is that I'd like to be encouraged to do so, not get labelled as a Luddite.
So piss off Visa. If my money isn't any good to you, why do you keep asking me to pay my balance with cash?
So, Leslie got me some Target gift cards to go buy a Wii for Christmas. She feels like crap about it but I don't blame her; the damn things are nigh impossible to find.
We spent a lot of time looking for one on the way back to Vegas after Christmas (special shout outs to you asshats in Davenport and Kansas City who were such unhelpful pricks). Anyway, about 10 states later, multiple under-10 minute misses and still no Wii, I'm almost reconciled to not getting one.
Target has been assholes. You doubt me? You should see my horrifically banal and insulting form letter from when I complained about a couple incidents with their "customer service-oriented" staff. Yeah, I know they're getting hassled, but they get PAID to get asked "Where's my damn Wii?" by hundreds of people a day. I have things I don't like about my job too; I just don't lash out at customers when those things get to me.
Getting to my point: some lady died yesterday after participating in some stupid radio contest called "Hold your wee for a Wii." Basically, drink until you have to pee. Last one clenching their legs together wins or something.
So yeah, I learned two things today, one of which I probably didn't need a reminder of. One, I really don't need a gaming console THAT bad. Two, when you enter a game set up by morning radio disc jockeys, you've already lost a battle of wits.
"McCain and Lieberman talked to many of the same officers and senior NCOs I covered for FOX News during my most recent trip to Iraq. Not one of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen or Marines I interviewed told me that they wanted more U.S. boots on the ground. In fact, nearly all expressed just the opposite: 'We don't need more American troops, we need more Iraqi troops,' was a common refrain. They are right."
- Oliver North on troop level escalations
"If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job. Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight. And sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever, when we are, in fact, working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave. As we determine the right force level, our troops can know that I will continue to be guided by the advice that matters: the sober judgment of our military leaders."
- Bush, June 28, 2005
"I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the core commander, General Dempsey, we all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American Troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no."
- General John Abizaid, Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, November 15, 2006
So....Bush is getting off his ass for once and trying to do something about Iraq. It is unfortunate that he still refuses to work from within reality.
In any case, his bubble boy solutions. One, listen to a different group of morons for guidance on Iraq.
Actually, that's not entirely fair. After Bush decided to send 20,000 more troops to Iraq, he replaced both Generals Casey and Abizaid. You know, because well, there IS no good reason is there? He just wanted to find some yes men who would agree with him. Not a great way to start a major policy change.
The punchline? Abizaid is being replaced by a Navy admiral. Seen any sailors getting killed by IEDs lately? So much for morale.
Wesley Clark weighs in on why the "surge" will ultimately fail.
The year ended with the US having more than 3,000 deaths among our servicemen and -women in Iraq. More data from ICasualties.org.
Additional info on military screwups, from ignoring and stigmatizing the mental health needs of our veterans to recalling the dead to service in Iraq.
The troops themselves? They just want to get home alive. Couldn't say it better myself.
