Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. - Oscar Wilde
Verizon says it won't block Philadelphia from providing free WiFi internet access to its citizens. That's good news for WiFi Philly. I hardly look at this as a grand corporate gesture, though. Okay, I'll just be happy for a moment. A win is a win.
134 soldiers killed this month in Iraq. Since there are a few hours left in the month, maybe we tie or beat the record of 135 for April 2003. George Bush's war is going great, huh?
I called this morning and asked the Governor to Veto Bill 30. The system is quite easy - it says "If you're calling about Bill 30, Press 1." Then it asks you to leave your name and a message. I said I would like broadband internet access to be available for all people and I urge Governor Rendell to veto Bill 30. Please call this morning if you can. The background is below.
Please veto House Bill 30. We cannot let powerful corporate lobbies set up a monopoly over Internet access. Initiatives like Philadelphia's wireless plan are crucial because the Internet must be equally available to all, not just as a luxury. Thank you for your time.Please let us know you're calling, at: http://www.moveon.org/callmade12.html
WASHINGTON - A majority of Americans say President Bush's next choice for an opening on the Supreme Court should be willing to uphold the landmark court decision protecting abortion rights, an Associated Press poll found.
Watch the newly created Keep on rockin in the free world video by Neil Young that blends the song with clips from Fahrenheit 9/11.
After being paralyzed for 20 years, a woman now is walking thanks to stem cells that were injected into her damaged spine. Helping the weak and needy is a Democratic moral value.
I went to Catholic school as a kid. We learned about Jesus. Bible stories. Humility. Which made me think about how Jesus disappeared and has been transformed by "Christians" in 2004. Supposedly, the US election was decided along "values" issues, which is a proxy for "Christian" issues. But the hypocrisy and manipulation knows no bounds. Rick Mercier wrote in If you read the Gospels, the Religious Right is mostly wrong:
The truth is, if you depend on the Christian right for your theological sustenance, you probably won't recognize the Jesus of the Gospels.That "moral values" argument is so weak and overmediated by the "Christians" as to render Jesus and the lessons of the Bible unrecognizable. The "Christian" moralists worry about gay marriage and tax cuts. But they don't seem concerned about real moral values. Mercier continues:
Where in America is the Jesus who sides with the poor and the outcasts? Where in America is the Jesus who disdains those who wear their piousness on their sleeves? Where in America is the the Jesus with the prophetic voice, the radical who dares to tell the powerful what they don't want to hear?The hypocrisy of this false Jesus shows in behaviors of the Red State Moralists. As Andrews Sullivan writes:
Many of Americas biggest sinners are those most intent on upholding virtue. It may be partly because they know sin close up that they want to prevent its occurrence among others.In Where the Bible bashers are sinful and the liberals pure, Sullivan writes about the disparity between what the Bible-thumpers say they do and what they do. Highest divorce rates? In Southern, Bible-thumping states. Where's the highest abortion rate, liberal Holland or conservative America? Shockingly, it's higher in the US by a factor of three. Highest teen birth rates? Twice as high in Texas as in Massachusetts.
Even a cursory look at the leading members of the forces of social conservatism in America reveals the same pattern. Rush Limbaugh, the top conservative talk-radio host, has had three divorces and an addiction to painkillers. Bill OReilly, the most popular conservative television personality, just settled a sex harassment suit that indicated a highly active adulterous sex life. Bill Bennett, guru of the social right, was for many years a gambling addict. Bob Barr, the conservative Georgian congressman who wrote the Defense of Marriage Act, has had three wives. The states that register the highest ratings for Desperate Housewives, the hot new television show, are Bush states.So, we are told we have a "values" split in the US. And the Red States Hypocrites and "Christians" are exploiting that "fact" as if there's been a shift in morality. It's always funny, methinks the "Christians" doth protest too much is something we should work on. Let's keep working to expose the hypocrisy. And moving to an authentic moral core.
iFlipFlop readers have spoken, and have overwhelmingly voted for their favorite George Bush kiss this week. In a week that featured a cheek-to-cheek kiss on puppethead Condi Rice and a lip lock on the new Secretary of (Sex) Education, Margaret Spellings, voters picked George Bush kissing Karl Rove's ass as their favorite kiss. The results:
More on electoral fraud in election 2004 by the George Bush Crew. From Online Journal:
November 26, 2004Additional information on the buying of vote riggers with Saudi and former Enron funds has been obtained. The epicenter for the vote rigging operation is Dallas, Texas, and the operation may involve retired FBI agents who used a well-established "good ole boy" network to arrange for access to polling precincts by electronic voting machine technicians who took advantage of various November 2 security "lockdowns" to illegally alter the tabulation of votes in favor of Bush. Some of the retired agents may have used courtesy credentials issued upon retirement to fool unsuspecting polling place workers.In Ukraine there are crowds of a hundred-thousand people protesting election fraud. They're making a difference. We still can have a voice as tens of thousands participate in Turn Your Back on Bush.
A graphic in the NYT shows the sad decline in Iraq, from dead and wounded to attitudes about the American occupation (only 35% of Iraqis say the country is better off since the US invasion).
A powerful piece by Thomas Friedman in the NYT, It's so good I nicked it in its entirety. You should read the original here:
In my next life, I want to be Tom DeLay, the House majority leader.
Yes, I want to get almost the entire Republican side of the House of Representatives to bend its ethics rules just for me. I want to be able to twist the arms of House Republicans to repeal a rule that automatically requires party leaders to step down if they are indicted on a felony charge - something a Texas prosecutor is considering doing to DeLay because of corruption allegations.
But most of all, I want to have the gall to sully American democracy at a time when young American soldiers are fighting in Iraq so we can enjoy a law-based society here and, maybe, extend it to others. Yes, I want to be Tom DeLay. I want to wear a little American flag on my lapel in solidarity with the troops, while I besmirch every value they are dying for.
If I can't be Tom DeLay, then I want to be one of the gutless Republican House members who voted to twist the rules for DeLay out of fear that "the Hammer," as they call him, might retaliate by taking away a coveted committee position or maybe a parking place.
Yes, I want to be a Republican House member. At a time when 180 of the 211 members of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Iraq who have been wounded in combat have insisted on returning to duty, I want to look my constituents and my kids in the eye and tell them that I voted to empty the House ethics rules because I was afraid of Tom DeLay.
If I can't be a Republican House member, I want to be Latrell Sprewell, the guard for the Minnesota Timberwolves. I want to say with a straight face that if my owner will only give me a three-year contract extension for a meager $21 million, then he's not worth working for, because "I've got my family to feed."
Yes, I want to be Latrell Sprewell. At a time when N.B.A. games are priced beyond the reach of most American families, when half the country can't afford health care, when some reservists in Iraq are separated from their families for a year, including this Thanksgiving, I want to be like Latrell. I want to make sure everyone knows that I'm looking out for my family - and no one else's.
If I can't be Latrell Sprewell, I want to be any American college or professional athlete. For a mere dunk of the basketball or first-down run, I want to be able to dance a jig, as if I'd just broken every record by Michael Jordan or Johnny Unitas. For the smallest, most routine bit of success in my sport, I want to be able to get in your face - I want to know who's your daddy, I want to be able to high-five, low-five, thump my chest and dance on your grave. You talkin' to me?
I want to be able to fight on the court, off the court, in the stands and on the sidelines. I want to respect no boundaries and no norms. And when I make your kids cry, I want to be able to tell you to just "chill" - that my coach says "stuff happens" and that my union rep is appealing my punishment in the name of the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta. Yes, in my next life, I want to be The Man.
If I can't be The Man, then I at least want to be the owner of a Hummer - with American flag decals all over the back bumper, because Hummer owners are, on average, a little more patriotic than you and me.
Yes, I want to drive the mother of all gas-guzzlers that gets so little mileage you have to drive from gas station to gas station. Yes, I want to drive my Hummer and never have to think that by consuming so much oil, I am making transfer payments to the worst Arab regimes that transfer money to Islamic charities that transfer money to madrassas that teach children intolerance, antipluralism and how to hate the infidels.
And when one day one of those madrassa graduates goes off and joins the jihad in Falluja and kills my neighbor's son, who is in the U.S. Army Rangers, I want to drive to his funeral in my Hummer. Yes, I want to curse his killers in front of his mother and wail aloud, "If there was only something I could do ..." And then I want to drive home in my Hummer, stopping at two gas stations along the way.
If I can't be any of these, then I want to be just a simple blue-state red-state American. I want to take time on this Thanksgiving to thank God I live in a country where, despite so much rampant selfishness, the public schools still manage to produce young men and women ready to voluntarily risk their lives in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to spread the opportunity of freedom and to protect my own. And I want to thank them for doing this, even though on so many days in so many ways we really don't deserve them.
Journalist Evan Wright, who was embedded with troops in Iraq, reminisces about the wanton murder and destruction in that country under "the fog of war." He also reflects on the irony and hypocrisy of media coverage in the US:
One of the great ironies of the Bush administration, obsessed as it is with Christian values and the attendant crusade to punish what it deems obscene and lewd in the media (from Janet Jackson's breast to Howard Stern's speech), is that it has given us a war in which the airing of snuff films on national TV has become routine. The conflict in Iraq, as seen through news coverage, has begun to resemble the macabre underground 1980s video series Faces of Death. Throw in the images produced by the U.S. Army at Abu Ghraib, and the administration has put itself in the running to successfully compete with the BDSM side of the porn industry.A dead-check, by the way, is poking a wounded enemy, then making sure he's dead by blasting away. More hearts-and-minds converted daily.
A Gallup poll revealed some scary statistics about Americans' views on science and evolution:
Only about a third of Americans believe that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific theory that has been well supported by the evidence, while just as many say that it is just one of many theories and has not been supported by the evidence. The rest say they don't know enough to say. Forty-five percent of Americans also believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago. A third of Americans are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.In a related story, radical religious right groups are telling members that the sun revolves around the earth. It's a highly effective campaign because the majority of their members already believe the earth is flat.
Look at this dragonballyee story about Ukrainian riots...because of election irregularities, discrepancies with exit polls, and a 3% "victory" for former Prime Minister Viktor A. Yushchenko.
George Bush's mandate. The Radical Religious Right is taking a 51-49 split in the electorate as a mandate to run roughshod over American policy. Now they have turned their sites on another den of iniquity: the Lincoln Memorial. Yep, you just never know where godlessness and heathenism will pop up. And they will slap it down. From ABC News:
For roughly a decade, a film has been shown to visitors at Washington's Lincoln Memorial, depicting historic events that have taken place there from civil rights marches to antiwar demonstrations.
The film shows a number of marches with liberal themes like gay rights and abortion rights, intercut with older clips of historical figures like former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Marian Anderson.
Then, one day the Rev. Lou Sheldon saw it.
"It showed only those liberal, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual marches," said Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition.
Sheldon's influential Christian conservative group took its complaint to the government's top levels "so they could reach down and work their system and cleanse in a proper manner and make it fair and balanced," he said.
Sheldon would like film of some conservative marches intercut as well, though it is unclear whether any major conservative marches have taken place at the Lincoln Memorial itself, which is the film's focus.
In a press release today, Captain Obvious, senior commander of troops in Iraq, said an increase in American troops in Iraq is necessary. First extended stays; soon, the draft. I don't think Ron Artest isn't doing anything right now. Maybe he could help. He's a decent fighter. The Bush Twins, too, since daddy thinks fighting in faraway lands is vitally important.
Emboldened by election, conservatives take charge. George Bush said he'd work to advance a bipartisan agenda. That lasted about one day. But why start telling the truth now? The Big Lie worked so well for the past four years.
In an incredible turn of mendacity, Republicans are now pulling the "I didn't do it, my hand did it" defense of a two-year-old when questioned about how a tax return access component was wedged into the last-minute spending bill in the Senate. The provision, supposedly sneaked into the 1,000-page document by a Senate staffer, would have allowed two committee chairmen to view the tax return of any American. Some senators and representatives are not pleased. From CNN:
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
The Republicans' lack of transparency and willingness to abuse their power is undermining democracy. It should be of grave concern to all Americans that their privacy could be invaded by such an outrageous provision.
John McCain (R- AZ)
If there is ever a graphic example of the broken system that we now have, that certainly has to be it. How many other provisions didn't we find in that 1,000-page bill?
Charles Schumer (D-NY)
This harkens back to the days of [FBI Director] J. Edgar Hoover, when some unknown person could go and snoop on you.
I can't do this any more justice than to say read Kevin Sites account of what happened.
In the "wanna hear something really sick?" category is this article from Al Jazeera this morning:
On the eve of the assault on Falluja, the US military ordered troops to shoot any male on the street between the ages of 15 and 50 if they were seen as a security threat, regardless of whether they had a weapon.
"You are killers, not murderers. You are warriors not war criminals. Don't cross that line."
Those were the words of a US officer to his men before they took part in the recent assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja.
George Bush keeps touting free and open elections for Iraq. Now the date is set for Iraq's election: January 30, 2005. Small problem, though - it's not a free and open election. The Sunnis have called for a boycott and over 30 groups have said the election is not a free election. King Hussein of Jordan says free elections will be impossible.
Maureen Dowd writes in Absolute Power Erupts about Republicans ramping up their power curve because of their belief that they have a mandate. She writes:
The party of moral values deemed that crime pays, shielding Tom DeLay with a rule that someone facing a felony charge can still be a leader.She summarizes with a frightening and powerful observation: "It's a paradoxical game plan: imposing democracy abroad while impeding it here."
The ultracreepy Mr. DeLay de-pantsed Democrats on Friday, sneering: "I understand the Democrat Party's adjustment to their national minority status is frustrating, but their crushing defeat ... should show them that the American people are tired of the politics of personal destruction."
Well, yeah. Watching Bush supporters shred a war hero into a war criminal was tiring.
See George get frisky. He might not be heeding the warning on his ED package. Four hours, nothing. This has been four days.
Here's why the election mattered. Radical Conservatives are demanding payoff for George Bush's "victory" and are working to roll back the clock by decades. They do it by stealth. Yesterday there was a provision attached to a spending bill that will effectively start us down the slippery slope to ban abortion:
The abortion language would bar federal, state and local agencies from withholding taxpayer money from health care providers that refuse to provide or pay for abortions or refuse to offer abortion counseling or referrals. Current federal law, aimed at protecting Roman Catholic doctors, provides such "conscience protection'' to doctors who do not want to undergo abortion training. The new language would expand that protection to all health care providers, including hospitals, doctors, clinics and insurers.Now the Radicals can start the process of pressuring those very groups to reject abortion training. While we have our eyes on the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade they are working to take away a woman's right to choose at the grassroots level. Time to be aware and activated, friends.
The internet is a perfect drug delivery system because you are anonymous, aroused and have role models for these behaviors," Layden said. "To have drug pumped into your house 24/7, free, and children know how to use it better than grown-ups know how to use it - it's a perfect delivery system if we want to have a whole generation of young addicts who will never have the drug out of their mind.So, we were distracted out of Afghanistan by the war in Iraq; now we identify internet porn as the new Osama bin Laden.
Pornography really does, unlike other addictions, biologically cause direct release of the most perfect addictive substance," Satinover said. That is, it causes masturbation, which causes release of the naturally occurring opioids. It does what heroin can't do, in effect.My favorite word from the hearings: erototoxins. Ever hear that one about why Evangelical women get wrinkles around their eyes? You want me to do what? Face it, it's the erototxins.
Every parent knows the fear of waking up to the cries of a sick baby or a child with an ear infection that will not go away. As parents, we both remember the countless times we called that first pediatrician to get answers to every last question.
But far too many parents have another fear, on top of their child’s health. They worry that a sick child means financial ruin. There are more than eight million uninsured children in our nation. These children are less likely to get a routine checkup, or to get treatment for common ailments like asthma. They miss more days of school. It is a disgrace that eight million children lack health insurance in the richest nation on earth.
Our plan starts by providing health insurance for every child in America. Under the Kerry plan, the federal government will pay the full costs for the 20 million children in the Medicaid program. In return, we will ask states to expand coverage to children in families with higher incomes than are currently eligible, as well as low-income adults. This plan will expand coverage to millions of people and provide much needed relief for states that are struggling under persistent growing budgetary pressures.
The plan will also simplify the health care system so we can prevent children from falling through the cracks. Right now, there are millions of kids who are eligible for federal/state health insurance programs but are not signed up.
There are lots of reasons — sometimes the enrollment forms require the skills of an accountant to figure out. Some states make parents sign up every six months in person, making it virtually impossible for a parent who cannot get time off or afford to lose a whole day of work. Some parents do not even know these programs are available.
Under our plan, kids will be signed up automatically at hospitals, community health centers, and schools. And $5 billion in enrollment bonuses will be available to states as an incentive to find uninsured children and keep them covered. Children do not choose their parents. They do not choose whether to have health insurance. Children deserve a good start—with both high quality education and health care. Under our plan, every child in America will have health insurance, and every parent will have a little more peace of mind.
MediaMatters covers a pretty extensive pack of lies by Condi Rice. As long as she's in for a procedure maybe she can get that fibroid removed that's blocking her ability to tell the truth.
51 Americans killed so far in the Fallujah offensive. A suicide car bomber kills five Iraq police at a Baghdad checkpoint today. 1,200 "insurgents" were killed in Fallujah this week. (An insurgent is anyone who doesn't have a uniform - which by extension means any Iraqi civilian, the CIA, Revolutionary Minute Men, kids who don't attend Catholic School, Iranians, Koreans, Democrats, women and their uterii, gays, and anyone who hasn't been saved by Cheez Whiz. Feel free to add your list of insurgents.)
Maureen Dowd writes today in NYT about the toadies in the Bush Cabinet, who instead of being fired are being promoted. She says:
I went to see the magical "Pericles'' at the Shakespeare Theater the other night.
In ancient Greece, the prince of Tyre tires of all the yes men around him. He chooses to trust the one courtier who intrepidly tells him: "They do abuse the king that flatter him. ... Whereas reproof, obedient and in order, fits kings, as they are men, for they may err.''
Not flatter the king? Listen to dissenting viewpoints? Rulers who admit they've erred?
It's all so B.C. (Before Cheney).
Now, in the 21st-century reign of King George II, flattery is mandatory, dissent is forbidden, and erring without admitting error is the best way to get ahead. President Bush is purging the naysayers who tried to temper crusted-nut-bar Dick Cheney and the neocon crazies on Iraq.
First, faith trumped facts. Now, loyalty trumps competence.
Mark Fiore is one of my very favorite cartoonists. This is worth a click.
Bravo, Middle America! Until election day, I was worried about what you were going to do when your job is outsourced, when you find privatized social security isn't enough to live on, when you can't afford healthcare, when you're arrested for something you didn't do and find you have no civil liberties, when your cities and towns and schools are falling apart, when global warming destroys all you've worked for, when a corporation poisons your drinking water (I drink bottled water), or when your sons and daughters are killed in Iraq. Now, I'm not worried anymore. (Thanks, Mr. Rove!)
House Republicans are ramming through legislation that allows members to remain in leadership positions even if they are indicted by state grand juries. This is provisionally called the DeLay Justice Proposal. I guess that moral values thing the Republicans trumpet doesn't include "Thou shalt not worship false idols."
And the US military won't allow the Red Crescent into Fallujah to provide humaitarian aid. 800 dead civilians. Executions of Iraqi prisoners. Desecration of mosques. That hearts-and-minds campaign isn't going so well.
Dragonballyee outlines this stealth move by the Bush Administration and the FDA to ban RU-486.
Another incident in Donald Rumsfeld's "winning hearts and minds" campaign. The video and photo is here (not for the weak of heart, friends).
US investigates Falluja killing
The US military is looking into whether an American marine in Falluja shot dead a severely wounded Iraqi insurgent at point-blank range.
Television footage shows US soldiers entering a building as injured prisoners lie on the floor.
The images of the alleged point-blank shooting of an Iraqi insurgent were taken by an NBC reporter embedded with the US troops in the Sunni city under assault.
THE 23rd SIGH
Colin Powell resigned. I'm going to bet that someday he's going to tell George Bush to bite his ass. Hopefully the only guy with a shred of decency in the Bush Administration got away with at least a sliver of his reputation intact.
Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, isn't painting a rosy picture of the Administration's pursuit of Osama bin Laden. Scheuer says, "Our leaders continue to say that we're making strong headway against this problem. And I think we are not."
Ah, the hypocrites are at it, casting stones at their fellow citizens in blue states. And they are living in big, southern, hypocritical, glass houses.
BOSTON If blue states care less about moral values, why are divorce rates so low in the bluest of the blue states? It's a question that intrigues conservatives, as much as it emboldens liberals.
As researchers have noted, the areas of the country where divorce rates are highest are also frequently the areas where many conservative Christians live.
Kentucky, Mississippi and Arkansas, for example, voted overwhelmingly for constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage. But they had three of the highest divorce rates in 2003, based on figures from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics.
The lowest divorce rates are largely in the blue states: the Northeast and the upper Midwest. And the state with the lowest divorce rate was Massachusetts, home to John Kerry, the Kennedys and same-sex marriage.
Watch this video. The title ryhmes with the headline. Rated R, friends.
There were 58 US soldiers killed this week in Iraq this week. 31 of them were killed in the siege of Fallujah, along with over 1,200 Iraqi "insurgents" and an unspecified number of innocent civilians. Since I missed remarking on the century mark of US military deaths that have occurred since George Bush declared mission accomplished, I thought this Sunday morning would be a good time to review the deaths as reported on Anti-War.com:
American Soldiers Killed
Since war began: 1,176
Since "mission accomplished": 1,039
Since "handover" to Iraq: 315
Americans soldiers wounded: 8,612
BI-PARTISANSHIP, n. When conservative Republicans work together with moderate Republicans to pass legislation Democrats hate.
Always nice to get to that century mark. 1,000 "insurgents" and an undefined number of Iraqi citizens were killed in Fallujah this week. Fallujah was once a city of 250,000 to 300,000 people. Now it's a city of the dead. And where are all those people who used to live there? Expelled into the desert. To die. (The nighttime temperatures are dipping into the 40s Fahrenheit.)
