Archive of old Left Hand Path front page stories:
August
1, 2005 A
recent survey of Americans which aimed to examine the religious
beliefs and scriptural/historical misconceptions revealed
some interesting aspects of American pseudo-Christianity.
Perhaps the most interesting and most telling was the erroneous
assumption of 3/4 of Americans that somewhere in the Bible it
says: "God helps those who help themselves." Not
only is this famous Ben Franklin quote nowhere in the Bible, but
the entire political/economic philosophy that it is based upon
is utterly anti-Biblical. This drove home for me
the technique that the corporate right wing has used to distort
and twist the overt socialism of the Bible into the rabid DIY
crony capitalism we see today. This excerpt from the
article in Harpers situates this lunacy in more empirical terms:
In 2004, as a share of our economy, we
ranked second to last, after Italy, among developed countries
in government foreign aid. Per capita we each provide fifteen
cents a day in official development assistance to poor
countries. And it’s not because we were giving to private
charities for relief work instead. Such funding increases our
average daily donation by just six pennies, to twenty-one
cents. It’s also not because Americans were too busy taking
care of their own; nearly 18 percent of American children
lived in poverty (compared with, say, 8 percent in Sweden). In
fact, by pretty much any measure of caring for the least among
us you want to propose—childhood nutrition, infant
mortality, access to preschool—we come in nearly last among
the rich nations, and often by a wide margin. The point is not
just that (as everyone already knows) the American nation
trails badly in all these categories; it’s that the
overwhelmingly Christian American nation trails badly
in all these categories, categories to which Jesus paid
particular attention.
Some other interesting ignorance includes 12% who think that
Joan of Ark was Noah's (of the Ark) wife.
And then there's Judy
Miller, who is probably the source of the treasonous
leak of Valerie Plame's CIA work.
May
11, 2005 I was thinking of a new bumper magnet ribbons to
irritate conservative voters who deep down realize that the GOP
Jesus Bullies Inc. of Dixie, Texas have lead us over a
cliff. Imagine a completely normal bumper magnet ribbon
with a background of the American flag,
red, white and blue--just like the ones you already see,
except that instead of the "Support Our Troops"
admonition, it would read: "Made in China." Or,
how about this... a black ribbon, highlighted in white so it's
visible on a black Prius, which reads" Pray for Oil."
Or, a red one with Chinese Maoist art background, star, hammer
and sickle. And this one reads: "Shop Walmart."
April
20, 2005: The
new pope, or "pabstfuhrer" made the news last year for
demanding of bishops to inform priests that any overtly
pro-choice parishioners, particularly a certain unnamed Catholic
political candidate, should not be given Communion. I
guess that's a good way for a former Nazi youth and reactionary
conservative "No-man" to start things off. It's
bad enough to have these fascists controlling all the wings of
government, but now they have a stranglehold on the Pope, who
they have recently transformed into a sort of
"safe-for-evangelicals" spiritual Head
Honcho.
April
13, 2005: After witnessing George W. Bush at the
Pope's funeral, and noting that he hasn't attended one single
funeral for an American soldier killed in his intentionally
misguided wars: "Maybe the president only goes to funerals
of people whose death he wasn't involved in." Arianna
Huffington said this in a beautifully ironic piece in which
she also points out that his stance on pedophile priests was
questionable: "This is a man who wouldn't allow a priest to
become a bishop unless he was unequivocally opposed to
masturbation, premarital sex and condoms. So, in his perversion
pecking order, you had to be dead-set against
"self-love" but when it came to buggering little kids,
there was some wiggle room." Enough of that deranged pontiff
already. As if it weren't enough to see gov'mint hatin'
right wingers suddenly become patriotic jackbooters, now we have
to watch formerly frothing anti-Catholic Evangelicals suddenly
become Papists. We also found out on NPR today that the
Vatican built an astronomical observatory in Arizona--no doubt
to generate some bad research to prop up their Intelligent
Design nonsense. But, perhaps the best thing this week was
Arthur Silber's
article on the dramatic upsurge in Authoritarian Relativism, of
which David Horowitz is the archetype. Read the
article, and suddenly you'll understand exactly what's going on
in America today. By the way, bold
irrationalism and anti-intellectualism are one of the plethora
of symptoms of incipient fascism.
Last on today's list of goodies is an article that might be a
useful. Do you have one of those Republican friends who
can plug their ears when the party talks about values and God,
but gets all excited about tax cuts and tort reform? One
of those nihilistic optimists who believes they will one day
become wealthy and retire? Let
Beth Schulman slap them around. Incidentally, during
the past four years I have not had a pay raise (state employee
wage freeze), and my taxes actually went up. They cut my
state taxes a bit, but my Federal tax went up even though my
income was actually lower this year than the year before.
Yes, you heard it right. Bush raised my taxes, and I'm
definitely in the middle class--not even on the high end of
it. Since the GOP took over the country, my overall tax
rate is increasing as the burden shifts to other fees.
Property tax increases during the last five years easily exceed
those of the previous eight in the same house. All the
while our fascist governor joyously watches as the whole thing
falls apart before his eyes. So, how about you? Did
you get any tax breaks this year? How about last
year? Who is getting those breaks anyway? If we had
children, we'd get a break, and we'd deserve it. But, by
picking families with children, aren't they picking winners and
losers? Isn't that something they rail against? It's
one thing to be dogmatic, but quite another to be so blatantly
incoherent. No offense to those who take exemptions
for children. More power to you. I'm merely pointing
to a glaring inconsistency. Besides, that deduction hardly
covers the expense of childrearing, and the fact that you and
your spouse both have to work, own two cars, cell phones, and
suburban commuter home in order to support that lifestyle, it's
seriously difficult to argue that the current constellation of
GOP bureaucrats has an honest interest in the well-being of the
families that make up this country.
April
9, 2005: Interesting days lately. The Schiavo debacle
seems to have put Jeb Bush's political future in the
dustbin. George W. is still going, largely because he kept
a bit of distance from it. But, he recently committed a
blatantly impeachable offense by boldfacedly violating the
Constitution. It may never make it onto the fascist media,
but the violation is based on this misleading demagoguery.
He stated: ""There is no trust fund -- just IOUs that
I saw firsthand. Imagine, the retirement security for
future generations is sitting in a filing cabinet."
If you will compare that remark to Article XIV, section 4 of the
Constitution written by those "founding fathers" he
harps about all the time:
Section 4. The validity of the public debt
of the United States, authorized by law, including
debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for
services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall
not be questioned.
There can only be two explanations for this. Either
they are so ignorant of the Constitution that they didn't know
this was illegal, or they knew full well what they were
doing. If they didn't know, then their interest in the
Constitution is a facade. If they did know, then their
interest in the Constitution is a facade. Follow
me?
The good news for the week was the speech
made by Jim Wallis of Soujourner Magazine at a local
Minneapolis Presbyterian Church. See, the liberal
Christians are finding their voice, and they are full of
righteous indignation at the Supply Side Jesus of the Bushies.
It's available on the MPR archive on-line if you click the link
above. Highly recommended listening if you haven't yet
lost all hope for the entire Christian faith.
April
Fool's Day 2005: New
essay on Terry Schiavo, the Pope's Feeding Tube and the scramble
to keep Tom DeLay alive.
March 30, 2005: The biggest bombshell in years.
Paul Wolfowitz appears to have let his penis dictate US foreign
policy. Unlike in the case of Bill Clinton, where the sex
was just a playful romp with a young thing who posed only a risk
to Clinton himself, various sources are stating that Wolfowitz
(a Jewish Neocon) has been involved in a long relationship with
a Tunisian Muslim who grew up in Saudi Arabia. The
really shocking part is that she is a senior official at the
World Bank, where comb-licking Paul is now working, and she has
a long history of lobbying for war to promote
"democracy" in the Middle East. Info on
the paramour, Shaha Ali Riza: Link
1, Link
2. As you can see, this scandal makes the stained blue
dress look rather dull. But, the media is terrified to
touch it in this country. Imagine the reaction if we were
to find that a sexual relationship led to a war that has
produced only problems and death. Meanwhile, I've been
cheering on the minions of the Christian Mandatory Life Gestapo
in Florida. Keep it up! Don't give up now! The
more extreme you get, the more absurd your agenda will seem to
Americans. The outrageous actions of the Christian right
in our government are uplifting my spirit. Add to that the
impending doom of Tom DeLay, and the smell of conservative moral
decay and electoral defeat is growing. Did
you know that DeLay chose to "kill" his 65 year-old
father in a very similar situation in 1988?
March 25, 2005: 10 Dead Indians in Minnesota and a
brain dead white woman kept alive against her will by groveling,
showboat Media-Christians. That's pretty much the
extent of NPR and MPR's coverage of news today. Over and
over and over again. Surely, the Red Lake school shooting
is profoundly newsworthy. Yet, Medicaid/Medicare and other
government health programs can't even pay to keep people with
functioning brains alive and healthy because the very same Media
Christians are also on a slash and burn campaign to destroy
those health programs. They also oppose mental health
care, largely on financial grounds. A non-media patient in a persistent
vegetative state would have lost the tube due to lack of funds
long ago--especially if she had been on a reservation. So much for their culture of life.
What might have caused Jeff Weise to kill his
schoolmates? Fellow Native Americans among them? The
media wants us to think it's because he wore a black trench
coat--like the Columbine High kids--and posted messages on a
Nazi blog or something like that. They tell the sad
story of his family, but don't stop to ask what caused all of
these things together. [May 11, 2005 update: It turns out
that a combination of anti-depressant happy doctors in league
with the pharmaceutical industry are more than a little to
blame--much more than any Ozzy Osbourne or Negativland
album. Jeff was over-medicated and had been giving lots of
warning signs. ] Meanwhile, Mr. George W. Bush
apparently thinks that Red Lake isn't as appealing for a
photo-op and congressional energy. The protesters in front
of the Florida hospice aren't likely to move to Red Lake to
protest for mental health and conventional health care on
reservations--which certainly could have prevented the murder of
children. Could it be poverty and racism that
caused the event? The unthinkable. No, they
say. It was his own bad choices that put him in that
situation. So, what do these two news barrages have in
common lurking behind the stories? Self-deception, poverty
and racism. In short, hypocrisy. Bullshit.
I
recall President Clinton made rapid trips to Columbine and other
schools where shootings occurred. He had his priorities
and morals in order--even if he was using it for a photo-op. At
least he knew where decency would dictate he should be in order
to extract the most benefit from the media coverage.
Rather than give us a few tears and some outrage over the plight
of Native Americans and school safety, we see a throng of
religious wackos making fools of themselves as they subvert
constitutional liberties to assert the "will of
God." Undoubtedly the secular wing of the Republican
party is having a hard time biting their tongues. Isn't it
supposed to be commies and liberals who want to control our
lives? The bright side is that we see yet again that
the Bushies can't do anything right.
At Jeff Nygaard's website I
found this astounding and ominous "quote of the week"
that will probably serve as a frame for the postmodern artwork
of the Bush regime:
http://www.nygaardnotes.org/issues/nn0274.html
"Quote" of the
Week:
This is Ron Suskind,
former Wall Street Journal reporter and author, writing in the
October 17 New York Times Magazine about the current resident
of the White House:
“In the summer of 2002,
after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House
didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen
Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He
expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me
something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend – but
which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush
presidency.
“The
aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the
reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who
‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of
discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about
enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off.
‘That's not the way the world really works anymore,’ he
continued. ‘We're an empire now, and when we act, we create
our own reality. And while you're studying that reality –
judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other
new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things
will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of
you, will be left to just study what we do.’”
Feb 24 2005: What's more disgusting than Bill
Clinton's spooge on the Oval Office carpet? How about Carl
Rove's (or someone else's?) poop soiling the Lincoln Bedroom after gay sex with a
prostitute who was given security clearance to pretend to be a
journalist? Since Bush can do nothing wrong, I
wonder if that means that suddenly sodomy isn't so scurrilous.
Perhaps we are standing on the dawning of the Queer Eye for the
Third Reich. What's next? Perhaps the Pope will come
out of the closet before he sucks his last gasp through his
tracheotomy tube. If
you haven't seen Bill Maher, Lesley Stahl and Robin Williams
talk about "Jeff Gannon", don't miss it. .
Imbolc (Groundhog Day/State of the Union) 2005:
Supreme Holy Commander in Chief comes out of underground bunker
cave beneath Washington DC. He sees his shadow. Six
more months before we can even talk about bringing any
soldiers come home from Iraq. I've been on Internet hiatus
lately. Election blues combined with Winter blues.
Not much point in posting political rants these days. I
decided to ignore this part of the website for a while, and work
on other parts. Captain Davis is
back with new fun stuff! For some odd reason, I have a sudden urge
to become a fashion mogul. The hottest fashions for the
2005 year will be Medieval. Wimples and chain mail
tunics. Women in veils and men fighting in the Crusade
against the Moor. Instead of that recent surf-Christian
with bead necklace and open collar look, and the baggy gangstah
look, it'll be monk's habits--Cistercians, Dominicans,
Franciscans, each in their "colors." Instead of
urban cowboys, we'll have chivalric knights. Horses will
make a big comeback, and motorcycles will replace SUV's.,
because they're more like horses.
November 3, 2004: Kerry lost the race...or should I
say Diebold won the race.
September 12, 2004: The optimism for Kerry's victory
is dwindling, but the Return of the Son of the AWOL Bush Scandal
has gone much further this time around than ever before.
About time... Documents
have been examined, and although the Whitehouse is claiming
that there are suspicious details in the typefaces in the
documents, further examination showed that the same fonts are in
documents officially released by the Whitehouse in regards to
defending the president, and the manufacturer said that
typewriters with the raised th were available since 1931.
So much for that argument. CBS is standing behind the
story and it looks like the story has finally got some
traction. What does this mean in the long run? As
I've indicated elsewhere, I'm sure that fully 1/3 of American
voters would vote for Bush even if they saw photos of him
sodomizing Iraqi prisoners and eating Iraqi babies. News
like this surely won't dissuade them, especially since their
enormous tax cuts are at stake. But, for the moth-brained
swing voters, and for veterans (who aren't moth-brained), this
story presents a very big problem. If it was an
impeachable offense to lie about having sex with an intern in
the Oval Office, then what degree of naughtiness is it when a
man a) LIES about using his family's wealth and power to
get out of going to Vietnam b) LIES about what he did while in
the military--nothing, except take money and use millions of
military training dollars to train a man who had no intention of
defending his country. c) LIES about the documents that
prove he lied? It appears to me that these lies will
be the final undoing of Bush, assuming that the documents are
not dismissed as false. If Bush really did lack the
character to rise to the challenge of the coveted position he
was granted by virtue of his family power, could any veteran
worth his or her salt find a good reason to let this man be
commander in chief of the military? I think not. President
Bush's own Fox Network is attempting to refute this all, of
course. (Oh, and if you haven't seen the Doonesbury
series on Rupert Murdoch, go now!)
August 5, 2004: Well folks, unless Carl Rove can dream
up some really effective scam to throw off John Kerry's support,
it looks like George W. Bush is toast in the next
election. The symptoms of desperation are everywhere and
the writing is on the wall. This
article nicely summarizes the mess that is destroying the
illusion of the Bush administration's competence. It
was sly how they called for the code orange in New York
just before their convention. That way there will be a
stronger police force to protect him from protesters. The
one problem they didn't foresee is that Bush's lame duck status
has for at least a year been causing fractures within the
GOP itself. I doubt the 2004 RNC convention will turn into
a replay of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, but
something tells me that they will have to work hard to cover up
the cracks in their historically unified party. For
more details on this theme, click here.
July 31, 2004: The cowardly bully president of the
United States is boosting the fascist format of his reelection
campaign. In case you hadn't noticed before, Bush's
handlers have done an incredible job restricting attendance at
Bush and Cheney appearances to fans and supporters. Bush
hasn't even had to speak to an audience that contains a real
skeptic or critic--which of course means that the media has also
been licking his bum for four years. Tony Blair
demonstrates courage and character, even though I still think
he's too fascist. He responds to intense criticism from
his critics in the House of Commons, and the British media,
which is startlingly more free and honest than ours.
Anyway, there are interesting
stories floating around now about the intensive screening
tactics used for Bush campaign activities. But,
my favorite irony of the week is this: driving around
Minnesota and Wisconsin during the last month I have noticed
something very, very interesting. While there are not huge
numbers of Kerry stickers on cars, there are quite a few.
In contrast, the number of Bush-Cheney stickers is very
low. More interestingly, the majority of them are subtle
and obscure enough to require a "Cracker Jack" decoder
ring. I saw one that looked like a Interstate freeway sign
for highway "W 04". The others are just big
"W 04" signs. Does this subliminal, wink-wink
promotion suggest to you that the Republicans are embarrassed to
show their support publicly? Fascinating. They'll
vote for Bush, but they hide in shame, opting for secret
communication between the occupants of large American made 4
wheel drive vehicles.
July 5, 2004: We just got back from a month long
trip to Spain. The
best part of our trip to Spain was the fact that we were there
when Ronald Reagan died. It was an incredibly merciful
absence in that we missed all the absurd adulation and
eulogizing for the second dumbest and second worst president in
history. I just can't stand to listen to conservatives
tell lies about him. The good news is that it's really
starting to look like the DUMBEST and WORST president in history
is going to lose the next election. Anyway, Spain was a
lot of fun and we shot many pictures. We spent most of the
time in the area known as Galicia, which is the Northwest corner
of the country. We had a nifty apartment on the side of a
steep hill overlooking the Sea of Ons (actually, a fjord).
I listened to some news, looked at graffiti and talked to lots
of people. My general conclusion about Spanish politics is
that racism and xenophobia are a huge force there now--similar
to, but more intensely than America. Immigrants are causing a strong upsurge
of skinheads and fascists. There are many Latin Americans,
Africans and Poles moving to Spain to work. In cities like
Barcelona, and probably large cities in the South, which we
avoided on this trip, one sees the largest concentrations. In
the central areas of Castilla and Leon, the amount of diversity
I saw was fairly small compared to Minneapolis. Madrid
and Burgos were great examples of how areas with limited
exposure to diversity can lose their minds when they are forced
to confront it. Every night on the news was a report or a
poll talking about Spanish feelings toward immigrants. It
was clear from the statistics that nearly two-thirds of
Spaniards think that the immigrants are threatening their way of
life. Most Spaniards I talked to about this were extremely
agitated, and felt that their country was being overrun by
foreigners. On the other hand, I looked around and saw
about as many immigrants in Madrid as you might expect to see in
Brainerd Minnesota. Nothing even close to what you would
see in Minneapolis. That reaction depressed me a
lot. The upside was
that I had a really good time talking with the Cuban and
Ecuadoran immigrants working in the hotels and
restaurants. It was especially fun because it was
immediately clear that the white Spaniards really hated seeing
the customers fraternize with their immigrant employees.
In conclusion, I recommend that liberal American tourists avoid
central Spain, where the xenophobia and nationalism are
strongest.
May 23, 2004: It's about damned time Americans on both
sides of the Republican/Democrat shenanigan parties started
waking up to how abysmally awful the Bush administration has
been. This
article from the Nation gets right to the point in this
closing remark:
And how pathetic is it that the only cable
network really grappling with the media's failure is Comedy
Central? Let's give the last word to the Daily Show's
incomparable Stephen Colbert: "The journalists I know love
America, but now all anybody wants to talk about is the bad
journalists--the journalists that hurt America.... Who didn't
uncover the flaws in our prewar intelligence? Who gave a free
pass on the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection? Who dropped Afghanistan
from the headlines at the first whiff of this Iraqi snipe hunt?
The United States press corps, that's who."
Shame on the "journalists" of every newspaper and
TV station of America. It's not like there wasn't
sufficient evidence to lock them up years ago. It will be
interesting to watch Bush fall from power and grace, but I'm
more interested in watching lickspittles like Dan Rather explain
to us why they never saw any reason to ask the questions the
Bill Moyers did, or for that matter, just about any reporter in
England. There is one reason and one reason alone that 2/3
of English people were opposed to the war in Iraq, while about
3/4 of Americans were in favor: sycophants and prostitutes in
the American media. Since the torture abuse scandal
has surfaced, I have not seen fit to make any more additions
than this to my political section of my website. Barbara
Ehrenreich has a really provocative article on the Abu Graib
scandal. Anyone who still takes Bush seriously is blatantly
uninterested in democracy and happiness for anyone but
themselves. If that whole story of shame doesn't put an
end to the Fourth Reich, then it won't matter any more. It
just won't matter... I'm working on my garden
now. More updates there.
May 13, 2004: You gotta love Tom Tomorrow.
Another
dead-on-center cartoon skewers the idiocy chakra of America.
May 11, 2004: During the Senate discussion of the
shocking pictures of torture in Iraqi prisons at the hands of
soldiers and mercenary
corporate interrogators, Republican Senator Jim Inhofe of
Oklahoma said:
"I have to say I'm probably not the only
one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than
we are by the treatment. The idea that these prisoners, you
know they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in
cellblock 1A or 1B these prisoners, they're murderers, they're
terrorists, they're insurgents, many of them probably have
American blood on their hands, and here we're so concerned
about the treatment of those individuals." [source
of text is a blog page, but I personally heard this remark
live]
And narcotics addict Rush Limbaugh said:
"This is no different than what happens
at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we're going to ruin
people's lives over it, and we're going to hamper our military
effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they
had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every
day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people,
you ever heard of emotional release? You [ever] heard of need to
blow some steam off?" [CBS
News]
Crackpot commentator Michael Savage responded by posting
unseen pictures of people falling from the World Trade Center
with the suggestion that these images should be shown to
"your liberal friends." I guess that the logic
here is that, in spite of all evidence to the contrary (and none
to support the idea), the naked piles of Iraqis with bags over
their heads is supposed to be a just compensation for the attack
on 9/11 committed by extremist Muslims from Saudi Arabia and
Egypt. He doesn't like to admit that Saddam Hussein was
way ahead of America in feeling very nervous about Al Qaeda and
Bin Laden. Later, he decided to suggest that
this torture is not only appropriate, but insufficient. He
wants more.
It's at times like these that I really have to confront the
ugly truth. These people are clearly missing an important
part of the human soul that apparently has evolved over
millennia. I mean, how can you argue with a person who
says things like this? If America is to be taken over by
people who think like this, can we possibly maintain even a
shred of credibility in the international arena as a voice for
human rights and democracy? I recall the Clinton years
when frothing and ranting Republicans spying on the sex life of
Bill Clinton claiming, along with blazing boors like William
Bennett, that they were outraged by the fact that Democrats and
the vast majority of the rest of the planet did not feel the
same sort of vitriolic hatred toward the man who dared commit
adultery in the Oval Office. Now we have these very same
hypocrites whining that these horrific pictures really aren't
that big of a deal, and that it's just a political maneuver for
an election year. The latter may be true--that it is being
used as a political lever to pry Bush out of the
Whitehouse. However, the notion that these pictures don't
raise profound and earth shattering questions about the motives
and competence of the people Bush has chosen to take over Iraq
for him. Hence, I am outraged at the outrage over the
outrage.
Lastly, whoever thought it would be a good idea to take
pictures of this torture? Why are there pictures at
all? Has anyone thought about that? It seems to me
that if you were really serious about committing illegal
violations of the Geneva Convention that you wouldn't want to
have unnecessary documentation. That these
acts occurred is unspeakably horrible. However, why
are there pictures? The possible explanations that occur
to me are even more disturbing than the torture. . .
April 27, 2004: Al Qaeda endorses George W. Bush for
president in 2004. Reported in the New York Review of
Books, announced
on CNN's Crossfire, Carville said: "The statement from
al Qaeda following the Madrid bombings reported in this week's
"New York Review of Books" said the organization hoped
George Bush would win reelection -- quote -- "because he
acts with force, rather than wisdom or shrewdness and his
religious fanaticism will rouse our Islamic nation, has been
shown."
April 11, 2004: The
Weird People (Neocons) behind Bush. Another great
history.
April 7, 2004: Tom
Tomorrow's cartoon speaks volumes about the spirit of the times.
March 31, 2004: Christian
Taliban--I already have a
page dedicated to this topic, and this article by Stephen
Pizzo makes a nice addition to that page. He gives a
couple of really juicy quotes that I'm going to cite here to
tease you to read the piece:
"I would like to outlaw
contraception...contraception is disgusting – people using
each other for pleasure." -Joseph
Scheidler, Pro-Life
Action League
"I don't think Christians should use
birth control. You consummate your marriage as often as you
like – and if you have babies, you have babies."
Randall Terry, Operation Rescue
See, this is what gives you the absolute grounds to
disregard, disrespect and distrust the Pro-Life movement, even
if you do oppose abortion. In a Cheap
Labor Conservative world, it makes perfect sense to outlaw
abortion, eliminate birth control and suppress sex education and
condoms. There are only two possible explanations for a
person who simultaneously supports all of those issues.
Either they are indeed trying to establish a Christian
equivalent to the Taliban, or they are implementing an evil plan
that will further help them drive down wages and keep people
enslaved to those low-paying jobs. It's pretty evident to
me that the truth is that both motives are at play. I
think it apropos to mention that one of Bush's first actions in
the sex-ed policy arena was to stop assessing the outcomes
of the new abstinence based sex education on the basis of teen
pregnancy rates, but rather on the grounds of attitude
assessments designed to show that children had learned the
"Just say no to sex" propaganda. The earlier
program, which was showing impressive results in reducing
pregnancies AND abortions, was replaced by this draconian agenda
that could have been dreamed up in the schools of Afghanistan
before 2001.
March 12, 2004: He
can't walk on water, but he can make you lay out pavement so his
feet never touch the ground. On a Bush campaign trip
to Gettysburg/Eisenhower Natl Park and elsewhere, the petulant
order has been "His feet don't touch the dirt."
Let's see, does this mean that he thinks he's royalty? or,
does it mean that he's just a flaming jerk who loves to see his
blue collar slaves do all this unnecessary work for him?
or, does it mean that he has some bizarre, obsessive compulsive
disorder? Am I missing something, or is there a
justifiable reason for ANYONE to demand that concrete slabs be
laid out on a golf course?
March 10, 2004: The
GOP finally figures out that Bush is America's biggest problem.
An interesting article from the Houston Chronicle--that's in
Texas dah-lin.
March 7, 2004: How
to fight the Cheap Labor Conservatives. An excellent article
on what the GOP agenda is really about, and how to beat them at their own war
of words. The core of the plan is to use the slogan "Cheap Labor
Conservative" at least as much, if not more, than these pus bags use the
hypocritical buzz phrase "Big Government Liberal." To add
salt to the wound afterwards, be sure to point out that the vast
majority of new jobs created are in the public/government sector,
while manufacturing and corporate employment are all in a
holding pattern or continuing to decline. Drunken sailor
spending by the cheap labor conservatives results in the biggest
expansion of government and debt since FDR. The higher they
can get unemployment, the lower your wages can be. It's
that simple. Of course, we can't forget the role that demonic
corporations like Walmart play in destroying the middle
class and enslaving the third world so you can buy that cheepo
home theater system--assuming the cheap labor conservatives
don't continue to use their tax cuts to fund outsourcing your
job to India. No wonder the GOP hates labor unions.
March 3, 2004: Right
wing benefactor Richard A Haynes, CEO of the chic Urban Outfitters store,
has just gotten into hot water for selling a T-shirt that says "Voting
is for Old People" and then responded to criticism by saying that it isn't
his job to support a political agenda. Here's a flaming asshole who
thinks that Americans are as stupid as he is. Let's hope he's
mistaken. OK you 20 something liberals, are you going to keep shopping at
this place? I didn't think so.
February 23, 2004: A
Bush Man--truly disturbing video ironically and sarcastically promoting Bush. Creepy
stuff, but eloquent in light of current events. Too bad the Democrats
don't have the guts to run campaign commercials like this one.
Unfortunately, the humor is based a bit too deeply in the redneck stereotype
rather than that of the East Coast aristocracy--like Kerry too, by the way.
January 30, 2004: Let
Their People Go! Ted Rall's eloquent satire captures the very essence of my
criticisms of the Bush-Hussein War. The WMD's aren't the only lie, and
the Bush isn't the only liar. It's much, much bigger than
that.
Conservative
sportsmen are turning against Bush on the basis of his full frontal assault
on wilderness areas where even 40 Texan hunter's clubs like to go kill
animals. Hey, doesn't that mean that Bush is losing his grip on the
NRA? Hmmm. Maybe all we need to do is to hold our noses and embrace
the gun lobby, and we can put Carl Rove, Dick Chaney and John Ashcroft back
into the private sector.
December 30, 2003: Twilight
of the Neocons? @ Billmon's
Whiskey Bar This is a really splendid article that explains
the history of the Neocon movement (that's "neo" as in
"new" and "con" as in "conman" who
pretends to be fiscally "conservative" to get elected,
then pulls the fascist takeover of government.). Richard Perle, the Neocon Sauron has
published a new
manifesto of aggression against other terrorist states like
Syrian and Korea--and possibly France. No, I'm not
joking. See for yourself. The monolithic Right
Wing Rank and File is starting to show signs of cracking. [ here
are some signs that the right isn't alright with Bush now--don't
forget that the CATO
institute has been criticizing Bush for several years now
]. For more
info on Iraq, click here. For more
info on Afghanistan, click here. E.J.
Dionne's analysis gives more details and analysis of the
implosion of the Bush Regime.
Every Neocon who supported the Iraq war AND has forced
someone to look at a picture of an aborted fetus should
look at this video which shows the effects of depleted
uranium bombs in the first attack on Iraq on the fetuses of
Iraqi children. Unfortunately, I'm sure most of them will
justify it to themselves by noting that they're not white or
Christian, so they'd go to hell anyway. This website (The
Memory Hole) which portrays the suffering of American GI's in
Iraq and Afghanistan also ought to be on their required reading
list.
December 8,
2003: At the risk of giving the appearance of gloating over
the endless string of misfortunes for Bush, I am pleased to hear
that Newt
Gingrich is now ripping into the Bush administration's Iraq
policy. For those liberals reading this who think that
Newt is a lunatic dimwit, let me be the first to tell you that
Newt has learned a lot since he dropped off the radar. He
is perhaps one of the most intelligent and informed of the
conservative thinkers. I don't want to suggest that I
agree with his ideas, but I willingly admit that he is one of
the most formidable minds on the right wing. What
this indicates to me is that the monolithic unity of the neocons
is starting to fall apart. Since Kissinger and James Baker
III made a stern recommendation against the Iraq war before it
happened, and since Gingrich is now breaking ranks with those
who are still kissing Bush's rank hindquarters, it is safe to
assume that right wing dissent is a force that Bush cannot
simply hide or ignore. Could this be the beginning of the
end of the Fourth Reich?
November 23,
2003: Quick news summary--parents of children molested by
Michael Jackson should be arrested for child endangerment and
outrageous stupidity. All people who thought Michael
Jackson should be allowed to have anyone under eighteen in his
home unsupervised should be slapped repeatedly, and then tarred
and feathered. The guy looks like a vampire and has a very
dubious past. This is a story of how fame makes people
into idiots. Michael should indeed be locked up, but we
all knew that way back when he bought the elephant man's
skeleton and traveled with a chimp. What took everyone so
long? The same idiocy that is probably going to keep
Limbaugh out of prison. As for the ultra creepy
Jackson, media covered it wall-to-wall to distract us from the
pitiful mess in England. The protesters have been ignored,
their numbers distorted and Bush has behaved like an invading
barbarian tribe. He
brought five chefs that deeply offended the queen, who
thought that hers ought to be plenty good for a hayseed Atilla
the Hun who offended her last time he visited with childish
behavior and an impertinent question about black sheep in her
family. As if that weren't enough, the high security/no
protest viewing tour involved landing
helicopters in the queen's gardens, causing tens of thousands of
dollars of damage to rare and very old specimens.
British news sources say the queen is more angry than when she
found out Charles was marrying a commoner.
November 7,
2003: Michael
Moore responds to lying liars attacking "Bowling for
Columbine." Great supporting evidence, video
outtakes from the free gun deal at the bank, etc. Best of
all, in spite of all the fraudulent attacks being promoted on
the Clinton News Network and Fox, not one single person or
organization--not even the NRA--has sued him over
this.
November 2,
2003: George
W. Bush, King of Kings, Lord of Lords. Chosen by Jesus
Christ to lead us through the aftermath of 9/11. For
some time now, Associated Press has been issuing the most
starkly religious "coincidental" images of Bush with a
diaphanous halo, and other outlandish images and statements that blur his role as
the president of a constitutionally secular nation, and the
manifestation of the latest phase of the Crusades against the
Muslim heretics. He has been talking out of both sides of
his mouth in regards to his position on Islam. While his
outward position has been one of peace and tolerance, his inward
position is revealed by his choices of Franklin Graham and
General Boykin to lead important US post-war activities in
Iraq.
So, Bush
claims that God is behind him. Given a choice between
believing in the idea that God really is backing a venal,
colonial emperor, and believing that His wealth and power are
merely super-effective tools of political prophecy, I’ll take
the latter to explain Bush's apparent clairvoyance and prophetic
skills. In speaking to Texan evangelist James Robinson
before his "election",
Bush said, surely in the deepest spiritual sincerity he could
muster: 'I feel like God wants me to run for
President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going
to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be
easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.' It
seems odd that his campaign would undermine that basic drive
inasmuch as he promised to minimize American military and nation
building activities.
The same
Guardian article also demonstrates how Bush is driving liberals
to unprecedented insanity. “A woman rammed a car
carrying her children, aged three, five and eight, into a
building where Bush was campaigning in Mississippi yesterday.
Betina Mixon, 29, was dragged away at gunpoint and charged with
aggravated assault.”
Oh, and
if that's not enough lunacy and hypocrisy for this week, then
there's the continuing saga of that supposed junky
Limbaugh. Sabina
C. Becker articulated many liberals' glee and loathing in this
article, slamming the hopped-up radio nazi for not taking
even the hint of personal responsibility for his problem.
In point of fact, all evidence militates against his story,
suggesting that like many unrepentant addicts, he is still a
bold-faced liar who blames his doctor and pharmacist for his
habit. Lack of evidence for back surgery or even back
problems makes us all wonder just how bad the pain was if he can
sit at that microphone hollering, and swing away on the golf
course. It's hard to say if a lying junky will do as
well as that convicted felon Oliver North in getting a decent
job. Still, we can all feel that profound sense of karmic
justice and well-deserved dearth of pity for him.
October 24th 2003: Rush Limbaugh, whose illegal purchases of "hospital
heroin" were as high as a hundred pills a day, is headed
for a secret treatment center. No doubt his lawyers
recommended this. I have my doubts as to whether or not he
is even addicted to this stuff. There is no way he could
have been consuming all that junk. Either he was selling
it, or he was giving it away at drug parties. The latter
seems more likely, given that he probably doesn't need the sort
of extra income a hundred pills a day would give him. But,
whatever is the case, he claims to be in treatment, and rumors
have it that he is in a really new age facility in
Arizona. This
article gives a hilarious picture of the possible scenario.
If he really is addicted, it's kind of satisfying to know that
Oxycodone addiction is extremely difficult to kick. He's
going to be very sick. And he's going to be surrounded by
liberal, touchy-feely therapists. It makes me feel good to
know he's in hell, even if he will probably dodge the prison
system that he karmically deserves far more than any drug addict
on the entire planet. Jerry Garcia is probably laughing
his ass off in heaven. As Libby
Hicks said, "...there are bound to have been 11-year-olds wondering
why Limbaugh was willing to pay blackmailers "substantial amounts of
money" not to tell about his use of legally-prescribed painkillers for his
painful, degenerative disc disease. Journalists don't seem to share
that curiosity. Once again, information that makes no sense is reported as if
it did."
The
Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception:
by David Corn. John
Dean of FindLaw reviews this new book . A systematic
revelation of blatant lying from the White House. Dean
says "Corn has done for George Bush what Ken Starr did for
Bill Clinton: provided evidence that places his presidency in
jeopardy."
October 7th
2003: Tom Tomorrow pointed me to August
J. Pollak, who pointed out this horrible irony: Just in time
for the October 12th anniversary of the brutal beating of
Matthew Shepard, probably at the hands of closeted homosexual
rapist/robbers, the ghoulish harpy king of violent Christian
intolerance, Reverend
Fred Phelps, is putting up a Matthew Shepard Memorial.
This monument is proposed for a park in Casper, Wyoming--the
home state of that other well-known Christian Reconstructionist,
Dick Cheney. [ See also the 365Gay.com
news article about it too ] It hardly seems a mere
coincidence that George
W. Bush has chosen the week of October 12th through the 18th as
"Marriage Protection Week."
July 7, 2003: George Dubyah Bush needs your prayers to
stay in power. Go have a look at the Presidential
Prayer page--fascinating glimpse into the mind of
the postmodern Christian fascist. Oh, and this nice collection
of tidbits and anecdotes about Bush's
record as a pilot and Air Guardsman raises some doubts
as to his "flight readiness." David
Rubenstein tells us about Bush's business acumen during
his tenure at the sinister Carlyle Group (it's humorous).
Irony of the Year: From the U.S. Code, Title 4,
Chapter 1, Section 8(c-d) of the United States of America, in
regards to the proper treatment of our flag.
The flag should never be used as wearing apparel,
bedding, or drapery.
- Title 4, Chapter 1, Section 8(d)
The flag should never be used for advertising purposes
in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on
such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed
or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything
that is designed for temporary use and discard.
In regards to this fact, take
a look at this disturbing story.
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