Rant on Muslims

As a progressive I am horrified at what our government is trying to do to combat terrorism. I am against a lot of it as being unconstitutional, elitist and wrong.

However, it's important to remember that radical Islam is a real and valid threat and those who perpetrate it's horrors are even more deserving of our scorn and opposition. Witness this video. It's a delightful rant which I highly recommend.

I'm Liking John Edwards.

Caught this quote today in a story about John Edwards:

"We need to reform our tax code," Edwards said. "Our current system favors the unearned income of people already doing incredibly well instead of rewarding the work of families trying to get ahead. It has all kinds of loopholes and shelters that lawyers can twist for their wealthy clients. It forces millions of families to hire help to figure out how much they owe."

I like the sound of this a LOT. It says it all.

Then the Republicans come back with '$400 haircuts. John Edwards is rich. Neener neener neener.' How asinine.

Here is the full text of Edwards' remarks.

This is Vile: Cheney's office "Not Part of the Executive Branch"

This is vile.

According to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, "Vice President Cheney exempted his office from the presidential order that establishes government-wide procedures for safeguarding classified national security information. The Vice President asserts that his office is not an “entity within the executive branch.”

After further back and forth, "The Vice President's staff responded by seeking to abolish the agency within the Archives that is responsible for implementing the President's executive order. "

This is bloody amazing and amazingly arrogant! Mr. Cheney seems to think the rules don't apply to him, that he can keep all the secrets he wants and circumvent, avoid or cancel his legal responsibilities.

There is no place hot enough in Hell to accommodate this man's soul.

All Or Nothing

I've been seeing a lot of 'All or Nothing' in various conservative posts and replies around the blogosphere. I've even encountered it in a personal conversation with a few old friends who, surprisingly to me, have become diehard conservatives.

So let me address a few of these misperceptions.

"Liberals want someone else to pay for their health care."
This makes us sound like lazy, shiftless bums, which we are not. We want everyone to pay for everyone's health care. There's a big difference. How would you feel if you heard someone complaining that 'liberals want someone else to pay for the roads,' or 'liberals want someone else to pay for clean water.'

Liberals consider health care to be a public need and a public benefit. If everyone gets health care from the government there will be vast savings reaped by moving the administration of the system out of the hands of profit-driven bureaucrats in huge, unacccountable insurance companies. There will be more savings realized by the many users who will no longer ignore health problems until they become serious enough to warrant emergency room attention. But make no mistake, we're willing to pay our fair share.

"Liberals want the government to look out for your and hold your hand."
Another grotesque oversimplification. Liberals simply want there to be a safety net to ensure the least fortunate of us are not totally hosed by the occasional catastrophe we are all subject to. It simply makes sense, on a moral as well as a practical plane, for the group to help look out for the individual.

The rich and the powerful can look out for themselves. It's the poor who are vulnerable, who are trying hard, that we should help. We need to provide a better minimium wage for the countless thousands of working poor who are busting their butts holding down a part- or full time job and still live below the poverty level.

"Liberals Engage in Class Warfare."
This is the most Orwellian spin of all. When the rich and the powerful adjust (or circumvent) the rules in order to protect and increase their profits, that's somehow okay, but when liberals try to adjust the balance back in favor of the little guy doing better, it's 'class warfare.'

The real class warfare is how the middle class has been eviscerated in the past 30 years. Bear in mind that during the boom years following World War II the rich were taxed far more heavily than they are now. We had shrinking poverty, a growing middle class, an unprecedented economic boom and increasing levels of literacy. Heck, my parents were a carpenter and a secretary and they managed to put 2.5 kids throuch college! (I was the .5 kid, dropped out and then finished my college in the Navy.) Just try doing that on today's wages.

Since the Reagan years, we've seen more and more of that income go to the richest of Americans while the rest sink into poverty. This is the injustice we seek to remedy. If anything, we want to end the class warfare that has been waged against the poor and middle class.

"Liberals all believe [fill in the blank]."
Yeah, well so do conservatives. Neener neener neener. That's intellectually satisfying, isn't it?

The Blog | Lane Hudson: Democrats Poised to Abandon Troops AND American People? | The Huffington Post

Great post by Lane Hudson on HuffPo:

The Blog | Lane Hudson: Democrats Poised to Abandon Troops AND American People? | The Huffington Post

Trudeau: "I Told You So"

Doonesbury is engaging in a powerfully prescient series of "I Told You So" reruns. Click each image for the full size version.

The next president should put Garry Trudeau in his foreign affairs cabinet.

See the series at www.doonesbury.com

Okay, this is unfair, but...

Okay, this is unfair, but ....

I'm looking at my Yahoo! home page today and under 'Most Viewed Photos' I see two images...

This one...




And this one...

















Now, these are up there on the same day, people.

Totally unfair, I know. Still....How am I supposed to not do anything about it? [g]

Click each picture for the link.

Moyers: Buying the War

Watch this. Tell your friends to watch it.

WATCH IT.

Bill Moyers Journal . Buying the War . Additional Interviews | PBS

Faster than Light is Possible - Google Ads

Do a Google search for 'faster than light travel' and you'll get a lot of scientists saying it's not feasible... but a Google Ad from lowfares.com says it can be done and they're selling it now!

The GOP's Cyber-Election Hit Squad

Here's an interesting and potentially damning set of information here that suggests Republican operatives conspired with computer technicians to manipulate the computer-counted votes of Ohio in 2004, giving Bush the presidency.

The GOP's cyber election hit squad

My only question is this: Specifically, what sort of outrage will really make the nation sit up and take notice? Talk radio has become increasing nasty, yet for some reason Don Imus' comment about 'nappy-headed hos' set off a firestorm that ended up obliterating him from the airwaves.

What will it take to make the same thing happen to Bush?

"I now understand..."

Amazing.

"I now understand there was a conversation with myself and the president."
- Alberto Gonzales in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee

Man, I'm so glad he understands that now.

Huffington Post

COLORADO BOB

I really like the look and content of this blog. Colorado Bob seems to have his head in the right place...

COLORADO BOB

I especially like this image...

Control Guns. Really. Control Them.

There has been talk on the Virginia Tech shootings on HuffPo. It's hard not to join in.

I'm in favor of gun control. I'm not in favor of banning guns, however. Owning a gun is a huge responsibility. You should have to pass rigorous tests. You and the gun you buy should have a license, just like your car. Technology to lock your gun down or to prevent anyone but you from firing it is available and should be made mandatory in all new weapons. Different levels of firearms should require different levels of licensing and patrolling; just as you need a different license to drive a big rig as opposed to a car, you should need a different kind of license to own a semiautomatic as opposed to a handgun. Cheap handguns should be banned.

Bear in mind this irrefutable fact: a gun is a killing machine, a destroying machine. Nothing more, nothing less. It amplifies the impulse to harm. Only those who are well-trained and mentally healthy enough to control those impulses should be allowed to own one.

PS: Bob Cesca has a corrosively good post on this topic here.

The Women's War - Sara Corbett - Iraq - Soldiers - Women - Abuse - New York Times

If we can get so worked up about Don Imus, why can't we get worked up about this?

Bloody appalling.

Fame/Fortune/Success/Popularity - Fueled by Peer Review!

This is interesting.

Evidently things become popular not just because they're good, but because people glom onto what other people think about how good they are.

Required reading for those (like myself) who suspect they're not rich and famous because they weren't good enough. It could have just been bad luck. No, really, it could. Honest. (Don't interrupt me while I'm reinforcing my denial..)

Tired.

I'm tired. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of the corruption, of the lies, of the malfeasance, of the bullshit.

• A president who 'comforts' a grieving Western Virginia Tech with a proclamation in favor of gun rights.
• Lawyers arguing that eventgoers can be evicted from events when they disagree with the president.
• An attorney general that lies to Congress about firing US district attorneys for political advancement
• A vice president who levels charges of treason against members of Congress who are trying to carry out the will of the people
• Radio commentators who use racial slurs, insults and the worst kind of slanderous accusations to forward their own hate-filled opinions
• Iraq filled with exploding bombs, scores of torture/murders a day, and our president says we're 'making progress'
• The Supreme Court failing to uphold Habeas Corpus
  
• Signing statements, attached by the President to bills he signs, saying he doesn't have to obey the law he just signed.

I'm just f**king tired.

RFK Speaks to 2007 from 1968.

Amazing how RFK speaks so eloquently to today.

This just in: Hippies NOT Ruining the Country

This is a letter I wrote in response to 'Hippies still trying to ruin the country' by Jenean Mcbrearty, contributing columnist for Kentucky's Lexington Herald.

---

I have to take strong issue with your article in the Lexington Herald, "Hippies Still Trying To Run the Country." You engage in a number of gross oversimplifications in your arguments. You also make a number of unsupported assumptions, a few of which are frankly quite terrifying.

You claim progressives believe "that America's armed forces are neo-Nazi storm troopers who delight in burning babies to further the aims of imperialistic corporations." You provide no attribution for this. It's a too-simple and too-broad smear. I am a progressive who served six years in the Navy. I know that the vast majority of those who serve are hard-working upright individuals who by the very nature of their job are prepared to place their lives on the line to defend this country and it's citizens. It's insulting to hear you lump me in with such a heinous generalization. I *do* take issue with huge corporations doing whatever they want, including meddling in foreign affairs and carelessly causing death and destruction in furtherance of greater profits. But you casually don't seem to want to think about that.

You claim we believe in 'Marxism.' Again, no attribution, just a smear, and an inferential one at at that. 'Hippies' don't believe in 'communism.' Unlike you, progressives are able to learn from mistakes, both theirs and of others. Of course communism didn't work, but that doesn't mean every concept contained in Marxism should be abandoned as toxic. There are some solutions that make more sense at a national governmental level. We should be judicious in figuring out which ones those are. But we should not discard out of hand every government program that helps people because 'smells of socialism.' Again, an oversimplification, an argument designed to cater to those who just don't think.

If you think the military-industrial complex is blameless and lily white, then see the DVD "Why We Fight" and tell me that you prefer these guys to 'hippies.'

You say there is 'no way out of our modern warfare dilemma' but there is. STOP WAGING WAR. Stop interfering in the governments of other countries, stop aiding and abetting our huge corporations who unfairly exploit the resources of other countries without compensating their citizens. Stop bullying, intimidating and yes attacking other countries just because they 'threaten our interests.' We must respond when attacked, yes, and only a fool talks about peace without preparing for war, but our actions since the end of WWII have been proactive, interfering, unfair, abusive and exploitative. Certainly since 9/11 the trust, respect and high regard this country had after winning WWII in 1945 have been utterly and totally squandered by the actions of our government.

You can do what you want, make enemies willy nilly and then spend trillions arming yourself and fighting them -- or you can work harder NOT TO MAKE ENEMIES. It's not always possible but in the long run it's the more sensible course. Before WWII it's what we did - for the most part - and it worked pretty well.

So many of your rhetorical questions are unfair comparisons....

• "Must we surrender our country to our enemies because our weapons are too terrible to use?" Well of course not. Who is saying that? It would be better if we had less enemies, thus less need for such weapons, but you somehow think such an approach/outcome is naive so you don't even advocate trying..
• "Whose life is more important: the 12-year-old Iraqi firing an Uzi or a soldier from Kentucky?" Aside from the moral uncertainty of valuing one life over another, the short answer is "it depends on who you ask." If the Kentuckian is waterboarding prisoners in Abu Ghraib or some other undisclosed location in eastern Europe and the 12-year-old is fighting to get foreign occupiers out of his country, is the answer to your question still as simple?
• "Which is more sacred: a mosque hiding a weapons cache or a plane of tourists?" Again, an utterly unfair and inflammatory comparison.
• "Do we want a military strong enough to protect our homeland? Are we willing to pay the price of survival?" Depends on the price, doesn't it? If we spend trillions on a bloated, corruption-ridden system at the expense of health care, food security, homeland security and the like then hundreds of thousands of our own citizens are potentially at risk. Is *that* acceptable? It's unacceptable for the enemy to attack us and kill a few thousand, but is it OK for us to lose ten times as many citizens through our own inaction, foolishness, short-sightedness or greed?
• "It's crucial that we come to terms with war questions because we will have war with Iran and North Korea. It will come down to their children or ours, their soldiers or ours, their countries or ours." Jesus H. Christ. Are you SURE about that? Are you saying that war with these countries is *inevitable?* Are you also saying the only way we could consider such a war 'won' is if those countries are UTTERLY DESTROYED? How can you sleep with yourself at night? Even our most dangerous foes, historically speaking, have gone on to become our friends, including Great Britain, Spain, Germany, Japan, even Vietnam! The choice you pose is a false one, and again needlessly inflammatory.

You claim that 'lefty loonies' (reasoned argument, that) are 'dangerous.' Yet these are not the people starting wars, bombing people, polluting the environment or unfairly and ruthlessly exploiting the resources of other countries. To use your analogy, this is like the heavily armed soldier pointing his cannon at a peacefully protesting 'hippie' and saying "HE'S THE DANGEROUS ONE! SHOOT HIM."

The 2006 Election

BOOM Baby!

What's YOUR Plan, Mr. President?

So now George Bush is asking Democrats "What's your plan for Iraq, then?"

My response would be what the hell's YOUR plan, Mr. President?

However, there is some validity to Bush's question. It's hard for a party full of free thinkers to come up with a single coherent plan that will deal with the train wreck that is Iraq.

So here's the analogy/parable/joke. George Bush is driving his SUV down the highway, with John Kerry riding shotgun. Bush drives too fast, weaves in and out of traffic, causing other cars to careen off the road and crash. He's chased by a police cruiser, sirens blazing, which causes him to speed up even more. Finally, just as he's nearly out of gas, Bush slams on the brakes, causing the police car to total itself on his rear bumper. This collision forces Bush off the road, into a ditch, where his SUV crashes. Bush and Kerry frantically escape the vehicle, at which point it explodes, bursting into flame.

"You idiot," yells Kerry. "What the heck did you do THAT for?"

"Okay smarty-pants," says Bush. "What's YOUR plan for getting there, then? Heh heh."