Next Up, a Boycott on Faberge Eggs

(Keywords and tags: politics, business, finance, religious right, the American Family Association boycotts Ford - who doesn't freakin' care)

I love press releases from Crazytown. Crazytown is a weird place with a different Mayor practically every week. This week, the Mayor of Crazytown is Don Wildmon, founder and chairman of the rightwing American Family Association. Sometimes it's hard to figure out whether the Mayor is nuts, stupid, lying, or all of the above. This week is no different.

According to Agape Press, Mayor Don's really excited over a boycott of Ford Motor Company. The problem AFA has with Ford is that the company doesn't hate gays nearly enough to get good christian dollars. So AFA is using its mighty market muscle to bring the godless automaker to its knees. Agape tells us:

The latest sales figures for Ford Motor Company continue the ongoing story of the company's declining bottom line -- a several-percentage-points drop in sales that the leader of a pro-family group ties in with a boycott and the economy.

Ford says its report for June, released this week, shows the company's total auto sales down 6.9 percent. Car purchases did rise 7.1 percent; however, truck sales dropped 14.5 percent. Don Wildmon, founder and chairman of the American Family Association (AFA), believes one of the things hurting the auto manufacturer's profit margin is the boycott his organization launched against the automaker this year.

AFA initiated the Ford boycott to protest Ford's affiliation with homosexual and liberal causes. Other organizations and individuals have joined in, and Wildmon believes the pro-family consumer protest is progressively hurting the automotive giant. "They've been going downhill at least since we began the boycott," he says, "and their stock continues to fall."

Is AFA a consumer behemoth on par with the American Association of Retired People (AARP)? Hardly. According to the banner on their website, AFA is "3,046,240 Supporters Strong and Growing!". (Whoohoo!)

How much do you want to bet that those 3,046,240 (an oddly specific number) aren't all driving new cars right now? Boycotting a car company's a lot like cutting down on your consumption of diamonds - you don't buy them often enough to make a damned bit of difference.

Besides, it's a bunch of crap anyway. All of the Big 3 automakers experienced a slump in June, with Ford - despite the horrible handicap this devastating boycott has imposed on it - coming out the best of the three. From The New York Times:

Stubbornly high gasoline prices sapped June sales of the profitable pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles made by Detroit's leading automakers, while Asian rivals reaped the benefits because of their reputation for fuel efficiency.

Sales data for June, released earlier this week showed that General Motors and Ford Motor hit new lows for market share in the first six months of the year, while Toyota and Honda posted record sales for the same period. The top 10 Asian manufacturers accounted for 37.3 percent of the American car market in June, just shy of the record 40 percent they recorded in May.

[...]

Chrysler ended June with nearly 550,000 unsold SUVs after sales plunged 15 percent for the month. The vice president of the Chrysler Group, Steven J. Landry, said the current incentive program was aimed specifically at reducing its light truck inventory.

[...]

Ford was the only Detroit automaker to increase its market share in June, to 16.7 percent from 16.1 a year ago. The second-largest automaker sold 8.6 percent more passenger cars but 14.8 percent fewer trucks and SUVs, according to Autodata.

Damn the NYT's liberal bias! Not a word about the earth-shattering boycott power of AFA. This is more a story about the foolishness of relying on trucks and SUVs than it is about any boycott from a bunch of religious fruitloops.

So what's AFA's gripe anyway? Best to let them tell you in their own words.

Ford "Proves" Commitment To Homosexual Agenda

Ford Motor Company has proven its commitment to the homosexual agenda by sponsoring a TV program featuring a passionate kiss between two lesbians.

Last fall, in a meeting with AFA, Ford agreed to stop funding the homosexual agenda, including homosexual marriage. (See details below.)

On a recent episode of CBS's Without A Trace, Ford proved to the homosexual community the company's commitment to their agenda. The Ford-sponsored program included a scene of two lesbians passionately kissing each other.

To see what Ford sponsored, click here. (Warning! This scene is very offensive!)

Oh geez! I'm literally laughing my ass off as I write here - please excuse any typos. I can't help but imagine the Mayor of Crazytown playing this clip over and over, wondering why he's both appalled and unwholesomely interested. Seriously, it's nothing. AFA's problem is that a TV show acknowledged that lesbians exist. That's not the only problem, of course, AFA also faults them for advertising Jaguars in The Advocate, a magazine for the LGBT community.

Oh man! I'm dying here - "let's all stop buying freakin' Jags!"
But what's really funny is the companies you're supposed to boycott - the entire Ford Motor galaxy of companies; Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Volvo, Jaguar, Land-Rover, and Aston Martin. I'm boycotting Aston Martin myself - it's called 'not being freakin' rich'. God help Bentley if AFA ever sets their sites on them.

Now you see why I call these 'press releases from Crazytown', the citizens are delusional and the Mayor's always a clown.

--Wisco

Global Warming is About Money, OK?

(Keywords & tags: politics, environment, biodiesel, ethanol, financial, if it has to be about money in order for republicans and business to take global warming seriously - fine, it's about money)

Serious people take global warming seriously. Foolish people do not. Due to a complete lack of vision, many on the right seem to believe they can argue reality away, rather than face short term expenses and disrupting the status quo. Corporations buy shills to gin up a phony 'controversy' over causes of global warming and what changes need to be made.

We've tried reason, we've tried fact, we've tried appeals to basic human decency - no dice. The anti-global warming moonies are not moved. So let's speak in language these rightwing fools understand - global warming is costing you money.

From Fortune:

Long-term investors, take heed: Global warming will have a significant impact on the financial performance of companies in your portfolio.

Some companies -- General Electric, DuPont, Cinergy, American Electric Power, BP, Toyota and Honda -- are seriously grappling with the risks and opportunities posed by climate change. They will be better prepared as governments and shareholders focus on the issue.

Many others -- ExxonMobil, Dominion Power, Sempra Energy, Nissan, BMW and Volkswagen -- have been slow to address climate change, and they could put their owners at financial risk.

Those, at least, are the findings of a report released Tuesday that takes a close look at how 100 of the world's largest companies are positioning themselves to compete in what's called a "carbon-constrained world" -- that is, a world in which emissions of greenhouse gases are regulated, as they are today in Europe and Japan and probably will be before long in the United States.

The report, which ranks the companies on a 100-point scoring system, comes from a group called Ceres, a coalition of environmentalists and institutional investors, including government pension funds, socially responsible mutual funds and religious investors, with $3 trillion in assets. It's worth checking out at www.ceres.org.

"Climate change is no longer a fringe issue, no longer an issue that can be ignored," said Mindy Lubber, the president of Ceres, at a news conference. "These trends present enormous risks and opportunities."

Reuters reports that other industries face losses related to climate change:

The world's second-largest reinsurer, Swiss Re, warned on Wednesday that the costs of natural disasters, aggravated by global warming, threatened to spiral out of control, forcing the human race into a catastrophe of its own making.

In a report revealing how climate change is rising on the corporate agenda, Swiss Re said the economic costs of such disasters threatened to double to $150 billion (82 billion pounds) a year in 10 years, hitting insurers with $30-40 billion in claims, or the equivalent of one World Trade Center attack annually.

"There is a danger that human intervention will accelerate and intensify natural climate changes to such a point that it will become impossible to adapt our socio-economic systems in time," Swiss Re said in the report.

And losses aren't the only way that a failure to address global warming will hit your pocketbook. Dealing with it creates new technologies, which in turn create new industries. Where the US could be a leader in these new technologies and industries, we've decided that we ought to sit this one out. While the rest of the world moves away from oil and coal technologies, we could find ourselves the last experts in a technology no one uses anymore.

Biodiesel and ethanol are emerging as major industries in nations like Argentina and Brazil. "[Edmundo] Defferrari hopes his $152,000 prototype plant in Chacabuco, about 145 miles west of Buenos Aires, will herald a trend that will become as common as cow dung," MSNBC reported in January, "The plant can churn out about 360 gallons of biodiesel and 10 tons of animal feed from 12 tons of soybeans per day. Not only does it produce fuel that's about half diesel's market price, it's automated, requiring humans only to load the contraption and turn it on and off." Let's do the math. Oil is now about $75 a barrel or about a buck seventy-nine a gallon. For a one time investment of $152,000, you can turn out 360 gallons a day - in less than a year, the plant has payed for itself and the only cost is the soybeans. Otherwise, it's pure profit. And even the cost of the soybeans is offset by selling the unfermentable solid waste (or mash) as animal feed. Breweries do the same thing with barley.

Still, industry is driven to insane rationalizations in order to protect the status quo, as Associated Press reports:

Royal Dutch Shell, the world's top marketer of biofuels, considers using food crops to make biofuels "morally inappropriate" as long as there are people in the world who are starving, an executive said on Thursday.

Eric G Holthusen, Fuels Technology Manager Asia/Pacific, said the company's research unit, Shell Global Solutions, has developed alternative fuels from renewable resources that use wood chips and plant waste rather than food crops that are typically used to make the fuels.

Sounds nice, but it's a lot less efficient to use wood or plant waste as biodiesel and nearly impossible for ethanol, which requires sugars. The concern that growing fuel takes away from food production is false. The vast majority of hungry people in the world live in nations with food surpluses. The problem isn't in production, it's in distribution. And growing crops for fuel doesn't take up land that could be used for food production - who looks at a petunia farm and thinks, "What a disgusting waste!"?

Crops grown for uses other than human consumption can be grown anywhere, year round. A lot of corn grown for 'feed & seed' is grown in urban industrial parks, using hydroponics and greenhouses.

-=-

If this is what global warming needs to be about in order to get the rightwing deniers on the side of reality, then this is what it's about. It's costing you money. Money you could be making is being spent outside the US. It's costing you in terms of higher insurance costs, in more tax dollars spent on natural disasters, in potential income lost because we're ignoring emerging technologies, markets, and industries.

If you're a dick and everything has to be about money before it becomes really important, then global warming is all about money.

--Wisco

Antisemitism, Bigotry, and the Gentle Love of Jesus

(Keywords & tags: politics, education, Delaware, civil rights, human rights, religious freedom, antisemitism, for the religious right, Jesus is the god of hate)

This is one of those stories that has everything it takes to make me really angry - bigotry, intolerance, and the smug, self-satisfied smirk the religious right gets on its face when they do something particularly evil and oppressive.

The story starts with Jews on First, with a post titled, Jewish family flees Delaware school district's aggressive Christianity:

A large Delaware school district promoted Christianity so aggressively that a Jewish family felt it necessary to move to Wilmington, two hours away, because they feared retaliation for filing a lawsuit. The religion (if any) of a second family in the lawsuit is not known, because they're suing as Jane and John Doe; they also fear retaliation. Both families are asking relief from "state-sponsored religion."

The behavior of the Indian River School District board suggests the families' fears are hardly groundless.

The district spreads over a considerable portion of southern Delaware. The families' complaint, filed in federal court in February 2005, alleges that the district had created an "environment of religious exclusion" and unconstitutional state-sponsored religion.

Among numerous specific examples in the complaint was what happened at plaintiff Samantha Dobrich's graduation in 2004 from the district's high school. She was the only Jewish student in her graduating class. The complaint relates that local pastor, Jerry Fike, in his invocation, followed requests for "our heavenly Father's" guidance for the graduates with:

I also pray for one specific student, that You be with her and guide her in the path that You have for her. And we ask all these things in Jesus' name.

See what I mean? But that's not it - not by a long shot. The suit alleges that:

The district's "custom and practice of school-sponsored prayer" was frequently imposed "on impressionable non-Christian students," which violated their constitutional rights.

The district ignored the Supreme Court's 1992 Lee decision limiting prayer at graduation ceremonies -- even after a district employee complained about the prayer at her child's 2003 graduation..

District teachers and staff led Bible clubs at several schools. Club members got to go to the head of the lunch line.

While Bible clubs were widely available, student book clubs were rare and often canceled by the district.

When Jane Doe complained that her non-Christian son "Jordan Doe" was left alone when his classmates when to Bible club meetings, district staff insisted that Jordan should attend the club, regardless of his religion.

The district schools attended by Jordan and his sister "Jamie Doe" distributed Bibles to students in 2003, giving them time off from class to pick up the books.

Prayer --often sectarian -- is a routine part of district sports programs and social events

One of the district's middle schools gave students the choice of attending a special Bible Club if they did not want to attend a lesson on evolution.

A middle school teacher told students there was only "one true religion" and gave them pamphlets for his surfing ministry.

Samantha Dobrich's honors English teacher frequently discussed Christianity, but no other religion.

Students frequently made mandatory appearances at district board meetings -- where they were a captive audience for board members' prayers to Jesus.

According to JoF, "The Dobriches said the prayers to Jesus' ruined the graduation experience for Samantha. Mona Dobrich, Samantha's mother, repeatedly called district officials to complain. A board member told her she would have to get the matter put on a meeting agenda -- then refused to put it on the agenda. The school superintendent slipped the topic onto the agenda and then told Mona Dobrich she would need to raise it during the public comment period."

Are we done? Nope. Things get worse. This is one effed up nazi community. Here are just a few of the reactions to complaints.

The board opened the June 15, 2004 meeting at which Dobrich was prepared to speak with a prayer in Jesus' name. The board was not forthcoming to her request that official prayers be in "God's name" rather than in Jesus' name. The high school athletic director veered from his agenda topic to encourage the board to keep praying in Jesus' name.

[...]

The district board announced the formation of a committee to develop a religion policy. And the local talk radio station inflamed the issue.

On the evening in August 2004 when the board was to announce its new policy, hundreds of people turned out for the meetng. The Dobrich family and Jane Doe felt intimidated and asked a state trooper to escort them.

The complaint recounts that the raucous crowd applauded the board's opening prayer and then, when sixth-grader Alexander Dobrich stood up to read a statement, yelled at him: "take your yarmulke off!" His statement, read by Samantha, confided "I feel bad when kids in my class call me Jew boy."

A state representative spoke in support of prayer and warned board members that "the people" would replace them if they faltered on the issue. Other representatives spoke against separating "god and state."

A former board member suggested that Mona Dobrich might "disappear" like Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the atheist whose Supreme Court case resulted in ending organized school prayer. O'Hair disappeared in 1995 and her dismembered body was found six years later.

The crowd booed an ACLU speaker and told her to "go back up north."

In the days after the meeting the community poured venom on the Dobriches. Callers to the local radio station said the family they should convert or leave the area. Someone called them and said the Ku Klux Klan was nearby.

[...]

Classmates accused Alex Dobrich of "killing Christ" and he became fearful about wearing his yarmulke, the complaint recounts. He took it off whenever he saw a police officer, fearing that the officer might see it and pull over his mother's car. When the family went grocery shopping, the complaint says, "Alexander would remove the pin holding his yarmulke on his head for fear that someone would grab it and rip out some of his hair."

Nice little nazis for Jesus, huh? The families finally moved out. For the religious right dickheads, it was mission accomplished. Done now? Not even close.

Two rightwing legal groups got in on 'defending the school district'. See, this wasn't a case so much of a bunch of antisemitic cavemen harassing families, as it was an attack on christianity. That's right, if you complain about being forced to be christian, you're attacking them.

The first group was the Rutherford Institute, which prepared a prayer policy for the school district. You have to take their word for it, though. The district hasn't made the policy public.

At this point, we come to the second rightwing group, Stop the ACLU. For Stop the ACLU, driving the families from the district wasn't enough - they had to be punished. This is where things take a particularly evil turn. From Dispatches from the Culture Wars:

The lawsuit was actually filed almost a year and a half ago, flatlander. Among the things I Googled up about it was a STACLU page which gave out the Dobrich's home address and telephone number.

In a STACLU writeup of the board's rejection of the settlement offer, there's this marvelously garbled sentence:

"The Indian River School District deserves a standing ovation from us for boldly and unanimously rejecting the ACLU's claims of monetary extortion and intimidation in trying to persuade them from public prayer before their meetings. "

The information at that link has been removed and replaced with this - demonstrating what deepthinkers Stop the ACLU are:

To All Liberal Lovin' ACLU Lefties:

You may think you have gained the upper hand by the removal of this previous page's content. I assure you that is not only not the case but we will be doing many other things to annoy you and tell you the truth about the ACLU.

It was suggested, NOT compelled or mandated, by our legal counsel to delete the content and thus take this page out of your arsenal. In its place, we will continue to post ACLU supporting lawyers and companies like Progressive Insurance and the Ford Foundation so that we may boycott them from ever getting our money and business.

In addition, we will put up more stories with commentary on the ACLU and many others tangible and legal ways we can to thwart them. So we are going nowhere, whether you like it or not.

And if you don't think we should exist, you should read the 1st Amendment.

And here's a challenge to you ACLU loving lefties. Point out to me in the U.S. Constitution where the phrase "separation of church and state" exists. Anyone who can find that will be handsomely rewarded.

So take the challenge.

Sincerely,

Nedd Kareiva

What a dick, huh? Jesus' General jumped into the fray and wrote Kareiva this congratulatory note:

Nedd Kareiva
Scrabble Champion
Director, Stop the ACLU Coalition

Dear Mr. Kareiva,

Please allow me to be the first to thank you and the staff of Stop The ACLU for all you did to make the Indian River Pogrom such a resounding success. It isn't easy to run a Jewish family out of town in these politically correct times. Usually, they just hunker down, hiding behind antiquated interpretations of the Constitution and the good will of those who wrongly believe that non-Christians are entitled to all of the benefits of citizenship.

But this time, the family fled, and I think you deserve partial credit for making that happen. After all, you did publish their name, address, and phone number on your web site (see screen cap below) as part of your "Expose ACLU Plaintiffs" project. It certainly wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that such information gave people the tools they needed to drive the Dobrich family from their home.

Of course, you didn't do it all by yourself. The good god-fearing Christians of the Indian River School District deserve most of the credit. They took to the task of ethnic cleansing with a vengeance , not sparing anyone discomfort, not even the Dobrich children:

[stuff I've already covered omitted; Wisco]

Congratulations again for the success of your pogrom. I'm sure it's only the first of many more to come as we retake our great nation in Jesus' name.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Not only was Karieva totally uninsulted by the word 'pogrom', he wrote JC back saying he was 'pleased we had an effect in this case'.

Pogrom? I'm not sure I want to call it that. That is not an appropriate term, however, I am pleased that we had an effect in this case. We have others we want to put up on the site to shame them but have not gotten around to it. And I'm not so sure I can take credit for it. However, if an ACLU speaker was booed, that's music to my ears.

I would appreciate it if you would sign your actual name rather than JC Christian.

Regards,

Nedd Kareiva
Director

He's not sure he wants to call it a pogrom... Nice to have that grey area between being a dumbass and a bigot wide open, huh?

This is it, this is the face of the religious right - and this is why I despise them. Anything short of being a fully-programmed evangelical robot is an attack on their religion. They are remorseless, thoughtless, shameless, and hateful. Despite their talk about a nation based on 'judeo-christian principles', they are antisemitic. Heretics must burn, dissent must be crushed, and only the state-sanctioned religion must be allowed.

I can say it without hyperbole; they want to be the American Taliban. The religious right is a supremacist hate group.

--Wisco

Happy B-Day, Dubya!

(Keywords & tags: politics, humor, charities to give to in Bush's name)

Happy birthday, George! In honor of your birthday, I'm suggesting that people donate to these causes in your name. Here's hoping you get a lot of thank you notes from these organizations - give to the nationals or the local chapters (where applicable):

Planned Parenthood
Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Southern Poverty Law Center
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Freedom From Religion Foundation
Veterans for Peace
World Wildlife Fund
Gold Star Families for Peace (Cindy Sheehan's Organization)
NARAL Pro-Choice America
Parents, Families and Friend of Lesbians and Gays (PLAG)
National Organization of Women (NOW)
Greenpeace International
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
Black Box Voting (Protect your right to vote)
Natural Resources Defense Council
Emily's List (Help elect pro-choice women)
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
People For the American Way (PFAW)
Reporters Without Borders

If you've got an organization that deserves to send a thank you card to Dubya, go ahead and leave the link as a comment. Remember to make all gifts in George W. Bush's name and, if you come across this post on any day other than July 6, do it anyway - better late than never. The address for thank you cards is The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500. I'm sure he'll appreciate it.

(Thanks to Elayne Boosler for the idea.)

--Wisco

Ghana - A 'Pro-Life' Showcase

(Keywords & tags: politics, abortion, religious right, Ghana, 'pro-life' groups suck at logic and math)

A glimpse of our possible future, from the Ghanaian Chonicle:

SOME MEDICAL experts have expressed worry at the alarming rate of maternal mortality, especially in the area of unsafe abortion, which is estimated as the second largest contributor to maternal deaths in the country with the highest numbers in the Upper East, West and Northern regions.

The experts called for pragmatic solutions to the needs of women and girls in the issue of safe and unsafe abortions, since according to them deaths resulting from unsafe abortions in particular are totally preventable and no woman should die from abortion in this modern age.

They gave statistics as maternal mortality ranging from 650/100,000 to 850/100,000 with a national average of 214/100,000 (Ghana Demography Health Survey 2003) to 770/100,000 live births and at the Korle-Bu Teaching hospital, unsafe abortion is said to account for 12-30% of maternal deaths.

The extent of the problem is such that of the over 200 million pregnancies recorded each year the world over, 46 million are terminated of which 20 million are unsafe, resulting in 67,000 deaths; an estimated 95% of which occur in developing countries including Ghana.

In Africa, women are said to experience the greatest risk of death from unsafe abortions with a ratio of 1in 150 compared to Asia's 1 in 250, Latin America's 1 in 800 and Northern countries' 1 in 3,700, while in developing countries, the risk of death following complications of unsafe abortion procedures is several hundred times more than that of an abortion performed professionally under safe conditions.

Experts from various institutions in the country made this known at a seminar in Accra organized by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) for selected journalists on reproductive health and unsafe abortion in Ghana.

Clearly, the lack of access to safe abortion services is not a disincentive to having an abortion. Of course, we've known that for years - it was as true in the US before Roe v. Wade as it is in Ghana today.

Now, compare the reality to the anti-abortion fantasy, from the ironically named LifeSite:

The World Health Organization's first strategy on reproductive health was adopted Saturday by the 57th World Health Assembly (WHA).

The strategy targets five priority aspects of reproductive and sexual health:
- improving antenatal, delivery, postpartum and newborn care
- providing high-quality services for family planning, including infertility services
- eliminating unsafe abortion
- combating sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, reproductive tract infections, cervical cancer and other gynaecological morbidities
- promoting sexual health

Pro-life leaders on the international scene warn that the term "eliminating unsafe abortion" means little more than promoting abortion. LifeSiteNews.com spoke with Samantha Singson, a pro-life lobbyist at the United Nations. Singson, currently at UN headquarters in New York trying to ensure pro-life language in a disability convention document, told LifeSiteNews.com that many countries have been coerced to allow abortion under the guise of "eliminating unsafe abortions".

Singson said, "Typically, countries with pro-life legislation are presented with false and inflated statistics on the supposed vast number of women dying through illegal abortions, and countries are thus pressed to allow legal abortion as a remedy." She concluded, "Abortion is an unsafe procedure for both mother and child, and legalizing it won't change that."

67,000 women a year would disagree. You might argue that Ghana is the third world - poverty likely plays a part here. But we have an example of what happens when you take a developed country and illegalize abortion. it ain't pretty - let's take Romania.

In Romania, abortion was legal from 1957 until 1966. According to the Guttmacher Institute, "The Ceaucescu regime then outlawed abortion in 1966 as part of its pronatalist policy, which led to soaring maternal death rates. Maternal death rates than fell dramatically once abortion was relegalized in 1990 after Ceaucescu's ouster" (see chart). Maternal death rates went from 21 per 100,000 prior to the anti-abortion law to 142 per 100,000 - an increase of about 676%.

So, what happens in the third world is also true of developed countries - when access to safe abortion is illegal or limited, women die. There is no question.

So let's look at the logic of the so-called 'pro-life' movement; if abortion, as they would argue, kills one person, then illegal abortion kills two. For some unreason, the latter is preferable to them.

--Wisco

Fun with Crazy People

(Keywords & tags: politics, religion, the religious right only cares about their religious freedom - everyone else can go screw themselves)

Fun post over at Wizbang. It's kind of funny to take a trip through a rightwing robot's mind - the self-delusion, self-pity, and self-importance is pure self-parody. These people wonder why folks think they're nuts when they put up posts like this, aptly titled Smokey's July Fourth Rant:

The time is far past for conservatives to stand up and SCREAM that we are not going to take it any more. For YEARS, the far left liberals of this country have shoved abortion, homosexuality, and more down our throats in an attempt to promote "tolerance" when in fact they want to make these things "normal" so that they can not be removed, yet at the same time they are trying to totally eradicate all vestiges of morality and religion from society, starting with Christianity (well, except for pedophile priests, who I'm pretty sure the aclu(natics) want in power so they will have an easier time fighting the Church as a whole). Well, I am officially going on record that I AM NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE! Most of you know that I am currently in school with plans to attend law school after my undergrad work. Well, guess what, once I graduate law school, I plan to counter-sue EACH AND EVERY PERSON who sues because a cross offends them, or a prayer "violates their rights", or because a private, CHURCH RUN school won't let their homosexual kids attend (I'll get to that later in this post, I promise). I have linked to this post MANY TIMES, and I feel I will have to keep doing it for a long time to come, because some people think that when they say you must "tolerate" something, that means you can no longer point out that you don't agree with it, yet that is NOT what it means. Read the post and you'll see where I am coming from. All of this said, I'm going to point out a few things I saw in the news today and see what you all think about them.

I'm a little lost on when it was that the lunatic right stopped screaming. As far as I've been able to observe, the only time they knock it off is to take a breath. But see what I mean? This guy's screaming that the right isn't screaming. What fun.

And we're trying to shove gay marriage, abortion, and 'more' down their throats? I'm sorry, who's demanding that they get married to gays and have abortions? If anyone's jamming anything down anyone's throat, they're jamming their religion down ours. If there's a blank square foot on a wall someplace, they want to paste the Ten Commandments there - hell, not only do they think they should, they think they have a right to. They want us to teach their religious beliefs and creation stories in schools. They want to force everyone to support their religion, indoctrinate our kids in it, and write their religious commandments into law, but when we complain, it's their religious freedom that's being suppressed. If we don't do it, shut up about it, and pay for it, we're being intolerant and probably hate America. Why we should be tolerant of an American Taliban is beyond me, but that's the way they want to play it.

The fun continues:

First, some good news, sort of. It seems a "pre-teen magazine" has come under fire for actually showing the Army as something other than what the moon-bat left wants to see (murders). Cobblestone Magazine, which is aimed at pre-teens, recently published an issue detailing many different jobs available in the U.S. Army, and has drawn complaints from teachers and parents (mostly, from what I read, in Mass, bit shock there). This is just another example of how it is perfectly OK to call our soldiers murderers or worse on NATIONAL TELEVISION, demand that the President be impeached for deposing TWO murderous governments, but not OK to show that the Army is not just about guns any more, and show that there are MANY opportunities today. I'm sorry folks but this is hypocrisy at it's highest.

This kid's going to law school? Who wants to impeach Bush for "deposing TWO murderous governments"? This guy hasn't been paying attention. It's weird that the idea that people might be a little pissed off that the Army's courting twelve year olds is completely foreign to this guy. And how is this hypocrisy - does this guy even know what the word means?

Skipping ahead, he goes into total crazytown, digging up the corpse of Terri Schiavo to wave around like a flag.

Remember Terri Shiavo? Well, it seems that a nurse who testified that her "husband" was TRYING to kill her is having to fight for her license to remain a nurse. You heard me right, Carla Sauer Iyer is having to go to court to keep her license because she simply stated what was already public record on CNN. What did she say that was so horrible?

he said that she found needle marks on Terri's body and her blood sugar was so low it wouldn't register on a glucometer - Evidence that her "husband" may have tried to kill her by insulin O/D.

'She said that she heard Terri say "pain" and "mommy help me", as well as that there were hours of video tape of her interacting with people that were placed under a gag order - Does this sound like a woman in a "persistent vegitative state" to you, or does it sound more plausible that michael had her killed for the money?'

No. It's sounds like a nutjob conspiracy theory that has been shot down, not only in court, but by Schiavo's autopsy. According to Media Matters, Judge Greer threw the nurse's affidavit out, writing in his decision, "The remaining affidavits deal exclusively with events which allegedly occurred in the 1995-1997 time frame. The court feels constrained to discuss them. They are incredible to say the least. Ms. Iyer details what amounts to a 15-month cover-up which would include the staff of Palm Garden of Lago Convalescent Center, the Guardian of the Person, the Guardian ad Litem, the medical professionals, the police and, believe it or not, Mr. and Mrs. Schindler. Her affidavit clearly states that she would "call them (Mr. and Mrs. Schindler) anyway because I thought they should know about their daughter." The affidavit of Ms. Law speaks of Terri responding on a constant basis. Neither in the testimony nor in the medical records is there support for these affidavits as they purport to detail activities and responses of Terri Schiavo. It is impossible to believe that Mr. and Mrs. Schindler would not have subpoenaed Ms. Iyer for the January 2000 evidentiary hearing had she contacted them as her affidavit alleges."

The short version - Iyer was lying her ass off. When Greer writes that he finds the claims 'incredible', he means it in the literal sense - they are not credible.

If this is the right's idea of a patriotic call to action, by all means, keep it up guys. Screaming, whining, crying, and lying is just going to show everyone just how crazy you all are.

--Wisco

North Korea Launches Missiles, Americans BBQ

(Keywords & tags: politics, North Korea, diplomacy, Kim Jong Il and Bush both want you freaked out over missiles)

I'll be damned, Krazy Kim had a big missile after all. Didn't work worth a damn, though. According to CNN, the two stage Taepong-2 missile lasted about 40 seconds before it failed and crashed back to Earth.

In all, CNN reports that, the Taepong-2 included, North Korea launched six missiles on the fourth. PDRK can't feed its people, but it can afford to fire six missiles in a tantrum to draw attention away from Iran's nuclear ambitions. What a waste of oxygen Kim Jong Il is.

I wasn't able to keep real close tabs on what was happening throughout the day, but CNN tells us that the big missile crashed about 200 miles short of Japan in the Sea of Japan. The last I'd heard, two missiles hit short of Japan's northernmost island of Hokaido, between the japanese island and Siberia. Whether this included the two stage failure doesn't seem to be clear. And I can't find any info on where the other ones went.

Japan, not surprisingly, is pissed. A Japanese foreign ministry press official, Akira Chiba, told CNN that Japan was studying "stern measures". Japan provides food aid to North Korea.

As I said, I didn't follow things. Neither did anyone else I spent the day with. My sister's birthday is on the fifth, so we had a sort of double-duty celebration at my mother's house. We heard about it and, conservative, liberal, or middle of the road, no one really gave a damn.

Judging by the reaction of my little sample, Kim's attempt to freak us all out failed miserably.

Now all we have to worry about is Bush's attempt to freak us all.

--Wisco

GOP Defends America against Pyrovexillomaniacs!

(Keywords & tags: politics, elections, flag burning, Pledge of Allegiance, these days Republicans look like Uncle Sam threw up all over them - they've got flags coming out of their ears)

"A drunk military man should order gallons and put out more flags in order to increase his military splendour"
-- Chinese sage, quoted by Lin Yutang

This is the GOP strategy going into the '06 midterm elections - put out more flags. Somehow, I doubt the anonymous sage meant 'put out' as in 'extinguish'.

Not that it matters, the 'flag burning amendment' failed in the Senate by one vote. It's very likely that it would've gotten even fewer votes, had it actually been an amendment to ban flag burning. But the text of the amendment shows that it would do almost nothing to address the problem of rampant pyrovexillism sweeping the nation. Don't bother looking that up, I'm pretty sure I just coined the word; latin, pyro "fire" + vexillum "flag". It says a lot about how small a problem is when you have to make up a word to describe it.

The text reads, "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States." There's no guarantee that any law banning flag burning would pass. It was a non-solution to a non-problem.

In another attempt to hump the flag, republicans introduced a bill to keep the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance. But republicans couldn't even get a simple majority in a committee where they outnumber democrats by six seats. Seven republicans didn't even show up.

And, of course, it wouldn't be an election year without republican Bible boosterism. An amendment to ban same sex marriage died in the Senate, but is being taken up by the House. I'm still a little lost on what the deal is here - what horrible thing could possibly happen if gays married? The religious right claims the Bible forbids it but, even if that's true, where in the Bible does it say you have to prevent other people from sinning?

While gas prices go through the roof, global warming worries many, health care costs worry more, and the war in Iraq worries everyone, it's kind of hard to believe that anyone cares whether 'under God' is in the pledge of allegiance or not. No one's pulling up to the pump and wondering if someone, somewhere, is burning a flag.

So our power-drunk military pretenders put out more flags. But the splendour of all these flags doesn't mean a damned thing if no one looks at them. The GOP may have to commit pyrovexillism themselves to get someone to notice - "Hey! Hey! Look! Some hippy lit up a flag! Let's all hate him - GRRRR!" Republicans are singing Rally 'round the Flag, but no one's showing up.

I began this post with a quote, so maybe I should close with one. It may be that it's one voters are beginning to remember.

"Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels."
-- William Samuel Johnson

--Wisco

(photo is mine for the Fourth - have fun and don't blow yourself up)

A Delusional Presidency

(Keywords & tags: politics, diplomacy, war, nuclear, Seymour Hersh Bush is crazy about Iran - but not in a good way)

I'm going to start calling Seymour Hersh 'Mr. Fun' - he never has any good news. Hersh has some especially bad news this go-round - not only does the Pentagon think bombing Iran is a bad idea, but the administration's still unconvinced. According to Hersh:

Inside the Pentagon, senior commanders have increasingly challenged the President’s plans, according to active-duty and retired officers and officials. The generals and admirals have told the Administration that the bombing campaign will probably not succeed in destroying Iran’s nuclear program. They have also warned that an attack could lead to serious economic, political, and military consequences for the United States.

A crucial issue in the military’s dissent, the officers said, is the fact that American and European intelligence agencies have not found specific evidence of clandestine activities or hidden facilities; the war planners are not sure what to hit. “The target array in Iran is huge, but it’s amorphous,” a high-ranking general told me. “The question we face is, When does innocent infrastructure evolve into something nefarious?” The high-ranking general added that the military’s experience in Iraq, where intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was deeply flawed, has affected its approach to Iran. “We built this big monster with Iraq, and there was nothing there. This is son of Iraq,” he said.

“There is a war about the war going on inside the building,” a Pentagon consultant said. “If we go, we have to find something.”

At issue is the suspected uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, about 200 miles south of Tehran. Hersh tells us:

In late April, the military leadership, headed by General Pace, achieved a major victory when the White House dropped its insistence that the plan for a bombing campaign include the possible use of a nuclear device to destroy Iran’s uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. The huge complex includes large underground facilities built into seventy-five-foot-deep holes in the ground and designed to hold as many as fifty thousand centrifuges. “Bush and Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “And Pace stood up to them. Then the world came back: ‘O.K., the nuclear option is politically unacceptable.’ ” At the time, a number of retired officers, including two Army major generals who served in Iraq, Paul Eaton and Charles Swannack, Jr., had begun speaking out against the Administration’s handling of the Iraq war. This period is known to many in the Pentagon as “the April Revolution.”

“An event like this doesn’t get papered over very quickly,” the former official added. “The bad feelings over the nuclear option are still felt. The civilian hierarchy feels extraordinarily betrayed by the brass, and the brass feel they were tricked into it”—the nuclear planning—“by being asked to provide all options in the planning papers.”

There's no political support for bombing, outside of the administration and a few in the Air Force. Nukes have apparently been ruled out, but other options would be as ineffective. "One complicating aspect of the multiple-hit tactic [e.i., multiple bombs to 'drill down' into the underground complex], the Pentagon consultant told me, is 'the liquefaction problem'—the fact that the soil would lose its consistency owing to the enormous heat generated by the impact of the first bomb," Hersh tells us, "'It will be like bombing water, with its currents and eddies. The bombs would likely be diverted.' Intelligence has also shown that for the past two years the Iranians have been shifting their most sensitive nuclear-related materials and production facilities, moving some into urban areas, in anticipation of a bombing raid." One possible nuclear facility is in Tehran, for example. Not only would a bombing campaign be ineffective, it would almost certainly result in a tremendous civilian death toll.

But Hersh's portrayal of Bush and his administration shows a group of crazy people completely removed from reality and in deep denial. "Several current and former officials I spoke to expressed doubt that President Bush would settle for a negotiated resolution of the nuclear crisis. A former high-level Pentagon civilian official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the government, said that Bush remains confident in his military decisions," he writes, "The President and others in the Administration often invoke Winston Churchill, both privately and in public, as an example of a politician who, in his own time, was punished in the polls but was rewarded by history for rejecting appeasement. In one speech, Bush said, Churchill 'seemed like a Texan to me. He wasn’t afraid of public-opinion polls. . . . He charged ahead, and the world is better for it.'"

Apparently, they believe that invading a broken down, second rate dictatorship is equal to defeating the superpower that was the nazi war machine. If you want a more apt comparison from the early twentieth century, try Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia. They actually think they're accomplishing something in Iraq.

Given the level of delusion that conclusion would require, don't expect cooler heads to prevail in the situation with Iran - there are no cool heads in this administration.

--Wisco

Bush's Spying Started Before 9/11 - and was Illegal

(Keywords: politics, scandal, NSA, Bush is such a visionary, he foresaw congress's approval of the War on Terror seven month's before 9/11 and started spying right off the bat)

At first, I thought the reaction to the New York Times story of Bush's financial tracking story was a non-story. When the rightwing press and blogs go fullblown mental over something, it's a pretty good sign that they're defending the indefensible.

According to CNN, Bush told reporters, "Congress was briefed, and what we did was fully authorized under the law and the disclosure of this program is disgraceful."

"The leaks to The New York Times, and the publishing of those leaks, is very damaging," Dick Cheney sneered at a fundraiser in Nebraska. "The ability to intercept al Qaeda communications and to track their sources of financing are essential if we're going to successfully prosecute the global war on terror."

But the NYT wasn't the only paper to publish the story. Both the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal ran the story, but it's the NYT which the rabid masses of talk radio programmed robots have been trained to hate. So, as far as these these fools know, only the NYT ran the story. The 'hate the NYT' campaign is an offshoot of breaking the NSA phone scandal.

But Bush has just been delivered a blow to his case that all of this surveillance is part of the 'war on terror' that began on the morning of 9/11. Bloomberg reports, "The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.

"The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation's largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages."

I knew some damaging crap would come out in the discovery phase of the civil suits.

In reporting on the NSA spy scandal, the Washington Post reported (emphasis mine), "The NSA activities were justified by a classified Justice Department legal opinion authored by John C. Yoo, a former deputy in the Office of Legal Counsel who argued that congressional approval of the war on al Qaeda gave broad authority to the president, according to the Times."

Oops! So, by the administration's own admission, this domestic spy program was illegal for the seven months prior to 9/11 that it was in operation. There goes that argument.

So how long has this financial tracking program been going on? Former Attorney General John Ashcroft came into office with two obsessions - a war on drugs and pornography. After the Clinton administration told him that terrorism was the most pressing problem facing the United States, Ashcroft went right to work fighting boobs and bongs.

So, is that what the NSA phone database was about in the months prior to 9/11, busting dealers? By all accounts, warnings of the growing terrorist threat were ignored by virtually everyone in the new administration. "All right," Bush told the briefer who presented the Presidential Daily Briefing titled bin Laden Determined to Strike within the US, "You've covered your ass now." Clearly, he didn't give a shit about terrorism.

Not that it matters why the program was inarguably running illegally for seven months prior to 9/11, the important point is that it was inarguably running illegally for seven months prior to 9/11.

That's why the noise machine is on full blast - they need to drown out the truth.

--Wisco

One Last Desperate Iraq Lie

(Keywords & tags: politics, elections, propaganda, republicans Rick Santorum and Peter Hoekstra apparently feel that phony WMD in Iraq are their party's only hope in the midterms)

Walter Pincus, of the Washington Post asks, "Do the 20-year-old Iraqi chemical munitions found by U.S. and coalition forces support the prewar contention that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and justify the invasion of Iraq?"

Let me answer that.

No.

When two political hacks desperate to keep their seats, Sen. Rick Santorum and Peter Hoekstra, 'broke' this story, I assumed that it was dead as soon as it started. The Dept. of Defense told FOX News' Jim Angle that a bunch of stale chemical shells were "not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

Now, this bullshit is moving to the House Armed Services committee. According to the Post, "Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine (San Diego County), contended that an April report by the U.S. Army's National Ground Intelligence Center is clear evidence of Hussein's weapons of mass destruction."

Here's the thing; as I've said over and over and over, a Weapon of Mass Destruction has to actually cause mass destruction. These can't - they're too stale. Even the top officials in the administration tell congress this is horseshit. On thursday, Reuters reported on a dust up between Hoekstra and US Intelligence Chief John Negroponte.

The chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee accused U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte's office on Thursday of downplaying the significance of chemical weapons finds in Iraq.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican, said in a letter to Negroponte that intelligence officials at a June 21 press briefing organized by his office misled journalists about the significance of 500 munitions containing mustard and sarin nerve agents discovered since May 2004.

Intelligence officials at the briefing told journalists the weapons predated the 1991 Gulf War, were too degraded to be used as originally intended and posed no threat to U.S. forces deployed in the region during the run-up to the 2003 invasion.

"I am very disappointed by the inaccurate, incomplete, and occasionally misleading comments made by the briefers," Hoekstra said in the letter, a copy of which was released by his office.

"Because this call was organized by your office, I assume that you authorized and were familiar with its content. I would appreciate an explanation and correction of these inaccurate and misleading assertions," he told the national intelligence director.

What a tool - he gets all pissy because Negroponte won't play along with his campaign of distortion.

But a broader point is that this is just the latest spin put on a war in search for a reason. First, the idea was to get rid of non-existent WMD. Then, it was because of non-existent iraqi ties to terrorism. Then, it was to bring democracy to Iraq.

And, now that the public has soured on the war and thinks a democratic Iraq isn't worth the cost - and even doubting whether there will ever be a democratic Iraq - they go back to WMD again.

The problem here is that claiming to discover a legitimate reason to invade Iraq after the fact is illogical. Again, the DoD said that these dead shells were "not the WMDs for which this country went to war." In fact, to go to war over this stuff would be ridiculous - as ridiculous as going to war for no reason at all. For those few slow boats that still don't get what the problem with calling these WMD is; they don't work!

Of course, this is all about approval ratings and elections. At this point, democrats enjoy a 16 point lead going into the midterms. Rick Santorum's opponent, Bob Casey, has an 18 point lead. Hoekstra's seat seems to be safe for now, but his Chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee is not.

So that's what this is all about - election year lies.

--Wisco