Okay - as an ex smoker I have a soft spot for this plan. I know smokers are the great evil we all must fear and loath - but screw it - I once chain smoked from NYC to Rome and loved every minute of it.
Wow. The Supreme Court has provided a check on Bush/Cheney's power. George Bush is out of control. The GOP congress is unwilling to defend our system of government if it means confronting the criminals in the White House. So there has been no oversight of Bush/Cheney. Bush has trashed the Constitution for 5 years now. The Supreme court actually ruled today that the cult of Bush does not have unlimited power - whether the neo-con nutters and Fox News likes it or not.
I don't know what to say. Really. My friend Jay, the director of Forgiving the Franklins sent me this clip via youtube. There is a relentless stream of GOP/Right wing crap to blog about - but this clip trumps all tonight.
Pickles are ruining my life!
Falwell seems to think he has been "saved" by Jesus. Though, just what people like this mean when they say they have "accepted" Jesus as their "lord and savior" is unclear. To people like Falwell it apparently means he gets to be a dunderheaded misguided idiot from the pulpit. The man is a jackass. Jesus, in three years of ministry, never once even mentioned homosexuality. Not once. Did he forget? Homosexuality was certainly happening. Yet, Falwell and the rest of the massive herd of the "saved" are obsessed with homosexuality. "Blessed are the Peacemakers" might be worth a little thought from a "Christian" minister - but Falwell wants to talk about gays.
Jesus was unambiguous about rich folk getting into heaven. According to Falwell's "lord and savior" it is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven. This little remark in Matthew seems to have eluded Falwell. The fact is Falwell has been "saved" from nothing. In the simplest terms: He and his ilk use one line in one gospel as an excuse to be assholes. Jesus does not like assholes.
My prayer today: Jesus, who long will you allow people like Falwell to pervert your message of love and inclusion? Please relieve us of those who use you to pollute our lives with stupidity and hatred.
It's just so obvious with Republicans, sometimes - Fight wars other people's kids. Get and stay rich by making other people pay taxes. Get erections with other people's Viagra.
Please, God, let this be true. Limpbaugh (he had Viagra, too!) was stopped at an airport with illegal prescription drugs.
What this guy said. Since everyone knows now that Countdown is the only cable news show worth a damn - is it possible that MSNBC is on the verge of deciding that maybe right wingers and other morons are not the only people who might want to see news on cable?
Greenland is becoming warmer - quickly. But remember the Right wingnuts say that global warming is not really happening, and we all know they are always correct and only want to protect us - not just serve themselves and profiteer at our expense or anything like that.
The Boss gives me hope that all is not lost to the Bush cult in my beloved country. Watch it.
Well, well, well. right after John Kerry demanded a timetable for American withdrawal from Iraq - it seems the Iraqi government is about to do just that. Oh my, the irony. I guess those crazy Iraqis did not get the GOP talking points.
This one has been around a while but my friend Damon sent it around again yesterday and with good reason. Look again. Though it is now 500 American deaths behind in it's count.
The Cheney/Bush delusion remains as immoral and lethal as ever.
1. If at all possible get tickets for these two movies: Forgiving the Franklins and Mr. Conservative.
2. Make comments on this blog- we now get 250 or so visits a day - but no one ever SAYS anything. Go for it. Even if it is insulting and mean to us. Or be nice. Whatever. Comment.
3. Wish my co-blogger Lynne a great time on her 2 week holiday (an Alaska voyage!!! whoo hoo!)
Also, this is a fine thing to comment on. She's off to see it before it melts. Who has been to Alaska?
Bill Clinton has added his voice to the Peak Oil debate.
Former U.S. president Bill Clinton has urged newspaper editors to focus more attention on the depletion of the world’s oil reserves. In a June 17 speech to the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies convention in Little Rock, Arkansas, Clinton said a “significant number of petroleum geologists” have warned that the world could be nearing the peak in oil production.
Even the CEO of Chevron said on Meet the Press that it's time to raise cafe standards to conserve energy. He pointed to a steep drop in demand during the 70's after the embargo. Thank you President Carter. Boone Pickens said that Carter was early on Peak Oil but he was right.
Get thee to a Vespa, go!
So, apparently we had a terrorist cell in Miami. Nothing immanent, no bomb making materials, no weapons, no ties to Al Qaida, no foreign ties. But they were thinking about terror. Stephen Spielberg made a movie about being arrested for thinking about crime - Collateral. Perhaps it's the administration being new wave.
Could it be, though, that with the tough talk on immigration, having a terror threat in Miami, or Cuba North, is a way to make the Hispanics, in Florida at least, believe that Bush & Co are protecting them? It is election time and you know that means terror alerts. Unfortunately for Bush, having Chertof come out to say we've moved up to orange on the terror scale might seem too political, even for them. It doesn't help that Chertof looks like the devil, either.
Am I too far out on a limb here? I watched Frontline this week and I don't think so.
The repudiation of civilization in the cradle of civilization goes on. Slaughter in Haditha. Young American men beheaded.
The neo-cons did a horrible thing when they lied to us and created a war in Iraq. Iraqi and American families grieve everyday now.
This is a war of choice.
It did not need to happen.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney with the help of their waterboys in congress in the media ARE NEVER, EVER GOING TO LEAVE IRAQ.
Ever. Nor are they ever going to tell us the true reasons for the Iraq war.
Unless and until this war is framed in its true context we cannot even have the proper argument about it. That context is this: The invasion of Iraq was executed to control the oil and to set up an enduring American military presence in the Middle East - to control oil.
Also, until Americans understand that our way of life is utterly and completely dependent on oil that we DO NOT HAVE and we change things at home - then resource wars in places like Iraq are inevitable. Lying to us about the true reasons for these wars are inevitable.
The price of oil is extremely high.
Today is World Refugee Day. How sad is it that we have a day dedicated to the refugees of the world? First we should focus every day on helping and then we should have a day to celebrate solving problems like Darfur.
We are not there. Help get there - skip a meal today and donate the money. Go to SaveDarfur.org and sign the petition to the President. Call your congressman and senators.
Don't wait for a leader - take charge.
As Ghandi said, Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Wanna know what is wrong with the Democratic "leadership" in D.C.? Best way to see it to is watch John Murtha on Meet the Press say and do everything right. And know what we've been missing all these years with weenies like Pelosi and Kerry leading the charge.
1. He's on the offensive and never goes on the defense.
2. He argues HIS point, regardless of the GOP straw man - never being sucked into a bogus argument.
3. He actually cares about and believes in what he is saying.
Now if that Democratic rump group in D.C. that "leads" the minority party (shall we call it the DLC - Democratic Losers Council) just did two out of the three things above in their media appearances then Democrats might win back congress one day. Or better yet - Democrats might even matter again.
Simpler still:
Pelosi has got to go. Reid, too.
Let's just go with Jack Murtha. Want to? It will be fun.
First off, great name. Have you known a Jack you didn't like? Jack Kennedy, Jack Kerouac, Jack Nicholson, Jack Nicholas, Jacky Robinson. (We are ignoring Jack the Ripper for the purpose of this discussion.) Like Sam, it is a solid all-American name.
Secondly, taking just our Jack Murtha, he is the man I want speaking for me. He will admit when he made a mistake and his answer is you have to change direction when something doesn't work. He was on Meet the Press this morning and with every word you feel his passion and his concern. He cares about every kid in uniform. Maybe it's because he's been there or maybe that is just who he is. But he wants the best for them. He is angry and he is clear. He is right.
Mr. Russert showed clips of Karl Rove dissing Mr. Murtha and Mr. Murtha fired back. I will admit that I would have been more pissy about it but he was firm and correct. He makes Rove look like the bully in a school yard.
Mr. Murtha answers questions without thinking about what it will sound like or what will people think. He thinks about what is right and what is wrong. He is a conservative Democrat and he doesn't apologize for it. He didn't apologize for putting out the letter that he wants to be the Majority Leader if we take back the House.
The only way we can take back the House is if Democrats line up behind Jack Murtha.
Let's dump Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. I want to be the party of Jack.
Forget Iraq, forget the NSA, forget political corruption. Rob Cordrry may be leaving The Daily Show.
AUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We love Rob. Who can forget his classic take off on Jeff Gannon? Or This Week with God. Or Hummer Drivin' Man.
Apparently his pilot has been picked up by Fox according to mediabistro.com.
Rob, we wish you well and you will be missed. Come back for guest spots.
And Ms. Samantha Bee - don't you dare leave!
Oh you crazy Democrats.
Did everyone get the email that apparently Chuck Schumer won't rule out supporting Joe Lieberman if he runs as an independent? What is that about? What an concept to build the party! Let's run everyone out of the party who will actually do us some good.
Case in point - Paul Hackett. He was on Scarborough Country tonight. He was clear and credible. Jeez, we can't have that - let's drive him out of the race for Senate in Ohio. He almost beat Mean Jean in an ultra Republican district. He is an Iraq War veteran. He cuts the bull shit. And our Senate Campaign Committee told him they wouldn't give him any money.
Jack Murtha came out with a plan. What did the Democrats in the house do? They ducked and covered. It doesn't matter what you think about Mr. Murtha's plan at least he is clear. He is trying to do something. Because 2,500 dead soldiers is not a number, Mr. Snow. It's families broken apart. It's a dad who won't be home for Father's Day.
Is anyone else ready for a third party? Or do we kick out Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi because they are not Democrats?
Because Tom Jefferson wouldn't have closed down the Senate to force Mr. Roberts to finish the second part of the report on intelligence and then NEVER FOLLOW UP. (I just had a visual of Sam Adams nagging Tom to finish the first draft of the Declaration of Indepence.) Mr. Reid, please take a page from Ronald Reagan's book - the Democrat Party is trying to leave you.
So part 2- Check out Mr. Conservative - Goldwater doco. And let me add - the other person I know who has made a movie this year is Jay Floyd. In fact, he is one of my best friends. The film is called Forgiving the Franklins. I am so close to this movie and so in love with it I will be unable to do anything but to say - IF YOU CAN - SEE IT! Simply put it is the most original, insightful and hilarious dissection of sexual repression and the fear and loathing of all sexuality that spews out of the far Right - that I have ever seen. It was an official selection to Sundance this year, is at the ProvinceTown film festival right now, and will be at Outfest in Los Angeles this July. Figure out a way to see it.
Here is part of a review from the Provincetown Banner:
The Franklins, a devout and stressed-out mom, dad, teenage son and younger daughter, face the frustrations of heartland life with a stiff upper lip. Then wham! — a near-lethal car accident turns their world upside-down. After an encounter with Jesus in what looks to be purgatory, they return to Earth transformed. Suddenly, nakedness and sex, which had once made them uptight, are a source of joy and uninhibited exploration.
Remember the line from The Godfather, "It's not personal; it's business?"
Watching Mr. Bush give his press conference today in the Rose Garden made me think that for him it's the opposite.
When he said that we have to finish the job in Iraq it struck me that we have to do that for his legacy. His presidency is going to be judged on the war in Iraq. It doesn't look good. 36 deaths on the day of his visit. Formerly stable sectors, like Basra, are now unstable. I love Jon Stewart's line last night - that had the new Prime Minister known Mr. Bush was coming he would have built an infrastructure. Bottom line is that there isn't an infrastructure.
Because when he later said we would have to continue to make sacrifices I wondered what sacrifices we have been asked to make. Aside from our civil liberties.
The same bunch of solders are fighting this war. Some are on they're fourth deployment. That is not shared sacrifice.
I would like to hear every Democrat say that staying the course is bull shit. It's clearly not working. We either need to throw everything we've got over there or pull out. We cannot win the war in Iraq with 130,000 troops. It's like patching a hole in one of the levees in New Orleans when the water is pouring over the top.
All it really takes is one Democrat to speak out like Jack Murtha did. He changed the conversation. Is anyone else brave enough to do it?
I hope I am wrong. I am prone to ranting every two years as to why the Democrats won't win - and by "win" I mean a change of majority in either house of congress. The Democrats have no plans for victory in November that are not dependent on the GOP botching it. Here's what we know about the GOP: They cannot govern. They can. However, win elections. The GOP is showing no signs that they are going to botch this election. Thus far the Democratic "plans" for victory look like this:
Plan A - "the culture of corruption" - a slogan that has worn thin already. It is not a plan anyway. It slogan than any two bit GOP hack can destroy with a few talking points and one crooked Democratic congressman.
Plan B - Rove goes down. That little delusion ended today.
Plan C - High gas prices. Hoping people will be angry enough to vote for the other party. Won't work. And is not a plan either - it is a hope.
There is no other plan. Democrats are still unwilling to fight this battle ruthlessly and on the proper battle field. Like it or not - the main battlefield is not the "grass roots." Or, rather, it is not only the grass roots. The main battle field is television. Even when all the news is bad the GOP dictates the terms on the conversation in the media. How can they do this? They have a plan and a vision. It's mostly lies, distortions, and more lies - but it is coherent. It comes together in nice 5 minute chunks on TV. The Democratic response? Bitching about Bush. It's based in truth - but it will not win a damn thing. I am convinced more and more that Pelosi and Reid and the rest of them simply do not understand how and why Democrats - against all logic- have stayed in the minority so long. They are losers is the broadest sense. They do not know how to win. They do not remember what winning takes.
What is the Democratic vision for America? Does anyone know? No vision. No victory.
To the green zone, Starsky. We need a photo op!
Don't worry about the cost, good lord, we've lost more money in Iraq than you can imagine.
Meanwhile, in the South of Iraq, where things had been going swimmingly, it's falling apart.
This once-quiet city (Basra) of riverside promenades was among the most receptive to the American invasion. Now, three years later, it is being pulled apart by Shiite political parties that want to control the region and its biggest prize, oil. But in today's Iraq, politics and power flow from the guns of militias, and negotiating has been a bloody process.
Now, after two years of relative calm, Basra has a soaring murder rate (the 85 killings in May were nearly triple the number in January), a tattered oil industry and a terrified population.
How are we going to win this war?
Ah name dropping -one of the finer social skills one must hone in my home town - Los Angeles. The skilled weave "big" names in and out of conversation while blithely speaking too loudly on a cell phone at Starbucks. I am not one of the skilled. So I blog - and drop names where ever it suits me. My friend Tani Cohen co-produced a documentary called MR. CONSERVATIVE, Goldwater on Goldwater.
I know enough about this film to know all liberals should see it - if only to remember that once we fought the good fight with good people who held other views.
And that conservatives should see it - if only to remember that once, not so long ago, being a conservative meant something other than setting up straw men and insulting widows.
It is at the Los Angeles Film festival this month and HBO will be distributing it.
One particular Goldwater Girl - who is now a Senator from New York - gives some wonderful insight into what Mr. Goldwater meant - and still means.
I just saw Sophie Scholl the Last Days.
They used the actual interrogations as part of the script. The transcripts were in East Germany and weren't discovered until 1990.
What an amazing woman. She was part of the White Rose. A group who distributed leaflets throughout Germany to encourage the Deutche Folk to rise up against Hitler. She and her brother were caught at the University of Munich. They were taken to Stadleheim Prison (which later housed Eric Burdon from the Animals). She stood up to the investigator and never gave up her friends. She condemned Hitler (in 1943) for killing the Jews and the mentally retarded. She never once backed down even when the investigator tried to give her an out to save her life.
Her brother, their friend Christopher Probst and she were all executed. She was 21.
Amazing courage.
I love Lynne's phrase "coultergeist" below so much I think it needs a definition.
Coultergeist: The 2 to 3 day media swirl after an intellectually inferior pundit (and therefore usually one on the "Right") publicly makes an outrageous statement or erroneous claim. The claim is often so far off the beam that more thoughtful people feel compelled to respond resulting in the pundit, who is usually hawking a book, receiving even more free publicity. This is a Coultergeist.
"Her claim that 9/11 widows should 'take their money and shut up' has created yet another Coultergeist on the cable news programs."
Another result of a Coultergeist is establishing stupidity and crassness as just as valuable and important in public discourse as hardwork, thoughtfulness, and deeply held, well reasoned convictions. For although the intellectually inferior pundit is rebuffed and the media swirl is short lived it has the effect of elevating him or her -often by equating him or her with a clearly more accomplished and more intelligent person who felt compelled to respond to the offensive remarks.
So Ann Coulter (a pair of legs with an editor) insults 9/11 widows, Senator Clinton (one of the nations most accomplished lawyers, a Senator, Ivy League Grad, former First Lady etc etc) feels compelled to defend those who lost so much in the state she represents and the story becomes: Clinton vs Coulter.
"Pauly Shore to debate Einstein!" Next on CNN!!!
We are living in the golden age of Irony. And I mean in a Jonathan Swift kind way, not Allanis Morrisett.
Apparently Mr. Bush was going to fire Rumsfeld until all those generals came out and told Mr. Bush to fire Rumsfeld. So he didn't. Now that Mr. Rumsfeld has the success of killing Zaquari Mr. Bush can fire Rumsfeld because people will not be telling him to.
That is convoluted.
I've been thinking about abortion and how Democrats are "the party of death".
Why is the right wing so focused on abortion? Because it's easy. If you're a right wing man you will never have to deal with being pregnant so it's a snap to say abortion is wrong. I admit I have a harder time with explaining the women's rationale. But I think for all of them it's an easy issue to feel good about themselves. See, we believe in Life!
And yet, doing the hard stuff, like taking care of the poor, isn't part of the agenda. I will say that perhaps Sam Brownback is truly pro life in that he supported us giving aid to Darfur prior to George Clooney. Look at Tom Delay. Anti abortion and making sure that the people of the Mariannas Islands don't make a living wage. Let's look at most of the Republican senators who voted for the bankruptcy bill. They made sure there were no provisions for people who had catastrophic medical bills or were recently divorced. And don't let anyone tell you that those two groups don't account for the majority of bankruptcies because they do. It's not some jerk running up his visa bills and then wanting to skip out. Look at the tax cuts. The bottom line is that they don't help the poor, or the middle class, or the upper middle class. They help the top 1%. The Estate Tax effects the top .5%. How many Republicans voted to help those people? Well I believe the answer is 48! But raising the minimum wage? Horrors. It will hurt small business. No, wrong again. In every state that has a higher minimum wage it has not hurt any business. In fact it helps because people have more income to spend. It hurts Walmart. So sad.
Being against abortion makes the conservatives feel they can take the moral high ground even when they're taking trips to Scotland with Jack Abramoff.
Ms. Coulter was on Lou Dobbs tonight.
Here's what I wish he had asked her.
Are you a virgin? Because otherwise you are not a good conservative girl. They are the party of abstinence. (Which actually explains a lot.)
When you maligned the people of South Florida for being too stupid to vote were you fore-shadowing your own precinct "mix up"?
You say that the Democrats use people like Cindy Sheehan and the widows of 9/11. Can you please explain why Mr. Bush had Lisa Beamer, who's husband was on flight 93 and helped thwart the highjackers with the cry of let's roll, at his speech on September 20, 2001? Can you further explain why Mr. Bush has used 9/11 to justify everything he has done including spying on us?
You call yourself a Christian so what do you actually do that is Christ-like? Do you volunteer to teach English as a second language? Do you support Operation Helmet? Do you visit shut ins? Do you deliver meals on wheels? Do you donate books to the library? Do you send care packages to our troops? Do you give money to help the people of Darfur? Do you build houses for Habitat for Humanity? Do you do anything that is not selfish?
Enquiring minds want to know.
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