Evildoer in Office

Santorum

2011-11-15T13:13:00.001-08:00

Just helping the cause. Santorum

And so it begins and ends

2009-01-20T12:12:00.000-08:00

"Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter"

Barack was sworn in and the last 8 years are now something we just need to fix, rather than something we need to fear. Cheney was wheeled to his limo in a wheelchair and George Bush, the worst president in America's history, boarded the Presidential Helicopter to leave D.C.

Below him the crowd sang, Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey, Goodbye..

I wonder if it would have been more difficult for Barack to win if Bush hadn't been such a fuck up. I wonder if Bush's greatest legacy will be that he abused his power to such an extent that he not only destroyed the Republican Party, but woke up an entire generation who will now support Obama.

Good riddance evildoer in office. Thanks for fucking shit up.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/01/20/hope_over_fear/
http://www.freep.com/article/20090120/OBAMAINAUGURATION10/90120058/LIVE+TV+BLOG++Obama+escorts+Bush+to+helicopter
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/01/21/1232471330521.html
http://newswhitehouse.com/index.html

Boomers, boom, put a fork in you. Let Gen X fix everything. Thanks for all the fish...

2008-11-28T20:50:00.000-08:00

Spent the night writing letters and finishing Common Sense. Letters to my 100 yr old grandmother and my mother and my brother.

Just finished reading Thomas Paine's "Common Sense"

He added the "e" to his name. Ha. Thomas Pain. He was a Balzac, a working man who ended up writing something beautiful that moved a nation. He ended up poor when he was ahead of his time. The others, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, were "Deists" that at the time meant you didn't belive the fucking bullshit of religion but said there was a spiritual concept to our existence. It was a get out of jail free card for the gentry. Thomas Paine said there was no god, 200 years before his time and was banished because of it.

And he took the money he made from his biggest hit and fed Washington's army.

He wrote the for "common man" in a language that our current day "common man" couldn't digest for 10 seconds. Our current "common man" needs the bleed of MTV or something that feeds his greed to give a flying fuck. But now, maybe we have a chance.

One quote stood out among many, as a reason for the secession of California even though there is a new dawn on January 20. This is pure Paine, after the Brits massacred between 8 and 100 colonists at Lexington, he wrote about why we needed to get all revolutionary.

"Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet, and as England and America, with respect to each Other, reverses the common order of nature, it is evident they belong to different systems: England to Europe- America to itself."

lol, really, read it again. Or read the whole thing at: www.earlyamerica.com/earlyam...ext.html
complete with Army ads. His pamphlet incited a population of colonists to rebel and to throw themselves against their oppressors to create a more perfect union. They were the original American patriots, fighting from the forest to take down the redcoat trees. History repeats itself. Over and over again. I'm down with our Union now that Barack is president.

We've got a chance for something powerful. I have faith that we, the unspoken generation can that the helm and fix the mistakes of the past. We spent our time, if we even had parents, helping our boomer parents deal. We were the adults when they had no clue, they were diluted by some many of their peers. We were there to help them along. Now it is our turn. I give them a 50/50 result rate and hopefully we won't see another one of them in charge because they're jsut a bunch of fuck ups.

In my letter to my grandmother tonight I wrote:

"I’m also excited that someone of my generation is finally going to run the show. Barack is only 47 and I’m 43. He’s the first Generation X’er to be president. We’re all post the civil rights movement, women’s rights, 60s trouble generation. It looks like Dad’s generation is going to be a draw. The Baby Boomers had their swing at running America. Clinton did a stunning job for 8 years and left us with a surplus, peace and a booming economy. Bush, well, he’s not gone yet, but we can’t wait for him to go away. "

Heh, yea, it is ours to win or lose now.

quick revolutionary war buildup
www.ushistory.org/march/phi...ground.htm

if you click the image you can read more about the revolutionary war (and decide if you're going to join the army)

Prop 8

2008-11-15T23:34:00.000-08:00

65 days and ten minutes as of this posting until new leadership can try to clean up all the fuck ups of the last years of Republican rule. All the greed and treason and downright criminal fucking evil that crew of despicable fucks have wrought upon our country will be flushed like rats fleeing from sunlight.

evildoerinoffice.blogspot.com/

I'm gonna shut that blog down once Obama takes the oath, and that will be one of the best days in my life, and in the history of our planet.

Fuck's sake, it blows my mind.. Good beat Evil, Democracy isn't dead, hate and greed were exposed. Really, the evil that threatened to take down our entire system of government was removed by the efforts of all of us who care about the future.

Although, Prop 8 passed, and that's another evil to be brought to its knees. The legislation has to actually do something and pass a bill instead of making the big moneyed interests fund propositions so that there with be NO MORE FUNDING FOR PROPS THAT TAKE AWAY RIGHTS, especially from out of state interests like Mormons and the Catholic Church. I'm ashamed that California of all places voted to take away civil rights from our citizens, but it was an effort driven by desperate dying made up theologies that have little left to their power other than the evil that lives inside them and bigotry and hatred to keep them afloat. At least the Catholics were around from the get go of Christianity and they've got a long lineage of oppression and mythology and big churches and shit, but the Mormons? What the fuck is that all about? Was this some kind of Mitt Romney revenge? Did they have some cash left over and instead of using it for something "Christian" they decided to take away people's rights in California?

I mean, seriously, the Mormons were made up from the failed scheme of a shyster who was like the original L. Ron Hubbard,; a con artist, AND THEY lost their right to take on herds of polygamist wives, and were oppressed themselves, run out of town.

Why the hell do they give a flying fuck about who gets married? They're all about marriage, they love it. Unless they've got some kind of axe to grind for the whole polygamy thing. It seems that sexual oppression is hardwired into their whole gig and this is just the latest manifestation. Even Steve Young, my favorite Mormon was against it. .

Unfortunate.

And my mother in law and her wife of 15 years got married before the election in Napa because they thought Prop 8 might pass. They've been through thick and thin, they're devoted to each other and they went and got married so they could be part of the mass of people who did it before some malevolent force guided by a philosophy that is so terrified of the other could influence enough Californians to take away that right. They didn't think it would happen, they had faith that people wouldn't be manipulated with lies to vote against equal rights, but they were wrong. Now the Catholics and Mormons can toast to the fact that they've revoked rights for thousands of people who love each other just as much as any hetero couple do. I don't get it. I don't understand the joy in that.

It is a hard fight. It is the same fight that's been going on for years, Miscegenation laws, the right to vote, slavery, all these things we look at now and think, wtf, who could have possibly supported that, for shame but in every case, the Bible was used ask an excuse to deny people of basic rights, and in every case Good eventually won.

Prop 8 supporters.. SHAME ON YOU. History will not look kindly on your legacy.

A new age will rediscover those religious words, those real ideals, and they'll get back closer to the real intent. But in our small space in time here, the dinosaurs who use that sad death religion to oppress are all becoming extinct, thank God. They will eventually all disappear and the species will finally be able to throw off the yoke of charlatans and liars to move on, to something that nurtures all of us and does not seek to keep anyone subservient and outcast.

Justice is going to kick those Pro 8 puppetmasters in the ass and consign them to the dustbin of ignorant wannabees that were jokes from the beginning and didn't quite make enough of an impression without using force for history to acknowledge them. It is just that now we have to deal with them, like they are children: Sad, spoiled, fucked up bratty children with far too much money and power.

You can only fight the tide of progress so long before you are exposed for what you are. The question for you is, who the fuck are you and where do you stand?

In the end, they'll get their due, I hope so, but for now, that fight continues. And we will win, because hatred may win the battles, but they'll lose the war because the dinosaurs of yesterday are dying and their ranks grow smaller and smaller and the evolution of the species won't tolerate ignorance.

Regardless of that battle, we did take back the big fish. We did get back our country and that's a good start.

All I can say is Wow.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT ELECT - GLEN PARK SPEECH

Tuesday, November 4, 2008
President elect Obama
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

Its the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

Its the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

Its the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

Its been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and hes fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nations promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the Vice President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last sixteen years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nations next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy thats coming with us to the White House. And while shes no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics - you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what youve sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to - it belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didnt start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington - it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generations apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.

I know you didnt do this just to win an election and I know you didnt do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how theyll make the mortgage, or pay their doctors bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who wont agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government cant solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way its been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, its that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House - a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, We are not enemies, but friends…though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down - we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security - we support you. And to all those who have wondered if Americas beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one thats on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. Shes a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing - Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldnt vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that shes seen throughout her century in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we cant, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when womens voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that We Shall Overcome. Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves - if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we cant, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:

Yes We Can. Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

President elect Obama

2008-11-04T22:04:00.000-08:00

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

Its the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

Its the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

Its the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

Its been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and hes fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nations promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the Vice President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last sixteen years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nations next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy thats coming with us to the White House. And while shes no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics - you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what youve sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to - it belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didnt start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington - it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generations apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.

I know you didnt do this just to win an election and I know you didnt do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how theyll make the mortgage, or pay their doctors bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who wont agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government cant solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way its been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, its that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House - a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, We are not enemies, but friends…though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down - we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security - we support you. And to all those who have wondered if Americas beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one thats on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. Shes a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing - Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldnt vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that shes seen throughout her century in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we cant, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when womens voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that We Shall Overcome. Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves - if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we cant, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:

Yes We Can. Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

Let's See if Democracy still exists

2008-11-04T13:14:00.000-08:00

If the the right doesn't steal this one, there's hope for America and I can end this blog (once Bush is actually out of the White House and off to Dubai)

VOTE today, no matter where you are. I suspect there will be worldwide celebrations if we can cast off the rule of these criminals.

More stupid fucking lying Republican scum

2008-10-25T10:54:00.000-07:00

Poster child for a generation raised on Karl Rove. She was attacked by a "big black man" and she was so stupid she carved the B for Barak backwards on her own face. Fuckin retard.

Woman admits making up McCain sticker attack, police say

(CNN) -- Bail was set at $50,000 Friday night for a GOP campaign worker who made up a story about being attacked by a man angered by a John McCain bumper sticker on her car.
Todd, a volunteer for a McCain phone bank in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said she was attacked Wednesday night.

Todd, a volunteer for a McCain phone bank in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said she was attacked Wednesday night.
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Ashley Todd, 20, of College Station, Texas, has been charged with filing a false police report, a misdemeanor, a police report said.

Todd, who is being held at the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, did not enter a plea when she appeared in court Friday night. She did not post bail.

She is scheduled to appear in court again October 30, when she is expected to enter a plea.

If she posts bail, Todd must be evaluated at a behavioral clinic.

"This has wasted so much time. ... It's just a lot of wasted man hours," Assistant Police Chief Maurita Bryant said at a briefing.

Todd was a volunteer for a John McCain phone bank in Pittsburgh, the campaign said.

The woman told investigators a man approached her Wednesday night at an ATM in Pittsburgh's East End, put a blade to her neck and demanded money, said Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard.

Police said they found "several inconsistencies" in Todd's statement and she was not seen in surveillance videos taken at the ATM. She was asked to take a polygraph test Friday morning, Richard said. The results were not made public.

Later, Todd came to the police station to help work on a composite sketch of the alleged attacker. When she arrived, Todd "told them she just wanted to tell the truth" -- that she was not robbed, and there was no attacker, Bryant said.

Todd originally told police a man "punched her in the back of the head, knocking her to the ground, and he continued to punch and kick her while threatening to teach her a lesson for being a McCain supporter," according to a police statement.

The woman also told police her attacker "called her a lot of names and stated that 'You are going to be a Barack supporter,' at which time she states he sat on her chest, pinning both her hands down with his knees, and scratched into her face a backward letter 'B' on the right side of her face using what she believed to be a very dull knife."

Bryant described Todd as "very cordial, polite, cooperating," and said the woman was surprised by all the media attention. Asked whether the false report was politically motivated, Bryant replied, "It's difficult to say."

"She is stating that she was in her vehicle driving around, and she came up with this idea," she said. "She said she has prior mental problems and doesn't know how the backward letter 'B' got on her face."

However, Todd was the only one in the vehicle, and "when she saw the 'B' she thought she must have been the one who did it," Bryant said.

"We're talking with the district attorney's office and conferring on just how we're going to handle it," she said. "It's been different stories through the night and this morning."

She said there was no indication that anyone else was involved.

Richard said the woman had described her alleged attacker as an African-American, 6 feet 4 inches tall with a medium build and short dark hair, wearing dark clothing and shiny shoes.

Before the revelation that the report was false, McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said that McCain and running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin "spoke to the victim and her family after learning about the incident."

The Obama campaign also had issued a statement wishing the woman a "speedy recovery."

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/24/mccain.sticker/?iref=hpmostpop

Obama Prime time - What's the October Surprise

2008-10-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

October 29th Barack will be talking for 1/2 hour on CBS and NBC.

What could the Republican's have up their sleeve?

My guess is either a manufactured crisis, "capturing" Osama Bin Laden, or, for fuck's sake I hope they don't allow a 911 style attack to happen.

If the 29th passes with nothing horrible happening, I predict we'll have a real election and democracy may not be done after all.

http://www.democraticcentral.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2696

What's up with Posse Comitatus

2008-10-21T19:04:00.000-07:00

this is a good article from Salon discussing the whole
Why is a U.S. Army brigade being assigned to the "Homeland"?

read the last paragraph

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/24/army/

Glen Greenwald

Wednesday Sept. 24, 2008 12:26 EDT
Why is a U.S. Army brigade being assigned to the "Homeland"?

(updated below - Update II)

Several bloggers today have pointed to this obviously disturbing article from Army Times, which announces that "beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the [1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division] will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North" -- "the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities." The article details:

They'll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack. . . .

The 1st BCT's soldiers also will learn how to use "the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded," 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

"It's a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they're fielding. They've been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it."

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

"I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered," said Cloutier, describing the experience as "your worst muscle cramp ever -- times 10 throughout your whole body". . . .

The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced "sea-smurf").

For more than 100 years -- since the end of the Civil War -- deployment of the U.S. military inside the U.S. has been prohibited under The Posse Comitatus Act (the only exceptions being that the National Guard and Coast Guard are exempted, and use of the military on an emergency ad hoc basis is permitted, such as what happened after Hurricane Katrina). Though there have been some erosions of this prohibition over the last several decades (most perniciously to allow the use of the military to work with law enforcement agencies in the "War on Drugs"), the bright line ban on using the U.S. military as a standing law enforcement force inside the U.S. has been more or less honored -- until now. And as the Army Times notes, once this particular brigade completes its one-year assignment, "expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one."

After Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration began openly agitating for what would be, in essence, a complete elimination of the key prohibitions of the Posse Comitatus Act in order to allow the President to deploy U.S. military forces inside the U.S. basically at will -- and, as usual, they were successful as a result of rapid bipartisan compliance with the Leader's demand (the same kind of compliance that is about to foist a bailout package on the nation). This April, 2007 article by James Bovard in The American Conservative detailed the now-familiar mechanics that led to the destruction of this particular long-standing democratic safeguard:

The Defense Authorization Act of 2006, passed on Sept. 30, empowers President George W. Bush to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist "incident," if he or other federal officials perceive a shortfall of "public order," or even in response to antiwar protests that get unruly as a result of government provocations. . . .

It only took a few paragraphs in a $500 billion, 591-page bill to raze one of the most important limits on federal power. Congress passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the president's ability to deploy the military within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tightened these restrictions, imposing a two-year prison sentence on anyone who used the military within the U.S. without the express permission of Congress. But there is a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the president invokes the Insurrection Act.

Section 1076 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 changed the name of the key provision in the statute book from "Insurrection Act" to "Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act." The Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that the president could deploy troops within the United States only "to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy." The new law expands the list to include “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition" -- and such "condition" is not defined or limited. . . .

The story of how Section 1076 became law vivifies how expanding government power is almost always the correct answer in Washington. Some people have claimed the provision was slipped into the bill in the middle of the night. In reality, the administration clearly signaled its intent and almost no one in the media or Congress tried to stop it . . . .

Section 1076 was supported by both conservatives and liberals. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, co-wrote the provision along with committee chairman Sen. John Warner (R-Va.). Sen. Ted Kennedy openly endorsed it, and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), then-chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, was an avid proponent. . . .

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned on Sept. 19 that "we certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law," but his alarm got no response. Ten days later, he commented in the Congressional Record: "Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy." Leahy further condemned the process, declaring that it "was just slipped in the defense bill as a rider with little study. Other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals."

As is typical, very few members of the media even mentioned any of this, let alone discussed it (and I failed to give this the attention it deserved at the time), but Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein wrote an excellent article at the time detailing the process and noted that "despite such a radical turn, the new law garnered little dissent, or even attention, on the Hill." Stein also noted that while "the blogosphere, of course, was all over it . . . a search of The Washington Post and New York Times archives, using the terms 'Insurrection Act,' 'martial law' and 'Congress,' came up empty."

Bovard and Stein both noted that every Governor -- including Republicans -- joined in Leahy's objections, as they perceived it as a threat from the Federal Government to what has long been the role of the National Guard. But those concerns were easily brushed aside by the bipartisan majorities in Congress, eager -- as always -- to grant the President this radical new power.

The decision this month to permanently deploy a U.S. Army brigade inside the U.S. for purely domestic law enforcement purposes is the fruit of the Congressional elimination of the long-standing prohibitions in Posse Comitatus (although there are credible signs that even before Congress acted, the Bush administration secretly decided it possessed the inherent power to violate the Act). It shouldn't take any efforts to explain why the permanent deployment of the U.S. military inside American cities, acting as the President's police force, is so disturbing. Bovard:

"Martial law" is a euphemism for military dictatorship. When foreign democracies are overthrown and a junta establishes martial law, Americans usually recognize that a fundamental change has occurred. . . . Section 1076 is Enabling Act-type legislation—something that purports to preserve law-and-order while formally empowering the president to rule by decree.

The historic importance of the Posse Comitatus prohibition was also well-analyzed here.

As the recent militarization of St. Paul during the GOP Convention made abundantly clear, our actual police forces are already quite militarized. Still, what possible rationale is there for permanently deploying the U.S. Army inside the United States -- under the command of the President -- for any purpose, let alone things such as "crowd control," other traditional law enforcement functions, and a seemingly unlimited array of other uses at the President's sole discretion? And where are all of the stalwart right-wing "small government conservatives" who spent the 1990s so vocally opposing every aspect of the growing federal police force? And would it be possible to get some explanation from the Government about what the rationale is for this unprecedented domestic military deployment (at least unprecedented since the Civil War), and why it is being undertaken now?

UPDATE: As this commenter notes, the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act somewhat limited the scope of the powers granted by the 2007 Act detailed above (mostly to address constitutional concerns by limiting the President's powers to deploy the military to suppress disorder that threatens constitutional rights), but President Bush, when signing that 2008 Act into law, issued a signing statement which, though vague, seems to declare that he does not recognize those new limitations.

UPDATE II: There's no need to start manufacturing all sorts of scare scenarios about Bush canceling elections or the imminent declaration of martial law or anything of that sort. None of that is going to happen with a single brigade and it's unlikely in the extreme that they'd be announcing these deployments if they had activated any such plans. The point is that the deployment is a very dangerous precedent, quite possibly illegal, and a radical abandonment of an important democratic safeguard. As always with first steps of this sort, the danger lies in how the power can be abused in the future.

-- Glenn Greenwald

ACORN is a Republican scam

2008-10-14T09:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/13/election-acorn-voter-fraud

The Republicans lie and lie and lie..

"Barack Obama and the Democrats are stealing the election. Massive voter fraud is being carried out, even as we speak, by their henchmen, known by the innocuous sounding Association for Community Organisations for Reform Now, or Acorn. Clever bastards.

The only problem? Despite the screaming wall-to-wall coverage of "Democratic voter fraud in 11 swing states" as seen on Fox News and even the once-respectable CNN, none of it's true. None of it.

In just the last week, we've had a phoney stunt raid in swing state Nevada (where Acorn had been cooperating with officials for months, concerning problem canvassers they'd long ago fired); a Republican election official in swing state Missouri tell Fox News that she's being beseiged with fraudulent registration forms from Acorn (in a county where they've not done any registration work since August); a Republican sheriff in swing state Ohio, who, the very next day, suddenly requested the names and addresses of hundreds of early voters (with evidence of exactly zero wrong doing, but lots of Democratic-leaning college student in the particular county, and John McCain's state campaign chair as a partner in the investigation); and a screaming front page headline in Rupert Murdoch's New York Post about a guy who claims he was somehow tricked by Acorn into registering 72 times (but read the article closely to note he says he registered at the same address each time, which, even if true, would allow him - you guessed it - precisely one legal vote.)

It's an old Republican scam, but it's never been carried out with more zeal than this year. The Republicans have been putting so much time, money and resources into the propaganda leading up to this over the last four years, we should have expected no less. "

red more http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/13/election-acorn-voter-fraud

Sarah Palin Garbage Pail Kid

2008-10-09T13:32:00.000-07:00

from http://www.holytaco.com/2008/10/07/if-sarah-palin-was-a-garbage-pail-kid/

WHo are the Terrorists?

2008-10-09T13:10:00.000-07:00

Palin and McCain are inciting people to hatred, rioting and calling for Obama's head over something they made up? This is worse than Swiftboating because it is turning very very ugly.

http://bloggerinterrupted.com/2008/10/video-the-mccain-palin-mob-in-strongsville-ohio

The McCain Palin Mob in Ohio

VIDEO: The McCain-Palin mob in Strongsville, Ohio

Wed, Oct 8, 2008

Politics

UPDATE - THANK KOS & WONKETTE & DIGG!! Please donate to keep my camera charged and the gas tank filled for more Ohio fun!

It’s no wonder that the slightest incitement from Sarah Palin or John McCain will turn one of their rallies into a lynch mob. Just talk to the folks who attend.

My camera was rolling for literally seconds before people happily said to me, on camera, that Barack Obama is a terrorist. If I hadn’t spent most of my time at the event inside, waiting for the candidates to show up, I could have gotten dozens of these people on tape.

It appears the McCain campaign has either been told to tone it down by the Secret Service, or is toning it down themselves, because Ayers never came up in the building. Which is good, because if they had invoked Ayers, this crowd, as you will see from the YouTube, would have easily gone to the death threats we’ve heard before, keeping the Secret Service busy for weeks. Of course, Jim Trakas didn’t get the memo, saying Barack Obama supporters are “sinners” and implored the crowd to “pray for their souls.”

Bonus footage of people claiming they know Sarah Palin better than they know Barack, and in fact, never heard of Barack.

I’ve been doing blog video for a while, and presidential rallies a lot longer. And this is the most strange, ignorant, uninformed, angry, up-to-no-good, and gullible group of people I’ve ever seen at a political rally.

Ever.

"You think he's a terrorist? -- He's got the bloodlines"

I love the comment:
# sponson Says:
October 8th, 2008 at 11:32 pm

This should be re-titled “Heavy Republican Parking Lot.” Great job.

Fuckin Idiots

2008-10-02T19:43:00.000-07:00

Here is the difference between Fox News and CNN, or between Republican operatives and the press.

Right after the Palin debate, when the spin was going nuts, I went to Fox and there was a pundit who said"Palin was well thought out, even mentioning our General in Afghanistan's name, McClellan, who Joe Biden probably couln't even remember."

I then went over to CNN and I heard, "Well, I thought Joe Biden showed incredible restraint, especially when she mentioned Afghanistan General McKiernan, who he knows well and he didn't correct her."

I looked it up. The US commander in Afghanistan is named General David McKiernan.

Ha.

The Age

image: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20080929-0915-theveepdebaters.html

Your next president, when McCain dies of Melanoma

2008-09-26T22:46:00.000-07:00

"Palin once blessed to be free from 'witchcraft'

Updated Thu. Sep. 25 2008 6:36 AM ET

The Associated Press

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- A grainy YouTube video surfaced Wednesday showing Sarah Palin being blessed in her hometown church three years ago by a Kenyan pastor who prayed for her protection from "witchcraft" as she prepared to seek higher office.

The video shows Palin standing before Bishop Thomas Muthee in the pulpit of the Wasilla Assembly of God church, holding her hands open as he asked Jesus Christ to keep her safe from "every form of witchcraft."

"Come on, talk to God about this woman. We declare, save her from Satan," Muthee said as two attendants placed their hands on Palin's shoulders. "Make her way my God. Bring finances her way even for the campaign in the name of Jesus. ... Use her to turn this nation the other way around."

Palin filed campaign papers a few months later, in October 2005, and was elected governor the next year. "

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2008/09/palins_new_pastor_problem.html

Pwned Debate 1

2008-09-26T22:25:00.000-07:00

Obama called McCain on every lie.

Let me say it again.

He took control for most of the debate. Whenever McCain
lied, he called him on it. And he kept going back to what he'd do to
fix the mess McCain and the Republicans left in their wake. I think he
won the thing.

McCain looked sickly and a little befuddled to me except for that one
time he rattled off leaders of iron curtain countries. And he kept
repeating his campaign phrases, over and over.

Reply

Wow... I saw Obama crush him.

Obama looked Presidential, forceful, and clearly explained his side.

McCain was whiney and arrogant.

- Porter

We TiVoed it. We kept scores for each round. The first few rounds on economy Obama won. Then they went to Iraq Afghanistan Iran soviet union. I think McCain had a bit more edge on the foreign policy subject but what I notice is that my audience just tuned out because it was foreign policy and nobody cared. So in this regard obama lucked out. People were glued to the tube when it was the economy.

So now we still have about 30 min pf tivp to go and the viewing party degenerated into "every time we hear Georgia we drink"!

Sent from my iPhone

The other thing is u have to look at it from the eyes of bubba from Kansas. I think they tuned out after the first 15 minutes. The first 15 minutes I think obama had an edge

Sent from my iPhone

More Bush Shenanigans

2008-09-26T16:57:00.000-07:00

So they're asking for 700 Billion dollars to bail out these financial institutions that gave bad mortgages, sliced and diced those bad mortgages into packages that were used to build other funds so the entire thing was a big ponzi scheme.

This all happened because for the last 8 years the Republicans have screamed that all regulations are the work of the devil and that the ONLY way for all the money that they gave to the rich and corporations to trickle down to the "common man" was by letting the market run wild.

A Lot of people made a Lot of money.

Now, the same people (McCain) who never saw a deregulation scheme they didn't support are screaming about greed and how regulation is needed. Obama was actually calling for real oversight in 2006, but he was called a socialist for even suggesting it.

This is a final fuck you from Bush (hopefully final, as in he and his ilk actually intend on leaving office). They've allowed the market to fuck things up so badly that they're framing it as the apocalypse, an impending depression, worldwide economic collapse. It reminds me a lot of the WMD lies that got us into Iraq so they could make a fuckload of money (or just outright steal it). It reminds me of the Patriot Act where this administration saw an opening to flame the fire of fear and take unlimited power. They are the ultimate opportunistic cynicists. It is all about them taking your money.

We need to do exactly the opposite of what McCain and the republicans have done for the last 8 years .

We need to rollback the tax breaks on the wealthy.
We need to tax corporations and regulate them.
We need to curtail CEO salaries and payouts.

You can just imagine Bush and company, hoping the chickens wouldn't come home to roost for another 6 months. Even though the mechanics are different, the last Bush left us with the Savings and Loan crisis. In 1979 Republicans pushed the deregulation of the SnLs. 8 years of Regan and 2 of Bush Sr. Later, we had a 1.6 Billion dollar bailout. The friends of the Republicans (including Bush jr.s brother Neil, with the Silverado Savings and Loan) and John MCCain who was part of the Keating 5, "five U.S. senators (Alan Cranston, Don Riegle, Dennis DeConcini, John Glenn & John McCain) were implicated in an influence-peddling scheme".

Now, we've got another Bush and a 700 Billion dollar bailout.

I've heard this is a conspiracy to put the final nail in the US economy so that if Obama wins, he will be so curtailed that there will be no money to do anything like fix health care, shore up Social Security, invest in oil independence.

But that's just so cynical.

http://www.womenforjohnmccain.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/k5album-298x300.jpg

Another Bush, but worse...

2008-09-23T14:29:00.000-07:00

"John McCain's presidential campaign has shielded the first-term Alaska governor for weeks from spontaneous questions from voters and reporters, and went to striking lengths Tuesday to maintain that distance as Palin made her diplomatic debut."

The whole story is here.

Palin meets her first world leaders in New York

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ijGq94pVTj9FGiR-c5EdA3iSm2owD93CLG600

White Priviledge

2008-09-19T19:54:00.000-07:00

This is Your Nation on White Privilege

September, 14 2008

By Tim Wise

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

* White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

* White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

* White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

* White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."

* White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't
added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

* White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.

* White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.

* White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

* White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

* White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in
speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.

* White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

* White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it, a "light" burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and
certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

----------------------

Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me (Soft Skull, 2005, revised 2008), and of Speaking Treason Fluently, publishing this month, also by Soft Skull. For review copies or interview requests, please reply to publicity@softskull.com

Palin Comparison

2008-09-18T08:49:00.000-07:00

more of the same.. using yahoo to circumvent having to use her official account for business purposes, refusing subpoenas in Troopergate... telling everyone in the Alaskan government to not co-operate with the investigation. Sounds like Bush / Rove / Cheney to me.

Now that's change, for sure.

Barack has your back

2008-09-16T21:32:00.000-07:00

John McCain wants to keep the tax cuts George Bush enacted for the richest Americans who have so much money invested that they live off of the interest from their investments... and money is never something they even give a thought to.

John McCain wants to give another tax cut to corporations like the oil industry... he says all that extra billions of dollars will trickle down to you.

That hasn't worked in the last 8 years and John McCain knows that.

He and the people who are helping to get him into power know that. They keep getting richer and richer and they will stop at nothing to maintain their power. They will not give up what they have taken from you.

Barack Obama will give a tax break to you if you are a laborer or a carpenter or if you work at Walmart or Target or are a painter or ironworker or a tech guy or a nurse or cabbie or chef or retail manager. He'll give you a break if you're in middle management or a project lead or a paralegal, a city planner or a teacher.

Barack Obama wants to give a tax cut to the 90 % of Americans who come home tired, who give at least 8 hours a day of their existence to those people who live off their interest. He knows that we aren't a serfdom. He wants to undo the damage Bush and his cronies have inflicted on the American dream.

And he will. Barack has your back. All the rest is lies.

Up is Down, War is Peace, Republicans are the party of Change

2008-09-16T19:19:00.000-07:00

For the love of.... We gotta win this one. If we don't we will have proved that 95% of those who voted are fucking morons and that'd be 1/2 our country.

The people who need to stay in control, the rich, the criminals who can't allow what they've done to become public, the religious nuts who are banking the republicans will bring about the end of the world will all vote McCain Palin. The rest of us would have to be out of our minds to vote for those two.

(from a friend at NBC/CNBC)
PK

********

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic' and 'different.'

Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you're an American story.

If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, and you're a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, then you're well- grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, help register 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, 8 years as a State Senator of a district of 750,000 people, chair the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people, sponsor 131 bills, and serve on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works, and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

If your resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town of 7,000 people, 2 years as governor of a state of 650,000 people, you're qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, left your ill wife, and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age-appropriate sex education, including the use of birth control, you erode the fiber of American society.

If you staunchly advocate abstinence-only education, while your teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're responsible.

If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, you don't represent America's family values.

If your husband is called 'First Dude', has a DWI conviction, didn't register to vote until 25, and was a member of a group that advocated secession of Alaska from the USA, yours is the quintessential American family.

And, finally, if you're famous for your quick temper, you're the one to have your finger on the red nuclear button.

OK, much clearer now.

image: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/BushMcCain.jpg

Heinz Soup

2008-09-16T15:25:00.001-07:00

Most husbands nowadays have stopped beating their wives.

From the good old days when conservatives ran the world...

thanks to sa_Steve on Flikr http://flickr.com/photos/sa_steve/

Terror and Oil

2008-09-16T13:44:00.000-07:00

Fri, June 27, 2008 - 10:40 PM

Charlie Black, one of John McCain’s top aides mentioned the obvious,

In Fortune Magazine, http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/20/magazines/fortune/Evolution_McCain_Whitford.fortune/
From the article:

“On national security McCain wins. We saw how that might play out early in the campaign, when one good scare, one timely reminder of the chaos lurking in the world, probably saved McCain in New Hampshire, a state he had to win to save his candidacy - this according to McCain's chief strategist, Charlie Black. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an "unfortunate event," says Black. "But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who's ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us." As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. "Certainly it would be a big advantage to him," says Black.”

This is typical NeoCon wishful thinking. GW Bush was the idiot president until the 911 attacks happened on his watch, attacks that his yet to be dismantled intelligence departments warned him about in that August 6, 2001, memo titled, “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Laden_Determined_to_Strike_in_U.S.. And that attack, that changed our nation forever could have, and probably would have been foiled on Bill Clinton’s watch, but for the NeoCons who were emboldened after stealing the 2000 election, it was a $GOD$ send,

We all know the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) had written that their goals of a new Pax Americana with the Us controlling all oil resources of the world could not happen “absent some catastrophic catalyzing event –like a new Pearl Harbor”.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

Interestingly, the PNAC has done away with their website (above) and even though a search for “Pearl Harbor Project for the new American century” on Google, still returns a Wikipedia page as the first result, that page has been sanitized and that particular quote has been disappeared.

Search for it yourself. You’ll see.

Ah, but this is all just conspiracy theory. Crazy talk. There’s no way that the current administration has any plans to allow another psychotic Islamic fundamentalist attack to happen right before the elections so that any hope we may have of taking back our country from these criminals might happen as our founding fathers envisioned our escape from tyranny would be set into stone. Haven’t they stolen enough of our money? Haven’t they used our military to secure their oil resources? Can’t they see that they’ve taken our country to the very edge, where they’re now affecting the thinking sector of their “republican” base to such an extent that they’ve got nothing left but the insanely rich and the evangelicals and other right wing idiots to support their cause?

I wouldn’t be too sure of that.

It would be nice to think that they’ve already checked out, that they floated the bomb Iran thing and that didn’t seem like it would go over so the people who really run things are counting the trillions of dollars they’ve made off manipulating the oil markets and GW Bush is just wandering around the White House, looking for the little things like silverware, towels and toilet paper he can steal to take home and break out when he and his buddies are really drunk on the ranch and he can say, “heh, heh, lookit this..” right before he shows them his antiquities his friend gave him from Iraq in the week after they took Iraq.

“It’s clay, but it’s really old, heh, heh.”

If Bush hasn’t talked to the Bin Ladens who’ve said, “Osama sends his love, and he’s ready to ship something nukular into your ports.
Thanks for never allowing those to be protected with any federal money, we’re golden” and they’ve got a plan.. Charlie Black misspoke, or he didn’t.

They don’t want to leave “office” because maybe someone would pursue treason charges, but I kind of doubt any one would. Politicians only want to stay in power. That seems to be what they’re all about.

So what is this all about?

Well, here you go; “In his second week in office George W. Bush created the task force, officially known as the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) with Dick Cheney as chairman.”

“Most of the activities of the Energy Task Force had not been disclosed to the public, even though Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests (since 19 April 2001) have sought to gain access to its materials. The organizations Judicial Watch and Sierra Club launched a law suit (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia: Judicial Watch Inc. v. Department of Energy, et al., Civil Action No. 01-0981) under the FOIA to gain access to the task force's materials. On 5 March 2002 the US Government was ordered to make a full disclosure; this has not happened, pending appeal.”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Task_Force

So what the FUCK?

How about this as a conspiracy theory?

Cheney, Bush and Condi meet and set out an agenda.

First WE LET THIS ATTACK HAPPEN BECAUSE OSAMA BIN LADEN IS BASED IN AFGHANISTAN AND UNOCAL ET AL NEEDS A PIPELINE.

From the 1998 Congressional Record
“”One obvious route south would cross Iran, but this is foreclosed for American companies because of U.S. sanctions legislation. The only other possible route is across Afghanistan, which has of course its own unique challenges. The country has been involved in bitter warfare for almost two decades, and is still divided by civil war. From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders, and our company. Two major infrastructure projects are seeking to meet the need for additional export capacity. One, under the aegis of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, plans to build a pipeline west from the northern Caspian to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. Oil would then go by tanker through the Bosporus to the Mediterranean and world markets.”

So.. being good capitalists who know we have to have the resources to run a war machine that will control the world and knowing those dwindling resources are OIL, let’s let that that PNAC dream of letting the Fundie Islamists attack us anywhere (oops, WTC on 911) so we can go in and scrape out the fundie Islamist scum from Afghanistan (like they did, and fuck the Muslim fundamentalists, really) so we can build that pipeline, like they did.

I can see where they’re coming from. I can appreciate their concern and the fact that they think that those who secure the world deserve to live in the world of wealth, but absolute power corrupts absolutely and it has taken 7 and a half years for people in the trickle down to feel the pain of that philosophy.

This plan is your tax dollars at work. It isn’t corporate tax dollars at work. They look at you like fodder, like another resource and they laugh at you because you aren’t in power like they are… and they stole their way to power.

They have absolutely no shame. They have absolutely no religion. They are only powered by greed. And we are better than they are.
I can deal with wiping out religious zealots. I can deal with greedy fucks making a little money off decimating the ignorant fundamentalist fucks who stone women and fuck their daughters and hate hate hate. Fuck them, I was exposed to Baptists at an early age and as fucked up as those idiots are, from what I hear about Islamofascists, they’re just vanilla child abusers.Afraid to dance.. feh!

What I have a problem with is letting people in the World Trade Centers be sheep to the slaughter for your energy plan. That’s treason and that’s one of the reasons the current administration is busily trying to wipe out all communications of their reign and if that doesn’t work, trying to figure out how to keep the perpetual war going. The finger of God, if there was one, is pointing severe retribution at the neocon fucks who have hijacked our country.

Next Energy Policy agenda item; WE NEED TO GET CONTROL OF IRAQ’S OIL.

So Bush and company lied themselves into that war. We all know how well that’s gone. There are good things and bad things. I’m not full on liberal, dissing the fact that we took out a dictator like Saddam Hussein who was about as bad as any dictator in the world, but the incompetence, the sheer stupidity of this administration in the aftermath has forever branded them as dipshits who’s dipshittery basically led to the deaths of not only our finest military men and women, but the people of Iraq and that led to a destabilization of the region that hasn’t worked in anyone’s interest, even the interest of the oil companies who’d hoped their buddy GWB would give them more than just billions of dollars of dollars shipped over in C-5’s that just disappeared. I wish I’d have been there when the C-5 opened up with those palates of cash and it was put into Mercedes and Jeeps and into my fucking backpack.

If you paid taxes in 2003, 10 percent of what you paid disappeared in Iraq with no record of where it went.

The next agenda items? Well..

LET’S DESTABILIZE THE MARKET SO WE CAN DRIVE OIL PRICES UP.

When Bush and Co. Stole the election in 2000, oil was below 40$ a barrel. Since the oil executives took over, oil has gone up to $140 a barrel.

Yea. www.aztlan.net/oiltanker.htm What is the new name of the Altair Voyager?

The “Condoleezza Rice”

This isn’t because of peak oil, this isn’t because of China and India, this is all because of speculation, the same bullshit that made California have rolling blackouts when Enron was running the show. There is plenty of oil for the world now, even though we are running out. This is nothing more than oil people stealing our government and letting whatever they need to make more and MORE goddamned money happen with absolutely ZERO REGULATION. Tomorrow, oil could drop back to, say, 60$ a barrel.. But that will never happen with these fucks, Bush and Cheney, and McBush in office. That will only happen if someone who isn’t owned by the oil world is running the county.

So, the country is tired and beaten. The politics of hate have played out. The real republicans, the one’s who thought their party was about economic conservatism are pissed. They all see that this is just a scam for GWBush and his oil and Halliburton cronies to make even more profit for their work are pissed.

And now? Well, the price of crude is high and every person in America is paying a shitload of money to drive, whether it is to get to work or to work. But they don’t fucking give a fuck, every extra 2 bucks you pay is multiplies by millions each day for them. Maybe it’ll help them build a colony on Mars after they’ve stolen all your money. But now, the final agenda item comes to the forefront:

WE NEED TO OPEN UP THE REMAINING 20 PERCENT OF OFFSHORE LAND FOR DRILLING.

Can’t you just see Cheney sitting there with his buddies, laughing over the pain they’ve intentionally caused/ Can’t you just see then laughing over the millions they’re making each day then saying, HA, and we’ll use this to get them to let us drill off their coasts because they’re stupid.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

I hope. I hope, as I’ve said before, that they just let it go if they don’t get it all. Damn, they couldn’t bomb Iran into the stone age. Fuck man, let Israel take out any nuclear facilities. They’re quite adept at that. Damn, they couldn’t get to actually protecting our country from the Islamists. You remember when they said the Clintonians stole all the “W”s off the keyboards when Bush came in and it was a lie? Well that’s going to be cute compared to what these criminals leave us, if they decide to allow elections. They’re going to leave us with a terrorist attack in the chamber that, if it happens, they’ll use as a means to point their lie machine to attack Obama’s government from the get go.

That is no where near unreasonable. It will happen, if they don’t let an attack happen before the election because it’ll supposedly help McCain. They don’t give a fuck about you and me. They stole the money, they pushed their agenda. There’s no reason not to expect the very worst from these evil men.

But I, for one, am glad the oil companies are back in control. I welcome our oily evil masters. Forget alternatives or believing in democracy. Don’t even bother to vote because it’s all rigged.

Or maybe, as Bill Kristol says, Bush will just bomb Iran before leaving office.
www.youtube.com/watch

“If [the Republicans] will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.”
Adlai Stevenson during the 1952 presidential campaign.

oldamericancentury.org/pnac.htm
www.bradblog.com/
www.voanews.com/english/20...4-voa31.cfm
www.whatreallyhappened.com/oil.html
strata.geol.sc.edu/petroleu...02000.htm
fuelfocus.nrcan.gc.ca/fact_sh...ne_e.cfm
www.wtrg.com/prices.htm

Race Tards

2008-09-16T13:40:00.000-07:00

Sun, June 15, 2008 - 12:34 AM

My countdown widget on iGoogle tells me that, as long as there’s no more treason from the evil buffoons who’ve pillaged our country for the last 7 years (see postponing elections because they let another terrorist attack happen) T Minus W is 219 days, 9 hours, 16 minutes and 46 seconds.

America and the world will breathe a collective sigh of relief on the day Barack Obama takes office. And really, I mean, come on, even the forces of pure evil must have stolen enough money from the country, shed enough blood, built up large enough stockpiles of death, to sit back and let someone try to fix the mess Bush is leaving behind.

I could go on and on about how fucked up the last 7 years of this illegal regime have been. I could discuss how they stole what they wanted, starting with the election in 2000 and how “compassionate conservative” was pure bullshit. How they took BILLIONS of dollars from our collective pocketbooks with their retroactive “tax relief” for the rich that have helped the oil industry make profits unheard of. I could be bitter about their irresponsibility in letting the attacks of 911 happen on their watch when they had adequate warning (from the Clinton infrastructure he left behind). I could bitch about the evisceration of any and all regulatory governmental agencies that in turn led to things like the foreclosure crisis and recurring food poising and environmental havoc. Oh, and there were the lies that got us into the Iraq war when we should have gone into Somalia and stayed in Afghanistan and caught all the Taliban fucks who actually are our enemies but we didn’t because the only reason we went there was to secure Unocal safety for their pipeline.

Iraq? Fuck.. the utter fuckups in Iraq, Abu Grab, torture memos, Guantanamo, Kyoto, Blackwater, Halliburton, gas prices, the loss of respect in the world..

Sure, not all of it was bad. Saddam Hussein is dead. There is a possibility of a more democratic Iraq, but Syria and Iran are emboldened and far stronger than they were before. Bush and his people had no fucking idea what they were doing going to war.

Actually, they did know what they were doing. They were all war profiteers who made a fuckload of money finding another way to further drain off that surplus Bill Clinton left them.

In spite of our misguided leaders, the men and woman of our armed forces have persevered and always done their job, even when we’ve got Republicans voting against providing health care for Post Traumatic Stress after combat because it’s just too expensive and against just rewards like an upgraded GI Bill (They said it would encourage people to join the military short term so they could *just* get $ for college, no shit).

The Right Wing chicken Hawk fucks who have no problem sending our warriors to face death in the name of protecting our country and then who don’t want to take care of those warriors afterwards all deserve a special circle of Hell devoted just to them. Seriously.

They used our government to make their money. George W was a failed businessman before he was selected as the figure head for the NeoCon takeover of our government in 2000. He’s taken what he and his cronies wanted from every person in the US. He was the CEO president. Now I just hope he and his crew just go away and enjoy their spoils.

I guarantee that Barack Obama is no George W Bush.

He’ll be our first African American president, so we will now get to experience just how entrenched racism still is in this country.

It’s already started, the innuendo, the false Fox “News” reports (a "terrorist" fist bump? you decide"). And this will be a time for America to decide what is more important:

Buying more lies from a party that now touts itself in a bizarre Rovian round robin as the party of “change” – the Republicans, who are running an old doddering what man who will be older than Ronald Reagan was when he was elected and who represents even more of the same failed policies of Bush and Company,

… or for real change

– the Democrats who are running a halfbreed (Shekky, a halfbreed himself's affectionate term of endearment) named Barack Obama who’s plan includes every kind of tax break for the middle class to the poor, who is going to actually fix the health insurance crisis that affects everyone but the rich, who is for real environmental reform that will create millions of jobs and save our species existence, who is for fixing all the last 7 years of, well, see above. Barack Obama, who, by taking money from individual donors and not corporate interests in not OWNED by ANYONE. And even with just counting on the people to fund him, he's got a shit load of money because the PEOPLE are sick of having our government hijacked and we want CHANGE.

It is a choice between truth and lies. It is a choice between the future and the past. It is a choice between the easy (but getting harder b y the day) path of letting those with everything use you for their own ends until you are just a husk or being a part of our democracy that is dangerously close to disappearing all together if we let them steal another 4 years.

I can’t wait to see Barack and McCain debate. The contrast was stark on the night Obama took the nomination, with McCain giving his impotent (almost pathetic) speech to a couple hundred supporters and with Obama calling on our nation to take back our democracy in front of tens of thousands of cheering Americans.

I have to include part of his speech from that night. In quotes:

" America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America. "

This election is going to have a lot of raw drama as it busts open the boil of racism that lives just below the skin of America because it is there and Obama is “Black” enough now (remember when he wasn’t the Democratic front runner and people were asking, “Is he really BLACK ENOUGH?”)

But I have faith in Barack, like so many others do. His campaign is ready to fight the same lies and innuendo that Swiftboated John Kerry with his site:

my.barackobama.com/page/con...earshome/

… and that’s yet another thing that is so awesome about him. He has no problem calling out the Republicans when they lie. And he doesn’t have the same pussy attitude Kerry had, where the great statesman was shocked, just shocked, that there were Right Wing operatives who would do ANYTHING and say ANYTHING to cast any kind of doubt in people’s minds. I think that we’ve learned after the last two elections that they will stop at nothing to distort the truth so they can stay in power and keep up the “permanent Republican majority”.

I was listening to Meet the Press (Fuck I’m going to miss Tim Russert. He was so excited about this campaign and the historical moment in time we’re in. He was one of the good guys, one of the real journalists who were fair and balanced, before shitheads like O’Reilly and Limbaugh and their ilk came along to poison the well of journalism. Russert’s legacy will assert his integrity, and I am certain that history will not be so kind to the Right Wing) .. and Tim opened with the Robert F. Kennedy quote:

"'There is no question about it, in the next 40 years a Negro can achieve the same position that my brother has' ... Kennedy said that prejudice exists and probably will continue to exist ...'But we have tried to make progress and we are making progress. ... We are not going to accept the4 status quo.'"

Washington post, May 27, 1961

This is interesting also because RFK was assassinated 40 years ago, the same week Barack Obama became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. 40 years… and we will most likely have our first African American president after the dust settles.

The sheer audacity of a BLACK man thinking he can become president. That is exactly the kind of audacity we need in times like these.

Barack wrote a book and you should read it if you really want to understand the man. It’s the first audio book I’ve ever listened to, “The Audacity of Hope” and since then, I’ve got to admit, I download his speeches and put them on my iPod and listen to them. I’d love to hear 2 minutes of GW Bush trying to read something he “wrote”. He is an amazing orator. He is smart. He cares deeply about this country. (Barack, obviously not Bush Junior)

When you’re listening to Obama speak, you can’t help but think you’ve never heard a politician speak like he does. At least my Generation X hasn't, or if we did, we were just barely old enough to remember our parents pointing at the black and white TV saying, "..remember this, we're landing on the moon" and that's about it.

Barack comes off as honest, intelligent, thoughtful, the utter opposite of the current resident of the US and as someone who is sick of the disease of our current government and who wants to change it. And he isn’t apologetic, no, he’s someone who can take on the worst that the right has to offer. Yes, he’s a politician, but he is grounded in the reality of 95% of Americans, not in the reality of this current regime that is only out for the rich and who throws out the occasional poison hate bone to the religious right in a Supreme Court justice or law to keep those uppity women from controlling what goes on in their bodies.

Obama's already said it, and I suspect it will be another “There you go again.. Reagan quote” when someone lies or distorts the truth and he says, “This is the kind of politics that I’m talking about. It is the kind of politics I believe we need to change.”

Audacity indeed.

The slings and arrows that Senator Obama has decided he will endure makes me shudder. He is a better man than I am, not because of his race or is ideals, but because he believes he can do this thing and I don’t care who you are, he deserves respect for what he has and will accomplish.

But the worms who, for whatever reason, hate someone because of the tone of their skin color will come to the surface and vomit out their hate. You can see it in comments sections on any political website now. You can see them surfacing on Fox News as “reporters” and in any other right leaning “news source” that are all just tools for the ruling class. This year, after being beaten down and seeing the rich constantly screw them, even the evangelicals aren’t sure what to do so the Republicans are going to have to widen their net a little and court the overtly racist vote because they’ve got so little else to run on.

And I predict, that they will come out full force, but, like the Republican party itself, they will damage their "brand", and since racists are far stupider than most of our species, they will burn out and hopefully self destruct early. This is unavoidable, the horror of being exposed to them, the embarrassment of knowing that genetically we are all related to them, and then the elation of seeing the sweet sunlight of truth burn them up into crisp turds on the sidewalk. If Bush has taught us anything, it is that things have to get very, very, very bad before people wake up and take action to rid themselves of the proactive evil that will always be there to destroy freedom and enlightenment.

I used to actually like John McCain, before he began cultivating the kinds of relationships with the far right hate machine and the very lobbyists and corporations that he once fought against before he flushed all his integrity so he could reach that pinnacle of presidential contender.

They’ll try tax and spend. They’ll try experience vs. youth. They’ll try security vs. inexperience, but none of those things will stick. So they’ll have to call on the army of ignorance to spread the virus of racism to really win (or they’ll try, as they have in the past to outright steal the elections on election day).

I can’t wait to see the Race Tards exposed to the light.

Their ugly head is just now peeping like a corn toothed shark out of the asshole of white trash America and you better bet the Republicans are going to use that great pathetic mass of ignorance like Willie Horton in a Twin Towers blender where Barack Obama Bin Laden is going to have a hip hop concert in the new Mosque he builds at ground zero.

The optimist in me says that we’re going to take back our country from the corporate fascists. We’re going to reel in the oil companies and restore fairness into the tax system. We’re going to put some balances in place that will keep another president from ever not only having disdain for the founding fathers of our country and that constitution they wrote, but utterly disregarding it again. We’re going to make our country truly safe and deal with the religious fundamentalists in the Middle East who aren't going to stop attacking us with more than just our war machine. We’re going to beat the Republicans, because they’ve run their course and gotten out of control in their ineptitude. They’ve destroyed so much of our country by sucking it dry with their irresponsible unabated greed that, as they say, has led to the “Republican Brand” being damaged.

And the optimist also believes that we survived. America is hurt and limping, but we survived and we will come back stronger. It’s like the last 8 years have taught us what happens when misguided people driven only by greed and a fascist ideology steal your government.

It is unfortunate that things had to get so bad for so many people to feel the need to bring about change, but this may be the one. This has to be the one. And even if some shenanigans like starting a war with Iran or letting another terrorist attack happens, we need to maintain our resolve and realize that the cancer on our country is the people who stole our government 8 years ago and they have to go.

We have to unite, all Americans, because 95% if us see where this path is leading and we don’t want it. The racists and the fascists, the corporate overlords and the Neocons may very well become extinct after this election if America can really rise up and take back our country, and unite and fight against greed and hate once and for all.

There are no red states and there are no blue states. There are only the United States.

It’s going to be a hell of a ride.

my.barackobama.com/page/con...earshome/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Russert
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy
current.com/items/890231..._40_years_ago - cool Youtube
nativenotes.wordpress.com/2008/...minee/
www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/0...45.html
www.breitbart.com/article.php

3 Comments

Justice Putnam

Sun, June 15, 2008 - 2:01 AM
I'm with you 100%!

QuasiPseudo

Thu, June 19, 2008 - 9:14 AM
Obama meets Peter at the Pearly Gates...

Peter: “Welcome to Heaven. Name?”
Obama: “Barak Obama.”
Peter: “Oh yes, that sounds familiar. Where would I know you from?”
Obama: “I was elected President of the United States.”
Peter: “No kidding?! The US elected a black man as their president? When did THIS happen?”
Obama: “Oh, about twenty minutes ago.”

Very tasteless, yes - but where do you think things will go should this little joke become a reality? How strategic should Obama be about picking his VP? ...and most importantly, how long can Obama go before he sells his soul like so many that have come before, who were initially credited with integrity? Or, has he already done so, while his amazing speech writers distract us with a message of hope?

In case you havent noticed, Im one cynical bastard when it comes to politics. However, Its one of the few subjects on which I greatly enjoy being proven wrong (& it doesnt happen nearly often enough). I sincerely hope that your hope in Obamas hope is well founded. Tho I pray for the day when we can finally eliminate all the hope middlemen and just be able to HOPE.

*Ali Baba* Alexandra Davies

Mon, June 23, 2008 - 5:51 PM
Barack is so inspiring. I love it. ;D

Talking Torture in the Whitehouse

2008-09-16T13:37:00.000-07:00

Tue, April 15, 2008 - 12:32 AM

No surprise, and as Andrew Sullivan says, the fact that Bush and Cheney and the other high level trolls who make up the current ruling junta sat around thinking up ways to torture prisoners to the extent that then Attorney General Ashcroft remarked that maybe they shouldn't be having these discussions in the White House, is no where near as important as Barack Obama making an off the cuff remark that people who have been out of work in middle America for 25 years are bitter so they "cling" to their religion and their guns.

andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/th...tml

We'll see if this story is buried. Unfortunately, I suspect the terror alert level will be raised if people start paying attention.

3 Comments

Nicole aka ~technopatra~

Tue, April 15, 2008 - 9:05 AM
My fear is that they will successfully shift majority public opinion to accept their party line that it was all necessary to ensue or safety. They MUST be tried for war crimes.

Bobzilla

Tue, April 15, 2008 - 2:05 PM
Those guys are PURE EVIL.

Tim Black

Thu, April 17, 2008 - 9:37 AM
By signing off on clearly illegal actions they show that they expect no one to call them on it. This shows that the criminals at the top of our government genuinely believe they are above the law. Bush has shown over and over that he will redefine any law he dislikes with a stroke of his pen. So we KNOW that the entire gang are thugs and thieves, but what if they are also right about being above it all? What if their control is already so tight that they really have nothing to worry about. If this passes out of sight without anyone going on trial, I'm afraid the cout de ta is already over and the bastards have won.

The Lone Gunman State

2008-09-16T13:33:00.001-07:00

Fri, February 22, 2008 - 3:25 PM

I wonder sometimes, if the Bushies have any intention of allowing a real election, even if they're handing over the chicken house to McCain.

And I LOVED this Bush quote in the paper on Wednesday regarding Cuba.

"This transition ought to lead to free and fair elections -- and I mean free and I mean fair, not these kind of staged elections that the Castro brothers try to foist off as being true democracy."

Good God that'd be hilarious if the George W. and brother Jeb's stolen 2000 Florida election hadn't brought about so much pain and wasted opportunities.

And there's rumblings about this from the Star-Telegram Feb. 21, 2008

"DALLAS -- Security details at Barack Obama's rally Wednesday stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at Reunion Arena.

The order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security.

Dallas Deputy Police Chief T.W. Lawrence, head of the Police Department's homeland security and special operations divisions, said the order -- apparently made by the U.S. Secret Service -- was meant to speed up the long lines outside and fill the arena's vacant seats before Obama came on.

"Sure," said Lawrence, when asked if he was concerned by the great number of people who had gotten into the building without being checked. But, he added, the turnout of more than 17,000 people seemed to be a "friendly crowd."

The Secret Service did not return a call from the Star-Telegram seeking comment.

Doors opened to the public at 10 a.m., and for the first hour security officers scanned each person who came in and checked their belongings in a process that kept movement of the long lines at a crawl. Then, about 11 a.m., an order came down to allow the people in without being checked.

Several Dallas police officers said it worried them that the arena was packed with people who got in without even a cursory inspection.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because, they said, the order was made by federal officials who were in charge of security at the event.

"How can you not be concerned in this day and age," said one policeman."

www.star-telegram.com/dallas_...413.html - image & story
www.star-telegram.com/dallas_...920.html

True, it may not have been a big deal, but it creeps me out and I'll feel a lot better when our candidates are out of Texas.

rambling politics

2008-09-16T13:31:00.000-07:00

Fri, February 15, 2008 - 9:31 PM

I'm giving less of a fuck recently about what was with me if you care. Politics does that to me. Walking a lot around San Francisco gets me all hard. Makes me wonder why the fuck I waste time writing a goddamned blog. Makes me wonder what the fuck anything matters. Everything is fucking birthday party or disjointed opportunity to piss on another post. Fuck em whoever "em" are. It's like mailing meat to someone after leaving the meat out for a couple days so the flies can lay eggs in it and when the recipient of the meat opens your package a bonnet of flies buzz out. I think that was a Monte Cazazza vs. Genesis P-Orridge thing... I kind of remember it.

I’ve been writing down the game. It takes a while to gather all the synchronicities. I’ll post those this weekend.

I walked on, listening to Tupac Shakur, where he says:

“....
And although it seems heaven sent
We ain't ready, to see a black President, uhh
...
Well hey, well that's the way it is”

Fuckin poetry. Wish he was around to see the possibility of a Barack in the White House.

At the Hotel Utah tonight…. Graffiti in the bathroom: Oh, Ba, Ma self.
And a communist friend of mine calls Barack an Obama-Nation.

Once the primary is done, we’ll see what the Swiftboaters can do with Barack Obama. Expect shit like, “I hear he got sworn in as senator on the Koran” and “I hear he went to one of those Madrasa schools” and “He’s the Most LIBERAL member of the Senate, ever.”

Yea. I’ll bet he can stand up to the lies too. I hope he's sincere. I think he is. I'd love to see the hateful racists fucktards shit their pants when we've got our first Black President. I hope they quake and gnash teeth and fucking lose their minds. I hope their fucking heads explode because they're dinosaurs from an ignorant dying reality and they had their time to fuck shit up (even though they were just patsies for the rich who USED them to loot the government, but they're too stupid to realize that).

Hey, at least he isn't a woman, huh you fucking assholes? Fuck You republican right wing dumbasses, really. We'll clean up your mess so get out of the way.

I think people are fucking sick of the plunder of the last 7 years. I just hope the Bush team doesn’t have a terrorist attack in the hopper, let it happen in September, and they’re ready in time to install martial law and an election postponement.

Was that a test in Pakistan, with Benazir Bhutto? To see what a populace who are disgusted with a corrupt government are willing to do when their candidate is killed by the system?

I’ll say it again, I just hope they've looted the treasury enough and that they’ve got enough money to let someone who actually gives a fuck about our country run it for a while. They can steal the election in 8 years, after someone’s fixed things, avoided a revolution.

Things have to get really bad before people start fucking voting. Things have to get really bad before people start taking notice of what the “leaders” are doing. Is it possible we’ve gotten bad enough? I hope we don’t have to move into a corporate/religious, pure unapologetic fascist state before things get bad enough for the people to take back the power.

Because, if the Republicans win or steal this election, the great American Dream is over.

We may as well have a fucking king, cause we’re all fucking serfs.

And to anyone who says whoever is in power doesn’t matter, all the dead for oil, all the money they’ve stolen, all the environmental carnage and pure greed driven decisions, all the ignoring the constitution, all the criminal shit they continue doing, well, look at the toads Bush stacked into the Supreme Court. You think Hillary or Barack are going to put roundhead puritans in like Roberts or Scalia or Thomas? No, they won’t. They’ll put in people who respect the constitution, people who aren’t lapdogs for a right wing ideology.

Fuck’s sake. I want to puke, seeing what they’ve done to our country. I want them in prison. I want them gone. I want our country to get closer to what it can be, even if it isn’t perfect, we could take it back from these corporate raiders, I still believe it’s possible.

But maybe I’m really dead, just living an illusion. May be when I wake up, I’ll realize that they’ve won and hope was just a fucking fleeting dream that kept us all from taking up arms to overthrow our oppressors.

I hope that isn’t the case.

Tim Black

Sat, February 16, 2008 - 1:04 PM
I think we (as a nation) are headed for a economic train wreak. The current fools will not stop raiding until the credit is gone and currency is as worthless as post war Germany. This is one reason we practice reuse, self-sufficiency and barter. Because in a few years, that is how we all will be living. I don't believe anything will stop this now. As burners we are used to having a party in the leftovers and wreckage of "normal" life. This is in fact training for the future. When a wound is big enough, it's only a matter of time before the body dies. We are not dead, but America (as we have know it) is dead. (We have NO money, only a crushing debt, the entire income tax no longer covers the interest payments.) The abuse of power and destruction of this nations wealth is a mortal wound. it just hasn't stopped twitching yet.

Three states for Obama this weekend

2008-09-16T13:27:00.000-07:00

Sun, February 10, 2008 - 12:14 AM

In case you thought it was over, it isn't

Here you go:

"Obama won the Nebraska and Washington caucuses by greater than two-to-one margins against Senator Hillary Clinton and easily captured the Louisiana primary by a double-digit margin with heavy support among African-American voters. Obama also swamped Clinton in the US Virgin Islands caucuses. But because of the proportional awarding of delegates in the Democratic contests, the two contenders remain locked in a close battle for the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the party's nomination."

--------------

Obama sweeps races

By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff
Posted by Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor February 10, 2008 12:43 AM

WASHINGTON -- Senator Barack Obama scored a clean sweep in Saturday's Democratic nominating contests from the West Coast to the Caribbean, giving him a burst of momentum in a Democratic campaign where every delegate has become crucial to capturing the nomination.

On the Republican side, a defiant Mike Huckabee easily won the GOP caucuses in Kansas and was projected as the narrow winner in the Louisiana primary, picking up support from social conservatives to best his party's front-runner, Senator John McCain, and giving a breath of life to the former Arkansas governor's uphill campaign. Huckabee and McCain were locked in a race that was too close to call early today in the Washington state caucuses.

Obama won the Nebraska and Washington caucuses by greater than two-to-one margins against Senator Hillary Clinton and easily captured the Louisiana primary by a double-digit margin with heavy support among African-American voters. Obama also swamped Clinton in the US Virgin Islands caucuses. But because of the proportional awarding of delegates in the Democratic contests, the two contenders remain locked in a close battle for the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the party's nomination.

"We won north, we won south, we won in between,'' a jubilant Obama told a Democratic Party dinner last night in Virginia. "And I believe we can win Virginia,'' he added to cheers and shouts of "Yes, we can!'' his campaign mantra.

The attention now moves to Maine, where Democrats will hold caucuses today, and to Tuesday's "Potomac Primary,'' in which Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia will hold primaries. Obama is leading in polls in Virginia and Maryland, and is expected to win in the District, so the Clinton campaign is banking heavily on wins in bigger states next month to keep her in the running.

While the Obama campaign celebrated, the Clinton camp sought to downplay Obama's successes last night, even before the votes were counted. "The Obama campaign has dramatically outspent our campaign in these three states, saturating the airwaves with 30 and 60 second ads,"' the campaign said in a memo to reporters. "Although the next several states that hold nominating contests this month are more favorable to the Obama campaign, we will continue to compete in them and hope to secure as many delegates as we can before the race turns to Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania.''

The Illinois senator has done overwhelmingly well among black voters, helping him score victories in the South and giving him an edge in the primaries coming up Tuesday. But Clinton has done very well among Latinos voters -- capturing California largely because of the two-thirds of the Hispanic vote there she received -- and her campaign expects the New York lawmaker to have an advantage in Texas because of the Latino vote there.

Heading into yesterday's contests, Clinton held a small lead over Obama in the delegate count, 1,055 to 998, according to an Associated Press tally, which includes the results of primaries and caucuses, plus a survey of unpledged "superdelegates." But Obama's campaign said last night that after his wins, he leads Clinton by about 70 delegates among those awarded in actual contests.

Obama can also claim wins in the popular vote in 18 states to 10 states for Clinton -- with votes still being counted in New Mexico from Tuesday. Clinton also won in Florida and Michigan, but those delegates are not being counted because the states broke party rules to move up their primaries. National polls show the two deadlocked.

www.boston.com/news/polit...eps_ra.html
www.latimes.com/news/natio...97845.story

image: woodburydems.com/blog/uplo...731285.jpg

Why do I like this guy?

2008-09-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

Fri, February 8, 2008 - 11:33 PM

and think he'd be a great president? Looks like a lot of other people like him too. Was Oprah behind all this? He gives a good speech, you gotta give him that.

Watch this.

www.dipdive.com/

"we've been told we cannot do this..."

"..there's something happening in America,
that we are not as divided as our politics suggest.

That we are one people.
that we are one Nation and that together we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea,

Yes We Can."

...

damn..

If you think you can know a person by their words, if you can feel them by the way they speak, if you can believe them, even when you're watching them on television or the internet, and if you think they're the right choice to fix all that's been destroyed, well..

You should check this out.

And, this was an interesting editorial in the SFChronic today.

I hadn't read his stuff before en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sirota
but I found this interesting and worth a read. He makes a good point about the Clinton machine (and don't get me wrong, I thought Bill did a great job and Hill would probably do that same if she could get elected) but his point is - You mention class and we'll talk about race.

The Democrats' class war

David Sirota, Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Friday, February 8, 2008

or all the hype about generational and gender wars in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, we have a class war on our hands. And incredibly, corporate America's preferred candidate is winning the poorer "us" versus the wealthier "them" - a potentially decisive trend with the contest now moving to working-class bastions like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

In most states, polls show Hillary Clinton is beating Barack Obama among voters making $50,000 a year or less - many of whom say the economy is their top concern. Yes, the New York senator who appeared on the cover of Fortune magazine as Big Business's candidate is winning economically insecure, lower-income communities over the Illinois senator who grew up as an organizer helping those communities combat unemployment. This absurd phenomenon is a product of both message and bias.

Obama has let Clinton characterize the 1990s as a nirvana, rather than a time that sowed the seeds of our current troubles. He barely criticizes the Clinton administration for championing job-killing trade agreements. He does not question that same administration's role in deregulating the financial industry and thereby intensifying today's boom-bust catastrophes. And he rarely points out what McClatchy Newspapers reported this week: that Clinton spent most of her career at a law firm "where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards," including Wal-Mart's.

Obama hasn't touched any of this for two reasons.

First, his campaign relies on corporate donations. Though Obama certainly is less industry-owned than Clinton, the Washington Post noted last spring that he was the top recipient of Wall Street contributions. That cash is hush money, contingent on candidates silencing their populist rhetoric.

But while this pressure to keep quiet affects all politicians, it is especially intense against black leaders.

"If Obama started talking like John Edwards and tapped into working-class, blue-collar proletarian rage, suddenly all of those white voters who are viewing him within the lens of transcendence would start seeing him differently," says Charles Ellison of the University of Denver's Center for African American Policy.

That's because once Obama parroted Edwards' attacks on greed and inequality, he would "be stigmatized as a candidate mobilizing race," says Manning Marable, a Columbia University history professor. That is, the media would immediately portray him as another Jesse Jackson - a figure whose progressivism has been (unfairly) depicted as racial politics anathema to white swing voters.

Remember, this is always how power-challenging African Americans are marginalized. The establishment cites a black leader's race- and class-unifying populism as supposed proof of his or her radical, race-centric views. An extreme example of this came from the FBI, which labeled Martin Luther King Jr. "the most dangerous man in America" for talking about poverty. More typical is the attitude exemplified by Joe Klein's 2006 Time magazine column. He called progressive Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., "an African American of a certain age and ideology, easily stereotyped" and "one of the ancient band of left-liberals who grew up in the angry hothouse of inner-city, racial-preference politics."

The Clintons are only too happy to navigate this ugly cultural topography. After a rare Obama attack on Hillary Clinton for supporting policies that eliminated jobs, Bill Clinton quickly likened Obama's campaign to Jackson's, and the Clinton campaign told the Associated Press Obama was "the black candidate." These were deliberate statements telling Obama that if he talks about class, they'll talk about race.

And so, as Marable says, Obama's pitch includes "no mention of the class struggle or class conflict." It is "hope" instead of an economic case, bromide instead of critique. The result is an oxymoronic dynamic.

Obama, the person who fought blue-collar joblessness in the shadows of shuttered factories, is winning wealthy enclaves. But Clinton, the person whose globalization policies helped shutter those factories, is winning blue-collar strongholds.

Obama, who was schooled by the same organizing networks as Cesar Chavez, is being endorsed by hedge fund managers. But Clinton, business's favorite, is being endorsed by the United Farm Workers - the union that Chavez created.

Obama, the candidate from Chicago's impoverished South Side, is finding support on Connecticut's gilded south coast. But Hillary Clinton, the candidate representing Big Money, is finding support from those with relatively little money.

As the campaign heads to the struggling Rust Belt under banners promising "change," this bizarre class war may end up guaranteeing no real transformation at all.

David Sirota is a bestselling author whose newest book, "The Uprising," will be released in June of 2008.

www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi

Who is watching the voting machines?

2008-09-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

QuasiPseudo wrote:

Just curious Moze, do you think that any to all of the elections since at least 2000 have been stolen/corrupted?

Moze replied:

I imagine that we've had stolen elections from the beginning of the American experiment, but I think 2000 was a banner year for the combination of technology and corruption when it comes to elections. That year we saw the traditional voter disenfranchisement mixed with blatant "voting irregularities", i.e. Diebold who've consistently promised to deliver elections. Katherine Harris is gone.. so is Jeb.

Somehow I rationalize it all by thinking that if we reach a certain, overwhelming percentage, we can beat the people who control the machines.

And that may be about as stupid as it gets.

Florida is out. I'm from Florida and I know how many soulless criminals live there. The ultimate justice would be if global warming sank the entire state and sent its residents scrambling like a bunch of insects upon the seas (except for my family who live there, of course). I got a kick out of the Democratic denial of their delegates. Seemed perfect.

You have a good point. Who is watching those machines? Everyone is partisan. And most people are fucking as ignorant as it gets when it comes to technology.

The question seems to be, are they going to be entirely stupid and skew things so far that people wonder wtf is going on .. oh, they've already done that.

I don't know. I think we need oversight. Who is in charge of that? Anyone? We can count of the current administration to always break the law. They've never done anything but. Who is watching the voting machines? Other than these guys, who just report on it: www.blackboxvoting.org/

Black Box Voting (.ORG) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501c(3) organization funded by citizen donations.

Donate Now by Visa, MC, Amex

Contact info: 425-793-1030; cell 206-335-7747; Mailing address: 330 SW 43rd St. Suite K, Box 547, Renton WA 98055. E-mail

When SF goes for McCain, we're truly fuct.

Bird is going to vote for Hillary. I'm voting for Obama. I may very well go door to door tomorrow. I gathered signatures for Jerry Brown when I first moved to California a long time ago. Could be fun. I know they always annoy me when they knock on the door. Ah, why not...

people.tribe.net/58284f03-...5a16901380

2 Comments

QuasiPseudo

Mon, February 4, 2008 - 11:00 AM
Thanks for taking the time to comment, this election season's got me pretty irked to say the least.

Im not so interested in proving electoral corruption at this point, but what I am trying to understand is HOW the people who believe that our elections are corrupted think that anything will be different this time around. Did I miss something? The results must still be taken on faith, no? Is this the last hope that people are clinging to, that somehow the removal of this administration will change everything? When Hillary gets elected, will it be a huge triumph for the anti-Bush crowd? Remember who succeeded the last Bush? Someone just as corrupt & connected as who will succeed the next. The hand lowers, shoves itself up a new puppets ass, and raises again. All IMO, of course, but is there any further reason that I should have more faith than none, simply because it is a defeatist attitude?

Moze

Sat, February 9, 2008 - 11:21 PM
Moze

Sat, February 9, 2008 - 11:17 PM
this is interesting

mediamatters.org/items/200802060008

'During MSNBC's February 5 coverage of that day's primary contests, on a day in which Democratic turnout reportedly exceeded Republican by 75 percent, co-anchor Chris Matthews suggested that Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean should be concerned about the party's lack of broad appeal."

75%?

so.. suppose that many democrats vote, even in a fucktard state like Florida, and the election is still stolen. I can't believe the fascists would be able to steal that.

I hope I'm right. I think they want to avoid a revolution because if that happens they'll lose more than they will having to pay taxes for four year.

As criminal as they are, really, something like this, the last thing they want is a spot light on what they've done in the past.

I'm hoping that the shit they've done in the last 8 years will finally make our country say enough. Maybe make us use our power, because voting is power, and even if you have to have a 50 to 1 majority when voting, that's power.

It's entirely anti American what the Bush Fascists have done, but I really don't want to give up hope yet.

Democratic Debate Thursday

2008-09-16T13:20:00.000-07:00

Thu, January 31, 2008 - 6:19 PM

Tonight's debate is awesome. Both Barack and Hillary are doing a great job. They're articulate, gracious, intelligent.

Man I can't wait to get rid of Bush. Both of these people will be able to stand up to either Romney or McCain. The Republicans already have their Clinton Hate / Lie machine ready to go. I think they'd have a harder time with Obama. Plus, well, Obama consistently tells it like it is. He's got an ability none of he others on either side have, to see the big picture and make a point that he isn't being led into. He isn't worried about taking a stand.

Both of them truly believe they can beat the Republicans and that's good. I'm a little concerned that the megalomaniac spoiler Ralph Nader is thinking about running again, however, I think he's largely irrelevant now..

Best quote of the night so far is from Hillary.

"It took a Clinton to clean up after the first Bush and I think its going to take a Clinton to clean up after the second Bush."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/31/debate.main/

The Best Part of Bush's Speech

2008-09-16T13:18:00.000-07:00

Tue, January 29, 2008 - 11:18 AM

hah, the poll from SF gate today

www.sfgate.com/

Barack Obama Responds to the State of the Union

2008-09-16T13:15:00.001-07:00

Mon, January 28, 2008 - 10:30 PM

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/samgrahamfelsen/CGVX8

Here's some sense to counter Bush's State of Denial speech.... Barack Responds to the State of the Union

Tonight, for the seventh long year, the American people heard a State of the Union that didn’t reflect the America we see, and didn’t address the challenges we face. But what it did do was give us an urgent reminder of why it’s so important to turn the page on the failed politics and policies of the past, and change the status quo in Washington so we can finally start making progress for ordinary Americans.

Tonight’s State of the Union was full of the same empty rhetoric the American people have come to expect from this President. We heard President Bush say he’d do something to cut down on special interest earmarks, but we know these earmarks have skyrocketed under his administration.

We heard the President say he wants to make tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans permanent, when we know that at a time of war and economic hardship, the last thing we need is a permanent tax cut for Americans who don’t need them and weren’t even asking for them. What we need is a middle class tax cut, and that’s exactly what I will provide as President.

We heard the President say he has a stimulus plan to boost our economy, but we know his plan leaves out seniors and fails to expand unemployment insurance, and we know it was George Bush’s Washington that let the banks and financial institutions run amok, and take our economy down this dangerous road. What we need to do now is put more money in the pockets of workers and seniors, and expand unemployment insurance for more people and more time. And I have a plan that to do just that.

And finally, tonight we heard President Bush say that the surge in Iraq is working, when we know that’s just not true. Yes, our valiant soldiers have helped reduce the violence. Five soldiers gave their lives today in this cause, and we mourn their loss and pray for their families.

But let there be no doubt – the Iraqi government has failed to seize the moment to reach the compromises necessary for an enduring peace. That was what we were told the surge was all about. So the only way we’re finally going to pressure the Iraqis to reconcile and take responsibility for their future is to immediately begin the responsible withdrawal of our combat brigades so that we can bring all of our combat troops home.

But another reason we need to begin this withdrawal immediately is because this war has not made us safer. I opposed this war from the start in part because I was concerned that it would take our eye off al Qaeda and distract us from finishing the job in Afghanistan. Sadly, that’s what happened. It’s time to heed our military commanders by increasing our commitment to Afghanistan, and it’s time to protect the American people by taking the fight to al Qaeda.

Tonight was President Bush’s last State of the Union, and I do not believe history will judge his administration kindly. But I also believe the failures of the last seven years stem not just from any single policy, but from a broken politics in Washington. A politics that says it’s ok to demonize your political opponents when we should be coming together to solve problems. A politics that puts Wall Street ahead of Main Street, ignoring the reality that our fates are intertwined; a politics that accepts lobbyists as part of the system in Washington, instead of recognizing how much they’re a part of the problem. And a politics of fear and ideology instead of hope and common sense.

I believe a new kind of politics is possible, and I believe it is necessary. Because the American people can’t afford another four years without health care, decent wages, or an end to this war. The woman who’s going to college and working the night shift to pay her sister’s medical bills can’t afford to wait. The Maytag workers who are now competing with their teenagers for $7 an hour jobs at Wall Mart can’t afford to wait. And the woman who told me she hasn’t been able to breathe since her nephew left for Iraq can’t afford to wait.

Each year, as we watch the State of the Union, we see half the chamber rise to applaud the President and half the chamber stay in their seats. We see half the country tune in to watch, but know that much of the country has stopped even listening. Imagine if next year was different. Imagine if next year, the entire nation had a president they could believe in. A president who rallied all Americans around a common purpose. That’s the kind of President we need in this country. And with your help in the coming days and weeks, that’s the kind of President I will be.

State of the Union Address

2008-09-16T13:11:00.000-07:00

Mon, January 28, 2008 - 7:53 PM

Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

Watching Bush's last State of the Union made me feel in parts sad for what he and his people have done to our country and hopeful, that possibly there will be some kind of change for the better. Perhaps now someone can come in and fix the damage.

With every sneer, I remembered what a despicable little man the current resident of the White House is. When he chided Congress for not acting to maintain his "tax relief", when he told them they needed to pass legislation to keep his domestic spying program going, when he spoke of bringing Justice and Liberty to the world... it all makes you a little queasy. He'd spout some double speak and sneer then smile over at his applauding lapdogs on the Republican side of the isle who stood obedient and grateful for how he's filled their coffers with our money in the last 7 years.

Man, I can't wait to not have to see this guy again.

When he was mentioning protecting the environment and how to safeguard our future I felt sick knowing that these last 7 years of inaction will be paid for with global suffering on a scale that didn't have to occur if we'd had leadership rather than a criminal oil man running the show. When he was discussing alternative power and he said NuKuLar I thought to myself, that may be the last time I'll have to hear that idiot mispronounce the word, but later he spent plenty of time on Iran and the threat their NuKuLar program poses. You could almost see the spots of black that are Cheney's eye glisten when GW talked about how we need to keep an eye on Iran. Then he mispronounced Zimbabwe as Zimbawe.. you could tell he was getting tired and that the attention span was starting to wane.

Then he said: "As we increase funding, we must also reform our veterans system to meet the needs of a new war and a new generation." and I thought, a new war huh.. interesting choice of wording there.

Man I hope the final fuck you of this administration isn't to drop nukes on Iran months before they're scheduled to leave. People in the U.S. have gotten used to this administration's total disregard for the law. They're used to being spied on, for having their tax dollars funneled off into the coffers of the fat cat friends of the administration. They're used to hearing about how our government uses torture or how something like the aftermath of Katrina can happen and no one will be held responsible. They're used to seeing elections stolen. They're used to seeing the rich get richer and the middle class and poor get poorer to make them rich. They're used to seeing the Constitution used to wipe these guy's asses.

I can't believe it looks like we're going to survive eight years of this. We are a resilient people...

I imagine this is what it feels like to have an out of control abusive father who is going away to prison soon, or maybe it's like you're just getting better from a disease and you know that by the end of the year, you'll probably be well again. You just want it to be over and you want to get out with as little damage as possible.

I just want them to take the last of our money and leave the mess behind for someone else to fix. I just want them to go away. We've done better before, we can do better again.

www.sfgate.com/flat/archi...nion28.html
image: simondonohue.files.wordpress.com/2...pg

5 Comments

Sunburn Sarah

Mon, January 28, 2008 - 8:43 PM
half the time I was cheering he was on his way out,, and the other half, I was puking.. but that happens everytime the ass speaks..

Hot Damn

Mon, January 28, 2008 - 9:44 PM
You should watch Barak Obama's South Carolina primary victory speech- it'll clear your mind.

Moze

Mon, January 28, 2008 - 10:27 PM
good idea. I'll even post his response to the State of the Union

kaiya (La Princesa del Sol)

Tue, January 29, 2008 - 12:52 AM
I tried so hard.
I am an old man of sorts and watch Jeopardy! every night. For some reason I though the SOB'ss SOU address was on Wednesday. So I turn to ABC and my show has been pre-empted by a speech being given by the 'Leader of the Free World.' WTF?? I tried so hard. I tried so, so hard. But I literally could not sit through it. Just couldn't do it. That smug, smirk as people all around me are beginning to hunt for roommates because they can't afford the same stuff they were affording last year at this time because the price of everything went through the roof. When every effing time I go to LAX, I see some 18 or 22 year old being shipped off to a probable death; when some of my students' parents have become literally homeless as part of the fall-out from the sub-prime lending debacle; when even I have set my course to leave California in 21 months for North Carolina because it's so much more affordable ... that Soulless Demonic Loser, has the nerve to SMILE, at every pause he made? I couldn't do it without breaking sh*t and since I don't have the extra fundage to replace a television with a clawhammer lodged in its front, I went ahead and changed the channel.

Thanks so much for posting this...and your Statue of Liberty (float?) picture is PRICELESS!!!

best,
kaiya

Sunburn Sarah

Tue, January 29, 2008 - 5:51 AM
" that Soulless Demonic Loser"

well said!

New Hamshire

2008-09-16T13:07:00.000-07:00

Tue, January 8, 2008 - 9:35 AM

Here are three points I've heard lately that I agree with and that make me like Barack even more..

1) Obama is the only one saying things like -- We aren't red states or blue states, we're the United States.

I really like that he's not into the divide an conquer mentality and it would be so refreshing to not have to deal with that after hmmm, I'll say 8 years of it, but it's been far longer than that. The last 7 years of Bush have just been the worse... The kinds of challenges we face like restoring our standing in the world, dealing with terrorism and environment change are only going to be able to be dealt with by someone who brings people together rather than making them hate each other for their own political gain.

2) With Obama as the face of America to the rest of the world, I honestly think (Andrew Sullivan noted this last night on Colbert) he could prove that the U.S. isn't always going to be run by old school, greed driven, white, criminal war profiteers.

It *is* possible to get beyond the old guard and yea, that's actually something called "Hope" and "Change".

3) And lastly, if and when the Republicans attempt to steal states in the 08 presidential election (best bet Giuliani in Florida) I can't see Obama rolling over like Kerry and Gore.

California's primary is coming up and that's going to be a huge day. February 5. It'll be interesting to see how San Francisco votes.

image http://images.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/20070418/425.obama.barack.041807.jpg

http://www.barackobama.com/index.php
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post_group/ObamaHQ/CGtM

Sunburn Sarah

Tue, January 8, 2008 - 9:40 AM
and Obama is the ONLY candidate that was against the "war" from the beginning...

no rollover on that point either as did Ms Clinton...

shekky

Tue, January 8, 2008 - 10:07 AM
hillary clinton is an old-school soon-to-be blue haired hag and i'd have a lot of trouble voting for her against whatever old racist religious fanatic coot the GOP spits out at us.

i'm registered green, so i'll probably vote for whoever they can come up with if hillary wins the democratic nomination.

Hot Damn

Tue, January 8, 2008 - 11:15 PM
I'm with you- I think it's Obama for me.

Way to Go Obama

2008-09-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

Thu, January 3, 2008 - 10:56 PM

Election year's begun as far as I'm concerned.

I've been behind Barack Obama because I like his message of unity, all his democratic ideals and the fact that he can pick up Independents I don't think Hillary can get. I think he can beat whatever survives that fight over on the Republican side.

I think he actually represents the kind of change we need in this country and as much as I loved Bill Clinton, I don't think Hill's the one. It's still early, but after listening to Obama's speech, I have to write share a few of the things he said. He does that to you. I know I'm supposed to be jaded, cynical and bitter, especially after what's happened to our country in the last 8 years, but I don't know.

The man can speak and for the first time in a long time, he doesn't sound like he's just entirely lying when he speaks. He talks about uniting the nation again.

... trying to catch some of his speech:

"We are choosing hope over fear, we're choosing unity over division and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America."

"You said the time has come to tell the lobbyists who think their money and their influence speak louder than our voices, that they don't own this government, we do, and we're here to take it back. "

His list of who he will be:

".. a president who finally makes health care affordable and available to every single American...

... a president who ends tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs over seas ... middle class tax cut.....

... a president who harnesses the ingenuity of farmers and scientists and entrepreneurs to free us from the tyranny of oil once and for all....

... a president who ends this war in Iraq and finally brings our troops home..

.. who restores our moral standing, who understands that 911 is not a way to scare up votes, but a challenge that should unite America and the world against the common threats of the 21st century - terrorist and nuclear weapons, climate change and poverty, genocide and disease. "

and he pronounced nuclear correctly of course... for fuck's sake I'll be glad when I don't have to listen to Bush make another speech. It's hard to imagine having someone eloquent and intelligent as President after all these years of spoil and ravage by the Bush administration. I just want them to take all the money they stole and to go away.

And someone like Barack Obama can fix the mess they've left behind. I really believe it.

He ended his speech with:

"We are not a collection of red states and of blue states, we are the United States of America"

you can watch it here, it's worth watching. my.barackobama.com/page/content/hqblog
www.barackobama.com/issues/

this is also cool http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/99999999/NEWS09/70523032/0/NEWS

2 Comments

Sunburn Sarah

Thu, January 3, 2008 - 11:47 PM
ah..... breathing has become a little easier today...

relief is at hand....

Anthony F

Fri, January 4, 2008 - 12:13 AM
I like the message. I just want some more seasoning on the messenger. I'm for Bill Richardson.

The country needs help in so many ways and a guy who is a Governor, was energy secretary, UN ambassador and congressman might just have the skill set to accomplish the things that need to be done. Like restoring our credibility overseas while dealing with some of the nasty threats we do face. Like having the background to make sensible judgments about alternative energy sources. Like executive experience and not just legislative experience, but with a knowledge of the workings of congress that is helpful in getting priorities made into law.

Tomorrow is 911

2008-09-16T12:55:00.000-07:00

Tue, September 11, 2007 - 12:37 AM

What's the 411 on Bin Laden? Evidently he's living in Pakistan in a safehouse with Bush's Saudi money keeping him on dialysis.

But that's just propaganda.

Gotta have a barbarian at the gates.

911 changed everything. If only our government hadn't been on vacation. If only they'd have paid attention to that one memo that was in their face. If only they didn't hope for a "pearl harbor". Look at what the aftermath has done to our country. So many lives lost. So many freedoms compromised. Such a fucking tragedy. Don't forget what happened and work to get the people responsible held accountable, who ever they are..

Project for the New American Century (PNAC)
American Empire

"Section V of Rebuilding America's Defenses, entitled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force", includes the sentence: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor"

There are people who don't remember a time before 911. Those roaring 90s, before the fucked up aughts. A time when government wasn't just a bunch of rich people stealing your tax dollars in an unchecked war profiteering orgasm. Pre-Halliburton. With only a year left they're either deciding how to take all the cash they've stolen and invest it somewhere else or they're figuring out how to keep power.

Such is the state of American "democracy' in 2007. We've seen two elections stolen. We're just sick of it all, hoping they've stolen enough to back off.

I know I am. I hope they just let us have our democracy back. They inherited a good pool to rape from Clinton. Maybe they'll let someone like Obama fix shit, then they can try to steal it back. And maybe Obama won't let them steal it back... That'd be cool. You just need the military on your side (read the Prince) and the military really fucking hates those Bush fuckers from what I hear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/05/31/schuster.column/index.html
http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3579856&page=1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_hegemony
image: http://delong.typepad.com/images/20061030_WTC_nysky3.JPG.jpg

God, Fox Sucks

2008-09-16T12:51:00.000-07:00

Wed, August 15, 2007 - 9:47 PM

I saw about 90 seconds of this show once. Why is it that when conservatives try to be funny, they always end up just looking like they're mean? Hmmm. Maybe because they're just mean. And there's nothing funny about fascism.

ahh, but everyone is getting ready to go the playa. They placed the stake. They've put up the fence.

from:
http://www.whereistheoutrage.net/wordpress/2007/08/15/half-hour-news-hour-goes-belly-up

Half hour News Hour goes belly up

Posted by: ecthompson

That almost brings a tear to my eye. The Half Hour News Hour which has been on the air about 3 or 4 months looks like it is going down. I think the problem was that it wasn’t…funny!!! Stewart is funny, first. Stewart has been perfecting his schtick for over 15 years. He started it on Saturday Night Live. Stewart then hired funny people to be around him and write for him. The Half Hour News Hour started with a stupid title and that was the highlight.

Update: video added. (When you go to the Fox Web site and then go to the News Hour this is the video that you can see. So, I didn’t chose a bad one. They chose this as an example of their humor and wit. 9th graders can write stuff like this. Actually, they can do better.)

image http://www.smashmonster.com/weblog/archives/fox%20news%20sm.jpg

San Francisco All Stars

2008-09-16T12:48:00.000-07:00

Thu, July 12, 2007 - 10:21 PM

I watched the Home Run Derby and All Star game this week with a genuine shitload of enthusiasm, mostly because it was here, in San Francisco at Phone Company Park and what a great time it was. My job has become brutal and the summer is here so baseball is there to get me through it all as it always has.

There was Willie McCovey, number 44, at the Home Run Derby. Phone Company Park is one of the hardest to hit a Home Run in, which is another reason why Barry Bonds is one of the greatest baseball players of all time.

Barry sat out the Derby because he's old and you could see how it would have killed him had he made it to the second round when Matt Holliday, Valadimir Guerrero, Alex Rios and Albert Pujols worked their asses off to hit home runs to narrow it down to the final two, Guerrero and Rios. I got home early to see the kayaks in the McCovey Cove and all the Aerial Shots of our fair City, up 3rd, into SOMA, the City skyline, the Golden Gate Bridge.

There's no better ballpark in America if you ask me.

Jenny likes Guerrero because he didn't wear gloves or a helmet or (she says) a cup. I couldn't really make out the cup thing. I enjoy watching her watching baseball. She goes to one game a year at the park and she'll watch stuff like the World Series. But she'll deny that she likes any sports, even though I know she likes baseball since it's zen and she likes to give me a hard time for enjoying the game...

The game itself was the usual, except it was, as I mentioned, in San Francisco. Pre-game, was all about 76 year old Willie Mays, the Say Hey Kid, getting adoration from 40 thousand plus fans; adoration you rarely see for older folks, but Mays is a legend and it seems like Sports and Astronauts (and now Rock Stars) elicit such adoration. Our's is a country that doesn't generally hold the old in great esteem unfortunately, but those three fields of career seem to be good paths for having a stadium still rocking out to you when you're in your 70s, riding in the back of a Pink Cadillac, throwing balls into the crowd. You gotta give it to Mays.

I you don't know anything about Willie Mays, read about him. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Mays. He was number 24.

And the media was really building Barry Bonds (#25) up. At the All Star break, he was 4 away from Hank Aaron's all time home run record of 755 and with all the controversy, well, in my opinion, that just gives the Barry haters something to fuel their fires. They always hated and booed him because he always kicked their asses. Now they can bitch and bitch about an asterix to his career and on and on ad nauseum, but really, Barry Bonds is the greatest playing baseball player alive today. Here's a little bit of what he's done.

- Holds record for most home runs in a season, (73)
- 2nd all time for career home runs, (751)
- Holds record for most walks in a career (2,512)
- Holds record for most MVP awards (7) and consecutive MVP awards (4); (1990, 1992-93, 2001-04). Note: the current version of the MVP award has been given since 1931. Prior to that year, the League Awards were only given to a player once (from 1922-1929) and sometimes not at all (from 1915-1921).
- Holds record for most pitchers homered off of (442)
- Holds record for most consecutive games with a walk (18)
- Shares record for consecutive plate appearances with a walk (7)
- Holds record for consecutive seasons with 30 or more home runs (13)
- Only player in 400 homerun and 400 stolen base club
- Only player in 500 homerun and 500 stolen base club
- One of four players in 40-40 club (40 homeruns and 40 stolen bases).
- Holds record for most consecutive seasons with .600 slugging percentage or higher (8)

etc. etc. ..

...so you can kiss my ass if you if you don't think Barry is one of the greatest. Yes, his prime is past. Yes, he may have taken performance enhancing whatever, but it wasn't illegal and the 1990s will always be a time when baseball players may have been taking that shit. But he's got the cred. People who hate him, do so because he's beaten them bad, made their pitchers look like little girls. And he's our player, a San Franciscan, the Godson of Willie Mays.

The game itself was ok. There was well deserved booing from the fans for The Anaheim Angels and the hated Dodgers, both teams who have fucked the Giants over when it really counted, the bastards. The Blue Angels flew over at the Chris Isaac Star Spangled Banner and I tried to count how long it took them to get from the Port of Oakland, where the blimp first filmed them, to when they buzzed the park. I think it was around 10 seconds. Then, not two minutes later Jenny looked at me and said, "You hear that?" and it was the Blue Angels flying over our house out in the Sunset.

As far as the game went, Ichiro hit big in the 5th, an in park Home Run off Ken Griffey, the first in the park HR in Allstar game history. Griffey did hit a sac fly in the 6th to to make it 3 AL and 3 NL. And the American League eventually won, as they have fo the last 9 years.

It was great week of baseball all in all.

But back to Barry.

It occurs to me that, in my short "adult" life, there have been 4 or 5 men who were "Stars" who I have admired and Barry is one of them.

They're people I've never really met, but I may have shaken their hands or nodded to them, or yelled out loud enough for them to hear me, and they're all flawed in one way or another. Perhaps their flaws and their greatness make them more interesting, because they're all doing what they do, and they aren't destroying shit, like some of the "men" these days who are driven by nothing but what seems like just pure fucking evil. Men who aren't even tragic, they're just assholes. I don’t need to mention names.

I know Barry's heard me yelling at him at Phone Company Park, or back at Candlestick. Mr. Jerry Garcia was another man who was dear to my heart and who I mourned sincerely when he finally died. I remember tripping and yelling out shit in my deep drunk way at shows and being told not to freak Jerry out. And there was Bill Clinton, who I believe cared about this country and left it in good shape from his 8 years in office, but who wasn't part of the oil current slime crew, so the witch hunt took him down for his definition of sex, only to have all the abundance and good will he'd worked so hard to leave as his legacy for this country, looted by the profiteers who stole the 2000 election. I shook Bill's hand in Union Square as he got off a cable car, down into the crowd and I knew then that I'd support that guy.

And there was Willie Nelson who played 3 versions of Whisky River at the Fillmore that one weekend of Jack Daniels soaked concerts when I'd scream out Whisky River and he'd find me in the crowd then nod and go into the song yet again. And I used to teach Bukowski at the University of South Florida Modern Lit class. Never met Buk, but I wish I would have.

Ahhh, blog blather..

But perhaps I'm thinking about these All Stars because my friend (who I admire) is writing about his experiences finding himself in the jungle drinking vines with shamans and just after, he came back to the states and his father died after a long illness, and I think that’s affecting me. And another friend of mine (who I also admire) just lost his dog of many years (again after illness) who was his and his wife’s child and they’re in so much pain right now I can’t even write about it, but I want to do something for them, and writing is the only thing I can think would even be close to doing something sincere, but I have to wait until the first tidal wave of grief has passed over them because when we’re in that state, we can’t do anything but feel the intensity of the pain of our loss and just keep our heads above water.

If you consider smoking dope or being an alcoholic or a junkie shaman, or taking performance enhancing substances or getting a blowjob from an intern and lying about it flaws, then I suppose these men are all flawed and damaged, but to me, they're all kind of real and, dare I say, heroes. I'm flawed and damaged and I'm just trying to do the right thing, the thing I was meant to do, and my flaw is that I let myself get sidetracked, and I drink and work jobs that are unfulfilling and I find excuses for not just quitting what I’m doing and starting something that would be exactly what I think I should be doing at the moment. I believe there's something I'm meant to do and I haven't done it yet, so death can't quite get his grip around me. I keep slipping out.

And I think we're all like that. People who hide their flaws are full of shit and I don't trust them. What are they hiding, anyway?

And maybe the National League will win next year. Or maybe not.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~npmelton/sfmap96.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Run_Derby
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_McCovey
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/events/all_star/y2007/hr_derby.jsp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Mays
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Bonds

Jerry Falwell's hit parade

2008-09-16T12:41:00.001-07:00

posted: Thu, May 17, 2007 - 2:07 PM

Jerry Falwell's Hit ParadeThe right's holy fool.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Tuesday, May 15, 2007, at 6:56 PM ET

God, they say, is love, but the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who died May 15, hit the jackpot trafficking in small-minded condemnation. The controversies Falwell generated followed a predictable loop. 1) Falwell would say something hateful or clownish about some person or group associated with liberalism. 2) A public outcry would ensue. 3) Falwell would apologize and retract the offending comment. 4) Falwell would repeat the comment, slightly rephrased.

For 20 years, evangelicals have chided the mainstream media for treating Falwell's ghastly pronouncements as news; Falwell, they often confide in private, ceased being a significant figure well before he left his signature political organization, the Moral Majority, in 1987. If so, someone forgot to tell Sen. John McCain, R.-Ariz., who as a presidential candidate in 2000 condemned Falwell's intolerance ("The political tactics of division and slander are not our values, they are corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country") but last year, as a presidential candidate positioning for 2008, made peace with Falwell and gave a commencement address ("We have nothing to fear from each other") to the 2006 graduating class at Falwell's Liberty University. On news of Falwell's death, McCain said in a statement, "Dr. Falwell was a man of distinguished accomplishment who devoted his life to serving his faith and country."

Nonsense. He was a bigot, a reactionary, a liar, and a fool. Herewith, a Falwell sampler:

On Sept. 11: "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way—all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.' "

On AIDS: "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals."

On homosexuality: "I believe that all of us are born heterosexual, physically created with a plumbing that's heterosexual, and created with the instincts and desires that are basically, fundamentally, heterosexual. But I believe that we have the ability to experiment in every direction. Experimentation can lead to habitual practice, and then to a lifestyle. But I don't believe anyone begins a homosexual."

On Martin Luther King Jr.: "I must personally say that I do question the sincerity and nonviolent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left-wing associations."

On Martin Luther King Jr., four decades later: "You know, I supported Martin Luther King Jr., who did practice civil disobedience."

On public education: "I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again, and Christians will be running them."

On the separation of church and state: "There is no separation of church and state."

On feminists: "I listen to feminists and all these radical gals. ... These women just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they're mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They're sexist. They hate men; that's their problem."

On global warming: "I can tell you, our grandchildren will laugh at those who predicted global warming. We'll be in global cooling by then, if the Lord hasn't returned. I don't believe a moment of it. The whole thing is created to destroy America's free enterprise system and our economic stability."

On Bishop Desmond Tutu: "I think he's a phony, period, as far as representing the black people of South Africa."

On Islam: "I think Mohammed was a terrorist. I read enough of the history of his life, written by both Muslims and non-Muslims, that he was a violent man, a man of war."

On Jews: "In my opinion, the Antichrist will be a counterfeit of the true Christ, which means that he will be male and Jewish, since Jesus was male and Jewish."

Rest in peace, you blowhard.

Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
E-mail Timothy Noah at chatterbox@slate.com.

Image: husterl http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free_speech/hustler.html

Good Riddance Jerry Falwell

2008-09-16T12:37:00.000-07:00

Tue, May 15, 2007 - 11:30 AM

There's a little less evil in the world today. Jerry Falwell is finally dead. The man who created a "ministry" that takes in 200$ million dollars a year off preaching hate has left the building.

That's a shame...

The one time I really, really wish America's "christian" obsession with hell was real is when one of these hippocrites die. It would be so gratifying to know that their souls were being dragged down to Hell for eternal damnation because of what they did to that particular religion. It would be nice to know that they were in the good company of other evil, hateful men for all eternity.

It will be interesting to see how many of the Republican Presidential candidates show up at the funeral to weep and proclaim what a great man this shyster was.

Our lives will be a little less entertaining with him gone, but there are plenty of neanderthals in the wings, some like Dobson or Ron Luce (BattleCry) or Lou Phelps. And we've still got old Pat Robertson. I worry that Falwell and Robertson will look like moderates compared to the upcoming generation of Battle Warriors for Christ.

All I can say is, Good Riddance Jerry.

“AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals”

- Jerry Falwell

However, let us not forget that Falwell wasn't all about just Teletubbies, hating gays, feminists and the ACLU. No, he was also happy to blame America in general for being tolerant in so many ways that God had no choice but to allow the attacks of 911.

in a conversation with Pat Robertson about the attacks of 911

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."

Some other great Falwell Quotes:

http://home.att.net/~jrhsc/devil.html

http://www.sullivan-county.com/nf0/nov_2000/falwell_911.htm
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/26/falwell-devil-response/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Cry_Campaign

.
LyingBare

Tue, May 15, 2007 - 11:48 AM
Ya know.... everyone stands for something, and ya dont have to agree with em,

but to wish them "good riddance" and declare them "evil" wow, thats some intense stuff....

I sure hope no one says that about me, or even you when we are gone....

be well....
Bare

Moze

Tue, May 15, 2007 - 12:02 PM
I'm sure no one will say anything bad about you because you're a good person. You leave your legacy when you die and you're responsible for what you leave behind.

Unfortunately Falwell's legacy was one of hate, IMHO. I didn't like him when he was alive, and I think he used his power to spread all the wrong messages, most of them in direct opposition to anything Christ talked about in the Gospels.

Here is a nicer send off for the good Pastor.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/05/falwell_is_dead.html

LyingBare

Tue, May 15, 2007 - 12:18 PM
I think Andrew Sullivan said it best.....

thanks Moze....

be well Darlin....

Bare

Cross Sidhe

Tue, May 15, 2007 - 1:19 PM
May he rot in HELL!!!

Cross the Witch

furtographer smith

Wed, May 16, 2007 - 9:01 AM
Let's be polite and not say negative things because
"Evil thrives best when good people say nothing" or whatever Edmund Burke said.

I heard there was a spontaneous DJ street party on Castro to celebrate.

Nicole aka ~technopatra~

Wed, May 16, 2007 - 9:38 AM
I'v been reading a lot of temperate responses to his death, like "for all he was, he was someone;s father and husband and I am sad for their loss" and "well I guess he'll find out for sure now". I get that you are not supposed to rejoice in negativity, that we should all have compassion etc etc. but COME THE FUCK ON.

This man was, imo, directly responsible for the beatings, murders, and rapes of thousands of gay people with his religion-soaked hatred-filled televised bile.

He is directly responsible for the abuse pregnant teens suffered at the ahnds of their righteous parents, for the lack of universal health care with his conservative politics, and for the war in Iraq AND for the lack of fuel efficiency and emission standards for his unqualified support of BOTH Bush regimes.

I take some comfort in my belief that there is no conscious afterlife, that his being is simply OVER.

Now if only that fuck Dobson would join him.

Moze

Wed, May 16, 2007 - 8:28 PM
Thank You.

He was a fucking asshole who did a great job keeping the stupid in hateville.

I'm in good company.

shekky

Wed, May 16, 2007 - 8:39 PM
"christianity is stupid.

communism is good.

give up!"

negativland, from the song "christianity is stupid".

This is just creepy.

2008-09-16T12:22:00.000-07:00

Mon, April 9, 2007 - 8:35 AM

Wtf is Cheney doing lurking around back there?

image from the NYT, don't have URL.

Flashlights on Conservative rot

2008-09-16T12:18:00.000-07:00

Fri, March 9, 2007 - 10:57 PM

Oh man, I'm still alive, just been working on simplifying my life. After we finished Jenny's LA show, she's back working on some pieces for another LA show in a month or so, but tonight she's watching "Jesus Camp". I watched a few minutes and it turned my stomach to see those little kids who don't know any better being indoctrinated into good little Theocon Americans.

Sailor is barking at what I think are imaginary raccoons. I don't see them. He's a hunting dog and he needs to get out of the City. I think he'd getting depressed here. He's too wild for it.

I'm putting the Big Red Truck up for sale on craigslist tomorrow. I'll fill all the fluids, make sure everything is tight beneath and sell it for no less than 2200 bucks. It's a good truck after all, but Jenny hates it because it's so lifted and the steering is weird. Eh, I can let it go. I finally sold some stock today and as I predicted, the stock went up as soon as I sold.

I did it for everyone else in the company. I knew the stock would go up as soon as I sold it. I wish them well. We're looking to buy a Dodge truck from Enterprise, the same truck we rented this year to go to Burning Man. Its a nice truck and I'm looking forward to having something I don't have to work on every month. It'd be nice to have a truck that doesn't lose a tire every 6 months or so.

I picked up my meds today and one of them cost 25 bucks. I asked the older lady pharmacist at Walgreens why it was so expensive and she said, "Have you ever looked at what these medications cost? Do you know how much your insurance is covering," and I agreed that I didn't. So... evidently that 25 dollar bottle is worth 302 dollars and insurance is paying the difference. All my meds are like 100 to 200 bucks for a month's worth. All except the xanax generic that I take to keep me from ever getting stressed out and smoking.

The older lady pharmacist and I had a short discussion about wtf do people who don't have insurance do? Do they just die? I mean, I'm using up thousands of dollars "worth" of meds each month.

And the things I'm taking now are just things that keep me cholesterol and highblood pressure free. I can't imagine if I was taking something that if I didn't take I'd die, could cost. I understand the whole Research and Development aspect of pharms capitalistic realities, but fuck. Is this just because they can fleece the US? I have a friend who works at Merke and he says there's a sweet spot where drug companies want you.

You have something that can't be cured, but drugs can keep you alive. And you have insurance. Oh, the drug companies love that person.

Speaking of scumbags, it looks like some light is finally being let into the room and the rats are scattering in Washington. Let's see, first this was brought to my attention by Bitchslap at slapfest.blogspot.com/

"Interesting post in which Andrew Sullivan is "forced" to quote from Paul
Krugman, what with Krugman being all correct and shit:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/03/it_has_come_to_.html

Reader's Digest version (without the Digest ideological bias): Gonzalez is
probably going down, "maybe sooner rather than later," to quote Arlen
Specter..."

and there was Coulter being all cunty and a bigot, but we all know about that and thankfully only idiots pay attention to her anymore...

and there's Bush causing riots at every South American nation he visits. That isn't exactly working out the way he'd hoped. He is universally hated. I remember when Clinton used to go to countries and people would come out to see him. There were parades and adoration. Yea, Bush, I hope all the demons you've summoned ride your back to the grave because you've been used for a purpose more evil than even you know you ass. It's going to take the US decades to recover from what you've done to it.

And today another spotlight that sent the right wing roaches scuttling for dark places with (oh surprise!):

"The nation's top two law enforcement officials acknowledged Friday the FBI broke the law to secretly pry out personal information about Americans. They apologized and vowed to prevent further illegal intrusions."

uh huh. No one saw that coming.
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cm/content/view/205/2/
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fbi10mar10,0,2014633.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Yea, I've been commuting and downloading podcasts to my iPod and listening to them on the way. News on demand. I'm drenched in information. Jenny mentioned that I might want to get away from it all soon and I might do that. But I thrive on it all.

I was going to recount my gun story from last weekend, but I guess I'll save that for the next blog. It's kind of embarrassing.

If you don't have him bookmarked, you should. Andrew Sullivan
http://dailydish.typepad.com/

Bush in South America
http://winnipegsun.com/News/World/2007/03/09/3719544-sun.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/09/ap/world/main2555240.shtml
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17531708/

Coulter
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cm/content/view/207/159/

image from
http://www.mistersquirrel.net/images/linked/daffy.jpg

3 Comments

*Ali Baba* Alexandra Davies

Fri, March 9, 2007 - 11:55 PM
Run, roaches, run! heh. Good riddance!

Glad you are getting a reliable truck. Very cool. ;D

Hopefully I'll still be able to recognize you in your truck, if only by your hair. ;P

affinity

Sat, March 10, 2007 - 5:26 AM
Looking forward to the gun story, I rhink
I will see if I can think of something embarassing to post in the meantime

shekky

Sun, March 11, 2007 - 11:48 AM
did you hear about the tribal priests that are going to purify an area that bush visits afterwards?

dammit, i can't remember if they were mayan or not, i read the story in the comicle yesterday.

Crawl back under your rocks Right Wing toads.

2008-09-16T12:15:00.000-07:00

posted Sun, January 14, 2007 - 3:41 PM

It was cold as hell Friday morning as I commuted to work with a heavy frozen wind blowing in from off the pacific as I walked up 19th to grab the 28 to Daly City BART around 7 thirty-ish. Really cold couple days. I finished “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield and started on “Blindness” by Jose Saramago. The first chapter has me sucked in.

Fucking George W Bush. God, I hate that guy.

The SF Chronic had a photograph of W dominating the top fold Friday and W was supposedly shedding a tear for the family of Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham of New York who heroically died whilst diving on a grenade to save his comrades. Jason Dunham had courage and demonstrated with his life how much, how many thousands, and millions more times worth of courage he had, than our current silver spoon idiot president.

I hope W was having a moment of realization over the true nature of his evil when he cried this tear. That, or perhaps he knew his gig is up. Or maybe he's just batshit insane and is incapable of feeling guilt over starting a reckless and misguided war for oil when we should have been going after real terrorists even if they don’t live in places where there is oil Bush’s buddies want to control. Maybe he was just off his meds and was wanting a drink. He's a son of a bitch for what he's done to our country. A real loser who was finally put in a place where he could have made a real difference, but instead he just pillaged and lied and worked to distort any semblance of democracy America had; and history will not be kind to this man. Worst President Ever, Asshole. Good riddance.

My friend King put me on the "Christian Alert" email list one of those times we were subscribing each other to fucked up email lists like the Depends Adult Diaper Support Forum or Daily Affirmation dot net's Daily Affirmation.

Sometimes I wish there was a "Christ Corporation" so the lawyers could sue fucks like "Christian Alert" for slander, copyright and trademark violations, defamation and other malicious mayhem in the name of their brand. They have absolutely nothing to do with the compassionate gospel stories of Jesus who as far as I can tell, was a socialist who hung out with prostitutes and other rabble rousers. Christ was the kind of guy these "conservatives" would kick to the curb to get him relocated away from their suburb to keep their property values going up. “Christian Alert” is really upset about being taxed and having any tax money go for things like taking care of the poor. And they really hate Mexicans who supposedly are stealing their jobs. Lots of Minuteman bullshit in these emails.

As an added bonus, I now get emails from the “Traditional Values Coalition”. This is that knuckle dragging fuck, Rev. Lou Sheldon, the “God Hates Fags” fundie fascist. The guy who gets his debased partially brain damaged meth head followers to do shit like protest at soldiers funerals because “GOD” has forsaken the liberal United States and to hold vigil to insult the memory of Matthew Shepard, a gay kid who was killed by some homophobic fuck kids, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney near Laramie, Wyoming. They are both serving life sentences. Rev. Lou is way up there with the sickest of the sick.

The day the new congress began I got this gem of an email -

"Help Us Stop Nancy Pelosi >From Assaulting Free Speech

Dear TVC Supporter:
San Francisco radical Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D) has just become Speaker of the House and has begun her tyrannical reign with an aggressive plan to muzzle conservative groups like Traditional Values Coalition! It is expected that she will bring up lobbying legislation in the first 100 hours of Democrat rule—and your help is needed immediately. "

Uh huh... Evidently the tyrannical “San Francisco Culture” incentives the newly elected (by a margin big enough to beat the voting machine ‘irregularities’) the Democrats are pushing include:

- Protecting a woman’s right to choose whether she wants to have a child or not.
- Fixing the overreaching parts of the Patriot Act that allow criminals like Bush to spy on US citizens for their own gain and getting the US out of the torture business.
- Stopping the right wing fueled institutionalized discrimination of gay people.
- Cleaning up the lobbying in congress and trying to stem the “to the highest bidder goes the legislature”.
- Getting us out of Iraq, a neocon blunder from the get go. Oh, and trying to keep mad King George from starting a war with Syria and Iran as a parting fuck you to the country.
- Letting scientists have a go at helping create environmental policy rather than just oil companies.

… the list goes on and on. For this, Rev. Lou promises that

“During the next two years, TVC is embarking on an ambitious educational agenda to do whatever it can to prevent liberals from enacting anti-family legislation, undermining our nation’s war on terrorism, promoting the homosexual agenda, raising taxes, restricting our religious freedoms and freedom of speech, removing protections for unborn children, passing legislation to entangle our nation in U.N. treaties on the environment and more.”

Sigh.

If there were a hell, there would be a special circle for Rev Lou and his followers, and the “Christian Alert” folks and especially for the weeping George W who has betrayed this country for his last two terms.

I can’t wait to see that ass gone. Its promising to see some of the wind removed from the sails of these right wing creeps for the time being.

I only hope we can do a better job as Americans this time and start taking care of our country again. If only we could go back to the 2000 election and start over, keep riding that wave of prosperity, keep shoring up Social Security, keep paying attention to the terrorists and stopping them before they struck. If only.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard
http://www.matthewshepard.org/site/PageServer
http://english.people.com.cn/200701/12/eng20070112_340693.html

shekky

Sun, January 14, 2007 - 4:35 PM
**If there were a hell, there would be a special circle for Rev Lou and his followers, and the “Christian Alert” folks and especially for the weeping George W who has betrayed this country for his last two terms. **

replace the word "hell" with "rattlesnake train" and "special circle" with "one way shithouse car" and we're in business, john.

Bars of the Outer Sunset

2008-09-16T12:11:00.000-07:00

Work's been boring. I find myself fantasizing about taking another 6 weeks off, but now I'm feeling a lot stronger and I've come to terms with a lot of my new lifestyle bullshit so I think it'd be more prolific in the writing sense than it was just this last time. But alas, I'm out of vacation and they let us loose next for Thanksgiving. Then Xmas week.

I measure out my life in vacation days. I'm trying to stop doing that.

I've been spending time at Grandma's Tavern on Taraval lately. They serve me my 3 glasses of Merlot. I watched the World Series there and I check out Monday night football sometimes. They're a good bunch of people at Grandma's, dive dwellers, with the occasional Hipster herd that floats in for some pool and martinis. The bartenders are all nice (to me anyway). Dick owns the place and between him and some of the other old time Sunset crew who seem to live there, they know pretty much every bar in the Sunset back to when they were growing up out here in the land of the fog.

Grandmas was originally on Noreiga, where the Eagles Drift In is now, between 20th and 19th. Dick came over to Taraval when the Philipino owner's son came in one night when the bar was open and decided that they weren't charging enough rent since it was obvious to him that Grandmas was making money hand over fist. Dick is classic old school Sunset. He tells it like he sees it and you pretty much know where you're at with him. All the old timers make no amends for being entirely un-PC and letting you know what nationality it was who did what when and where. It's refreshing, but sometimes I find myself with my jaw dropping then laughing and thinking, did he *really* just say that.

The building that Grandma's is in was the Blue Crystal in the 1920s, when there were more bars out here. Taraval was in the center of the Parkside Subdivision that was named Parkside because most people thought of sand dunes and desolation. The Twin Peaks Tunnel that goes beneath the mountain at the Castro and comes out at West Portal was opened in 1918. That street car line opened up the commerce strip of West Portal and Taraval. The Parkside Theater is in the block above Grandmas and there's a Copy Central there that used to be called the Auld Saud and before that Panama Central and before that the Spinning Wheel.

Farther down Taraval is the Dragon Lounge where a lot of the cops from the Parkside station hangout. That bar used to be called Faheys, and had the slogan "Where the elite meet". I moved out here when it was still Faheys, now they serve a lot of frou frou drinks, but the vibe is still chill and they've got a nice pool table.

All the way down Taraval is the Rip Tide and they allow dogs in, so I took Sailor there when he was just a small boy a year ago. I need to get back there. It's around 47th and evidently it was owned by some brothers who were always getting into trouble back before its current incarnation when it was called the SandBar. Before that, it was called the OarHouse and that name goes way back. They countered Fahey's slogan "Where the elite meet" with "Where the debris meets the Sea". This may well be the western most bar in the City.

Between Faheys at like 25th and the Rip Tide all the way down at the ocean is the Four Deuces. It was called that when I moved out here, then it was taken over and renovated and renamed the Old Rouge for a while, but it's back to being called the Four Deuces again. That bar is at 34th and evidently the name, the Four Deuces comes from the fact that the owner's original bar was at 2222 Irving.

Those are my favorite Sunset dive bars. If you take the L all the way to the end of Taraval, past the Rip Tide, to where it turns to go to the Zoo, there is a large Synagogue there called B’nai Emunah. Evidently that building used to be a large bar called the Sand Dunes and they had go-go dancers in cages from the late 60s to about 1975 when the Synagogue moved in. I thought that was pretty funny.

Other bars of note out in the Sunset are Club Scirroco, and I'm not sure that's still around. I used to go there to eat the spaghetti in the crock pot and hang out with some cool people. It was on Judah and 20 something I think. There was an altercation one night where some Asian gangbangers came in, caused trouble and were told to leave. They returned later and shot up the place, killing one innocent person. I saw the fliers around the Sunset for a long time, offering a reward for information leading to the arrest of the killers. Damn shame.

There's Sam McQuires at Noriega and 45th, just up from the Safeway in that 3 or four blocks of little Chinatown. It is an Irish bar and has been for a long time evidently. I heard it was originally Antons, then Rodney's Fishbowl, then the owner wanted it to sound more Irish in the 70s so he named it O'Freethy's. Then it was McCarthys. When I moved out here it had been renamed Playland and there were photos of Laughing Sal in there. Its current incarnation is Sam McQuires.

And at the end of Judah, probably the westernmost Bar in the City (in a close race with the RipTide) is the Pittsburg Pub. This place was called the Reef before and evidently that end of Judah had a bunch of bars at one time, the Redmill, the Seagull, The Gables. And there was something called Slots at the Beach. And Playland wasn't too far from there...

I try to make it to all the bars in my neighborhood. Someone dropped off a book called "Dice Bars of San Francisco" at Grandmas and I was reading it the other day. None of this came from that, it came from the regulars at Grandmas, and I searched for that book and couldn't find it online. I'd recommend it if I could find it. I *can* recommend Lorrie Ungarretti's book San Francisco's Sunset District for some cool photos of this neighborhood.

We'll stick around until the landlord kicks us out. We never know when that'll be. Our rent is so cheap that we can deal with the "stuck in the 1950s" reality of the Sunset. We can deal with the frozen fog and the rain that comes in off the ocean. Its nice to be able to always hear the waves whenever you take the time to listen for them.

And if I ever get 86'd from a bar, there's always another one just up the street

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_District,_San_Francisco,_California
http://www.sfhistoryencyclopedia.com/articles/s/streetNaming.html
http://www.sfhistoryencyclopedia.com/articles/c/chanSunsetDistr.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Peaks_Tunnel
http://local.yahoo.com/details?id=32356625
http://www.yelp.com/biz/jRy3Zwbe4V1JqWVoQ_GIkw
http://www.amazon.com/Franciscos-Sunset-District-Images-America/dp/0738528625

*Ali Baba* Alexandra Davies

Mon, November 20, 2006 - 1:09 PM
Don't forget the Western Neighborhoods Project--they've got some cool old photos and info.

There was a nice pic in the Sunset Beacon a few weeks ago [?] with a pic of GGpark and surrounds from 100+ years ago, around world fair time. I kept it.

We were weary of the Four Deuces for awhile, since you can't see in from the outside--but it was chill when we checked it out. Mostly just stay home and drink with the roommates in comfort--much cheaper, and for us ladies, the security of knowing the bathroom won't be nasty is always nice. ;P
[not that I remember any particularly nasty Sunset toilets, but ya never know with dive bar type places] ;S

That'll work

2008-09-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

Thu, November 9, 2006 - 5:09 PM

All I can say is, wow. that's awesome. I can't believe we finally have checks and balances on this president. I can't believe there were hardly any machine problems. My paranoia says this is a trick, that maybe they're just finished with the pillaging for a while, but I think that we actually had an election where the Democrats were less loathed than the Republicans.

Good riddance to Rummy. It was wonderful to see Bush squirm like a bug on a pin during his press conference the day after the election. He is definitely someone who isn't used to not getting his way.

It'll be nice to see what the Dems can do in two years, before another election comes around. Itll be interesting to see if the Republicans try to pin all the damage from the last 6 years on this brand new congress. Let the presidential races begin!

AND Allen conceded Virginia: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/09/politics/main2169988.shtml

I didn't expect that.

here are some other links: http://slapfest.blogspot.com/2006/11/quelle-tragdie.html
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/55018

and watch the daily show coverage on YouTube if you haven't..

Also, I saw Borat a couple nights ago. Highly hysterical, really, probably the funniest movie I've ever seen. We went on election night rather than watch the returns because I thought they'd just be too depressing.

Whew.

http://www.tmz.com/2006/11/09/borat-lawsuit-high-five/

image: http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/U.S._Senate_election,_2006

Bill Frist wants you to vote too.

2008-09-16T12:07:00.000-07:00

Tue, November 7, 2006 - 10:44 AM

there's nothing better than the line about Democratic obstruction and the things the Republicans could have done if only the Democrats weren't so obstructionist....

from billfrist@volpac.org
Subject: Frist: The Stakes Couldn't Be Higher

Over the past several months, I’ve campaigned nationwide with common-sense conservative candidates who offer a hopeful, forward looking Agenda for the country. Bright leaders ready to take responsibility and make a positive difference.

Candidates like Michael Steele who was raised by a single mom in a segregated city, yet rose to become the first state-wide elected African-American in Maryland’s history. Candidates like Tom Kean, Jr., an independent reformer fighting the politics of corruption in a state dominated by party bosses for too long. Candidates like Jim Talent, who co-authored welfare reforms that helped break the cycle of government dependency that afflicted so many of our Nation's poor. Candidates like Bob Corker, who has created hundreds of jobs, who has revitalized Chattanooga by cutting violent crime in half, who has founded a non-profit to secure affordable housing for over 10,000 families. These candidates need your help and your vote on Tuesday.

These last two years, in the face of unprecedented Democrat obstruction, Republicans working with the President have achieved:

Two exceptional Supreme Court justices. Tax relief to grow our economy and shrink unemployment to new lows. Secure fencing along our southwest border. A reauthorized Patriot Act. Sweeping reform of our broken legal system. Terrorist tribunals to convict and punish the perpetrators of 9/11.

But more could have been done.

If Democrats had set aside partisanship, we could have worked together to pass an amendment protecting the American flag ... pass the Child Custody Protection Act ... confirm additional Circuit Court Judges ... confirm John Bolton ... repeal the unfair Death tax ... enact badly needed medical malpractice reform and make the tax cuts permanent.

As you can see, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

I want to thank everyone who has contributed a dollar, volunteered an hour, hosted a lawn sign, left a comment on a blog post, passed out literature, or talked up any of the candidates who share our beliefs and values. And I'd ask you to go that final step: to vote and to do everything you can to ensure that your friends, family and co-workers do so as well. Offer to take them to the polls, remind them to vote with an email or a call and volunteer if you can at the local Republican Party headquarters.

Your support has made and will continue to make the difference.

Bill Frist, M.D.

VOLPAC
Post Office Box 158552
Nashville, TN 37215
Office: (615) 386-0045

image: http://www.waynebesen.com/blog/2005_05_22_archive.html

Are you going to vote tomorrow?

2008-09-16T12:05:00.000-07:00

Mon, November 6, 2006 - 1:45 PM

I'm not sure that voting matters any more. I'm not sure that the voting machines aren't rigged and no matter how sick the American public is with the Republicans, they'll always, somehow, manage to "pull it off" and remain in power.

I hope I'm wrong.

Here's some comments from Gore Vidal a out Tuesday's election if you haven't seen them already today.

Partial transcript:

We’re facing the most important election in my lifetime—which does not quite extend back to that of Abraham Lincoln, but it’s pretty close. There’ll be nothing more important in the voting line that one can foresee that will come our way while any of us is still hobbling around. This will determine whether we regain the republic which we have lost over the last five years.

The coup d’etat was so rapid that even I, who am ready for such things ... I thought, these people are going to make a grab for it. But I thought, my heavens, there’s still the courts.... Even a shameless Supreme Court is not going to back up the loss of habeas corpus....

So, my fellow countrymen, as I sit here, not yet at Gettysburg, I have a notion that this is the most important vote that you’ll probably ever cast. Because should this gang of thugs continue in the two houses of Congress, there isn’t any chance of getting the Constitution back....

This is the last chance, really, by getting some new chairpersons to head committees in the House ... to have a clean sweep, which, in normal times, if we’d ever enjoyed them, would have happened by now. Now it has got to happen, or welcome to the Third Reich.

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20061105_gore_vidal_the_most_important_election_in_my_lifetime/

http://www.pixelbeat.org/ms_mirth/diebold-bnp.jpg

Bushies Can’t Handle A Dose of Truth

2008-09-16T11:59:00.001-07:00

Wed, September 27, 2006 - 12:53 PM

I remember back when we elected presidents rather than just having corporations use the system to cheat them in. I think.....

Bushies Can’t Handle A Dose of Truth
from: http://www.observer.com/20061002/20061002_Joe_Conason_politics_joeconason.asp

By Joe Conason

The most amusing part of the confrontation between former President Bill Clinton and Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace came in the immediate aftermath, when the bullies of cable and their wingnut gang shrieked about the mean, crazy man picking on them.

Waah! Waah! Waah! they wailed. Clinton planned it! Clinton tricked Fox! Clinton melted down! Clinton is responsible for 9/11!

If Mr. Wallace didn’t want to provoke a tough answer, he shouldn’t have impersonated a tough interviewer. By insinuating that Mr. Clinton was somehow derelict in failing to eliminate Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban, he reopened a can of worms that he should have left shut.

That incident wasn’t the first time that the Republican Party’s media servants, at Fox and elsewhere, have tried to falsify the history of American conflict with Al Qaeda for partisan purposes. The smearing began within months after 9/11 and has continued for almost five years.

Yet for some strange reason, as Mr. Clinton sarcastically pointed out, his conservative critics show little concern about the Bush administration’s failure to act against the jihadist enemy for eight months after taking office. Not only did they refuse to do anything, but they and their top aides refused to even talk about doing anything.

The Bush White House may still seek to shift responsibility to its predecessors. But such bamboozlements are no longer as easily accomplished as a few years ago, when Condoleezza Rice warned that the “smoking gun” in Iraq’s forbidden arsenal could turn out to be a “mushroom cloud.”

What the Wallace interview and its aftermath proved is that the Republicans can be relied upon to take the path of political convenience—and to blame someone else for it later. In full confidence that nobody will look up the facts, they love to claim that they were courageous, steadfast and farsighted, when they actually displayed the opposite qualities.

Consider Mr. Wallace’s claim that “when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, [Osama] bin Laden said, ‘I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of U.S. troops,’” which suggests that Mr. Clinton pulled a “cut-and-run.” Actually, he resisted Republican demands for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Somalia—where President George Herbert Walker Bush had sent them—precisely because he wanted to preserve American credibility.

The Senate Republican leadership openly sought to weaken him by cutting off funding for the mission, which Mr. Clinton managed to sustain for another six months after the disastrous Black Hawk Down firefight in Mogadishu. (Among those who counseled retreat was Senator John McCain.) But now the Republicans want to blame him for doing what they forced him to do in 1993.

Or consider Mr. Clinton’s missile strikes against Al Qaeda installations in Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998, which the Republican politicians and the press ridiculed as “wag the dog” maneuvering in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Now those same frauds complain that he didn’t try to hit Osama bin Laden often enough, when all they cared about back then was the blue dress. Mr. Clinton’s recollection that he was mocked for his “obsession” with terrorism is accurate. Whenever he took resolute action, whether in Haiti or Kosovo or Sudan, the brave Republicans could be relied upon to behave unreliably.

Finally, consider Ms. Rice’s retort to Mr. Clinton on the subject of which administration did more to thwart Al Qaeda. “What we did in the eight months,” she assured her pliant hosts at Fox News, “was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years.” That sentence must rank as one of the most brazen lies ever uttered by any Bush administration official, which is quite an achievement. She knows that the frequent actions and mobilizations of the Clinton years stand in sharp contrast to the mental vacation of the Bush era.

The hard truth is that Ms. Rice, the President and the Vice President were warned repeatedly about the threat posed by Al Qaeda for months before 9/11. The departing Clinton officials warned them. So did former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke and C.I.A. director George Tenet. But they dismissed the Clinton warnings, demoted Mr. Clarke, ignored Mr. Tenet and threw the Hart-Rudman report in the garbage. When the President asked Vice President Cheney to convene a task force on terrorism, he literally did nothing until days before the attacks—and the President never bothered to find out why.

If Mr. Wallace and his Fox News colleagues ever stop crying about being spanked by Mr. Clinton and want to prove that their network is indeed fair and balanced, here is a timely question they can pose to the President, the Vice President or their old friend Tony Snow, the White House spokesman: When will the government release the secret joint testimony of Messrs. Bush and Cheney before the 9/11 Commission?

again, from: http://www.observer.com/20061002/20061002_Joe_Conason_politics_joeconason.asp

You may reach Joe Conason via email at: joe@joeconason.com .

This column ran on page 5 in the 10/2/2006 edition of The New York Observer.

Photo Copyright
Getty Images

5 Comments

DVDB...

Wed, September 27, 2006 - 1:40 PM
Great post.
I thought about doing the same on my Blog but right now I am just too much of a lightning rod in most politic Tribes to be of much effect.

thanks for post it tho.

DVDB...

Wed, September 27, 2006 - 1:42 PM
darn it!
politics and posting it tho.

Moze

Wed, September 27, 2006 - 2:25 PM
ha, yea, I'm sick of politics, but I miss Clinton and I've got to post some political stuff every once in a while. Good to hear from you. I hear the eplaya is back up and running.

DVDB...

Wed, September 27, 2006 - 3:26 PM
Email
Yep and my email has changed and I'm not getting the webteam list anymore which is sort of a bummer since a new meeting is comming up and I may be in Canada again the day of the meeting.
I'd like to stay in touch. I'll work something out I hope.

Ciao!

P.S. Really really glad you are ok.

LaDonna Kumari

Wed, September 27, 2006 - 4:28 PM
Thanks for that post, Moze. I love Mr. Clinton, too. I don't care who's dress he spooged on. Maybe if Bush did a little spooging, he wouldn't be such a flippin' idiot!

Happy 4th

2008-09-16T11:56:00.000-07:00

Tue, July 4, 2006 - 10:25 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn7UB2FtrIE&search=star%20spangled%20dead

Hey! I was at this game.

National Anthem sung by Jerry Garcia and Grateful Dead
Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Vince Welnick of the Grateful Dead sing the National Anthem in Candlestick Park, San Francisco on April 12th, 1993.

Judge invalidates Prop. H handgun ban

2008-09-16T11:54:00.000-07:00

No surprise here. Gun owners can sleep once again knowing they're not breaking the law. This kind of stuff might work on the East Coast, but com'on people, we're still the wild west.....

Judge invalidates Prop. H handgun ban
Ruling says measure intrudes on an area regulated by state

A judge struck down San Francisco's voter-approved ban on handgun possession Monday, saying local governments have no such authority under California law.

Proposition H, which passed with a 58 percent majority in November, would have outlawed possession of handguns by all city residents except law enforcement officers and others who need guns for professional purposes. It also would have forbidden the manufacture, sale and distribution of guns and ammunition in San Francisco.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren agreed with the National Rifle Association, which argued that Prop. H exceeded the powers of local government and intruded into an area regulated entirely by the state. The NRA sued on behalf of gun owners, advocates and dealers the day after the measure passed. Enforcement of the measure was suspended while the suit was pending.

Warren said California law, which authorizes police agencies to issue handgun permits, implicitly prohibits a city or county from banning handgun possession by law-abiding adults.

That law "demonstrates the Legislature's intent to occupy, on a statewide basis, the field of residential and commercial handgun possession to the exclusion of local government entities,'' Warren wrote in a 30-page decision.

If the city were allowed to ban handguns within its borders, he said, nearby counties could be flooded by handguns no longer allowed in San Francisco. Such a possibility illustrates the need for gun ownership to be regulated on a state level, Warren said.

"California has an overarching concern in controlling gun use by defining the circumstances under which firearms can be possessed uniformly across the state, without having this statewide scheme contradicted or subverted by local policy,'' the judge said.

He declined to consider the ban on sales of other types of guns and ammunitions separately, saying it could not be detached from the handgun ban, the dominant provision of Prop. H. "The focus of the public debate ... was all on the effect of the ordinance in barring handguns,'' and there is no evidence that voters would have approved the other restrictions as a separate measure, Warren said.

Chuck Michel, the NRA's lawyer, said his clients were "thrilled that the judge recognized that law-abiding citizens who possess firearms to defend themselves and their families are part of the solution and not part of the problem.'' Rather than banning such weapons, he said, the city should include gun owners in an effort to "fight the criminal misuse of firearms, which is a goal that we all have in common.''

City Attorney Dennis Herrera, whose office defended Prop. H, will decide whether to appeal the ruling in the next day or two, said spokesman Matt Dorsey.

"We're disappointed that the court has denied the right of voters to enact a reasonable, narrowly tailored restriction on the possession of handguns,'' Dorsey said.

Supervisor Chris Daly, a chief sponsor of Prop. H, urged Herrera to appeal and criticized Warren. The judge "sided with the powerful gun lobby against the safety of San Franciscans'' after showing "disregard for the voters of San Francisco'' by taking nearly three months to rule, Daly said.

The court to which Herrera would appeal Warren's decision may have sounded the death knell for measures like Prop. H in 1982, when it overturned a San Francisco ordinance forbidding possession of handguns within city limits and said state law left such regulation to the Legislature.

Sponsors of Prop. H had hoped to comply with the 1982 ruling by drafting a narrower measure that applied only to San Francisco residents. Gun control advocates were also encouraged by state Supreme Court rulings allowing local governments to ban gun possession on public property and to prohibit possession of the cheap handguns known as Saturday-night specials.

But Warren said the local impact of Prop. H was outweighed by its potential effect on neighboring communities, and by the state's interest in uniform statewide regulation.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/13/SFGUN.TMP

3 Comments

RedTux

Tue, June 13, 2006 - 9:25 AM
The law was only a "Feel good" law. It took guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens who might use them for lawful purposes such as self defense or shooting at a range. It would have had no impact on illegal gun posession, that what the existing laws are on the books for.

Moze

Tue, June 13, 2006 - 9:35 AM
exactly....

shekky

Tue, June 13, 2006 - 6:44 PM
some folks in san francisco ought to have thier craniums filled with cheap gunpowder instead of the air that's in them now.

Election Fun

2008-09-16T11:53:00.001-07:00

Tue, June 6, 2006 - 10:23 AM

The cynicism with which the Republicans handle themselves is so transparent that it becomes ridiculous sometimes. OK, it is transparent most of the time. With Bush's popularity plummeting and this election season looking like the Democrats might pick up some seats only because the Republicans are proving over and over again, and with much hubris, what scumbag criminals they are, Karl Rove and Co. do the only sensible thing they know how to do and trot out the old dog of Gay Marriage.

Oh yes, the evil Homosexuals are trying to steal Marriage away from all the happy straight 1950s families, and just in time for the election! I don't know about you, but I suspect this is just a ruse to distract Americans from things like the Iraq War, the NSA spying on all of us (HEY NSA!) the profiteering by Cheney and Haliburton in Bush's Wars, the Delay trial, the Enron verdicts, the Cheney Treason leak, Katrina, the failing economy and the ballooning deficit, the price gouging by Bush's friends in the Oil Industry, the barely contained salivation for war in Iran by the Neocons, the widening gap between rich and poor with permanent tax cuts planned for the ultra rich, the utter incompetence and fiddling while Rome Burns, etc etc. ad nauseum of the cluster fuck of plundering and pandering to the Right that this administration has subjected our once prosperous country too....

Just a hunch.

We've seen it before. But everytime the Republicans throw the Right Wing Christians a bone, they mobilize and jump on it like they were being offered a brand new car on their sweet sixteenth birthday. They got some nice Supreme Court Justices out of this administration. Now if we could codify some bigotry into the constitution, we'd be set.

It makes me sick. Really.

Please get out and vote today, if only to show them that we care enough to take part in the system. I suspect that Caesar Jeb Bush will be installed at the next Presidential "election", but out here in San Francisco, the land of progressive thinking people who aren't into an amendment saying that gay people in a committed relationship should be institutionally discriminated against, we can show them we still care enough to vote for the little things.

The Purpose Driven Life

2008-09-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

This is classic. If you don't think that there's a battle between good and evil coming up, well, 06/06/06 is nearing so think again. And good and evil is purely subjective in this battle. There was a time when good meant doing what was best for everyone, to lift us all up and to make the species survive and stuff. But god, er Good, to those in power means stealing from the poor to feed the rich and propping up an empire that will control the oncoming chaos (that will manifest because those in power have been stealing from the poor to prop up the rich and to build and empire).

In my wildest paranoid dreams, I wholly suspect the Bushie Fundies to use that date to do something stupid and dangerous for everyone on the planet, and if they don't, perhaps the Fundie Muslims will see an opportunity and take it. We're in a battle of religions here, where the stupidest, most superstitious and insane people who listen to the voices in their heads have taken control of the weapons of mass destruction. The end of the world people are just SO PISSED that the end didn't come on schedule. Fuck, they even had the red cow or whatever all bred and ready. I thought the early 1900's generation was bad, but I'm beginning to miss them. At least they had some kind of boundaries. These Boomers have no such thing and they're so used to getting their way, that they don't give a fuck about any generation that comes along in their wake.

OK, I'm generalizing, sorry. I know some really cool Baby Boomer types.

It'd be so easy to just believe that you had the key to God and to win the prize. Seriously, is this yet another symptom of the Baby Booming Me Idiot Generation? Fuck, I'm so tired of those guys. First they brought us the 60s with their idealistic ideals. That was good, but they kind of lost it after that. They brought us disco and cocaine and horrible clothes in the 70s. Then they brought us the greed drenched 80s. Then they all watched their children grow up and leave in the 90s. Now they're all facing the gaping maw of mortality in the face, so they're hoping that their stupid, made up god (who blesses them because they're rich) comes back and takes them all to heaven on the clouds. I can't wait until they're all suffering from dementia and shitting their pants. (OK, not ALL of them. I just keep seeing the assholes who are screwing everything up for everyone else)

At least eventually my GenX friends will get miracle cures that all the Research and Development money will go to for the next 15 years. And we'll end up with all their property when they die off.

Yea, but we're safe here on the Left Coast. Sure. You believe that....

Andrew Sullivan http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/05/christianism_wa_3.html linked to http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/5/29/195855/959::

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

The game, slated for release by October 2006 in advance of the Christmas shopping rush, has been previewed at video game exhibitions, and reviewed by major newspapers and magazines. But until now, no fan or critic has pointed out the controversial game's connection to Mr. Warren or his dominionist agenda.

[Click the link above to read about that idiot]

And Andrew goes on to say at LaHaye's Anti-Christ

31 May 2006 05:54 am

"I forgot to mention in my reference yesterday to the new "Left Behind" Christianist video game that the Anti-Christ has an identity. (I was joking about the Democratic nominee.) In the novels, which have sold over 65 million copies in the last ten years in America, the Anti-Christ is one Nicolae Carpathia, a Romanian who, after the Rapture, becomes head of the United Nations. An important detail:

Marilena's husband, Sorin, and his gay lover, Baduna Marius, provide genetic material to facilitate Nicolae's conception.

So gay people literally spawn Satan. No wonder Christianists want us eventually wiped off the face of the earth."

Of course, this video game comes from the profit driven people who brought you the Left Behind series www.leftbehindgames.com/. They are the right wing xtian counterparts to the people behind the Da vinci Code (Sony, who started a website to stir up rumours of spiritual warfare to get more people to go see the movie). Mammon has truly won out as the God of this generation.

..... sigh..... It seemed like we were evolving there for about 2 seconds in evolutionary time, didn't it?

American Taliban in San Francisco

2008-09-16T11:46:00.001-07:00

Sat, March 25, 2006 - 7:19 PM

San Francisco is being overrun with Evangelical Christians this weekend. Only in SF would this make the news and draw protestors. We live in a wonderful city indeed.

Evidently this group is called "BattleCry" and they use a lot of fundie Fascist imagery and the City issued an official condemnation of their particular brand of religiousity. Kudos to them. The right wing Christians only come here to get publicity anyway, I'm convinced.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence among others showed up to protest them at City Hall. My favorite quote from the article is this:

On one side of the barricade was girl carrying a sign that said, "Instead of porn, show us Godly relationships." On the other, a woman held one that said, "I moved here to get away from people like you."

And that's exactly how I feel about these people.

They're led by a guy named Luce (Acquire The Fire) who is basically brainwashing a bunch of teenagers into God Warriors. He's also in with James Dobson's "Focus on the Family" (with your fist) and Mr. Pat Robertson's (God will smite you etc, etc, ad nauseum) 700 Club. Once Luce is done with all those blank slate "Reverse Rebellion" teenagers, he'll have a nice little army of zealots at his beck and call and all he'll have to do is give them weapons and they'll be ready for the final battle against the godless infidels.

Hmmm, that doesn't sound familiar at all. No, not at.

While these guys don't seem as full on, single issue hateful as Phelps and his "God Hates Fags" prayer warriors who slink into town from time to time, they do seem pretty dangerous. I ask myself, When, oh when, will these lunatics have their rapture and float up into the fluffy clouds to be with their God who is so full of fury and condemnation of anything that doesn't adhere to pre 1960s America? God please save me from your followers. If only all the fundie christians and the fundie muslims and whatever other fundie religious idiots would just disappear one day, we might finally be able to have some peace on earth.

That would be paradise.

From the SF Chronicle......

Evangelical teens rally in S.F.

Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, March 25, 2006

More than 25,000 evangelical Christian youth landed Friday in San Francisco for a two-day rally at AT&T Park against "the virtue terrorism" of popular culture, and they were greeted by an official city condemnation and a clutch of protesters who said their event amounted to a "fascist mega-pep rally."

"Battle Cry for a Generation" is led by a 44-year-old Concord native, Ron Luce, who wants "God's instruction book" to guide young people away from the corrupting influence of popular culture.

Luce, whose Teen Mania organization is based in Texas, kicked off a three-city "reverse rebellion" tour Friday night intended to counter a popular culture that he says glamorizes violence and sex. The $55 advance tickets for two days of musical performances and speeches were sold out, but walk-up admission was available for $199.

After stops in Detroit and Philadelphia in the next few weeks, Luce wants to unleash a "blitz" of youth pastors into the communities to do everything from work with the homeless to find new ways to bring others to Christ. He challenged youth leaders to double the size of their groups in the next year.

And then he plans to return to San Francisco next year to chart their progress.

That's bad news to Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who told counterprotesters at City Hall on Friday that while such fundamentalists may be small in number, "they're loud, they're obnoxious, they're disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco."

to read more...
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/03/25/MNG6OHU6RR1.DTL

pic is: Sister Mary Timothy of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence shouts at evangelical Christian youths rallying outside City Hall. Chronicle photo by Paul Chinn

Getting Stabbed in the Tenderloin

2008-09-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

Tue, March 7, 2006 - 7:36 PM

I just posted to Red Tux's Blog: "Last night, I was almost murdered", where he was at a club when some gangbanger shot at him and people fell and he (being a trained EMT guy) tried to save some guy, but the bullets just tore the patient apart and there was nothing Tux could do because the damage was done.

Here in the bay area we don't have near the kind of violence people are seeing in Iraq or Afghanistan. But even here, with the random acts of violence we do encounter, the taint is just as strong in that moment. When it happens to you, well, there's no discounting it, eh. There's plenty of bloody horror to go around. And at anytime the whole artifical notion of civilization could be stripped away, regardless of where you are.

The whole civilization thing is fragile and always at the tipping point. But there is a fine line between paranoia and intellect. We have to keep producing enough children who understand that line, otherwise we'll all be living in red states eventually, with the Haves behind walls that separate them from the disenfranchised Have Nots out there. ...with the Haves sitting on their security and waiting for their imaginary concept of the Rapture to take them up into the fuzzy clouds where they'll all live happily ever after.

Does every culture have a mythology that abdicates it from the responsibility of raising up the underclasses so we can move towards utopia? Ours certainly does.

I blame the Baby Boomers for all this. They've always been hedonistic to a fault and my age group follows in their wake. Now I've got to see all these drug and health commercials as they start breaking down into the slippery slope of gaping death. Greatest consumer generation in our history. And now that they've done all their drugs and had their sexual revolution and rebelled and bought their houses and IRAs , they're finding God.

God, please spare me from your followers.

But I digress, Red Tux was posting follow ups to his blog, the murder, the investigation, and I remembered when I got stabbed in the Tenderloin.

Here's one of my funny "I was almost dead stories". I've got a couple.

I've spent some time down there, in the Loin and in the Mission, doing things I'd rather not get into any detail about. Back in the nineties, between serious relationships I was known to galavant and befriend the people who live beneath the stairs and who wander the streets at early morning hours with tweak in their step and guns in their pockets. I've sat up in No Tell Hotels with a girl for hire and a pipe, with her angry pimp prowling about and with me at the peephole sweating and then sitting in the grayish pallor of a television droning in the corner thinking what the fuck was I doing there.

I've known those girls and those gangstas who are all probably dead or long gone by now and I've been in those uncomfortable situations where your tiny paycheck will be devoured that weekend and you will be dying with the poison you've injested.

I remember one night, walking home from the Montgomery BART, thinking, tonight I'll be good. I won't hook up with the freaks or the gangbangers or the homeless or the other assorted San Francisco losers who have been sucked into that hectic paranoid survival zone of pain just behind the Welcome to San Francisco sign. I was bopping along with my bag and not a care in the world. Up past the bars and the liquor stores. Up past the girl who saw the taint in my eye and asked if I wanted to "Come upstairs" and I said "no darlin."

Then I was going down Larkin towards the Civic Center and suddenly someone blindsided me from behind with a huge punch between the shoulder blades, causing me to spin around and to grab into my bag where, if you'd have asked if you could borrow my knife, it would have taken me 5 minutes to find, but the knife was in my hand and open.

There were five or six kids, all youngish, wearing big puffy Raider's jackets, staring me down as I stood against that fence. The biggest of these kids said, "Give me your money," and I took out my wallet which was empty and showed them I was busted. I was actually on my way to the ATM, but I didn't mention that. One kid said, "He's got a knife."

Ha. It was a tiny, laughable knife.

I said, "So what are we going to do here?"

They stood there in front of me for a moment and I expected them to be on me like a pack of wolves, but the big kid said, "Nothing, we got the wrong person." and they were gone, ducking and holding their big Raiders' jackets about them as they made their way around the corner.

I stood there a moment and looked at my knife and laughed, then I made a big whew, right as the sun slipped down behind the buildings and those sick yellow street lights came on and flooded that filthy concrete expanse. I collected my wits beneath the Air Travel Motel sign and resumed my bopping along, down towards Civic Center.

A block or so later I felt something on my back that tickled and I stuck my hand up there behind my shirt to scratch it and I felt a warm and stickiness and pulled my arm out and around to find it covered and glistening with rich crimson blood all the way halfway up my arm. It was bubbly bright. Frothy even. I was like, fuck. That son of a bitch stabbed me.

I walked a couple more blocks to a coffee shop that was open and went in. At the counter I said, "You need to call an ambulance."

The girl behind the counter shook her head and said, "No can use phone."

I sighed and put my arm back up my shirt and let some blood pool into it then I slapped a big puddle of warm bubbly blood onto the counter that splattered all over the doughnut display case and the Leukemia quarter cardboard collection thing and her and I said again, "Call an ambulance."

Luckily for your's truly, some guy was in there who said he was a doctor and he ran behind the counter and called 9-11.

I took a seat at one of their rickety round tables, bleeding heavily, and I lit a cigarette and bitched about how the kids in the Tenderloin just couldn't be trusted these days, and I remember the blood all over my cigarette and caked in my beard where I'd rubbed my face. There were other people in there who were horrified with all the blood all over me and the smoking inside, then the paramedics came and for some reason they cut off my trousers and right as they were putting me on the stretcher I started nodding off.

They took me to General where I was moved to the front of the line in ER because evidently I was dying and a nice nurse woman held my arm as they inserted a chest tube and I remember her saying, "This is going to really hurt," and it did. They cut a slit in you down into the ribs, then they have to force the end of the tube through your chest peritoneum and they can't get in there with anaesthetic or a scalpel.

It was kind of fun watching the tube after they put it in because they just let it drop down and all of the sudden all this blood starts pouring out into an open bucket on the floor. I kept that tube. Still have it, bloodstained and all, down in the basement at my workbench.

I spent 2 days in General. They gave me morphine for the pain and it was in a drip. Whenever the nurses would change shifts I'd get the new one to give me an extra dose. By Sunday night I was ready to go. They'd taken out the chest tub (an orderly assisted a medical student with his first chest tube removal on me) a procedure that also, as they told be beforehand, hurt like hell.

I took out my IV and my roommate gave me a ride home. I went into the Cop Shop on Bryant Street that week to get my back photographed. They'd missed my spinal cord by about 5 millimeters. Man I'd have been pissed if they'd have paralyzed me. And when I told the cop that a kid in Raider's jacket had stabbed me, but I couldn't really remember what he looked like, he told me he doubted they'd ever find them. At least not until they'd killed someone.

Waiting in that dull room in the police station, in the Victim's Unit, with the cheap polaroids taken by a desk duty cop, with the mug shots and the Victim form -- that was when the feeling of being a Victim is most likely to take hold. It hangs in the air there like a sick helpless demon ready to pounce on you. But I'm not a vicitm. I like to think that I'm moving through this life like a glacier, cutting out valleys behind me. Son of royalty. I'm going to spray paint myself over any boring surface I encounter, leave my scent, so someone says, "A big animal slept here" and I'm going to inject myself into the bloodstream of our species.

It'll take a lot more than some kids with a knife to slow me down.

After that I found that my body wouldn't let me go to the Mission or the Tenderloin any more. I could no longer hang out with the hustlers and the gangsters. I couldn't make my feet walk there because I'd break out in a sweat and become cold and nervous. I've never really understood anxiety, and objectively I could tell that this was a reptillian brain response to what had happened, but subjectively, I just wasn't able to go back to that life. And that worked out well for me, actually.

I was suddenly cat sensitive to people walking closely behind me (and I still am). I went through a period where I carried a .380 around in my coat, then I carried a 12 inch knife. I remember finally getting rid of that knife the night that Jenny and I went to the Cellspace for the first time for some Casino Night thing Chicken John was putting on where he had a large roach that ran around in some kind of gambling game.

Years later, I can do the walk down the Loin or the Mission. I can still sense the dealers and they see me but I nod them away. I carry that taint in my walk even though it has been years since I've been lost down there. Jenny had a show at the PawnBrokers Gallery, now part of the Shooting Gallery last year and I found myself walking the 1/2 block down there to stand beneath that Air Travel Motel sign and to watch the good people pass by beneath those sick pale yellow street lights. It was good mojo.

And I'm glad that I was the one to get stabbed that night and not someone else who may have had a harder time of it. I hope I took the bullet (or blade if you will) for some other unsuspecting schlep who may have been there in the wrong place at the wrong time.

2 Comments

RedTux

Tue, March 7, 2006 - 10:17 PM
Ya sounds like you can pretty close to purchasing the farm so to speak. Glad that was not your day to meet the maker. :-)

Any time there is a trauma situation the patient will get what's called a "strip and flip". That's where all of their clothes are cut off so that every surface of the body can be visualised.

Glad you're still here. :-)

Tracy

Wed, March 8, 2006 - 12:47 PM
wow....
Holy shit. That is a fuckin nightmare. I've learned a bit more about "residential hotels" this year than I ever wanted to know. But you never think that you're actually gonna get rolled.

I wonder If I met you at the Lost Vegas where you ditched your knife? I work the crap table.
Chicken will be doing the 1st Lost Vegas in 5 years on April 14th. All the old crew & I'm very excited. Happinin at Nimby & I'm lookin forard to seein you....

Perhaps, in your honor I could mug people at the event.

The Mall

2008-09-16T11:35:00.001-07:00

It being the great American Consumer Holiday, Jenny and I decided that we wanted to get ourselves some cameras. She wanted an expensive digital SLR that would allow her to photograph her paintings without us having to pay someone 200$ a pop and I wanted the cheapest and hardiest camera available so that I could photograph the things I write about and remember what the hell I was thinking when I stumbled from writing spot to writing spot.

It was the day before Christmas Eve so we went to Ritz Camera at the Stonestown Mall as much for kicks as for the cameras themselves.

We never go to the mall, but that day we were brave and spontaneous so we drove up past the YMCA and into the parking lot where it was like a rock concert with all the cars and we eventually found a space way out by the eucalyptus trees.

We entered the holy mall through Macys and passed though the initial Christmas displays of trees and wreaths and designer ornaments all on sale due to the late date and that particular section was steeped in the sweet edible scent of mulled wine, cinnamon and other holiday spices which triggered memories of Christmases past.

Then we went up to shoes and leather items, all heavy and tanned, like roast beast, and my nostrils remembered fresh leather, tasty, with almost a hint of chocolate and something fresh yet sour like lemons, then we were around the corner into the perfumes and there was a 10 foot square section where the leather mixed with the perfume and I stood there saying, "You know Bird, there's got to be a job where the department store plans how to lead us along with the mixing of all these smells."

Macys pushed us along, olfactory science planned perfectly to take us from the leather mix into the perfume and beauty counters where young Macys makeup girls stood chittering amongst themselves and appeared to be busy in a manic way, creating false excitement, and on every counter oval mirrors awaited your makeover to the tune of your Macys card charged to the limit. Those girls were like used car salesmen, waiting for the next sucker who wanted to do away with those "crow's feet" and "frown lines" and "jowling at the jawline", "deep folds" or "marionette lines" that are all symptoms of the natural and dignified process of growing older and that have all been properly defined as something negative that can only be "cured" by the latest product offered at Macys.

We escaped beauty and perfume out into the semi controlled chaos of the Mall Proper and the scent of Boudin Bakery mixed with brand new tennis shoes (Just do it, please). Godiva chocolates mixed with that brand new load of mall merchandise; wool sweaters and rows and rows of plastic candy tainted toys, more leather and the ever omnipotent burn of electronic gizmos. There were the yellow lamps warming up large pretzels and hot dogs on a stick up to the food court where broken and tired families sat four to a small table to devour all manner of insincere Asian Pacific noodle and rice plates, or inferior sushi, or faux Philly cheese steaks.

The food court was all sanitized below and manic neon glowing above at each restaurant, with hoodlum wannabe mall warriors talking on cell phones and making high school passes at suburban Latino and Japanese girls done up in their best ghetto makeup with eyebrows pruned then penciled in and all wearing lowcut jeans that enunciated their 17 year old J-Lo asses. And everyone, EVERYONE, on cell phones, so much so that I wondered if at least half of them weren't just acting like they were talking to someone since most of their friends were probably here, at the mall.

Ah, but maybe that was it, they were all talking to the kids a table over.

And there was such a din of talking on those phones...that din was rising up all around us, and they were all moving like cattle in lines, but less orderly since they retained a semblance of their human disorder so they'd break away and jump ahead like healthy salmon swimming upstream to spawn sometimes.

Santa was there in the middle of the mall, below the food court, holding his own court like he was the Pope with pilgrims in line to kiss his ring and sit on his lap. Parents lined up around the great lit Christmas trees with children to get photographs taken.

Santa was Saint Peter and all the good consumers swished though as if they were clubbling or there to talk on their cell phones or simply there because it was the place to go and Bird and I stood at the balcony taking in the voices swirling up into that grand cacophony, up into the vault above him, into the apex of that blinking atrium where it was all white twinkling and bold colors below, reflective spaces and wide open, and those bold color schemes below all defined singular spaces of large inviting entrances where retail slaves stood watch, waiting cheerfully to help you along with your purchase.

Each store was colorfully branded like their websites. Like a lifestyle. And everywhere offers of better buying power, better deals, don't worry, you'll never be left out of the yearly holiday buying frenzy. Don't worry my entirely immature child who has absolutely zero concept of what borrowing really means, you can charge it all up now.

I noticed actual open space benches, but they were taken by the hardcore who lived there and who'd invested hours of their time in that place, so the benches were theirs and they were aggressively guarding them. The only other places you could sit came with a purchase of coffee or a pretzel. Watching is discouraged when there are so many places you can investigate and make a purchase.

We made it to Ritz Camera fully expecting to be disappointed, but we were "waited on" by a smart kid named Paul who knew cameras and told us about the lenses Jenny needed and we dropped a grand with him. I asked him if he got a commission and he said, "A small one" so that was cool. We grabbed a catalog on the way out because I felt like we'd made a connection. Something almost sincere. We'd go back there. The scam worked. But Paul was cool nonetheless.

Then we were back into the Mall Proper that flowed like a rushing river and each store was an eddy, a place to relax and escape that constant pull. We'd been to our store. But we didn't have another store. Or did we?

Soon thereafter, we ran into a wondeful friend who was with her mother and I was able to try out my camera.

The true American Christmas spirit of consumption pulled us into stores we'd never seen before to examine their wares, to touch their fabric and almost buy, then leave and move onto the next. It seems like the Mall is our latest incarnation of the carnival, but without any rides or games, since it is so well engrained into us that consumption is the game and the ride. We need more rides. We need better rides. We can do better.

Each store comes with a soundtrack, music to match the mood of each branded establishment, with decorations and shiny things in between to keep you moving along. It is the physical manifestation of all that advertising money...and it all lives inside the Mall temple to Mammon who is capital and the exchange of that capital for goods.

It is, in essence, America and our holiday mania that really is more concerned with getting the right gift for someone rather than celebrating the birth of some long diluted and hijacked godhead who would probably spit upon all this commercial excess and wonder why the fuck we weren't taking care of the least among us.

But I digress. I was at that moment, one of those fish swirling around inside that peculiar fishbowl.

We needed to accomplish one last thing at the large sparkly commerce temple before we left and that was to buy a DVD for the nieces. We believed said DVD was available for sale at the Disney store. The Mall became overwhelming and as the sun went down outside, automatic Mall lights came on inside the skylights to give the illusion that time did not exist and all was well shoppers. You have garnered an extra hour of two of your lives while you were inside here. I looked up right as those light came on and it reminded me of how the casinos in Vegas control the environment so you won't flee and realize that your life is passing you by as you sit there, a monkey to the lever, hitting that pleasure center.

Bird and I found the Disney store and that store is a microcosm of the Mall Proper. There are various branding zones. There was a Cinderella section with music piped in overhead and surrounding you, and videos played on the multiple televisions. There was a Young Einstein section. There was a Chicken Little Section. And all through the store there are the impulse buy situations, smaller, cheaper shit at a child's eye level, much like the meaty bones in our petstore, down so that the dogs can grab them with their mouth and their owners can think how cute it is that their darling pet selected something on their VERY own, so much so that they can't help but buy it even though they are holding the 100$ Cinderella doll that's two feet taller than the child they are buying that doll for.

We couldn't find the DVD. We looked around the place and felt ill. There was a long sad line of parents with sniffling children in tow waiting for the Happy Disney Associates to ring them up so that they could move on to the next store. Disney is the master of distilling wants and needs into something easily digestible like baby formula and in that instant the mall burped around us. Jenny rolled her eyes and I smiled so we fled.

The exits weren't clearly marked to keep the hamsters in their cage no doubt, but we eventually made it back through to Macys and the smells led us downstairs then outside and and we opened those doors out into the night and gasped the cold wet San Francisco air and we passed darkly as crowds of freshly showered mall kids goosestepped while talking on their cell phones towards the open maw of the mall and we ran to the car parked out by the eucalyptus and went home.

When we were finally home we played with our new toys.

We got some nice cameras.

... and they Impeached Clinton for saying a blowjob wasn't sexual relations

2008-09-16T11:34:00.000-07:00

Thu, December 22, 2005 - 11:13 PM

Ok, I don't usually post stuff from other sources, but I'm going to post this because it is hopefully going to become a big deal once the government comes back from their holiday vacations.

Once again, Bush is saying, "Trust us, we can break the law but it is only to protect the country". How many times has this guy screwed the country since he stole office in 2000? Wake up people, the safety net for your civil rights, environmental concerns and any semblance of health care are gone, the rich have raided your surplus and Bush is using our soldiers to secure oil wells for his friends to get rich off of.

Oh, and Shekky, yea, this is long, but still not as long as your disaster post.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001736558

Published on Thursday, December 22, 2005 by Editor & Publisher

'Impeachment' Talk, Pro and Con, Appears in Media at Last

NEW YORK - Suddenly this week, scattered outposts in the media have started mentioning the "I" word, or at least the "IO" phrase: impeach or impeachable offense.

The sudden outbreak of anger or candor-or, some might say, foolishness-has been sparked by the uproar over revelations of a White House approved domestic spying program, with some conservatives joining in the shouting.

Ron Hutcheson, White House correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers (known as "Hutch" to the president), observed that "some legal experts asserted that Bush broke the law on a scale that could warrant his impeachment." Indeed such talk from legal experts was common in print or on cable news.

Newsweek online noted a "chorus" of impeachment chat, and its Washington reporter, Howard Fineman, declared that Bush opponents are "calling him Nixon 2.0 and have already hauled forth no less an authority than John Dean to testify to the president's dictatorial perfidy. The 'I-word' is out there, and, I predict, you are going to hear more of it next year - much more."

When chief Washington Post pollster Richard Morin appeared for an online chat, a reader from Naperville, Ill., asked him why the Post hasn't polled on impeachment. "This question makes me mad," Morin replied. When a second participant made the same query, Morin fumed, "Getting madder." A third query brought the response: "Madder still."

Media Matters recently reported that a January 1998 Washington Post poll conducted just days after the first revelations of President Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky asked about impeachment.

A smattering of polls (some commissioned by partisan groups) has found considerable, if minority, support for impeachment. But Frank Newport, the director of the Gallup Poll, told E&P recently that he would only run a poll on the subject if the idea really started to gain mainstream political traction, and not until then. He noted that he had been besieged with emails calling for such a survey, but felt it was an "organized" action.

Still, he added, "we are reviewing the issue, we take our responsibility seriously and we will consider asking about it."

Conservative stalwart Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online takes the talk seriously enough to bother to poke fun at it, practically begging Bush foes to try to impeach him. "The main reason Bush's poll numbers would skyrocket if he were impeached," Goldberg wrote, "is that at the end of the day the American people will support what he did [with the spy program]."

And the folks at conservative blog RedState.org took issue with Fineman's prediction, noting that for "all his fearmongering" he "fails to note the essential point: the more the Dems mutter 'impeachment' in 2006, the more it helps the GOP, because it just further entrenches the notion that the Dems are out of touch, partisan, and not serious about national security."

But John Dean, who knows something about these matters, calls Bush "the first President to admit to an impeachable offense." The American Civil Liberties Union threw more fat on the fire with a full-page ad in The New York Times on Thursday calling for a special counsel to look into the secret spy operations and urging Congress to get involved in considering the possible high crimes involved. And one of those thoroughly unscientific MSNBC online polls found about 88% backing the idea through late Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Washington Post blogger/columnist Dan Froomkin, declaring that "The 'I-word' is back," assembled an array of quotes on the subject. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), he pointed out, sent a letter this week to four unidentified presidential scholars, asking whether they think Bush's authorization of warrantless domestic spying amounted to an impeachable offense.

Todd Gillman wrote in the Dallas Morning News: "Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., suggested that Mr. Bush's actions could justify impeachment." And Froomkin cited Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University and a specialist in surveillance law, saying 'When the president admits that he violated federal law, that raises serious constitutional questions of high crimes and misdemeanors."

When Washington Post pollster Richard Morin finally answered the "I" question in his online chat, he said, "We do not ask about impeachment because it is not a serious option or a topic of considered discussion -- witness the fact that no member of congressional Democratic leadership or any of the serious Democratic presidential candidates in '08 are calling for Bush's impeachment. When it is or they are, we will ask about it in our polls."

Morin complained that he and other pollsters have been the "target of a campaign organized by a Democratic Web site demanding that we ask a question about impeaching Bush in our polls." But Froomkin commented, "there's nothing wrong with asking the question."

The debate should only grow in 2006. Fineman predicted a dark year ahead:
"We are entering a dark time in which the central argument advanced by each party is going to involve accusing the other party of committing what amounts to treason. Democrats will accuse the Bush administration of destroying the Constitution; Republicans will accuse the Dems of destroying our security."

*****************************
www.americanprogressaction.org/si...asp

NATIONAL SECURITY - The Threat of an Unchecked Presidency

James Madison warned Thomas Jefferson, "Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad." The threat to the United States today is real. Yet, in recognition of this threat, Congress painstakingly produced a constitutionally-sound system that allows our government to monitor the activities of those who wish to do us harm, whether they be foreign agents or American citizens. A much different danger has been exposed by President Bush's warrantless spying program: an active hostility by one branch of government to the checks and balances designed to protect our nation's democracy. This hostility "is as pernicious and as damaging as any abuse or panic or misstep of the past," Washington Post defense analyst William Arkin writes. Americans have been asked to "pledge allegiance to a certain post-9/11 Order, abandon the rule of law, compromise our values, turn against our neighbors, enlist in a clash of civilizations, all in the name of defeating the terrorists.

We are being asked to destroy our country in order to save it." Our nation has not yet struck a perfect balance between ensuring our security and protecting our rights and liberties. But as the history sketched below demonstrates, the solution lies in more vigorous debate and more careful oversight, not less.

FLASHBACK: SPYING IN AMERICA, PRE-FISA: America has experienced an era of warrantless wiretapping before. "For much of the Cold War, foreign intelligence investigations (that is, both spying and spy-hunting on American soil) were not regulated by statute and operated at the initiative of Executive Branch agents without much congressional oversight." This largely unchecked power produced numerous abuses and crimes, and had a corrupting effect on our nation's intelligence agencies.

The FBI's COINTELPRO program "conducted domestic harassment of dissenters" and opponents of the Vietnam war "that included illegal wiretapping."

National heroes like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., were targeted for surveillance by government agents. And heinous crimes were committed -- perhaps most notoriously, the point-blank extrajudicial killings of black activists Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in a pre-dawn police raid facilitated by the FBI.

CONGRESS RESPONDS: THE CHURCH COMMISSION: In response to these abuses, the U.S. Senate launched the Church Committee Hearings, "the most comprehensive review of American intelligence activities ever conducted." The committee's 14 reports found "that covert action had been excessive, circumvented the democratic process, and had violated the Constitution."

Yesterday, former Sen. Gary Hart (D-CO), an original member of the committee, lamented "how soon we forget, how little we learn and how pervasive is the tendency to violate civil and constitutional liberties in the name of war. Virtually all of the reforms recommended by the Church Committee -- many of which were passed into law -- have been evaded, ignored or violated in the name of the 'war on terrorism.'" Just this week, news reports documented secret surveillance operations targeting "groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief," as well as opponents of the Iraq war.

FISA CREATED PRECISELY TO PREVENT WARRANTLESS SPYING ON AMERICANS: The legislative outcome of the Church Committee was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. In five different sections of the Act, Congress makes clear its intention "to prevent any future President from carrying out warrantless eavesdropping on Americans." In one section, Congress repealed the provision "the government had relied upon in claiming inherent presidential authority for warrantless wiretaps." In another, Congress "expressly made it a crime for government officials 'acting under color of law' to engage in electronic eavesdropping 'other than pursuant to statute.'" In yet another, Congress stated explicitly that FISA and criminal wiretap laws "shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance...communications may be conducted." The bottom line: using FISA, Congress "enacted a comprehensive scheme governing all foreign intelligence wiretaps," drawing a clear line in the sand. Under the cloak of secrecy, and away from congressional scrutiny, President Bush has acted to subvert that line.

THE ADMINISTRATION'S DANGEROUS POWER GRAB: Vice President Cheney is "living in a time warp," says Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer and Reagan administration official. "The great irony is Bush inherited the strongest presidency of anyone since Franklin Roosevelt, and Cheney acts as if he's still under the constraints of 1973 or 1974." Since taking office, President Bush, "with Cheney's encouragement, has taken what scholars call a more expansive view of his role than any commander in chief in decades," the Washington Post reports. This view is so "expansive" that, when the administration sought to violate FISA statutes, it simply disregarded the other branches of government. It bypassed the Legislative Branch by "briefing" an extremely select number of members of Congress, swearing them to secrecy, preventing them from seeking outside counsel and from objecting substantively to the program. The administration bypassed the Judicial Branch by relying exclusively on advice from administration lawyers, and it ignored Justice Jackson's famous concurrence in the Supreme Court case Youngstown, (cited by Chief Justice John Roberts during his confirmation hearings) which found that "when the president is acting contrary to congressional authority...the president's authority is at its lowest ebb." How telling that Vice President Cheney -- who on Tuesday criticized the laws enacted "around Watergate and Vietnam [that] served to erode the [president's] authority" -- is a prime mover behind both of their contemporary analogs, the CIA leak scandal and the Iraq war.

CONGRESS MUST ACT TO REASSERT ITS AUTHORITY: Several dangers are posed by such "expansive" executive powers. One, noted by Bruce Fein, is that the power grab is not fleeting, but rather sets a precedent that "would lie around like a loaded gun, able to be used indefinitely for any future occupant." Another is stated pointedly by former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick: "If you're John McCain and you just got Congress to agree to limits on interrogation techniques, why would you think that limits anything if the executive branch can ignore it by asserting its inherent authority?" As it stands, Congress "is part of the problem, willing participants in their own bondage." The solution is simple. Congress must reassert itself, and take up its vital oversight responsibilities with new vigor. Following the example of the Church Committee would be an excellent start.

Preaching to the Choir, but really.

2008-09-16T11:32:00.001-07:00

Anything that seeks to censor art is always suspect. The powers that be at this particular moment in time only want to maintain their sacred stranglehold. Every new culture that supercedes the preceding has a new arsenal to obliterate anything sincere in the culture it intends to assimilate.

Like the army that develops the latest and greatest weapon of mass destruction, only on a psychic level, they come for you with TV and control of ideas and credit cards these days. All in the name of wholesomeness and some idea that died a long time ago, or never really existed.

And cultures in power always step up their attempts to stomp out free thought when they are most threatened.

That's what makes right now in this country so exciting. The Christians and the Conservatives are threatened with losing their holy grip left over from the 50s so they have to cheat their way into power so that they can attempt to stomp out the gains we've made towards what was moving slowly towards something where more people actually shared power. They don't like the idea of real democracy. They don't like it when the species evolves. They have to put women back in their place, they have to give the rich unchallenged power, they don't like the uppity. The American ideal of anyone "making it" has to be a closely controlled phenomenon that they make money off of, otherwise it is a threat.

If they don't get this under control, they're threatened with sliding back into the gene pool like dinosaurs. And they know it because their only creative thoughts are How to Maintain their Power.

Anything that seeks to destroy the creative aspect is evil and counter to our survival as human beings. We instinctively want to take care of our own and do away with artificial boundaries. Why do you think that we lurch forward and as a whole want things like equal rights, zero poverty, environmentalism, healthcare for ourselves and our children, freedom to love whomever we want with equal benefits, communities and structures that will help nurture these human animals into something where we all realize our potential?

Because that is natural and with so much wealth, we all want to share in it. We want it because that is utopia. And it IS attainable.

And why do you think the people who hold the power have things like the media to keep those ideas from reaching fruition?

Why do they go to war to steal oil instead of taking the path of figuring out alternatives? Why are they so cynical that they prey on the religious folks who are easily preyed upon? Why do they twist everything around with doublespeak and downright lies?

They are afraid and they take the easy, cynical path. They know that they'd have to share the wealth if a freethinking people rule and that is the antithesis of their power.

Our species evolves through the metaphors we discover. And that makes art all the more important.

Anyone who says that everything that will ever be done, has been done already is a lazy bastard. If you live in the linear realm where most of us live, we are always changing and evolving, and to believe that is to say that we as a species, have stopped evolving. That is to have given up hope on us all and to have decided what is mine is mine and fuck you. Greed is spawned by fear and those in power are full of fear. They breathe it.

The themes inherent to our emotive reality; love, hate,, longing, procreating and death, won't change because those are the processes of our human condition, but our perception and creative expression of those things will continue to evolve. And our art will never be simple regurgitation, unless we decide to stay the mainstream course and cash in absolutely, and immediately to please the powers that be who yearn for a simpler time when their power was never questioned. Painter of Lights and shit...

That taking what exists and creating new metaphor out of it is what pushes us forward.

Every revolution is sparked by a sudden freedom of ideas. Don't lose hope. I know I do. I believe the voting machines have been usurped by Republican friends at Diebold. I believe that only my weapons will protect me when the "Saints go Marching in". I believe that buying land and putting up a big cross with an American flag hanging on it at the Dark Bunny Carnival will keep the Corporate fascists from knocking on my door if they can find it.

But until then, it is all about the art. Art being painting, writing, song, dance, your expression of what YOU are. regardless of and in violation of the powers that seek to hammer the norm into your gullet.

Fuck them. History will remember them as cowards.

Eventually those who dared to push the envelop at any cost will be revered as those who created the metaphor that made our species eventually "get it".

If we must live in an empire that has stolen our country from us, then it is our duty to express ourselves. And even if their heavy hand may win this battle due to sheer force or the fact that they own everything, we can't stop, because our struggle will be remembered and our struggle will someday inspire another struggle and all those struggles for what is good and right for the people will eventually add up to something.

It is the loss of hope that will kill us. And we must fight them tooth and nail until the death of us. And by fighting I only mean, not giving up and giving in. Not becoming assimilated and not thinking that the false dream they offer as an alternative is an option. We are stronger than them and they are only driven by greed and a desire to silence us.

that's all.

Body Cavity Search, ages 4-7

2008-09-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

Tue, November 29, 2005 - 12:41 PM

Oh, this is too priceless, the Playmobil - Security Check Point. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0002CYTL2/qid=1132957527/br=1-7/ref=br_lf_t_7/104-0346844-7690304?v=glance&s=toys&n=171345

I must get a hold of this. Just in time for Christmas. Other people who bought this have bought the Airport Terminal and Playmobil Jet Service Vehicle.

They're out of stock, but I entered my email for an update when they're available. Other fun toys this Christmas in Amerikka, the First Amendment Zone complete with 10 hippies behind barbed wire (comes with 20 riot police) and the PlaySkool Muslin Discentegrator Tank (part of the GHWB Crusader toy line).

I'm holding out for the PlaySkool Gitmo.

OK ladies, here's some fashion for you

2008-09-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

This winter's fashion, the American Taliban.

http://www.modestapparelchristianclothinglydiaofpurpledressescustomsewing.com/

that's a really, really long URL

"In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in MODEST APPAREL, with shamefacedness and sobriety;..." 1 Timothy 2:9

of particular interest, I love www.modestapparelchristianclothinglydiaofpurpledressescustomsewing.com

Gramma is "Waiting for a few more good men for son-in-laws."

and

"This third daughter is 24, a farm girl at heart. Doesn't want to get too far from her milk cow or the other animals for that matter.

Would like several children of her own, just has to find the right man first.

Mature, spiritual, obedient, kind, and a real blessing to all."

and last but not least:

"Sixth daughter is 19 and always ready."

hmmmm.

More Fun with Christians,
http://plainlydressed.bravepages.com/ladiesgirlsclothingfile.html

hey, at least they're not wearing burkas, yet.

Sun, December 4, 2005 - 6:19 PM - permalink - 4 Comments
post an entry edit this post delete this post

4 Comments

shekky

Sun, December 4, 2005 - 6:53 PM
holy moly
some of my aunts were in the "holiness church"--they were'nt allowed to wear pants or show their ankles.

i used to go to church with them, and listn to the churchgoers speak in tongues and roll around on the floors.

oh lord, i know these people in my blood.

be afraid.

be very afraid.
delete this comment

♥╚@ü®α Queen Bee♥

Sun, December 4, 2005 - 9:11 PM
That is truly terrifying
and I think I'm going to hell.

Jennybird Alcantara

Mon, December 5, 2005 - 10:57 AM
you wanna see going to hell!!!
I noticed they aren't trying to marry off the daughter with downs

Tracy

Mon, December 5, 2005 - 9:01 PM
Whaddya talkin about?
This stuff is ROCKIN! Those big puffy gibson girl sleves from the turn of last century are hot.
I totaly want one of those swimsuits. You can't get that stuff anymore!
Do you really think that bloomers don't effect the Prurient intrest?

Remember kids, wholesome is the new punk.

Don't give up Hope

2008-09-16T11:23:00.000-07:00

Fri, December 9, 2005 - 9:41 PM

d00rmaus: duuude
d00rmaus: you and herrick and zemos all bailed!
spider_rabbit: huh?
d00rmaus: hee
spider_rabbit: playing tonight?
d00rmaus: we were gonna
spider_rabbit: I'm busy putting up the 2006 theme for Mr. Harvey
d00rmaus: slave to the man
spider_rabbit: yup, good place to be.
spider_rabbit: not much up there but text, see typos? fuxxored stuff?
spider_rabbit: [URL withheld until it is released and stuff]
spider_rabbit: don't send that around
d00rmaus: looks cool
d00rmaus: man sounds like a great theme
spider_rabbit: Waiting for more art. Right now I'm trying to write something comparing the two apocalypses, Islam v. Xtian
spider_rabbit: how's the bourbon treating you?
d00rmaus: didn't really start, was waitin for the game
d00rmaus: but I guess I should go ahead
spider_rabbit: damn
spider_rabbit: sorry man, I had no idea
spider_rabbit: kevin must be around
d00rmaus: eh no biggie, we've been playing WoW
spider_rabbit: there, I uploaded loopy man refresh.
spider_rabbit: mych0 made it a looping gif
d00rmaus: nice
spider_rabbit: All of these devices will be connected by a closed Wifi network, and linked to a secure computer equipped with a sophisticated software program.
spider_rabbit: hahahha
d00rmaus: yeah that shit is spotty in normal conditions
spider_rabbit: nothing is sophisticated at BM
spider_rabbit: I imagine Larry's totally being a prankster with this: This futuristic technology will employ a complex algorithm...
d00rmaus: the mean is 0
d00rmaus: humanity is an empty vessel of decadance and hate
d00rmaus: it's a constant
spider_rabbit: so you vote for distopia. Thats cool.
spider_rabbit: However, I disagree, not all humanity
spider_rabbit: I suspect that when I die, my deeds (even with my aggressive nature) will make me feel pretty good about what I did here
d00rmaus: you believe in an afterlife
spider_rabbit: I'm agnostic
spider_rabbit: I believe I don't know
spider_rabbit: but I was "dead" once and I was outside in the air
spider_rabbit: that kind of keeps me happy
spider_rabbit: I was looking down at the roof of that ambulance
d00rmaus: I believe that once you accept the possiblity there might not be a god, you're effectively an athiest
d00rmaus: because god is faith
spider_rabbit: nah, I don't believe that
d00rmaus: everything else is games
spider_rabbit: Games are competition. Nothing competitive when you accept how utterly alone you are at that moment of death. I just say you don't know. live your life and care about people, practice compassion and you'll be ok, and if there's nothing else, at least you helped the species be little nicer to each other.
spider_rabbit: fuck the rules of religion. Religion is fucking crap, always has been
spider_rabbit: we are god man
spider_rabbit: the whole thing boils down to, does your consciousness transfer anywhere when your corporeal mass dies
spider_rabbit: I had an experience that makes me think it does for at least 20 minutes
spider_rabbit: so that's what keeps me from stressing about it
d00rmaus: I'm not really stressed about dying
d00rmaus: every once and I while I remember I'm mortal and panic a bit
spider_rabbit: I only hope there's a fucking horrible hell for people like Bush etc who lived for greed and other horrible shit and had the power to bring about their sadism and greed. I hope they have to see the other side. But I don't expect it for them.
d00rmaus: but most of the time life is just a pattern
d00rmaus: a game with shifting rules
spider_rabbit: well, you've passed on your DNA, you've essentially fulfilled your biological purpose
d00rmaus: yes, I've survived long enough to breed
d00rmaus: now I just need to make sure my spawn can take care of itself
d00rmaus: long enough to breed
spider_rabbit: from a purely biological perspective, it's all about passing on that genentic code and mixing it with some other code in the chance that it'll be the mutation that makes the species more hardy. The culmination of evolution is procreation. Make something better suited to survive when the Martians invade.
d00rmaus: yeah, but we've made more out of it, that's pretty special
d00rmaus: that we took dirt and built castles in the clouds
d00rmaus: that's something to be said for humanity
spider_rabbit: yup
spider_rabbit: opposable thumbs and large craniums
d00rmaus: nines and gats
spider_rabbit: but with progress comes the whole ability to end it all, and unfortunatly no one who cares about responsibility holds any of the power They're all like spoiled children, gettting what they can and not giving a shit about the entire species. And using religion to self righteously hate and stamp out anything they're uncomfortable with. Things could be so much better. They're really just slave holders in an age where some of us really despise that who concept. Slave, serf, god, politicians...

spider_rabbit: someday people will look back at this time like they do now about when there were slaves in the south.
spider_rabbit: They'll ask, how did corporations and greedy politicians control humanity like that?
spider_rabbit: I don't know my child... I don't know
spider_rabbit: cool, I'll put that in my blog.
spider_rabbit: smoochies Mr. Holt
d00rmaus: smoochie

Down and dirty from Tom Gilroy at HuffPo

2008-09-16T11:22:00.000-07:00

I try not to repost things here, but this article made me think so here you go....

White House in Chaos' & Other Utter Horseshit

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-gilroy/white-house-in-chaos-_b_10159.html

Nothing could be more damaging for the bridge club of armchair
politicians known as the Democratic Leadership than the recent spate of
sound bytes like ‘Bush’s worst week in Office,’ ‘A White House demoralized,’ and ‘Bushies on the Brink of Collapse’.

You can already feel Schumer, Dean, Hillary, and their media addicted
minions being taken over by that familiar self-satisfied stupor, validating their inaction and cowardice, even repositioning it as though it was part of a grand plan, an agenda, even an ideology.

It’s like a bunch of fat people on a couch learning about the obesity epidemic from 60 Minutes and concluding they must be skinny.

The problem with these snappy doomsday pronouncements—collective wishes really—is that they bear no relationship to reality. You really have to wonder what kind of bloated house-bound moron could think slumping
polls and plummeting approval ratings would worry a gang of fanatics
who stole two elections in a row, invaded a country they knew couldn’t
defend itself, and gave a male hustler White House security clearance.

As long as Democrats and their well-fed punditocracy measure Bush, et
al with a yardstick of morality, popularity or ethics, they will never
recapture the majority, and here’s why; Bush, et al aren’t driven by
morality, popularity, or ethics. They’re driven by money.

You can almost deduce what Rove will tell them to do next by simply
asking yourself what would be best for the rich. But ask yourself what
would any normal person do when their egregious gluttony, mendacity and
utter scorn for the common man was exposed and you’ll find the Bushies
actions baffling. You’ll wait for their humble confession until you’re
blue in the face—uninsured at an underfunded emergency room. Judge them by their drive to get at even more of our public resources and money, and suddenly you’ll recognize they’re still a well oiled machine.

So they don’t ‘Reel With Frustration’ or ‘Rethink Their Message’ or
‘Try to Recapture the Public Mood,’ that’s just delusional journalists
waxing poetic over how a decent person would behave. But these people
aren’t decent, they’re crooks, and crooks don’t give a shit about you
seeing them for what they really are. They don’t care what you see as
long as they’re getting you’re money.

But ‘On the Brink of Collapse?’ ‘A Crack in the Empire?’ Running
Scared?’ ‘Drowning in an Ethical Quagmire?’ ‘Crisis of Leadership?’
‘Humbled by the Damage to Their Legacy’?

Yeah, sure.

They’re so humbled they just last week passed landmark changes gutting
Florida’s Medicaid and Medicare programs, to be used as a model for
other red states so their Republican governors can appear fiscally
responsible. So you crippled grandmother better not exceed her spending
cap next year, or she’s shit out of luck; her dog food rations will
have to go up to 3 meals a week just to pay for her meds. Boy, thank
God the GOP’s been humbled by the ethical quagmire.

They’re so humiliated by their treasonous lies and media intimidation
in the lead-up to the illegal war, they just nominated a raving puritan
lunatic to the Supreme Court, a brown-shirted lemming so in thrall of
corporate power and totalitarian government control he makes Maggie
Thatcher look like a feminazi. Running scared!

Dick Cheney’s act of contrition for the public discovering he’d
sacrifice a CIA agent ‘s head on a silver platter so an illegal war
could funnel money to Halliburton was to replace his indicted chief of
staff with David Addington, a stealth gorgon who’s hatred of democracy
reaches back to Iran/contra and co-authoring Gonzales’s Torture Memo.

Dick’s so horribly ashamed he’s even bucking the entire Congress to
force a torture loophole into a bill that would otherwise compel
America to abide by The Geneva Conventions. You remember The Geneva
Conventions, those rules of ethics drafted by all of humanity in
response to the Nazis gassing 6 million Jews? Clearly, our VP is so
demoralized he must be triple popping Prozac just face his morning
coffee.

W is so decimated by the embarrassment of his (and his mother’s)
classism, racism and venal cronyism in the wake of Katrina, he could
barely muster the courage to eliminate minimum wages and environmental
protections in the great domestic funneling of cash to Halliburton ,
otherwise known as the rebuilding of New Orleans. Just look at the
chickenshit run! We got ‘im now!

Talk about cowering at the feet of liberals. That’s why they’re
offering up the olive branch of the Guest Worker Program, that nice
euphemism for a lot of poor people without constitutional rights,
occupational protections, health insurance, the ability to establish or
practice their culture, send their kids to school, or have a permanent
home—all for below poverty wages. Which is of course another way of
saying slavery. Boy, they’re in the final throes!

And the face man for torture and CIA-trained death squads from Honduras
to Nicaragua, John Negroponte, is still running Iraq, probably using an
Ottoman vase as a chamber pot while tallying up our weekly Geneva
Convention violations on a centuries-old Koran with a Sharpie.

Boy, are they reeling in humiliation. I’m surprised they can muster the
dignity to get out of bed in the morning, they ‘re so debilitated and
demoralized.

Here’s a little secret; they never reel because they are never
demoralized. They don’t measure success and failure they way you and I
do, by analyzing public benefit or desire, or even legality, or ethics.
They measure success by how much more money they feast on from the
public trough. And by that measure, they hogs are literally drowning in
shit.

So while you fold your arms in the triumphant reassurance that
Scooter’s indictment and the GOP’s plummeting ratings reveal the world
to be what you’ve always had faith it was, think again. The pendulum
you always talk about is not swinging back. The Truth has not come out.
What has happened is what you’ve known all along has merely been
reiterated. There is no new information, and so there will be no new
consequences. And while you smirk and feel validated they’ll go right
along gobbling up more and more, laughing at you between belches.

Because they don’t care about your moral indignation, your ethical
judgment, or what the public thinks. They don’t care what’s popular,
legal, or good for the country. They want your money.

So while the Democrats brunch and strategize about who to run in 2008
(choosing from the 3 frontrunners, all of whom want to INCREASE troop
numbers in Iraq), the dozens of Rove wannabees over at the The
Federalist Society are planning their fifth, sixth, seventh move from
now in their uninterrupted plunder. They’re thrilled you think they’re
running scared, because that means you’ll go back to watching ‘Sex &
The City ‘ marathons.

Because while you’re in your HBO or ‘Desperate Housewives’ coma,
they’re moving way beyond small potatoes stuff like Valerie Plame and
Patrick Fitzgerald. They’re plotting new ways to get at our money in
places you’ve never even thought of. They’re gonna spread those
Medicaid cuts to every state in the union, they’re gonna make billions
overcharging us for avian flu vaccine, they’re plotting ways to
dissolve land trusts via ‘eminent domain.’ They’re paying lawyers to
strategize ways to let every corporation in America out of honoring
pension and health insurance commitments.

While you’re smirking about them finally getting their comeuppance,
they’re hiring investigators to find out if Barack Obama ever had gay
sex, Elliot Spitzer ever paid a maid under the table, or Kenye West
ever went to a hooker. They’re plotting Phase II of the ‘social
security debate,’ and the PR sliming of China and Venezuela into the
new Russia and Cuba. They’ll have every anchorperson in America calling
environmental and animal rights activists ‘domestic terrorists,’
Homeland Security monitoring the email records of college students, and
the ATF following future Cindy Sheehans by tracking their EZ Pass.

Think I’m wrong? Ten years ago, could you have imagined evolution being
challenged, ‘affirmative action’ a political liability, or a pregnant
GI posing for torture photos?

If these are the actions of a humiliated cabal, imagine what an
emboldened one would try to get away with. The mind reels.

Vote today!

2008-09-16T11:21:00.000-07:00

If you live in California, today's the day to vote against all Arnold's schemes to consolidate power for the Repulicans.

Also, if you live in SF and you like being able to own a handgun legally, Vote No on Prop H. I'm pretty liberal, but like they say, if guns are outlawed....

Here's the Dem ticket (except for Prop H)

Prop 73 - No, if you're pro choice
Prop 74 - No, leave the teachers alone Arnold
Prop 75 - No, if corporations can advertise, shutting down Union's voice is just smarmy and decidedly Republican
Prop 76 - No
Prop 77 - No, another redistricting scam like they do in Texas
Prop 78 - No, the pharmaceutical company's answer to a real solution in the next proposition. They're such scumbags it boggles the mind.
Prop 79 - Yes!
Prop 80 - Yes

and on all the SF propositions, vote Yes except for Prop D and Prop H. Vote NO on those, if you want to do the right thing IMHO.

Even if the voting machines are all rigged, we gotta at least try to stem the tide of fascism. Can't wait for the election to be over. Phone's been ringing off the hook.

The Republicans will stop at nothing to keep up their pillage

2008-09-16T11:18:00.000-07:00

Thu, November 10, 2005 - 1:09 PM
What could possibly be better than having a bunch of greed driven Corporate Fascist Neocons with absolutely no regard for humanity in control of your government? Well having them fall into disarray and become even more unglued and dangerous, of course.

to be fair, some of the ideas in the memo are good ones, like "resolving the Iraq situation".

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7639.shtml

GOP memo touts new terror attack as way to reverse party's decline
By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Nov 10, 2005, 06:19

A confidential memo circulating among senior Republican leaders suggests that a new attack by terrorists on U.S. soil could reverse the sagging fortunes of President George W. Bush as well as the GOP and "restore his image as a leader of the American people."

The closely-guarded memo lays out a list of scenarios to bring the Republican party back from the political brink, including a devastating attack by terrorists that could “validate” the President’s war on terror and allow Bush to “unite the country” in a “time of national shock and sorrow.”

The memo says such a reversal in the President's fortunes could keep the party from losing control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections.

GOP insiders who have seen the memo admit it’s a risky strategy and point out that such scenarios are “blue sky thinking” that often occurs in political planning sessions.

“The President’s popularity was at an all-time high following the 9/11 attacks,” admits one aide. “Americans band together at a time of crisis.”

Other Republicans, however, worry that such a scenario carries high risk, pointing out that an attack might suggest the President has not done enough to protect the country.

“We also have to face the fact that many Americans no longer trust the President,” says a longtime GOP strategist. “That makes it harder for him to become a rallying point.”

The memo outlines other scenarios, including:

--Capture of Osama bin Laden (or proof that he is dead);

--A drastic turnaround in the economy;

--A "successful resolution" of the Iraq war.

GOP memos no longer talk of “victory” in Iraq but use the term “successful resolution.”

“A successful resolution would be us getting out intact and civil war not breaking out until after the midterm elections,” says one insider.

The memo circulates as Tuesday’s disastrous election defeats have left an already dysfunctional White House in chaos, West Wing insiders say, with shouting matches commonplace and the blame game escalating into open warfare.

“This place is like a high-school football locker room after the team lost the big game,” grumbles one Bush administration aide. “Everybody’s pissed and pointing the finger at blame at everybody else.”

Republican gubernatorial losses in Virginia and New Jersey deepened rifts between the Bush administration and Republicans who find the President radioactive. Arguments over whether or not the President should make a last-minute appearance in Virginia to try and help the sagging campaign fortunes of GOP candidate Jerry Kilgore raged until the minute Bush arrived at the rally in Richmond Monday night.

“Cooler heads tried to prevail,” one aide says. “Most knew an appearance by the President would hurt Kilgore rather than help him but (Karl) Rove rammed it through, convincing Bush that he had enough popularity left to make a difference.”

Bush didn’t have any popularity left. Overnight tracking polls showed Kilgore dropped three percentage points after the President’s appearance and Democrat Tim Kaine won on Tuesday.

Conservative Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum told radio talk show host Don Imus Wednesday that he does not want the President's help and will stay away from a Bush rally in his state on Friday.

The losses in Virginia and New Jersey, coupled with a resounding defeat of ballot initiatives backed by GOP governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California have set off alarm klaxons throughout the demoralized Republican party. Pollsters privately tell GOP leaders that unless they stop the slide they could easily lose control of the House in the 2006 midterm elections and may lose the Senate as well.

“In 30 years of sampling public opinion, I’ve never seen such a freefall in public support,” admits one GOP pollster.

Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin says the usual tricks tried by Republicans no longer work.

"None of their old tricks worked," he says.

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) admits the GOP is a party mired in its rural base in a country that's becoming less and less rural.

"You play to your rural base, you pay a price," he says. "Our issues blew up in our face."

As Republican political strategists scramble to find a message – any message – that will ring true with voters, GOP leaders in Congress admit privately that control of their party by right-wing extremists makes their recovery all but impossible.

“We’ve made our bed with these people,” admits an aide to House Speaker Denny Hastert. “Now it’s the morning after and the hangover hurts like hell.”

? Copyright 2005 by Capitol Hill Blue

it is hard killing your best friend

2008-09-16T11:16:00.000-07:00

Thu, October 13, 2005 - 12:31 AM

... so I had a dream that when you died, the state you were in when you died was the state you were in the afterlife and you never really left this realm, you just hungout with the other dead animals.

The person who told me all this in my dream was my last dog Satchmo and he told me I should die as young as possible so that when I passed over at least I'd still have my muscles, attitude and wouldn't be shitting myself. He said now is the time to die. 40 is a good time to do it because you aren't an idiot kid and you also aren't geriatric yet.

Hmm, there is a certain stigma surrounding listening to dogs who tell you things about life and death, but I grow old and perhaps that reference is lost on many people.....

That whole dying when you're supposed to, evidently is the nature of things and this whole keeping us alive beyond our years thing is an abomination. That's what he was telling me when the alarm woke me up yesterday.

He was a little pissed that I waited to put him down until he was unable to walk and I had to carry him down the stairs then hold him so he could do his business. He said he didn't have anyone over there to help him do that and it was just embarrassing. Satchmo always had pride. Maybe he really just wants me to come over and help him. I don't know.. I tend to make a habit of distrusting the dead when they come to me, regardless of how well they know me...

I let him live because I loved him and couldn't bring myself to kill him even though I knew that animals in our stead rely on us for that last act of compassion. And that's selfish, keeping a being alive when you should let it go. I finally took him to a vet who said, "yes he can't walk and his spine is fused together and he'll wake up one morning paralyzed and he'll freak out because he won't be able to even stand up and all he wants to do is please you because he's a Lab and he loves you."

.... so Bird and me sat on the floor of that vet's office and the vet gave him the pink juice with a big needle and Satch just stopped breathing within 10 seconds. He had a weird dog smile on his lips when he left his body. We cried in there for an hour. And I kept taking his arm and rubbing it on my face. He'd gone from this living being to a dead thing. As much as we wailed, there was no turning back and he was really dead. We left eventually, tearstained, mourning and horrible, leaving his dead carcass there to be shuttled off to Pet's Rest and to be burned. I didn't want him laying in the ground in the summer, boiling. I wanted him to just evaporate and be free.

And after he was dead I saw him every day I was walking. He was running next to me. Free doggie. goddamn I loved that little guy. I like to think he became a crow because I see crows all the time and they seem to have pretty good lives.

I've got his ashes now. I showed them to Sailor and he tried to eat the bones in there. I miss that boy. You will never get over losing a pet who was your friend, never..

... and in my dream he was so cold. The dead are really cold evidently. They just kind of exist. There is no higher place. Just here. And they watch us. The great joy they get is watching us fuck or jack off or stress about what'll happen when we die. Yeah, they get a big chuckle out of that.

I looked at him and tried to warm him up by the propane heater out back where we used to hang and I told him I'd think about dying soon, but I've got a lot of stuff to finish before I can go there.

We'll see what happens.

Satch was such a great dog. He and I were friends for 16 years. I trust that little Black Labrador dog friend of mine. He was loyal and he loved me through all my early life. Damn I loved that dog.

If you've ever had to put a pet down to ease their pain, it is the last responsible thing you have to do for them.

Satch has a website I never finished after I put that boy down at www.violetshivers.com/John/Sa...dex.html

Ha, but it was just a dream. Those don't mean anything, right...
Thu, October 13, 2005 - 12:31 AM - permalink - 8 Comments

8 Comments

RedTux

Thu, October 13, 2005 - 1:30 AM
sniff....
Damm you... you made me cry... Not a day goes by where I don't think of my old friend Cara. She was a Black Lab and I feel the coolest dog ever. She was smart and caring and always happy to see you. I never got to say good bye to her, I was living in England at the time and she was with my Aunt and Uncle in California. I'd like to think she led a good life. My aunt told me that every day she'd wake up around 3pm from her afternoon nap, that was the time I'd usually come home from school.

allison lange

Thu, October 13, 2005 - 4:05 AM
heart breaking
delete this comment
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offline 152

Thu, October 13, 2005 - 5:48 AM
one of the best blogs I have ever read

♥╚@ü®α Queen Bee♥

Thu, October 13, 2005 - 8:47 AM
Oh man...
I just lived through the time of "missing", and then "found, dead" with my best friend, whose best friend from her whole life took herself off a cliff. Days, nine days she was missing before they found her, and I was there for the whole thing. I have yet to shed a single tear, my job right now is to be a comfort to her.

I have a beautiful guy, Jack Bennett. he turned 11 this summer. His eyes are getting a little milky, his muzzle is going gray, and the little dog gets two treats to every one of his because he can't see so well to catch them any more. This dog has been with me through many a drunk, was there for me when I was getting sober...I love him more than any being that didn't father me; that I didn't give birth to.

I finally cried, reading your story. One of my biggest fears is to come home and find him in his final sleep; have to get him out of his crate and deal with the furry remains. I now know that I would much rather that than to have to do what you did for your buddy.

I think our ability to feel this deeply is both a blessing and a burden. I'm going to go out and throw the ball for Jack Bennett, and give him an extra pet, since he's still here, and I can.

Jennybird Alcantara

Thu, October 13, 2005 - 9:25 AM
man baby, you are kicking asses and taking names with this one, I've already cried twice, once reading it and once reading the other posts.....you have a way.......

shekky

Thu, October 13, 2005 - 5:52 PM
one day, my old cat clem will no longer be with me...
i'm not looking forward to that day.

clem (aka "growler the cat") has been with me through a lot of ups and downs, and all he's ever asked for is some crunchies, fresh water and a can of processed whale meat every once and a while.

anybody who tells me, or one of my friends that they're "just animals" has never experienced the pleasure of the old cat resting his head in my hand every night. clem has slept with me (and whoever i happened to be sharing my bed with) for sixteen or seventeen years now, it's been so long i've lost track.

again, i'm not looking forward to the day when my furry little buddy curls up in the crook of my arm and puts his head on my hand, just like a pillow.

my heart goes out to all of our feathered, furry and slithering companions, for making a worlds a better place.

Nicole aka ~technopatra~

Thu, October 13, 2005 - 6:29 PM
Oh John, I had no idea. I remember Satchmo at one webteam meeting you brought him to. So sweet. I remember hearing the thump of his tail against those weird table legs. I am so sorry for your loss.

My one and only dog was a smallish black Lab mutt with a white patch on his chest named Hershey. When we moved to Laguna Beach when I was 6, he just walked in our open front door, looked around, and decided we were good enough for him. For me, it was love at first sight. It is sad but I can say that I loved that dog more deeply than I've probably loved anything, or anyone, in my life - with the pure love of a child.

He was so smart he'd look both ways before he'd let me cross the street. Hand to God.

He slept with me every night. My mom wanted him on the ground, but I always let him under the covers after we'd sung our sleepytime song, "The Rainbow Connection", and she'd kissed me goodnight and left. My brother and I shared the room and he never ratted me out.

We moved to Hawaii a year later, and my mom gave him away. She told me that he was in quarantine, thinking that within 6 months I'd forget about him. I kept bugging her and bugging her and she finally told me that the people who were taking care of him in quarantine loved him so much that they moved without telling us. My heart was broken.

I had a dream once that I was at a fancy club, and everyoen was ignoring me. Waiters, people dancing...I just moved thorugh them frustrated and sad at getting no attention. They had all the trappings of things I wanted - hip clothes, great hair, fancy little food and cocktails - but Icouldn't connect with any of them.

I was wandering around a found a hallway that was being used as a oat check, and both sides of it were lined with red furry coats. In the middle of the hallway was a decidely unhip looking older woman. She had a moon face and a plain sack dress, but she smiled at me. She didn't speak in words but somehow I heard her tell me that she knew i was hurt and frustrated and angry and sad, but it didn't matter because those people didn't matter, They were a distraction. They were immaterial in their materialism. She told me she'd show me something make me feel better. Then with a wave of her hand she released me from my body.

I didn't even have time to be scared, I just felt myself discorporate. My vision blurred into colors and then into nothing, because i had no eyse, and my body dissolved into everything, and I felt the rapture of going back to into the cosmic soup, a physical and spiritual sense of rapture beyond anything I ever felt in real life.

I was beginning to lose my identity, the specific mixture of parts that make me...well, me. But then she pulled me back into my body, and I was back in the hallway with her. She looked at me, still smiling, as if to say "See?".

Then I woke up.

Maybe it was only a dream, maybe it was my mind going about its nightly defrag, but I sincerely believe that's what death is. No form, no judgement, no heaven or hell, no heat or cold, no rules no philosophy, no identity and therefore no separation, no thoughts...no sensation except the immeasurable energy of the cosmic soup.

I bet Satch liked going back into the soup, too.
.
*Ali Baba* Alexandra Davies

Sun, October 7, 2007 - 3:43 AM
This totally made me cry. But then Nicole's comment made me smile at the end.
And also remember a dream...very similar to the end of hers: I had knowledge of the feeling of death and it feeling wonderful, being light and radiating and just fabulous.

I tend to believe, though, that we have an afterlife where we get to hang with our peeps and animals, spend some good time loving them and hanging out and learning until we decide we want to come here and live another lifetime. ;D

Of course, as I learned in anthro of religion, people believe in something because it works FOR THEM.

Could I have met Satch at the Carousel Numinous party? His adventures sure brought me many smiles today. A fantastic fellow indeed.

Autumn in the Sunset.

2008-09-16T11:04:00.000-07:00

Wed, October 12, 2005 - 11:12 PM
Autumn is falling down across the California Coastal region. This time of year it always nuzzles in from the wide open ocean. It is an unmoveable force flowing over the sea lions and whales and other briny sea mammals that inhabit that cold Pacific, and we humans out here in the Sunset can smell that summer is gone without a doubt of it reappearing, if even for one weekend. The Outer Lands of the Sunset are now in winter mode.

That creature Autumn comes on with a front of cold arctic fog that pulverizes any semblance of warmth the ground may have absorbed in the three or four weekends of sun that graced us between August and October.

It soaks us in chill and our summer is literally measured in weeks out here on the northern California coast.

This time of year, when I drive home from work on 280 from San Bruno, I'm usually hot and wearing sunglasses to deal with the sun that's moved lower on the horizon and is setting around 7:30 but is most obnoxious and orange around the time I'm driving home.

Driving home. I pass the National Cemetary and I note whether the huge U.S. flag is at full or half mast. It is usually at half mast these days, which sucks because I know not that many old veterans are dying and being planted in those perfectly manicured rows and rows of dead soldiers at the foot of those white headstones.

Continuing on home, the Large Red Truck curves downward in a big left then moves to the right at the Hickey Blvd exit and I see the cemetaries of Colma to the right, beneath a white flowing sheath of clouds being pulled like a tube towards the warm SF Bay. Then around that corner, precipitiously, 280 drops down around the Greenland and Woodland cemetaries towards Serramonte and the Big Red Truck drifts into a huge gray cavern of cloud churning off the Pacific and I have to take off my sunglasses to see as I drive into that tunnel of roaring overhead fog.

It is like driving into a frozen underground garage. Seriously.

That's what living on the coast is like in California.

The air is prematurely crisp and everything is dripping wet. You smell fires in fireplaces like you're tasting them and the dull salty ocean stomp of another season is moving in at us. The Sunset is wet and ready to return to the reason no one ever really wanted to live here in the first place. Lake Merced is enshrouded by more fog, so much that you can't even see the lake you could see a week ago.

Once around Lake Merced and off Sunset, there is a swirling miasma of Chinese or Thai food and Korean barbeque. The food mixes with the oncoming fog soup along Taraval.... and there is the heavy menthol Eucalyptus dripping down, mixing with the water as a salve around any open green space. There is the smell of last minute burning tar roof fixes against the oncoming rain. There are the people who move along, gray figures in the fog to make the L or hangout at the bars, to get a Quickly. There are all the people with dogs. And there are broken old people barely visible though that transparent carapace, moving like lonesome frozen ghosts, and there are people who are going into the warm, lit places to conjoin and energize themselves with others who have made it out of the house. Yoga, Arthur Murray Dance, young couples with sweaty chidren who have just finished Tai Kwon Do and who are moving them along the street to their minivans and SUVs.

And the surfers are waiting for the winter waves.

There is a constant noise out here. You can hear it any time and it is the sound of the ocean. In the summer it is easy to avoid that sound unless you are down on the beach, but as the Autumn moves in, the roar becomes more pronounced. By December, it is deafening if you realize it is all around you. The ocean becomes hungry for sand and it pounds and scrapes the beach relentlessly.

But this is just the beginning. In a couple months, the rain will fall down and soak everything and that ocean wind will come on relentless and chill us even more. that is when there will be wave reports at Mavericks. That will be when the surfers will take to the ocean in mad packs to ride those frozen 12 foot plus waves.

Coming home to the Puppyboy and the Bird on nights these warms me like I've got something real for my short moment of existence. I do have something real to come home too.

Tonight Bird is getting ready for Open Studio this weekend and I helped her move some paintings around. I streamed most of the first Burning Man webteam meeting on my laptop out back and was on IRC with catilin and nani and gutowski. There was talk af bacon and next webteam meeting I have to bring my coleman so I can make bacon for everyone throughout the meeting. It was another instance of being with my friends. My glorious friends who I am so grateful to be aquainted with in this age of such detachment.

Burning Man is an ending and a beginning each year, whether I like it or not. Halloween has become the first holiday of my new year. I always liked Halloween. This Burning Man gig has rearranged my perception and when I get back from the playa, I have a period of down time that is interrupted with Decompression, then the meetings begin again and we figure out how to keep the information flowing.

Back in the day, I think all that back to reality started after New year's eve. But then again, I've never been one for embracing "reality". I'm getting older and watching my time slip away, so precious, that time, and all I really want to do is leave a little bit of myself that will live on. Some words or something that'll survive the times. I am cursed in that I always feel like I've got so much time to do that.

I've got my Bird and my dog and my writing and my friends and my crazy family. And I've got this yearly fog that rolls in to start the Autumn of the world out here. And I've got that ever pounding powerful ocean that I can hear anytime. I've never lived more than 20 minutes from a coast since I was born. I love the salty swill of the ocean. And I continue to end up next to that ocean, whatever ocean it is.

Bring on the fog.

____________

4 Comments

shekky

Wed, October 12, 2005 - 11:39 PM
bring on old man winter
then the fog lady will crawl under the golden gate bridge again until next may.

sorry johnny, i don't like the fog. i long for the sun and summer heat, which don't often visit san francisco. when was the last time it was warm enough at ten o clock in the evening to sleep under just a thin sheet in the city?

i guess i'll never become a true san franciscan, even after living out here twenty two going on twenty three years, more than half my life.

maybe that's one of the reasons i keep going back to burning man, to celebrate and revel in the renewing energy of the desert sun.

bring on old man winter, and rain, mother nature, then i'll know your warm sun will visit our city come march, april and maybe the first half of may.

allison

Thu, October 13, 2005 - 4:31 AM
that was beautiful. thank you. i have always romanticised the fog. i am due for a trip to the sunset TO VISIT YER ASS and to maybe swing by the beach.

allison

Thu, October 13, 2005 - 8:37 AM
i quoted a portion of your blog in my blog, hope you don't mind.

How Sweep It Is.

2008-09-16T10:57:00.000-07:00

Thu, October 27, 2005 - 10:52 AM
So the WhiteSox swept the lowly Houston Astros. I was able to see most of three of the games and although none of my teams made it to the World Series, I took great joy in watching Texas lose.

If baseball is a truly American sport (which it is) the WhiteSox are decidedly more representative in their roster of America than the Astros. While the Astros do have some Dominican guys on their team, the Sox have Dominicans, African Americans and a Japanese guy. They even have guys from Venezuela and Cuba. Why, they're practically Communists, or Democrats.

When the series moved to Houston we got to see Barbara Bush's whitehead gray hair sitting behind home plate each night. The first night she was sitting with the other Bush son (the one who got busted for the Savings and Loan scams, I think). When they did a tribute to the victims of Katrina, they gave us a close up of Barbara, looking all concerned and pious. This after she'd said:

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

What a bitch.

At Minute Maid Park, watching the shots of people in the stands during the game was like watching a Republican Convention. So many Texas whiteys. It looked like none of those underprivileged folks made it out to the game.

Jenny and I were playing "Find the Minority". Throughout the entire 14 innings as the Texas white team played on the field, we counted one mexican kid and one black guy in the stands.

We watched the Astros fans cheer, we watched them sweat. We watched them praying to Jesus to help their team win and when Astacio blew it in the 14th by letting the Sox get a homerun, you could see it on the white people's faces. You could see their ultimate disappointment. How could we, TEXAS, lose? We've got god on our side. We run the WORLD. Yea right...

It was beautiful.

I can't help hoping that this is just a harbinger of the beginning of the end of Texas' reckless reign over America. Compared to the post 911 goosestepping, the media (except FoxNC of course) are kind of reporting the bad news of this selected president. How he lied to get us into war, how he is purely for the rich, how he is dismantling any semblance of a safety net, how top Republicans like De Lay and Frist, Cheney and Rove, are all under investigation.

Houston, Texas is a white christian enclave where the rich run the show and the poor will all get their reward in heaven. It is ground zero of the Red States, and now it is flooded with refugees from Katrina. As Barbara said, "What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas."

The real America, the one that is vital and rich because of its diversity, will win the battle for the soul of our nation.

Sorry Texas, your attempt at creating a Corporate Fascist state is failing. Your lies are crashing down around you. No matter how many yes men Bush surrounds himself with, there will always be people who won't go along and who will expose you. You'd better make sure those voting machines are all wired up and ready to tabulate in your favor because even the Red Staters who voted for you last time are getting fed up with losing their sons and daughters in your war. They're fed up with your oil buddies gouging them with gas prices. They're fed up with health care costs that are out of control. They're fed up with your incompetence and inability to take care of our country.

Bush and Co. have looted and pillaged our country for long enough. They've lied and used our military so they could profit long enough. You're down 3-0 in the series Bush and your chances of winning are fading away.

Of course, Baseball *is* just a game. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it.

Go SOX!

----

shekky

Thu, October 27, 2005 - 4:05 PM
i agree with you about houston, johnny BUT
chicago has had its problems as well.

julia and i both noticed that all of the folks celebrating at that bar in chicago were white. the south side, where the sox fan base is located, is mostly white. the KKK has marched in the southern suburbs of the windy city, often with the whole hearted support of the populace of those cultural backwaters.

let's not get into the 1968 democratic(?) national convention in chicago, where mayor daly had his rat fuck racist asshole police department attack protesters, journalists and innocent bystanders.

america is becoming an Us or Them society, my friends.

i'd suggest we all go shopping soon at J Crew...

oh yeah, i'm glad that two teams made it that have'nt been to the series in years, like the sox, and never before, like the astros, even though i used to call them the "assholes" when i was a reds fan...

Thu, October 27, 2005 - 8:39 PM
sports. feh. give me FatBirds
the only thing i like about sports is that the Human sits still for three hours and puts the Fire Tube in his mouth, which makes him slow.

sometimes he yells at the Jabber Box for no good reason, and i have to jump off of his lap, but most of the time he just takes a nap.

then i either nap with him, or i get up on the coffee table and steal whatever food he's left out.