Solving the recruiting problem...
Mood:  mischievious
Topic: Political
I recently heard that recruiting numbers for the military were down over 40%. It seems we can't find people who are silly enough to go fight Dubya's war for him. I can't imagine why. The drop in enlistment led the miltary to stop recruiting for an entire day to "reassess" their methods. What? Promising recruits a million dollars, a condo, 3 day work weeks, a new car, and their choice of assignment isn't getting it done any more?
According to news reports there have been cases of military recruiters lieing to potential recruits. You know I was beginning to wonder why the entire Army wasn't based in Hawaii.

Anyway, the miltary is all in a bunch because no one wants to fight Dubya's war in Iraq so they figure it's time explore some new ideas. Well rest easy gang I have the solution to your problem.

It's simple. Do away with the age limit. Let anyone join. If you do that then all these patriots with "These colors don't run" bumper stickers on their pick-up trucks can join up. Based on all the "I support our troops" magnets I see on cars, I really believe that most of the people in said cars would join the army and head to Iraq in a heartbeat if they were simply allowed to enlist. See? Problem solved. I can't believe I am the only one who has thought of this.

You know that the age limit is all that is keeping every jingo spouting, war loving, gay hating, liberal bashing, gun toting member of the NRA out of the Army. Hell, you raise the age limit on enlistment and these guys and gals can solve two problems at once. They'll join up tomorrow and they'll bring their own guns. It's a win-win situation. The military gets their recruits, the taxpayers save money on weapon production.

Since they wanted the war so badly we should at least be decent enough to let them go fight it. We can let all the flag wavers and sticker bearers lead the charge into wherever it is we are attacking this week. All the military needs to do is raise that age limit and they'll have lines out the door tomorrow. I am assuming my Mom's husband and my in-laws would certainly join up. They were practically foaming at the mouth when this whole Iraq thing got under way. In fact one of them even said "Don't you just love times like this? It's so patriotic." Yes she actually said that.

Anyway, my point is simple. All these folks with the magnets and stickers want to make sure we know how much they support Dubya, our freedom, and the war. So let's make it easy for them. Loosen up the restrictions and let them sign up. They wanted this thing let them fight it.

You heard it here first...
Topic: Political
Wasn't it about a year or so ago that this very blog was telling you that those so-called "terror alerts" were nothing but Dubya's way of deflecting attention from himself and in the process scaring the hell out of the brain dead republican base? As usual the actual media shows up a day late and a dollar short. Anyone with enough sense to write their name knew those alerts were nothing but propaganda and scare tactics. For those of you who still don't realize they were fakes...read on.


(USA Today) The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says.

Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or "high" risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled.

His comments at a Washington forum describe spirited debates over terrorist intelligence and provide rare insight into the inner workings of the nation's homeland security apparatus.

Ridge said he wanted to "debunk the myth" that his agency was responsible for repeatedly raising the alert under a color-coded system he unveiled in 2002.

"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert). ... There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?'

A Must Read From Buzzflash.com
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Political
Click here for a great take on the religious right

Could you be a Democrat?
Topic: Political
From Buzzflash.com

Could You Be A Democrat?

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Mary Schumacher



Although Democrats have been taking a beating at election time, polls keep indicating broad public support for Democratic ideas and ideals, and dissatisfaction with the direction and aims of Bush and his party. There seem to be a lot of people out there who, for one reason or another, don't know they're Democrats. If you have any of these people among your friends and acquaintances, you might want to pass along this statement of Democratic beliefs and values to help them realize who they really are:

COULD YOU BE A DEMOCRAT?

Democrats believe in self government -- based in the widest possible participation of all citizens from all walks of life, as opposed to government controlled mostly or exclusively by elite and powerful, but limited, interests.

Democrats believe that government must be useful and responsive. They disdain empty grandiosity and dishonest pomp -- a staged landing on an aircraft carrier or a fake townhall, for instance -- designed to glorify officials and promote awe of government authority rather than respect for democracy and democratic power.

Democrats abhor (and will rebel against) government that is narrow, self-interested and authoritarian (the kind of government today's Republicans, or at least the limited, powerful interests who now control the party, seek).

Democrats believe that democratic government is the best tool ever devised to bring the diverse people, interests and resources of a complex society together to effectively solve common, society-wide problems or to achieve important society-wide goals.

Democrats don't "believe" in "big" government, but they do understand that solutions to big problems, or the achievement of big goals -– protecting the elderly, meeting our moral obligations to the vulnerable, disabled and ill, protecting natural resources, defending our homeland, exploring space, recovering from economic or natural disaster, finding solutions to our energy and other kinds of crisis, etc. -- require big resources that often can be most efficiently, or only, marshaled and distributed through government actions in which the people broadly participate and that they broadly support. Democrats believe in government big enough -- but no bigger than necessary -- to accomplish the job at hand.

Democrats believe the people have the right to, and, in the cause of protecting their liberty must, limit and protect themselves from ALL abuses of POWER -- whether it is the abuse of government power or private power.

Democrats differ from today's conservative Republicans in that they are idealists rather than ideologues. They believe in the inherent potential for good in people, and in the ability of people to create good by working together. They do not, like the Republicans, believe in their own moral superiority or in the absolute, infallible truth of their own ideas.

Democrats believe that there are sacred principles, but that there are no sacred ideas.

Democrats believe in individual rights, personal liberty and personal responsibility. But they believe equally in social responsibility, community service and public obligation. They understand that finding the right balance between these competing values –- between the rights of the private man and the obligations of the public citizen -- is one of the most important, and difficult, jobs of citizenship and politics.

Democrats are guided by undying moral and humanitarian principles rather than constantly changing social "values." These principles are honesty, fair play, social justice, economic morality, political equality, freedom of conscience, individual integrity, respect for others regardless of station in life, gender, race, religion or inherited resources and privilege, and, an undying commitment to self-government free of the authoritarian coercion of church, monarch or, in this modern age, corporate or other elite and unaccountable power.

Democrats are the inheritors of this nation's Enlightenment and revolutionary tradition. We represent the democratic passion of Tom Payne, the pragmatic problem solving of Ben Franklin, the self-confidence and faith in and respect for humanity expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

The Republicans, as they now are constituted, on the other hand, have chosen to align themselves with the Tory tradition of church, crown and military coercion. As well as with the Southern planter tradition of brutality and empty, self congratulatory "aristocracy."

Considering all this, on which side do you think you really belong?

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

How screwed up is the religious right?
How fucked up are the religious right? This fucked up. Click here.

Great article about the religious right wing wackos
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Political
Click here for a great take on the religious right. It's excellent.

Only in Florida, Only the NRA
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Political
You have got to be fucking kidding me on this one. I heard about this on Air America today but it was so ludicrous that I figured it had to be a joke. Nope it's true.

Thanks to GunGuys.com and the Palm Beach Post I am able to bring you the craziest idea the NRA has ever come up with and believe me that ain't easy to do. Read on and once you are done laughing take a minute to ponder the fact that this is an actual bill in the Florida legislature.

Again this is from the Palm Beach Post via GunGuys.com

Sunday, March 27, 2005


It doesn't take a lot of thinking to predict problems with Florida's fast-tracked Make My Day Law. The Legislature didn't notice potential problems because, as usual when the National Rifle Association wants something, the Legislature didn't do a lot of thinking.

Because "a person's home is his or her castle," the bill (HB 249, SB 436) says, people need enhanced rights to protect themselves at home or in a vehicle. It removes any obligation to try to avoid a confrontation, by running away or calling police. The law assumes that anybody who gets in your home or car illegally is a violent threat. In short, you can shoot him. That's assuming you aren't shot first after you are emboldened to exercise your new rights under the law.

Recently in Lake Worth, a woman told police how scared she was when Hispanic men jumped into her car. Because the men entered her car illegally, it would be reasonable under Make My Day for her to shoot them. What she didn't know is that she had stopped in an area where people pick up day laborers. By the way, Make My Day also would forbid anyone she shot from suing her.

Aside from home and vehicle, the law extends to "any place" where the person "has a right to be." Any attack can be met with deadly force. What if the shooter says he was attacked but police aren't sure? A law-enforcement agency "may not arrest the person for using force unless it determines that there is probable cause that the force used was unlawful." Call it the right-to-escape clause.

The law has overwhelming support in both the House and Senate. Never mind that this, like other NRA schemes ? such as ending the assault-weapons ban and preventing police from keeping lists of pawned guns ? will give the judicial system fits. When Make My Day is in force, individuals will practice the racial profiling police forces have tried to eliminate. More innocent people will get shot. Prosecutors and courts are going to have their hands tied. All of which, apparently, will make the NRA's day.

Wow...
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Everything else
I was doing some housekeeping on this little blog a couple days ago and I stumbled on to something that made me pretty happy.

I was adding to my list of meta words and going over some older entries to see if they were still relevant etc.

For the uninitiated (like me) meta words are what you use to drive traffic to your site. I guess they pop up in search engines and that's how we end up on google etc. An example of some of my meta words are, political, liberal, sports, media, right-wing dumbasses, republicans suck, Bush sucks, NRA assholes, you get the gist. Anyway I added some new words to my meta list so of course I had to do a search to make sure they worked.

Low and behold in my little test search I stumbled on to an article that was published by something called PCQuote.com I guess it's some sort of online stock market magazine thing for PC users and stockholders which is funny since I use a Mac but I digress...

The article was published in July of 2004. It was about political blogs and how they were affecting the presidential election. Well much to my surprise they had listed a few sample blogs in the article and there I was number seven on the "Blue Blogs" list. (They listed Red blogs for right wing idiots, blue for the enlightened and intelligent folks, and purple for the poor souls who are apparently too stupid to decide between good and evil.

Needless to say I was thrilled by this discovery. Apparently some writer thought my blog was either good enough or representative enough to use as an example in this article. So thanks to the writer whoever you are. More importantly thanks to all of you who drop by and check out my ranting and raving.

We'll keep fighting until the last dog dies or until republicans take their heads out of their asses whichever comes first. I don't want to seem cynical but based on republicans I have run across well suffice it to say I wouldn't want to be that last dog.

Out...Red41

Nice TV Spot from Bradycampaign.org
Topic: Political
Watch this ad then make a call to stop the nut job NRA in it's tracks.

Sean Hannity on civility.
Mood:  a-ok
Sean Hannity in rare form

From the great Paul Krugman
Topic: Political
This is from The New York Times.

An Academic Question

By PAUL KRUGMAN

It's a fact, documented by two recent studies, that registered Republicans and self-proclaimed conservatives make up only a small minority of professors at elite universities. But what should we conclude from that?

Conservatives see it as compelling evidence of liberal bias in university hiring and promotion. And they say that new "academic freedom" laws will simply mitigate the effects of that bias, promoting a diversity of views. But a closer look both at the universities and at the motives of those who would police them suggests a quite different story.

Claims that liberal bias keeps conservatives off college faculties almost always focus on the humanities and social sciences, where judgments about what constitutes good scholarship can seem subjective to an outsider. But studies that find registered Republicans in the minority at elite universities show that Republicans are almost as rare in hard sciences like physics and in engineering departments as in softer fields. Why?

One answer is self-selection - the same sort of self-selection that leads Republicans to outnumber Democrats four to one in the military. The sort of person who prefers an academic career to the private sector is likely to be somewhat more liberal than average, even in engineering.

But there's also, crucially, a values issue. In the 1970's, even Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moynihan conceded that the Republican Party was the "party of ideas." Today, even Republicans like Representative Chris Shays concede that it has become the "party of theocracy."

Consider the statements of Dennis Baxley, a Florida legislator who has sponsored a bill that - like similar bills introduced in almost a dozen states - would give students who think that their conservative views aren't respected the right to sue their professors. Mr. Baxley says that he is taking on "leftists" struggling against "mainstream society," professors who act as "dictators" and turn the classroom into a "totalitarian niche." His prime example of academic totalitarianism? When professors say that evolution is a fact.

In its April Fools' Day issue, Scientific American published a spoof editorial in which it apologized for endorsing the theory of evolution just because it's "the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time," saying that "as editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence." And it conceded that it had succumbed "to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do."

The editorial was titled "O.K., We Give Up." But it could just as well have been called "Why So Few Scientists Are Republicans These Days." Thirty years ago, attacks on science came mostly from the left; these days, they come overwhelmingly from the right, and have the backing of leading Republicans.

Scientific American may think that evolution is supported by mountains of evidence, but President Bush declares that "the jury is still out." Senator James Inhofe dismisses the vast body of research supporting the scientific consensus on climate change as a "gigantic hoax." And conservative pundits like George Will write approvingly about Michael Crichton's anti-environmentalist fantasies.

Think of the message this sends: today's Republican Party - increasingly dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation, not research - doesn't respect science, or scholarship in general. It shouldn't be surprising that scholars have returned the favor by losing respect for the Republican Party.

Conservatives should be worried by the alienation of the universities; they should at least wonder if some of the fault lies not in the professors, but in themselves. Instead, they're seeking a Lysenkoist solution that would have politics determine courses' content.

And it wouldn't just be a matter of demanding that historians play down the role of slavery in early America, or that economists give the macroeconomic theories of Friedrich Hayek as much respect as those of John Maynard Keynes. Soon, biology professors who don't give creationism equal time with evolution and geology professors who dismiss the view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old might face lawsuits.

If it got that far, universities would probably find ways to cope - by, say, requiring that all entering students sign waivers. But political pressure will nonetheless have a chilling effect on scholarship. And that, of course, is its purpose.

As I said a while back...
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: Political
I think it was around 2 weeks before the election I wrote that even if John Kerry got the most votes I wasn't counting on him actually becoming president. My reasoning was that the neocons would cheat and do everything possible to make sure that Bush won. Turns out I was right. Kerry did get the most votes and Bush is still president. It DID happen here. Right in my own backyard.

Thanks for nothing Ken Blackwell and Diebold. I don't want to wish misfortune on either of them but it won't break my heart if they get hit by a train...


This article is from the Akron Beacon-Journal website Ohio.com


Analysis points to election `corruption'

Group says chance of exit polls being so wrong in '04 vote is one-in-959,000

By Stephen Dyer
Beacon Journal staff writer

There's a one-in-959,000 chance that exit polls could have been so wrong in predicting the outcome of the 2004 presidential election, according to a statistical analysis released Thursday.

Exit polls in the November election showed Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., winning by 3 percent, but President George W. Bush won the vote count by 2.5 percent.

The explanation for the discrepancy that was offered by the exit polling firm -- that Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polling -- is an ``implausible theory,'' according to the report issued Thursday by US Count Votes, a group that claims it's made up of about two dozen statisticians.

Twelve -- including a Case Western Reserve University mathematics instructor -- signed the report.

Instead, the data support the idea that ``corruption of the vote count occurred more freely in districts that were overwhelmingly Bush strongholds.''

The report dismisses chance and inaccurate exit polling as the reasons for their discrepancy with the results.

They found that the one hypothesis that can't be ruled out is inaccurate election results.

``The hypothesis that the voters' intent was not accurately recorded or counted... needs further investigation,'' it said.

The conclusion drew a yawn from Ohio election officials, who repeated that the discrepancy issue was settled when the polling firms Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International disavowed its polls because Kerry voters were more likely to answer exit polls -- the theory Thursday's report deemed ``implausible.''

Ohio has been at the center of a voter disenfranchisement debate since the election.

``What are you going to do except laugh at it?'' said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who's responsible for administering Ohio's elections and is a Republican candidate for governor. ``We're not particularly interested in (the report's findings). We wish them luck, but hope they find something more interesting to do.''

The statistical analysis, though, shows that the discrepancy between polls and results was especially high in precincts that voted for Bush -- as high as a 10 percent difference.

The report says if the official explanation -- that Bush voters were more shy about filling out exit polls in precincts with more Kerry voters -- is true, then the precincts with large Bush votes should be more accurate, not less accurate as the data indicate.

The report also called into question new voting machine technologies.

``All voting equipment technologies except paper ballots were associated with large unexplained exit poll discrepancies all favoring the same party, (which) certainly warrants further inquiry,'' the report concludes.

However, LoParo remained unimpressed.

``These (Bush) voters have been much maligned by outside political forces who didn't like the way they voted,'' he said. ``The weather's turning nice. There are more interesting things to do than beat a dead horse.'

from Ohio.com

Fucking fascists. God Save The U.S.A.

From Ohio Congressman Sherrod Brown
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Political
During the 2004 Presidential campaign, Congressman Brown sent messages to interested Democratic supporters, volunteers, and people committed to changing our country. Continuing that fight for social and economic justice, Congressman Brown sends this message to you. If this is your first message, we welcome you. If you have been with us all along, thank you for staying the course and working to make our country better.

The following is Sherrod's report.


Grover Norquist - college friend of Karl Rove, confidante of Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney, guru of the Republican revolution - said recently: "We are trying to change the tones in the state capitols - and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship."

After watching the events of the last two weeks surrounding the tragedy of the Schiavo family, the GOP strategy of
distract-and-divide is becoming more and more apparent. It may be hypocritical for the party of states' rights to involve Congress, the President, and the federal courts in a decision already decided by the state of Florida. It may be a bit disingenuous for the "party of family values" to intervene in the most personal of family decisions. It may seem ironic, even sanctimonious, for a party which hates big government to bring Congress and the President back to Washington on a Sunday night - at a cost in excess of $1 million - to advocate for more Medicaid and Medicare spending for one person while cutting Medicaid by $60 billion for our nation's most vulnerable citizens.

But so be it. It distracts attention from Republican Majority
Leader Tom DeLay's career-ending ethics problems, and from
Republican failures to reign in the exploding budget deficit.

Even better, it rallies the Republican far-right base for the
approaching confirmation fights for President Bush's most
conservative judicial appointments. And if that's not enough, the Schiavo family tragedy presented an opportunity for Florida
Governor Jeb Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to audition for the 2008 Republican Presidential primary: who could be more appealing to the far right -the governor of a key swing state who tried to push the Florida legislature and judiciary to "save Terri's life"? Or the
physician-senator who put his medical ethics and training aside to diagnose a patient from a three-year-old, edited set of videotapes?

The more responsible media mentioned polls showing 70-80 percent of Americans disapproving of the President Bush and Congress' involvement in this family's tragedy. Many media outlets, however, have missed the Republican distract-and-divide strategy, instead dutifully reporting on each attempt as if it's major public policy. So the Bush-Rove-Norquist strategy continues to rally the far-right base in state capitals and in Washington.

Look at a few examples in Columbus and in Washington.

In 1983, when facing a real crisis in Social Security, a Republican president and a Democratic Congress worked out a solution, making America's pension system and disability and survivors insurance program solid for decades to come. Today, Republicans have used Social Security to divide Americans, to drive a wedge between generations, encouraging young people to question senior citizens' "greed."

At every opportunity, Republican lawmakers in Washington play off rich against poor - from tax cuts to welfare reform, from corporate welfare to Social Security benefit cuts. When Democrats point out that GOP tax cuts for the most privileged are directly tied to GOP cuts in programs for the most vulnerable, they repeatedly accuse us of class
warfare.

While Ohio's schools decline and tuition at our state universities
surge upwards far faster than the national average, the governor and the legislature repeatedly deny court orders to improve our public schools and instead pass legislation allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons.

While Ohio has lost one-fifth of our manufacturing jobs in the last four years and lead the nation in job loss, the governor and
legislature hold hearings on restricting academic freedom at state universities and fiddle away their time on gay marriage legislation.

The Schiavo family tragedy, however, has led to two good things. First, millions of Americans are talking about end-of-life issues with the people they love, and many of them are adopting living wills. And second, more and more Americans - including Bush voters - are figuring out what this crowd in DC is all about.

Since I began "Dispatches from the Trenches" nine months ago, I have always asked you to do something. Continue to do what so many of you have done in the last year: call radio talk shows; write letters to the editor to daily and weekly papers; do book studies with friends; organize, organize, organize.

We need you more than ever.

Sherrod

Backward Christian Soldiers
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Political
Here is a great article on the Terri Schiavo case. It's from The Nation. I really thought the right wing whack-jobs were going to blow a vein over Terri Schiavo. I don't recall ever seeing them so rabid and out of control. They smell blood in the water folks. We better start speaking up or before we know it we'll be living in the United States of Fanatical Christianity. Don't get me wrong, I believe in God, but The God these nuts are talking about does not add up to the one I have seen in action. These are some dangerous times if you happen to believe in the values our country was founded on. These people are certifiably nuts and they'll stop at nothing (including murder) to prove their God is a just and loving God.

It cracks me up that all these pro-lifers are willing to kill to get their way. Fucking hypocrites...

Read on for a great take on the whole thing. Thanks to The Nation website.

Backward Christian Soldiers
by Katha Pollitt


Maybe, just maybe, the religious right and its Republican friends have finally gone too far with the Terri Schiavo case. Americans may tell pollsters the earth was created in six days flat and dinosaurs shared the planet with Adam and Eve, but I don't believe they want Tom DeLay to be their personal physician. I don't think they want fanatics moaning and praying outside the hospital while they're making hard decisions. I don't think they want people getting arrested trying to "feed" their comatose relatives, or issuing death threats against judges and spouses in the name of "life." I don't think John Q. Public wants Jeb Bush to adopt his wife or Newt Gingrich to call her by her first name or Senator Frist to diagnose her by video, or Jesse Jackson to pop in at the last minute for a prayer and a photo-op.

The Terri Schiavo freak show is so deeply crazy, so unhinged, such a brew of religiosity and hypocrisy and tabloid sensationalism, just maybe it is clueing people in to where the right's moral triumphalism is leading us. Before Congress jumped into the act, Republicans may have seen a great opportunity to paint the Democrats as the "party of death." No thanks to the Dems, who mostly cowered, the stratagem backfired: The weekend after Schiavo's feeding tube was withdrawn, 75 percent of Americans told CBS pollsters they wanted government to stay out of end-of-life issues, and 82 percent thought Congress and the President should have kept away. Jesse Jackson seems not to have gotten the memo--he's calling for the Florida legislature to overturn thirty years of carefully crafted medical ethics and pass a previously rejected bill requiring patients in a persistent vegetative state to remain on life support forever, unless they've left a written directive to the contrary. If that's the "religious left," forget it.

It's about time Americans woke up. The Schiavo case only looks unprecedented: For decades, women seeking to terminate pregnancies have faced gantlets of screamers, invasions of privacy, violence in the name of "saving babies," charges of murder and of evil motives, politically motivated legal obstacles, spurious medical "expertise" (abortion causes breast cancer; Terri Schiavo just needs therapy). There is the same free-floating vitriol: Abortion is the "Silent Holocaust," while, according to Peggy Noonan, those who support Ms.
Schiavo's right to die are on "a low road that twists past Columbine and leads toward Auschwitz" (that would be the same road that Tom DeLay and his family went down when they withheld life support from his critically injured father--the same road, in fact, that Robert Schindler, Terri's father, took when he turned off his mother's life support).

Randall Terry, the Operation Rescue showman who wants to make America a "Christian nation" and to "execute" doctors who perform abortions, is the Schindlers' chief strategist; other
Operation Rescuers in the hospice parking lot include the Rev. Pat Mahoney, who freely gives out Michael Schiavo's home address; Cheryl Sullenger, who served two years for conspiring to bomb an abortion clinic in 1987; and Scott Heldreth, a convicted sex offender who told an AP reporter that driving long hours to the hospice and getting arrested was all his 10-year-old son's idea.

In this transposition of the abortion drama, Terri Schiavo is the defenseless fetus; her husband, Michael, is the callous "convenience" aborter; and the Schindlers are the would-be adoptive couple doomed to childlessness by tyrannical judges. But there's a difference. Abortion happens to women--bad girls, sluts. Because of the shame and secrecy around abortion, you can believe, probably wrongly, that you don't know anyone who's had one and, thanks to your virtuous life, that you would never need one yourself. But anyone can fall into a permanent coma, and death comes to us all. Millions of people have had to make end-of-life decisions for loved ones or for themselves;
they've had to think about what a life is--a pulse? a reflex? a thought?--and what a person is, and what that person would have wanted. And because of this collective experience, most Americans know that to "err on the side of life," as the enthusiastic death-penalty fan and Medicaid-cutter George
W. Bush advises, is just a slogan.

Your wife with Alzheimer's who's
stopped eating and drinking is alive. Do you intubate or not? Your father in a stroke-induced coma is alive. Do you treat his pneumonia or see it as "the old man's friend"? When do you go for aggressive treatment, when do you let the person go, when do you decide the person has already gone and only their body is there in the bed? Over three decades, Americans won the right to make these painful, intimate decisions for themselves. That right--not disability rights or the possibility of medical miracles--is what is at stake in the Schiavo case. Most people, especially young people like Terri Schiavo, are never going to write living wills: Should no weight at all be given their spoken wishes or the conviction of their loved ones that, like Tom DeLay's father, they "would never have wanted to live like this"?

For many ordinary Americans, the stem cell debate was the first time the religious right strove to deprive them of something valuable. It's one thing to make women pay for sex with childbirth, or to deprive your children of modern scientific education, or to ostracize homosexuals, but it's going too far to value a frozen embryo more than Cousin Jim with Parkinson's. Now, with the Schiavo case, Americans have another opportunity to ask themselves if they really
want to live in Randall Terry's world, where the next Michael and Terri Schiavo could be anyone of us.

Fascism On The March. The Truth Comes Out.
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Political
FASCISM: often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

I don't truly believe a lot of the conspiracy theories that are being bandied about by the more radical element of my liberal brethren. Theories like The Bush regime closely resembles The Nazi Party of Germany in the 30's. Or the "secret societies" etc. that Bush and his cronies belong to that are slowly implementing their plan for ruling the world. I find the theories fun and interesting but I also find it hard to fathom that so many republicans could be smart enough to pull it off. That said, if I were a nut job extremist right-wing whacko intent on taking over a nation, I wouldn't do a thing differently from what Bush has done in 5 years in office... Maybe it can happen here.

This is from DailyKos.com and it's smoking gun proof that Bush and the Republican Party have no interest in the Constitution or The America we all grew up loving.

Again Thanks to DailyKos.com I think this is a letter from 3 readers of the site who were also involved in the described incident...read on.


This is incredible.

Very rarely does the everyday public get a glimpse of what happens behind the scenes in a normally-secret Bush Administration.

But Monday, March 28, the Secret Service called three everyday people into their offices to discuss why we were kicked out of a presidential event in Denver last week where Bush promoted his plan to privatize Social Security. What they revealed to us and our lawyer was fascinating.

There we were - three people who had personally picked up tickets from Republican Congressman Bob Beauprez's office and went to a presidential event. But as we entered, we were told that we had been "ID'ed" and were warned that any disruption would get us arrested.

After being seated in the audience we were forcibly removed before the President arrived, even though we had not been disruptive. We were shocked when told that this presidential event was a "private event" and were commanded to leave.

More astonishingly, when the Secret Service was contacted the next day they agreed to meet with us this Monday, March 28 to discuss the circumstances surrounding our removal. We had two big questions going into this meeting:

How is the Bush Administration "ID'ing" citizens before presidential events?

Why was an official taxpayer-funded event called a "private event" - leading to citizens being kicked out?

Most shocking of all, we got answers to both questions.

The Secret Service revealed that we were "ID'ed" when local Republican staffers saw a bumper sticker on the car we drove which said "No More Blood For Oil." Evidently, the free speech expressed on one bumper sticker is cause enough to eject three citizens from a presidential event. (Similarly, someone was ejected from Bush's Social Security privatization event in Arizona the same day simply for wearing a Democratic t-shirt.)

The Secret Service also revealed that ticket distribution and staffing of the Social Security event was run by the local Republican Party. They wanted us to be clear that it was a Republican staffer - not the Secret Service - who kicked us out of the presidential event. But this revealed something else that should be startling to all Americans.

After allowing taxpayers to finance his privatization events (let's call them what they really are after all,) and after using the White House communications apparatus to set them up, Bush is privatizing the ticket distribution and security staffing at his events to the Republican Party. The losers are not just taxpayers, but anyone who values the First Amendment. Under the banner of a "private event" the Republican Party is excluding citizens from seeing their president because of the lone sin of expressing the wrong idea on a bumper sticker or t-shirt. The question for Americans is - will we allow our freedom to be privatized?

Karen Bauer, Leslie Weise. Alexander Young
Denver residents


I was emailed this account by the people involved, so it's straight from the horse's mouth.

The AP did a story on this as well.

"They hadn't done anything wrong. They weren't dressed inappropriately, they didn't say anything inappropriate," Recht said. "They were kicked out of this venue and not allowed to hear what the president had to say based solely on this political bumper sticker.

"The very essence of the First Amendment is that you can't be punished for the speech you make, the statements you make," Recht said.

So to emphasize -- the White House uses taxpayer dollars to finance these propaganda events. THEN, in order to keep out anyone who might be critical, they "outsource" ticketing and security. That way they can label the events "private" and kick out anyone they want in violation of the First Amendment.

Who in Congress will step up and call for an investigation?