Things you need to believe in order to be a Republican

I found this on another site but couldn’t link it. So instead I copied it and will now paste it for your perusal:

1. Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.

2. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush’s daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him, and a bad guy when Bush needed a “we can’t find Bin Laden” diversion.

3. Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

4. The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.

5. A woman can’t be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.

6. The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches, while slashing veterans’ benefits and combat pay.

7. If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won’t have sex.

8. A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

9. Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy, but providing health care to all Americans is socialism. HMOs and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at heart.

10. Global warming and tobacco’s link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

11. A president lying about an extramarital affair is a impeachable offense, but a president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

12. Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

13. The public has a right to know about Hillary’s cattle trades, but George Bush’s driving record is none of our business.

14. Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you’re a conservative radio host. Then it’s an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

15. Supporting “Executive Privilege” for every Republican ever born, who will be born or who might be born (in perpetuity.)

16. What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the ’80s is irrelevant.

17. Support for hunters who shoot their friends and blame them for wearing orange vests similar to those worn by the quail.

Oh my – the list is great. So if you agree with more than five of the things in this list, get the hell off my blog. Republicans aren’t welcome here.

Now this is some amusing blogging

Apparently somebody lost their T-Mobile Sidekick in a NYC cab. Whoever found it decided not to do the human thing, instead they decided to be a criminal and use the Sidekick, not knowing that all the pictures upload to T-Mobile’s servers.

The perps are clearly identifiable so I do hope NY’s finest can figure this out. I mean, Evan pretty much did their casework for them. Hell, he should ask to be placed on the NYPD payroll as a consultant. Pays quite well from what I hear.

And just to verify – at most any police department you don’t get a case number until it’s entered into their system. You can follow the whole sordid saga at Evan’s blog page.

The Coming Economic Meltdown

I’ve been seeing signs of this for quite some time. The problem is, with inflation out of control (And it IS out of control because they conveniently leave out food, fuel, and housing in inflation calculations) prices have been going up on everything. Of course there’s some outright gouging going on, that goes without saying.

But this article on CounterPunch scares the crap out of me. What they’re predicting isn’t a recession, it’s a depression. We could be entering a period of hyperinflation, with gas prices soaring to $6 or more per gallon, and food prices doubling. Just imagine what this will do to the rabble, or what used to be called the middle class. Just imagine how mad they’ll be. You might actually see them get out of their comfy chairs and take to the streets.

Robert J. Elisberg: I know a Secret

I often wonder why Bush keeps beating the conservative drum when he really doesn’t have to. Robert J. Elisberg wonders the same exact thing.

He’s got a base of roughly 25-40% who no matter what he does will always support him. Business leaders will support him because he’s profit over rights, the religious nuts will support him because they have no idea how to think for themselves and their mega-church pastors make out like bandits.

Does Bush think he’s doing any favors for future Republicans? Because I honestly can’t see them surviving the bush administration. It’s an administration of lunacy to be sure. Everyone can see through their lies and half truths.

My Find!

Between yesterday and today we were cleaning out the office in preparation to paint and make it a proper office. Going through all my things I found some things that gave me pause, particularly among the pictures:

In one batch of pictures I realized that every person in those pictures was dead, taken by this horrible plague called AIDS. Ron, Roger and Maureen. In those pictures they’re full of life but I know they’re gone and it makes me a little bit sad.

Then I found pictures of my paternal great grandmother. One was taken when she was probably around 18 or so, she’s standing next to her father. Another picture her is with her husband, my great grandfather. Vincenzina and Manuel had to be in their late 40’s or mid 50’s in that picture. Then I found one of my them from 1975, the year they both died. There’s one in there where all the great-grandkids are in between them that had to be taken in 1973 or so. So I got to meet all but one of my great grandparents. That’s the benefit of being in a family that starts out young.

But then I found the prize. My great grandmothers naturalization papers. She was naturalized in 1937, all 5′ and 212 pounds of her being describe as white with a dark complexion. That probably explains why I get very olive colored when I get a tiny bit of sun. My great grandmother was 37 years old when she was naturalized. Interestingly she looked the same at 55 and 75. So that’s where my family gets it’s youthful looks from.

So it was an interesting trip among the dead this weekend.

If you value your rights as a consumer

I suggest you read Death by DMCA that is published on the IEEE Spectrum website.

Might I also suggest you lookup your congressmen and senators and write them regarding the several bills sponsored by and co-sponsored by some of our ‘Democrat’ friends. Hillary Clinton is no Democrat. She’s a panderer. Tell her so.

What you might want to tell them is the proposed bills are a bad idea. Broadcast flags, banning devices that haven’t even been invented yet, etc. Reminds them of the Betamax decision, and ask them to stop this all out attack on our rights by corporations.

Maureen Dowd: Teaching Remedial Decency

Since the NYT decided to convert to an all pay system for their editorial content someone was kind enough to post this on another site so I’ve copied it here for your perusal.

Now – we’ve all known for some time that the Department of State pretty much told the Bush administration that a minimum of 350,000 soldiers was necessary to invade Iraq and re-build afterwards. The hawks decided they could do it with less than a third that force that’s undereuquipped and more importantly has no exit strategy.

Does this all sound familiar to you? Do you remember the Vietnam war? If so, you can see that Iraq has become a quagmire. For the freepers that hit my blog every now and then I’ll define it:

Main Entry: quag·mire Pronunciation: 'kwag-"mIr, 'kwäg- Function: noun 1 : soft miry land that shakes or yields under the foot 2 : a difficult, precarious, or entrapping position : PREDICAMENT

The second definition is the applicable, while the first has its value too.

Before the war, America railed against the Iraqi leader for slaughtering innocent Iraqis. Now the Iraqi leader is railing against America for slaughtering innocent Iraqis.

Iraq is blustering about sending away American troops to make life better for Iraqis, after American troops were sent in to make life better for Iraqis.

With fury swirling over the Haditha massacre and the shooting on Wednesday of two women, one of whom might have been pregnant and on the way to a hospital, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki laced into the American military, accusing it of regular attacks on civilians that were “completely unacceptable” and pledging his own inquiry on Haditha.

“They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion,” he said, adding that some in the military “do not respect the Iraqi people,” and that assaults on unarmed civilians will help determine how long American troops are welcome in Iraq.

Bold talk from a tenuous government dependent on U.S. forces to prop it up during a sectarian bloodfest.

It’s a bitter irony. And not even a terribly illuminating irony, since Saddam truly had a regime of butchery and the American military is not in the business of atrocity, even if an undeniable atrocity was committed and even if the war has become something of an atrocity.

“It’s one of those things where we have become the enemy,” John Murtha said ruefully on CNN.

American troops are under spectacular emotional pressure. They go out every day, not knowing Arabic, not understanding the culture, not knowing who the insurgents are, not knowing when they can go home or which of their buddies will be blown up before their eyes by an unseen enemy.

The troops were not trained for a counterinsurgency, because Bush hawks ignored the intelligence reports that predicted an insurgency and civil war. These kids were turned into sitting ducks because the neocon con to sell the war needed a gauzy prediction of Iraqi gratitude and a quick exit.

It is admirable that the Marine commanders want to morally sensitize the troops while they are in such a hostile environment, but it also seems a bit absurd, sending them to summer school in “core values.”

There’s no way to teach someone not to shoot an unarmed woman or child. If somebody doesn’t already know why they shouldn’t murder a baby, it’s not clear that a refresher course will help.

The problem with brushing up on core values is that if you don’t know them by a certain point you can’t learn them. You can’t teach remedial decency, any more than you can teach remedial ethics to White House officials who vindictively leak information about critics of the war after vowing not to leak.

As Norman Schwarzkopf said, in a quote that is part of the military’s slide show on core warrior values: “The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.”

From Reverend Dimmesdale to Bill Bennett to President Bush, people who righteously preach values and aspire to be moral exemplars often get bitten in the end.

The world is now looking askance at American values, even though W. ran on a platform of restoring values to the Oval Office and was propelled to victory by “values voters.”

Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld engineered the invasion of Iraq in part to revive what they saw as lost American values. They wanted to stiffen the squishiness about using force left over from Vietnam and the moral ambivalence left over from the do-what-feels-good 60’s.

In their worry about a spineless America, they made America all spine — overly vertebrate. They started thinking with their spine.

They wanted everyone to be afraid of us, and now nobody’s afraid. Certainly not the nutty president of Iran, whom the administration is forced to kowtow to, now that the American military is not a fearsome force in potentia, but a depleted, demoralized and disparaged force trapped in Iraq trying to police a civil war.

The invasion that was supposed to help terrorism has made it worse. The invasion that was supposed to make America more feared and beloved has made us more hated. The invasion that was supposed to banish post-Vietnam syndrome has revived it.

The virtuecrats of the right thought they would demonstrate American virtue to the world as they imposed American democracy. But now, with murder charges expected against some marines, and a cover-up investigation under way, the values president is running a war that requires a refresher course on values. A bitter irony.

Pansmermia – life probably did get seeded on Earth

How interesting. First I read this week that the definition of humans has now been re-defined to include the bacteria in our gut as part of a Human, a symbiosis if you will.

Now threre is increasing evidence that life does exist outside our little sphere. It’s bizarre life to be sure, but life none the less.

So perhaps we are aliens ourselves. Wouldn’t that be something. I’m so happy that science continutes along disproving religion on a regular basis. But what concerns me even more is the lack of science education here in the United States. Science is almost a dirty word, what with the attacks on amateur chemistry, model rocketry, etc. under the guise of homeland security.

As has been proven – there has been one incidence in which common farm chemicals were used to destroy a federal building in Oklahoma, and an incident where alleged terrorists used an aircraft. So tell me, why didn’t we ban air flight? Oh I know, it’s ridiculous but honestly, what could you do with a D type rocket engine, or some common chemicals which if combined MIGHT make a potent bomb? Most chemistry experiments are with small amounts. Sure some dopes manufacture their own TNT for kicks, and others actually create their own little breeder reactors in the trunk of their car. But those are few and far between.

I’ll stop now becuase this could develop into a full blown rant.

Banned BBC Video on the 2000 Elections

It’s an independent documentary video shot in Florida after the 2000 elections. What I love about this is that people with cheap cameras are now ambushing administration and political figures. This is something Friedman talks about as one of the flatteners in his “The World is Flat”. I also love that the director of the elections division gets very uncomfortable and defensive when confronted about the DBT contract.

Of course there was corruption, collusion, fraud, and outright shenanigans employed in both Florida and Ohio, two states with a high number of electoral votes. How else could George W. Bush have captured the Presidency of the United States. It continues to this day, as evidenced by my posting of the link to the RFK Jr. article

Seriously – Bush is a guy who looted two companies and a baseball team and then ran them into the ground, who partied like an animal, defaulted on his obligation to serve in the National Guard, and who generally follows Alfred E. Neuman’s “What, me worry?” philosophy on life. Matter of fact, Neuman looks a LOT like Dubya.

So how the hell did he get elected?

Granted, Clinton was an ultra-liberal pot smoking woman chaser. But to me those are much less offensive than taking the trust of millions and smashing it to little bits. Sure, Dubya started small, but look where he is now. He was probably the kind of kid that got his jollies over torturing innocent animals.

With any luck he won’t be there much longer, and I think he knows that. So we need to be especially vigilant with regard to the 2006 congressional elections. Dig in now folks, it’s going to be a bumpy ride but with any luck we Democrats will emerge victorious.

Was the 2004 Election Stolen – in Rolling Stone now

Finally! I’ve been waiting for this after reading about it in Brad’s Blog. The article was written by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Of course the 2004 election was stolen, so too was the 2000 election. In any case, just click the article title to be taken to the web site.

Since I’ve just read the first few pages (It’s a 10 page article) I have one question to ask. What do we do to a president that was elected through fraudulent means? The Constitution doesn’t cover that scenario. So I’ll entertain suggestions.

Some of mine: Tarring and feathering definitely has some appeal. Send the bastard back to Crawford in shame. Or how about being run out of town on a rail. Would either of these be illegal? Granted – we’d have to seize power to do so but wouldn’t that be fun!

But on the serious side, the Constitution and its amendments seems to be silent on the possibility of outright fraud when it comes to elections.

With that in mind I’d like to propose a constitutional amendment:

If any official or person be found guilty of election fraud including undue influence or rigging of systems, procedures or other means, shall upon conviction by a circuit court, be put to death by hanging.