... What is the fucking deal with these sexually repressed sick fucks [That would be conservatives. - F] ? Is it that they couln't get laid until they were in their thirties by an aging old semi toothless hooker and now they want to make up for lost time? ...
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the nation would be safe under a Barack Obama presidency and that she is ruling out a shot at the vice presidency under either Obama or Republican John McCain.
Someone's got to be deep down there in the cave, making the decisions on the dark side that keep America one step ahead of China and Russia. The future is built upon our giant corporations. Congress doesn't matter much anymore. It's a quaint artifact, just a bunch of posturing popinjays. All that matters is that Exxon/Mobil could buy half of the nations in the world with a year's worth of company profits. Now, that's power. And my pals don't have to go to 435 representatives and 100 senators for permission to pull in that kind of dough and make a lot of people very wealthy -- and it's the wealthy who pull the rest of America along with them. You're darn tootin' about that. Only the big multi-nationals can keep us afloat, as long as we give them the military support that they need to expand their markets and extend their control over fossil fuels. And Americans just aren't equipped to understand all of this. We do it for them -- the forgeries, the manufactured provocations, the invasions, the torturing, the killing -- because you can't be a great nation and be wimpy when it comes to conquest.
In these times, when the number of women in Congress has leveled off, it is great to see Diane Benson waging a spirited fight for Congress in traditionally Republican Alaska.
In 2006, Benson ran an impressive race against Republican Representative Don Young for Alaska's single at-large seat. She spent approximately 10% as much as her opponent but still won over 40% of the vote – only the third time in 33 years a Democratic challenger had crossed that threshold in vying for the seat.
I asked Benson how she responds to the fact that the Washington Democratic establishment hasn't supported her – or, at the very least – stayed out of the primary given her success in 2006.
"I think people are always scared of somebody who challenges their values," she told me. "I believe I have challenged the values of the party. I'm asking them to really step up to what they claim to be. And sometimes that's tough for people…. Not just in terms of the issues, which is one thing. There's a certain safety net in a good ole boy network. Insiders support insiders too often. And trying to break-up the game – it's like standing in front of a bunch of guys [who are watching] Monday Night Football [on] the TV set. Good luck."
But if there's one thing Benson has in abundance it's toughness. In her attempt to become the first Native American woman in Congress – as well as the first Alaskan Native man or woman – she calls on that toughness every day.
Benson's strength and determination stems at least in part from her background. She "grew up in logging camps, boarding schools, foster homes and even on boat houses," according to Indian Country Today. At times she was homeless. She worked her way through college as a Teamster truck driver and was one of the first women tractor-trailer drivers on the Alaska Pipeline – she often was the only woman on the jobsite. Benson said that was a tough job to get.
"I could prove that I could do the job and the union stood up for me," she said. "And they stood up for me time and time again, and I will never forget that."
Did you help put America's worst prez into power? Time to make amends
Sure, you could start with an open-palmed apology, a profoundly contrite on-your-knees sort of thing, maybe an open letter in your local paper or a heartfelt speech at your next dinner party whereby you stumble though some sort of "I don't know what the hell I was thinking" or "I must've been blind" or "Wow, that mescaline sure was potent" type of defense for your unfortunate and reprehensible choices.
But the fact is, that's not really gonna cut it.
So then, what can you do, all you increasingly humiliated, disillusioned, deeply mistaken Bush voters? How can you, having hopefully realized by now the violent error of your ways, take steps both small and large to try and make amends for shoving Dubya down the throat of the world, for your tiny but oh so poisonous contribution to the worst and most demeaning eight years in modern American politics?
While you're at it, mention to your buds that the steaks they're eating are actually locally raised and grass-fed, not because you give a good goddamn about humane animal treatment or toxic industrial feedlots (though you really should), but because the meat tastes better and costs less and you wanna save some dough to, you know, buy more guns and porn. Hey, whatever works.
But don't stop there. Might as well tell your homies to throw their food scraps in your new compost bin, too, not because you care about garbage, but because you learned how to cultivate some great topsoil in which to grow your heirloom tomatoes for your famous spaghetti sauce for NASCAR night. Look at you! Actually caring about the health and the environment, but pretending not to! Hey, it's a start.
You get the idea? Really, compared with the disgusting levels of damage wrought by your support of the dark armies of Bush, these suggestions are nothing. You actually owe quite a bit more. OK, a lot more. Incalculable, really.
But for now, let's be reasonable. After all, the sooner you realize that the world is, in fact, not America's bitch, that it's actually a living, humming organism, interconnected and interdependent in ways and on levels no organized religion or fear-based neocon political agenda can possibly comprehend, much less bomb into submission, well, the sooner we can get our collective s— together and move the human experiment forward once again.
And after what you've put us all through, it's the very least you could do.
ST. PAUL, Minn.—Advocacy groups that fight prostitution in the Twin Cities are gearing up for what they believe will be a surge in activity during the Republican National Convention—even though police say they aren't expecting it to be a problem.
Vednita Carter, executive director of Breaking Free, a St. Paul organization that helps women escape from prostitution, told the Star Tribune that talk among prostitutes is that there will be a lot of money to be made.
Randi Rhodes and Air America Win Big Court Victory Against Alleged "Torture" Contractor
CACI International had sued Rhodes (now with NovaM radio) and Air America for remarks she made about the alleged involvement of CACI "interrogators" in abuses at Abu Ghraib.
In what is considered a "conservative" federal appeals court, a three judge panel ruled that Rhodes was well within her First Amendment rights in making her comments about CACI:
"Rhodes's criticism of CACI's role and conduct was unbridled, caustic, and indignant," Judge M. Blane Michael wrote. But the right to speak freely is an "essential privilege" that "minimizes the danger of self-censorship on the part of those who would criticize, thus allowing robust debate about the actions of public officials and public figures (including military contractors such as CACI) who are conducting the country's business."
A district course judge had earlier dismissed CACI's lawsuit as groundless and without merit. CACI appealed and its claim resoundingly rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond (4th Circuit).
The ciruit court decision in favor of Rhodes and Air America was made on August 5 and was unanimous.
... Interesting; war crimes have been defined down and up at the same time. Torture isn't a war crime, but driving is ...
As the kerfuffle of the past week indicates, it's apparently even problematic for Obama to attempt to describe the Republican Party's obvious game plan of defining him as different, exotic and risky.
Obama could note, however, that the tactic doesn't seem to be working. A new poll by The Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University shows him leading McCain by 10 points, 47 to 37 percent, among white low-income workers. These people have to be made to fear or distrust Obama, and in a hurry, or McCain loses.
For eight years we've suffered from the Bush administration's two exclusive and alternating modes of operation: When it wasn't engaging in prosecutable criminality, it was busy with impeachable incompetence.
...
A grueling survey of vast tracts of forest and swamp in the northern Congo Republic has revealed the presence of more than 125,000 western lowland gorillas, a rare example of abundance in a world of rapidly vanishing primate populations.
As recently as last year, this subspecies of the world’s largest primate was listed as critically endangered by international wildlife organizations because known populations — estimated at less than 100,000 in the 1980s — had been devastated by hunting and outbreaks of Ebola virus. The three other subspecies are either critically endangered or endangered.
...
Holland America Line offers three distinct Africa itineraries including a 20,500 nautical mile circumnavigation that visits 28 unique ports of call in 18 countries for the ultimate Africa Voyage. Experience Africa's animal kingdom on a 3-day safari in Kenya; explore the markets of Casablanca, shop for diamonds in Namibia, relax on the beaches of Durban and journey through the Suez Canal to Egypt and discover the pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx, and the extraordinary antiquities in Cairo's museums. Enjoy "at sea" days being completely spoiled by our crew and indulging in relaxing or invigorating onboard activities. All this aboard our most intimate ship, the 793-guest ms Prinsendam*.
...
As we got back into the car, the tears were streaming down my face. Mr. Pop asked if I was okay. I told him I was and that was the reason for the tears. If, when I was a little girl anyone had told me that some day I would be bringing donations to a pantry like this rather than more aptly shopping at the pantry, I would never have believed them.
...
Forgetting the evils of communism
An entire generation that remembers the threats posed by the Soviet empire is fading.
FOXSports.com has learned that the Packers will employ former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer for one month as a consultant.
Why? I have no frickin' idea. I thought Ari Fleischer was busy this Summer heading groups slandering Obama -- but I guess since the McCain campaign decided to cut out the middle-man on such things and do it themselves he has time on his hands.
This just in, the Chicago Bears, the Minnesota Vikings and the Detroit Lions are the new axis-of-evil.
Sadly, Matt Millen of the Lions just hired Scott McClellan.
So let us begin on the solid ground of these simple facts: this spectacular episode of misrule has coincided with both the political triumph of conservatism and with the rise of the Washington area to the richest rank of American metropolises. In the period I am describing, gentlemen of the right rolled through the capital like lords of creation. Every spigot was open, and every indulgence slopped out for their gleeful wallowing. All the clichés roared at full, unembarrassed volume: the wines gurgled, the T-bones roasted, the golf courses beckoned, the Learjets zoomed, the contractors' glass buildings sprouted from the earth, and the lobbyists' mansions grew like brick-colonial mushrooms on the hills of northern Virginia.
Yes, today's conservatives have disgraced themselves, but they have not strayed from the teaching of their forefathers or the great ideas of their movement. When conservatives appoint the opponents of government agencies to head those government agencies; when they auction their official services to the purveyor of the most lavish "golf weekend"; when they mulct millions from groups with business before Congress; when they dynamite the Treasury and sabotage the regulatory process and force government shutdowns -- in short, when they treat government with contempt -- they are running true to form. They have not done these awful things because they are bad conservatives; they have done them because they are good conservatives, because these unsavory deeds follow naturally from the core doctrines of the conservative tradition.
But this is only the beginning of the story. As we make our rounds of conservative Washington, we glimpse something much greater than single acts of incompetence or obstruction. We see a vast machinery built for our protection reengineered into a device for our exploitation. We behold the majestic workings of the free market itself, boring ever deeper into the tissues of the state. Ultimately, we gaze upon one of the true marvels of history: democracy buried beneath an avalanche of money.
Here’s the moment of high-larity that the Rude Pundit is awaiting: it’s a week or so after the election in November. Barack Obama has won, handily, and yer TV and newspaper pundits everywhere are declaring how inevitable it all actually was, how McCain never really had a chance, and, in the name of balance, how one or two demographics actually make the race closer than it is. Back at the McCain manse in Arizona, a state he will not carry, Team Maverick is trying to figure out what went wrong, how a man with as much “experience” and how a man who was, didn’t the public know, a war hero because he got tortured, could possibly lose to this uppity upstart mulatto motherfucker.
Once McCain decided to get on his torture-stiffened knees and guzzle that Rove chowder like a tranny whore at a fireman’s bachelor party, he was once again signing enemy propaganda. Hell, his ads may as well call Obama a “black pirate,” as he once called himself. It was a lie then, so why not now?
[...] You can rest assured, though, that the ads are gonna get worse and worse until the hints aren't even subtle: a reference to his "shiny" smile and a couple of bongo beats is all it'd take. Still, ya gotta think, at some point, McCain's gonna have to offer a plan, which will be the doom of his campaign.
Buck up, worried liberals. This was over a long time ago. Of course the polls are gonna tighten like McCain's urethra. That's because we haven't reached the benchmark image of Obama and McCain appearing on stage together with the nation watching, getting to that "Oh, fuck" moment of "Who do you wanna have to look at for the next four years? Denzel or the Cryptkeeper?"
Caveat: Obama could still fuck it up. Badly. More on that later.
...
Price was among at least three other reporters, and the only black reporter, surrounding McCain's campaign bus — Gov. Charlie Crist and his fiancee, Carole Rome, were already aboard — when a member of the Arizona senator's security detail asked the reporter to identify himself. Price had shown his media credentials to enter the area.
...
"I explained I was with the state press, but the Secret Service man said that didn't matter and that I would have to go," Price said.
When another reporter asked why Price was being removed, she too was led out of the area. Other state reporters remained. [my em]
...
...
I misread McCain. On the night of the 2000 South Carolina primary, I was in his hotel suite and watched Cindy weeping over what Rove and his goons did. Her husband was plenty mad, too. Now he's got Rove's protégé, Steve Schmidt, running his campaign. Eight years ago, McCain profusely apologized for playing racial politics in South Carolina by backing efforts to fly the Confederate flag at the state capital. Now he's content to see race crowd out the economy in the battle for precious media oxygen. McCain argues that Obama opened himself up to attack by saying, "They're gonna say he doesn't look like those other presidents on the dollar bills." But if his campaign hadn't leaped on that Obama comment, it would have been another. Accusing the other guy of playing the race card is a not terribly subtle form of, well, playing the race card—and the victim.
...
... In fact, McCain's personality seems like the perfect amalgam of Junior and Cheney --- juvenile, arrogant, bullying and mean ...
... But in the world of that mythical heartland, every manly man is an amateur mechanic and forever tinkers with his roadster and, yes, does things like change oil and check tires and keep them properly inflated ...
Fire breaks out at 'God Hates Fags' church
ALSO SEE: 'God Hates Fags' pastor blames gays, judges for Saturday church fire"No doubt the work of fags or fag sympathizers,"...
Last week two judges encouraged me to look to courts to help us recover from the damage done by an outlaw executive and a spineless corrupt legislature. The first was Bush-appointed federal Judge John Bates who ruled that people must comply with Congressional subpoenas even if they used to work for the president, and this because - you know - the law requires it. The second was Judge William Price in Iowa who was hearing the case of citizens arrested for trying to make a citizens' arrest of Karl Rove. When told what they had been trying to do, the judge said "Well, it's about time!" (my em)
Sort of makes you want to go out and arrest a war criminal or two, doesn't it? Here's how: http://afterdowningstreet.org/citizenarrest
Lets go for it; war crimes trials could be more fun than impeachment!
Besides the usual suspects within the administration, there are the gutless cowards in congress that actually promoted and voted for war or if they were against it voted to continue funding for war and refused to hold anyone accountable as provided for in the Constitution; which includes most of my state congressional delegation of Arizona: starting with John McCain, John Kyle, my congressman Harry Mitchell, J D Hayworth, John Shadegg, Jeff Flake, Rick Renzi, Gabrille Giffords. Not to mention congressmen that know better and make a big deal about the constitution but refuse to call for impeachment because it might adversely affect their political career, thats right I mean Ron Paul!
Mabe we can't put all these scumbags on trial but it is time to start naming names and hold the collaboraters and enablers up to the ridicule they deserve!
Hoped-for Economic Rebound Fueled By Tax Rebates Fails to Materialize
Rebates spent mostly on barrels, suspenders.
Congress Goes on Vacation
Along with lobbyists, escort services.
Sen. Stevens Entitled to Speedy Trial, Presumption of Innocence
Constitution back in vogue for GOP.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.
Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.
Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon." [my ems]
...
[...] Or, as Jay Leno suggested, Democrats could strike back by comparing McCain to Bea Arthur and Zsa Zsa Gabor.
I am truly sorry, but there is nothing at all responsible about believing bullshit and bragging about it.
Here we see the overarching need to have impeached Bush reflected again: from now until January 20th this ugly administration will be pulling out the stops and crashing through whatever remains of their agenda to utterly destroy this country.
Keeping the very unimportant marijuana plant illegal is a higher priority for the GOP than those who do not contemplate this issue can possibly imagine. We spend approximately $0 to $50 billion a year on the "drug war". I am told that $40 billion would fund a SCHIP-like program for more than 2 years.
Thus we can assert with confidence that enforcing pot laws directly prevents children from having access to healthcare. Good show! VERY Republican.
The "drug war" is about 90% marijuana prohibition, 10% about genuinely serious drug issues. Mostly its about enforcing the stupidity of reefer madness: laws against the cannabis plant, and maintenance of the propaganda stream, making sure that accurate information and genuine intelligent discussion are obliterated any time they break out.
That's why the highly-paid PhD liar was sent to crash Barney Frank's press conference: because Frank's bill represents serious, if incremental, progress in reforming these stupid cannabis laws.
Fixing cannabis laws ought to be a core element of Democratic party reform. It's a bad situation that can be fixed easily because it is entirely arbitrary. THere was never a salient reason to make pot illegal. People will cite a thousand reasons, none of them are remotely legitimate. It's all based on lies.
When we get verifiable factual assertions in the MSM, it will be like the collapse of Communism. When the lying finally stops the whole thing will just crash down.
Matthews is far from the first talking head to get this treatment. Long before this primary season, clips of Maddow, an Air America host often invited on cable news shows as a ballsy gremlin of the left, zipped around the Internet. Her specialty was making Tucker Carlson's head explode, or getting under Buchanan's skin until all he could do was gibber at her about socialism. But presidential election cycles provide the hot klieg lights under which character actors mature into media leading ladies, and at 35, with fewer than five years of national broadcast experience under her belt, Rachel Maddow is the explosive star of the season. She's gone from being a popular guest analyst on MSNBC to an exclusive commentator to a regular guest host for the network's prize pig, Countdown With Keith Olbermann. Now there is increasing clang and clamor over the possibility that she will get her own show on MSNBC.
What's remarkable about Maddow's ascension is not its velocity--Hurricane Katrina made Anderson Cooper in less than a week--but the shifts in media it may demarcate. Maddow is one of the few left-liberal women to bust open the world of TV punditry, which has made icons of right-wing commentators like Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin. Unlike her beautiful, bilious conservative female counterparts or the cocksure boys-on-the-bus analysts, however, Maddow didn't get here by bluster and bravado but with a combination of crisp thinking and galumphing good cheer. Remarkably, this season's discovery isn't a glossy matinee idol or a smooth-talking partisan hack but a PhD Rhodes scholar lesbian policy wonk who started as a prison AIDS activist.
... So, six weeks before the election, the news is going to be filled with stories coming out of the criminal trial of a senior GOP senator ...
A divided Federal Communications Commission has ruled that Comcast Corp. violated federal policy when it blocked Internet traffic for some subscribers and has ordered the cable giant to change the way it manages its network.
In a precedent-setting move, the FCC by a 3-2 vote on Friday enforced a policy that guarantees customers open access to the Internet.
...
Thanks largely, however, to one man, Gorbachev, who consciously chose a path of non-violence, after four decades of nuclear standoff in a fully garrisoned MAD (mutually assured destruction) world -- and to the amazement, even disbelief, of official Washington -- the USSR simply disappeared, and almost totally peaceably at that.
You could measure the era of denial up to that moment both by the level of official resistance to recognizing this obvious fact and by the audible sigh of relief in this country. Finally, it was all over. It was, of course, called "victory," though it would prove anything but.
And only then did the MADness really began. [...]
In the meantime, it was clear by century's end that the "peace dividend" would go largely to the Pentagon. At the very moment when, without the Soviet Union, the U.S. might have accepted its own long-term vulnerability and begun working toward a world in which destruction was less obviously on the agenda, the U.S. government instead embarked, like the Greatest of Great Powers (the "new Rome," the "new Britain"), on a series of neocolonial wars on the peripheries. It began building up a constellation of new military bases in and around the oil heartlands of the planet, while reinforcing a military and technological might meant to brook no future opponents. Orwell's famous phrase from his novel 1984, "war is peace," was operative well before the second Bush administration entered office.
Call this a Mr. Spock moment, one where you just wanted to say "illogical." With only one superpower left, the American Age of Denial didn't dissipate. It only deepened and any serious assessment of the real planet we were all living on was carefully avoided.
A Fierce Rearguard Action for Denial
This, of course, brings us almost to our own moment. To the neocons, putting on their pith helmets and planning their Project for a New American Century (meant to be just like the old nineteenth century, only larger, better, and all-American), the only force that really mattered in the world was the American military, which would rule the day, and the Bush administration, initially made up of so many of them, unsurprisingly agreed. This would prove to be one of the great misreadings of the nature of power in our world.
The response to 9/11 was, to say the least, striking -- and craven in the extreme. Although the Bush administration's Global War on Terror (aka World War IV) has been pictured many ways, it has never, I suspect, been seen for what it most truly may have been: a desperate and fierce rearguard action to extend the American Age of Denial. We would, as the President urged right after 9/11, show our confidence in the American system by acting as though nothing had happened and, of course, paying that visit to Disney World. In the meantime, as "commander-in-chief" he would wall us in and fight a "global war" to stave off the forces threatening us. Better yet, that war would once again be on their soil, not ours, forever and ever, amen.
The message of 9/11 was, in truth, clear enough -- quite outside the issue of who was delivering it for what purpose. It was: Here is the future of the United States; try as you might, like it or not, you are about to become part of the painful, modern history of this planet.
And the irony that went with it was this: The fiercer the response, the more we tried to force the cost of denial of this central reality on others, the faster history -- that grim shadow story of the Cold War era -- seemed to approach.
A few months ago, I wrote that John McCain was an honorable man and he would run an honorable campaign. I was wrong. I used to think, as David Ignatius does, that McCain's true voice was humble and moderate, but now I'm beginning to think his Senate colleagues may be right about his temperament. From what I can gather, Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, a Republican, reflected the views of many of his colleagues earlier this year when he said:"The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine...He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."
The erratic nature of McCain's campaign seems to be confirming that judgment. The McCain I used to know would never have touted his own courage as he did a few weeks ago when he said:"I had the courage and the judgment to say that I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war.It seems to me that Senator Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign."
Courage is grace under pressure. McCain showed it when he was a prisoner of war, and on many issues--yes, even on his stubborn insistence that the surge would work--but he is not showing it now. He is showing flop sweat. It is not a quality usually associated with successful leadership.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.
To Provoke War, Cheney Considered Proposal To Dress Up Navy Seals As Iranians And Shoot At Them
