Family traits

Failure is one of them.

Yeesh

Pat Robertson's at it again. I pray for a well-placed lightning bolt.

Fightin' words

This is what I like to see. Dems with balls.

My colleague at Democrats.com, Bob Fertik, never one to shy away from a fight, has called Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman out and challenged him to a public debate on the merits of impeaching George W. Bush.

...

Cold showers?

California is proudly leading the way again. Like a family man who screws himself out of a place at the dinner table, so is California screwing its way to disastrous overpopulation. What to do, what to do? From the EssEffChron:

As Californians proliferate with rabbit-like efficiency, the state's residents are surprisingly of one mind about how to deal with overpopulation. Whether they're liberal Democrats or evangelical Christians, they favor sex education and access by the young to birth control.

In an endeavor that gives new meaning to the term phone sex, researchers spent two weeks last month calling about 2,500 people around California, asking them about things such as contraceptives, abortion, teen pregnancy, morning-after pills -- and even politics.

"I was most surprised by the fact that most Californians don't fully appreciate the role of births in population growth," Baldassare said. "One other thing that struck me is the broad consensus for programs that promote birth control and sex education -- support across racial and ethnic and regional and political categories to make birth control accessible and available."

The single greatest contributor to the state's population increase is births to residents -- almost half in recent years have been to immigrant women. There have been about 500,000 births annually in California in the 2000s, and the rate is projected to stay at that level, or rise above it, for the next decade.

Those who know something about sex or young people, or both, have their own thoughts on how to remedy overpopulation.

"Break the egg!" said Jane Tollini, who produced the most prolific captive penguin colony in the world during her years at the San Francisco Zoo. "Make an omelet."

When she realized the subject was people rather than seabirds, Tollini said, "I don't know -- cold showers?"

"We've already seen a huge change in society locally with condom use," he said. "When they teach that if you don't use condoms you're going to die, or you'll get pregnant and your life will be ruined, it is effective.

"If you don't teach that, kids can't make an informed decision. Kids are smart -- they're smart, but they're ignorant."

I think when kids get taught that 'abstinence only' shit, they know they're being fed a line, and ignore it. Tell 'em the truth and they'll listen, if just for a refreshing change from business as usual.

The false god of ideology

It's a little unsettling to have to be reminded of this by a German. From an editorial in the LATimes:

He reminded me that fear and rigid ideology are the enemies of freedom. "Democratic capitalism can sometimes leave people feeling extremely insecure," he said. "But freedom and democracy are always more important than the temptation to have more security." Particularly in these days, he thought, Americans need to remember that.

Danke, Helmuth.

Just another phony christian...

Local news from KOCO, Okie City:

An executive committee member of the Southern Baptist Convention was arrested on a lewdness charge for propositioning a plainclothes policeman outside a hotel, police said.

Lonnie Latham, senior pastor at South Tulsa Baptist Church, was booked into Oklahoma County Jail Tuesday night on a misdemeanor charge of offering to engage in an act of lewdness, police Capt. Jeffrey Becker said. Latham was released on $500 bail Wednesday afternoon.

Latham, who has spoken out against homosexuality, asked the officer to join him in his hotel room for oral sex. Latham was arrested and his 2005 Mercedes automobile was impounded, Becker said.

I don't care if the guy wants to stick his dick in a woodchipper, and I'm not a huge fan of the cops setting up John stings. I'm a supporter of legalized prostitution, but that's for another time.

What this article shows, on the surface, is just one more example of a supposed christian saying one thing and doing another. I think we're kinda used to that. No big deal, other than it's fun when they get caught at it.

What gets me is the last sentence of the quote. Therein lies the real hypocrisy. It shows the true nature of the phony christians.

What's a "man of God" doing riding around in a '05 Mercedes? If he were truly a "shepherd to his flock" he'd be driving a ten-year-old pickup* filled with food and clothing for the less fortunate among God's children, purchased with the money he gave the M-B salesman. Apparently, he doesn't have any "less fortunate" parishioners of his own if they donated enough to get that ride, but I'm sure he could find some.

I don't think much of the Southern Baptist Convention either. Money, power, subjugation of women, homobigotry, and political influence ain't really in line with the Beatitudes. Buncha fuckin' phony poseur con men.

When these guys finally appear at the Pearly Gates, and St. Peter hands 'em an asbestos thong, grins, and points to the elevator, maybe they'll get the message.

*

Just as an aside, my local pastor, Father Francisco, drives a Subaru that truly demonstrates the power of prayer. That old rattletrap has every mechanic in town praying for it. Ha!

This is Seriously F-upped

Bus line debuts tour of stricken city

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - An international bus line launched tours of devastated sections of New Orleans on Wednesday, amid controversy over whether so-called disaster tourism would help, hurt or humiliate the hurricane-ravaged city.

Two sold-out Gray Line tour busses slowly prowled along the city's broken levees, through its rubble-strewn streets and past the heavily damaged Superdome where desperate residents took shelter when Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29 and most of the city flooded in the aftermath.

Plans for the "Hurricane Katrina - America's Worst Catastrophe" tour, at $35 per person, prompted debate over whether it is appropriate or exploitative to turn devastation into a tourist attraction.

Gray Line, which runs more than 150 tours around the world, plans to donate $3 of each New Orleans ticket to charity. The three-hour tour will run once a day, Wednesday through Sunday.

"Gray Line thought long and hard before making the decision to send this tour out,"

Yo jackasses:
Stay home and donate the $35 to a charity - you'll sleep better at night. And as for the ghouls masquerading as Gray Line employees? Obviously you didn't think at all except about lining your pockets.

Duh

The WH is spying on journalists and the corporate press is in their pocket.

...

Mitchell: You don't have any information, for instance, that a very prominent journalist, Christiane Amanpour, might have been eavesdropped upon?

Risen: No, no I hadn't heard that.

Now the second question and its answer have been deleted. Which of course just strengthens the rumors that Amanpour might have been spied on.

How much you wanna bet we find they've been spying on the Democrats, namely the Kerry campaign last year? It's just conjecture on my part, so far, but I feel comfortable making the prediction.

Update:

More via Jane.

Post Sharon

Ariel Sharon's stroke last night changed the face of Israeli politics in an instant. The Head Heeb has an excellent essay up on the effects of the sudden power vacuum created when Sharon went down.

...

And then there's the potential spillover to the other election - the one in the Palestinian Authority. Israeli and Palestinian politics have been inextricably intertwined for years, and never more so than now. Sharon's disability is bound to affect the Palestinian electoral balance; the only question is how. The Palestinians might view the situation as a political opening - they remember Sharon less for the Gaza withdrawal than for the settlements and Sabra-Shatila, and a conciliatory centrist like Olmert or an unknown quantity like Livni might carry less emotional baggage and spur the hope of a return to negotiations. In that event, Fatah might benefit at the polls. On the other hand, if the Palestinian electorate sees a moment of Israeli weakness, or if it looks like Kadima is collapsing and Netanyahu is gaining the upper hand, then the spoils might go to Hamas.

So there we have it - a single stroke has created a multitude of unknown quantities. Two weeks from now, Israel might still be in a three-way race between Avoda, Likud and an only-somewhat-weakened Kadima, or it might be facing an uncertain Peretz-Bibi battle with the center fading and political fragmentation returning with a vengeance. The mercurial Palestinian electorate, for its part, could swing toward either moderation or radicalism. The one thing in which there will be some guarantee of continuity is the caretaker government, where Olmert's experience and moderation will provide the country with a steady hand. But that is the only blessing that Israel can count on tonight.

For those who say Israeli politics doesn't affect us, think again. As my man Lurch says, with Bush in office, the mission of the U.S. is to protect Israel to the last man. Believe it.

No such thing...

...as global warming. This via Bob Harris:

AUSTRALIA is being pressed to come to the rescue of drowning Pacific islands which face a homeless crisis due to rising sea levels caused by global warming.

With predictions sea levels could rise by up to 32 centimetres by 2050, a number of Pacific islands could be rendered uninhabitable within a decade.

...

As Bob says:

...

It must be nice to be a U.S. "conservative" and live in a dreamworld where this simply isn't happening.

"60% of what you say is crap!"

Go watch Letterman v. O'Lielly at Crooks and Liars. Listen for how O'R pronounces MI-6. Yeesh.

Confessions of a Bush hater

Via Maru, an excellent post at Pensito Review:

...

The president's incompetentce is compounded by his blindness to it. He lacks the mental discipline to undertake analysis or introspection, which renders him befeft of the fundamental tools required to take corrective action when he makes mistakes.

Basic communications skills are another minimum requirement for the presidency in the TV age. But this president is hands down the worst public speaker in modern politics. His speechifying style is bizarre. The ... staccato ... way he ... talks ... grinds on the brain of the listener. He sounds like Capt. James T. Kirk doing a hillbilly accent with a mouth full of marbles.

...

...the sailor, home from the sea...

A little sea time got that old squid Dem Vet refreshed and re-fired. Just go read 'til your eyes hurt. A sample about "Preznit Tinpot Commissar":

Other than the fact that he either skipped, slept or was hung-over or stoned during High School civics, he just never seems to get the part where he's not the King. I guess he figures that all his political capital will help him bully congress into submission.

Whining is particularly unattractive in grown men. But then, alot of what makes Bunnypants such a loser is unattractive, so what's another negative? Such a fucking loser. I wonder how much "buyers remorse" there really is?

We'll find out in November, and that'll be here sooner than we think. A whining Penis-With-Ears will make a great campaign commercial...

I hope they put that one on during the Superbowl!

Mine disaster, Abramoff, intertwined at their roots...

Attytood connects these seemingly disparate stories as being the fruit of the poisonous Republican tree.

Don't look past the big picture. The roots of the horrific events underneath the earth in timeworn West Virginia, and the scandal on the tony sidewalks of Washington's K Street, are as deeply intertwined as those aspens out west, maybe more so. It's a connection that can be summed up in three simple words:

Republicans gone wild.

But until people make that connection between the corruption on one end of the American political pipeline and the human misery on the other end, these problems will linger in the air like toxic coal dust.

After you read this, I'll bet your resolve to get rid of these bastards multiplies by an order of magnitude. Mine did.

My 'Enemies List'

Pic courtesy of Brains and Eggs. Click to embiggen.

The CIA couldn't throw a beer party in a brewery...

LATimes:

In a clumsy effort to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, the CIA in 2004 intentionally handed Tehran some top-secret bomb designs laced with a hidden flaw that U.S. officials hoped would doom any weapon made from them, according to a new book about the U.S. intelligence agency.

But the Iranians were tipped to the scheme by the Russian defector hired by the CIA to deliver the plans and may have gleaned scientific information useful for designing a bomb, writes New York Times reporter James Risen in "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration."

And just to be fair (chortle!):

The CIA added its own criticism Tuesday, saying the book contains "serious inaccuracies."

And then:

David Albright, a former weapons inspector for the IAEA, agreed with the other expert that the plans could have shaved many years off Iran's nuclear effort.

"I wouldn't call it a colossal failure" by the CIA, said Albright, now president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. "But I don't quite understand the purpose of it, why you would want to hand something like this to the Iranians. It's unlikely to work."

According to the book, the CIA effort to sabotage Iran's nuclear effort came on the heels of another massive intelligence failure, in which a CIA officer mistakenly sent an Iranian agent a trove of information that could help identify nearly every one of the spy agency's undercover operatives in Iran.

The Iranian was a double agent who turned over the data to Iranian authorities. They used it to dismantle the CIA's spy network inside the country and arrest or possibly kill an unknown number of U.S. agents, the book says.

Lemme see if I get the gist of this. They gave Iran bomb plans, flawed ones to be sure, but bomb plans. They hired one of those oh-so-trustworthy Russians to deliver them who then snitched them off, and then they gave away the names of our agents to an Iranian double agent. That about cover it?

I think if Fixer had come up with a plot line like that, he would have thrown it out as being too unbelievably far fetched. If truth is stranger than fiction, I think the CIA is stranger than truth.

It seems the CIA's best qualities are stupidity and incompetence. Throw in a little high-level obsequiousness to Bush and Cheney and you've got a real witches' brew of national disaster.

I think it's high time to can Goss and upper management, and promote some mid-level guys who can kick some ass restructure the Agency just a little, you know, so it doesn't step on its dick all the time. Or disband it.

Update:

BuzzFlash has more on Mr. Risen's book.

Well, this is a book that is causing an enormous stir, even though the public and reviewers haven't even seen it yet. The right wing is already trashing it from here to eternity on the Internet -- and these bimbos haven't seen a copy, not a one! So you know it's hot.

It's a testament to how far the NYT has sunk that it was forced to pop a story about criminal behavior in the White House because a book by one of its own reporters was going to beat it to the punch. That's pathetic.

I betcha it'll sell like hotcakes.

Tell the Senate: Investigate illegal wiretapping before the Alito hearings.

Here's a letter at Working For Change that you should sign.

[cough] Heh [cough, cough]

Rhode Island became yesterday the 11th state to legalize medical marijuana...

Read.

Why yes, officer, I'm treating for glaucoma prophylactically.

When mama's happy...

...Everybody's happy. I learned this a long time ago, and I don't mean kissing your woman's ass. I mean treating a woman with respect and as an equal. When you shit on a woman (especially one who hasn't been beaten into submission, literally or figuratively), you can expect a load of shit to come back at ya. To wit:

...

What many people didn't realize at the time, however, is that during the Powell interview Miller was upset because her fiancee, Michael Scanlon, had broken off their engagement, two of Miller's former State Department co-workers said. While still engaged to Miller, Scanlon had started an affair with a manicurist and broke up with Miller because he planned to marry the other woman, three of Scanlon's former associates at DeLay's office said. They added that the two had numerous public arguments.

But Miller had something on Scanlon. He confided in her all of his dealings with Abramoff, former colleagues said. She saw his emails and knew the intimate details of his lobbying work-work which is now the center of a criminal fraud investigation. After the breakup, Miller went to the FBI and told them everything about Scanlon's dealings with Abramoff, her coworkers added. [my em]

...

Heh...All it takes is one wronged woman to bring down an Empire.

Great thanks to Dave.

Why

John explains why Lardass has become a Republican suck boy (see Gord's post below):

Hardball's Chris Matthews, FOX's Tony Snow and Britt Hume helped raise money for shady Abramoff charity

Also a handy chart of who got what.