Friday, June 24, 2005

C Student = F President

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate the Secretary of Energy joining me today. He's a good man, he knows a lot about the subject, you'll be pleased to hear. I was teasing him -- he taught at MIT, and -- do you have a PhD?

SECRETARY BODMAN: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, a PhD. (Laughter.) Now I want you to pay careful attention to this -- he's the PhD, and I'm the C student, but notice who is the advisor and who is the President.


Having read that and read that he did this THREE times... I gotta say;

I was a C student in College, a B+ student in grad. school and I want someone SMARTER then me as president. I want a president who understands the stuff that bores me to tears or makes me go 'wha?'

Or at least a president with humility( I think that's a Christian virtue) to say- well I don't have ALL the answers, that's why I have A+ students like [ insert name of expert being introduced] to help me with the tough problems facing America.

[ footnote of all the responses to this story my favorite was: "I joined the Reserves in a time of war and all I got was my teeth cleaned. Colin Powell here spent his whole adult life in the armed services yet who's Commander in Chief? Heh heh. Like that one Colin?"]

Lock up the opposition

Oh man...

Ok I got this O'Reilly from Media Matters and NOT Franken. Actually been waiting for Franken to mention this on Air America, but he hasn't yet so I gotta post O'Reilly's rant.

O'REILLY: And when he [Durbin] went out there, his intent was to whip up the American public against the Bush detainee policy. That's what his intent was. His intent wasn't to undermine the war effort, because he never even thought about it. He never even thought about it. But by not thinking about it, he made an egregious mistake because you must know the difference between dissent from the Iraq war and the war on terror and undermining it. And any American that undermines that war, with our soldiers in the field, or undermines the war on terror, with 3,000 dead on 9-11, is a traitor.

Everybody got it? Dissent, fine; undermining, you're a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they're undermining everything and they don't care, couldn't care


Get that? If you disagree with the president- you're a TRAITOR and should be arrested. Thus sayth O'Reilly.

Now There are MANY ways that I could potentially respond to this.... But I'm going to take the low road and mention that O'Reilly, Limbaugh, et al. undermined the work of President Clinton during HIS presidency... They weren't about dissent; they undermined ALL his works. So doesn't that mean that according to O'Reilly, O'Reilly should be in jail?

Friday, June 17, 2005

By the numbers...

So as mentioned, I now get the Al Franken show on Sundance and I realized it's easier/better to get my mad on by watching him then by Bill O'Rielly.

Because while I could get angry about what Bill says, it's only by listening to Al that I get mad about what Bill and Fox doesn't say.

Like the number 5 billion.

That's a big number. It's even bigger when you put a dollar sign in front of it.
so the figure becomes $5,000,000,000.

That's how much money is MISSING in Iraq. Yup- 5,000,000,000 that the U.S. has given to rebuild Iraq is gone, and we don't know where it went.

To put this in perspective- that's a tenth of what W. wants for education.
Or that's enough money so that Even, his three kids, their 6 kids, their 18 kids and their 54 kids wouldn't have to work a day in their lives.

5,000,000,000 missing. And congress isn't doing ANYTHING to find out 'where the money went'. I realize that compared to the 419.3 billion that the DoD is getting WITHOUT counting the money W. wants for Iraq and Afghanistan, maybe $5 billion isn't all that much... but again to the common man or business 5 billion is a HUGE amount of money. I mean if me and ALL my friends pool our money FOR OUR LIVES, I doubt we'd get to .5 billion.

This really gets my goat... and I wish Fox would cover it.
Oh and I thought another interesting way to look at that 5 billion. NASA is trying to get us to Mars with a budget of 16.5 billion.
-------------------------------------------
15

Fifteen is the number of senators who did NOT vote for the resolution apologizing for its failure to enact federal anti-lynching legislation.
It took me a bit of time to find the 15, but part of that is because Frist did NOT want a roll call, as he didn't want the no votes to go on record.

See 15 is also the number of REPUBLICANS who did NOT vote for the resolution apologizing for its failure to enact federal anti-lynching legislation.

So from the Macon Telegraph the 15:
Lamar Alexander, Tenn.; Robert Bennett, Utah; Than Cochran, Miss.; John Cornyn, Texas; Michael Crapo, Idaho; Michael Enzi, Wyo.; Chuck Grassley, Iowa; Judd Gregg, N.H.; Orrin Hatch, Utah; Trent Lott, Miss.; Lisa Murkowski, Alaska; Richard Shelby, Ala.; John Sununu, N.H.; Craig Thomas, Wyo.; and George Voinovich, Ohio.


Needless to say Mississippi was at the forefront of lynching and both of their senators voted NOT to sign this piece of legislation.
----

So again today's blog was brought to you by the numbers - 5 billion( amount of U.S. dollars missing from Iraq reconstruction) and 15( the republican senators who didn't want to apologize for lynching in the south)

[note when I spoke to two freinds on 6/17, they both put the Iraq missing money at EIGHT billion instead of five. I nodded but felt that since only ONE of the many googled sites put it at 8 and most said 5, I'd keep at five. HOWEVER I'm watching last night's Al Franken show and he put it at 8 billion. So while I'm keeping 5 billion above- I will allow that it could be up to 8 billion missing, and should you have a source that says 8 billion, I'd appreciate a link to it]

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Dean's MY man!

From Tuesday's USAToday

Instead of muzzling Howard Dean, Democrats should give him a bullhorn. Rather than urging him to retreat from his attack on Republicans, party leaders ought to send him off to a political war college -- preferably the one the late GOP strategist Lee Atwater attended.

As chairman of the Democratic Party, which is teetering between political renewal and functional extinction, Dean should be making war, not peace. But that's exactly what his critics within the party seemed to be suggesting last week when they admonished him for his tough talk about Republicans.

"The Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people. They're a pretty monolithic party. They all behave the same, and they all look the same," he said days earlier. He also said the GOP is "pretty much a white, Christian party" and Republicans "never made an honest living in their lives."

Understandably, Dean's verbal barrage drew a return salvo from Republicans, who accused him of hitting below the belt. Surprisingly, it also sparked friendly fire from some Democrats, who worried aloud that he was unnecessarily alienating Republicans.



While, in fact, what he said about the GOP stretches the truth, it also rallies the Democratic troops, something the party has had difficulty doing since Bill Clinton left the White House.

Ironically, Dean's negative talk is something Atwater, who managed the 1988 presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush, turned into an art form. When the story broke that Willie Horton, a black convicted murderer, raped a white woman and assaulted her fiance while on a weekend furlough from a Massachusetts prison, Atwater went on the attack. He vowed to link Horton so closely to Bush's opponent, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, that people would think the career criminal was the Democratic candidate's running mate.

Republican leaders, eager to extend their party's control of the White House beyond the eight years of Ronald Reagan's presidency, didn't chastise Atwater for playing to racial fears and stereotypes in linking Horton to Dukakis. Instead, they made him party chairman.

Not long after he assumed that post, Atwater put his crosshairs on then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, a Democrat he correctly feared might keep Bush from winning re-election. Atwater plotted to use allegations of drug abuse and womanizing to derail Clinton's political career. "We may or may not win, but we'll bust him up so bad he won't be able to run again for years," Atwater said, according to The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, a 2000 book by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons.

Despite expressing his regret for these actions shortly before his untimely death in 1991, Atwater's go-for-the-jugular brand of politics has become a lethal weapon in the Republicans' arsenal. It is what motivates GOP operatives to quickly label Democrats as liberal -- and to treat liberalism as a dirty word.

To his credit, Dean has broken ranks with those Democrats who think the best defense is to seek cover and then throw themselves on the mercy of voters on Election Day. The time has come for Democrats to fight back. They should explain what it means to be a liberal, not allow Republicans to define them. They should answer hyperbolic attacks with exaggerated speech of their own, if that's what it takes to stave off political annihilation.

For much of this decade, right-wing Republicans have dominated the public square, shouting down some on their political left and drowning out others who have tried to counter their bombast with civil responses. The time has come for Democrats to give as good as they get.

Americans, for the most part, love politicians who fight for what they believe -- and they abhor political wimps. Dean is a fighter, albeit one who needs to learn that in an ideological spat, a well-placed jab often can do more damage than a barrage of roundhouse punches.

But he can't learn that lesson if Democrats won't let him take the fight to the GOP.

DeWayne Wickham writes weekly for USA TODAY.

Monday, June 13, 2005

Christian Fear

I meant to blog about this story last week when I heard about it BUT I forgot so hear it is. Below is a quote from Rush Limbaugh on his June 8th show as reported by Media Matters

LIMBAUGH: Let me tell you something, the Democrats are more fearful -- and I've told you this too -- they're more fearful of Christians than they are of Al Qaeda. The Democrats are more fearful of Democrats [sic] than they are of Islamist terrorists living in this country. They are more fearful of Christians than they are of any enemy of the United States of America. They probably have more fear of Christians than they do nuclear weapons being launched by North Korea.


You know something- He's right. I'm more afraid of Anthony Scalia then I am of Osama Bin Laden. The moral majority scare me more then the Taliban.
And the reason for that is that it's the CHRISTIAN nut jobs, not the MUSLIM nut jobs that are destroying this country.

Yes- 4 years or so ago terrorists took over 4 planes and used 3 of them as flying bombs blowing up the twin towers and the pentagon. They killed thousands of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists and others.
In retribution- our CHRISTIAN commander in chief has invaded two countries, killed TENS of thousands of Muslims, and put our 'boys' in harm's way- letting thousands of them die.

Shortly after this attack on America- it was a CHRISTIAN, Jerry Falwell, who took to the AMERICAN airwaves and spewed this quote of hatred
The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way all of them who have tried to secularize America
I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'

God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.


It wasn't Al Qaeda who lied to America about how Pat Tillman died, it was OUR leaders.

The Taliban isn't using WMDs but the United States is using WMDs against them. See the Depleted Uranium Weapons, which I've often blogged against, are considered ILLEGAL weapons of mass destruction according to the U.N.

And it was the Christians in 2004 who overwellemingly voted in 11 states to DENY equal rights to gays- saying that gays shouldn't be given the same rights as GOOD CHRISTIAN folks.
Likewise it was Senator Santorum who made the news when the Supreme Court ruled that gays were ALLOWED to have sex in Tx. He compared gay sex to incest and other sexual acts he didn't like.

It was CHRISTIANIN Judge who has told two Wiccan parents that they can't teach their child THEIR religion.


I could go on- but I think you get the idea.
*I*, Drew Harris, think that the Moral Majority is destroying these United States more then any outside invader could or has.

Friday, June 10, 2005

Activist Judges

Ok... I came by this story in a roundabout manner but it still managed to make my blood boil.

It's a simple story til an activist judge got involved.
Basically a NON Christian couple were getting a divorce. It was nice and friendly divorce until the judge read a report from Domestic Relations Counseling Bureau. Said Bureau usually is involved in divorce situations to offer the court recommendations.
Apparently the report pointed out that kid went to a local Catholic school
BUT
the parents are wiccan.

Well the judge KNEW how to fix that. He decided to make it illegal for the parents to teach the kid "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals."

So even though both the mother and father worshiped THE SAME RELIGION, and didn't have a problem with the OTHER parent teaching the kid wiccan values.... The judge DID have a problem with their value system, and so ordered the parents to stop teaching the kid their own religion.

This is wrong.
This is a judge using his SEAT OF POWER to tell others how to worship.
And you know if a Wiccan judge did this to a Christian family unit, his/her head would be on a silver platter on Fox News for the next two months- but because it was Wiccans, he'll get a gold star from O'Reilly.

(spell check note: blogger.com's spell checker didn't recognize Wiccan as a word)

Thursday, June 09, 2005

O'really O'Reilly

So I was VERY happy that on MONDAY the Sundance channel was showing the Al Franken Show. It's hard to get his radio show where I live because there's a nice big FM tower on the Prudential, which makes it hard to get AM.

I didn't realize what I was *truly* missing til last night( a mere 3 days after getting it back) when Franken ripped into O'Reilly. It seems the O'Reilly decided to monkey around with reality... and Franken naturally took umbrage.

O'Reilly had clips of Sen. Biden on his show from Biden's appearance on This week... but the FUN part is that Franken points out that it's CLIPS from the show, as O'Reilly cuts out part of Biden's interview... and Franken makes sure you know what O'Reilly cut. The funny part, which really pisses off Franken, was that O'Reilly then 'suggests' the same thing that Biden wants- an independent counsel to check up on Gitmo, but O'Reilly cut out Biden's suggestion for an independent counsel on his own show, and then passes the idea off as O'Reilly's own...

This story is on Franken's site- but just watching the clips on Sundance was worth my cable bill this month. It was really frightening what O'Reilly was doing with 'reality', and the fact that he's getting away with it, while Newsweek had to apologize up and down for THEIR 'unconfirmed' report of Koran abuse.

Monday, June 06, 2005

Separating Church and State ?!? But God's Everywhere!

When I read this story in the NYT this morning... Man things made me angry and vexed.

The governor of Texas went out of his ways to sign TWO bills in a evangelical school. Both had religious repercussions, one being to make it harder for teens to get abortions and the other to BAN same sex marriages.

What really hurt my head was this line:
Rabbi David Stone of the Beth Yeshua Messianic Jewish Congregation in Fort Worth, was, in fact, present and gave the closing benediction. The group believes that Jesus was the Messiah, a tenet heretical to traditional Jews.

Yeah... because if 'traditional Jews' believed in Jesus, they'd be CHRISTIAN.
They brought up this "Jewish group" as a way to say 'it's not just us Christians who believe this way...' Well I'm sorry but if EVERY who believes what you believe in also believes that Jesus is Christ... Then it is indeed a 'Christian thing'

But from another pov, if the governor of Texas TRULY believes that God is everywhere- as he says at the end of the article- then why the heck did he have to sign the bill on SUNDAY at a evangelical school. I mean wouldn't God have paid as much attention if the Gov. had signed it Monday in the Gov.'s office?
The governor KNEW what he was doing. He knew he was merging church and state, and he's hoping that he'll get the votes next November because like his leader, he's made sure that he's on the same ballot as the 'gay question'.

And that really is the thing that I find pathetic, that the republicans have decided that THEY get votes for denying fellow humans the same rights they want- and last November the voting public of 11 states showed that the republican party was right about that.

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Faces of the Fallen

Because I have Iraqi Body Count as a link on the side of MY web site I figured I'd also mention the american fallen and add this picture here

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