Holy Hypocrisy
photo courtesy of Heather B. Armstrong
I’ve also seen a t-shirt with the question, “Who would Jesus torture?”
Ugly American Plays The Fatwa Game
Hartford Courant: Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition and former Republican presidential candidate, sounded like he belonged to the Goodfellas Club Monday when he advocated the assassination of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez.
Mr. Chavez, a populist and a harsh critic of the United States, poses “a terrific danger” and ought to be eliminated, opined Mr. Robertson on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “The 700 Club.”
“I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination,” said an incensed Mr. Robertson, “but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it. … We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”
Two years ago, he suggested that the State Department be blown up with a nuclear device. On another occasion, he critiqued feminism as a movement that encourages women “to kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”
One Person Making A Difference
photo by Jason Reed of Reuters
The thing I love about Cindy Sheehan’s vigil outside the Bush compound in Crawford, TX is her level-headed, on-message delivery. TV journalists try to trip her up and paint her as a partisan pawn, but she gives not an inch to these scumbags. She stays true to her mission—to find out from the President the real reason her son died in Iraq.
I also love her line of questioning. “If this war is so noble,” she asks, “is the President encouraging his two daughters to fight?”
Pirates, Yes They Rob I
Nine months ago I wrote this, “Bald eagles, egrets, herons, alligators, manatee, dolphins and panthers make Florida their home. For sure, increasing human population is a dangerous threat to pristine nature. Which makes it all the sweeter to visit places in the state that are hard to reach and therefore relatively untouched. The Ten Thousand Islands are such a place, as is Keewaydin, a barrier island between Naples and Marco Island. Keewaydin is accessible only by boat. There are homes, but very few. You can walk the beach and see no one. That’s a true joy in modern times.”
Tonight I heard from a concerned citizen in Naples who informed me Keewaydin is in danger of being opened to resort-type development. Some Collier County mucky mucks want a new place for another private club, is the short of it. To their credit, the developers say they want to do it right. But that’s not the point. The point is once you give an inch the game is lost, for some other jackasses will be lined up to take a mile.
Naples News: Basil Street Partners LLC, a company making a redevelopment mark on downtown Naples, wants to build a 2,925-square-foot beach club on land the company owns on the barrier island within the boundaries of the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve.
The club would serve as a private amenity for as many as 750 club members and their guests. Members would be condominium and boat slip owners at Naples Bay Resort, a collection of Basil Street Partners projects at the former Boat Haven site, at the intersection of U.S. 41 and Sandpiper Street and at Grand Central Station. The general public also might have a chance to buy memberships.
Basil Street Partners, which is managed by developer Jack Antaramian, needs approval by Collier County commissioners to build the beach club.
Please voice your opposition by August 19, 2005, to:
Linda Bedtelyon, Community Planning Coordinator
Community Development and Environmental Services Administration
2800 North Horseshoe Drive, Naples, FL 34104
Phone: (239) 213-2948
Fax: (239) 403-2395
email: lindabedtelyon@colliergov.net
Kerry Can Dumb It Down, After All
Boston Globe: During last year’s presidential campaign, John F. Kerry was the candidate often portrayed as intellectual and complex, while George W. Bush was the populist who mangled his sentences.
But newly released records show that Bush and Kerry had a virtually identical grade average at Yale University four decades ago.
The transcript shows that Kerry’s freshman-year average was 71. He scored a 61 in geology, a 63 and 68 in two history classes, and a 69 in political science. His top score was a 79, in another political science course. Another of his strongest efforts, a 77, came in French class.
In addition to Kerry’s four D’s in his freshman year, he received one D in his sophomore year. He did not fail any courses.
What Was The Majority Smoking?
The U.S. Supreme Court took the Bush administration’s side in the drug war yesterday, declaring that people who legally grow, possess and smoke medicinal marijuana under state statutes which allow it, can be prosecuted by federal authorities. Yes, that’s right, in effort to give no ground on this failed “war,” we’re now declaring the nation’s sick a worthy enemy of justice and the American way.
USA Today, not exactly a liberal, nor liberterian, daily had this to say in today’s Op-Ed page.
Court’s ruling on marijuana reeks of ‘reefer madness’
The Court’s 6-3 decision was a stretched interpretation of the clause in the Constitution that gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce.
Under Monday’s ruling, growing marijuana at home for medicinal purposes, with no money changing hands, is somehow now a form of interstate commerce. It makes you wonder what the majority was smoking. As Justice Clarence Thomas said in his dissenting opinion, “If Congress can regulate this … under the commerce clause, then it can regulate virtually anything.”
How Much More Of This Can We Take?
Reagan, Bush and Dubya may in fact be socially conservative, but they’re far from fiscally conservative. Cavalier spending is going to bankrupt this country unless we do something about it, and call these liars on their bullshit.
Thanks to Preposterous Universe for the heads up.
Get ‘Em George
Respect MP George Galloway is in Washington today to confront a Senate committee accusing him of profiting illicitly from Iraq’s oil-for-food program.
from Reuters: Pursued by a crowd of British journalists, Galloway arrived at the hearing just minutes before it began reviewing testimony aimed at exposing corruption in the now-defunct U.N. scheme.
“This group of neocons is involved in the mother of all smokescreens,” he said of the committee. “I want to turn the tables on this neo-con, pro-Israel, pro-war, Republican lynch mob.”
Galloway was the last witness at the hearing of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that is examining how ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein used oil to reward politicians, particularly from Russia, France and Britain, under the humanitarian oil-for-food program.
Galloway, a maverick kicked out of the Labour Party for his fervent opposition to the Iraq war and for personal attacks on Prime Minister Tony Blair, has dismissed allegations by the committee that he benefited from the program.
To summarize, Republicans in the U.S. Senate are accusing one of Britain’s most liberal and outspoken anti-war voices of “insider trading” with Iraq. Hmmm…this sounds an awful lot like accusing John Kerry of dishonoring his country, when in fact he served his country during the Vietnam debacle, unlike the sitting President and V.P.
I’m sure this story will lead the 6:00 “news” this evening, and all will be understood. Yeah, right.
Huffingtonians Get All Huffy
Traditional media star, Arianna Huffington, has opened a can of whoop ass on traditional media (and Matt Drudge). Her group blog, which debuted yesterday, has entries from Walter Cronkite, Larry David, Rob Reiner, Senator Jon Corzine, Tina Brown, Bill Maher, Gary Hart, Jerry Brown and several others.
According to the Washington Post, Warren Beatty says the venture “holds out the possibility that the horrifying danger of media consolidation may be ameliorated.” He says Huffington will provide a forum “not owned by the New York Times, News Corp., General Electric, Disney, Viacom, The Washington Post, Tribune Media, Knight Ridder, Gannett and the like” and that smart writers “will have no fear of being edited or fired for views that might go against the interests of the publisher.”
One post I particularly enjoyed came from former California Governor and current Oakland Mayor, Jerry Brown.
Scanning the TV news tonight, I was struck again by the massive and incoherent stimuli transmitted to American minds in the guise of national news. Is it a post-modern nightmare or Dante’s Inferno?
The rapid shift from one image or story to another–now comic, now trivial, now tragic–undermines one’s critical faculties. Drug and car ads compete with murders in Iraq and a “nuclear option” for the Senate.
The common sense questions–such as, why our government is borrowing madly, tempting nature, engineering foreign nations, cutting taxes for some while increasing financial burdens for others–get lost in the psychic distractions of a perverse media acupuncture of the mind.
The public forum is overloaded with “junk” news, science and politics.
Long ago, America’s founders assumed an educated electorate and the deliberative discussions and reflections that a slower age invited. Then it was an Age of the Book. Now it is the Age of the Screen and its attendant attention deficit.
Not bad for an opening salvo.
Unchecked Greed Is The Order Of The Day
According to an Associated Press report, lawmakers plowed through an energy bill yesterday that would provide billions of dollars in tax breaks to industry, open an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling and aid farmers by expanding the use of ethanol in gasoline.
Hey, I’m all for ethanol. So there is some good news. But now back to the bad news.
Democrats were expected to try to remove a provision that would, for the first time, allow oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Republicans said they’re confident the attempt will be rebuffed.
The refuge drilling issue is all but certain to be rejected in the Senate where opponents have vowed to block it by filibuster. Refuge drilling proponents in the Senate, instead, are hoping to get the measure passed as part of the budget process where the filibuster cannot be used.
Democrats complained that the tax package, which advanced out of the Ways and Means Committee, provides little to promote renewable energy sources and reduce energy use while funneling tax benefits to energy companies that already are making huge profits from high energy prices.
“There is no provision … that will lower the price of gasoline, only protect the profits of the oil industry,” said Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) “What do the American people get — nothing but a raw deal.”