December, 2007 archive
Torture through the Years 0
Read about it here.
I’m Lazy 0
I’m not going to rewrite this.
Just please go read the post. And wonder what the heck goes on in some persons’ heads.
As the first commentor said, “Intolerant AND stupid…what a magical combination.”
Atrios Nails It 2
I mentioned a little while ago that I believe that bigotry is at the heart of the Republican furor over immigration.
I am convinced that, if hordes of English-speaking Canadians were pouring over the the northern border to take jobs in the call centers of Sioux Falls, the hullabaloo over illegal immigration would merely be a baloo.
Atrios nails it. It’s the “Southern Strategy” all over again once more redundantly.
Immigration isn’t the issue. Hating immigrants is the issue.
Keep the Evidence 1
Via Talking Points Memo, Dana Perino states that the Current Federal Administration has been advised not to destroy documents related to the CIA torture tapes.
The documents will probably be stored with those White House emails.
We Need a “No Politician Left Behind” Act 2
So these bozos learn how to do homework. From Fact Check dot Org:
- Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee made some incorrect and questionable claims about Americans who don’t have health insurance, hypothesizing that a third don’t have coverage because “the think they’re healthy and invincible” – a claim for which we find no support – and that another third are self-insured – which is the definition of all people who don’t have health insurance and must pay their own bills. He also understated the number who can’t afford insurance.
- Mitt Romney said the Massachusetts universal health care plan he signed into law as governor didn’t include an “employer mandate,” but the plan includes a number of employer “requirements” with penalties for noncompliance. He also claimed subsidies for low-income individuals were completely financed by a state fund for care of the uninsured. It’s not clear if that will be the case just yet.
- New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani falsely stated that the performance of K-12 students, including Hispanics, in the country has declined. Actually, it has improved.
And, of course, I have a personal opinion on Huckabee’s lies about health insurance. As I have described before, I am uninsured.
Not because I think I’m invincible. When you take three blood pressure medicines a day, you really don’t consider yourself invincible.
I’m uninsured because I am self-employed and have so far been unable to find an insurance company willing to issue me insurance. (The church secretary was shocked to know that an applicant could be turned down.)
Here’s a neat little article I found that explains how health insurance (fails to) work.
Bush to the American People: “What You Don’t Know Can’t Hurt Me” 0
“What a tangled web you weave,
When first you practice to deceive.”
And, damn, have they practiced to deceive!
“Can You Give Me Sanctuary, I Must Find a Place To Hide . . .” 0
With apologies to the Doors:
FactCheck dot Org investigates Guiliani’s flip-flops:
We took up their challenge, digging into the specific policies of cities on CRS’ list, including those that openly call themselves “sanctuary” cities, and comparing those policies to Giuliani’s. We found the following:
- The policy ordered by Giuliani as it relates to law enforcement differs only in minor respects from those of cities, including San Francisco and Cambridge, Mass., that openly called themselves “sanctuary” cities or places of “refuge.” New York police could turn over the names of illegal aliens to federal immigration authorities if “suspected†of a crime, while San Francisco required that a suspected criminal also be booked on felony charges and in custody, for example.
- Immigration experts we consulted said New York’s policy differed but little from others that CRS put under the heading of “sanctuary†cities. “If you commit a crime … well then, in virtually all of these localities and states, you’re no longer protected or insulated,†said Marshall Fitz of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
- We also found that New York appears on another list – this one prepared by the National Immigration Law Center – of 70 jurisdictions that had policies “limiting local enforcement of federal immigration law.
Full disclosure:
I believe that the current furor over immigration has more to do bigotry than with morality or legality.
I believe that the pandering of many of the candidates for the Republican nomination to the anti-immigrant wing of the party is pandering to racism. But, then, that’s the Southern Strategy.
As much as I find many of John McCain’s positions distasteful, I must honor him for not piling on the bigotry train.
Putting aside my belief, formed over 57 years of observing the political landscape, that any Democrat is better than every Republican, I believe that a Guiliani presidency would be as much a catastrophe as the Bush presidency has been.
Of course, that goes for a Huckabee presidency or a McCain presidency or almost any other Republican presidency.
It also might go for a Romney presidency, as soon as Romney decides what he believes.
Rick Warren 1
Yesterday, I listened to an interview with Rick Warren on one of my favorite radio shows. Rick Warren’s name rang a bell or two, but I didn’t remember at the time that he is the author of The Purpose Drive Life.
(Now, Rick Warren may not necessarily be my cup of tea, but I give him credit for walking the same walk that he talks.)
Soooo, I whipped out my trusty cell phone, fired up Opera, and googled him. I found a Wikipedia article:
Today, the article starts out like this:
Yesterday, it started out something like this:
Rick Warren is a famous American heretic blah blah blah.
Being on my cell phone, I wasn’t able to do a screen capture. By the time I got home from church, the Wikipedia gremlins had already edited the slurs out of the story.
Where am I going with this?
Actually, I’m not really sure, except that I wish had had the chance to get the screenshots of the adulterated page.
And, oh, yeah, what does it say about someone whose only recourse to support his position is to place a lying entry on a webiste?
Then, again, whoever it was was only following the example set by the Current Federal Administration, which has raised lying to a fine political art.
I Wish I Could Be at Drinking Liberally Tomorrow Night 0
But I have a meeting to attend.
I assure you, I would really rather be at DL than at this meeting.
Once a day and twice on Sunday.
So, please, pick up the slack. Tangier Restaurant, 18th and Lombard, Philadelphia, 6 p. m. until Brendan can’t take it anymore.
HOW TO Spot an Evangelical Republican 2
From the This Is To Good To Pass Up Department (aka the Department of Not Being Able To View the World Critically Department):
Daniel DiRito at ASZ:
They’re opposed to sectarian conflict in Iraq but in favor of sectarian politics in the United States.
Number Nine:
They’re opposed to homosexuality and same-sex relationships but they’ll vote for a presidential candidate who does drag and lived with two gay men if he can beat Hillary Clinton and her “typically†unfaithful heterosexual husband.
Number Eight:
They wouldn’t dare vote for a Clinton given Bill’s disgraceful sexual antics in the White House but they’re happy to support a candidate who used New York City funds to carry on an adulterous affair.
Number Seven:
They criticize Democratic candidates for suggesting they would only nominate pro-choice judges to uphold the law of the land while they require their own candidates to pass religious litmus tests in conflict with the law of the land.
Number Six:
They’re in favor of abstinence only sex education even if it leads to more unwed teen pregnancies and more parent sponsored abortions (call it the evangelical version of NIMBY – not in my back yard; NIMBU – not in my babygirl’s uterus).
Number Five:
They’re in favor of the separation of church and state if it involves opposing a congressional inquiry into the fundraising and spending habits of leading televangelists but opposed to the separation when it comes to selecting a presidential nominee.
Number Four:
They support candidates who endorse more funding for AIDS in Africa while embracing a candidate who favored quarantining AIDS patients in America as well as having Hollywood fund AIDS research instead of the government.
Number Three:
They tout Ronald Reagan as their political icon despite the fact that he was unable to acknowledge the toll of HIV on gays in America or even utter the word AIDS…while they and their churches now run around talking about saving Africa from the ravages of HIV…as long as it doesn’t involve condoms.
Number Two:
They talk about their Christian values while they favor denying health care treatment to the children of illegal immigrants. Family values apparently stop at the waters edge (that would be the Rio Grande river).
Number One:
They’ll never make enough money to truly benefit from George Bush’s tax cuts for the rich or condemn his doubling of the national debt but they’re happy to call the Democratic candidates who supported an increase in minimum wage and favor a national health care system “unacceptable tax and spend liberals.”
It is one thing to allow one’s religious and moral beliefs to inform one’s vote.
It is quite another to allow self-ordained “religious” figures to stampede one’s vote.
Jon Swift on How To Become President 0
Over at PoliGazette. The entire post is worth a read:
The main task of most of the Democrats running for President is to prove how wrong they were (as far as Democrats are concerned) about Iraq. Although New York Senator Hillary Clinton surged to the front of the Democrat candidates on the strength of being wrong about health care and all the other wrongs committed while her husband was President, her inability to completely regret her vote on Iraq, has given other candidates an opening. When it comes to being wrong on Iraq, Clinton can’t seem to get it quite right. She says that she made the wrong decision for the right reasons and that if she knew then what she knows today, she would have made the right decision, which is at least better than being right for the wrong reasons, but not good enough for some people. Some Democrats are saying that she isn’t the right candidate if she can’t just say she was wrong. The early strength she got from admitting that her health care plan was all wrong, or, at least, that it was the wrong plan for the right reasons, has been jeopardized by her stance on Iraq. And now her husband has made things worse by saying he was right on Iraq from the beginning, which blurs Hillary’s message that she was kind of wrong.
Via (natch) Jon Swift.
Willie Horton Redux (Updated) 0
Remember Willie Horton?
Only, this time, it seems that the Governor actually had something to do with it.
It should be fun to watch this one play out, what with family values and all.
Of course the last time I checked up on it, serial rape was not considered a “family value.”
Addendum, 12/7/2007:
Horton the Elephant never forgets: Huckabee swings back. And misses.
You see, the problem is, facts have this stubborn habit of not going away. They may go into hiding for a while. But they seldom go away (unless, of course, they are CIA videotapes of CIA torture, but that’s another story).
A “Hunt” Only Dick Cheney Could Love 3
Up the road a piece, they have something called “pigeon shoots.”
Now, I am not a hunter. That’s just sort of through inertia; my Daddy wasn’t a hunter. But many of my uncles and cousins and friends are hunters, and I have no objection to hunting.
(And I love Bambi burgers. Venision is delicious.)
But this is not hunting:
Over and over for two hours scores of live pigeons are launched into the air as shooters vie to kill the most birds and take home the prize money.
And those who participate in it are not hunters.
Heck, if they were “hunters,” they would find their own damn pigeons to shoot.
They can’t even dignify themselves as “target shooters.” Target shooters are satisfied with clay pigeons.
This is just disgusting.
Drumbeats (Updated) 0
Keith Olbermann’s Cavalcade of Stars: “Grant, Hays, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, . . . Bush.”
Addendum, Later That Same Evening:
Afterthought: He left out Harding, who is perhaps the most apt comparison in terms of both competence and integrity.
Drumbeats 0
Ya know, I don’t think I could stay in a job that required me to lie all the time.
Some of the time, maybe.
But not all the time.
Via Talking Points Memo.
Talking Points 0
Josh Marshall has taken the trouble to compress the Republican candidates ads into one place, so you can watch them once, then Tivo them for the rest of the campaign.
Demo Booboos 0
(Full disclosure: I’ve got the NPR Democratic Debate on my mp3 player, but I don’t know that I’ll listen to it, given my low opinions of candidate debates. Now, if they were real, actual debates, rather than soundbite circuses, that might be something else . . . .)
From FactCheck dot Org:
- Biden linked an $18-per-barrel increase in the price of oil to the Senate resolution declaring Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization – even though it took two months to achieve that hike, and it’s a leap of logic to connect the two events.
- Biden also said, erroneously, that Spanish-speakers didn’t account for the majority of illegal immigrants in the U.S. It’s been a long time since that’s been true.
- Clinton, in blaming Bush for having “de-fanged” the Consumer Product Safety Commission, ignored the fact that the agency has been losing workers for years – even during her husband’s administration.
- And Clinton said the Chinese didn’t want her to come to a UN conference on women in 1995. They may not have liked what she said, but they knew her presence would help perceptions of the conference they were hosting.
Poor Joe. He’s a good Senator and an honorable man, but he does have a bad case of “open mouth, insert foot.”
