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September 30, 2004

Kerry Beats Bush Like an Old Mule

Kerry beat Bush senseless during the first (and only significant) debate tonite on national TV. Kerry was confident, concise, and confronted Bush on his numerous failures (see Failures, Miserable in the Encyclopedia). Bush stammered, stopped in mid sentence, and most bizzarely, dropped into smooth speech when regurgitating the speechlets that Karl Rove undoubtably forced him to recite over and over. It was like he was on drugs, or drunk. Kevin Drum said it best:

Bush's performance was mediocre, I thought. He was smirking too much during the cutaways, he alternated between defensiveness and an unattractive belligerence, and he repeated the same phrases a little too much. Staying on message is fine, but sounding like you've been hypnotized isn't.

The major news outlets are calling it for Kerry, but of course, by the morning, there will be a recount and Bush will be declared the "winner" by noon.

Posted by Steven at 10:16 PM | Comments (0)

September 29, 2004

How to Debate George Bush

by Al Gore

This year, as usual, the dominance of attack advertisements on television has made it hard to get a clear picture of where the candidates stand. But the same media revolution that brought us the 30-second commercial also brought us televised presidential debates - and ever since the first of them 44 years ago, they have played a crucial role in shaping voters' opinions of the candidates.

America has long been devoted to the clash between opposing advocates as the best way to evaluate information. In this era of media clutter, it is all the more important for voters to have this moment of simple clarity when the candidates appear before them stripped of advisers, sound bites and media spin.

My advice to John Kerry is simple: be prepared for the toughest debates of your career. While George Bush's campaign has made "lowering expectations" into a high art form, the record is clear - he's a skilled debater who uses the format to his advantage. There is no reason to expect any less this time around. And if anyone truly has "low expectations" for an incumbent president, that in itself is an issue.

But more important than his record as a debater is Mr. Bush's record as a president. And therein lies the true opportunity for John Kerry - because notwithstanding the president's political skills, his performance in office amounts to a catastrophic failure. And the debates represent a time to hold him to account. For the voters, these debates represent an opportunity to explore four relevant questions: Is America on the right course today, or are we off track? If we are headed in the wrong direction, what happened and who is responsible? How do we get back on the right path to a safer, more secure, more prosperous America? And, finally, who is best able to lead us to that path?

A clear majority of Americans believe that we are heading in the wrong direction. The reasons are obvious. The situation in Iraq is getting worse. Osama bin Laden is alive and plotting against us. About 2.7 million manufacturing jobs have been lost. Forty-five million Americans are living without health insurance. Medicare premiums are the highest they've ever been. Environmental protections have been eviscerated.

In the coming debates, Senator Kerry has an opportunity to show voters that today American troops and American taxpayers are shouldering a huge burden with no end in sight because Mr. Bush took us to war on false premises and with no plan to win the peace. Mr. Kerry has an opportunity to demonstrate the connection between job losses and Mr. Bush's colossal tax break for the wealthy. And he can remind voters that Mr. Bush has broken his pledge to expand access to health care.

Senator Kerry can also use these debates to speak directly to voters and lay out a hopeful vision for our future. If voters walk away from the debates with a better understanding of where our country is, how we got here and where each candidate will lead us if elected, then America will be the better for it. The debate tomorrow should not seek to discover which candidate would be more fun to have a beer with. As Jon Stewart of the "The Daily Show'' nicely put in 2000, "I want my president to be the designated driver.''

The debates aren't a time for rhetorical tricks. It's a time for an honest contest of ideas. Mr. Bush's unwillingness to admit any mistakes may score him style points. But it makes hiring him for four more years too dangerous a risk. Stubbornness is not strength; and Mr. Kerry must show voters that there is a distinction between the two.

If Mr. Bush is not willing to concede that things are going from bad to worse in Iraq, can he be trusted to make the decisions necessary to change the situation? If he insists on continuing to pretend it is "mission accomplished," can he accomplish the mission? And if the Bush administration has been so thoroughly wrong on absolutely everything it predicted about Iraq, with the horrible consequences that have followed, should it be trusted with another four years?

The biggest single difference between the debates this year and four years ago is that President Bush cannot simply make promises. He has a record. And I hope that voters will recall the last time Mr. Bush stood on stage for a presidential debate. If elected, he said, he would support allowing Americans to buy prescription drugs from Canada. He promised that his tax cuts would create millions of new jobs. He vowed to end partisan bickering in Washington. Above all, he pledged that if he put American troops into combat: "The force must be strong enough so that the mission can be accomplished. And the exit strategy needs to be well defined."

Comparing these grandiose promises to his failed record, it's enough to make anyone want to, well, sigh.

Posted by Steven at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

Lone Star Iconoclast Endorses Kerry

Never heard of the Lone Star Iconoclast? It's the local paper in Crawford, TX. That's right, Bush's "home town" paper endorses his opponent.

The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda," the newspaper said in its editorial. "Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry.

Posted by Steven at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)

Cowardly Broadcast System

Salon has an exclusive story that is essentially a retelling of an Ed Bradley piece that 60 Minutes has "spiked" (i.e. dropped from broadcast) thanks to the Rather screw up.

One measure of the debacle is a "60 Minutes Wednesday" segment that millions of viewers now will now not see: a hard-hitting report making a powerful case that in trying to build support for the Iraq war, the Bush administration either knowingly deceived the American people about Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities or was grossly credulous. CBS news president Andrew Heyward spiked the story this week, saying it would be "inappropriate" during the election campaign.

The importance that CBS placed on the report was evident by its unusual length: It was slated to run a full half hour, double the usual 15 minutes of a single segment. Although months of reporting went into the production, CBS abruptly decided that it would be "inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election," in the words of a statement that network spokeswoman Kelli Edwards gave the New York Times.

Posted by Steven at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2004

Canadians, Draft Dodgers and Iraq

An editorial in today's Globe and Mail.

When you have no reasonable arguments to make, throw insults.

That's what some Americans, including the "national commander" of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, have done regarding the plan by residents of Nelson, B.C., to build a monument to the 125,000 men and women who escaped from the United States rather than participate in its invasion of Vietnam.

These Americans call such war resisters "cowards." Canada is a "country of cowards," according to one American, and "Yanks" like him are "smarter than you, tougher than you, and we will kick your inbred ass."

Of course, not all Americans share this particular view. A woman from Maryland has written that parents in the United States "bless" Canada, the "land of the truly free." In 1967, Noam Chomsky dedicated his first book to those "brave young men who refuse to serve in a criminal war." When Michael Moore spoke in Vancouver in 2002, his suggestion that a statue should be put up for war resisters received thunderous applause from the audience.

But some U.S. veterans are asking President George W. Bush to "communicate" with Prime Minister Paul Martin in hopes that the proposed monument is scrapped.

This issue is important, not only in its own right, but primarily because the United States is currently fighting a war in Iraq, and history is repeating itself.

In Vietnam, then-president Lyndon Johnson fabricated a phony attack on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin as his excuse to escalate the war and bomb North Vietnam in 1964. Although the United States lost the military conflict, more than three million Indochinese were killed, with more than 58,000 Americans dead or missing.

By the standards established by the United States and its allies after the Second World War at Nuremburg and in the UN Charter, Mr. Johnson and his advisers would be considered war criminals.

As everyone now knows, the current Bush administration made two serious allegations as their excuse to begin what UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called an "illegal" war: that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that ties existed between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

This act of "preventive" war is a violation of international law, and George Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and others in that circle may also be considered war criminals.

There is another ominous parallel between the attacks on Vietnam and Iraq. Retired U.S. general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, has said that the war in Iraq "is far graver than Vietnam," and that it is "achieving bin Laden's ends." The war has been a boon to fanatics who use it to recruit more terrorists. Richard Clarke, former U.S. anti-terrorism chief, says that the invasion of Iraq has actually increased the threat of terrorism, not only against the United States, but around the world. "I've never seen it so bad between the office of the Secretary of Defence and the military," says Mr. Odom. "There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster."

One of the many ironies is that Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld and others in the administration were the true draft dodgers. They supported the war against the Vietnamese - as long as other people, disproportionately poor and non-white, fought and died.

On the other hand, millions of Americans who opposed the Vietnam War put themselves on the line out of moral principle - refusing orders to ship out, demonstrating, organizing peace networks, burning draft cards, and going to jail. Surely these people are more properly called "war resisters."

Now, as then, a number of U.S. troops are refusing to fight in Iraq, and some are again seeking asylum in Canada.

When I escaped from the U.S. Marine Corps and arrived in Canada (exactly 35 years ago), I was overwhelmed by the generosity and support from everyone that I met here. When I received my Canadian citizenship, the magistrate congratulated me on my decision. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Canada for providing sanctuary to those of us who did not want to kill Vietnamese people.

I hope that we Canadians will continue our tradition of accepting those who, today, "refuse to serve in a criminal war."

Peter G. Prontzos teaches political science at Langara College and is a member of the Peace and Justice Committee of the City of Vancouver.

Posted by Steven at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)

Health Care Costs Rise for Four Straight Years

Families USA is reporting that health care costs have risen in each of the four last years, while the quaility of health care has fallen in the same period.

In the past four years, Americans have spent an ever-growing portion of their paychecks on health care and for the most part gotten less for their money, forcing millions into the ranks of the uninsured or personal bankruptcy, according to government figures and several independent assessments.

Nationwide, workers' costs for health insurance have risen by 36 percent since 2000, dwarfing the average 12.4 percent increase in earnings since President Bush took office, the liberal consumer group Families USA reports in an analysis scheduled for release today. The number of Americans spending more than a quarter of their income on medical costs climbed from 11.6 million in 2000 to 14.3 million this year, according to the group.

The news comes as many companies are dropping medical coverage entirely or trimming their benefit packages, while taxpayers are subsidizing millions of people below the poverty line who have enrolled in the state-run Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program, a separate survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found. Hardest hit have been low-income working families, Hispanics and people with chronic conditions such as diabetes, asthma or depression.

"The cost of family health insurance is rapidly approaching the gross earnings of a full-time minimum-wage worker," said Drew Altman, president and chief executive of the nonprofit foundation, which compiled the data. "If these trends continue, workers and employers will find it increasingly difficult to pay for family health coverage, and every year the share of Americans who have employer-sponsored health coverage will fall."

That trend has already begun. From 2001 to 2004, the proportion of workers receiving health coverage through an employer fell from 65 percent to 61 percent, according to the latest Kaiser data. That decline translated into 5 million fewer jobs providing health benefits, with the sharpest drop in small businesses.

And the other headline today: Bush Leads in Polls.

Who is voting for this madness?

Posted by Steven at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)

Only Bush/Cheney Volunteers Can Attend Rallies

The NY Times is running a story about how the Bush/Cheney campaign is now only inviting volunteers to their "public" rallies. After demanding (one would presume illegal) "loyalty oaths" earlier in the year, they are now extending their anti-democratic notion of proxy government (where you can only see your representatives if you give them gifts) down from the "Ranger" and "Pioneer" model (i.e. give Bush/Cheney $100K and you get a rubber chicken dinner and photo op with Bush) to the peon. If you do volunteer work for Bush, you can go to a rally and scream your lungs out in support for him.

"It's like going to Disney World, only instead of the cartoon character saying you have to be this tall to ride, they have a picture of Rush Limbaugh saying you have to be this right-wing to get in," Mr. Shea said.

But Bush aides say that chasing swing voters may be a waste of time. "We believe that the number of undecideds or independent voters is smaller this election than ever before," said Mr. Dickens, the campaign spokesman.

The Bush campaign may be packing its audiences with die-hard supporters, he said, but it is holding its events in swing districts where every extra enthusiastic volunteer can make a difference.

Oh joy ... where do I sign up? NOT.

Posted by Steven at 08:17 AM | Comments (0)

$50 Oil is Here (To Stay)

Oil closed at $49.64 yesterday and broke $50/bbl. in after hours trading as fears of a war in Nigeria, coupled with the Gulf of Mexico production shutdown thanks to a near-Biblical swarm of hurricanes (is anyone who believes in this paying attention?) this month, combined to drive production down to dangerously low levels. Across the US, regular gas now averages $1.97 but most people are paying more than $2/gal. and there will probably never be a lower price. Filling up a Chevy Suburban now costs $100 for most Americans. Now do you feel the burn?

Update

Oil traded at $50.47 overnight. $50 oil is in the house.

Read more at the WaPo story.

Posted by Steven at 08:09 AM | Comments (0)

September 24, 2004

Canada Not Buying the Bullshit

The Toronto Star editorial from yesterday:

I just can't believe it. After misleading the world about the threat which Iraq posed, after implying that the United Nations was irrelevant, after preemptively invading Iraq without U.N. approval and against the wishes of many countries and millions of people around the world and after getting bogged down in a guerrilla war with religious militants and insurgents in Iraq, President Bush went to the U.N. for help on Sept. 21.

However, he did not apologize for starting an unnecessary war. He did not apologize for insulting the U.N. before the war. He did not admit that the preemptive invasion was unjustified, impulsive and ill-planned. He did not plead for help. He basically acted tough and challenged the U.N. to provide support suggesting that it would be in the best interests of its members.

But, think about it. What was Bush actually doing? He knows that many Americans are questioning his integrity. He knows that many people feel that it was unnecessary to invade Iraq. He knows that he did not foresee the after-effects of the invasion. He knows that the war is costing hundreds of billions of American dollars and thousands of lives. He knows that the invasion has increased threats to people around the world. He knows that America is bogged down in Iraq and will have difficulty getting out without help. He knows that American elections are imminent. He knows that he is in a tough situation and he knows that current fiasco might jeopardize his chances of re-election.

In fact, Bush was trying to scare the U.N. into providing support because he wants to get America out of a predicament and cement his own political victory this fall. He was not asking for help because he really wants to make the U.N. relevant or because he really thinks that it is in the best interests of its members. History shows that the Bush administration is deceitful and manipulative and will use the U.N. or not as it suits its interests.

Given this, the U.N. should stick it to the U.S. and its allies, wish them good luck and tell them that it will not provide security or any other aid after an unauthorized war, which many people now know was unnecessary.

The coalition partners were the ones who created the current mess in Iraq. So, they should be the ones who provide the security, pay for reconstruction, clean up the mess and lead Iraq to democracy if they feel that to do so is in everyone's best interests.

In addition, they should be left on their own to pay every time they attack a country preemptively or preventatively without U.N. authorization. Maybe, then, they would check their intelligence information more thoroughly, think things through more clearly and get world support before preemptively attacking another country.

Posted by Steven at 08:16 AM | Comments (0)

Hope Your SUV is a Sub

Hey residents of Miami, New Orleans, and New York City who drive SUVs and light trucks. Good news. An irreversable melting of the Antartic galciers has begun and you can kiss your cities good bye in a few decades.

Spurred by warming coastal air and waters, some of Antarctica's glaciers have accelerated their seaward march, fresh observations show, suggesting that ocean levels might be irreversibly on the rise for centuries to come.

Hope you like spending billions on dykes and other temporary measures keeping the oceans from drowning your homes. You've already spent billions killing thousands of Middle Easterners taking the mineral resources under their feet so you can ride a few feet higher off the ground, instead of heeding the warnings back in 1979 and learning to use your technological advantage to avoid this problem entirely.

"Nice shoot'n, Tex!", is all I can say.

Posted by Steven at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)

GOP Spreading Lies (Again)

The NY Times is reporting that the GOP has admitted mailing fliers to rural voters in West Virginia and Arkansas saying that Liberals will "ban the Bible" and force homosexuality on youth.

They ADMITTED IT.

The mailing is the latest evidence of the emphasis Republicans are putting on motivating conservative Christian voters to vote this fall. But as the appeals become public, they also risk alienating moderate and swing voters.

An editorial on Sept. 22 in The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, for example, asked, "Holy Moley! Who concocts this gibberish?"

"Most Americans see morality more complexly," the editorial said. "Many think a higher morality is found in Christ's command to help the needy, prevent war and pursue other humanitarian goals. Churchgoers of this sort aren't likely to believe childish allegations that Democrats want to ban the Bible."

In statement, Senator John Edwards, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, said President Bush "should condemn the practice immediately and tell everyone associated with the campaign to never use tactics like this again."

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, called the mailings an ugly contrast to Mr. Bush's public statements. Although the president has called for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, he often emphasizes the need for tolerance as well.

"The president takes more or less the high road and his henchman and allies on the right have been let loose to conduct these ugly, divisive smear campaigns," Mr. Foreman said. "It is wedge politics at its worst."

In any event, the Bush campaign appears confident about its religious appeal.

Well, that pretty much says it all, IMHO. They lie, lie, LIE. If you believe anything they say without some basis in scientific proof, you're nuts.

Posted by Steven at 08:03 AM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2004

Open Right-Wing Mouthpiece, Insert Global Foot

OK, by now you might have heard Richard Perle's year-old blooper about Baghdad having a great Chimpy Square by, well, today. While everyone is busy noticing some of the failed predictions, I thought I'd revisit a smug piece of crap written by conservative zombie, Mark Steyn, and published in the London Telegraph, April 12^th, 2003.

Steyns naïve "a year from now" predictions have had over a year to come true, and they couldn't have been less accurate. Steyn starts his foot-gobbling article with this thoughtful paragraph:

On to the next quagmire! Don't get mired in the bog of yesterday's conventional wisdom, when the movers and shakers have already moved on to new disasters. America may have won the war but it's already losing the peace! Here's your at-a-glance guide to what the experts who got everything wrong last week will be getting wrong next week:

Steyn doesn't stop being a childish dick there. He ridicules negative predictions by countering with a "MBITRW" for "Meanwhile Back In the Real World" retort.

Let's look at the "real world" Mark lives in:

1. A year from now, Basra will have a lower crime rate than most London boroughs.
   [Ed Note: I don't get local news from London, but I haven't heard much about people getting kidnapped and decapitated there as of late.]


2. No [humanitarian] disaster will occur, any more than it did during the mythical "brutal Afghan winter" and its attendant humanitarian scaremongering. ("The UN Children's Fund has estimated that as many as 100,000 Afghan children could die of cold, disease and hunger." They didn't.)
   [Ed Note: As of now the only place that you can reliably get electricity in Iraq is on prisoners' genitals.]


3. There will be terrible acts of suicide-bomber depravity in the months ahead, but no widespread resentment at or resistance of the Western military presence.
   [Ed Note: Oh yeah, it's a love-in over there.]


4. Obviously, it would be preferable if the late Saddam's future media appearances were confined to guest-hosting Good Morning, Hell! with Osama. But if he's reduced to bin Laden's current schedule - mailing in bi-monthly audio cassettes of Islamist boilerplate - what's the difference? Even if he'd escaped to Syria, he'd be spending the rest of his days as a Bedouin goat-herd. Right now, Boy Assad is doing his best not to attract Rummy's attention.
   [Ed Note: With Saddam Hussein in prison, it's clear that he has little to do with resistance to the "Coalition."]


5. There's nothing in the least bit "cobbled" about [Iraq]. The three Ottoman vilayets of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra have been bound together by geography and trade for millennia. As a coherent jurisdiction, it makes more sense than, say, Belgium. As long as you respect its inherently confederal nature, it'll work fine: think St Kitts and Nevis writ large.
   [Ed Note: The latest Intelligence Estimate predicts civil war in Steyn's "coherent jurisdiction"]


6. [Turkey's attitude toward the Kurds is] Nothing to worry about. The Kurds are the only part of the indigenous population that were part of the liberation force from the start. They're not going anywhere now. They'll settle for being Scotland or Quebec rather than Pakistan.
   [Ed Note: Hence the bombing of Assyrian and Turkomen ethnic targets...]


7. Effective immediately, Palestinian suicide bombers are no longer subsidised by Baghdad; in Jordan, the Saddamite boot is off the Hashemite windpipe; Syria is under notice to behave. Despite the best efforts of Western doom-mongers to rouse the Arab street, its attitude will remain: start the jihad without me.
   [Ed Note: Ah, the glorious peace in Israel! Without Saddam's largesse Palestinian bombing has... gotten worse.]


8. The pilfering of Iraq's oil has just ended. Saddam parcelled his country's wealth out to those companies willing to cosy up to him. The oil business will now be opened up to competitive tender. The only North American politician with a personal stake in any of this is not Bush, Cheney or any of their Texan oilpatch pals, but the Prime Minister of Canada, whose daughter is married to TotalFinaElf's biggest shareholder. The liberation of Iraq is a victory for real markets over French cronyism.
   [Ed Note: Can you say "no bid contract"?]


9. Actually, I almost wish [we won't find WMDs]. Anything that turns up now will be assumed to have been planted. If I were Washington, I'd consider burying anything I found. After all, an America that feels no need to bother faking justifications for invasion would be far more alarming to most Europeans. Instead, horrible things will turn up, but will never be "conclusive" enough for the French, who've got all the receipts anyway.
   [Ed Note: Wish granted. Iraq is so clean you can eat off it.


10. In a year's time, Iraq will be, at a bare minimum, the least badly governed state in the Arab world and, at best, pleasant, civilised and thriving. In short: not a bad three weeks' work.
    [Ed Note: I'm willing to dole out plenty of criticism to Arab governments, but the most positive thing you can say about Iraq is that "anarachy is better than no government at all."]

I think that no further comment is needed. This was just Steyn's "rebuttal" text. The full text is on the Telegraph site. Read and enjoy.

Then ask yourself, "Why are any of these idiots still employed as commentators?"

Posted by at 01:24 PM | Comments (0)

Martha Stewart Living (in the Prison of Her Choice)

Martha Stewart is going to prison ... on her schedule and at the prison of her choice.

WTF?

A woman worth millions wants to "attend" prison in Danbury because it's closer to her mother? Buy her a goddamned home next to the prison, bitch!

I think this is all a ruse. She wanted Danbury to be near NYC, and her staff of loyal followers (aka. "employees"). The mother story was another lie, in a web of lies, which got her thrown in prison in the first place. Martha, the rules do apply to you.

Posted by Steven at 08:32 AM | Comments (1)

September 21, 2004

Don't Buy A Home In Texas

The LA Times is running a story about how home owners in Texas cannot under any circumstances sue their home builders for any defects in their products.

Builders like Bob Perry, the man who has given George Bush more money than any other Texan and who financed the Swift Boats for Truth slanders against John Kerry this summer.

Texas homebuilders are big contributors to Republican political campaigns.

In the 2002 election cycle, Bob Perry and his wife, Doylene, the owners of Houston-based Perry Homes, gave $4.2 million to Texas candidates and their political action committees, including $905,000 to the Texas Republican Party. Dubbed by the Dallas Morning News the "most influential man in Texas you have never met," the reclusive Perry gave three times more money to state politicians than anyone else in 2001-02.

A longtime friend and ally of Karl Rove, President Bush's political strategist, Perry also gave most of the money that funded this summer's ad campaign by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacking the military record of Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry.

As a homebuilder, Perry had plenty of allies in winning a business-friendly state government. The group that has given the most money to Texas politicians — other than the two parties — is Texans for Lawsuit Reform.

The group gave $1.98 million to Texas candidates in the 2002 election, which saw Republicans win a clean sweep of the governor's office, Legislature and Supreme Court.

The Legislature didn't give a hearing to the consumer-backed home lemon law last year.

Instead, lawmakers passed another bill drafted by the homebuilders. It says homeowners must take their complaint to a new state commission — whose nine-member board is dominated by builders and lacks any consumer representative — before they consider going to arbitration. The commission chooses the inspectors who will determine the "factual" basis on which arbitration will be based.

This "neutral" evaluation can lead to a speedy resolution and "avoid time-consuming lawsuits," the commission says.

Consumer advocates are skeptical. "This commission was created by the builders for the builders. They didn't want our input. It has nothing to do with consumer protection," Cobarruvias said.

Indeed, the new brochure says: "Attention Builders and Remodelers! The Texas Residential Construction Commission serves you, your business and your industry."

This state is run by a bunch of "Fuck You" Republicans (Motto: Dick sez "go fuck yerself!"). Settle here at your own risk.

Posted by Steven at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)

Back To School

Well, school's back in session and so everyone's thinking about it. Even George W. Bush is giving his report in front of class. Actually, he's speaking to the U.N., but he was told that he was reading his essay "What I did on my Summer vacation." Apparently, he fucked up Iraq. Who knew?

College campuses continue to be a battleground between left-wing idealists academics, and well-funded scumbags on the right.

OK, OK, as a left-wing pundit, I am duty-bound to be honest, and to be honest, college campuses are an arena for some pretty embarassing left-wing antics. Michelle Goldberg's Salon Article about the American Film Renaissance festival notes:

...a 45-minute documentary about double standards and p.c. excesses on college campuses, called "Brainwashing 101." The latter was one of the better things in the festival, capturing very real abuses of conservative students' First Amendment rights by doctrinaire administrators and hysterical speech codes. It included an account of a college Republican dragged through a grueling disciplinary process after hanging a flier for a conservative event at his campus's multicultural center, an incident that should rile civil libertarians of all persuasions.

Duly noted, Michelle. Of course, we can fill the other 23 hours and 15 minutes in the day cataloging the antics of the right-wing scumbags.

You might want to start with Josh Holland recent article Backlash 101 which dutifully documents some pretty outrageous stuff:

Savvy organizers have seized on all that righteous anger and created an appealing image for today's young conservative: rebellious and oddly counter-cultural, courageously fighting the power. They've also co-opted the mocking, confrontational tone of bygone campus radicals in their tactics. So we see stunts like "affirmative-action bake sales" (in which people of different races are charged different prices for cookies) or the announcement of "whites only" scholarships on campuses across the country.

Overall, Josh's article focuses on the money trail leading back to the usual gang of pathological liars and crypto-fascist fucksticks.

Money flowing the opposite way, from college campus to right-wing groups, is the subject of Scott Jaschik's Salon article. Jaschik uses FEC data to profile the political contributions coming from academia:

Even places where people make more donations to Kerry than Bush don't always fit the liberal stereotype. Three employees of Morehouse College, a historically black institution in Atlanta, have made federal campaign contributions since the start of last year. A $300 donation went to Kerry, $400 to Joe Lieberman's doomed (and not terribly liberal) presidential bid, and $500 went to Republican Senate candidate Johnny Isakson.

Imagine that. Academics have a variety of opinions. Whoda thunk it? Certainly not the lying liars on the right who whine that the left has title to the Ivory Tower.

Finally, we have the Arizona Secretary of State and the Pima County Registrar's Office teaming up with the local Fox affilliate's news team (any surprise?) to threaten Arizona college students with time in a Federal Prison should they have the audacity to register to vote. This despite a Supreme Court case establishing the right of college students to register and vote in the locality where the spend most of their year. Oh, and Dick Cheney is from Wyoming, right? Anyway, more on this here.

Posted by at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)

Kerry's Top Ten List

John Kerry was on Letterman last night. His Top Ten List is:

10. No estate tax for families with at least two U.S. presidents.

9. W-2 Form is now Dubya-2 Form.

8. Under the simplified tax code, your refund check goes directly to Halliburton.

7. The reduced earned income tax credit is so unfair, it just makes me want to tear out my lustrous, finely groomed hair.

6. Attorney General (John) Ashcroft gets to write off the entire U.S. Constitution.

5. Texas Rangers can take a business loss for trading Sammy Sosa.

4. Eliminate all income taxes; just ask Teresa (Heinz Kerry) to cover the whole damn thing.

3. Cheney can claim Bush as a dependent.

2. Hundred-dollar penalty if you pronounce it "nuclear" instead of "nucular."

1. George W. Bush gets a deduction for mortgaging our entire future.

Posted by Steven at 08:55 AM | Comments (0)

What Do You Have To Do To Be Labeled A Terrorist?

CNN has a story about "bombing suspect" Eric Rudolph, who's laywers are trying to get him released on a technicality because (I presume) they discovered some abortion clinics he missed firebombing. But this post isn't about that. It's about labels.

Eric Rudolph is a terrorist. That's the label I apply to him.

CNN says he's a "bombing suspect". Not a terrorist. Look, he doesn't have to be convicted of anything to be called a terrorist. The American media has labeled all sorts of unindicted individuals "terrorists" with only John Ashcroft's say-so, so why not Rudolph?

Could it be that he blows up women and first responders for Jesus?

If he suddenly sprouted a turban, would CNN start calling him what they call everyone else who wears Middle East garb and blows things up a terrorist?

He's on record saying things that a terrorist says, and he clearly believes he's on a mission from God, which in my book makes him a Grade A terrorist. Just like the cracker who blew up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. And the two little shits who shot up Columbine HS. And the SLA. Manson's crowd. And so on. TERRORISTS. Not "bombing suspects".

Some one explain it to me so my head will stop throbbing.

Posted by Steven at 08:16 AM | Comments (0)

Bush and Character

Today's E. J. Dionne column speaks about Bush's lack of candor about his activities in 1972, and that this is relevant to the election since Bush is clearly running on "character" instead of his last four years (our lawyers insist we refer to that as MISERABLE FAILURE).

E.J. quotes Bush responding to reporter's questions about the CBS document flap:

"There are a lot of questions and they need to be answered," Bush told the Union Leader in Manchester, N.H., last week. "I think what needs to happen is people need to take a look at the documents, how they were created, and let the truth come out."

Isn't this like Jeffery Dahmer taunting the police to do a better job finding mass murderers? Bush himself is the issue in this and he's acting like he's a third-party in the whole affair. All he has to do is come clean on 1972 and "the truth [will] come out."

Let me speculate why he won't:

• He knocked up a woman who later in '73 had an illegal abortion
• His cocaine use made it impossible for him to fly as well as take the AF physical
• Maybe coke and liquor don't mix as well as he originally thought

Of course, the likelyhood we'll actually find these things out is zero, at least as long as Rove is breathing.

Posted by Steven at 08:08 AM | Comments (1)

September 20, 2004

Bush in '72: A Primer

Salon has a succinct (if not long) review of President Bush's exciting and largely military free year of 1972.

• In May 1972 Bush left the Houston Guard base for Alabama. According to Air Force regulations, Bush was supposed to obtain prior authorization before leaving Texas to join a new Guard unit in Alabama.

  But Bush failed to get the authorization.

• In requesting a permanent transfer to a nonflying unit in Alabama in 1972, Bush was supposed to sign an acknowledgment that he received relocation counseling.

  But no such document exists.

• He was supposed to receive a certification of satisfactory participation from his unit.

  But Bush did not.

• He was supposed to sign and give a letter of resignation to his Texas unit commander.

  But Bush did not.

• He was supposed to receive discharge orders from the Texas Air National Guard adjutant general.

  But Bush did not.

• He was supposed to receive new assignment orders for the Air Force Reserves.

  But Bush did not.

• On his transfer request Bush was asked to list his "permanent address."

  But he wrote down a post office box number for the campaign he was working for on a temporary basis.

It never occurred to me that he violated dozens of military rules, and that the missing paper trail would be this rich. What a complete cock-up the press has made of this by not doing even a simple amount of research and turning up this treasure trove of back-scratching.

Posted by Steven at 08:23 PM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2004

Iraq Meltdown

It looks like Bush is taking some flack from his own party on his rosy view of Iraq:

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona said Bush was not being "as straight as maybe we'd like to see" with the American people about Iraq.

McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on "Fox News Sunday" that it was "a serious mistake" not to have had enough troops in place "after the initial successes" and that the mistake had led to "very, very significant" difficulties...

Speaking on CBS's "Face the Nation," Jon Kyl, Arizona's junior senator -- also a Republican -- said "hand-wringing" about the situation in Iraq would not win the war.

"War is tough, and there are casualties. And just before victory, sometimes, it gets most violent," said Kyl, chairman of the subcommittee on terrorism, technology and homeland security of the Judiciary Committee.

Appearing on the same program, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a fellow Republican, disagreed with Kyl that the United States was anywhere near victory.

"I don't think we're winning. In all due respect to my friend Jon Kyl, the term 'hand-wringing' is a little misplaced here," Hagel said.

"The fact is, a crisp, sharp analysis of our policies are required. We didn't do that in Vietnam, and we saw 11 years of casualties mount to the point where we finally lost.

"The fact is, we're in trouble. We're in deep trouble in Iraq," said Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees...

On ABC's "This Week," Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana and Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware both had critical words for the administration's handling of Iraq...

Lugar, who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said "the incompetence in the administration" led to only $1 billion spent out of $18 billion appropriated last year for reconstruction efforts.

If you think these guys are off the reservation now, just wait until after the election. There are a lot of this people in this country that are fooling themselves about what is going on over there. These senators know what is going on, and they want to be as far away as possible when that wall of denial comes tumbling down.

Posted by at 10:17 PM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2004

American Film Renaissance festival

Dallas' Hotel Intercontinental hosted the inaugural American Film Renaissance festival this week. Salon's Michelle Goldberg courageously reviewed it for us.

Like so many of the people at the inaugural American Film Renaissance festival, Medved spoke with an easygoing Rotary Club ordinariness that belied the seething anger underneath. There was none of Zell Miller's fire and brimstone in his voice as he blandly called for more demeaning portrayals of gay people in the mass media, saying, "Every single image of homosexuality you see on TV is positive. It's not only positive, it's glowing. It's saintly. When was the last time you saw a nasty gay character? A degraded gay character?"

Medved is a bigot, but he's also on to something. Many people on the coasts haven't reckoned with the true cultural complexion of vast swaths of this country. They tend to make movies and write articles and produce albums as if their fellow citizens inhabited the same reality that they do. But there is another world in America, a through-the-looking-glass universe in which conservative Christians, despite dominating all the branches of government, feel persecuted by the state, in which gun control is seen as the natural precursor to genocide and Bill Clinton is suspected of covering up Iraqi responsibility for the Oklahoma City bombings. Residents of this febrile realm believe they're the majority and that sinister, cringing liberals are denying them their cultural due. Convinced that the film industry is conspiring against them, they want to create a cornfed Hollywood of their very own, from the grassroots up.

According to the story that festival founder Jim Hubbard, 35, told repeatedly to journalists and attendees, he was inspired to create the American Film Renaissance after he and his wife, a pretty, bouffant blonde named Ellen, went to an art house theater one night and were distressed to find that their only choices were Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" and the Frida Kahlo biopic "Frida," about "a communist artist."

"Where are the films for normal people?" he asked.

The American Film Renaissance was created to give films for "normal people" -- in this iteration, the far right -- an outlet. It was held at Dallas' Studio Movie Grill, a theater with waiter service where audiences can order burgers, pizza, nachos and other greasy snacks while they watch movies. According to Hubbard, the timing wasn't intentional, but Sept. 11 was invoked over and over again in the festival's selections, the burning towers shown to punctuate all sorts of arguments about liberal treachery.

Posted by Steven at 10:54 AM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2004

Hummer Dinger

Apparently, some guys feel so inadequate that even the mighty Hummer H1 isn't big enough to soothe their fragile egos. Now you can get the CXT, a 12 ton "pickup" truck based on a commerical dump truck frame.

Called CXT, for commercial extreme truck, it dwarfs the beefy Hummer H2 sport-utility pickup and even could call the hulking H1 military version "junior."

The CXT is 2 feet taller, 4½ feet longer, twice as heavy and totes more than five times the cargo weight of H2. "You can put the Hummer in back and take it with you," quips Nick Matich, vice president at International Truck and Engine.

It's also about twice the price of H2, about the same as H1. It starts at $93,000, runs $105,000 typically equipped and tops out at $115,000 with DVD player, leather upholstery, tilting dump box and rear-view camera.

Playboy Magazine used to (famously) ask "What sort of man reads Playboy?" This begs the question, "How small does your penis have to be to want this?"

Posted by Steven at 03:59 PM | Comments (2)

September 09, 2004

Welcome Back

We're Back!

Posted by Steven at 09:08 PM | Comments (0)