Olbermann: Bush's 8 in 8

While Bush is scrambling around trying to find his "legacy," some have accused him of being an incompetent idiot. The fact is that he succeeded rather well in his goal of shredding the Constitution and making Congress irrelevant.

For someone who didn't spend much time in the White House, preferring to whack innocent shrubbery at his Texas "ranch," he managed to get a lot done, even if every single bit of it was damaging to the nation.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann sums up Bush's 8 years of accomplishment in 8 minutes. It's quite a list.





current-events

State of the Union

Shaker Heights is already hit by the sub prime mortgage meltdown

The Shrub gave his State of the Union speech last night; I didn't watch it - what the fuck does he know? Instead, I re-read this article:

The streets are empty. Trash rustles down the road past rusted barbecues, abandoned furniture, sagging homes and gardens turned to weed.

This is Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland and a town ravaged by the sub prime mortgage crisis roiling the United States.

Faded "for sale" signs sit in front of deserted houses. The residents are gone, either in search of new jobs after the factories shut down, or in shame after being evicted for missing their mortgage payments.

A red, white and blue American flag flies over windows and doors which have been boarded up to keep the drug dealers away.

Thieves have stripped many homes of the plumbing, the doors, the windows, the aluminum siding.

The police station parking lot is full. The officers, who have seen their numbers triple since 2006, are coming back from their rounds. They speak of installing alarms in some of the homes claimed by squatters.

The rest of the story here.

And, of course, this shit hasn't even slowed down:

BAGHDAD — A suicide car bomb exploded near an American patrol in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, a day after Sunni Arab guerrillas killed five American soldiers during an ambush on a convoy in Mosul.

There were no American casualties in the latest attack, but one Iraqi was killed and 15 others were wounded, the military said in a statement. The attack is the latest sign that the main front of the insurgency has shifted to northern Iraq.

On Monday, the Sunni Arab guerrillas ambushed the American convoy with a roadside bomb, then sprayed survivors with machine-gun fire from perches in a nearby mosque.

It was the second devastating attack on United States forces this month, bringing the number of fatalities to 36 this year. While American deaths have fallen sharply in Baghdad and Anbar Province, they have not slowed in the north. Three-fifths of the American service members killed this year were in three provinces dominated by Sunni Arabs north of Baghdad.

Three weeks ago, a house rigged with explosives killed six soldiers in Diyala Province.

And there's still this:

Photo by Clayton James Cubitt

current-events

Gonzales is under investigation for (gasp) perjury

Department of Justice official Glenn Fine has revealed that he has an open and on-going investigation into the slimy wetback's persistent lying to Congress.

What's to investigate? He's a weasel, as you can plainly see from the photograph above: while he distracts Vermont senator Patrick Leahy, his mini-me clone is preparing to slip a shiv into Leahy's back.

'Nuff said.


current-events

Those darn furriners!

Shiva Lingam

Those darn furriners are invading the Senate with their heathen religion, gosh darn it.

Read this and then bless the Rev. Wildmon for catching wind of this brazen attempt to take over our government and for his passing us the Good Word before it's too late. Oh, and please to disregard Mr. Barton's bad grammar; he's doing the best he can with his home schooled education.

And oh-oh, watch out: thems is live hyperlinks.

July 10, 2007

Please help us get this information into the hands of as many people as possible by forwarding it to your entire email list of family and friends.

Hindu to open Senate with prayer

Send an email to your senator now, expressing your disappointment in the Senate decision to invite a Hindu to open the session with prayer.

Dear GLENN,

Please read this news report from OneNewsNow.com.

On Thursday, a Hindu chaplain from Reno, Nevada, by the name of Rajan Zed is scheduled to deliver the opening prayer in the U.S. Senate. Zed tells the Las Vegas Sun that in his prayer he will likely include references to ancient Hindu scriptures, including Rig Veda, Upanishards, and Bhagavard-Gita. Historians believe it will be the first Hindu prayer ever read at the Senate since it was formed in 1789.

WallBuilders president David Barton is questioning why the U.S. government is seeking the invocation of a non-monotheistic god. Barton points out that since Hindus worship multiple gods, the prayer will be completely outside the American paradigm, flying in the face of the American motto "One Nation Under God."

TAKE ACTION – Call your Senators at 202-224-3121

"In Hindu, you have not one God, but many, many, many, many, many gods," the Christian historian explains. "And certainly that was never in the minds of those who did the Constitution, did the Declaration [of Independence] when they talked about Creator -- that's not one that fits here because we don't know which creator we're talking about within the Hindu religion."

TAKE ACTION – Click here to send your E-mail today!

Barton says given the fact that Hindus are a tiny constituency of the American public, he questions the motivation of Senate leaders. "This is not a religion that has produced great things in the world," he observes. "You look at India, you look at Nepal -- there's persecution going in both of those countries that is gendered by the religious belief that is present there, and Hindu dominates in both of those countries."

And while Barton acknowledges there is not constitutional problem with a Hindu prayer in the Senate, he wonders about the political side of it. "One definitely wonders about the pragmatic side of it," he says. "What is the message, and why is the message needed? And will it actually communicate anything other than engender with folks like me a lot of questions?"

Barton says he knows of at least seven cases where Christians have lost their bid to express their own faith in a public prayer.

Zed is reportedly the first Hindu to deliver opening prayers in an American state legislature, having done so in both the Nevada State Assembly and Nevada State Senate earlier this year. He has stated that Thursday's prayer will be "universal in approach," despite being drawn from Hindu religious texts.

Take Action

Send an email to your senator now, expressing your disappointment in the Senate decision to invite a Hindu to open the session with prayer.

Click Here to Email Your Senators Now!

If you think our efforts are worthy, would you please support us with a small gift? Thank you for caring enough to get involved.

Please help us get this information into the hands of as many people as possible by forwarding it to your family and friends.

Sincerely,

Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman
American Family Association

P.S. Please forward this e-mail message to your family and friends!

-------------------

Om, padme, om

"They hate us for our freedoms"

President Bush is fond of repeating the inane statement that, “They hate us for our freedoms.”(sic) The National Intelligence Estimate said, “No, they hate the US government for its Middle East policy.” In Michael Moore’s new flick, “Sicko,” an American resident in Paris says that in France the government is afraid of the people, whereas in America, the people are afraid of the government.

Which is probably an odd collection of quotes to kick off the July 4th weekend, but something to chew on as our Republic descends into anarchy and lawlessness.

To wit: Cheney claims that the vice presidency is not part of the executive / White House refuses congressional subpoenas / Air Force Academy cadets are ordered to join fundamentalist congregation / Like it or not, we are building permanent military bases in Iraq / Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia was a bagman for the CIA’s rigging of Italian elections / CIA releases “family jewels”: tales of murder, coups, torture, and the American promotion of dictators everywhere /

Have an interesting Fourth of July, Gentle Readers.




current-events

The myth of Congressional Democrats' helplessness

The Democratic presidential candidates had a big debate last week but I didn't watch it. I mean, Who cares? I knew that they would try to weasel out of their shitty vote on the war funding, and that most of them would say what they did in fact say: "Hey, we tried to end the war, but Bush vetoed it, and now we're stuck."

What a bunch of tripe. This shit isn't rocket science, Gentle Readers. This here vid from YouTube lays it out pretty simply.






current-events

Abortion ruling blessing in disguise?

Eloquence in chalk

Photo by Alexandra Lee. (License: Creative Commons Attribution)

Killfile writes: The Court's 5-4 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart will very likely not prevent a single abortion. What it does do, however, is demonstrate a clear and unambiguous consensus from the Court that the Congress does have the authority and the power to legislate, based entirely upon moral grounds, the legality of a medical procedure. The precedent set in Gonzales v. Carhart, in conjunction with that set McCulloch v Maryland, fundamentally alters the landscape of the abortion debate and, with Democrats in control of the Congress and (potentially) the Presidency in 2008, the reaction from the American Right should be one of overwhelming terror, not jubilation.

Continue reading: Chickens Before They Hatch -- The Misplaced Jubilance of the Anti-Abortion Right