In his acceptance speech last night Sean Penn mentioned the "signs of hatred" he passed on the way into the Academy Awards. He was referring specifically to Shirley Phelps Roper and the rest of her "God Hates Fags" brethren from the Westboro Baptist Church. Since I didn't have a ticket to get into the awards ceremony I spent a bit of time interviewing Shirley Phelps Roper. Note that many of my questions were culled from the comments section of a video I posted last year of Shirley Phelps Roper also from outside of the Academy Awards.
NOTE: There are some really entertaining parts if you can stand to make it through the entire video!
What follows are not scare tactics but facts. And when taken together they present a stark picture of what a John McCain presidency would mean to a woman's right to choose to have an abortion. Anyone who is pro-choice should think long and hard before casting a vote for John McCain.
Note that the next president will undoubtedly appoint at least one but probably a handful of Supreme Court justices and that many of the likely vacancies will come from the four member moderate/pro-legalized abortion wing. Justice Stevens is 88 years old, Justice Ginsburg is 75 years old and has fought cancer, Justice Breyer is 69 years old and Justice Souter is 68 years old and allegedly longs to retire to his New Hampshire home.
Meanwhile, as Jeffrey Toobin (a moderate Supreme Court expert) recently wrote in a must read article about a McCain speech addressed to the religious right, legalized abortion is on the table in a McCain presidency:
"In short, this one passage in McCain's speech amounted to a dog whistle for the right -- an implicit promise that he will appoint Justices who will eliminate the right to privacy, permit states to ban abortion, and allow the execution of teen-agers."
And McCain has told Fox News: "I do not support Roe vs. Wade. It should be overturned."
The importance of these statements and beliefs cannot be understated because the Supreme Court already consists of four conservative radicals who, along with conservative Judge Anthony Kennedy, have been chipping away at legalized abortion over the last few years. The replacement of just one judge from the liberal/moderate pro-abortion wing with a McCain appointee would tip the balance and all but guarantee the end of legalized abortion in most states, if not the country.
An April 2007 Court decision that criminalized partial birth abortion evidenced the radicalness of the ultra-conservative Court members:
"Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child. The Act recognizes this reality as well. Whether to have an abortion requires a difficult and painful moral decision... While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained. Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow."
"Isn't that special! Five old, rich, white (with all apologies to Clarence Thomas), Jesus fearing/loving men have decided that they know what's best for women who otherwise may come to regret their choices in life and suffer depression. In other words, women are dumb and need men to tell them what to do. Interestingly, the Paternal Five are not troubled by the lack of reliable evidence supporting their position because it seems unexceptional to themselves. Or, who needs evidence when something is so plain to the eye (of at least 55% of Supreme Court Justices). Ladies and gentlemen, announcing the arrival of the faith based Supreme Court!"
As it turns out, there is plenty of evidence that the Paternal Five are full of it. Earlier this month the American Psychological Association released a study that debunked much of the Supreme Court's reasoning, concluding that a single abortion does not pose a mental health threat to women.
Facts be damned! The conservative justices were making a clear statement that they know what is best for women and that that does not include abortion. And the only thing standing in the way of criminalizing abortion altogether is one more radical judge -- the kind that John McCain has repeatedlypromised to appoint to the Supreme Court:
"McCain has cited Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito as being his model justices, and he's also praised Scalia, one of the most conservative justices ever to sit on the Supreme Court."
And McCain's views were shaped long before he picked the ultra-conservative Christianist Sarah Palin as his running mate. The even more radical Palin believes that abortion should only be legal when a mother's life is at stake. Thus, she is against abortion even in cases of incest and rape. Palin has stated that she would choose life even if her own daughter was raped.
Making matters even worse, both McCain and Palin support policies that make it more likely that women will have unplanned pregnancies. They both support abstinence only education which has been proven ineffective by government studies. And they oppose the much more effective safe-sex education. Sadly, such policy choices have also led to a huge increase in teenage STD cases. In fact, 26% of teenage girls are infected with an STD according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
McCain has also worked to cut funding for family planning and opposes requiring insurance companies to cover prescription birth control. And as Governor, Palin has cut funds that would help teenage mothers.
So grim is the McCain/Palin ticket for supporters of women's rights issues that the co-chair of Republicans For Choice said the following this week:
"Well, it means we have to work harder. We have to make sure that the McCain/Palin administration... don't make these issues, the social issues, the central portion of their policy agenda, as Bush has done. We have a lot of work to do. We don't believe McCain would -- he really doesn't care much about the issue, even though he has an almost perfect pro-life voting record."
And on the prospect of overturning Roe v. Wade:
"The only thing that gives me comfort is that Democrats are going to win the Senate."
But it is the president who nominates Supreme Court judges. And while it is true that the Senate must confirm those picks, it is worth noting that four Democrats voted for Samuel Alito in 2006 and 22 Democrats voted for John Roberts in 2005. Further, there is no guarantee that Democrats will hold onto the Senate in two years.
Finally, McCain's pick of Palin to be his VP all but proves that he is beholden to the religious right whose top desire is to outlaw abortion. McCain's top two choices for vice president -- Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge -- were shot down by the religious right because of their pro-abortion stances. So McCain settled on Palin, a choice which has been met with overwhelming approval by James Dobson and other far right religious extremists.
Make no mistake about it, legalized abortion as we know it is at stake in this election.
While most informed people attribute George W. Bush's 2000 election victory in Florida to the Supreme Court, Karl Rove, Jeb Bush or even Katherine Harris, Pastor John Hagee blames a higher power -- God! From the 2003 clip above:
"I believe that God has raised George Bush up for this time in history to crush Saddam Hussein. And let me give you just an ironic something that I put together the other day and I almost jumped out of my chair. When George Bush was running for president, Florida was the basis of contention. And an Orthodox Rabbi was in my office and he was saying - you know - he's a democrat - [that] one of the confusing things in the Florida election was that, in a neighborhood that Mr. Gore should have carried, there is a large block of retired Jewish people and - somehow, mysteriously - they all voted for George Bush. Now think about that. He won the state. He became the president."
Hagee was clearly speaking about the infamous Palm Beach County butterfly ballot which The Palm Beach Post concluded cost Al Gore 6,607 votes or 10 times Bush's "winning" margin. Of course, a review of all the Florida ballots by a media consortium concluded that Gore got more votes in Florida anyways.
In any case, it does make one question God's motives and virtue. According to Hagee, God fooled old Jewish Floridians into voting for George W. Bush so that the United States would attack Iraq, something Al Gore would not have done. So God is a meddling, duplicitous, warmonger. More good news!
3) Convert them to Christianity - not quite check, but working on it.
The post also goes covers the thousands of Iraqis that took to the streets to protest "enduring" American bases. Apparently the Iraqis are not so gung ho about us Americans staying for a 100 years.
According to the crazy Christian lady (aka Shirley Phelps Roper) from the Westboro Baptist Church whom I spoke with outside of the Academy Awards a few weeks back, Heath Ledger is going to hell.
It's unfortunate that our conversation was cut short by a heavy rain because I wanted to ask her why she thought Hannity & Colmes had her on Fox “News” so often (see one of her many appearances below). The answer, of course, is that it is the job of Fox “News” to scare the dickens (borrowing an expression from Pastor John Hagee) out of Middle America and few do it as well as the “God Hates Fags” church.
I met Pastor John Hagee at an event promoting Christians United For Israel (CUFI) yesterday and was able to pose a few questions to the controversial Pastor. The audio and transcript of our conversation follow below and at the bottom is video that seems to prove the Pastor lied to me repeatedly.
AB: I was just curious, you’ve been in the news a lot lately – what do you think of all the controversy.
Pastor Hagee: Well, you know, the minute you definitively stand up with Israel you’re in a controversy about something. And when I wrote the book, “In Defense of Israel”, and I wrote the chapter on… Are you a newspaper reporter?
AB: No.
Pastor Hagee: Yeah, wrote the chapter on anti-Semitism, the Catholic League was insulted.
AB: Bill Donohue?
Pastor Hagee: Yeah, was incensed about it. And I told them look, for 2,000 years you were fiercely anti-Semitic and that is a fact of history. You cannot rewrite history. You cannot ignore history. I also wrote about the anti-Semitism of Protestantism under Martin Luther. But, that is the past but it is a fact. So they got angry as a dickens about it.
Then when I endorsed John McCain they saw a way to spin it to make John McCain denounce me in an effort to keep what they thought would be Catholic support. And that’s where the brouhaha came from.
AB: I don’t claim to be an expert, but there was the whole thing about Farrakhan that I read. I don’t know how that tied into you.
Pastor Hagee: Well it doesn’t tie into me. What they were trying to say, what the Catholic League was trying to do, is paint me into a corner as being a fanatic who supports Israel.
With people who are ignorant and uninformed it may work. But the point is we are in an information war and there are people who are very basically anti-Semitic who have access to major media outlets and they are masters on how to put out the big lie and they keep on doing it.
If I would drop out of site for about six months with this Israel message that would go away like smoke driven by wind. But because I have a global television audience – I’ve been on national television for 30 years and I am now in every nation on the planet – and because that global national television market is there and has been for 12 years, anything that you say that is pro-Israel infuriates these people.
That’s why I have a security force that’s a crack security force – we get death threats in there like people get invitations to go to Passover who are Jewish. And these people are serious. They are haters of Israel. They hate Jews. And if you stand up for Jews they paint you in their corner and say because you have chosen to be their mouthpiece we are going to shut you up.
AB: The stuff I read was more like about I guess a hatred for gays, I wouldn’t say a hatred but a displeasure for gays and comments you made about New Orleans and stuff like that. I was reading blogger Glenn Greenwald…
Pastor Hagee: Here’s what I will do. The statement about Katrina was this: I was teaching from Deuteronomy 29 to my congregation. Moses says: I’ve said before you life and death, choose life. He said, if you will keep my commandments and covenants all these blessings shall come upon you. Then it goes for 15 chapters – 15 verses – and then he says but if you do not keep the commandments of God all of these curses will come upon you. And he lists those and those are 66.
So I says in the logic of Moses, things that come to your life are both blessing and cursing. They are divided into those two kinds. But some days you don’t know the difference between a blessing or a cursing. I said Katrina may have been a blessing, it may have been a curse, but we don’t know.
I said, for instance, take the life of Joseph. When Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery it looked like the worst day of his life. When he went to prison it looked like the judgment of God. But he got promoted to Prime Minister from which he was able to save his family. So in hindsight, many years later, he could say that that was the best day of my life. But the day it happened, it looked like the worst day of his life. That is what I was teaching.
AB: I’m from New Orleans and I wouldn’t say it’s a blessing yet.
Pastor Hagee: So they took the one thing - Hagee says that’s a curse. Well, I said it is a curse slash but can prove to be a blessing later. If they rebuild New Orleans and make it better than ever, fine. That may be a blessing. Right now there is not much silver lining around the clock.
AB: Well, I look forward to hearing you.
Pastor Hagee: Yeah.
AB: Thank you.
Pastor Hagee: But anybody’s statement and if they take a phrase or one statement out of a 40-minute speech, they can make anybody look like a lunatic. And let’s face it, Israel doesn’t really have a lot of friends that are in the liberal media right now. But because I have a television audience I can hit back.
And a video mashup (h/t Veracifier) below for comparison sake:
Everyone is abuzz about the NY Times McCain philandering/ethics story but for the wrong reasons. The most troubling aspect of this story is its timing as the Times sat on the story since before the Iowa caucuses. Why run it now a day after the Wisconsin primary and once John McCain has all but wrapped up the GOP nomination?
The answer is what happened in the Wisconsin primary -- that Barack Obama creamed Hillary Clinton and all but assured himself the Democratic nomination for the general election. This was and is horrible news for John McCain and Republican hopes for recapturing the White House in November. As I blogged about here and here, Barack Obama matches up far better than Hillary Clinton against John McCain. This is why we recently found everyone from President Bush to Fox “News'” jumping on the Hillary bandwagon while simultaneously attacking Obama at every opportunity.
Once Obama essentially wrapped up the nomination last night, it became abundantly clear that Republicans needed a Plan D (Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson representing Plans A and B to the McCain Plan C). That Republicans are so willing to throw McCain under the bus is hardly surprising considering he fell into the nomination based more on his supposed opponent (Hillary) and the failure of the other Republican presidential hopefuls rather than based on anything he brought to the table. Once coroneted, McCain still failed to win the hearts of the hardcore CPAC haters or the evangelical base and he continues to struggle against Mike Huckabee despite a full-court press by the GOP establishment.
Clearly the Republican elite saw the Wisconsin results as the last straw. They know that McCain cannot beat Obama no matter how much they rely on the Southern Strategy and stealing elections (which need to be relatively close). The fact is that there is not one significant area where McCain is superior to Obama:
Old vs. Young
Old vs. New
Old vs. Good looking
Anti-hope vs. Hope
Plain spoken vs. Articulate
Uninspiring vs. Inspiring
Another 100 years in Iraq vs. Against the war from the start
Terrible fundraiser vs. Great fundraiser
Lousy campaigner vs. Crazy good campaigner
So while we are going to hear conservative talk radio and Fox “News” rail against the bias of the New York Times in the coming days, it would be wise to withhold judgment until the newspaper clarifies why it held the story until now. Did a GOP insider or a former McCain underling finally corroborate parts of the story? If so, it's safe to assume that those orders came from Republican higher-ups since it would otherwise be career suicide.
And if that is the case, just what is Plan E? Jeb? Cheney? Romney? Newt? Perhaps only Bush's Brain knows...
Hannity & Colmes break new terroritory tonight by discussing exorcism with two Catholic priests in light of a botched exorcism of a three year old child in Phoenix. First, Father Jonathan Morris, who believes more in God when he sees the presence of evil in someone, assures viewers that what took place in Phoenix was not actually an exorcism. Father Edward Beck then explains that being possessed by the Devil or an evil spirit is possible and that the cure for such a malady is exorcism.
Signs to look for to determine if the Devil has taken possession of a person include: speaking in a foreign language that is not one's own language, speaking in tongues, having a certain power or knowledge that one should not have, and seeing into the future.
At one point, Sean Hannity turns to Father Morris, who has witnessed an exorcism, and states:
I don't want to minimize this, I was just kidding about Alan. But, this is really serious here. I mean Christ, if we believe the Bible and I do, um, he exorcised demons with regularity. I mean often. What did you see at the exorcism you were at?
Father Morris, a Fox News contributor, responds by telling a story that happened to him in Spain while promoting the movie The Passion of the Christ. Long story short, the chief exorcist in Spain didn't know what to think about the movie until he went to his most difficult exorcism case and mentioned the Mel Gibson flick. The Devil inside the tough case immediately went crazy which assured the chief exorcist that the movie was okay since the Devil hates all good things.
Billy Ray Cyrus tells the 700Club about how celebrity brought him a bunch of thangs but little happiness. Then he hit bottom when he was cast in a David Lynch movie which contained bad language, sex and violence, you know, all the things Hollywood has to offer.
So Billy Ray did what anyone else in his situation would do -- venture into the woods to talk to God. And Billy Ray said, “God, tell me what to do, I'm lost.” After some talking, God and Billy Ray concluded that it was time for him to return to his roots and make a gospel album which he could then sell for an outrageous price on Christian broadcasting stations thus allowing him to buy more thangs. Or something like that.
This mashup was originally posted last year but was lost when my original YouTube account was shut down.
Jeffrey Dahmer feels it is a copout to blame others for his crimes. That is, except maybe Charles Darwin! You see one of Dahmer's major problems was that he did not feel accountable to anyone. And he only became accountable once his father sent him some “Creation Science” literature in prison and Dahmer realized that evolution was a complete lie and that the Lord Jesus Christ was the true creator of the universe. How can we feel accountable, after all, if “we all just came from the slime?”
Henry Frankenstein: Dangerous? Poor old Waldman. Have you never wanted to do anything that was dangerous? Where should we be if no one tried to find out what lies beyond? Have your never wanted to look beyond the clouds and the stars, or to know what causes the trees to bud? And what changes the darkness into light? But if you talk like that, people call you crazy. Well, if I could discover just one of these things, what eternity is, for example, I wouldn't care if they did think I was crazy.
Doctor Waldman: You have created a monster, and it will destroy you!
How the right wing corporate controlled empire created a monster and why that might turn out to be a good thing...
John Kerry calls for the return of the fairness doctrine and for equal time requirements in the media. As if anyone needed any proof that an imbalance existed in the media, a recent study evidenced that conservative talk radio accounts for 91% of total talk radio programming. Again, nothing surprising.
But what is particularly interesting about this brief video is that it was posted on YouTube by MDRUDGE and has 180,000 views in one day -- much of them coming from the conservative blogosphere including Hugh Hewitt and Real Clear Politics. The base of the Republican party has always been overly sensitive to such accusations about the media because they actually believe the laughable propaganda about a liberal bias. This ridiculous notion, mind you, is not shared by those at the top of the party like Rich Bond (the former Republican party chair), Bill Kristol and Pat Buchanan, among others, who all admit the idea is rubbish.
Knowledge of the truth about media bias, of course, never stopped Kristol and his colleagues from continuously using the liberal media ploy to fool the rabid Republican base into backing their policies for war or voting for their pro corporate candidates for political office. After all, you don't cut off the hand that feeds you. And here is where our first monster was born.
As I blogged about here, corporations require year over year growth in revenues and profits or management risks losing $$$$ as Wall Street moves to better investments. This results in more corporate lobbying, bribery, corporate welfare, government give-aways, corporate tax breaks, cronyism and corruption than the previous year. Thus, every year the corporate whores that make up the media punditry, think tanks and Fox “News” must come up with more ridiculous incendiary rhetoric to rally the base whose skepticism grows with every scandal and as their quality of life worsens with higher energy prices, education costs, health care costs and lost jobs. At this point, the right has used every trick in the book from liberal media bias, racism, the faux liberal attack on religion and Christmas, anti-gay, xenophobia, anti-Muslim, creation of an evolution vs. creationism debate, etc. to stoke the fears of its base and rally the troops to overcome the greed and corruption of the corporate-government relationship.
Trent Lott was speaking on June 15 about why Congress was unable to pass immigration reform. The problem was the rabid Republican base that he and his colleagues created to help line the pockets of corporations and themselves as well as win elections had grown into an independent force that was now derailing the corporate/government plans to secure cheap labor. And I can't stop my crocodile tears. Imagine encouraging the worst racist fears in people, not to mention, fear-mongering about the threat of terrorism, year after year for political gain and then crying foul when it comes back to haunt to you. Actually, you need not imagine it.
So now we are stuck with two monsters that must be killed. First, we have the ginormous corporations that must improve their bottom lines which requires even more heinous activity, usually with a government hand, than the year before. The amount of money at stake is so great that no human could help but be influenced by it, never mind, a member of Congress. Thus, we will continue to see more Enron's, Halliburton no-bid contracts, Big Oil billion dollar giveaways, Big Tobacco hundreds of billion dollar giveaways and a bigger portion of the country's tax bill paid by individuals rather than corporations - until this corporate monster is killed. For a current example the idea of allowing News Corp. to buy the Wall Street Journal borders on insanity but it would never be stopped by our government because so many politicians receive benefit from Murdoch's empire.
And we will continue to see more influence from the fringe but powerful group of hate first, irrational, radicals that make up the Republican base and have the power to kill legislation favored by up to 70% of the country. Trent Lott is right to realize the danger that this monster presents to the country. And as one might expect, conservative talk radio was none to happy about Trent's comments or John Kerry's remarks and will fight back hard and dirty. Which is hardly surprising considering the hate rhetoric leaders on the right have filled it with over the years. This monster is a powder keg that wants to blow.
And of all of this might be the best thing to happen to the country. On their own, each monster poses a real threat to the country which has already been severely weakened by six years of Bush policies. It is difficult to see how we reign in or kill either monster on their own considering the corporate monster controls much of Congress, the media and the courts but can't seem to control the radical monster. But, both monsters are showing a willingness to fight each other as evidenced by the Lott quote and reaction from the blogosphere.
David Brooks strikes again. Is there anybody on the planet, deemed credible by the mainstream, who is more full of shit than Brooks? That he is the best that the NY Times can find to represent the right tells you an awful lot about the slim pickings on the right. Here's the beginning of his latest debacle:
A little while ago, a national study authorized by Congress found that abstinence education programs don’t work. That gave liberals a chance to feel superior because it turns out that preaching traditional morality to students doesn’t change behavior.
But in this realm, nobody has the right to feel smug. American schools are awash in moral instruction — on sex, multiculturalism, environmental awareness and so on — and basically none of it works. Sex ed doesn’t change behavior. Birth control education doesn’t produce measurable results. The fact is, schools are ineffectual when it comes to values education. You can put an adult in front of a classroom or an assembly, and that adult can emit words, but don’t expect much impact.
Only one problem David, you're either grossly misinformed, blatantly stupid or lying. Study after study (PDF) after study after Washington Post article emphatically state that comprehensive sex education involving birth control does produce measurable results. And if you can't read a freaking study David, take a glance over at Africa and see the devastating effects of your boy 43's disgraceful abstinence only policy's. Then if you can manage to think back seven years in that atrophied brain of yours you might recall that HIV/AIDs infections were on the decline and largely under control. What do you think the difference was?
Your columns are much like any Bush policy in that nothing good ever comes from either.
This is exactly the type of thing Elizabeth Edwards was speaking about in her impassioned speech posted below. Compromise is not the best approach when certain values are at stake. And what's more important, saving the lives of our soldiers and Iraqi civilians or placating religious bigotry and homophobia?
Put another way, is there any doubt whatsoever that the “culture of life” has cost the lives of American soldiers?
Evidence that we are unlikely to recover from the Bush administration's faith based world. And the truly disconcerting number is that of the “Democrats” who are supposed to make up the reality based community.
