Hot Potato Mash

SHOCKER - Violent Crime Sees Largest % Increase Since 1991

Who woulda thunk it?  Hopefully no liberals will look at these numbers on rising violent crime and try to link it to the ginormous tax cuts for the rich and INSANE military spending over the last five years.  The fact that vast sums of money have been transferred away from programs that help the poor and middle class in favor of huge tax breaks for corporations and wealthy individuals(PDF) is merely coincidental.  And don't forget that Bush inherited a recession (after fudging the numbers) and had to deal with 9/11 and Katrina.  Blaming this on Bush policies is, frankly, un-American. 

Further, the use of logical reasoning or connect-the-dots, gotcha-politics, reminds me of when liberals tried to blame increased homelessness on President Reagan the result, they said, of cutting federal support for low-cost housing from $32 billion in 1981 to $7 billion in 1987 as well as cuts to programs that led to the release or eviction of mentally ill patients who had nowhere to live.  What will they come up with next?

NY TIME'S HEBERT EDITORIAL ON REPUBLICAN ELECTION FRAUD

Bob Hebert, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Mark Crispin Miller before him, concludes that “Mr. Kerry almost certainly would have won Ohio” if the democratic process had not been trampled.  Hebert also writes that he had given up on Florida after “monitoring the efforts to suppress Democratic votes” led by the “thuggish practice[s]” of the Jeb Bush administration.  Hebert concludes the editorial:

The lesson out of Ohio (and Florida before it) is that the integrity of the election process needs to be more fiercely defended in the face of outrageous Republican assaults. Democrats, the media and ordinary voters need to fight back.

The right to vote is supposed to mean something in the United States. The idea of going to war overseas in the name of the democratic process while making a mockery of that process here at home is just too ludicrous.

I would add that it is also ludicrous to use WMD on Iraqis after invading the country on the pretext of stopping Saddam from using them on Americans; implementing the global gag rule despite the legality of abortion in the United States; impeaching a president for an extramarital affair and then failing to even conduct investigations when his successor repeatedly violates the Constitution and breaks the law, and; having a president finishing his sixth year in office despite never having won an election. 

CHILLING BBC VIDEO - MORE CIVILIAN DEATHS AND ANOTHER COVER-UP

Crooksandliars has a chilling video from the BBC showing a bullet ridden home strewn with dead Iraqi bodies, including women and young children, before it was razed by U.S. helicopters in an apparent attempt to cover-up the massacre. Probably just trying to win more hearts and minds. If true, the soldiers involved should certainly pay for their crimes. But anyone who doesn't believe the bulk of the responsibility falls on the President, VP and Rummy, is kidding themselves.

Smears, Lies and Videotape: A Leak Scandal Documentary

With Karl Rove back in the cross-hairs of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, it is well worth one's time to revisit this Think Progress documentary (about 5 minutes). The piece includes the following 2003 exchange between Chris Matthews and Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Ed Gillespie:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Don't you think it's more serious than Watergate, when you think about it?

RNC CHAIRMAN ED GILLESPIE: I think if the allegation is true, to reveal the identity of an undercover CIA operative -- it's abhorrent, and it should be a crime, and it is a crime.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: It'd be worse than Watergate, wouldn't it?

GILLESPIE: It's -- Yeah, I suppose in terms of the real world implications of it. It's not just politics.

ANTI-CHOICE ABORTION CLINICS

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This mini-documentary by Mariana van Zeller about the Center for Pregnancy Choices can be seen in its entirety on Current.tv. A pro-life ministry masquerading as an abortion clinic, the Center is run by far right activist Barbara Beavers, who finds her pitch more effective using a sonogram rather than the antiquated model fetuses. While Beavers' heart may be in the right place, her faith acts as a firewall to reason as evidenced by her inability to deduce from a laundry list of evidence that the clinic's practices may be deceptive.

What is truly scary, however, is that Beavers does not represent some fringe element of society. In fact, Beavers is a rather good representative of what America has become. Crazy? Consider that in 2004 ”the Christian Coalition gave 42 out of 100 senators ratings of 100 percent, meaning they took the group's position on every significant issue“ (see Michelle Goldberg's Kingdom Coming). Yes, almost half of the mainstream senate votes in lockstep with Pat Robertson who believes God sends airplanes into tall buildings and tsunamis into far away villages as punishment for homosexuality and the ACLU.

The clip is about 1.5 minutes or a third of its original length. Van Zeller has a bunch of other worthwhile short documentaries on her site.

 

VOTING: THE SOUP GETS IT

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One of these days, probably towards the end of November/beginning of December, the main stream media and “we the people” will get it too. I could not begin to venture a guess as to the year.

Frist and Robertson discuss gorillas and immigration

 

                   Watch the video 

A conversation on yesterday's 700 Club between Senator Bill Frist and Pat Robertson that produced a couple comical gems seen in the clip above.   The clip is about 1:20 and covers the three topics detailed below.

1. AMAZING! HUMANS SIMILAR TO GORILLAS

This conversation on gorillas is especially strange considering that both Frist and Robertson are big supporters of teaching creation science next to evolution in the classroom.  Here is a partial transcript:

Robertson: Is a gorilla heart like a human heart?

Frist: Surprisingly, it's almost exactly like it (awkward laugh)...some of the gorillas develop heart diseases just like humans do.

Robertson: That's amazing... It's a great hobby to start the day, kind of stressful.  But I guess it gets more stressful trying to deal with an immigration bill.

Frist: It's actually very similar.  These gorilla hearts and some of the people I deal with right here  (in D.C.) are actually very very similar.

Strangely, neither man mentioned anything about evolution. 

2. IMMIGRATION

In another classic moment, Frist gives the following laundry list of prerequisites immigrants must meet before being conidered for citizenship:

"If you've been here greater than five years, you can wait an eleven years but you have to have a job, you got to pay a fine,  you got to know English, you got to pay all taxes would be eligible to apply for citizenship."

Which begs the question: would Frist qualify for citizenship were he  an illegal immigrant?

3. LIKE BUSH - FRIST WORKS HARD

At the  very end of the conversation, Frist explains that because of the importance of the immigration bill, he has been working very hard.  One would think and hope, that with his $180,000 salary being picked up by "We the people",  he would work hard all the time.

THE SIMPSONS: Wake Up America

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Americans could care less about our current foreign policy. Kill 30,000 innocents, kidnap foreign nationals in foreign countries in order to torture them, break the Geneva Convention ban on torture against the advice of military commanders, Gitmo, use WMD on Iraqi citizens in Fallujah and on and on and on - and so what?

But, show a nipple on tv, sing the national anthem wrong or, god forbid, question “dear leader” and all hell breaks loose.

A couple of clips from last night's Simpsons episode illustrate the absurdity of the situation. Hopefully Americans, who love to preach values to the rest of the world, will soon wake up to our own nightmare and attempt to fix our many problems before conducting anymore grand experiments with the lives of real people and the sovereignty of other nations.

Wake up America!

PUNIDIOT- Sean Hannity

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While one can make the case that Sean Hannity is deserving of the punidiot award on a daily basis, we thought his comments regarding Al Gore's new environmental movie were extra special. It takes some huge huevos to state, among many galling things, that Gore has a pro Yugo or Prius agenda. Admittedly, we are perhaps not the best judges here having been HUGE Yugo fans for as long as we can remember.

Hannity also finds fault with Gore because he has not changed, which we take to mean Hannity now prefers flip-floppers. Similarly, Gore's politics reflect his beliefs which Hannity finds appalling.

Perhaps Hannity is just frustrated with Gore's new, more relaxed and natural demeanor, which has left Hannity in the unenviable place of being the world's stiffest human being.

The Other War

Time magazine's video montage on conditions in Afghanistan is a must see but be forewarned that a few pictures are difficult to take. Suicide attacks, a resurgent Taliban and an ever growing drug trade (poppy farming) are just some of the things Afghanis deal with daily.

Conservative Ideology - Women and War

In the May 15, 2006 edition of The Weekly Standard, Executive Editor Fred Barnes writes that all conservative politicians stray occasionally from conservative orthodoxy for various reasons including political expediency. Barnes, who is also a daily Fox News contributor, provides the following two examples involving President Reagan:

1. “He insisted on picking a woman, moderate Sandra Day O'Connor, as his first Supreme Court nominee”
2. “He met repeatedly with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Conservatives fumed.”

Technorati Tags: barnes, bush, conservatism, gorbachev, reagan, women

Unholy Alliance: Ken Blackwell and the Religious Right

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Pastor Russell Johnson is one of Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's biggest supporters in his bid for Governor. So big, in fact, that the IRS is investigating whether Johnson has violated the non-profit religious status of his organization -- the Ohio Restoration Project, for stepping over the line that separates matters of church and state. The pastor's fondness for Blackwell, the controversial former chair of the Ohio 2004 Bush/Cheney campaign, is seemingly based on Blackwell's anti-gay marriage stance.

In any case, Johnson has campaigned tirelessly on behalf of Blackwell, who is favored to become the state's next governor. In addition to raising large sums of money, the pastor has bestowed numerous awards upon Blackwell and called him a "leader of leaders". Yet, in this clip, Pastor Johnson makes a rather strange comment that could either be interpreted as high praise for Blackwell or, perhaps, reveal a much more sinister side to the relationship between Blackwell and the religious right. You make the call. It runs 1:32.

Ohioans needs to read Ken Blackwell Biography

With his victory in the republican primary last week, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell is now favored to become the next governor of Ohio. In light of this scary proposition and all the other controversy surrounding Blackwell, I thought it might do Ohio voters some good to read Blackwell's biography. Well, "What Went Wrong in Ohio, aka "The Conyers Report", is not exactly a biography of Blackwell, but he does play a prominent role throughout this official record of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, written by the democratic staff on the House Judiciary Committee. Page 2 of the Executive Summary reads in part:

"As to our factual finding: in brief, we find that there were massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio. In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio."

Exactly what I look for in a governor.

"What Went Wrong In Ohio: The Conyers Report On The 2004 Presidential Election" (Anita Miller)

Technorati Tags: Blackwell, Diebold, Elections, Fraud, Ohio, Voting, voting-machine