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5/31/2009

For two decades, George Tiller faced down death threats and the bombing of his clinic. Why? Because he dared to provide women with needed services, including abortions, at his clinic in Kansas. He was even brought to trial on 19 misdemeanor charges of shady financial dealings with a referring physician, and was acquitted of those charges. Where did these charges originate from? He dared to provide late-term abortions, which are legal in Kansas with a referral from a physician that states that the mother's life is in danger if she carries the fetus to term. Shootings, bombings, death threats and criminal charges didn't stop Tiller from providing health services to women in Kansas.

The crazies have been gunning for him for years. In fact, they already shot him in both arms several years ago. Well, today they finally killed him for it, and they got him as he was walking with his family into his church.

Who is they? Who else? The American Taliban, who proved a long time ago that you don't need Allah to launch a jihad in this country. All you need are websites like this:

Operation Save America, which is definitely a misnomer of staggering proportions.

Operation Rescue, though, which has had the "Tiller Watch" up for some time, either just got inundated with hits, or it shut itself down to do some damage control, because I can't even get into their website right now. They did release a statement, reported in the HuffPo: We are shocked at this morning's disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down. Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice."

Sorry, Operation Rescue, but when you even run a page called the "Tiller WATCH", you don't get to hide behind that statement. You incited the wackos, and told them where to find Tiller, then want to claim "peaceful" and "legal" when one of your followers goes out and commits murder? That dog don't hunt.

All the damage control in the world won't change the fact that websites like Operation Rescue caused this murder directly, by setting up such pages as they probably find funny - wanted dead or alive posters. "Tiller Watch."

The republicans want to cry and moan about muslim detainees from Guantanamo being set loose on the streets of america to spew and spread their hatred. Who gives a shit? We have our own fucking taliban to deal with, and it's high time we start dealing with it. What exactly do I mean?

What I am talking about is this: moderate religious persons absolutely hate it when they get lumped in with the zealotry of the American Taliban, so start lumping them. As far as I'm concerned, the moderate christians let these blood-thirsty killers take over their religions, and their political party, and it's up to them to take it back. Maybe when they get tired of being equated to a snake-handling village idiot with a .45 in one hand and a bible they can't even read in the other, maybe they'll start to shout these POS's down.

So who needs to worry about terrorists being brought to the mainland, when we have plenty of our own homegrowns to worry about?

Suddenly, that Right Wing Extremists report which got leaked a few weeks ago, and which yours truly blogged about when the republicans started crying "foul" looks to be right on the money. Janet Napolitano pulled that report, said they were re-writing it. I hope they have the guts to add some names this time - like Operation Rescue.

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5/31/2009

The American Spectator, another of those republican outlets that I like to peruse when I'm in a particularly self-loathing mood, thinks that the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is an abomination.

(groan).

The repubes have been gnawing their own paws off over this, because they are stuck. Wring those hands - What to do? What to do?

They painted themselves into the corner a couple of weeks ago when they made the pronouncement that they would never, ever accept anyone that Obama nominates to SCOTUS, no matter who they were, where they were from, etc. etc. etc.

So now, Obama has picked a rather centrist hispanic woman who has 17 years of experience on the bench, which was more experience than Stevens, Scalia and the "other guy" had between them. She was appointed by Bush I to the District bench, then promoted to the appellate bench under Clinton. Noone has complained about her in all this time.

But just because "that uppity dar...uh, we meant President Obama" nominated her to SCOTUS, all hell has broken loose in the GOP, to the point where the American Spectator tells the Senate Republicans to stop playing patty cake and start playing...what, competition dodgeball?

Cheney's lobbing insults at Colin Powell, Powell's responding with a series of "you big fat liar!'s" and the GOP has been right on the verge of total nuclear meltdown since November 4. They've got half their constituency turning Libertarian, the other half spewing every racist and misogynistic thought that ever occurred to them and not even having the decency to say "Oops, did I say that out loud?"

Don't even get me started on the ones buying every firearm and piece of ammo they can get their hands on - you can't even get .38 ammunition in this state right now.

Yes, indeed, folks, the republicans have gotten themselves into a sticky situation with this one. They talked a big game during the McCain campaign about reaching hispanic voters, and died a slow death on that front, when the majority of latino voters went to Obama. Now, if the rhetoric keeps up like this from that idiot FORMER lawmaker Tancredo keep up, that party may very well not exist in any substantive way in another year or so. Thank the dog that a Media Matters rep was there to try to dispel this guys bullshit:

Tancredo yammers on and on about La Raza, labeling it a racist organization. Here we go with ACORN all over again - any organization that tries to further civil rights for any particular societal group is a "racist" organization to the racist republicans, because we all know how they spurn civil rights.

According to La Raza, the term can mean race, but in this case, means "The People." Fine with me, as a quick perusal of an online spanish to english dictionary shows that the word, like many english words, has many meanings, depending on context. I'll take La Raza's explanation over Tancredo's anyday.

And yes, he does call her Latina KKK. How anyone could be so dim-witted and still be breathing is beyond me.

And so it goes. The republicans dispersing themselves to the winds, because like the self-indulgent toddlers they are, they cannot accept that they lost this round last November, so they look to the idiocy of the likes of Rush and Hannity and the half that are brain-numbingly ignorant and who choose brain-numbingly ignorant fools for leaders.

So I say, while the fire is hot and the true colors of the GOP "base" is blazing forth in all its hoary, degraded glory, let's just start these confirmation hearings tomorrow, and let the republicans in congress talk themselves into oblivion.

On a lighter note, the President and the Mrs. went to a Broadway play, of course to the jeers of republicans saying "how can you go on a date night?? Don't you know you have to clean up all that shit we threw on the walls for the last 8 years?" They seem to have forgotten that their nonesteemed leader was on vacation for MORE THAN TWO YEARS of the 8 years he was president. (groan). I actually feel embarrassed for these dummies sometimes.

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5/27/2009

Everyone knows by now that President Obama's choice to replace Justice Souter is Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Last week, the repubes were telling us how they would fillibuster any choice Obama made, and in fact already had their lawyers putting together their opposition of anyone that Obama nominated for the position. Even NOW likes her, and NOW doesn't really like anybody.

And then Obama pulled the rug out from under them with an obvious move: nominate a highly intelligent, decent-hearted hispanic woman.

It is beautiful. MSNBC.com says that the GOP better watch itself with how it deals with this turn of events.

Even Michelle Malkin is strangely...subdued in her raving, waspish mania. It's as if even she knows there is a line. A very fine line. And if she crosses that line, there may be trouble, and that no matter how much she really, really, REALLY wants to, she probably shouldn't cross that line. Because it just might be the final nail in the GOP coffin. Then again it could just be that she's ethnic, too, and doesn't want to go there. But then again, that never stopped her before, so why would it now?

Meanwhile, we learn that President and Mrs. Obama plan to host the 9th annual Book Fair held on the National Mall in Washington DC.

And I'll bet you that the President will be reading something a bit heartier than "My Pet Goat."

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5/24/09

The New York Times thinks that closing Guantanamo has given the republicans a Wedge Issue.

Not really.

Consider this: Two old ladies arguing over how to clean up the overflowed toilet. This is the republican party's "wedge issue." Nothing more, nothing less, than a bunch of old ladies pooh-pooh'ing the activities of what they see as the help, but not having a single clue as to how to clean up that mess themselves. Meanwhile, pooh is dripping through to the ceiling below and drywall threatens to cave in at any moment on the poor schmucks living below.

We are all the poor schmucks living below.

The only wedge issue here, is whether or not the republican party can dislodge that wedgie that Obama gives them on a regular basis.

Old ladies arguing that Obama's plans for closing Guantanamo won't work, will put us in danger, is socialist, is communist, will destroy our american way of life and jihad will be spread through the prisons because of millions of converts to islam if ONE single detainee is sent to Pelican Bay and then it will spread to the streets of Duluth because Obama is going to let all those heathens loose in the streets to rape and pillage and spread their heathen ways!

Meanwhile, the democrats in Congress who still haven't figured out that they won last November, keep on letting the republicans frame that argument (see rant below on 5/21/09 on what Harry Reid said) for them. Democrats should be standing up and saying "Hey! Assholes! We're cleaning up your shit! Do you really want to go there with us? Because we're ready to remind everybody that this is YOUR shit we're cleaning up! That YOU are the ones who threw it on the wall, so don't dare come back and tell us we're not cleaning it up in a good enough manner for you! We could subpoena every single one of you and drag you into the Senate to explain to everyone just why you threw this shit on the wall in the first place!"

No, instead, the Democrats like to follow the repube lead of throwing Nancy Pelosi under the bus because....well, evidently, because 1) she probably didn't know a damned thing, but the CIA says she did, and we all know the CIA follow the boy scout oath religiously and never, ever lie and 2) because they're too damned stupid to turn around and tell the republicans to go F...well, you know.

So I have to ask: What Wedge Issue?

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5/21/2009

Every now and then, someone says something so incredibly plug stupid that it makes me cringe. I actually feel embarrassed for the person who let this half-baked sentence leave their lips. Like when I was a kid, watching Little House on the Prairie, and would feel embarrassed when Laura would say something astonishingly thickheaded. Then I just feel angry that someone who managed to get himself elected to Congress could make a statement like Harry Reid made a couple of days ago when the Senate voted to block funding for the closing of Guantanamo:

"I can't make it any more clear," Reid said. "We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States."

(close eyes, count to ten, take deep breath) HARRY YOU F-ING DOLT, THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RELEASE AND RELEASE INTO CUSTODY!!!

Whew, that feels better.

Evidently noone explained it to Harry and the rest of the morons who voted against funding because they thought terrorists would be set asail from Guantanamo Bay in a dingy, pointed toward Miami Beach, where they would magically wash ashore and the Federal Marshals would then give them a cookie, a soda, and take them to the nearest SuperMax that this isn't actually what Obama and his crew have in mind. And why didn't someone explain this to them? Because it shouldn't have to be explained! Sometimes in life there are givens. It's a given we're all going to die one day. It's a given that the sun will come up tomorrow. It's a given that Obama is not that stupid, but obviously the Senators who voted against closing Guantanamo because they don't know the exact in's and out's of how prisoners will be transferred to the mainland, are that stupid.

Obama is not telling them the date of departure, the time of arrival, the manifest for the boat or plane that will bring them here, the plate numbers of every car from the federal pool that will be driven, because they are too damned stupid to have this information, and they will tell the entire world every detail they are privvy to.

The Turkeys of the Week Award goes to our illustrious US Senators.

Now I hear tell that some of Congress are worried that these detainees, if put into an american prison, will spread their cancerous dogma to the other prisoners.

Kind of like every white supremecist group and coast-to-coast gang out there.

These guys won't be anything special. Especially considering the good possibility that most of them didn't even do anything other than piss off a neighbor who turned them in for the bounty. Or just got themselves rounded up because they were brown and wearing a scarf on their head.

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5/17/2009

President Obama gave the commencement speech at Notre Dame, and boy has the right-wing been howling about that. Now I know, and you know, that there are a few catholics in the so-called "pro-life movement", but you and I also know that most of that constituency is evangelical christian. Since when do the evangelicals pal around with the Catholics? Oh, yeah - since that Roe v Wade thing. Well, not quite - since the anti-abortion crowd decided that in this one instance, they do have at least that one thing in common with the catholics. Next week they'll be back to crowing about that idol-worshipping papacy.

While Obama was speechifying in his particularly excellent manner, outside the protestors were rending breasts and gnashing teeth about child murderers and other such nonsense, all because Obama believes that a woman should have some semblance of control over her own body, particularly if she is a victim of rape or incest. He also believes that all those embryos left over from infertile couples trying to breed should be put to good scientific use, rather than left to gather freezer burn in the back of the frigidaire.

Obama acknowledged that "no matter how much we want to fudge it ... the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable." But he still implored the University of Notre Dame's graduating class and all in the U.S. to stop "reducing those with differing views to caricature. Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words. It's a way of life that always has been the Notre Dame tradition."

The views of the two camps are indeed irreconcilable, so long as the one camp holds that its self-righteousness is the end-all be-all of the universe, and that everyone everywhere must bow down to their moral superiority. Make no mistake, convictions of moral superiority are indeed the underpinnings of the anti-abortion movement. Have you ever noticed that they tend to be the same crowd that excoriates Disney for including "objectionable content" in the form of an imagined woody that appears for one frame, or a fraction of a second, during The Little Mermaid? I went looking for it - didn't see it. Big surprise. Just like you won't see all those "serial abortionists" at the local free clinic. You know, those women who like to get pregnant just so they can have that abortion! You don't see them, because they don't exist anywhere but in the fevered if repressed imaginations of the overly-religious crowd.

Here in Richmond, VA, we have an excellent community theatre which has been around for decades. Manager Bruce Miller in the Barksdale Theatre Blog has a legitimate beef to pick with parents and teachers who object to the "questionable and offensive" content of Annie. Yes, you read correctly - Annie. Annie evidently is a hotbed of moral inequity because Daddy Warbucks and President Roosevelt say damn and hell in a discussion about the Great Depression. (Nevermind the question if you can't use the words damn and hell in a discussion about the Great Depression, then dammit, when the hell can you use those words?) One teacher was so self-righteously incensed, that she had her class write letters to the theatre asking why were they exposed to such lewd language. You read correctly. A Teacher. Who had her class do her complaining for her. To this mentality, a cute little Oliver face exuding "please sir may I have another" asking a theatre manager why he would inflict those horrible words on the sensitive ears of young'uns would make him re-write the play next time - even though that is patently illegal. I my little plot of the world, I have seen anti-abortion crowds with their 8 year olds holding signs of allegedly aborted fetuses in full technicolor and blown up to 10x scale, because those pitiful little faces might make us hard hearted murderers change our minds and say "you know what? I don't care if that woman was brutally raped, she should have that child, by god, and be happy she was brutally raped! Even if it was by her own father!" It will take more than an angelic little face to rid me of my pragmatism on this point.

Adults hiding behind their children to get a point across does not convince me that the woman who is brutally raped should have to carry that fetus to term and be happy with it. It actually disgusts me that an adult would hide behind a child to get their point across - whether it be anti-abortion points, or "I don't like Peter Pan because noone warned me there would be pirates!" Call me old-fashioned, but I figure that if an adult has a point to make, they should suck up the courage to make it themselves.

President Obama wants to have a fair-minded discussion about abortion - he wants the debate to continue, and for both sides to stop demonizing each other. Well, I hate to break it to him, but so long as one side holds the bible in one hand and a flaming sword of self-satisfaction in the other, that will never happen. I reserve the right to point out the moral inequities of the side that never once stops to put itself into the shoes of a woman who has found herself in one of the most emotionally deblilitating positions a woman can find herself in - legs spread wide for the world to leer at, either way, be it rape or abortion. These Hellfire and Brimstone moral self-absolutists tend to be those most in favor of torture, the death penalty, and those most in disfavor with any social programs geared toward the poor and the children of the poor. The world must work their way, and no other way, because they are right, and the rest of us are all going to hell for not agreeing with trumped up biblical'isms.

Be it art or science, medicine or social justice, the talibangelicals will attack it if it offends their precious sensibilities and their provincial notions of how society should be. I reserve the right to attack disgusting displays of theocratic tendencies when I see it. I reserve the right to call bullshit when I smell it.

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5/13/2009

Bee is sick - mold count sky high - full blown sinus infection impending - so tonight's post will be a shortie.

The Stupid Headline of the Week is: Cheney Attacks May Not Help Republicans.

DUH! Maybe I'll change the title of my blog to "No Shit, Sherlock!"

'nuff said. Where's that Sudafed...

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5/10/09

Turns out those 100+ civilian casualties were at least partly our doing. I do have to respect the apologies from our highest leaders, and I do believe that those apologies are heartfelt like BushCo's never were - or did he ever even apologize? I seem to remember talk about collateral damage, a term I have thank the dog not heard from this administration, unless I missed it.

However, apologies don't cut it. I am sick in my heart and mind of seeing pictures of babies burnt by U.S. bombs on the front pages of every fucking website out here.

My message to the Obama administration is simple: This WILL be another vietnam if the status quo is followed.

This war needs to end, and it needs to end soon. Obama, Clinton, Gates, listen up: Find another way. BushCo turned the U.S. into the supreme terrorists to parts of the world. You were charged to end this madness last November, so end it. Yeah, yeah, I know you're working on it, but work faster. While I believe the Taliban were most likely guilty of using civilians as human shields - that is one of their typical M.O.'s. You ordered an airstrike that went badly, and women and their children died badly for it. So find another way.

Just stop. Find another way, and find it fast, because this shit isn't working.

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5/6/2009

Secretary of State Clinton regrets that Afghan women and children were murdered. Dozens, perhaps as many as 120 according to a "former Afghan government official" were killed. The presumed culprit is an American bombing run. Others say the Taliban killed those people to make it look like they died in an American bombing run.

A brigadier general has been sent to head the investigation. We'll see how this plays out.

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5/4/2009

BRING OUT YOUR TEABAGS! because Obama's going to raise taxes! On the wealthy and the off-shore money hoarders!

How dare he! This will DESTROY America!!! Those mega-corporations hiding money in off-shore accounts, and screwy tax benefits for "choosing" which nation to pay taxes to on foreign profits is being targeted by Obama - he's going to try to put an end to offshore tax shelters!! He will! It's his socialist plot to reassign wealth! My wealth! This will UTTERLY DESTROY AMERICA! THE RICH WILL ALL MOVE AWAY! JOBS WILL BE LOST! JOBS WILL BE LOST BY THE BILLIONS! IN DULUTH ALONE, BILLIONS OF JOBS WILL BE LOST! IT WILL DESTROY AMERICA! FELLOW IDIOTS...I mean FELLOW CONSERVATIVES UNITE! TAKE YOUR TEABAGGING INTO THE STREETS! SHOW THIS SOCIALIST COMMIE FAKE-BIRTH-CERTIFICATED PRESIDENT WHO REALLY CALLS THE SHOTS IN THIS COUNTRY! Don't let this uppity dar...I mean President Obama...tell you who will be paying the taxes! The middle class has been bearing the tax burden for years - we won't stop now! He can't make us!!! We'll get out into the streets and make EARL GREY! TAKE THAT, OBAMA, YOU SOCIALIST COMMIE YOU-KNOW-WHAT!

On Tomorrow's Show: YOU CAN KEEP YOUR LEZBO LIBERAL ELITE SUPREME COURT NOMINEES! I'LL KEEP MY GUNS AND MY CHANGE!

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