Thursday, March 31, 2005

The Ghoulish Death Watch is Over...




LONG LIVE THE GHOULISH DEATH WATCH!

The Events of the Day have been Very Hard on Her

So John Derbyshire drew the short straw and had to take Kathryn Lopez out and dance her blues away.

Hitting the Nail on the Head...

From my email box comes the missive of cereal-box pastor Tony Alamo (Is that also his porn name?)

Dear Sir,

Anyone watching Terri Schiavo being dealt with in this inhumane, satanic way and agrees with it and does nothing about it, is just as sick and guilty in the eyes of God as the demonic, depraved government agencies that are doing it and enforcing it.

...

I and my church are praying that at least one of you who has any ability to save this woman’s life that you repent before it’s too late for you. The Lord is very capable of extracting the spirit out of your body by just telling it to come out, and if He does, your soul will be in Hell for eternity. And in the end Hell with you and Satan in it will be cast into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:14-15). I’ve done what the Lord has told me to do. I’ve delivered my soul with this message unto you. I’m off the hook with God, but you’re not unless you make a difference, unless you follow the dictates of this message. At least read this message to the world that they might pray for her soul and that her health is recovered in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of the living God.


Well, I wouldn't want to be condemned undeservedly and all.

So here's a picture of Pat Boone exposing his genitals.

Idiots

How can we sum up the Bush Neo-Con Death Cult through examples?

Well there's this...

President Bush said Thursday that he joins the millions of Americans saddened by the death of Terri Schiavo and urged the country to honor her memory by working to "build a culture of life."

...

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said her death was a "regrettable loss of life" that deeply saddened him. "May God bless her memory," he said.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, called Schiavo's death a "moral poverty and a legal tragedy."


MEANWHILE, completely uncommented upon by those three listed above...

Car bombers kill 8; 3 GIs killed in separate incidents

Conspiracy Theory

Holden Caufield of First Draft via Indy Media, tells us about one of history's great crimes.

Okay, first Bill Kristol's car is coming around the bend...


It appears to be traveling about about 5 to 10 miles an hour...

The crowd waves and the entourage basks in the apparent adulation..


and then SUDDENLY!


From behind the grassy knoll.


That is some magic pastry!


Back and to the...right.

Commenter Matt casts doubt there was a lone pieman.

America will never be the same.

Jim Garrison will likely subpoena us.

Strange World

Near Wichita, Kansas:

"It is important that we show compassion and love towards our brother Dennis Rader. If what is claimed to be true, we should be about the business of asking for God's help in healing of heart and soul," he told them during his sermon. "The truth from God will free us from the anger, the pain, the bitterness, the hardened heart, the release from being lost and confused."


Meanwhile, in Florida:

The case has had some impact on the private life of the judge. On March 17, Judge Greer withdrew from Calvary Baptist Church in Clearwater after its pastor, the Rev. William Rice, asked him to clarify whether he was still a member.

This Day in History and Its Relevance to Today

Many people have recited the romantic short-verse regarding Columbus, how in 1492 he sailed the Ocean Blue.

And much has been discussed of this, whether he was the first European to do so, and of course the destruction, both intentional and inadvertent he and his successors inflicted upon the Western Hemisphere.

But something else happened in 1492 involving Columbus's benefactors.

It was on this date in 1492 that Queen Isabella of Castilia & Ferdinand of Aragon expelled the Jews from their newly united Spain.

History is just chock full of those moments of Christian Tolerance isn't it?

513 years later, Republicans are trying to expel John Danforth.

I'll Await the Prominent Placement of the Correction!

Breaking News:

A black spider monkey believed to be the world's oldest monkey other than apes has died at age 53 in Japan, with her friendliness and a late-life love affair with a younger monkey seen as clues to her longevity.


Great, the Monkey was a regular Demi Moore.

But world's oldest monkey, excuse me?

58

Looks like I picked the wrong time

...to never watch South Park.

In an effort to stop the feeding tube to be removed, Satan's current boyfriend (a demon who really resembles Emperor Palpatine) suggests that they should take action to try to keep the boy alive so that his soul can't fight for Heaven. Satan asks what they can do. The other guy responds "Simple. We'll do what we always do. Use the Republicans".

We then see President Bush making a speech calling for Kenny's life to be saved, with that demon whispering all of his words to him.

As the protests intensify, they move into Kenny's hospital room. And then...just as everything was growing louder, the lawyer found the last page of Kenny's will. His wishes were..."If I'm ever in a vegetative state, for the love of God don't put me on national TV." Kyle and Stan realize that while Cartman was trying to remove the tube for the wrong reasons, and they let Kenny die.

Kenny returns to Heaven in time to defeat Satan's army. He is rewarded with a golden statue of Keanu Reeves.

No Longer a Metaphorical Circus

I'm kind of sick of the story too, but lordy the material.

He prayed about whether he should drive to Florida and visit the hospice. Then he got an answer, said 32-year-old Nathan Dorrell.

"God told me to come," Dorrell said, "and juggle."

So Dorrell loaded his pregnant wife and two children into their minivan and made the 480-mile drive from Temple, Ga. The family arrived at Hospice House Woodside on Wednesday morning and unpacked in a shady spot.

Dorrell, wearing a fluorescent orange tie that squiggled down his chest, tossed his silver juggling clubs into the air. They glimmered in the sunlight, drawing the attention of dozens of protesters sitting nearby.

Some weren't pleased. This was not the time, they told Dorrell, for juggling.


UPDATE:

Oh, hey, good ol' Holden even found a picture.

Drawn & Quartered

Joe Scarborough has apparently had the vapors over the Schiavo case and has been aroused every night on MSNBC apparently.

Crooks & Liars, the progressives number one resource for video, has a link to Joe beeing thoroughly pummelled by former jurist and current CourtTV talking head Catherine Crier (and though she's no liberal she is soooooo much better than Nancy "Mah Eyes are a poppin' from mah Skull" Grace).

Here it is, it's worth it.

Internet Tough-Guy

TBogg already noticed this, but some phrases are too good for me to pass up.

Some of you may have heard that somebody threw a pie at the genetically hacktacular Bill Kristol the other day. Jonah "Please Go Fight My War for Me" Goldberg responds with fightin' words.

That story Ramesh posted about Bill Kristol getting smacked with a pie reminds me: I'll be at Ithaca college on April 6 talking about diversity & stuff.

I suppose Bill responded the correct way, but transforming oneself into a helicopter of fists certainly has its appeal as well.


Helicopter of Fists?


Well he did once roll a "natural-20" to beat that nasty Githyanki in college.

Oh please, denizens of Ithaca College, please load yourselves up with Coconut Cremes and Video Cameras. I do so want to see the 'Doughy Pantload' try to flail about and attempt to be a "Helicopter of Fists".

I'm willing to bet it will in reality be a "Tugboat of Assuming Fetal Position" myself.

Dear Leader on Parade


President Bush revealed the White House's new combo Social Security/Dietary Plan.


Rumsfeld announces Wolfowitz's replacement at DOD, Topo Gigio.

Creep-o-tism

Dick Cheney's mood?


Content

President Bush has nominated the vice president's son-in-law, Philip J. Perry, as general counsel of the Homeland Security Department, where he would oversee 1,500 lawyers who work on legal matters like Coast Guard maritime laws and immigration.

Mr. Perry, who is married to Elizabeth Cheney, is leaving the Washington office of the Latham & Watkins law firm, where he was a partner, as well as a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin, one of the top 10 contractors for the Homeland Security Department.


...

If confirmed, Mr. Perry will not be the only member of Mr. Cheney's family working for the administration. Elizabeth Cheney, the vice president's daughter and Mr. Perry's wife, was appointed last month by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as the second-ranking United States diplomat for the Mideast.


You have to admit, he certainly photographs like an "original" Cheney.


No word on when Jenna or Not-Jenna will be appointed to head the Bureau of Alchohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Food Tube Boobs

Aren't we just fucking the bestest nation on earth?

Malnutrition rates in children under five have almost doubled since the US-led intervention - to nearly 8% by the end of last year, it says.

UN specialist on hunger Jean Ziegler, who prepared the report, blames the worsening situation in Iraq on the war led by coalition forces.

He was addressing a meeting of the 53-nation commission, the top UN rights watchdog, which is halfway through its annual six-week session.

When Saddam Hussein was overthrown, about 4% of Iraqi children under five were going hungry; now that figure has almost doubled to 8%, his report says.

Governments must recognise their extra-territorial obligations towards the right to food and should not do anything that might undermine access to it of people living outside their borders, it says.

That point is aimed clearly at the US, but Washington, which has sent a large delegation to the Human Rights Commission, declined to respond to the charges, says the BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva.


When pressed on the matter, Dear Letter was heard to utter...

Aaaaaaa Waaaaaaaaa!

This about sums it up

From Mark Kleiman:

I see Nat Hentoff and Jesse Jackson have joined the feed-Terri forces, which already included Ralph Nader, Randall Terry, Rush Limbaugh, Bo Gritz, Sean Hannity, and James Dobson. Now if we can just get Alexander Cockburn and Al Sharpton to join in, we'll have a left-right coalition embodying the very cream of the nation's loudmouth dimwitted self-promoting busybodies.

We have an new Chubby Hero

Thanks to William Pitt and reader Semper Fubar for making us aware of it. From the clown-show in Florida.

Fresh Meat

Well, now I know Ed Grimley's favorite blog, I must say.

For those of you who think that Chuck Woolery is too erudite, Pat Sajak has a thing or too to tell ya, which apparently is this:

Allow me to show my keen superiority to those nasty liberals and their generalizations by engaging in meaningless generalizing.

Touche.

Oh and just because I never pass up an opportunity for a cheap shot:

"Recently, for example, I was discussing the United Sates Supreme Court with on of my many Liberal friends..."


Anyone up for buying a vowel...since clues seem to be in short supply?

Another Study has found that Howie is even more of a Putz than previously imagined

A couple days ago, Mr. Shari Anis used his column to discuss how College Campus's are "more" liberal than previously thought (undoubtedly giving David Horowitz a gigantic chubby – well gigantic by his standards).

Barely mentioned is that the study is funded by:

The study appears in the March issue of the Forum, an online political science journal. It was funded by the Randolph Foundation, a right-leaning group that has given grants to such conservative organizations as the Independent Women's Forum and Americans for Tax Reform.


"Right-Leaning" doesn't really state it strong enough. IWF is Phyllis Schaffly's "tea-time" crony group, and ATR is pretty much Posse Comitatus with better offices.

And the leading researcher of the study, Robert Lichter of George Mason?

Well, as stated yesterday, Attaturk is no journalist, but there is some research he can do and he has done some on this Dr. Lichter. His full name is S. Robert Lichter. Say, this S. Robert Lichter used to work for AEI and has a long history of calling things "liberally biased". It's almost like he has a proclivity for such statements:

However, it fails to mention that between 1986 and 1988 Dr Lichter held the DeWitt Wallace Chair in Mass Communications at the American Enterprise Institute. Back in 1993, Dr Lichter appears to have been less shy about his connection with the AEI, as it features in a biography of him used to advertise a speaking engagement at the Ashbrook Center [3] (http://www.ashbrook.org/events/lecture/1993/lichter.html) [4] (http://www.fair.org/reports/lichter-memo.html).


My goodness, oh and then there is this blast from the past:

According to FAIR [5] (http://www.fair.org/reports/lichter-memo.html), at a conference sponsored by Accuracy In Media after the first Gulf War, Lichter was reported by AP (4/27/91) to have said "...he was disappointed in statements by [Peter] Arnett upon his return from Baghdad that he was in the enemy capital on behalf of all CNN viewers, not just Americans. 'I see a trend toward journalists seeing themselves as citizens of the world' rather than patriotic Americans, Lichter said."

Lichter had another go at Arnett in the second Gulf War, during the media feeding frenzy following Arnett's remarks in an interview with Iraqi state television. An April 1, 2004 Washington Post article quoted Lichter saying: "If ever there was a poster boy for bias, it is now Peter Arnett." [6] (http://www.carma.com/news/prweek/030414.asp)




And none of this information was mentioned by Howie.

But then he's a journalist and Attaturk is not.

Keep Whistling Past the Graveyard

From the Guardian:

The human race is living beyond its means. A report backed by 1,360 scientists from 95 countries - some of them world leaders in their fields - today warns that the almost two-thirds of the natural machinery that supports life on Earth is being degraded by human pressure.

The study contains what its authors call "a stark warning" for the entire world. The wetlands, forests, savannahs, estuaries, coastal fisheries and other habitats that recycle air, water and nutrients for all living creatures are being irretrievably damaged. In effect, one species is now a hazard to the other 10 million or so on the planet, and to itself.

"Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted," it says.

The report, prepared in Washington under the supervision of a board chaired by Robert Watson, the British-born chief scientist at the World Bank and a former scientific adviser to the White House, will be launched today at the Royal Society in London.




Meanwhile, the Bush Administration announced the "Friendly Environment Act" which advocated bombing the environment into submission.

Priorities:

While some folks simply MUST be forced to live, others can be allowed to die. Naturally, the folks pushing for the former more than likely support the drive for the latter when it comes to gay people.



Michigan Preparing To Let Doctors Refuse To Treat Gays

(Lansing, Michigan) Doctors or other health care providers could not be disciplined or sued if they refuse to treat gay patients under legislation passed Wednesday by the Michigan House.

The bill allows health care workers to refuse service to anyone on moral, ethical or religious grounds.

The Republican dominated House passed the measure as dozens of Catholics looked on from the gallery. The Michigan Catholic Conference, which pushed for the bills, hosted a legislative day for Catholics on Wednesday at the state Capitol.

The bills now go the Senate, which also is controlled by Republicans.

The Conscientious Objector Policy Act would allow health care providers to assert their objection within 24 hours of when they receive notice of a patient or procedure with which they don't agree.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Old Faithful

Reader Suzanne keeps me updated on the continuous supply of unintentionally humorous quotes from the mascot of the Intersection of Ben wa Balls Street & Venus Butterfly Avenue.



REPUBLICANS DON'T HAVE SEX? YOU WISH! [K. J. Lopez]

Wassup with this? A poll on Americans being too tired for sex includes a picture of Bush-Cheney supporters on election night. Wishful thinking from Reuters?

Posted at 11:41 AM


Project much?


Misplaced Priorities, how about preventing some real barbarity?

While her obsession with a person who is being allowed to die after 15 years in a vegetative state, K-Lopez fixation with being fed has distracted her from a danger that would seem to hit much, much closer to home.

Permission has been granted by the Canadian authorities for at least 319,500 harp seals to be shot or clubbed to death over the next month.

Thanks Yahoo & Google

For giving Attaturk so many pictures to caption over the last year.


I guess the honeymoon is over.


"Just keep walking normally honey and perhaps they won't notice us ahead of them."


Often times people search out for substitutes for the intimacy they once had...I'm just sayin'...somefolks are missing Condi and Ari.


Forget presidentin', I'm going to tour in 'Riverdance'


"Jeebus, that bitch is in every fucking picture! And the dog too!"

More "Boy King" Follies

So, after four plus years of the First Amendment not applying to Dear Leader is it even permissible to post about matters like this?

The U.S. Secret Service on Monday said it was investigating the claims of three people who said they were removed from President Bush's town hall meeting on Social Security last week after being singled out because of a bumper sticker on their car.

The three said they had obtained tickets through the office of Rep. Bob Beauprez, R-Colo., had passed through security and were preparing to take their seats when they were approached by what they thought was a Secret Service agent who asked them to leave.

One woman, Karen Bauer, 38, a marketing coordinator from Denver, said the agent put his hand on her elbow and steered her away from her seat and toward an exit.

"The Secret Service had nothing to do with that," said Lon Garner, special agent in charge of the Secret Service district office in Denver. "We are very sensitive to the First Amendment and general assembly rights as protected by the Constitution."

The Secret Service is in charge of protecting the president.

The three who were removed, along with their attorney, Dan Recht, met with Garner Monday. Recht said he may file a lawsuit based on the group's alleged violation of their First Amendment rights.

Garner said the group appeared confused as to who asked them to leave and declined to release further details, citing an ongoing investigation.

Alex Young, 25, an Internet technology worker from Denver who was among the three removed from the event March 17 at Wings over the Rockies, said officials told them the next day they were identified as belonging to the "No Blood for Oil" group.

Young said they belong to no such group, but the car they drove to the event had a bumper sticker that read: "No More Blood for Oil."

"I don't think a bumper sticker on a friend's car should disqualify me from seeing the president," Young said.

Beauprez distributed tickets to the event, which was part of President Bush's effort to gain support for his plan to overhaul Social Security. Messages left after-hours at Beauprez's office were not immediately returned Monday. A call to Bush's advance team in Denver went unanswered Monday afternoon.


This is hardly the first time this has happened, it happened many times during the prelude to the coronation, aka Election 2004, and it has happened several times during the Baboon-a-palooza Tour*.



*Credit to Holden at First Draft.

And the topic is...Ass Fucking

The ultimate blogpanel:

Yes, the same day that the prestigious Washington, D.C., journalism organization plans to present a lunch talk by former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, it will also allow the former White House reporter/sex site operator to be on a panel discussing bloggers and online journalism.

Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, resigned his job with the conservative Talon News last month after it was revealed he had used a pseudonym, had little journalism background, and had ties to male escort Web sites.

Still, Press Club leaders will include Gannon on the panel April 8 that includes Wonkette.com editor Ana Marie Cox, National Journal's John Stanton, and others.

Randall Terry's Master Plan Comes to Fruition

We've all heard professional scum bag Randall Terry enjoy his return to the limelight and his proclamation that somehow, Terry Schiavo said "Aaaaa Waaaa" and it meant "I want to live" (as opposed to "I want Randall Terry's little testicles to shrivel into a painful blistered mass"). So with that in mind...

A little scene in nearly as bad a taste as Mr. Terry's day-to-day existence, with a tip of the hat to Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks:

EXT. THEATRE - NIGHT

A poster reads:

BUCHAREST STATE THEATRE

Tonight Only

R. TERRY

in

"THE GREATEST DISCOVERY SINCE FIRE"

Presented in Cooperation With

the
Evangelical Pseudo-Neurological Society

A "SOLD OUT" sticker is pasted across the poster.

CUT TO:

INT. AUDITORIUM - NIGHT 106

The audience is filled with ELDERLY SCIENTISTS, their
WIVES, and THE CURIOUS from the upper crust in society.

All are elegantly dressed in cheap movie studio wardrobe.


R. Terry stands on a stage, dressed in tails.


R. TERRY

And now, my fellow creationists and
born agains...I must ask you to
...continue to suspend belief.
For up until now, you have seen
Terry just lied there with her mouth
agape. You think that this woman is but
an inanimate blob, which I endowed
with the secret of perpetual life -- yes!.in
all honesty -- that showed some measure
of skill on my part.

But for what you are about to see
next...we must enter -- quietly --
into the realm of genius. I say
this modestly, only because I am,
myself, as in awe of the gifts I
possess as if I were observing them
in some other person. I think of
them, only, as a loan. Grateful, of
course...that my credit is good.
Thus, with the accumulated knowledge
of sophistry, ignorance, alchemy
...and pure bravado...I now present
what was once an inarticulate mass
of lifeless tissues.
Ladies and gentlemen...
Mesdames et Messieurs...
Damen und Herren...Terry Schiavo!

Randall sits down at a beautiful grand piano. He plays a
short trill up the keyboard.

ANOTHER ANGLE

as A SPOTLIGHT hits the darkness next to him.

And there -- IN TOP HAT AND TAILS -- rolls out Terry Schiavo.
she is heavily made up.

R. TERRY
(playing the piano
and singing)
If you're blue and you
don't know where to
go to, why don't you...

Terry Schiavo just sits there.

R. TERRY
...go where fashion
sits.........................

(Several minutes pass by)




TERRY SCHIAVO
Aaaaaaaa waaaaaaaa

R. TERRY
Diff'rent types who wear
a day coat, pants
with stripes and cutaway
coat, perfect
fits.........................

(After several more minutes)

TERRY SCHIAVO
Aaaaaa waaaaaa

R. TERRY
Dressed up like a
million dollar
trouper
Trying hard to
look like Gary
Cooper.

(About an hour goes by)

TERRY SCHIAVO

Aaaaaa Waaaaaaa

The Audience's faces are cheering wildly.

R. TERRY

Come let's mix where Rock-
e -- fellers walk
with sticks or 'um-ber-
el-las' in their
mitts.........................

(The next morning)

TERRY SCHIAVO

Aaaaa Waaaaa.

While Davey deals with the effects of a beanball, Krugman marches on!

Hard to write much about Bobo today, as he is going down memory land and writing about baseball. Good hard hitting editorialist that he is.

But none of that piffle for Krugman who goes right to the heart of the matter in tackling the denizens of Bobo's World:

What we need - and we aren't seeing - is a firm stand by moderates against religious extremism. Some people ask, with justification, Where are the Democrats? But an even better question is, Where are the doctors fiercely defending their professional integrity? I think the American Medical Association disapproves of politicians who second-guess medical diagnoses based on video images - but the association's statement on the Schiavo case is so timid that it's hard to be sure.

The closest parallel I can think of to current American politics is Israel. There was a time, not that long ago, when moderate Israelis downplayed the rise of religious extremists. But no more: extremists have already killed one prime minister, and everyone realizes that Ariel Sharon is at risk.

America isn't yet a place where liberal politicians, and even conservatives who aren't sufficiently hard-line, fear assassination. But unless moderates take a stand against the growing power of domestic extremists, it can happen here.


Amen.

Thanks for being suckers

When someone nominates professional slimebucket Randall Terry (see above) as your spokesman, you know this is likely to happen:

The parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of their financial supporters, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups.

"These compassionate pro-lifers donated toward Bob Schindler's legal battle to keep Terri's estranged husband from removing the feeding tube from Terri," says a description of the list on the Web site of the firm, Response Unlimited, which is asking $150 a month for 6,000 names and $500 a month for 4,000 e-mail addresses of people who responded last month to an e-mail plea from Ms. Schiavo's father. "These individuals are passionate about the way they value human life, adamantly oppose euthanasia and are pro-life in every sense of the word!"

Privacy experts said the sale of the list was legal and even predictable, if ghoulish.


And pity the little suckers:

Pamela Hennessy, an unpaid spokeswoman for the Schindlers, said she was initially appalled when she learned of the list's existence.

"It is possibly the most distasteful thing I have ever seen," Ms. Hennessy said. "Everybody is making a buck off of her."


Note the word..."initially".

Juxtaposition

The incomparable Billmon is back to actively posting again. Yesterday's post was a great find.

Bill Tierney, the ultimate Christian Stereotypical Warrior.

I suppose I could have checked out Atrios before I put this up this morning, as he was all over this last night.

However, Atrios doesn't accompany his posts with pictures of the Pope praying for the sweet release of death.

Monday, March 28, 2005

For Many People this May Strike you as Denoting Some Special Occurrence

But at the Bush White House it was simply known as...

Monday.


Lynn Cheney's new novel has only metaphorical lesbians.


The DoD reveals its special plan to up Marine Recruitment with prepubescents.


Seconds after Lynn began reading from "The Children's Book of Ayn Rand", the audience realized they could overcome her with their vastly superior strength in numbers.


Fortunately, for Ms. Cheney, Laura showed up with her purse loaded for bear and put down the unruly crowd.

Well another Easter Weekend out of the Way

Or as it's known in Washington, D.C., The weekend that Joe Lieberman is forced to go over to all the Republicans' residences and apologize.


Joe for Jesus!

I don't give a shit

There are some bloggers that do reporting. Josh Marshall does some, David Neiwart, there is some reporting that goes on at a place like Daily Kos.

But to the extent I care about the latest reporter to whine about how bloggers are not reporters, my response is "well d'uh". To a large extent anymore, neither is much of the media.

I am no reporter. No is anyone else on this blog. There is not one piece of original news reporting that any of us have done...I take that back, I think DeDurkheim went to a few Kerry rallies. That is about it.

But what reporters don't seem to notice is that much of the "broadcast medium" that so many people of slack jaws and "Cult of Earnhardt" view as reporting are, in fact, nothing but commentors. There is very little actual reporting on any network in the evening, it is all commenting.

And for the most part that is 95% of blogging, some of it is quality analysis, some of it is entertainment value (comedy), and some of it is stupifyingly banal (so just like FoxNews). But all-in-all it is pretty plain that the quality of commenting on blogs is far and away superior to that shown in broadcasting. It's more substantive and wittier.

I'm sorry if this basic concept eludes them.

Not that anyone on the right will notice, but Michael Moore was right

Right on the charge of the Bush Administration/FBI assisting members of the Saudi Royal Family escape in the wake of 9/11 as charged in Moore's Fahrenheit 911 film.

The FBI gave "well-connected" Saudi families escorts to the airport after the Sept. 11 attacks, the New York Times reported Sunday, citing government documents.

Two Saudi Arabian families and several citizens were escorted by FBI officials and flew home without being interviewed, the newspaper said, citing documents from the U.S. Justice Department newly obtained by Judicial Watch, a legal watchdog, and given to the Times.

Some of the escorted Saudis were relatives of Osama bin Laden, the newspaper said. The documents showed one of the flights departed on Sept. 14, 2001, from Providence, R.I., and included a member of the Saudi royal family, the newspaper said. The U.S. government began allowing flights on Sept. 13, 2001, although most were still grounded.

An unidentified FBI official told the newspaper that the agency would assist "anybody if they felt they were threatened," the newspaper said, while in 2003, the agency "reacted angrily" to suggestions that Saudis received preferential treatment, the newspaper said.


Somehow, I doubt this will be mentioned by ERNEST T. BASS, ESQ. or the Intersection of Cult of Personality Street & Blinders Avenue.

Send your Emails to Bobo Brooks

The Schiavo protest is sort of the Woodstock of the Bobo's World set, with Randall Terry playing the part of Wavy Gravy. At least it would be if there were all that many people there. Oh, and stay away from the brown holy wafers! Steve Gilliard notices once of many examples:

An Associated Press article is beginning to circulate at http://www.wfmynews2.com/news/local_state/local_article.aspx?storyid=38304
and elsewhere regarding 10 year old Joshua Heldreth and his father, Scott Heldreth. Heldreth is a longtime Operation Rescue/Operation Save America participant as is clear from a simple Google search and any claim that his son induced him to come to Pinellas where many other OR/OSA people and their leadership were present is clearly bogus.

Further, Scott Heldreth is a registered sex offender in the state of Florida, marked as "absconded from registration," according to this FDLE flyer:

http://www3.fdle.state.fl.us/sexual_predators/OffenderFlyer.asp?keys=38964


A Howard Scott Heldreth is registered as a sex offender in both Illinois and Florida and a Scott Heldreth has let his son get arrested outside Terri Schiavo's hospice. Both pictures are very similar.

It seems he wasn't registered in North Carolina, where he lives, as a sex offender.

The problem with the whole circus outside the hospice is that you don't know what kind of people you attract. You drag in all sorts and if this is true and Heldreth is absconded from registration as a sex offender.

What is amazing is that after seeing this guy let his kid get arrested, no one did as much as a google search on him until someone did on Kos.

Don't we have reporters any more? Or are they all stenographers?


When is the Schindler brother that looks like Ben Stiller going to play the Jimi Hendrix-style, "Onward Christian Soldiers" guitar riff?

Get out the Barf Bag

Who needs the feel of a feather on your throat, when Elizabeth Bumiller has reached 'pon farr' again?

George W. Bush has been acting like a man liberated from the American presidency.

At an event in Denver last Monday, he mused that sending out quarterly statements for the individual investment accounts he wants to add to Social Security could encourage people to pay more attention to government but then chuckled that investors might conclude from tepid returns that "maybe we ought to change presidents or something."

At a news conference last week, Mr. Bush joked that he did not have the time "to sit around and wander, lonely, in the Oval Office, kind of asking different portraits, 'How do you think my standing will be?' "

And at the end of an interview with a Belgian television correspondent last month, Mr. Bush blurted out to the young woman that she had "great eyes," glanced away slyly and then a little sheepishly, but for the most part seemed sorry that the session was over.

Is this a new George Bush?

White House officials insist not and say that the frisky president people are seeing in public is simply the one he has kept private for the last four years. "In the first term he wanted to have the American people see his heart and his policy agenda and his seriousness, and not that he's an impishly fun, very clever guy," said Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education and the president's former domestic policy adviser.


Oh, Jeebus.

This guy makes bizarre statements about pretty faces and pretty eyes and he is impishly fun and very clever.

The last clever thing this guy did is spell out "mommy" in blow on an Alabama Hooker's ass.

Paper-Towel dosed with Formaldehyde

Well, what can I say? Attaturk spends the Easter Weekend sick as a dog (and it wasn't even from a Chocolate Bunny) and world keeps going on without me.

There was one story that I missed blogging about, and some readers have emailed me about it, and that is the story of how Tom DeLay ended the life of his daddy by covering up his airholes, sticking a pin through him and displaying him at the County Fair.

He then went on to pursue a lawsuit for product liability against the big-bad corporation that he alleged caused daddy's death.

Not surprisingly, of course, seventeen years later, DeLay accuses those making the same decisions of being murderers and does his damndest to prevent suits against corporations.

I've run out of witty puns for the prick.


The DeLay Family Tree

Saturday, March 26, 2005

So it's come to commando raids

Fuck the rule of law apparently.

Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo was not to be removed from her hospice, a team of state agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted -- but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge's order, The Herald has learned.

Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the small town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, on Thursday that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding.

For a brief period, local police, who have officers at the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called ``a showdown.''

In the end, the squad from the FDLE and the Department of Children & Families backed down, apparently concerned about confronting local police outside the hospice.

''We told them that unless they had the judge with them when they came, they were not going to get in,'' said a source with the local police.


Unfuckingbelievable.

Just a little poll here, for years the conservatives have pounded the "RULE OF LAW" card, so how many have you heard over the airwaves, besides albino mutant John Gibson, urge that judge's orders be ignored and the hospice be stormed? I've heard plenty.

Meanwhile, more uncommented upon dead infants in Iraq and the Sudan.

Friday, March 25, 2005

Bonus Friday Miscellaneous "Culture of" Lifeform

Image hosted by Photobucket.com


From reader MNKid.

They LIE!!!!!! Part 1,783,043

What is that mantra that I've stated before?

Oh yes, in the World of Dear Leader one must follow this pattern:


1. Something Happens.

2. Spin immediately and hard that it is the greatest thing EVER!

3. Say it is because of Dear Leader.

4. Move on to next over-the-top declaration of Dear Leader's greatness before anyone notices what happened is not the greatest thing ever, but actually made things worse.

5. Blather, Rinse, Repeat!



In today's example...

No proof for claim Iraq killed 85 rebels
Government now says battle not a major incident


New details from an intense battle between insurgents and Iraqi police commandos supported by U.S. forces cast doubt Thursday on Iraqi government claims that 85 insurgents had been killed at what was described as a clandestine training camp.

Accounts of the fighting continued to suggest that a major battle involving dozens of insurgents had occurred Tuesday on the eastern shore of Lake Tharthar, about 50 miles northwest of Baghdad. But two U.S. military officials said Thursday that no bodies had been found by American troops who arrived later at the scene. A spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, meanwhile, said he presumed the death toll was accurate, but he played down the scope of the fighting.

"I wouldn't call it a major incident," said the spokesman, Sabar Kadhim. Its significance, he said, was that it was "the first major operation" to be conceived and executed by the nascent Iraqi security forces with U.S. soldiers in a supporting role.

How many of these stories today from the "CULTURE OF LIFE" crowd?

From Newsday:

SEMINOLE, Fla. -- A man was arrested after trying to steal a weapon from a gun shop so he could "take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo," authorities said.

Michael W. Mitchell, of Rockford, Ill., entered Randall's Firearms Inc. in Seminole just before 6 p.m. Thursday with a box cutter and tried to steal a gun, said Marianne Pasha, a spokeswoman for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.

Mitchell, 50, told deputies he wanted to "take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo" after he visited the Pinellas Park hospice where she lives, Pasha said.


Every action like this should be on the head of Chimpy and the fact that he enables nutjobs like Randall ("I retrieved this plastic fetus from a dumpster outside Planned Parenthood...really") Terry.

Hell To Pay

The difference between the nutjob wing of the Republican party (which seems to grow larger by the day) and the majority of sensible Americans of all political stripes is becoming clear. The Republican party, as envisioned by Bush, Frist, Delay, Hastert, Cheney, Rove, etc. has become a parody of itself. Beleiving that the party had to co-opt nutjobs like Randall Terry (to say nothing of Grover Norquist) is proving to be damaging to the party's health.

Bush's tone of resignation sparked anger and disappointment among protesters standing vigil outside the hospice where Schiavo was being cared for. Terry, who has been advising the Schindlers, said "there will be hell to pay" if the politicians whom religious conservatives had helped elect let Schiavo die.


I think he is on to something, on so many levels. Now we don't want to start counting chickens yet but we may take note of the fallout not from Terri Sciavo, but from the cynical hubris demonstrated by Bush and congressional Republicans using Terri Schiavolike a playground utility ball. They have seriously miscalculated on this one and the fact that they were either so blind or drunk about the actions they were taking is a good sign.

So here's to having hell to pay. May the price be steep and unrelenting. And there's no better time to do it you know.

Culture of Life Update

Dear Leader, so busy trying to make sure that a White Woman remains alive as chattel, hasn't seemed to notice that ten non-whites seem to have died this week in Minnesota, as Joe Fish notes.

Amazing isn't it that the GPS/SatNav systems on Air Force One don't have any mapped routes to Northern Minnesota?


As the Washington Post reports:

Native Americans across the country -- including tribal leaders, academics and rank-and-file tribe members -- voiced anger and frustration Thursday that President Bush has responded to the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history with silence.


...

"From all over the world we are getting letters of condolence, the Red Cross has come, but the so-called Great White Father in Washington hasn't said or done a thing," said Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the founder and national director of the American Indian Movement here. "When people's children are murdered and others are in the hospital hanging on to life, he should be the first one to offer his condolences. . . . If this was a white community, I don't think he'd have any problem doing that."


Of course, much as Schiavo is a complete sop to his most ardent (and deranged) supporters, the downplaying of a tragedy that is only slightly behind Columbine in numbers of dead is also related to a constituency groups. God forbid that we note that once again guns are everywhere in our society or that once again, a kid on prozac seems to go off the deep in and committ mass murder.

God forbid we ask any questions.

You cannot restrict GUNS, to curb the easy availability of instruments that can kill so many, so quickly and efficiently would not respect the CULTURE OF LIFE!

Friday Miscellaneous Lifeform Blogging

Attaturk is a tired man this morning. But nonetheless it's Friday and that means a random form of life must be posted.

All manner of material could be thrown up this week, but instead I dedicate this weeks post to the only animal I know of that can do to one physically, what Randall Terry does to one metaphorically.


The Amazonian Candiru

While it is been written that this fish enters the urethra of human bathers (one article - Lins, Journal of Urology, 1945) claims a U.S. navy surgeon named Charles Ammerman operated on three candir victims, in one case slicing into the bladder to extract the fish. Now, it is certain it does based on a recent report of a human having urinated while in the water and the Candir entered through his penis opening. The catfish had to be surgically removed at a hospital in Manaus. The disbelieving urologist (Dr.Anoar Samad) who performed the operation was not certain at first the fish was in the urethral tract but x-rays proved it was in there stuck. (Information verified by Dr. Paulo Petry, Bio-Amazonia Conservation). The Candir is considered by some to be the only known vertebrate to parasitize human beings, however that is an erroneous postulation. Truth is the fish enters humans more by accident than design, fortunately it is rare occurrence they enter human bodies!



HEY! You're at work, get your hands out of your pants and uncross your legs.

Thanks to reader TheaLogie.

Fair UND Balanced Homie

Ah, FoxNews, where journalism is in a permanent vegetative state, and employs albino freakshow John Gibson:

I think Jeb Bush should give serious thought to storming the Bastille.

By that I mean he should think about telling his cops to go over to Terri Schiavo's (search) hospice, go inside, put her on a gurney and load her into an ambulance. They could take her to a hospital, revive her, and reattach her feeding tube. It wouldn't save Terri exactly; she'd still be in the same rotten shape she was in before they disconnected the feeding tube.

But the point is, the temple of the law is so sacrosanct that an occasional chief executive cannot flaunt it once in a while, sort of drop his drawers on the courthouse steps and moon the judges, as a way to protest the complete disregard courts and judges have shown here, in this case, for facts outside the law.


You know at a real news station, having one of your purported news reporters advocate breaking the law would get one punished.

But on FoxNews, Colmes will bring him a hot doughnut and coffee*


*Thankfully not intended as a euphemism for "handjob".

Thursday, March 24, 2005

And Now a Serious Post

The incredible nature of this Schiavo mess is stunning to me, stunning that this particular case became such a tempest, and stunned at the mendacity of a minority of the religious GOP rearing its head.

What no amount of poor news coverage, or slanders against Michael Schiavo could hide is the fact that this is something even most conservatives have a passing knowledge and concern for. Each and everyone of us knows that we are going to die, and each and everyone of us wants to go gracefully and with as little pain as possible. Certainly, not one of us would choose to be known only for our appearance in a vegetative state, when someone we trusted holds us up for display. I'm pretty sure nobody will argue that Terri Schiavo wanted that.

No person wants to be a glass-eyed spectacle at the end of our lives, trotted out like some exotic dead trout. That was the fate of Terri Schiavo for the last several years. 15 years in a vegetative state, the ONLY image millions of people have is a blank stare and an open mouth, an empty vessel.

And we all know if the Schindlers, and those on the right using them, had prevailed that was potentially a fate awaiting any one of us. Laying out, propped up on a bed, blank stare, drooling, glassy eyed, with only instinctive movement. Waiting, without knowing, someone to come clean us from whatever bowel or bladder movement we've had.

What they do not understand is that not only does everyone know they are going to die, a great many of us will face a situation of being with, or being responsible for, the life or death decision of someone else. Look at these posts on MSNBC for personal story after personal story of people who were in the situation of Michael Schiavo, time after time after time, all of them made the same decision and each came to know that letting someone go was the right decision.

Even those of us who do not have such a situation, or have not yet with a human being, we likely have had it in some other fashion.

I'm not a religious person, but if there are souls, then dammit my dogs have had them as much as most any person I've met. And yet like most pet owners I have faced the life and death decision. When your lifespan is several times the length of an animal that you keep as a pet, that is going to happen. We pet owners know what it is like to realize that life has no remaining value other than pain for our beloved animals, and we have to make the decision to end their lives -- and we do. I don't mean to compare the value of a pet to a human being so directly, though I think most pet owners are closer to their dogs or cats than all but a small handful of people in their lives.

Humans are genetically attuned to such matters in one form or another. For Tom DeLay to accuse someone like Michael Schiavo of being callous, we know that he is, in fact, judging most all of us in the same vile manner. And Bugman, we know ourselves and we know who we are, and we know damn well we don't make such decisions lightly.

The actions of DeLay and Bush this week are repugnant against the manner in which we as a society choose to live our lives and it manifested itself this week in opinion polls. When you attack something so important to all of us, and tell us our feelings are evil, it leaves a mark that we will all remember. We will remember and let you know.

Jeebus, this is too easy

The meltdown has apparently now led to a large puddle. It is clearly getting more and more PERSONAL for the Empress of the intersection of Nilla Wafer Street and Chick'n in a Biscuit Avenue.

"THE COWS SUFFERED TREMENDOUSLY." [K. J. Lopez]
Vermont farmer prosecuted for starving his cattle to death.
Posted at 01:43 PM


That story, must really hit close to home.

The Mind Reels

I'm staying as far away from Li'l LuLu as possible, but this post at my favorite recent object of scorn does make one wonder...

WEISE ON THE NET [K. J. Lopez]
Michelle Malkin's doing some disturbing Internet researching on the Minnesota school shooter.
Posted at 12:26 PM


Perhaps Ms. Maglaglalangabangagong is suggesting that people who share Weise's ethnicity be put on reservations or something?

So Much Material...

So little time...

Must...NOT...SPEND...PRECIOUS...SNARK...

STAY AWAY, SEAN [John Derbyshire]

Watching Hannity & Colmes Tuesday night I found myself nursing a devout hope that if I ever enter a persistent vegetative state, Sean Hannity is nowhere in the neighborhood.
Posted at 09:52 AM

The Culture of Life...Comes with Hushpuppies and Slaw on the Side

The Talent Show demonstrates that Mel Gibson cared enough about the Schiavo case to interrupt his meal. Ironically he was eating flounder at the time.



Having studied history, this reminds me of the time that Bob Packwood expressed solidarity with Ms. Lech Walesa by sending her a picture of his polish sausage.

THIS IMAGE DELETED BY THE EDITORS

They'll Blame the Clenis somehow...

Yet more evidence of Florida continuing to be Jebby and the Bush's virtual food tube.

State records show Bush re-election concerns played part in FEMA aid

As the second hurricane in less than a month bore down on Florida last fall, a federal consultant predicted a "huge mess" that could reflect poorly on President Bush and suggested that his re-election staff be brought in to minimize any political liability, records show.

Two weeks later, a Florida official summarizing the hurricane response wrote that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was handing out housing assistance "to everyone who needs it without asking for much information of any kind."


...

FEMA officials, the governor and the White House have steadfastly denied suggestions that politics played a role in the distribution of hurricane aid in Florida.

"The men and women at FEMA don't give a patooey about who the president is or who the governor is," FEMA Director Michael D. Brown told the newspaper's editorial board in October. "Whenever people say stuff like that … we're just offended by that because that's just not how we operate."

But politics was foremost on the mind of FEMA consultant Glenn Garcelon, who wrote a three-page memo titled "Hurricane Frances -- Thoughts and Suggestions," on Sept. 2.

...

Weeks after it was written, the memo made its way to Gov. Bush's chief of staff, Denver Stutler, who forwarded it to the governor Sept. 30. Bush did not see the report, nor was it used by the state, said the governor's spokesman, Jacob DiPietre.

Reached Tuesday at his home in Oregon, Garcelon said he "dashed off" the memo while on an airplane. "It was strictly my own personal perspective on things."

Working for Fluor Federal Services, a large firm that provides engineering and construction services to the government, Garcelon had been in Florida working on housing assistance for FEMA.

...

Dan McLaughlin, spokesman for U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla, said he was not surprised "that a consultant for the Bush administration would consider politics before the needs of hurricane victims."

"The very first points [of Garcelon's memo] have to do with shirking blame and calling in the president's re-election experts," McLaughlin said. " It only serves to underscore why we have to investigate how FEMA spent the hurricane money because there are just too many questions."

FEMA has been under scrutiny since the Sun-Sentinel first reported in October that the agency was awarding millions of dollars in disaster funds to residents of Miami-Dade County, even though the county did not experience hurricane conditions. At Nelson's urging, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is investigating. Earlier this month, 14 Miami-Dade residents who received assistance were indicted on fraud charges.

As of March 16, FEMA had given $31 million to 12,891 applicants in Miami-Dade for damage claimed from Frances.

This Day in History and its (apparent) Irrelevance to Today

March 24, 1818, from Henry Clay:

'All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All separated from government are compatible with liberty.'



Apparently, that phrase is just so much bullshit nowadays.

"It was an e-mail we weren't meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, where they passed off bogus social science on gay marriage as if it were holy writ and issued fiery warnings that "the Presidents [sic] Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level"—this to a group whose representative in Israel believed herself to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of Harry Potter. Most of all, apparently, we're not supposed to know the National Security Council's top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios."


BTW, George Bush might ask, who is Henry Clay?



Well, he was not a founder, but he was of the first generation, a great political generation, that succeeded the "Founding Fathers"; and a generation that while it doesn't quite get the ink the originals do, still produced its own series of giants.

Most Evangelicals may not have heard of these folks, but more than a few of our readers probably have:

...Andrew Jackson
...John C. Calhoun
...Daniel Webster
...Thomas Hart Benton
...John Quincy Adams
...James K. Polk

and of course, Henry Clay

All giants of their time, and some of them as important in their own fashion as the founders, some more accomplished. While the originals may have established a republic, it was this generation that insured that the Republic would get its roots into the ground and who actually set about encouraging democracy on a broad scale.

A trio of them, never President, though they dearly wanted to be, dominated the era (apart from Jackson), each from a different region.

Daniel Webster, from Massachusetts, by and large representing free commercial states;

John C. Calhoun, from South Carolina, by and large representing the slave-based agricultural South;

and Clay, the Kentuckian, representing the growing and slavery ambivolent West.

The Great Triumvirate they were called.

Henry Clay's famous nickname was "The Great Compromiser" such did he work on keeping the Union together and avoiding Civil War, as did, in their own fashion Webster and Calhoun -- okay, Calhoun perhaps a bit less.

Not surprisingly, when they died in the decade before the war (they all died between 1850 and 1852), the compromises they tried so hard to reach and hold fell completely apart.

Henry Clay, it should be noted was Abraham Lincoln's greatest political hero.

Quick, Somebody Reinsert the Tube!

GM Says It May Kill Off One of Its Brands

GM's Buick and Pontiac are both "damaged brands" due to lack of investment over the years, and GM is working to correct that with an array of new vehicles coming to market, Lutz told a Morgan Stanley automotive conference in New York.

But if some of its brands fail to meet sales projections, "then we would have to take a look at a phase-out. I hope we don't have to do that. What we've got to do is keep the brands we've got."


No mention yet from Tom DeLay.


Following up on Champollion's post

Attaturk must say he is interested in Champollion's mention that Gov'nor Jebby is thinking of kidnapping Terri Schiavo.

Is it fair to add "Stockholm Syndrome" to this woman's maladies?

Although let's face it, Jebby is certainly a model caregiver.


If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

Oh well, I guess it's time to ask which photoshopper can do something with Terri Schiavo and this famous photograph.



I see Margaret Cho has already sort of done this.

Weary of Bush

I know all about the post hoc fallacy (post hoc ergo propter hoc, translated loosely: after the fact therefore because of the fact) but still find myself of the mind that we were so much better off under President Clinton than the pathetic piece of shit that currently occasionally inhabits the presidential suite of the White House. I read news like this,and this, and I can't help but miss the old days.

I'm just tired of Bush for so many reasons but the biggest reason is that he is a crappy President. He doesn't make us feel more secure, his policies divide us into the haves and have-nots, he gleefully favors the haves, he enjoys the power of making war, he believes God has told him to make war, he has a really small penis (I don't know that for sure but for most men a new sportscar is enough; this mother-fucker shits on the whole world, so it has to be the penis), and he is a moron.

So fault me for yearning for the old days, but they were better.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Schiavo Shield?

Lets be honest about what the wing nuts are doing with all of this sudden heartfelt concern for the sick, its a cover. Social security reform? Sinking faster than a Paris Hilton film. And of course, no... no... look over there, will Terri make it through the night? Republican financial shenanigans!

What they most notably want to hide is illegal lobbying connected to super far right "can't have enough tax cuts" republican hatchetman -- Killing the pest squashing -- Tom Tom DeLay.

See the full article.

As attention grows on campaign fundraising and the relationship between top Republicans and a lobbyist under multiple federal investigations, the Republican National Congressional Committee has erased all online records of fundraising events for the last three years, RAW STORY has learned.

Previously, the website listed all NRCC fundraisers dating from late 2002 to the present. Now only an error message appears, though several months are available in cache files (here, here and here).

The scrubbing appears to have occurred shortly after RAW STORY placed now-Sen. Vitter (R-LA) at a $1000-a-plate fundraiser hosted by the fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff during the same time Vitter was meeting with Abramoff’s staff to arrange a provision favorable to the lobbyist’s tribal client. The last cache files date to Mar. 12, four days before RAW STORY revealed the event.

Also in attendance at the dinner was House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s (R-TX) deputy Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), who had signed a letter with DeLay encouraging the Interior Department to rule favorably to Abramoff earlier that summer.

In the following days, the Capitol Hill daily Roll Call and Louisiana newspapers reported on the fundraiser.

DeLay–and other leading Republicans in Congress–have come under scrutiny for their dealings with Abramoff. DeLay took an expensive junket to London paid for by Abramoff’s clients and has consistently favored the lobbyist’s agenda.

Focus has also turned to Abramoff’s pricey Pennsylvania Avenue restaurant, Signatures, where he regularly entertained politicians and billed his tribal clients for hundreds of thousands of dollars in meals, according to the Washington Post.


Thanks to Suburban Guerrilla and Raw Story!

Jeb Hearts Terri

Jeb is proving that the Bush clan and the Republican party are truly in hock to the nutwing sect of the evangelical Christian movement. What else could explain this?

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - Terri Schiavo's parents saw their options vanish one by one Wednesday as a federal appeals court refused to reinsert her feeding tube and the Florida Legislature decided not to intervene in the epic struggle. Refusing to give up, Gov. Jeb Bush sought court permission to take custody of Schiavo.


The fucker never got his hands dirty in his whole life now he wants custody of a human vegetable. I say give him custody and make him care for the woman. You know, snot, piss, shit, and all the good stuff that goes with nursing a patient like this. I'm no health care professional but by my calculations ol' Jeb doesn't know what he is talking about. What an asshole.

So Crazy it's come to this

Lolth, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, (located at the Intersection of Tapped-Out Street & Irony Avenue) manages to pull out this argument in support of Schiavo:

SIGH [K. J. Lopez]
U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights , Article 25:

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.


The quote above is her argument.

I'll tell you what K-LO, you nobs agree to live by those terms for the rest of the fucking country, and I'll personally stick the tube back in.

It means:

-- Hike the Minimum Wage, a lot;
-- Universal Health Care,
-- Social Security without privitization

And all other manner of things that you guys normally call "Communist".

PREDICTIONS

Sorry, for some silly reason this post makes myself and Champollion giggle so much we are going to put it up again, now with bonus snark. It is actually all about the picture.

As the meltdown at the intersection of What us in favor of States Rights? Street & Unrequited Doughy Pantload Love Avenue continues, it may be time to make some predictions:


Will Kathryn Lopez climb the Clock Tower?

If so, When?

What ammo will she use?

How many can she take out?




The LAST MOMENTS OF K.J. LOPEZ (as imagined by Champollion)

UPDATE:

TBogg and Wolcott have similar thoughts, with the addition of Peggy Noonan who, if you recall was last seen trying to trying to claw her way into Ronald Reagan's casket for what must have been the dry hump she'd always dreamed of.

Election 2006

See the Right-Wingnuts harken back to the old days of the GOP and wave the "Empty Tube".

NYT Quote of the Day is Our Quote of the Day

"My party is demonstrating that they are for states' rights unless they don't like what states are doing."
- CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Republican congressman of Connecticut, on the Schiavo case.

Says it all.

One sane Column from its namesake doesn't eliminate BOBO's World from the lexicon.

Not to besmirch an entire region, but some make it so easy. Once again, Southerners seem destined to be cursed with the affliction of stupidity and ignorance [btw, when I mock the "South" please try to ignore the fact that Powerline's perveyors of nausea are from Minnesota].

Behold a Steadfast Love of Ignorance:

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) -- The IMAX theater in Charleston and several others in the South have passed on showing a science film on volcanoes because of concerns it might offend those with fundamental religious beliefs.

"We've got to pick a film that's going to sell in our area. If it's not going to sell, we're not going to take it," said Lisa Buzzelli, director of the local IMAX theater. "Many people here believe in creationism, not evolution."

Buzzelli said while the Charleston theater doesn't rule out showing "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea" in the future, she considers people's religious views when showing films.

The film makes a connection between human DNA and microbes inside undersea volcanoes. Buzzelli said the handling of evolution was considered in her decision.

IMAX theaters in Texas, Georgia and the Carolinas have declined to show the film, said Pietro Serapiglia who handles distribution for Stephen Low, the film's director and producer who is from Montreal.

"I find it's only in the South," Serapiglia said.

Some people worry screening out such films will discourage filmmakers from making others in the future.

"It's going to restrain the creative approach by directors who refer to evolution," said Joe DeAmicis, vice president for marketing at the California Science Center in Los Angeles and a former director of an IMAX theater. "References to evolution will be dropped."

Count me out

As her meltdown proceeds, the Old Maid of the Intersection of Recessive Gene Street & My Batteries are Getting Low Avenue, swipes the doughnut crumbs off her keyboard and takes note of this email to her between gourgings.

At 3 p.m. today, in solidarity with Terri Schiavo, I and a group of Harvard students (who have signed with me below) began a hunger strike that will last until Terri’s feeding tube is reinserted or until the hour she dies


Sorry, kids but K-Lo's gonna sit this one out, principles can only go so far and they are certainly not all that tasty.


"Manchy kabook noonee Solo"

Chalk up another fuck up...

Oh how the Bush Junta squeeled when Kerry asserted that Bush's blundering and outsourcing of the Tora Bora operation allowed Bin Laden to escape.

When that criticism was made Cheney, naturally, made the most outrageous protestation when he mumbled...

[I]t's absolute garbage. It's just not true.

There were many bloggers that pointed out just who was really peddling garbage at the time, the most effective probably being Josh Marshall.

But now comes this additional support:

A commander for Osama bin Laden during Afghanistan's war with the Soviet Union who helped the al-Qaida leader escape American forces at Tora Bora is being held by U.S. authorities, a government document says.

The document represents the first definitive statement from the Pentagon (news - web sites) that bin Laden, the mastermind of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was at Tora Bora and evaded his pursuers.

President Bush (news - web sites) and Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) asserted during the presidential election that commanders did not know whether bin Laden was at Tora Bora when U.S. and allied Afghan forces attacked there in December 2001. They dismissed assertions by Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), the Democratic presidential nominee, that the military had missed a chance to capture or kill bin Laden while al-Qaida made a last stand in the mountainous area along the Pakistan border.


...

While campaigning for president last fall, Kerry said Bush had erred in relying on Afghan warlords to hunt down bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora in December 2001, contending on Oct. 22 that the president had "outsourced" the job.

Cheney said Oct. 26 that Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, had "stated repeatedly it was not at all certain that bin Laden was in Tora Bora. He might have been there or in Pakistan or even Kashmir (news - web sites)," the Indian-controlled Himalayan region.

Franks, now retired, wrote in an opinion column in The New York Times on Oct. 19, "We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001." He added that intelligence assessments of his location varied, but bin Laden was "never within our grasp."

On several occasions Bush cited the column as evidence that bin Laden could have been in any of several countries in December 2001. "That's what Tommy Franks, who knew what he's talking about, said," Bush said on Oct. 27.



So when the Bushinistas SCREAMED that they still had no idea in the Summer and Fall of 2004 whether Bin Laden was at Tora Bora or not...SURPRISE, they lied.

Hey, that Clinton thing, it wasn't about the blowjob, but the lying right?

But apparently, it's okay to lie your ass off about military decisions?

Funny how these things keep dripping out without coverage from the broadcast media because of one manufactured human interest story after another isn't it?

Dammit

I was going to do something like this, it would have been less well done of course, but still like this!

From the blogger that our comment pages are dedicated to ... although since he has not actually stopped writing (thank goodness), perhaps it is time to rename the thing.

In other news




Attaturk saw the live feed of the Pope doing a general wave of some sort from the Vatican this morning. Let's just say the constant jerking spasms where his head was sucked into his neck was probably not a good sign.

...unless, of course, that is the invisible hand of God bopping him on the head.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Thinking of Appeals

I think a lot about appeals; it's kinda related to what I do when I try to make a living. Now I'm not saying that is what I do for a living, just that it is tangentially related to what I do. And it got me thinking.

We know Bush didn't consult his father about invading Iraq (so we know the Bush men have obvious unresolved penis issues with their dad...that first time seeing him in the mens locker room at the Petroleum Club had to be shocking, watching the old man scratch his nuts while ordering his golf shoes shined to a high polish by the steward), deciding instead to appeal to a "higher father" according to bootlicker Bob Woodward. It brings back memories.

"According to Abbas, Bush said: 'God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.'


How lucky are we to have a President that thinks a lot about appeals to the highest authority of all? Which all has me wondering, given the hubris these evil people have demonstrated of late, why they just didn't by-pass the federal court system entirely and just pass a law that allows Bush just to ask God what to do about Terry Schiavo?

PREDICTIONS II

If Terry Schiavo should happen to die this Friday (i.e. Good Friday) what will be the setting on the rapture index?

I expect FoxNews to point this out repeatedly.

...unless she dies on Passover of course.

More on the MN School Shooter

Reuters is reporting that the seventeen year old who shot and killed nine people plus himself was interested in supremacist ideas in Red Lake, Minnesota. It is important to remember that many of these shooters (Columbine shooters, McVeigh, and others) are lone wolf types who while they may be influenced by extremist ideas and groups are not well socialized into these groups; think of it as people in search of reasons to act violently.

A 17-year-old who killed nine people and himself on a Minnesota Indian reservation identified himself as an "angel of death" and a "NativeNazi" on Internet postings, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The shooter was Red Lake High School sophomore Jeff Weise, according to witnesses and school officials.

Weise identified himself in Internet site postings as "Todesengel," German for "angel of death" and "NativeNazi," the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported.

He also claimed to have been questioned by police in 2004 about an alleged plot to shoot up the school on the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birthday, but said he had nothing to do with that, the report said.

"I guess I've always carried a natural admiration for Hitler and his ideals, and his courage to take on larger nations," the newspaper quoted Weise as saying in one forum used by neo-Nazis.

No Shame what-so-fucking Ever

From another fine Digby post comes this bit of news:

Mr. DeLay complained that "the other side" had figured out how "to defeat the conservative movement," by waging personal attacks, linking with liberal organizations and persuading the national news media to report the story. He charged that "the whole syndicate" was "a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in."


Oh for fuck's sake:

Just this morning we managed to see just how "personal" DeLay can get with someone who disagrees with him, even an Evangelical Christian:

"Right now, murder is being committed against a defenseless American citizen in Florida," DeLay said.

He also said, "Schiavo's life is not slipping away - it is being violently wrenched from her body in an act of medical terrorism."

DeLay's office did not respond to requests for comment.

Greer, who declined to comment for this story, has been the subject of verba l attacks from religious and right-to-life groups since his ruling on Schiavo. He has als o received at least one death threat.


Reality changes everyday

What the hell happened to "Bobo"? Bobo just seems to slam da Hammer DeLay and everyone's favorite unthinking neocon Nordquist without throwing up a Democratic Boogeyman. What does this mean? Could we be witnessing a shift in reality? If so, what is next?

What's next Bob Novak praises John Kerry? What's next Ari Fleischer honestly answers questions about Bush confusion? What's next Bush apologizes for being wrong about invading Iraq? What's next the republican party begins to care about people over the wealthy and business interests?

I don't know about you but I am beginning to like this alternate reality. I just wish I could live there.

There's A Plan?

It's amazing that whenever the great Social Security Privatization Scam is shown to be unpopular with the vast majority of the public, the Bushies say they have yet to unveil their plan.

Nonetheless, despite this lack of a plan, the Lemur seems to keep touring the country in his anti-septic bubble.

And for the, what 3 people (including Terry Schiavo) who think that McCain is "Mr. Integrity", observe him assist in the scratching of the Presidential Genitalia.

"My dear friends at ... AARP, if you don't like our solutions, give us one," McCain said. "Sit down and join us in this debate. Don't block it."


They have solutions now? They have solutions, but no plan?

Okay.




A Monkey always loves his little bitch!

I know, I know, I referred to him as the Lemur, but try getting a picture of lemurs hugging!

Breakdown in Progress

The intersection of Permanent Vegetative State Street & Logically Inconsistent Street has a special highlight today.

Kathryn Jean Lopez's breakdown.

Just look at all the freakazoid posting. Post after post after post.

Criminy, I bet she even cut down from a Baker's Dozen Krispy Kremes to Twelve.

K-Lo demands the feeding tube!

The Hypocritical Lemur

I'm demoting the First Chimp down the primate ladder.

Yesterday in Arizona:

This is a complex case with serious issues, but in extraordinary circumstances like this, it is wise to always err on the side of life.


So sayeth the man, who acted like this:

President Bush announced the attack in a four-minute television speech to the nation. "On my order, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein's ability to wage war," he said. "These are the opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign."

Minutes before the speech, an internal television monitor showed the president pumping his fist. "Feels good," he said.


And before he even got a chance to waive Saddam's gun around,

In 1999, during the 2000 Republican Presidential primary race, Carlson interviewed then-Governor George W. Bush for Talk Magazine. Carlson reported that Bush mocked soon-to-be-executed Texas death-row inmate Carla Faye Tucker and "cursed like a sailor."

Eating their own

Believe it or not, Attaturk believes there are actually a number of good Republicans. Hopefully more and more will stop drinking the goddamned Kool-Aid (although McCain appears to have a vat of the shit).

Here is a good example of just how much of an ass Tom DeLay is:

Many local Republicans shuddered last weekend when U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay accused a Pinellas judge of "murder" and "terrorism."

Such labels, troubling in any context, are particularly grating when they involve two members of the same political party.

"I was absolutely so disgusted with what he said," said County Commissioner Bob Stewart.

Pinellas County Property Appraiser Jim Smith, a former state legislator and Republican state committeeman, called DeLay's remarks "a disgrace."

Local Republicans had their own words for Judge George Greer, who, as presiding judge in the Terri Schiavo case, ordered the removal of her feeding tube on March 18.

Conscientious. Honest. Compassionate. A good Christian. An outstanding lawyer.


...

In Washington, Republican lawmakers worked through the weekend after Greer refused to let congressional subpoenas interfere with his order. Today would be Schiavo's fourth ful l day without nourishment.

Leading the way was DeLay, the House majority leader, who used inflammatory language while marshaling congressional Republicans to swiftly force a federal judge in Tampa to hear a request by Schiavo's parents to reinsert her feeding tube.

"Right now, murder is being committed against a defenseless American citizen in Florida," DeLay said.

He also said, "Schiavo's life is not slipping away - it is being violently wrenched from her body in an act of medical terrorism."

DeLay's office did not respond to requests for comment.

Greer, who declined to comment for this story, has been the subject of verba l attacks from religious and right-to-life groups since his ruling on Schiavo. He has als o received at least one death threat.

His Republican colleagues in Pinellas are saddened by DeLay's statements in the already emotional debate.

"I personally don't agree with Judge Greer's decision," said Ken Burke, Pinellas County Clerk of the Circuit Court and an active Republican. "But I respect the way he made it. I think those are inappropriate comments on DeLay's part."

"We need more judges like Judge Greer, not fewer," said Bruce McManus, a Largo probate lawyer who specializes in elder law.

McManus has found himself in a particularly difficult position. He's a member of groups that have been critical of Greer, such as the Southern Baptist Convention. But he also specializes in the area of law that Greer is interpreting.

McManus said Greer has done his best to make a tough decision, and called DeLay's comments "ridiculous."

"Judge Greer is an evangelical Christian man," McManus said. "He believes in the right to life as much as some of the people who are criticizing him so harshly. But he also believes in the rule of law, which he was sworn to uphold. To the best of his ability, that's what he is trying to do."


Eating their own.

What a creep DeLay is...a cockroach, to put it mildly.

Well what do you know

A federal judge has refused to order that Terry Schiavo continue to live with indignity.

Schiavo's parents will petition both the 11th Circuit, and First Officer Spock in a last ditch attempt to revisit Talos IV.

You better watch it...

Ted Stevens is getting angry, you won't like him when he's angry (or asleep for that matter -- those are pretty much his two moods):


TED SMASH!

Bad Acid

I must have had too much of the brown stuff, because Bobo's column today has to be a hallucination.

Look Unicorns!


...oh, wait a minute...

Is it the RAPTURE already?

Monday, March 21, 2005

Bush Nicknames for Terri Schiavo

We here at the Rising Hegemon have received a confidential list of Bush nicknames for Terri Schiavo from a secret internal white house source. We present the list written by Bush himself without any editorial comments:

1. Terr Terr
2. Terri Bo Berry Bannana Fanna Fo Ferry
3. Republican talkin' point #3 (or just #3)
4. My successsor's election strategery
5. The Lump (heh heh, gud one)
6. Blinky
7. My religious right girl frien'
8. The Terranator
9. Mrs T. -- I pity da fool who take out her tube!
10. Mrs. Schiavo

Why is everyone calling her Terri?

As hilariously pointed out this evening on The Daily Show, all of these lets-expand-government-because-we-can-republicans are calling Mrs. Schiavo, Terri as if they were her close personal friends. A moment of clarity is required on this. She is being called Terri because to call her Mrs. Schiavo would be to acknowledge the right of her husband to represent her medical interests.

Furthermore, why are we only questioning her husband's motives and not her parents? One has to worry about parents who do not care the state of mind of their child or her wishes. They must have her body with them.

Perhaps we should question the interpretations and motives of politicians who are crying "medical terrorism" based on videos made by parents in violation of court orders. So, judges are deprived of discretion, legal guardians will be denied the right to exercise the trust others have placed in them, all in the name of a "culture of life."

What does this mean when politicians do not care about providing the living with the health care and clean food, air, and water we all need to live to the best of our abilities. And do any of us doubt that we can trust all our most personal of rights to politicians who only have our best interests in their wee hearts. Yeah.

So, out of respect, can we call her what we should? Political pawn.