A Mandate for them.......not for change
What if I told you that we have government funded healthcare/insurance for some key Americans who love and even utilize such a benefit, but don’t want you to have it? Would you be shocked? Would you be confused? Would you respond by asking me if I was talking about Medicare? No, though Medicare is a successful form of government funded and run care-coverage, I’m not talking about it. I’m not even talking about Vet Care….I’m talking about a health plan/benefit plan that’s complete with great coverage, coverage that covers all Federal workers, including US Senators, members of the House, etc. It’s a plan that even includes pensions and other benefits. Read a summary here: http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/congresspay.htm
Thus, I’ve never heard Mitch McConnell or the so called “Blue Dog” Democrats, or the usual talking head RNC mouthpieces in the Congress ever, ever, turn to the camera and say, “I will pay back what I took in health benefits...
On Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC)
The facts that emerged today regarding the illicit and salacious adultery committed by Republican Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, amidst the numerous other sex scandals within the (mostly) Republican party, seem to reflect a deep-seated and very obvious lack of any kind of self control. Hypocrisy comes to mind first, of course. The maddening fact of the matter is that this Sanford man, along with so many other smarmy and villainous characters in the Republican party, has/have this uncontrollable need to actually preach to us, the American people, about moral conduct and so-called family values; all whilst their own lives are utterly mired in turpitude, deception, lies, weakness of character, personality disorders, and general wickedness and/or stupidity.
1. Former Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) for the "wide stance" excuse, the married-but-secretly-gay possibility, and the details of the bathroom stall.
2. Former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) whose instant messages to boys were so icky we couldn't stop reading.
3. Former Gov. Jim McGreevey (D-N.J.) for the wife who stood at his side during the press conference (until the book came out) and the unforgettable "I am a gay American" line.
4. Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D-N.Y.) because Mr. Rectitude was a hypocrite who had paid for a hooker.
5. Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) for claiming he cheated on his wife only when her cancer was in remission and for apparently letting a loyal campaign aide pretend to be his girlfriend's baby daddy.
6. Former Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA) for the 911 calls and police reports that alleged he'd choked his mistress, which Sherwood denied.
7. Former Rep. Vito Fossella (R-N.Y.) for his secret second family.
8. Former Senate candidate Jack Ryan (R-IL) for the pre-election bombshell that derailed his senate race and gave the country President Obama: Ryan's ex-wife reportedly accused him of trying to make her go to sex clubs, according records in the couple's divorce file. He denied the accusation.
9. Former Rep. Ed Schrock (R-VA) for an allegation by a gay activist that the congressman placed gay personal ads.
10. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) for his phone number in the D.C. Madam's black book and his admission of "sin".
Cheers,
BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREEA Simple Question: Would God Condone Torture?
Maybe I'm missing something but I find it uniquely ironic that some the same people who clamor for prayer in school, claim that same-sex marriage is an abomination under God,who insist that America is a Christian nation, and fight for the Biblical version of creationism over science, are also the very same people who demand the right to be armed to the teeth with some of the most destructive private weapons on Earth, the right to slaughter and bring the most excruciating kinds of death upon God's other creatures for nothing more than their own entertainment, and now, condone the torture of other human beings as a legitimate tool of government. Is it just me, or does anyone else see this as the very height of hypocrisy?
in the name of the fathers and their sons and the Colonialistswho proudly hailed toward some gleaming across the oceanby Natives saved from death the first winter, leaving twenty-threepaternalists never owning the genocide of nearly an entire racehistory not saying much different now, denying Native Sovereigntywhile descended from the Daughters of the American Revolutioni'm still steeped in false prides and dreams, woman and subjectamong slaves and Natives, would we comprise our own nationindivisible in shame, doubt and fear within, overlapping virtuesone with no pride, lying under a Governor that would tax Nativeswe shouldn't be prosecuting prostitutes for trying to earn a livingjust working to get where you are with the little she's been giventhat might be doubly enforceable if she had also been a Nativeraised lost herself, from life removed by her relations' massacressorrows handed down with depressions, as legacies like wealthas i strolled behind the scenes in the Museums of Natural Historynot one pre-Colombian pottery piece, closets filled with the samebear and animal skins collecting dust, spoils of hunts and safarishung on racks in rooms, like so many furs in a dry cleaning storei guess there was some point of a brass tribute to Roosevelt therewhen i and plenty of others with children cannot afford health carein school taught history, lessons of law and what is right or wronginsurance companies rape New York and politicians still get votescall the system "Admitted Carriers" crowned like elitist princessixty-nine articles or rules open to the public, i'm just small leaguecollaring poor Martha Stewart, rich woman in the patriarch gametrying to make it through the meet, entrenched to keep her securitygrowing girls away from indiscretion like we are born little whoresdo any damn newspapers print the true realities of life's hypocrisiesits been a man's world, and i am now told spirituality is on the riseto see common bonds between Christianity and Native religionsbeen there before don't you think, twist stories to fatten their hideswe've seen worse than prostitution from the abbots in the abbeyswhat more could we ask in lowering our commitment to this worldstewardship, self-determination, humbled by truths of generationsequality of birth; let no slave, Jew, Native or woman not earn honorspirituality belongs to the individual and their sacred conjugal rightsas each seeks their proper balance and a peaceful place in Natureto regain our status as human beings everywhere, perhaps in effectpermit globalization of the human society without a fear not to eatwhile we are sent back to school to keep up with new developmentstime has been calling us up, each and everyone to raise standardssmall groups march from West to East coasts to open new life cycleswe comfort in soft chairs behind screens to seek play and distractionwhile each have the power within to raise up our spirits' resurrectionredeem injustices suffered upon human beings, land and our futurewe need all wear the grimaces of foolish shame and shut our mouths same on all the faces of the leaders worn in a slide show i saw todayi'd never have thought i was good enough to run for elected officethat thought had left my mind some time just before my twelfth yeartrue leaders are born we are told, but heart can takes years to retrainthere is truly something on the rise, whether it be glorious or fearfulobviously we can't live under the crushing weight of our current lieshere comes the march upon each one, the place we meet our fatei can't apologize for yesterday, because i was meant to be here nowbut tomorrow will responsibility be sought for all that's yet to comejust what higher purpose may mean about grace and being rebornreality is a hard habit to break - salamandra
Written March 11, 2008, copyright MEWilson
Now that Obama and Biden have ridden to a victory partially on the back of the GAY and LESBIAN community, he has chosen to kick all of us in the teeth before he is even president by having "Trick Warren" (disgraceful homophobe) give the invocation at the INAUGURATION?
Barack, C HOW U R ? You give us a MARCHING BAND for our work for the Party?
This is a good place for human beings affected by Obama's monstrous injustice to unite and share ideas on how to provide feedback to King Barack, the last. Something to share with his magnificent, all-hetero family over the holidays and in the months to come.
As I listened to his droning monotone, DEFENDING HIS BIGOTY CHOICE, I thought, O God, 4 or 8 years of this? This is why we united once more behind the Dems just to be slapped down?
WHO WANTS TO REGISTER INDEPENDENT WITH ME TODAY? Let's hear from you.
Fundraising is a political necessity. ReDubyLickin alarm over Obama/Biden's fundraising success is nothing but sour-grape hypocrisy. Both parties accept large donations, but from predictably different interests:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/us/politics/21donate.html The Times examination of donors who wrote checks of $25,000 or more through September found some notable differences in the industries from which Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain drew their largest contributions. Compared with Mr. Obama, Mr. McCain drew a slightly larger percentage of his big-donor money from the financial industry, about a fifth of his total. The next biggest amount in large checks for Mr. McCain came from real estate and then donors who identified themselves as retired. With his emphasis on offshore drilling, Mr. McCain has also enjoyed heavy support from generous benefactors in the oil and gas industry, a group Mr. Obama drew relatively little from. After the financial arena, Mr. Obama drew the most in checks of $25,000 or more from retirees and lawyers — Mr. McCain collected significantly less in large donations from lawyers — followed by those in real estate. Mr. Obama also drew a significant amount from big givers in the entertainment industry, who contributed relatively little to Mr. McCain. In contrast, donations from the private equity and hedge fund industries accounted for a significantly greater amount of the giving from Mr. McCain’s largest donors, compared with Mr. Obama’s.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/us/politics/21donate.html
The Times examination of donors who wrote checks of $25,000 or more through September found some notable differences in the industries from which Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain drew their largest contributions.
Compared with Mr. Obama, Mr. McCain drew a slightly larger percentage of his big-donor money from the financial industry, about a fifth of his total. The next biggest amount in large checks for Mr. McCain came from real estate and then donors who identified themselves as retired. With his emphasis on offshore drilling, Mr. McCain has also enjoyed heavy support from generous benefactors in the oil and gas industry, a group Mr. Obama drew relatively little from.
After the financial arena, Mr. Obama drew the most in checks of $25,000 or more from retirees and lawyers — Mr. McCain collected significantly less in large donations from lawyers — followed by those in real estate.
Mr. Obama also drew a significant amount from big givers in the entertainment industry, who contributed relatively little to Mr. McCain. In contrast, donations from the private equity and hedge fund industries accounted for a significantly greater amount of the giving from Mr. McCain’s largest donors, compared with Mr. Obama’s.
If you appreciaterd this message, then please have a look at my blog, http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/henrymu and support and contribute to the campaign (it’s not over until the polls close): http://tinyurl.com/henrym4obamafundraising
Henry M
John McCain does not wear a flag pin, but there are no outcries as there were about Obama, who wears one now. It doesn't matter to me -- flag pin wearing is a silly issue. But this shows the hypocrisy of the right wing. Flag pins mattered when it was Obama, not when it's McCain. Having a rich heiress wife who hasn't released tax returns mattered when it was Kerry, not when it is McCain. Questionable military history is okay to attack when it's Kerry, not when it's McCain. Bill Clinton's marital indiscretions mattered, but McCain's affair does not. Being a strong Christian mattered for Bush over Kerry, but Obama's stronger Christianity than McCain's doesn't matter now. Experience matters when it's Obama, but not when it's Palin. See the pattern? This is why America does not trust the Republican Party anymore.
Rumors were flying on the blogs recently about Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s five-month old son actually belonged to her unmarried teenaged daughter. To quell the rumors that her son, Trig was indeed hers, she made public the announcement that her 17-year old daughter Bristol was indeed pregnant.
However, her quote and the response of the Republican pundits and evangelical supporters expose a glaring dual standard.
“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents," Sarah and her husband Todd Palin were quoted in the released statement. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080901/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_palin_daughter)
Note the use of “proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby”? That phrase begs the question: was there ever a decision? If so, why? Gov. Sarah Palin is proud to proclaim her right to life and elimination of choice. If there’s no choice, what is there to decide in the Palin family?
Someone needs to mention that Sarah Palin has links to the Alaskan Independence Party, a group whose goal is to secede Alaska from the United States. Her husband, Todd Palin has registered to the group in 1995 and 2000 and remained registered until 2002.
Details are included in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmYqRfp6-x8
I am a big fan of fact-checking. Skepticism has served me well and I am quite persistent in my attempts to instill a healthy inclination toward incredulity in my two young daughters. Some of my favorite websites, especially during election season, are Snopes.com, FactCheck.org, and Politifact.com. These and others do a fine job of wading through campaign rhetoric and analyzing claims with an academic discipline that includes actually referencing sources of information and quoting those sources in full context.
The Daily Show is good at fact-checking. John Stewart is quick to classify his show as a comedy not a news program, but I am consistently impressed by the quality of research that goes into many of the sketches. The ones that especially get me riled up are those that juxtapose video of politicians, pundits, or advisors making statements that blatantly contradict statements they made just a while ago. Don’t these people realize that they are being continuously recorded? I wish the real news shows were as diligent in questioning and then validating the words of our politicians and then confronting them with these “inconsistencies”.
One of the primary reasons I support Barack Obama over John McCain is that he has done a pretty good job of keeping himself and his words off of sites like FactCheck.org and out of The Daily Show episodes.
I was watching Morning Joe this morning and I heard Mr. Obama called a celebrity yet again. This after seeing McCain boarding a yaucht with Rick Davis (THE LOBBYIST), Anne Hathaway (THE CELEBRITY) and her ex boyfriend What's his face (Going to Prison) for 5 yrs. for his scams. I am not sure what the McCain camp thinks is an honerable campain is, but I'm too sure this is it...
The sad thing is, is that the average American doesn't pay enough attention to make informed decision about their own future and that of their young.
I am from Arizona and am from a fundamentally Republican family, I live in Texas, and work in the oilfield. My views are not so popular at this moment.
Here is a great clip featuring Carl Rove, Dick Morris and others showing the hypocrisy of the Republican Media Machine.
Thanks Wanza for forwarding this clip!
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&title=sarah-palin-gender-card
It's very unfortunate that the best, most accurate and hard hitting cable news is often on the Comedy Channel.
A political cartoon depicting Barack Obama as a mental asylum inmate appeared in my local newspaper yesterday. Restrained in a straitjacket, Glenn McCoy's Obama has clearly been writing the word "Sarah" with his foot all over the walls of his padded white room ... in lipstick. The clearly simian bend of McCoy's portrayal (the monkey-like face is overshadowed by the clenched ape foot clutching the tube of lipstick) is obviously a not-so-subtle jab at Obama's race. The cartoon is available at http://townhall.com/funnies/cartoonist/GlennMcCoy/2008/09/3
What I want to know is, where is the outcry? I mean, the chorus of dissent over Obama's use of a popular political phrase reached the rafters, but why are cheap shots about the fact that Obama is an African-American allowed to pass without comment? I'm a white female, and my increasing awareness of the double-standard allowing everything that might possibly be construed as anti-woman being blown out of proportion while blatant jabs at African-Americans are evidently fair game is starting to really make me angry.
If anyone hasn't heard about it, Senator Obama said, in reference to McCain's economic policy, "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." For some reason, this was taken as somehow referring to Governor Palin and, faster than you can say hypocrisy, the word was out that Obama had made an anti-woman crack.
The phrase, "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig" is clearly another way of saying that, no matter what short-term appearance fixer you put on something ugly, it's still going to be ugly. In other words, you can't change what something is by playing with its outward appearance. A similar phrase involves the inability to make chicken salad out of chicken s***, but I digress.
The fact that John McCain said of Hillary Clinton's health care plan, "I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig" in Iowa last October (that's less than a year ago) is for some reason not getting the same press. There was no feminist outcry last October, and there is very little mention of this in response to the public skewering Obama is currently taking. The ultimate irony, in my humble opinion, is that Hillary Clinton is a far greater champion of women than Sarah Palin will ever be.
A longtime part of used-car dealership jargon, the phrase was, according to Time magazine, first exposed to the public in 1985 when a news station said using its financial surplus to renovate Candlestick Park would be like "putting lipstick on a pig." Since then, the phrase has been used by (in no particular order) Elizabeth Edwards, Dick Cheney, Torie Clark (former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs under Rumsfeld, former communications chief for the Pentagon for a portion of Bush's presidency, and former McCain press secretary), John Edwards, and House Minority Leader John Boehner as well as by John McCain and Barack Obama.
The overblown criticism Obama has taken for his use of a saying that has been used by a variety of people from differing walks of life is just adding to the surreality of this campaign. That direct cracks directed at Obama (a la McCoy's political cartoon) are somehow fair game only add to the bitterness that is starting to really bog me down and look at my country with a cynical eye.
Has anyone else noticed this, or am I just overly sensitive, cynical, or out-and-out wrong?
Has anyone else noticed that, with the addition of Sarah Palin to their ticket, the McCain campaign has now effectively endorsed the very things he castigated Barack Obama for not so long ago?
Take experience, for example. John McCain stated at a California rally, “For a young man with very little experience, he's done very well. For his very, very great lack of experience and knowledge of the issues, he's been very successful.”
After graduating from Columbia University, Obama worked as a community organizer before attending Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review. He worked as a civil rights attorney and a law school lecturer on the subject of constitutional law before being elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1997. His keynote speech at the 2004 DNC catapulted Obama into the national spotlight, introducing him to the country as a unifier before becoming a United States Senator in 2005.
This little overview of Obama’s life shows someone willing to work hard to accomplish his dreams. His resume spans metaphoric miles—author, lawyer, business newsletter writer—in the way of most Americans. He has grown and changed over the years, willing to change positions when careful consideration convinces him that his way was not the best.
This is a stark contrast to Palin, whose “pro-life even in cases of rape or incest” stance is almost militant. Palin sees things as she sees them … and that’s that. No, being accused of “flip-flopping” will not be a serious problem for Palin. But maybe that’s the most frightening thing about her, beyond her lack of experience.
Sarah Palin’s experience begins with her third-place finish in the Miss Alaska pageant, a venture which more than likely prepared her for the cutthroat nature of politics if not knowledge that might prepare her for national office. Palin bounced around to four different colleges, eventually earning a degree in communications/journalism from the University of Idaho. She worked briefly as a sports reporter then for her husband’s fishing company before joining the city council then serving as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska from 1996 until 2002. Subsequent work included chairing the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission and co-directing a group championing Republican women in Alaska. Palin was elected Governor of Alaska in 2006.
Palin’s spotty employment record featuring virtually no substantive experience prior to her gubernatorial victory less than two years ago would mean little—she’s the veep candidate, after all, not running for president—if John McCain was a few years younger. And, of course, if the Republican party hadn’t based much of their criticism of Obama on his supposed lack of experience.
Then there’s the whole celebrity thing. According to Fox News, which of course has no reason to lie on this one, over 300,000 items featuring Ms. Palin have been put into circulation by internet t-shirt vendor Café Press as of yesterday. That’s just one company, too.
And it’s not just t-shirts. The Palin Parapharnalia has extended to bumper stickers, action figures, and—my personal favorite—thongs. Yes, I’m serious. The media is salivating over Palin, right-wingers and disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters are writing blogs extolling her virtues, and her trademark glasses have led to a Kawasaki 704 frenzy (incidentally, this alleged “Mom-next-door” pays $700 a pair for those babies).
And I’m left wondering how the McCain campaign has gotten away with the blatant hypocrisy of praising to the sky Sarah Palin, who epitomizes the very things of which they criticized Barack Obama.
