Author: miscellany101

Sarah Palin-What is she good for? Absolutely nothing!


The abyss into which the Republican Party has descended has been filled with the vitriol and hatred that only 8 years of neoconism has brought this country, and it’s not a pretty sight.  It’s probably safe to say THE REPUBLICAN PARTY is no longer one which concerns itself with limited government domestically, fiscally and internationally, but rather it has become a hate-mongering party which draws battle lines based on race, religion and it’s own perverted sense of patriotism.  This is what fuels the rallies of both McCain, and Palin and lurches this country backwards so many decades ago.  If I weren’t so optimistic I would think we’re on the verge of a civil war.

“Obama held one of the first meetings of his political career in Bill Ayers’s living room, and they’ve worked together on various projects in Chicago. These are the same guys who think that patriotism is paying higher taxes — remember that’s what Joe Biden had said. I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America, as the greatest force for good in the world. I’m afraid this is someone who sees America as ‘imperfect enough’ to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country.”

Notice the “fear” this young, Christian woman feels at the thought of the menacing Obama?  Such imagery is meant to deflect the intense criticism already coming her way from the party faithful.  Peggy Noonan laments,

Her supporters accuse her critics of snobbery: Maybe she’s not a big “egghead” but she has brilliant instincts and inner toughness. But what instincts? “I’m Joe Six-Pack”? She does not speak seriously but attempts to excite sensation—”palling around with terrorists.” If the Ayers case is a serious issue, treat it seriously. She is not as thoughtful or persuasive as Joe the Plumber…. In the past two weeks she has spent her time throwing out tinny lines to crowds she doesn’t, really, understand….. She could reinspire and reinspirit; she chooses merely to excite. She doesn’t seem to understand the implications of her own thoughts.

What Noonan doesn’t understand is Palin is not meant to think for herself, or make others think, Palin is a painter who draws a picture, a self-portrait as it were, of all that America has come to fear.  She is the bulwark rallying the crowds to stand against the hordes of whatever image they fear the most, be it terrorism, black people, militancy, urbanization, whatever.  Why else do crowds come away from her rallies with the sentiments expressed by people in this video:

Trying to keep score


This last week has been really fun to watch with so much going on.  I’m sure other bloggers have written about the shenanigans but here are my two cents concerning the political fiasco call the presidential campaign. The McCain campaign tried to capitalize on “Joe the Plumber” until it was learned he was closely related to the Keating scandal which McCain played a major role.

Turns out that Joe Wurzelbacher from the Toledo event is a close relative of Robert Wurzelbacher of Milford, Ohio. Who’s Robert Wurzelbacher? Only Charles Keating’s son-in-law and the former senior vice president of American Continental, the parent company of the infamous Lincoln Savings and Loan. The now retired elder Wurzelbacher is also a major contributor to Republican causes giving well over $10,000 in the last few years.

Opps! You have to ask yourself what was the Obama campain thinking when they let their candidate get sandbagged by an obvious political hack.  Why was Obama walking through this guy’s neighborhood?  Dumb and dumber, I suppose.

William Buckley’s son Chris has come out endorsing Obama and has had to quit his post as a contributing writer on the National Review as a result.  Conservatives, or rather the truest party loyalists among them, those I consider brain dead and members of THE REPUBLICAN PARTY can’t stand the idea that a born and raised conservative doesn’t see anything conservative about their present party.  They forget, those on the National Review, how their publication’s founder distanced himself from Bush and his foray into Iraq, pretty much declaring himself a heretic from his own magazine and the modern day conservative right neocon cabal.

“With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn’t the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago. If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war.”

The conservative right has also distanced itself from Palin’s choice as the vice presidential nominee.

But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office. She is a person of great ambition, but the question remains: What is the purpose of the ambition? She wants to rise, but what for?

*snip*

In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It’s no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism.

You betcha’!

How refreshing


to read someone write about Islam and not be apologetic, and especially when it is a woman! My wildest dream is that this woman be appointed to a cabinet level position in an Obama administration. My typing that probably insures his defeat among this widely hysteric Islamophobic electorate, but I don’t care and I don’t think the author of this piece does either, so here goes. (hat tip to Taalib)

Spare Me the Sermon On Muslim Women By Mohja Kahf

Crimson chiffon, silver lamé or green silk: Which scarf to wear today? My veil collection is 64 scarves and growing. The scarves hang four or five to a row on a rack in my closet, and elation fills me when I open the door to this beautiful array. Last week, I chose a particularly nice scarf to slip on for the Eid al-Fitr festivities marking the end of the month of Ramadan.

It irks me that I even have to say this: Being a Muslim woman is a joyful thing.

My first neighbor in Arkansas borrowed my Quran and returned it, saying, “I’m glad I’m not a Muslim woman.” Excuse me, but a woman with Saint Paul in her religious heritage has no place feeling superior to a Muslim woman, as far as woman-affirming principles are concerned. Maybe no worse, if I listen to Christian feminists, but certainly no better.

Blessings abound for me as a Muslim woman: The freshness of ablution is mine, and the daily meditation zone of five prayers that involve graceful, yoga-like movements, performed in prayer attire. Prayer scarves are a chapter in themselves, cool and comforting as bedsheets. They lie folded in the velveteen prayer rug when not in use: two lightweight muslin pieces, the long drapey headcover and the roomy gathered skirt. I fling open the top piece, and it billows like summer laundry, a lace-edged meadow. I slip into the bottom piece to cover my legs for prayer time because I am wearing shorts around the house today.

These create a tent of tranquility. The serene spirit sent from God is called by a feminine name, “sakinah,” in the Quran, and I understand why some Muslim women like to wear their prayer clothes for more than prayer, to take that sakinah into the world with them. I, too, wear a (smaller) version of the veil when I go out. What a loss it would be for me not to have in my life this alternating structure, of covering outdoors and uncovering indoors. I take pleasure in preparing a clean, folded set for a houseguest, the way home-decor mavens lay elegant plump towels around a bathroom to give it a relaxing feel.

Tassled turquoise cotton and flowered peach crepe flutter as I pull out a black-and-ivory striped headscarf for the day. When I was 22 and balked at buying a $30 paisley scarf, my best friend told me, “I never scrimp on scarves. If people are going to make a big deal of it, it may as well look good.”

I embraced that principle, too, even when I was a scratch-poor graduate student. Today I sort my scarves, always looking to replace the frayed ones and to find missing colors, my collection shrinking and expanding, dynamic, bright: The blue-and-yellow daisy print is good with jeans, the incandescent purple voile for a night on the town, the gray houndstooth solidly professional, the white chambray anytime.

As beautiful as veils are, they are not the best part of being a Muslim woman — and many Muslim women in Islamic countries don’t veil. The central blessing of Islam to women is that it affirms their spiritual equality with men, a principle stated over and over in the Quran, on a plane believers hold to be untouched by the social or legalistic “women in Islam” concerns raised by other parts of the Scripture, in verses parsed endlessly by patriarchal interpreters as well as Muslim feminists and used by Islamophobes to “prove” Islam’s sexism. This is how most believing Muslim women experience God: as the Friend who is beyond gender, not as the Father, not as the Son, not inhabiting a male form, or any form.

And the reasons for being a joyful Muslim woman go beyond the spiritual. Marriage is a contract in Islam, not a sacrament. The prenup is not some new invention; it’s the standard Muslim format. I can put whatever I want in it, but Muslims never get credit for that. Or for having mahr, the bridegift that goes from the man to the woman — not to her family, but to her, for her own private use. A mahr has to have significant value — a year’s salary, say. And if patriarchal customs have overridden Islam and whittled away this blessing in many Muslim locales, it’s still there, available, in the law. Hey, I got mine (cash, partly deferred because my husband was broke when we married; like a loan to him, owed to me whenever I want to claim it) — and I was married in Saudi Arabia, a country whose personal-status laws are drawn from the most conservative end of the Muslim spectrum.

I had to sign my name indicating my consent, or the marriage contract would not have been valid under Saudi Islamic law. And, of course, I chose whom to marry. Every Muslim girl in the conservative circle of my youth chose her husband. We just did it our way, a conservative Muslim way, and we did it without this nonsensical Western custom of teenage dating. My friends Salma and Magda chose at 16 and 17: Salma to marry boy-next-door Muhammad, with whom she grew up, and Magda to marry a doctor 10 years her senior who came courting from half a world away. Both sisters have careers, one as a counselor, one as a school principal, and both are still vibrantly married and vibrantly Muslim, their kids now in college.

I held out until I was 18, making my parents beat back suitors at the door until I was good and ready. And here I am, still married to the guy I finally let in the door, 22 years (some of them not even dysfunctional) later. My cousin, on the other hand, broke off a marriage she contracted (but did not consummate) at 16 and chose another man. Another childhood friend, Zeynab, chose four times and is looking for Mr. Fifth. Her serial monogamy is nothing new or radical; she didn’t pick up the idea from reading Cosmo or from the “liberating” influence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. It’s simply what a lot of women in early Muslim history did, in 7th- and 8th-century Arabia.

And would you guess that we’ve also been freer to divorce and remarry than Christian women have been for most of history? In medieval times, when Christian authorities were against divorce and remarriage, this was seen as another Islamic abomination. Now that divorce and remarriage are popular in the West, Muslims don’t get credit for having had that flexibility all along. We just can’t win with the Muslim-haters.

Here’s another one: Medieval Christianity excoriated Islam for being orgiastic, which seems to mean that Muslims didn’t lay a guilt trip on hot sex (at least within what were deemed licit relationships). Now that hot sex is all the rage in the post-sexual revolution West, you’d think Muslims would get some credit for the pro-sex attitude of Islam — but no. The older stereotype has been turned on its head, and in the new one, we’re the prudes. Listen, we’re the only monotheistic faith I know with an actual legal rule that the wife has a right to orgasm.

Of course, I’m still putting in my time struggling for a more woman-affirming interpretation of Islam and in criticizing Muslim misogyny (which at times is almost as bad as American misogyny), but let me take a moment to celebrate some of the good stuff. Under Islamic law, custody of minor children always goes first to the mother. The Quran doesn’t blame Eve. Literacy for women is highly encouraged by the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. Breast-feeding is a woman’s choice and a means for her to create family ties independent of male lineage, as nursing creates legally recognized family relationships under Islamic law. Rapists are punishable by death in Islamic law (and yes, an atavistic part of me applauds that death penalty), which they certainly are not in any Western legal code. Birth control allowed in Islamic law? Check. Masturbation? Let’s just say former surgeon general Joycelyn Elders’s permissive stance on that practice is not unknown among classical and modern Muslim jurists. Abortion? Again, allowances exist — even Muslims seem not to remember that.

It’s easy to forget that Muslims are not inherently more sexist than folks in other religions. Muslim societies may lag behind on some issues that women in certain economically advanced, non-Muslim societies have resolved after much effort, but on other issues, Muslim women’s options run about the same as those of women all over the world. And in some areas of life, Muslim women are better equipped by their faith tradition for autonomy and dignity.

There are “givens” that I take for granted as a Muslim woman that women of other faiths had to struggle to gain. For example, it took European and American women centuries to catch up to Islamic law on a woman’s fully equal right to own property. And it’s not an airy abstraction; it’s a right Muslim women have practiced, even in Saudi Arabia, where women own businesses, donate land for schools and endow trusts, just as they did in 14th-century Egypt, 9th-century Iraq and anywhere else Islamic law has been in effect.

Khadija was the boss of her husband, our beloved Prophet Muhammad, hiring him during her fourth widowhood to run caravans for her successful business; he caught her eye, and she proposed marriage to him. Fatima is the revered mother figure of Shiite Islam, our lady of compassion, possessed of a rich emotional trove for us. Her daughter Zainab is the classic figure of high moral protest, the Muslim Antigone, shaking her fist at the corrupt caliph who killed her brother, her tomb a shrine of comfort for millions of the pious. Saints, queens, poets, scribes and scholars adorn the history of Muslim womanhood.

In modern times, Muslim women have been heads of state five times in Muslim-majority countries, elected democratically by popular vote (in Bangladesh twice and also in Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan). And I’m not saying that a woman president is necessarily a women’s president, but how many times has a woman been president of the United States?

Yet even all that gorgeous history pales when I open my closet door for the evening’s pick: teal georgette, pink-and-beige plaid, creamy fringed wool or ice-blue organza? God, why would anyone assume I would want to give up such beauty? I love being a Muslim woman. And I’m always looking for my next great polka-dot scarf.

It’s Obama’s fault


You didn’t know that did you? Yes,  Obama is responsible for Sarah Palin’s malfeasance.

Meg Stapleton, the spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, said in a statement tonight: “The report […] illustrates what we’ve known all along: this was a partisan-led inquiry run by Obama supporters and the Palins were completely justified in their concern regarding Trooper Wooten, given his violent and rogue behavior. Lacking evidence to support the original Monegan allegation, the Legislative Council seriously overreached, making a tortured argument to find fault without basis in law or fact.”

To prove it, look at how crafty, another code word for a black candidate you can’t trust,  he and his supporters were in keeping Obama’s name out of the two hundred sixty three page report detailing Palin’s abuse of power.  Why the nerve!  I’m sure that will become a campaign talking point for the McCain/Palin ticket.

The yo-yo called Gitmo


There’s a lot wrong with Guantanamo Bay and this latest episode demonstrates clearly the perils for those detained there.  Seventeen Chinese Muslims who have been detained for seven years were given their marching orders by a federal judge who told them they could go.  What’s extraordinary about that is since 2004 it has been known these men were not hostile to the United States, and were not declared enemy combatants, illegal or otherwise.

The United States determined in 2004 the 17 Uighurs are not enemy combatants, but has kept them at Guantanamo while trying to persuade other countries to resettle them. Officials said they were not returned to China because of credible fears they could be mistreated if returned.

The irony is that instead of turning them over to someone who officials thought might persecute them, it was decided to keep them locked up and persecuted at a US federal facility!  Go figure, but that’s not the end of it.  As I’ve said before, Americans are some of the kindest,  most decent people alive, and they demonstrated that kindness by offering to take care of the men from China once released by the government. Relief and faith based organizations throughout the country offered to take the men in and get them settled in the US, but acting on the politics of fear, the Administration said they were unsure what such a group in the heartland might do and didn’t want to release them.  I guess I can understand the fear the government would have of retribution from people who had been unlawfully detained, tortured and abuse for the last seven years.  Most people wouldn’t take too kindly to that sort of treatment and might want to “get even” as it were.

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there.  An appeals court has blocked the release of these men until further notice.

A US appeals court has temporarily blocked the release of 17 Chinese Muslim Uighurs from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp as President George W. Bush’s administration scrambles to appeal it.

*snip*

The 17 were officially declared no longer “enemy combatants” by the government in June, and the US government approved their release back in 2004.

But officials had maintained they could continue to hold the men at Guantanamo Bay if no other country accepted them.

The Uighurs were not returned to China due to credible fears they would be tortured upon return.

The White House condemned Tuesday’s ruling, saying it paved the way for extremists to demand the same freedom, and added it would continue to work to find another country to take in the men.

The article goes on to mention the resettlement of a group of the same ethnic Muslims to Albania where they live in peace but “with no possibility of returning to their families any time soon”.  However these Muslims from China are not acceptable in the US……it could be they are too close to corporate media who might in a fit of conscious decide to actually interview them to expose what took place in Guantanamo Bay.  In any event, their saga continues and the terrible legacy of Gitmo, left to us by this Administration, too continues and remains very much in the air.

They just can’t get it right!


Our friends across the “pond” just can’t quite fully understand the nuances of “Free Speech”.

Guardian Held Hostage by Islamophobic Pressure Group

In what can only be described as a shocking glimpse into Zionist lobbying at the heart of British media, the Guardian last week dismissed an Iranian contributor after a group of pro-war, Islamophobic Neocons accused her of anti-Semitism.

Soraya Terani, an Iranian mother who lives and works in London at a children’s charity, was commissioned to write 2 pieces to Comment Is Free (CIF) chronicling the routine horrors endured by Arab women whose lives have been ravaged by the US and Israeli invasion. But then, due to mounting pressure from Zionist “watchdogs” and blogs her pieces were dropped. Seemingly, Terani also posted comments on an open blog forum which, according to editor Matt Seaton, betrayed all the hallmarks of ‘anti-Semetic racist discourse’.

The media of Europe expects to be able to ‘dump’ on groups of people it chooses, Muslims, Asians, Africans, et.al and to censure others for dumping on groups of their choosing, the Vatican, Jews and Israel.  The hypocrisy is rather stark and obvious and I’m sure the editors and reporters know this, but agenda driven journalism makes it easy to forget.

What’s with Republicans?


They put Sarah Palin on the ticket in order for her to attack Barak Obama and play the damsel in distress when she is attacked, even though her attacks against Obama don’t even come close to her own issues of associating with terrorists or terrorist minded individuals and organizations!

“My government is my worst enemy. I’m going to fight them with any means at hand.”

This was former revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers back in his old Weather Underground days, right? Imagine what Sarah Palin is going to do with this incendiary quote as she tears into Barack Obama this week.

Only one problem. The quote is from Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party. Inconveniently for Palin, that’s the very same secessionist party that her husband, Todd, belonged to for seven years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alaska governor earlier this year. (“Keep up the good work,” Palin told AIP members. “And God bless you.”)

AIP chairwoman Lynette Clark told me recently that Sarah Palin is her kind of gal. “She’s Alaskan to the bone … she sounds just like Joe Vogler.”

You can find out more about this “Party” that until recently Sarah Palin’s husband used to belong to here.  One can see all too quickly why the Pallin’s must distance themselves from this group as they’ve distanced themselves from her, choosing to endorse the Constitutional Party’s presidential candidate over Sarah Pallin’s.

What is shameful in all this is the mock outrage the McCain/Pallin ticket expresses when they meet people who, having listened to the campaign rhetoric express themselves in ways the candidates really want them to!

John McCain was booed by his own supporters during a rally on Friday after he described Barack Obama as a “decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”

McCain was responding to a town hall attendee who claimed he was concerned about raising a child under a president who “cohorts with domestic terrorists such as [Bill] Ayers.” Despite the fact that McCain and his campaign have repeatedly used Ayers to hammer Obama in recent days, the Arizona Senator tried to calm the man.

“[Senator Obama] is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared about as President of the United States,” he said, before adding: “If I didn’t think I would be one heck of a better president I wouldn’t be running.”

The crowd groaned with disapproval.

Later, McCain was again pressed about Obama’s “other-ness” and again he refused to play ball. “I don’t trust Obama,” a woman said. “I have read about him. He’s an Arab.”

“No, ma’am,” McCain said several times, shaking his head in disagreement. “He’s a decent, family man, [a] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about.”

Yeah, lady, there’s definitely something wrong with being an Arab….plausible deniability is the intended meaning of this dog and pony show.  The McCain campaign has done a pretty good of planting all the seeds of hatred and distrust towards Obama among the American citizens and it wants the fruits of those efforts to be that people forget the financial “crisis” America finds itself in, some saying it’s the largest economic crisis the country has faced since the Great Depression.

America’s mortgage crisis has spiralled into “the largest financial shock since the Great Depression” and there is now a one-in-four chance of a full-blown global recession over the next 12 months, the International Monetary Fund warned today.

The US is already sliding into what the IMF predicts will be a “mild recession” but there is mounting pessimism about the ability of the rest of the world to escape unscathed, the IMF said in its twice-yearly World Economic Outlook. Britain is particularly vulnerable, it warned, as it slashed its growth targets for both the US and the UK.

The report made it clear that there will be no early resolution to the global financial crisis.

The failed Iraq/Afghanistan war with a 12 billion per month price tag has also significantly contributed to this economic problem, and the WOT, which is being shown for the sham it really is each and every day it has an appearance before a government body NOT fully controlled by this Administration.

Today, for the first time, a federal court ordered the release into the United States of 17 innocent Uighur men who have been imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay for nearly seven years. The men are refugees who would face persecution and imprisonment, if not death, if returned to their native China.

“In the history of our Republic, the military never imprisoned any man so harshly, and for so long, let alone men who are not the enemy. We have broken faith with the rule of law, and been untrue to the generosity of spirit that is our national character,” said Sabin Willett, Partner at Bingham McCutchen who argued the case for the detainees today.

“This is a historic day for the U.S. Finally, we are beginning the process of taking responsibility for our mistakes and fixing them,” said CCR Attorney Emi MacLean. “For years, the United States has begged other countries to clean up the mess we made in Guantánamo, but the hypocrisy of this appeal was evident abroad. Perhaps now other countries will be less reluctant to come to our aid.” MacLean continued, “Allowing these wrongfully detained men a fresh start would also provide the U.S. a fresh start — an opportunity to turn a page and finally take a position of leadership in closing Guantánamo.”

McCain, et.co want Americans to forget all this and instead concentrate on the spin they are putting to an Obama association that is tangential AT BEST, while being able to say they have had nothing to do with the conclusion. It should be painfully obvious to any and all that at staged public appearances this late into the campaign process, candidates are able to control who gets in and who says what.  Dirty and cheap politics have been a hallmark of the GOP the last several elections.  It’s sad it’s being bought, lock, stock and barrel, but should come as no surprise.

UPDATE

John McCain gets mugged very nicely by Juan Cole, who calls McCain out for using demagoguery and then withdrawing it.

John McCain quickly shed his last vestiges of decency when he allowed his campaign to try to smear Barack Obama for having been in the same room with Bill Ayers, who had been a Weatherman in the 1960s when Obama was a child. McCain knows very well that Obama is a centrist, not a radical, that Ayers had long since been rehabilitated and has ties to the Republican governor of South Carolina, and that Obama had very little to do with Ayers. The ‘terrorist’ charge is supposed to work subliminally, and to subconsciously suggest other smears.

However, I disagree with Professor Cole when he says the two messages of the McCain candidacy, the decent high road McCain versus the wallow in the mud McCain are conflicted.  To the contrary, I think McCain is trying to have his cake and eat it too.  He’s appealing to the wine and cheese crowd of the party with his attempts at calming the lynch mob out to get Obama, while inciting that very mob to action!  McCain has been on the receiving end of this lynch mob mentality during the primary of a few campaigns ago so he is a testament to its effectiveness. It’s a shameful display of hypocrisy.  I also like the fact that Cole says what Obama dare not say and it’s another reason why I’m not fully behind the man Barack Obama.  He should be man enough to speak for himself and not let others do the talking for him.

Mr. McCain, Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans are decent, family-oriented citizens. The only thing wrong with calling Obama by either of these modifiers is that it would be incorrect. He is not an Arab ethnically, but rather northern European and Luo (Nilotic). He is not a Muslim but a Christian.

McCain’s insinuation that “Arabs” (whether he and his friend actually meant “Muslims” or not) are not decent and not family-oriented and not citizens is obscene.

Perhaps Juan Cole is the one who should run for the presidency.

The Republican Party’s dirty tricks-at it again


What should you expect from the party of whiners and liars.  Let’s just go and put it on the record before it gets lost in the memory hole amidst all the shouting about Gwen Ifill’s book and the liberal media and minorities who can’t pay their mortages. THE REPUBLICAN PARTY is out distributing a flier intended to scare black voters in Philadelphia.

An anonymous flier circulating in African-American neighborhoods in North and West Philadelphia states that voters who are facing outstanding arrest warrants or who have unpaid traffic tickets may be arrested at the polls on Election Day.

The flier starts off by identifying its origins from an Obama supporter; the underlying assumption of the hit piece is that those who might support Obama in the targeted communities are criminals or on the run from the law.  You can read the flier here.

Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Everett Gillison, who learned of the flier last week, said that the message is completely false.

Typical for the party of whiners and liars.

A bigger bill means bigger government


This is really a bad sign.

Two Saturdays ago, it totaled just three pages — the White House’s request for $700 billion to rescue tottering financial institutions by buying their devalued mortgage-related assets.

After an intense weekend of negotiations, the draft of the bailout legislation before Congress had swelled to 42 pages.

The following Friday, after almost a week of marathon talks between Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and key lawmakers in both parties, the working version was up to 102 pages. It went down to defeat Monday in the House, mostly at the hands of Republicans.

Once the Senate was finished adding sweeteners Wednesday to entice reluctant House Republicans to change their minds and vote for the bailout, the bill heading for passage had grown to 451 pages.

It was unclear whether it would expand still more as House leaders hunted for the votes needed to clear the bill.

The increased verbiage means more and more people had their hand in writing it which makes me think of the proverbial ‘too many chefs spoil the soup’ analogy.  What it does mean is more and more special interests signed on to put their imprimatur in the legislation which means government has to get bigger to oversee or regulate or play a part in the legislation which means it’s gonna’ cost the taxpayer probably a lot more than initial estimates. Big government working for us.  NOT!!

George Bush and John McCain are on the same page


“I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well.” – Jan. 29, 2001(GWB)

“I just want to make a comment about the obvious issue and that is the failure of Congress to act yesterday. Its just not acceptable. […] This is just a not acceptable situation. I’m not saying this is the perfect answer. If I were dictator, which I always aspire to be, I would write it a little bit differently.” September, 2008- John McCain

Christian evangelism/intimidation in the US military


Bush’s ‘you’re either with us or against us’ slogan has been turned on its head to mean ‘even if you’re American if you aren’t Christian go to Hell whether you believe in it or not’.  That’s the problem with simplistic slogans that appeal to everyone’s ego. Lowest common denominator politics; it’s in vogue these day.  There’s always someone who can’t seem to get beyond that.  In the Pentagon there have become so many recent examples of people being harassed or intimidated because they weren’t Christian, or have had Christianity shoved down their throats by peers and superiors alike that the message of Christ, the Savior, if you believe in him, has been lost, and the Constitution of this Republic has been violated.  Here are just a few recent examples.

The Army post in Kansas said it is investigating a message left on Spc. Jeremy Hall’s cell phone. Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, based in Albuquerque, N.M., have a lawsuit pending in federal court in Kansas City, Kan., with the Defense Department and Secretary Robert Gates among the defendants. Foundation President Mikey Weinstein provided a transcript of the message left for Hall early Saturday. The message is laced with obscenities and a racial slur commonly directed at African-Americans, though Hall is white. In it, the caller promises to slit Hall’s throat and drink his blood. The caller also promises to sexually assault Hall’s wife and mother.

Hall serves in a military police company at Fort Riley, and Weinstein said it’s “highly probable” the caller was a fellow soldier. Weinstein said he notified Hall’s company commander and battalion commander’s office and wants the caller found – and court-martialed.

“We have the phone number this death threat came from and the actual voice recording,” Weinstein said. “Even Inspector Clouseau would be able to nab this felon. How hard can this really be?”

Specialist Dustin Chalker a Purple Heart recipient filed suit against the Department of Defense and Robert Gates for relief from being forced to attend religious ceremonies which feature prayers he, as an atheist, does not feel the need to perform, yet feels his position in the military is in jeopardy.  His suit was filed on September 25, 2008 and in it he alleges, he was required by his chain of command to attend a function described as a barbeque where a Christian sectarian prayer was delivered, required by his chain of command to attend a change of command ceremony at Fort Riley, Kansas. The change of command ceremony began and ended with a sectarian Christian prayer delivered by the battalion chaplain and other incidents mentioned in his suit.  Chalker is an atheist and as such does not voluntarily participate in religious services, ceremonies or rituals that are conducted either on and around Fort Riley other military installations to which he is assigned.  The proslytization of the military goes beyond ceremonies where a prayer is spoken, although the military has addressed these concerns they don’t seem to be applied  by commanders and especially the commander in chief.  He’s too busy fighting a global war on terror.  He leaves the job of beating up little guys in the US military to those in the Pentagon.

Spc. Jeremy Hall, who is also an atheist, sued the defense secretary and his supervising officer last year for allegedly trying to force him to embrace fundamentalist Christianity and then retaliating against him when he refused. That lawsuit was amended in March. MRFF is also listed as a plaintiff in the lawsuit. The case is still pending in federal court.

Hall’s decision to become a plaintiff with MRFF in a lawsuit against the Pentagon has had repercussions. Last September, while Hall was still stationed in Iraq, he said other U.S. soldiers physically threatened him after word spread that he and MRFF sued the Pentagon and the secretary of defense. On popular military related blogs, such as military.com, individuals who claimed they were active-duty soldiers posted comments threatening Hall with “fragging,” a term used by the military in which an unpopular soldier could be killed by intentional friendly fire during combat. The comment received widespread attention on blogs and in November Hall was transferred from Combat Operations Base Speicher to Fort Riley, Kansas.

The intimidation doesn’t stop with atheists.  For those who cry out it’s multiculturalism that’s destroying the Judaeo-Christian ethic of America, you are WRONG.  It’s bigotry.

A U.S. Army soldier was brutally beaten by other soldiers in his platoon earlier this month following two incidents in which a drill sergeants allegedly used anti-Semitic slurs to address the soldier.

Pvt. Michael Handman, 20, who has just completed his fifth week of basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, was recently released from a hospital where he was treated for a concussion, facial wounds, and severe oral injuries following the attack, according to the boy’s father, Jonathan Handman.

*snip*

Michael Handman enlisted in the Army earlier this year. He wears a yarmulke with his uniform, which apparently led his drill sergeants to refer to him as a “fucking Jew” and a “kike” and a demand that he remove the yarmulke during dinner, according to his father. The soldier recently wrote a letter to his mother Randi recounting the anti-Semitism he has endured by his drill sergeants and members of his platoon since arriving for basic training at Fort Benning.

“I have just never been so discriminated against/humiliated about my religion,” Michael Handman wrote his mother. “I just feel like I’m always looking over my shoulder. Like my battle buddy heard some of the guys in my platoon talking about how they wanted to beat the shit out of me tonight when I’m sleeping. It just sucks. And the only justification they have is [because] I’m Jewish. Maybe your dad was right…The Army is not the place for a Jew.”

I call this blowback.  The Bush Administration led a charge against Islamofascist, a term which has found meaning in today’s America, but many have been misled by this call to arms and have taken it upon themselves to interpret it in the way they see fit.  Without any direction from the commander in chief, we have become a Nation that feeds on itself.  Because our enemy was defined in religious terms people’s personal preferences began to confuse those terms and religions to reflect their own bias and hatred.  In some cases that has been perfectly acceptable to the people in power; who want nothing more than to divert citizen’s attention from the  deceit and lies of WMD, the WOT, and the unconstitutional grabs for power they have foisted upon the American public. The buck never stops with this Administration, it just gets passed and people who are somehow different are discouraged from participating.  Chalk that up to  another of Bush’s legacies.

Republicans have become the party of liars


Bush’s legacy is he has reduced his party to one of whiners and he has no one to blame but himself, as do both houses of Congress who have no one to blame but themselves.  It’s a pathetic group of politicians.  The latest offense that has really upset me is the one dealing with the financial bailout and the reasons why it is necessary.  The Republicans began by erroneously blaming minorities and Clinton for the Nation’s financial situation because of the Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA which allowed more and more members of minority communities to purchase homes and we called them on it, saying they were the party of sleaze and race baiting.  Unfortunately theirs is a mantra which works on some of their constituents, so they sent out their party hacks to repeat it and much like everything else they utter to cover for the party of race baiters, it’s a lie!  The cause of the housing meltdown lies solely at the feet of the Bush Administration!  You can read all about that here.

Now that they’ve deflected the blame for the cause of the problem, Republicans then set about to say why they can’t solve the problem, blaming a speech Nancy Pelosi gave on the House floor the day of the vote on the Administration’s bail out plan.  Typical.  Does this blame business ever get tiresome with these folks? Of course the corporate equally sleazy media picked up on and broadcast the excuse without commenting on how lame and ridiculous the excuse really was.  Only after Congressman Barney Frank made the comment of the year….”Because somebody hurt their feelings, they decided to punish the country? I don’t believe they had the votes. They are covering up the fact that they don’t have the votes.” did the Republicans come around to saying Pelosi’s verbal bombast wasn’t the reason the bill didn’t pass.

Quite simply the bill is a bad piece of legislation for reasons we’ve already mentioned on this blog, but those reasons are not why House Republicans voted against the measure.  As we’ve discussed the legislation gives broader powers to the executive and specifically the Treasury department than ever before, as well as removes oversight from the other two branches of government.  The Republicans have always given away this power when Bush asked for it, but this time, facing the possibility of defeat in the presidential elections as well as their own seats they decided to listen to the people or did they?  Does anyone else find it ironic that opponents of the bill are now saying such legislation should be more carefully thought out before coming to the floor for a vote?  I seem to remember a lot of peole saying the same thing during the war on terror series of voluminous reams of legislation that were always rushed through at the risk of its opponents being called traitors or siding with the enemies against us. That the Republicans would throw out red herrings which were picked up by the corporate media and hide the real fact of their opposition, that they don’t want to cede this kind of power to a Democratic administration on the eve of what they consider a likely defeat in the presidential elections is just one more example of the pandering and lies they engage in their efforts to frighten, threaten and intimidate the voting public.  I wish I could say at this time that the Democrats are a viable alternative.

An Unintended Consequence


The Obsession movie distributed to newspapers in so called swing states has produced an unintended consequence, the gassing of a place of worship of Muslims.  It doesn’t help that the place of worship, masjid, was inhabited at the time and full of children and infants.  This is not exactly what the purveyors of the filth called “Obsession” wanted because it forces Americans who are good hearted people and hate injustice to be sympathetic towards Muslims and that’s not what is wanted.  What the organizers of “Obsession” want is for people to vote for John McCain and any acts of violence done towards Muslims in America that can be tied to their efforts, the attack in Dayton happened on the very evening the DVDs were distributed by the Dayton newspaper earlier that day,  will have a negative impact on that outcome.  Perhaps that’s why the news has only been passed along on Dayton’s media outlets and not picked up nationwide.

The Clarion Fund is an Islamophobic organization that has inserted itself into American politics.

Clarion Fund was founded by the writer and executive produce of “Obsession,” Israeli-Canadian Raphael Shore. The group also runs the Web site Radicalislam.org – an educational site which implores its readers to “take action against radical Islam” by exploring its resources under four headings: “fueling terror,” “Sharia law,” “vote 2008,” and “radical Islam overview.” Because of Clarion Fund’s nonprofit, tax-exempt status, it is not permitted to sway voters in a partisan manner. But Radicalislam.org reportedly was, until it was recently pointed out in the media, carrying an article that explicitly endorsed McCain.

Perhaps that last fact is why a writer has called for John McCain to denounce the inflammatory, anti-Muslim message of Obsession; and to do everything in his power to stop any further campaign activities by his supporters that have the potential to incite violence.  I’m betting he won’t do that.