Which do you want first

  The good news or the really, really bad news.
  You owe it to yourself to read the bad news, from start to end.  Your head has been filled with the false good news for so long now, it is going to hurt.  Get the hurt started, because then we won't be so schizophrenic.

Flash News from BuzzFlash

• One in three voters will using DieBold machines this November.  Heard any stories about polls being bad?  It's because they have already rigged the voting machines, if I don't miss my guess.
• Sleazy Firm will pay $4,000 for any seniors willing to say the GOP amendment to Medicare is a good idea.  Funny they have to try that hard.
• New Lying Swift Boat Veterans Ads.
• Tom DeLay aides garner 32 indictments.  Would you believe it had anything to do with corporate contributions to campaigns?
• More Bush administration kowtowing to corporate interests.  This time, DHS changes EPA report on threat from chemical industry (as victims of attack).

Victory Lap Waylaid

  Before Michael Totten (fascist, ignoramus blowhard for $$$) could finish his victory lap, declaring the Second Intifada over and done with, this happens.
  When the next right-wing blowhard announces the end to the Palestinian uprising, perhaps he should consult with the Palestinians first, or at least check with some of them? Perhaps one?  Slimeball Totten cites not a single Palestinian who says it is over.

Dan Rather For President

Expected to tell the truth?  Forced to apologize when he doesn't?

We already hold him to a higher standard than any President in my memory.

Who Said What?

Take the Stupid White Men's Quiz at CounterPunch. Find out who said ""Freedom is about authority." and "A young man who does not have what it takes to perform military service is not likely to have what it takes to make a living. Today's military rejects include tomorrow's hard-core unemployed."

Swaggart, Scumbag

Swaggart said "I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry, and I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died,"
Gay advocacy groups say such language encourages violence against gay men and lesbians.
"Good gracious alive, it would be a long stretch of the imagination to come up with that," Swaggart, the fuckwad idiot, said.

A Message to Libertarians

"Neither force nor fraud" is a axiom of Libertarians around the world.  For them, I present...
NEITHER FORCE NOR FRAUD:
Reasons for Libertarians to Support Bush's War in Iraq

<this space intentionally left blank>

Next to Face Recall Vote?

I jest.  Joseph Diess, President of Switzerland, said, after Pretzeldent George Walker Bush spoke & ran at the UN...

In hindsight, experience shows that actions taken without a mandate which has been clearly defined in a security council resolution are doomed to failure.

Yay Yay Yugoslavia!

The great heros at Whatever It Is, I'm Against It have linked to the fantastic news that we really bombed Yugoslavia to sell its assets to hard-working corporate CEOs.
I guess this disingenuous attitude is the only way to deal with this truly, truly evil occurence.

Are you Busy, Busy, Busy?

I saw a nice T-Shirt once, in a store on CommonWealth Ave in Back Bay, Boston...
Jesus is Coming... (then a picture of a person sweeping)... Look Busy.
Busy, Busy, Busy is a wonderful blog, especially for those who think the major national columnists could whittle down their columns a bit.

Let Freedom March

And provide the boots. From Fanatical Apathy.

Someone Asked...

"Is this a religious blog?" so I think I should get back to politics.
  To me, the Killian memos, (memos which claim Bush had to be given good things because of political pressure), always seemed entirely real.
  Some people, including Randi Rhodes of Air America Radio, say that because the memos were leaked only to Dan Rather of CBS, it sounds dubiouos.  If I had memos, not documents on official stationary, I would have a hard time proving they were real, so I would go to the one person I know/trust.  Politicians tend to leak things to single sources, because they all know it is a boon to the journalist to whom the story was leaked.
  Within four hours of the television broadcast of the story, the Stooge Republic began attacking the peice, mostly for lies about the nature of typography at the time.  Because it was an anonymous poster on Stooge Republic, the mainstream media picked up on it.
  Now it turns out that this person who posted anonymously has a regular history of mendacious garbage, and is nothing like anonymous anymore.  Thanks, Digby, for getting the story to me, and thanks to Democratic Underground, where it broke first.

---

Update
  This LA Times story doesn't, up front, call MacDougland a "pull it out of his ass liar who still got attention from the mainstream media," and the timid reader might think MacDougland was more of a patriot than a scurrilously, and flagrantly lying loser.

France Bashing

Will it ever end?
Certain morons are up in their roosts, flapping their wings about the new French ban on visible religious symbols.
The France bashers are jumping all over this, claiming the Sikhs are particularly hurt because of their turbans.
If these nitwits pulled their heads out of their asses, they would learn that the turban is only to cover their long hair, which is a religious requirement.
The Turban Sikhs wear is not a requirement of their religion, but it is tradition.

YOU heard it here first!

  The g-d of the monotheistic religions (Islam, Christianity and Judaism) started out as the g-d of the Jews.
  The Jews called it by many names: Yahweh, Elohim, El, Elah, Eloah.
  El was the name of a person.  Elohim refers to El's seventy children.
  This is the gossip on the Dead Sea Scrolls, from a student of one of the scrolls' top scholarly researchers.

Praise the Lord!

Gentlemen, Rulers of the World, have I got the Good Word(tm) for you!  Don't fear about a Kerry election, because we no longer need to have elections!  The proof is quite simple, and even the thickest of your followers can understand.  Here we go...

• The Lord of America, President George Walker Bush, gets direct answers from G-d!.
  • John Kerry certainly doesn't.
  • Yes/No answers from the Almighty are all a Nation can ask for from its leader!
  • Theocracy is a rule by the G-dly, which His Excellency George Walker Bush certainly is!
• "Democracy" (spit!) was invented by Homosexual Greeks, and not G-d-fearing Americans like George Walker Bush, praised be he.
• The evil men who forced "Democracy" (spit!) on America were, in fact, believers that G-d is One!  Every True Christian knows that G-d is Three (such heretics were executed in earlier times)!
• Is there even any question that these "Framers" were in fact... Homosexuals?  If they were not, they were duped by the Homosexual Agenda to destroy America and sodomize the sons of the loyal and faithful followers of His Highness, George Walker Bush.
• Monarchy is the most holy of all forms of Government.  Certainly if G-d has selected our Dear Leader, then there is no need to ask the hoi-polloi(common people, ignorant of the Most High's Grand Plans).
  • Like the Kaiser (Holy Roman Emperor, or Ceasar) before him, the Great George Walker Bush has been selected by God to be the unquestioned leader of the Greatest Nation on Earth.
  • To deny this is satanic.  Are you a tool of Satan?
• Terrorists want us to have elections.
  • No elections mean no election-time terrorism!
  • Arab leaders want our Holy King(tm) to be replaced!

  There you go, Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Moon, and all the other craven media flunkies of the current regime.  In a nutshell, gays want you to vote, G-d wants Bush to be KING.
If you are a normal person, you might like this PhD's views on the theological aspects of Bush "diplomacy" (spit).
Dear Readers, please get your heads outside of your rears and realize that Bush is a Theocrat, a Born-Again Christian, and, for that, a loony.

The Origins of the Word Politics

  As I (perhaps) already discussed, the word "Terrorism" comes from the French, specifically the State terror of Robespierre and the Jacobins.
  The word politique, with its current meaning, also comes to us via the French, but first a small explanation of my brief knowledge of the latter half of the 16th century European situation is in order.
  Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor ruler of Germany, Austria, Spain, the Netherlands, parts/intermittently of Italy, and Spain's possessions in the New World, was dead.  The Protestant Reformation had taken hold, and while Luther himself was dead; Calvin, from his base in Geneva, was proving to be a powerful organizer of cross-continental forces.  Book-banning and Inquisitions were being stepped up in Spain and the Netherlands, and religious disharmony was being used by the aristocratic elite to help overthrow weakened Monarchs (tired from a long Spanish-French war and broke from the double default, both France and Spain, in 1557).  At the same time, the Calvinists connected with the aristocrats in order to gain, by force if necessary, the right to worship freely.  For the record, some of the most militant Calvinists didn't want anyone worshipping any other way than their own.

  From the book

Already in France, about the year 1564, the term "politique" had come into use to describe the growing body of middle-of-the-road opinion which, while holding no brief for the new religious doctrines, considered that repression would only precipitate the very disasters it was designed to avert.

I'm screaming on the inside with the irony of it all.

Most all of this is from J.H. Elliot's 1968 book Europe Divided 1559-1598, which I am currently reading.

Just the Facts, Ma'am

Spinsanity has a little article pointing me to a CBO report on the share of Federal Taxes paid by each quintile.

If one were to read the report, one would learn that in 2005 every quintile except the top quintile will be paying HIGHER taxes than when Bush took office.  I repeat, every quintile except the top quintile will be paying higher taxes in 2005, after the three Bush-signed tax acts, than before Bush took office.

	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005
Lowest Quintile	5.4	5.3	5.2	5.2	5.5
Second Quintile	11.6	11.6	11.0	11.1	12.0
Middle Quintile	15.2	15.0	14.5	14.6	15.6
Fourth Quintile	19.3	19.1	18.5	18.5	19.6
Highest Quintile	26.8	25.4	24.4	23.8	26.3

(from page 18 of 32 of the report)