Only One Side Has Been Perpetrating and Promoting Violence

For anyone who's thinking, "Well, I'm sure violence comes from both sides of the political spectrum," here's a brief reminder.

No, it hasn't. It has virtually all been coming from conservatives and to an abominable degree.

From Sarah Palin's gunsights on Representatives including the just-shot Gabby Giffords in Arizona with her calls to "take aim" and "open a salvo", to Sharron Angle's calling for 2nd Amendment remedies to "take out" Harry Reid, to completely taking out of context a quote from Thomas Jefferson as if he were promoting violence (he wasn't) in pursuit of liberty, the radical right as promoted through their media outlets have done everything short of arming their disciples and given them location addresses for their public appearances.

No, strike that. They DID give out the locations for Democrats' public appearances while not revealing Republicans' meetings during the Health Care debate, if you can use that word when the one purpose promoted was to disrupt any discussion or actual debate.

In case you don't remember:

A conservative who followed right-wing media killed a guard at the Holocaust museum.

A conservative who followed right-wing media killed West Memphis cops.

A conservative who followed right-wing media killed Dr. George Tiller while he was in church.

A conservative who followed right-wing media killed two people at a Unitarian church in Tennessee.

Unknown arsonists set fire to a planned Tennessee Mosque and cultural center at the time right-wing media denounced a planned Manhattan mosque and cultural center.

Unknown terrorists targeted Democratic officials and non-conservative media figures with anthrax in the past decade.

Democratic Congressman James Clyburn was spit on while being called racial slurs by conservatives in May 2010.

Numerous Democratic Party headquarters around the country were vandalized with bricks by conservatives who attached pro-conservative rhetoric to the weapons after being directed to do so by their conservative lords.

The headquarters for several Democratic Representatives such as Louise Slaughter and Gabby Giffords were attacked similarly by conservatives.

Nine conservative members of the Hutaree militia planned attacks last year on government officials and those who would attend the subsequent funerals.

A conservative who followed conservative anti-tax rhetoric flew a plane into a Texas IRS building.

A Tennessee conservative was arrested after walking into his local county courthouse to try to effect a citizen's arrest of a grand jury foreman who had refused to investigate President Obama's legitimacy to serve as promoted by right-wing media.

A self-proclaimed Glenn Beck fan was arrested for scouting out and trespassing on Air National Guard Base at Gabreski Airport in New York. She had an XM-15 assault rifle, a shotgun, and 500 rounds of ammunition in her car when police found her.

A conservative supporter knocked down to the ground and then stomped on a liberal protester's head as she lay by the curb outside a Republican campaign stop.

There are so many more I can cite, but the pattern is obvious here. Violent acts are not protected First Amendment speech and cannot be tolerated by a civilized society. The promoters in the conservative media are just as guilty as the perpetrators and should stop promoting violence immediately.

Republicans, The First Week

After just two days, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives has shown themselves to be a hypocritical embarrassment to anyone who voted for them as well as the rest of America.

They promised to employ a stringent interpretation of the Constitution without acknowledging that it is not written in stone to set up permanent rules, but rather to set guidelines that need to be interpreted or even changed with the evolution (oh dear, that word!) of our society. Our forefathers have made plenty of egregious errors along the way. How do the Republicans address that? By changing historical truths to suit their needs. In the reading of the Constitution, they simply ignored such facts as Native Americans weren’t considered people, that Blacks were considered just three-fifths of a person, that escaped slaves were to be returned to their owners no matter where in the country they were found, and that conservatives made alcohol consumption and commerce constitutionally illegal.

Well, isn’t that special!

Two Republican Congressmen – Pete Sessions and Mike Fitzpatrick – didn’t even bother to honor the rules of the Constitution when they didn't show up to be sworn in with the rest of the House. Where were they instead? They were attending a fundraiser that would help line their pockets with all of those really wealthy dollars that helped buy their way into office so they may attend to their further bidding.

Breaking the rules of Constitution on the day Congress is reading parts of the Constitution so you can be paid by really wealthy people is certainly very special!

Republicans pledged to cut 100 Billion dollars in federal spending. Now they say that written pledge was just hypothetical so they’re revised that to 50 Billion and some experts are saying it will be much more like 30 Billion. Meanwhile, they raised the deficit by 133 Billion with bonus tax cuts for wealthy beyond the regular tax cuts they would have gotten as proposed by the Democrats. Republicans say they were already in place, but, in fact, they were put in place at a time of economic surplus without wars and were set by Republicans to expire.

Republicans are trying to explode the deficit by another 230 Billion dollars by repealing health care reform. It’s part of their new “cut-as-you-go” promise – to not just pay for, but cut spending by whatever has to be paid for additionally. What will be cut to pay for this 230 Billion dollar blow up of the deficit? Nothing because they decided arbitrarily they don’t need to follow this promise when they don’t want to! And 230 Billion dollars is the amount computed by the independent Congressional Budget Office – the official accountants working on behalf of the government. The Republican Speaker says that’s just their opinion, which is tantamount to saying he thinks 2+2=7, and those who tell him it’s 4 are simply of the wrong opinion as well.

Well, isn’t that special!

Another broken Republican pledge is their stated commitment to reporting public attendance of Congressional committee meetings, which is where nearly all of their work takes place. But they decided to do away with that provision in a closed-door meeting Tuesday night.

Apparently, their promise of transparency wasn’t that special, either.

Another one of Republicans’ pledges was their promise to allow Democrats to offer amendments to legislation. On their first bill introduced since taking over, Republicans are not going to allow any amendments. Take it or leave it, suckers!

Another often-repeated promise was a “triumphant” return to open rules in the House. But after one day we see reporting that not a single one of the bills that will be brought to the floor this week will be brought under open rules.

Isn’t that triumphantly special!

Finally, in their Pledge to America, Republicans also promised to require each bill moving through Congress to include a clause citing the specific constitutional authority upon which the bill is justified. After all, these Republicans are strict constitutionalists (not counting the parts of the Constitution they don't believe in or want to acknowledge were ever there). However, none of the three bills that Republicans plan to introduce this week have any constitutional citation.

None of this hypocritical, dishonest, or simply bungling behavior is the result of an opposition party trying to destroy any accomplishment of government or childishly just saying “No” to obstruct everything proposed. Republicans have done this totally on their own to themselves and the American people, and they’ve done it in just two days.

An Awful Week in McCain's Political Life, but the Media Covers it up

If John McCain weren’t the darling of the media, he would be in BIG trouble after this past week. I cannot remember a politician having such a disastrous string of mistakes, missteps, and misstatements in so short a time. Yet, it's almost being completely ignored by the media.

First, McCain promised to balance the budget by the end of his first term from all the money he would save by winning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan even though he has said in the past that there’s no reason to bring troops home if they’re not getting killed anymore. Of course, he has also said that we can’t bring the troops home as long as they’re getting killed. In other words, we stay if we are getting killed and we stay if we’re not getting killed. So where does the money being saved come from?

He then attacked Barack Obama for not voting for something he didn’t vote for, either - the Kyl-Lieberman amendment.

He claimed to have a record with veterans that he really doesn’t have. It was Barack Obama who supported the G.I. Bill and John McCain who refused to vote for it. That just backs up all Veterans’ groups overwhelmingly scoring McCain’s support of soldiers among the worst in the Senate.  

McCain ignored the Iraqi Prime Minister calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq even though McCain had said before that if the Iraqis wanted us to leave, we would leave.

McCain joked about wanting to kill Iranian civilians by giving them lung cancer.

On Monday, McCain described social security as a total disgrace, not saying that it needed to be fixed, but saying, “We are paying present-day retirees with the taxes being paid by young workers in America today.” That just happens to be the entire premise of social security, which he has stated he wants to privatize.

McCain’s top economic advisor, Phil Gramm, who largely caused the mortgage crisis in America by creating the Enron loophole while a Senator, called Americans a bunch of whiners for an economy he said was only in a mental recession. Despite this, he got to keep his campaign co-chairman position.

Another top economic advisor, the formerly ousted Hewlett Packard CEO, Carly Fiorino, told reporters that McCain was just as upset as she was that insurance companies cover Viagra for men, but not birth control for women leaving McCain befuddled and bewildered on his campaign bus when reporters asked him about it.

Finally, McCain lied about his own life story just to pander to a Pittsburgh TV morning show. When McCain was held in Vietnam by the North Vietnamese, he had always said he gave false information under torture to make the torturers stop. He even stated it in his autobiography and the film that was made about it. Instead of naming his squad mates and squadron commander, he named the offensive line of the Green Bay Packers - the best team in football in the 1960s.

At the time, the Pittsburgh Steelers stunk. They were completely insignificant with no outstanding players although they would later become the best team of the 1970s well after McCain left Vietnam.

In talking to this Pittsburgh TV reporter, McCain changed his life story by saying he named the Pittsburgh Steelers famous defensive line of the time just to show what a great Pittsburgh fan he was. Too bad the famous Steel Curtain defense didn’t exist yet!

Furthermore, he formerly used this Green Bay Packers story to illustrate how ineffective torture is. A victim generally says anything just to end the pain. Of course, McCain completely changed his anti-torture stance under the direction of the Republican dictatorship who used incorrect information gleaned under torture to justify the irresponsible spending of American blood and taxpayers’ dollars in Iraq.

It’s a good thing for McCain that the media is the lapdog of the Republican machine or else he’d never hear the end of this week’s gaffes.

McCain, Republicans - No (truthful) Energy Plan Whatsoever

The latest atrocity being pushed by John McCain and the Republicans is that we need to boost oil production by drilling off the gulf shore shore and in the Alaskan National Wildlife Arctic Refuge (ANWAR).

Virtually every reason they give for this is, at best - completely baseless; and, at worst - a total lie.

The fact is that the Republicans’ stance on energy and oil has been abysmal and that McCain has no plan whatsoever to offer other than to keep doing what Bush is doing - subsidizing oil companies like Exxon-Mobil who made $8 billion per year when Bush took office, but who now make over $40 billion per year giving them the largest yearly corporate profit in the history of planet Earth.

We also have no reason to need it. The oil companies are sitting on 68 million acres of leased drilling land in the United States and purposely NOT drilling on it. They are hoarding at our expense and their republican backed puppets are floating other abominations now.

Misrepresentation #1 - Increasing offshore drilling will help bring down the cost of oil quickly.

Fact - Increasing offshore may produce a little more oil by the year 2025 or so, but the amount will be only a slight fraction of the nation’s total output. Republicans are basing this on the theory that we can drill our way out of the problem.

This is truly the most ludicrous of all their arguments. The United States has two percent of the world’s oil, but use 25 percent. Increasing that to 2.02 percent in 20 years will not make up the difference. If it was a difference maker, why won't they drill on the already secured 68 million acres they're sitting on? Because we're already refining oil at our full capacity. More oil won't get us more gasoline or lower prices.

Misrepresentation #2 - Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 did no damage to the environment from offshore oil platforms. McCain said, “They’re safe enough.”

Fact - Hurricanes Katrina and Rita forced 700,000 gallons of oil to spill during the hurricanes. The chance of further disasters not related to weather also factor into a possible catastrophic disaster to not only the ecology, but also the gulf states’ industries along the coast, such as the seafood industry and tourism on the beaches.

Misrepresentation #3 (actually a blatant lie) - “China is drilling off the coast of Florida...” (optional aside - “with the help of Cuba.”)

Fact - It’s a LIE. This rumor has been alleged by Vice-President Dick Cheney, Republican Congressmen John Boehner and Roy Blount, and media personalties Michelle Bachman and George Will over the past week. Dick Cheney actually apologized and corrected himself the day after this assertion, but it has a life that lives on thanks to Bachman and friends at the Republican Headquarters known as “Fox News.” It simply happens to be a fabrication.

Misrepresentation #4 (and the most fanciful of all) - ANWAR helps caribou in Alaska because the pipeline is warm. One Republican congresswoman from Minnesota even said the caribou will have coffee klatches with such a warm pipeline! I’m not making that up.

Fact - This is the silliest one yet. Think about it a second - the animals native to Alaska... are freezing??? Wouldn’t they have moved or become extinct long ago if they needed more warmth? And oh, by the way, why would we be HEATING the oil to such a degree that it will make the outside of the pipes warm? Is there some reason we’d need to do that? Would we need portable heaters along the pipeline to keep it warm the entire length? If not, then why has no one ever proposed simply putting in heaters FOR THE CARIBOU?

The simple truth is that the wealthiest corporations in the history of civilization, who are already being subsidized with additional tax dollars paid by hard-working Americans, want more. The Republicans are just the people who will rob the bottom 99 percent to make it happen.

Bobby Jindal - Puppet, Heretic, Exorcist

Bobby Jindal is the Indian-American, 36-year-old governor of Louisiana and the only non-white Republican to hold high political office in the United States.

Some have thrown out his name as a possible vice-presidential running mate for John McCain. It won’t happen because, if for no other reason, the age difference would make John McCain look really old.

Jindal has been appointed to most of his positions by upper-echelon Republicans who taught him to obey, and he has throughout his career in Congress and, now, Governor. He has voted with George W. Bush more than 95 percent of the time and kissed up to every conservative politician who came into the state.

He was a Hindu until converting to Catholicism at 15. But it was revealed this week that he admitted to committing one of the most  egregious sins in the Catholic church when he took the role of a priest in performing an exorcism.

That’s right - he performed an exorcism - on a girlfriend he once knew. He wrote about it in a magazine article.

In the Catholic church, only an ordained priest can perform an exorcism, and, even then, it takes quite a high authority to appoint a priest to that function.

Obviously, Jindal thought rather highly of himself to appoint himself to this task.

He said it worked. He claimed the demon was cast out of the girl’s body.

Furthermore, Jindal said he also cured her of cancer!

It’s too bad he can’t use some of those magical powers to keep some his campaign promises about transparency in the Louisiana governor’s office regarding ethics.

Maybe the devil made him do it.

More McCain Blunders - Iraq (again), Iran (again), and New Orleans

Because I've been away for awhile, I haven't been able to keep up with all of the recent John McCain goofs. Still, the last seven days have shown us that even upon reflection the best McCain can do is compound the errors with more mistakes.

On his least knowledgeable topic, the Middle East, his seemingly unending streak of misstatements, foul-ups, and lies continued last week with his assertion that troop levels in Iraq were below what they were before the Republican escalation of the war in January 2007. WRONG!

In fact, troop levels are higher now. So he tried to “correct” that the next day by saying he meant they would be below pre-surge levels by July.

Again, that simply wasn’t true. The ending of already Republican-extended troop deployments will force levels to reduce somewhat this summer, but they will still be a full 10,000 troops above what they were before the January 2007 troop escalation.

The week began on Monday with McCain speaking to the conservative Jewish group, AIPAC, and bashed Barack Obama for proposing to speak with other countries before beginning to bomb them. McCain made his point by speaking about the divestment campaign against South Africa and how that lead to the end of apartheid. If only he were president, he would begin a divestment campaign against Iran as well.

That was all good, except for three BIG problems.

First, the Senate already proposed an Iran divestment bill last year. It was written by Barack Obama. Oops. In case you think it was a democrat version, it wasn't. In fact, the bill was co-sponsored by conservative republican Sam Brownback.

Second, John McCain voted AGAINST the bill he's now proposing. Double oops.

Third, he had also voted years ago against the divestment bill against South Africa, the very example he held up as a basis for pursuing one against Iran!!! WHAT A MORON!!!

McCain continued his sightseeing tour of forgotten truths this week when he was asked why he twice voted against independent investigations into governmental failings before and after Hurricane Katrina. McCain said, I’ve supported every investigation and ways of finding out what caused the tragedy." WRONG!

In 2005 and in 2006, Democrats proposed an independent commission to look into the problems regarding the handling of the worst natural disaster in American history. It would have been comprised of non-federal-government analysts appointed by both Democrats and Republicans.

McCain and his fellow Republicans killed both proposals.

Again, McCain tried to later “correct” his misstatement by saying he voted against the bills because they were filled with pork barrel projects that had “billions for projects and programs that had nothing to do with the recovery of the city of New Orleans.”

Once again, McCain’s attempt to explain away his earlier incorrect recollection was completely wrong. The bills would have provided $3 million for the projects, but had no allocations for anything else.

McCain’s Magical Misery Tour continues.

McCain's "plan" for Iraq - HA!!!!!!!!

John McCain said on April 7, 2008 - in between his humorously sad, consistent conflation of AlQaeda (Sunni) with Shiite Extremists in Iraq even after being corrected on camera by former Democrat Joe Lieberman - that we don't have to be in Iraq for 100 years or longer provided certain conditions are met.

Iraq merely has to secure U.S. interests by being a country that is:

1 - Stable;

2 - Prosperous;

3 - Democratic;

4 - Not a threat to its neighbors (exception - see number 8 below);

5 - A terrorism fighter;

6 - Happily entertaining international entities (i.e. allows foreign oil companies to remove Iraq's oil for no money whatsoever);

7 - Accepting of all religions; and

8 - Starts treating Iran like an enemy.

Gee, wouldn't it be nice if the United States could meet some of those criteria, too?

I'd especially like the USA to fulfill numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 because we're sorely lacking in each of those under our current Republican dictatorship.

100 years, McCain? Under those conditions we're going to be there closer to 1,000 years.

And there's certainly no better strategy for accomplishing those goals than by having your country controlled and occupied by a foreign military.

Think for a minute - do you suppose the USA would be more stable, prosperous, democratic, neighborly, terrorist-fighting, and increasingly tolerant of religions if, say, we were occupied by the armies from Japan (enemy in WWII) or China (enemy in Korea), countries who now hold most of our ever-increasing national debt?

Naaaaaaah, i didn't think so either. Otherwise, we probably wouldn't have spent so many lives fighting them before.

Of course, those were Democratic presidents who fought those wars so maybe our Republican emperor and his puppet yes-men have a different idea of what democracy and America stand for.

Nothing Unusual

There is nothing unusual about George W. Bush overriding the U.S. Constitution to increase power and control over money and life itself.

There is nothing unusual about George W. Bush protecting corporations over people.

There is nothing unusual about George W. Bush showing contempt and disrespect for the bottom 99 percent of the U.S. population.

There is nothing unusual about George W. Bush ignoring the rule of law.

There is nothing unusual about George W. Bush not caring about freedom and liberty.

There is nothing unusual about George W. Bush terrorizing his own country by promoting weakness, hatred, and fear of outside terrorism to accomplish the above. 

What is unusual is when all of the above statements come together in one act. It became clear this week when George W. Bush actually stated his intention to veto FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act designed to actually protect Americans against acts of terrorism, if Congress didn't also grant immunity for past criminal acts carried out by phone companies at the request of Bush.

Mind you, the FISA bill doesn't expire until August. So why is he throwing a tantrum about it now? Because the immunity for criminal behavior expired yesterday.

He's actually willing to create a greater threat of terrorism against the United States because he's not getting immunity for his business criminal buddies having broken the law at his command. He's doing it by telling (i.e. lying to) the American people by saying holding up immunity of these past criminal activities helps terrorists win, and. by golly, he'll actually help terrorists win just to prove it.

The Republican Congress made a big show of storming out of Congress (after the media had assembled their cameras, naturally) so they wouldn't have to do their job of checks and balances against their savior, George W. Bush. It also helped that they were scheduled to vote on contempt charges against John Bolton and Harriet Miers for ignoring Congress' orders to testify before them. Imagine - two reasons for Republicans in Congress to show their cowardice at one time.

And what was the law the corporate criminals broke the Republicans favor? They spied on American citizens, collected email, telephone, text messages, web activity, and every other bit of information they could find by peering into the private thoughts of Americans, recorded it, and refuse to destroy it or turn over this illegally-obtained information to anyone.

They stole our privacy and they don't want to give it back. But most of all, they don't want to be held responsible for their criminal activities - even it if kills us.

I can't believe this is what Americans wanted to vote for in 2000 and 2004.

Recent Abominations of the Radical Right

John McCain - Last November, John McCain sponsored an anti-torture bill that came up for vote this week in the Senate. McCain was tortured himself in Vietnam, and spoke out against torture until his meeting with Bush in 2003 when he emerged a Bush-loving neocon through and through. Still, in the interest of clarification, he pushed through this piece of legislation republicans widely opposed.

This week, John McCain voted AGAINST the exact bill he himself sponsored just a few short months ago. It's time to crown him the Pander Bear for not even having the courage to vote for his own bill because he wanted to prove that he, too, can be a pawn of the radical right.

Republican Gun Nuts - Six students at Northern Illinois died this week after a student off his medication for mental illness brought three guns - that despite his mental medical condition were legally purchased, owned, and registered - onto campus and opened fire on students. Here's a recap of recent similar incidents.

June 2000 - University of Washington, Seattle - Two dead.

August 2000 - University of Arkansas - Two dead.

May 2001 - University of Pacific Lutheran - Two dead.

January 2002 - Appalachian State School of Law - Three dead.

October 2002-  University of Arizona Nursing College at Tucson - Four dead.

May 2003 - Case Western Reserve University - One dead from a seven hour shooting.

September 2006 - Shepherd University shooting - Three dead, father and his two sons.

April 2007 - University of Washington, Seattle (again) - Two dead.

April 2007 - Virginia Tech University - 32 dead.

September 2007 - Delaware State University - One dead.

October 2007 - University of Memphis - One dead.

December 2007 - LSU - Two dead.

LAST WEEK - Louisiana Technical College at Baton Rouge - Three dead.

THIS WEEK - Northern Illinois - Six dead.

This doesn't even include the wounded or maimed for life. I'm only including colleges, not high schools or student shootings at malls.

Northern Illinois had a plan for this type of situation. It was implemented as well as it could have been, which means this was the best possible outcome under the circumstances.

So what was the radical right's response to this horrible tragedy?

THEY SAID THAT WE NEED TO GET MORE GUNS ON CAMPUSES. They said that if more guns were carried by more students, then that would solve the problem.

I can't believe this is what Americans wanted to vote for in 2000 and 2004.