Politics: In Memoriam

Teddy Kennedy, the Lion of the Senate, and youngest of the ill-fated Kennedy brothers who have contributed so much to make America a great nation, is dead.

To leave a message for his mourning family, you can go here.

Now that he is no longer with us, we must work harder than ever to pass the legislation that Senator Kennedy has fought for for so long. He wanted health care reform, and although we have lost his guiding hand, we cannot falter. We should reform health care, as we all know too well. In its own way, the legislation will be a fitting memorial to Senator Kennedy's memory.

Rest in peace, sir. Your lifetime of dedication to the causes of the common people will not be forgotten. Nor will your, and your family's, long tradition of service to the nation.

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2008 Elections: You Were Wrong!

Jed Lewison does his usual bang-up job of skewering John McCain using his own words, just as Barack Obama did during the debates. Jed, you are a treasure. Watch:



Ah, teh YouTube! It puts into the hands of teh Peeple the ability to point out what a lying sack of shit John McCain is. He's been wrong about so much for so long, electing him now would be like throwing a little gasoline on the fire that's burning the country down.

Think wisely. Choose carefully. Vote Obama/Biden.

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2008 Elections: Inspiration

Just watch:



These are not Likudnik hawks or AIPAC bots. These are real genuine living breathing Israelis and Jews from different parts of the world who see that Obama represents a genuine hope for peace in the Middle-East. Something all sane people desire. They know that a vote for McCain is a vote for more war, horror, dissension, turmoil, death. They know that Barack (Baruch, in Hebrew, which means Blessed) has the calm demeanor, the rational, cool, collected temperament, the ability to see the goal and work towards it in logical, reasoned, incremental steps.

Remember that when you go into the booth to cast your vote. The fate of your nation, and many other nations, rests in your hands.

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2008 Elections: Choose Wisely

Commenter sheasie asks a very important question:

You are The Boss... which team would you hire?

With America facing historic debt, multiple war fronts, stumbling health care, a weakened dollar, all-time high prison population, skyrocketing Federal spending, mortgage crises, bank foreclosures, etc. etc., this is an ***unusually critical*** election year.

Let's look at the educational background of your two options:

Obama:
Occidental College - Two years.
Columbia University - B.A. political science with a specialization in international relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

& Biden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in history and B.A. in political science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.


McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank 894 of 899

& Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in journalism

Now, which team are you going to "hire" ?

=====================================================

Choose wisely and well. We — the nation and the world — can't afford four more years of Bush policies and economic disaster.

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Politics: Rep. John Conyers Offers

A high-quality butt-kicking to that ambulatory slimeball KKKarl Rove.

Will it happen?

We here at this blog, your hosts at La Casa de Los Gatos, are so thrilled by this eventuality that we force ourselves to blog with an icepack on our repro bits as we swelter in the 100-degree temperature.

Dayumn, Rep. Conyers. May we offer you a pair of hobnailed boots? Or, better yet, spike-soled shoes? We could rub a little Scotch bonnet over the spikes first. In the interest of an unique experience, y'unnerstand.

Let's hope this causes the fetid little porker to squeal on everyone else in the chain of command at the Bush-Cheney Misadministration.

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Politics: No Excuse For Apathy

Photo credits Reuters

At the age of 89, Maimun Yusuf must be the oldest person ever to run for public office. Ms. Yusuf ran as an independent in the coastal state of Trengganu in peninsular Malaysia, and her determined stance has won her supporters to help with her campaign. Raw Story tells us:

Maimun Yusuf now has her own blog, and a page on the popular social networking website Facebook. Footage of her campaign has also been uploaded on the video sharing website Youtube.

Tok Mun, as she is affectionately known, attracted the support of members of Malaysia's diverse communities. Brian Ong, a former Yalie, helped her get online, while Gopi Munusamy and YK Sim have moved to Trengganu to help her get to the electorate. Before they started driving her around, Tok Mun was bicycling from village to village, appealing for votes.

"I am happy that these young men have come from far to help me. I hope that I will reach the young voters now that I'm online," said Maimun, who can hardly read or write.

Trengganu tends to be fairly conservative, and has unfortunately lined up with Kelantan behind the PAS, Parti Agama Islam se-Malaysia. While we don't like the retrograde mentality of the PAS, especially with regard to women's issues and religious orthodoxy, we do not think of the PAS as an "Islamist" party in the style of radical Islam so much as a bunch of ancient dodderers committed to their right to tell everybody else how to live their lives.

Tok Mun makes her living selling kain songket, traditional handwoven silk/cotton with gold brocade. It looks like this:


Traditionally, it is worn by both men and women, wrapped around the waist under a short fitted jacket.

Regrettably some PAS mental antique won the election instead. However, Tok Mun's candidacy impressed and touched so many that people have stepped up to pay her campaign debts. Check out her bilingual blog.

Tok Mun on her rusty old bicycle

If a nonagenarian can invest her life savings and schlep around dirt roads on her ancient rusty bicycle to make her country a better place, we have no excuse not to get involved.

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World: Poodle Clipped

Keresaspa tells it like it is

HAHAHAHAHA!!!! Sorry, people. After the most recent and really depressing post, we had to find something to take our mind off the tragedy, and Tony "T3h P00DL3" Blair obliged so obligingly, we gotta give him two thumbs up! (Up what, we refuse to say.)

The Guardian finds that much of Europe is violently opposed to the idea of Pretzelnitwit McChimpyDunce's favourite lapdog heading the EU. We couldn't agree more! In fact, we hope someone in the U.S. creates a web site much like the European Stop Blair site. That kneepadded lickspittle Tony Bleargh deserves to go down in infamy.

What's the matter, Tony? Your attempts at bringing your own IraqWarLike brand of peace to the Middle East showing the same kind of "success" the Iraq War did?

Glob-a-log Shows Us Tony's Work For MidEast Peace

That fat bank gig that Dimwit McPretzelChimp arranged for you run out of money? What?

We'd really like to know why that pathetic bastard of a war criminal needs another job. His bank job is a part-time advisory gig that pays over $1 million a year. Here's the Times' analysis of the son-of-a-swine's fiscal picture:


Meanwhile, the soldiers he threw into Iraq to suffer injuries and die have a very different financial picture. Here's an excerpt from the Times:

Iraq veteran Colonel Tim Collins discovered after leaving service that he was entitled to compensation for neck and ankle injuries sustained in a parachuting accident. It took him six months to arrange monthly payments of £114.

He said: "This Government mistreats soldiers and wants the cheapest Army it can get. Even the largest payments available to service personnel are barely a living wage.

As for his attempt to polish the stinking turd that is his legacy to the world, The Guardian says, in part:

A "Stop Blair" website run by pro-Europeans has launched a petition against him; a transnational, cross-party caucus in the European parliament is forming to campaign against a Blair presidency; senior officials in Brussels are privately dismissive about the new post going to a Briton; and senior diplomats in European capitals also doubt that Blair is the right person for the post being created under Europe's new reform treaty.

[...]

"But more generally the German political elite would be puzzled by the idea of Tony Blair. His track record on EU matters is not so great. There is unease about a Briton at the top in that job. And then personally with Blair, there's the Iraq thing."

Sources close to Merkel confirmed her opposition. "He made a lot of fine speeches about Europe but, essentially, stood on the sidelines when it came to concrete steps forward," they said.

HAHAHAHA!!! Oh, this is rich! The Europeans are, once again, proving that they actually pay attention to politics, unlike the morons that seem to form the bulk (yes, we do mean bulk) of the American voting public.

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Politics: MSMedia's "Inevitable" Candidate

Latest Update below.

Looks like Hillary Clinton is rapidly losing ground to Barack Obama. Is that good or bad? There's a lot about Clinton that we don't care for, but Obama is not our preferred choice either. This time, however, it seems as if Clinton is sinking due to issues that are not entirely her fault. Quite frankly, it seems as if she is not at all being judged on the issues.

What issues, you ask? Try these:

• She's a woman. If elected, she would be the first woman in America to achieve the rank of President. That is stirring up sentiment on all sides, some positive, some negative.
• Her run for the presidency, after four years of BushI, eight years of her husband, and eight years of BushII, is just too dynastic. If Chimpy McTwit had served only four years and someone else had been president in between, her chances would be a lot better. Right now, the people are disenchanted with their government, the power structure, the stealing of their votes, the dirty tricks of the past eight years. And, unfortunately, Clinton is associated with it because the "blame Clinton" mouthbreathers have been pounding that meme for over a decade.
• Her husband. Hillary Rodham Clinton would probably have made a better president than Bill Clinton, but she couldn't run for the office 16 years ago. She lacked the experience, and the climate wasn't right. She couldn't run instead of Bill 12 years ago - there was too much resentment of the Clintons. And she would never have won against Idiot McChimpface eight years ago. Now it seems as if the time will never be right for her to run. But things may change.
• Her centrist placement, at a time when two-thirds of the nation is almost desperate for a change. People are not responding well to her campaign's cautious, poll-driven focus, although at another time such a strategy might make sense.

Oh, well. Wisconsin's shift of support to Barack Obama should not be allowed to feed into the "everybody hates Hillary" meme. Lots of people don't. By anointing her early in the game, the mainstream media fed a lot of anger against her. Anger at the "inevitability" of the whole electoral process. Now that she's the underdog, sympathy might well move votes her way again.

Raw Story has posted the letter from the Wyoming Democratic Party chair explaining why the party is backing Barack Obama. A mitzvah for Barack.

Hey, how come all the koolaid-drinking mouthbreathers who endlessly harp on the lie that Barack is a Muslim never once mention the fact that he has the same name as the Israeli Defense Minister?

Update: One thing I've never liked about Clinton is her penchant for attacking fellow-Democrats. The Republicans have a lot going against them, but one thing that works in their favour, even if it's dangerously close to creating a lockstep mentality is, they save all their criticism for people outside the Republican party.

At any rate, apparently some Iowa Clinton campaign workers are walking off the job in disgust. Raw Story has the details.

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World: Benazir Bhutto Under House Arrest Again

Associated Press reports that Pervez Musharraf has placed Benazir Bhutto under house arrest again. Lovely.

Bhutto's aide, Sen. Safdar Abbasi, said the seven-day detention order was not binding because neither Bhutto nor one of her representatives had been served with the document.

"We will go ahead with the march," he told The Associated Press.

The U.S. and the U.K. have been meddling in Pakistan's internal politics, and the whole mess has now blown up in their faces. We don't endorse Musharraf or Bhutto, but Pakistan is a sovereign nation, with the right to determine her own path. Bush is an utter failure at foreign policy or, indeed, any policy matters. He simply doesn't have the experience or wisdom to formulate policy. His idea of policy is to bind his balls up and strut across the deck of an aircraft carrier. That's not policy. That's braggartism.

Needless to say, all the messes that Bush has created were quite foreseeable to many - no, any - people with a reasonable degree of education and an understanding of negotiation and interaction. You don't win arguments by threatening to beat people up. You win them by understanding that everybody involved in an interaction has to feel like they're winning something, whatever that something might be. If you try beating up everyone else, either they'll join together and beat the holy living shit out of you, or they'll resent you and keep looking for ways to get back at you. And no one wins those prolonged, endless battles.

Well, I guess now that Idiot Boy has fucked up in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia, and "Old Europe," it might be time to send him off to do what he does best - get drunk and clear brush. Impeachment, anyone?

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Politics: Things That Make You Furious

Update below By now, everybody in the world has probably read that Congressmember Fortney "Pete" Stark apologized to Teh Chimperor for telling the truth about that psychopath and his unwillingness to end his pet war.

I was going to get my underoos unbunched enough to actually blog the issue, but I had to calm down first, and maybe snoop around a little to see if someone else had an idea what-all was going on. And I'm glad I waited.

Over on DailyKos, wmtriallawyer diaries the issue thus:

According to the House website of proceedings for today, here's the chronology of what happened:

10:28 a.m.: The Censure resolution is introduced as a "privileged matter," which, within the pervue of the House rules, allows a member to introduce it without any formal procedure of going through the Rules Committee and such.

10:30 a.m.: Two minutes after it is introduced, Democratic floor manager for the day Rep. Bennie Thompson moves to table the resolution.

11:01 a.m.: A roll call vote is held. And the resolution is tabled from consideration by a vote of 196-173.

11:02 a.m.:Rep. Stark asks for a point of personal privilege to address the House chamber, and issues his apology.

Please read his post. It's educational. I say that because:

• The past 7 years of a Republican president has been sheer hell for the country. It's not an experience we ought to repeat anytime within the next couple of centuries.
• When Republicans held both houses of the Legislature, they rubberstamped an incompetent president and spent all their time accumulating future convictions. It's fine to have the occasional Chuck Hagel in Congress. It's definitely not OK to have more than one Tom Delay or Dennis Hastert or Duke Cunningham or Jerry Lewis or Lindsey Graham or Mark Foley or ... but you get my drift - per century.
• Republicans do control the media, thus determining what information we get and how it influences our actions.
• Republicans have shown themselves to be past masters of spin.
• Part of the Republican spin is to dispirit voters. If they can get us to think our votes don't count, then we don't vote, and they hold on to power. If they can get us to think, Democrats are just as bad as Republicans, then we don't vote Democrat, or, likely, vote at all. If they can convince us that Democrats are spineless wimps, then we don't want to work to make our vote count by finding less spineless Democrats and funding their races and making sure they represent the will of the people.

So be careful, and don't let the tricksters steal your votes before you can even cast them. California did a good thing in electing Democrat Debra Bowen as Secretary of State. She has undone much of the damage created by the past elections by getting rid of voting machines, returning to a system that includes a paper trail, and fining companies who attempt to subvert California voting rules. We need to do the same in every state, county, parish, municipality, and ultimately, throughout the country. And we won't accomplish that if all we're doing is getting dispirited with our (pretty useless) Democratic party leadership and giving up on them. Instead, let's hold their feet to the fire and call them on everything, make them work for our support, toss them out when they refuse to fulfil their appointed duty.

As to abusing Congressmember Pete Stark (I'll admit, I was furious for a bit), don't. Here's what Jane Hamsher over at Firedoglake had to say on the issue. Read her post. She lays out clearly the weakest links in the Democratic chain. Those are the people that we need to concentrate on removing if the nation is ever to heal. After we get rid of the Hasterts, Youngs, Cornyns, Grahams, and the rest of their ilk, of course. Crucial information from Jane's post:

Update: From reader Cynthia R.:

I called Stark’s office in DC to complain about his apology. The person answering the phone told me that Stark had no choice; Stark was told before the vote was taken that should he not apologize, the vote to censure would pass. According to his office, that is the only reason he apologized.

Nancy Pelosi and the Bush dog Democrats are still a bunch of gutless gobshites, but now we have to work to get rid of them and make sure the next candidates to lead the party have the guts of a Pete Stark or a Barbara Lee or a James Webb or a Jack Murtha. No more wimps!

Update: From Booman:

Though the motion amounts to a failed vote, Stark addressed fellow lawmakers afterward to apologize.

"I want to apologize first of all to my colleagues, many of whom I have offended, to the president. his family, to the troops that may have found (offense) in my remarks as were suggested in the motion that we just voted on, and I do apologize. ... With this apology I will become as insignificant as I should be and we can return to the issues that do divide us but that we can resolve," Stark said to applause.

After his mea culpa, Stark walked off the floor to the Democratic side of the chamber and for at least five minutes stood sobbing while fellow Democrats gathered around him. Reporters close to the Speaker's Lobby were not able to hear why he was crying.

Pete Stark is a good man. I don't doubt that some severe pressure was brought to bear on him, and that he finds it unacceptable that he must apologize for telling the truth while the crooks and liars and thugs all around him need never apologize for their crimes against the nation and against humanity.

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Politics: King Bhumipol Of Thailand

Apparently, His Majesty King Rama IX Bhumipol Adulyadej of Thailand recently suffered a stroke, for which he was hospitalized. His doctors report that he is doing better and nervous system irregularities that he had suffered have "returned to normal."

King Bhumipol is the longest-reigning monarch in the world. Our best wishes to His Majesty for continued health and long life. He has led his beautiful country and people through many trials and tribulations and made his nation strong.

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Politics - Faux News And The Drums of War

Yay, Bernie Sanders! Yay Robert Greenwald!


Finally, someone has the guts and the brains to take on Teh Mighty Wurlitzer - the Republican Party media machine that guarantees only certain voices and viewpoints are heard, the Fairly Unbalanced shrill conservatives who mindlessly echo this misadministration's talking points until ordinary citizens come to believe those voices in their heads are their own. From AP:

MONTPELIER, Vt. - Condemning the Fox News Channel as a warmonger that's agitating for a U.S. attack on Iran, documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald and independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders announced an "online viral video campaign" Wednesday calling on television news organizations "not to follow Fox down the road to war again."

Greenwald, the director behind "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism" and "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," has compiled a new three-minute video that mashes clips from Fox's coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath with recent coverage of possible U.S. military action against Iran.

The video and an accompanying "open letter" to ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC and CNN — viewable at http://www.FoxAttacks.com — urge news organizations to ask tough questions about administration policy on Iran and say citizens should pressure them to do so.

I don't suppose I need to add that the journalistic establishment, as represented by one Bob Steele, the Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values at the Poynter Institute school for journalists, is sniffily dismissive of the whole thing. So, so new media, y'know.

Personally, I'd rather hearken to the likes of Christiane Ahmanpour, who is quoted in the story and the clip, pointing out that the misadministration and its thugs at Faux News have worked to intimidate the press as much as they can. One of the reasons we no longer have a free press, in Teh Greatest Democracy In Teh World.

Quote from Sanders:

"We have got to put pressure on the mass media not to play the same craven role they played in Iraq, when they effectually collapsed and became a megaphone for Bush's policies," Sanders said. "What Robert is saying here is that the leader of that effort is Fox News, which in many ways is simply a propaganda machine for the Republican Party and the Bush administration."

He's only saying what those of us with a fucking grain of sense have known forever. Yay, Bernie! Long live the Free State of Vermont.

Vermonters, you now have official permission to look down your noses at the idiots in Connecticut and Maine, who elected feebs like Joe "BlowdaPrez" Lieberwhore and that Susan "KneepadsForBush" Collins.

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Goodness Will Prevail

Sometimes I read something that renews my hope ...

From today's Globe and Mail:

JOHANNESBURG — The official order of business Wednesday was the introduction of The Elders: convened at the request of Nelson Mandela, a collection of former leaders that has begun to work together to advance the causes of peace and global justice.

Five Nobel Laureates and a handful of other eminences gathered on the stage in Johannesburg as Mr. Mandela announced that they would seek to fulfill the traditional role of elders in a village, providing wisdom and leadership and attempting to resolve conflicts, taking on everything from climate change to the fighting in Darfur.

To read the whole story ... and it's worth it ...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com

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