ATTACK DEAD PEOPLE YOU USELESS FUCKS

AMERICAblog

A lead religious right “research” group has concluded that Dr. Sally Ride’s pancreatic cancer may be due to her being a lesbian.  They deduced this from looking at the obituaries of lesbians in San Francisco papers.  Seriously.
Dr. Ride was the first US woman astronaut. She recently died of pancreatic cancer.
The attack comes from a well-known hate group, the Family Research Institute, that’s been promoted by all the lead groups of the religious right, including the Family Research Council, the American Family Association and the Concerned Women for America.

Mark Rutte, the coddling Prime Minister

Mark Rutte is a wimp. As in the Republican Party in the United States, the Netherlands has its racists and bigots in political leadership positions, too.

From DutchNews.nl

Prime minister Mark Rutte has refused to comment on a website set up by the anti-immigration PVV to record complaints about central and eastern Europeans in the Netherlands, the Telegraaf reports on Friday.

Asked to react to the initiative during a Thursday evening debate on the European Union, Rutte said it is not up to him to comment on positions taken by individual political parties.

New poll up today at DutchNews.nl: "Should the prime minister distance himself from the PVV's anti-Pole website?"

‎"Distance himself..."?? Well, isn't that just nice and dandy. Rutte should denounce Wilders' and the PVV's bigotry from the rooftops of the Binnenhof and the Knight's Hall and not take these people seriously (no decent person would). He should have done it a long time ago. And the media (including DutchNews.nl) should not coddle these idiots, either, but they won't because they are enablers, too.

Max Blumenthal interview: 'GOP conducts Islamophobia campaign'

It's with Press TV's Autograph. An excerpt:

There was a shift in the Republican Party in 1964 under Barry Goldwater when Southern Democrats who had opposed civil rights moved into the Republican Party when then President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil rights Act allowing African Americans to have voting rights etc.

There is really no leadership in the country right now that is capable of putting this hatred back in the box; instead what you have are a bunch of Republican presidential hopefuls who really have no chance of defeating Obama competing with one another for who can be the most extreme - because the far right controls the party.

Today, Newt Gingrich who is the former House majority leader; who has had three wives and who cheated on his second wife with a congressional staffer and then left his second wife while she was recovering from cancer, he's going to the church of Pastor John Hagee, the foremost leader of Christian Zionism in the US.
Hagee believes the end of the world could come any day and that Islam is the religion of Satan and that if Jews fail to convert to Christianity they will burn in an everlasting lake of fire. Yet he is also a great supporter of Israel and hailed by Netanyahu as a friend to the Jewish people. Now, Newt Gingrich is making a pilgrimage to his church.

So this just shows how extreme the party has become; how it's gone from the big tent of Eisenhower to a one-ringed circus of Palin and Gingrich.

Max Blumenthal is one of my favourite journalists. You can read more of his writing on his website.

Texas Textbooks Decison

You can read the blow-by-blow of what happened yesterday in The Texas Observer.

But Steve Benen in the Washington Monthly says it best:-

At its core, this is not just a travesty for academic integrity and students in Texas, but it's also a reminder of what's gone horribly wrong with the twisted right-wing worldview. These state officials have decided they simply don't care for reality, so they've replaced it with a version of events that makes them feel better. The result is an American history in which every era has been distorted to satisfy the far-right ego.

Tricky Dick's Dream Come True

Weird, huh? The Dems pass a Republican health care bill and the GOP hates it. Only in America....here's Taylor Marsh in HuffPost:

'When you have Speaker Pelosi's office inviting only the boys, so called "progressives" who are insider Democrats whose only goal it is to prop up the presidency instead of focusing on strong policy, the current health care bill is what you get. Even when you go beyond the issue that Democrats willingly eroded women's rights, the fact that ... See moreDemocrats didn't even try to push for a public option reveals the fundamental failure of Democrats, because they ignored what the majority of the American people want.'

It just shows how far to the right the Democrats have gone. And the wimpshit "progressives" lost their soul to ObamaCorp and didn't have the cajones to stick up for the people!

'From throwing the American people into a system without any choice, providing private insurance companies with new customers, to using women's rights to get it done while progressive Democrats enabled it to happen, what Democrats have done is produce a Republican health care bill that Richard Nixon would have loved.'

Humourous Link of the Day

This ain't satire, these guys are serious (or seriously idiotic). Of course, the Democratic Party doesn't even come close to being socialist or Democratic Socialist.

From The Real News Network: The Republican National Committee to re-brand the Democratic Party as the "Dem Socialist Party"

Tossing a Snowe Ball

Jane Hamsher in FDL

Olympia Snowe in the New York Times:

Regrettably, we failed to learn the lessons of Jim Jeffords’s defection in 2001. To the contrary, we overreached in interpreting the results of the presidential election of 2004 as a mandate for the party. This resulted in the disastrous elections of 2006 and 2008, which combined for a total loss of 51 Republicans in the House and 13 in the Senate — with a corresponding shift of the Congressional majority and the White House to the Democrats.

Shorter Olympia Snowe: the Republican Party has now boiled down to a hard crust of extremist freaks, and now that they've run Lincoln Chaffee and Arlen Specter out of the party, they'll be coming after me.

He's now Arlen Specter (D-PA)

Raw Story:
http://rawstory.com/08/blog/2009/04/28/specter-switching-parties-dems-will-gain-filibuster-proof-senate/#tab=home&url=home.php

Actually, it don't amount to a hill of Philadelphia Scrapple. He'll vote as a Blue Dog conservative.

A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: 2008 IS JUST THE BEGINNING

THE TRAIL OF BROKEN PROMISES

MATT GONZALEZ, Ralph Nader's vice presidential running mate writes

On the street when I am approached by an Obama/Biden volunteer or someone who tells me they’re voting for Obama, I usually ask “What about the FISA vote?” And each time I hear in return “What’s that?” Or if I say, “You know he supports the death penalty,” I usually hear in response, “No he doesn’t.”

At what point will there be intellectual honesty about what is
happening? People are voting for Obama because they find him to be an engaging public speaker and like his message regardless of his history of being part of the very problem he professes to want to fix. Most people don’t want the actual facts to interfere with the desperate hope that he is everything they want him to be.

Do you really want to vote for someone who has already voted to take away your civil liberties because of some vague wish that he’ll act differently as president? Obama himself, speaking of Sen. Hillary Clinton, made a remark that could just as easily apply to him, and, unwittingly makes the case for why no one should vote for him: “We can’t afford a president whose positions change with the politics of the moment. We need a president who knows that being ready on day one means getting it right from day one.” (Salem, OR, 3/21/08).

If voting for war appropriations and taking away civil liberties was bringing us closer to a more democratic and egalitarian society, well, I would advocate it. But it isn’t doing that.

What is your breaking point? At what point do you decide that you’ve had enough?

What do they have to do to lose your vote?

THE GOVERNOR'S ETHICS VIOLATION

A formal complaint has been filed. GREEN MOUNTAIN DAILY has the whole nine yards.

OBAMA BRAND DEMOCRACY

Money marries influence.

TACTICAL POLITICS AS PANDERING

Robert Weitzel has a post up in Counterpunch on why he'll vote for Ralph Nader. But I saw this bit --

In 1933, the Glass-Steagall Act was intended to prevent the kind of banking shenanigans that have helped to plunge the world into worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. But legislation written by Republicans Phil Gramm and James Leach and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999.

It's Gramm's bill that has helped get us into the mess we're in. Then I realised that's the same James Leach who very publicly endorsed Obama and spoke on his behalf at the Democratic National Convention. Just this past weekend lying warmonger Colin Powell said he'll vote for Obama. And today's story has neo-con Rumsfeld subordinate Kenneth Adelman's endorsement. So much for being endorsed by the "right people." I think stinks.

'THIS BILL DOES NOTHING FOR THE ADDIE POLKS OF THE WORLD.'

UPI

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- The plight of an Ohio woman who shot herself as deputies tried evict her from her foreclosed home was part of congressional debate on the $700 billion bailout.

Addie Polk, 90, was being treated at Akron General Medical Center after shooting herself Wednesday as deputies were at her door with eviction papers, U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said Friday during floor debate on the rescue plan for U.S. financial markets. Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) foreclosed Polk's home after acquiring the mortgage in 2007.

Kucinich used Polk's circumstances as he spoke against the rescue plan that eventually passed the U.S. House of Representatives 263-171.

"This bill does nothing for the Addie Polks of the world," Kucinich said. "This bill fails to address the fact that millions of homeowners who are facing foreclosure."

The bill, which passed the Senate Wednesday, "will take care of Wall Street," Kucinich said, "but democracy is going down here."

Robert Dillion, a neighbor, climbed a ladder to enter a second-story window in Polk's home after he and the deputies heard the noise from inside, CNN reported.

In 2004, Polk took out a 30-year mortgage for $45,620 with a Countrywide Home Loan office in Ohio, CNN said. Polk had missed payments on her home during the next few years. In 2007 the Federal National Mortgage Association (OTCPK:FDRNP), or Fannie Mae, assumed the mortgage and later filed for foreclosure.

THE GUARDIAN
The bailout is not going to work.

OPEN THE DEBATES II

INTERVIEW ON DEMOCRACY NOW! with George Farah, Exec Dir & Founder of OPEN DEBATES:

No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates

The Obama and McCain campaigns jointly negotiated a detailed secret contract dictating the terms of all the 2008 debates. This includes who gets to participate, as well as the topics raised during the debates.

Q: WHAT DO OBAMA AND MCCAIN HAVE IN COMMON?

A: The same big donors, who will expect to have their way no matter who wins.