Republican News Update

Republicans Gone Wild

Rudy Quote I Forgot
New York Firefighters have been in Florida, helping ensure Giuliani loses the race there once and for all. They particularly don't like his slimy use of the WTC attacks to promote himself and his decision-making 'competence'.

"He didn't prepare us before, during, or after," says Riches.

Giuliani has campaigned strongly on his leadership during the attacks on New York, claiming he is the best suited to prevent an "Islamic terrorist war against us." But the firefighters were quick to question that courage.

"Yeah, the decision he made was, which direction he was going to run," says Riches. "And he ran north, and that's all he did."

Ouch.

Source: Raw Story

Fuckabee
So Mike Huckabee wants to amend the Constitution to conform with the Bible.

Darn. I really like my blended fabrics too!

If that sounds too extreme and aggressive to describe the smiling Huck -- who introduced himself to the country as "a conservative, but I'm not angry about it" -- then consider how he explained his urge to revamp the nation's founding document. At a public forum on the eve of the Michigan primary, while mocking Republican opponents who don't want to append a "marriage amendment" or a "life amendment" to the Constitution, he said: "I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards."

Go ahead, try it Mike. See how far you get. There'll be another Civil War before you can get that amendment passed, I guarantee it.

Source: Salon.com

Despicable Semi-Human Monsters
I'm as sick of Heath Ledger news as the next person whose bloodflow reaches his brain, but this is just too horrible to pass up.

Opening his radio show with funeral music yesterday, Fox News host John Gibson callously mocked the death of actor Heath Ledger, calling him a “weirdo” with a “serious drug problem.”

Playing an audio clip of the iconic quote, “I wish I knew how to quit you” from Ledger’s gay romance movie Brokeback Mountain, Gibson disdainfully quipped, “Well, he found out how to quit you.” Laughing, Gibson then played another clip from Brokeback Mountain in which Ledger said, “We’re dead,” followed by his own, mocking “We’re dead” before playing the clip again.

...

Throughout the course of the show, Gibson continued to bring up Ledger’s death while discussing current events, jokingly claiming that current events may have caused him to commit suicide.

Of course, Gibson has tried to backpedal on his various obscene commentaries and hoping this will all blow over, as it surely will, what with being employed by Fox Noise and all.

On his Fox News show today, John Gibson apologized for his recent comments mocking the death of actor Heath Ledger. “I’m sorry that some took my comments as anti-gay and insensitive,” said Gibson. “Once again, to anyone offended by my comments, I’m sorry.”

...

UPDATE: Gibson said the same apology on his radio show this evening, though before mentioning that his comments were “anti-gay and insensitive,” he added the words “some gay groups.”

Oh yeah, it's just teh gay who are upset at him being a colossal prick.

Right.

Source: Think Progress (Initial Story)
Think Progress (Update/Apology/Update)

McCain Is Scum
So McCain thinks that getting out of Iraq is 'surrender' and handing a victory to Al-Queda... who weren't in Iraq before we got there.

Senator John McCain launched into a pointed critique of his Senate colleague Hillary Rodham Clinton today, saying that “for the first time in political history” a presidential candidate has called for outright surrender in a war.

“Candidate Clinton has called for surrender and waving the white flag,” he said during an appearance in West Palm Beach. “I think it’s terrible. I think it’s terrible.”

...

“I look forward to the debate with Senator Clinton on that issue. Americans don’t want to throw away the hard-earned gains we have made against Al Qaeda and Iraq. If Senator Clinton has her way, Al Qaeda will trumpet to the world that they have beaten the United States.”

Name one, asshole. Name ONE gain.

Go on. I'm waiting. One way in which we're better off now than before the war.

No, Halliburton stock prices don't count.

Clinton responds of course:

Phil Singer, a spokesman for Senator Clinton, emailed this response: “Senator Clinton and Senator McCain disagree. Senator McCain says it would be fine with him if our troops were in Iraq for 100 years. Senator Clinton wants to end the war and will bring our troops home quickly and responsibly. That’s the best way to defend our nation and protect our national security interests.”

He literally did say something like that at one point, that we could be in Iraq for a century, that it'd be like Korea, etc.

He's a complete loon.

Source: NyTimes Blog

Hunger in America and Right Wing Idiots
So Megan McArdle, right wing commentator and brainless moron, thinks that the 'stimulus' package designed to delay the recession a few weeks shouldn't include any food assistance for poor people because, and I'm not making this up, they're all fat to begin with and therefore should be eating less.

Why not food stamps?

1) The poor don't need more food. Obesity is a problem for the poor in America; except for people who are too screwed up to get food stamps (because they don't have an address), food insufficiency is not.

Needless to say, the facts are against her, and Tbogg takes her apart like a cheap toy.

Food insecurity also has been linked to overweight and obesity, particularly among women (Townsend MS et al. J Nutr. 2001;131[6]:1738-1745; Wilde PE and Peterman JN. J Nutr. 2006;136[5]:1395-1400). This apparent paradox may be explained by the fact that high-calorie, processed foods often are less expensive than fresh, perishable foods such as fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products.

"One of the first food groups that's cut out of an impoverished person's diet is produce," explained David H. Holben, PhD, RD, of the School of Human and Consumer Sciences, at Ohio University, in Athens. "Generally speaking, they often choose high-fat, high-sugar, low-cost foods that taste good," he added. Re searchers have found that marketing can also influence consumers, who are bombarded with advertising for unhealthful food and receive inadequate nutritional information, especially in restaurants (Hayne CL et al. J Public Health Policy. 2004;25[3-4]:391-407)

Go see the whole thing, it'll make you want to retch.

Source: Tbogg

Bush's Favorite Painting
So it turns out the fake cowboy President has a favorite cowboy painting that he finds inspirational.

George W. Bush is famous for his attachment to a painting which he acquired after becoming a “born again Christian.” It’s by W.H.D. Koerner and is entitled “A Charge to Keep.” Bush was so taken by it, that he took the painting’s name for his own official autobiography. And here’s what he says about it:

I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us...

So in Bush’s view (or perhaps I should say, faith) the key figure, with whom he personally identifies, is a missionary spreading the word of the Methodist Christianity in the American West in the late nineteenth century.

It turns out, not so much on the inspirational part.

[Jacob Weisberg]... gives us the full story in his forthcoming book on Bush, The Bush Tragedy:

...["A Charge To Keep"] is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist... executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.”

So Bush’s inspiring, prosyletizing Methodist is in fact a silver-tongued horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob.

Oops. This is what we get from the famed intellectual Bush, of course. It's not like he actually has to know about anything, anything at all, even things that are supposedly of deep personal significance.

Keep in mind: this thing hangs in the Oval Office.

Source: Firedoglake

Repugnant National Convention 2004
So during the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004, the city police brutally abused protestors and the citizenry, effectively cordoning off a wealthy area of town for the hillbilly rich, so they could parade around in Humvees and cowboy boots while voting for GW.

They threw protestors in makeshift prisons fashioned out of old parking garages filled with toxic waste, and so on, and so forth.

The ACLU has been fighting to get this exposed for years, and those efforts are starting to pay off, with the City being told that, no, it can't make SECRET ARGUMENTS that the ACLU is not allowed to see to prove that it was all saintly and innocent of wrongdoing.

The city must disclose its arguments about why documents on police surveillance of protesters before the 2004 Republican National Convention should be kept confidential, a judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV in Manhattan said the court won't consider a sealed affidavit by David Cohen, the New York Police Department's commissioner for intelligence.

Secret courts, secret trials, secret prisons, secret arguments... this is a country gone completely mad.

Source: Raw Story