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

Mega Republican Post

More Antics from the Right

Or is it Reich? Either way.

Republican Ex-Rep Turns Terror Lobbyist?
For what it's worth, the Feds are accusing another Islamic charity of being a front for terror groups to launder money. A lot of these accusations are petty hand-wringing -- if you donate money to the legally elected government of, say, Palestine, then you're aiding terrorists, because that happens to be Hamas; similarly, if you give money to the only competent government, and legal participant in the Lebanese parliament, Hezbollah, you're supporting terrorists.

On the other hand, if you give Israel money to buy a giant caterpillar bulldozer that they use to run innocent people over as they demolish Palestinian housing, why, that's charity.

*rolls eyes*
At any rate, this case sounds like it might have a bit more meat, since the money was supposedly being laundered to Iraq through Jordan, not to one of those legitimate governments I mentioned before, as well as to some religious nut in Pakistan. This sounds more credible.

The really interesting bit though is that they hired as a lobbyist, to try and get themselves off the terror list, and hence their assets unfrozen, a former Republican congressman.... and paid him with stolen money meant to aid needy people in the third world as well.

Siljander founded the Washington-area consulting group Global Strategies Inc. after leaving the government.

The indictment says Siljander was hired by IARA in March 2004 to lobby the Senate Finance Committee in an effort to remove the charity from the panel's list of suspected terror fundraisers.

For his work, IARA paid Siljander with money that was part of U.S. government funding awarded to the charity years earlier for relief work it promised to perform in Africa, the indictment says. Under the grant agreement, IARA was supposed to return any unused funds after the relief project was wrapped up in 1999.

Instead, Siljander and three IARA officers agreed to cover up the money's origins and use it on the lobbying effort, the indictment charges.

Oops. Needless to say, the right wing media is going to work very studiously at looking the other way at this (former?) Republican's current legal situation. Ignoring Republican legal problems is a very well honed skill for them by this point.

Source: Raw Story

Count 9/11 Strikes Again
Rudy Giuliani has just released an ad claiming that he, and he alone, didn't wet himself in fear when the WTC went down in flames.

Rudy Giuliani's new ad, running in the West Palm Beach area, uses actual video footage from 9/11 to promote Rudy's candidacy -- and includes this surprising line about the terror attacks:

"When the world wavered, and history hesitated, Rudy never did."

I'll say he didn't; he was too busy plotting how to ghoulishly profit from the carnage and death he was complicit in causing through his ineptitude and focus on banging his mistress rather than building a functional emergency command system for the city.

It takes a lot of work to be this big a sleaze.

Source: TPM Election Central

South Carolina Primary Again Ugly for McCain
In 2000, a group tied to Bush ran a push-poll in South Carolina suggesting McCain had an illegitimate black child, in order to derail his campaign (which worked beautifully, FYI). This time around, someone is distributing flyers accusing him of being a collaborator with his North Vietnamese captors in the Vietnam War

This is ugly even by South Carolina standards: John McCain is being targeted by a nasty flyer that lampoons McCain's POW captivity in Vietnam. The flyer, which was sent to local newspaper editors, depicts a manacled McCain in a cell with the phrase "POW for President," and "elect me" scrawled on the walls, suggesting that McCain is trying to ride his POW status into the White House.

The mailer also accuses McCain of collaborating with his captors and betraying his fellow POWs.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the South is not really part of America. They have never earned the privilege they forfeited in the Civil War.

Source: TPM Election Central

White Power Huckster Hour
So it turns out that Huckabee gave a speech to one of the most infamous White Supremacist groups in the South (and that's really saying something):

Making coded appeals to white racism is nothing new for Huckabee. Indeed, well before he was a nationally known political star, Huckabee nurtured a relationship with America's largest white supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens. The extent of Huckabee's interaction with the racist group is unclear, but this much is known: he accepted an invitation to speak at the group's annual conference in 1993 and ultimately delivered a videotaped address that was "extremely well received by the audience."

Descended from the White Citizens Councils that battled integration in the Jim Crow South, including at Arkansas' Little Rock High School, the Council (or CofCC) has been designated a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In its "Statement of Principles," the CofCC declares, "We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called "affirmative action" and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races."

Charming, I know.

Cooking squirrels is one thing, but I guess living in the same dorm with a darkie would have been too much, eh, Huckabee?

Source: Raw Story

Ron Paul Speaks at Bob Jones U
This should help further cement his white power street cred -- a speaking gig at pro-segregation, anti-miscegenation Bob Jones U!

Why Paul, who said just a month ago that fascism will come to this country wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross, and who is still mired in a major controversy with his newsletters containing racist garbage he claims he didn't write, would make a stop at a fundamentalist madrasah that didn't open its doors to students of all races until 1975, and banned interracial dating and marriage all the way through 2000 (after George W. Bush appeared there), is beyond comprehension.

Well, that's an easy mystery to solve: he's a race-baiting hypocrite, and the more attention he gets, the more moolah he rakes in. Duh.

Interestingly, Bob Jones won't be publicly endorsing him, because the university leadership already has another horse in the race:

Ken Herman at the Austin American-Statesman writes that he got an earlier press release from the Paul camp that said, curiously, "It should also subtly be conveyed that Dr. Ron Paul will be the only Presidential Candidate to speak at Bob Jones University (although this fact does not translate into an endorsement in any way, shape, or form)." That's probably so because Bob Jones U.'s president previously endorsed Mitt Romney, who (despite what the Paul release says) had already made a stop at the college.

The choice of Romney is odd as well, since BJU has a history of hostility towards Mormons. A former BJU president said in 2000 that Mormonism, along with Catholicism, are "cults which call themselves Christian."

So really, the hypocrisy more than goes around, on the Republican side of the aisle.

Source: Jazz From Hell

Great History of Jonah Goldberg
So Jonah, aka Doughy Pantload, makes the specious argument that the real racists, evildoers, even FASCISTS in America come from the left side of the aisle, especially those eeevil progressives. Republicans/Conservatives are free of all sin, and in fact have always been racially neutral, believing in the purity of the market-based meritocracy.

Jonah writes, if you can call it that, for the National Review, an infamous right-wing screed. Sadly, No! has called him out on being part of a magazine with such a colorful racist history while he lambasts progressive historical figures for not being as PC as he might like:

Okay, so Jonah, a contributing editor of National Review, fer chrissakes, is throwing an accusation of racism against progressives and the left. That doesn’t just take the cake, it takes the fucking cake platter, the table under the cake platter, the whole fucking dining room, the house too, and the block on which the house is located, and the city, state, nation, planet, galaxy and universe. At its inception, the whole point of the National Review, the magazine that pays for Jonah’s triple bacon cheeseburgers, was the virulent racism of William F. Buckley and his cohorts, all of whom spilled truckloads of ink over the virtues of segregation.

If you don’t believe me, let’s take on instructive trip down memory lane and read stuff that was printed in the National Review in its halcyon days. Here’s what NR had to say about the Birmingham church bombings after they occurred:

Let us gently say the fiend who set off the bomb does not have the sympathy of the white population in the South; in fact, he set back the cause of the white people there so dramatically as to raise the question whether in fact the explosion was the act of a provocateur — of a Communist, or of a crazed Negro.

And let it be said that the convulsions that go on, and are bound to continue, have resulted from revolutionary assaults on the status quo, and a contempt for the law, which are traceable to the Supreme Court’s manifest contempt for the settled traditions of Constitutional practice. Certainly it now appears that Birmingham’s Negroes will never be content so long as the white population is free to be free.

It only goes downhill from there. Way, way downhill.

Source: Sadly, No!

CIA Agrees with Bush Ally on Bhutto Death
Big surprise, the CIA has come down on the side of Musharraf, despite copious evidence of his indifference to, if not active compliance in, Benazir Bhutto's death... including her disturbing letter from beyond the grave laying blame at his feet for cutting her security detail.

Of course, the CIA has now dedicated itself to the quest to find the 'real killers'. And who do they blame? Why, Al-Queda, of course!

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The CIA believes extremists associated with a Pakistani tribal leader are responsible for the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, according to a U.S. intelligence official.

The official, who spoke under condition of anonymity, said the agency concluded that Baitullah Mehsud -- the leader of the Pakistani Taliban who has ties to al Qaeda -- was behind the attack.

This is really starting to get sad. Al-Queda might as well be blamed for making kids wet the bed, ice cream melt too fast, and apple pies to burn if left in the oven too long. At this point, we're just a few screens shy of having the Two Minutes Hate.

Source: CNN.com

FEMA FEMA FEMA Chameleon...
So after gutting FEMA and merging it with the equally useless Department of Homeland Security, Bush has been forced to restore most of its power by angry state governments.

About time.

After years of aggressive lobbying by unhappy state governments, the administration chose to restore FEMA's power to coordinate federal disaster operations. That power was undermined in the administration's previous plan -- used just once, after Katrina -- when the secretary of homeland security appointed his own officer to oversee disaster response.

Under the new plan, the head of FEMA will appoint the top coordinating officer, clarifying responsibility and, according to the states, ending confusion that caused critical delays. Congress ordered that change to the plan last year.

Ahh, it's nice to get an early start on fixing the gaping holes in government that the Republicans created. Still so much to do, though.

Source: The Washington Post

Pure As the Driven Snow
I know technically General Tommy Franks supposedly isn't considered a big time Republican (despite endorsing GW Bush in 2004), but he went along with the Rumsfeldian/Neoconservative plan to conquer the World/liberate Iraq eagerly enough, despite it being a fool's errand from any sane person's perspective.

Turns out his opportunism doesn't end there.

"Retired U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, was paid $100,000 to endorse a veterans charity that watchdog groups say is ripping off donors and wounded veterans by using only a small portion of the money raised for veterans services, according to testimony in Congress today," ABC News reports.

The article continues, "Gen. Franks' involvement was revealed as members of Congress questioned Roger Chapin, who operates Help Hospitalized Veterans and the Coalition to Salute America's Heroes Foundation, charities that congressional investigators say spend only 25 percent of the money they raise on projects for wounded veterans."

"General Franks was paid $100,000 to lend his name. We understand he developed misgivings and asked that his name be taken off," Congressman Henry Waxman, D- Calif. said.

Of course, it's easy to develop misgivings when the check's been cashed and the donor in question is under Congressional investigation.

Source: Raw Story
Wikipedia on Tommy Franks

The Infamy of Republican Rule
We're here at last; where even our most stalwart allies are forced to admit that yes, under El Presidente, the United States is a nation of torturers.

OTTAWA, Jan 17 (Reuters) - An official Canadian government document has put both the United States and Israel on a watch list of countries where prisoners run the risk of being tortured, CTV television reported on Thursday.

The revelation is likely to embarrass the minority Conservative government, which is a staunch U.S. ally.

The document mentions the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where a Canadian man is being held.

CTV said the document was part of a course on torture awareness given to Canadian diplomats to help them determine whether prisoners they visited abroad had been mistreated.

It said the document mentioned U.S. interrogation techniques such as "forced nudity, isolation, and sleep deprivation."

God Bless America.

Source: Reuters

(Adding, I like the headline category -- latestCrisis. It seems like we bounce from one to the next and back again under this administration, does it not?)

Ghouliani

Not too much to say here. An official member of Giuliani's campaign has come out in favor of genocide, and said that his boss would be the best man to lead the war against Muslims. All Muslims.

"[Rudy's] got I believe the knowledge and the judgement to attack one of the most difficult problems in current history and that is the rise of the Muslims, and make no mistake about it, this hasn't happened for a thousand years. These people are very dedicated and they're also very very smart in their own way. We need to keep the feet to the fire and keep pressing these people until we defeat or chase them back to their caves or in other words get rid of them."

Just in case someone thought he was misquoted, he elaborates in a second interview.

Greg Sargent just interviewed the guy. He is John Deady, the co-chair of Veterans for Rudy in New Hampshire, and he is not backing off his original comments, telling Greg: "I don't subscribe to the principle that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims. They're all Muslims."

So there you have it. Giuliani's in bed with some real psychopaths.

Let's see him try to spin this one. Assuming that the mainstream media, as usual, doesn't just completely drop the ball.

Source: The Daily Kos