Shared Values!

Via Crooks and Liars, we have a clip of our fave talking head Stephen Colbert mourning the political demise of the lovely and talented Ralph Reed, as he has his ass handed to him by the values voters of Georgia.

Alaska's Super-Voters!

One story about voting 'discrepancies' is the fascinating tale of the Alaska Super-Voters. Perhaps due to the bracing weather, the mighty voters of our northern-most state cast their votes so powerfully that the voter turnout in 16 of 40 house districts came out to more that 200%! Now, that's what I call enthusiasm. Say what you will about disaffected voters and low turnout - not in Alaska!

BradBlog, the go-to guys for all thing vote-a-licious, reports that the sore losers of Alaska's State Democratic Party, instead of being encouraged by the engagement of Alaskans in the political process, want to look at the election data from the (surprise!) Diebold machines and the state has 'flip-flopped' on whether they would release it or not. This resulted in claims by the state that any data they released would be proprietary and would belong to Diebold Elections Systems Inc. (DESI).

The above led the state Democratic party to file a lawsuit to get the data they have been requesting.

The following is from an email from Rich McClear of KUDO1080, the Air America Radio affiliate in Anchorage, Alaska:

The State of Alaska website shows 16 of 40 house districts with more than 200% voter turnout, Also, if you add up the vote totals from each district they come to more than 100,000 votes for state wide candidates than the summary reports show.

More than 7 months ago the Democrats asked for an explanation. The state said it could not release the data files because they were proprietary to Diebold.

Diebold gave the state permission to release the files.

The state still refused. The Democrats went to court, the state asked for extension after extension. Their final extension expired Thursday and they replied to the Court, in a 200 page document, that since it is a month from the primary election, they can't release the database without compromising the primary. There is not enough time to rebuild the central tabulator file if they release the data before the election.

The Democrats have to respond to the court Monday. To respond to a 200 page document would usually require the Democrats to ask for an extension but they are working throughout the weekend to get the filing in Monday. Right now I have the Democratic Spokesperson scheduled for my show Monday Morning.

The State stalled for 7 months and when they ran out the legal clock they claim it is too late to release the information because it is too close to the primary. I find it interesting that this has not been picked up by the local press yet, save KUDO.

What I want to know is, why the hell is there a 'proprietary format' for data from a public election? Why is there private software for public data? Why is public voting, the cornerstone of our democracy, privatized? And to an obviously partisan company? This is the single most important issue on the table. This issue controls everything else in our country! Our votes are what supposedly put this gang of thugs in office! We have to be able to trust our voting system. We have to be able to check the results.

What just blows me away is that we allow this to happen. I have a knot in my stomach just thinking about November.

Reap What You Sow

Well, well, well. Isn't it a pity that the Kowboy Koward of Krawford has decimated our relationships with every country in the world, to the point that we can't even speak to them directly? And that the useless and toothless UN and Kofi Annan must be appealed to? Apparently that smooth, suave, silver-tongued master of diplomacy John Bolton hasn't been able to woo other nations with his matchless charm! How shocking is that?

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

Good morning! It's time for church, and no one does Sunday morning quite like Old White Lady from "It's Morning Somewhere". This morning's offerings from Landover Baptist Church (if you aren't a member, you might ask yourself just how Christian are you, anyway?) are some handy 'Dating Tips for Christian Men'. Fellas, read here and you'll be on your way to meeting the devout doormat of your dreams! And gals - even though it's 'just for men', that doesn't mean you can't peruse it to get some pointers on how to recognize your future 'lord and master' when he comes a-callin'!

Also thanks to OWL, this oh-so-timely homage to Blastocyst-Americans from Jesus' General! The comment thread is as good as the post.

Sister Nancy Beth Eczema from Edicts of Nancy leads us to a Modern-Day Beatitude. Praise Him!

More Thoughts On Madness

Follow the logic here, friends.

Bush sez:

1. He's not making it illegal, he just doesn't want the government to pay for it.

2. In his view, it's murder.

Which leads one to conclude that, although it's murder, he's not for making it illegal.

Is it murder or not? Is murder legal or not?

But, since government won't be paying for the research, who will be doing the research? Why, our good friends in the private sector!

So, any progress in the research will, as usual, go to benefit those who can afford it.

And, believe me, to anyone who thinks that every AIDS patient gets the kind of medication that Magic Johnson gets - I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. There is medicine for Joe Average, and then there is medicine for the über-wealthy. And that's how they plan to keep it, folks.

I Always Wondered...

Need a laugh today? I sure did. Please go and visit my friend Star's most excellent blog The Enigmatic Paradox (say that 5 times quickly!) and check out the video link on this post.

Star says this proves he's not a drunk. I myself don't think you can rule it out.

The Madness of King George

We are beyond Hooterville now. We have rocketed right into the Twilight Zone.

George W. Bush, the only president to advocate the killing of people who have done nothing to us - the author of the "Doctrine of Pre-emption', which says, "If I don't like you, I can bomb the sh** out of you, whether you attack me or not!", has decided to use his veto (instead of using 'signing statements' to exempt himself from adhering to the law) for the first and only time in the 6 years that he's been in office - to ban stem cell research!

This is beyond crazy.

This blood-soaked killing machine, who thinks nothing of bombing innocent men, women and children in a country that he doesn't like - people who are, may I say, already living, breathing, fully-formed humans - is suddenly the Sovereign of the Snowflakes, almost Buddhist-like in his respect for all living organisms. All creatures great and small, yada, yada, yada.

In the most hypocritical administration in the history of the United States, this has to take the cake. It is, though, consistent with the policies of these heinous criminals - raise a great righteous hue and cry over complete non-issues, such as protecting the flag (burn some cloth, go to jail), protecting the Pledge of Allegiance (a bill on the floor to advocate for keeping the phrase 'under god' in the pledge of allegiance--a phrase that is already there!) gay marriage (which poses no danger to heterosexual marriage whatsoever) or keeping brain-dead people on life support (which was the only issue ever important enough for Dubya to leave a vacation for - not Katrina, not the threat of a terrorist attack).

In this bogus concern for the 'sanctity of life' and the protection of the smallest group of cells, he doesn't seem to be so very informed about the facts. One fact is that women lose between 60 to 80% of their naturally-conceived embryos during their menstrual cycle. In an article for Reason (a magazine advocating "free minds and free markets", not a liberal rag) , Ronald Bailey points out that

This is not miscarriage we're talking about. The women and their husbands or partners never even know that conception has taken place; the embryos disappear from their wombs in their menstrual flows. In fact, according to John Opitz, a professor of pediatrics, human genetics, and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Utah, embryologists estimate that the rate of natural loss for embryos that have developed for seven days or more is 60 percent. The total rate of natural loss of human embryos increases to at least 80 percent if one counts from the moment of conception. About half of the embryos lost are abnormal, but half are not, and had they implanted they would probably have developed into healthy babies.

So millions of viable human embryos each year produced via normal conception fail to implant and never develop further. Does this mean America is suffering a veritable holocaust of innocent human life annihilated? Consider the claim made by right-to-life apologists like Robert George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, that every embryo is "already a human being." Does that mean that if we could detect such unimplanted embryos as they leave the womb, we would have a duty to rescue them and try to implant them anyway?

"If the embryo loss that accompanies natural procreation were the moral equivalent of infant death, then pregnancy would have to be regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions: Alleviating natural embryo loss would be a more urgent moral cause than abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem-cell research combined," declared Michael Sandel, a Harvard University government professor, also a member of the President's Council on Bioethics.

As far as I know, bioconservatives like Robert George do not advocate the rescue of naturally conceived unimplanted embryos. But why not? In right-to-life terms, normal unimplanted embryos are the moral equivalents of a 30-year-old mother of three children.

Of course, culturally we do not mourn the deaths of these millions of embryos as we would the death of a child—and reasonably so, because we do in fact know that these embryos are not people. Try this thought experiment. A fire breaks out in a fertility clinic and you have a choice: You can save a three-year-old child or a Petri dish containing 10 seven-day old embryos. Which do you choose to rescue?

Stepping onto dangerous theological ground, it seems that if human embryos consisting of one hundred cells or less are the moral equivalents of a normal adult, then religious believers must accept that such embryos share all of the attributes of a human being, including the possession of an immortal soul. So even if we generously exclude all of the naturally conceived abnormal embryos—presuming, for the sake of theological argument, that imperfections in their gene expression have somehow blocked the installation of a soul—that would still mean that perhaps 40 percent of all the residents of Heaven were never born, never developed brains, and never had thoughts, emotions, experiences, hopes, dreams, or desires.

Yet millions of intelligent people of good will maintain that seven-day-old embryos have the exact same moral standing as do readers of this column. Acting on this sincere belief, they are trying to block biomedical research on human embryonic stem cells that is desired by millions of their fellow citizens.

Okay. How long is this insanity going to be debated with a straight face? How long are these bizarre contradictions in logic going to be treated as if they were rational arguments?

The only thing I can conclude from this is that the only 'life' the Kowboy Koward of Krawford is really interested in is life without a functioning brain.

Newspeak

Aw geez. This is just unbelievable. Frank Luntz, the master speech manipulator, lays it out. Here it is, in black and white:

(if you click on the image it's easier to read)

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

He could have saved himself the ink and paper, and just written one word: "Lie".

Orwell was a piker when compared with Frank Luntz.

Read the whole thing here.

Liberal Cartoons

As you know, I've been doing my liberal cartoons for a while now. Special thanks go out to Comments From Left Field who have been kind enough to feature them on their excellent site, along with fab comic-meister Zencomix. Dhonig at Hypnocrites has a blog devoted to his sharp-as-a-pointed-stick brand of cartoons, and has been looking, as I have, for a way to get them out and about.

So, I have decided (cuz I'm the Decider) to start a cartoon link on the sidebar. I invite you to chack out these fine liberal flamethrowers, and if you have or know of a cartoon blog you would like to see featured here, please comment or e-mail me, and I will put it on the sidebar. Drawn, Photoshopped, or a combination - whatever. Lord knows, sometimes the only way to combat the horror is through laughter. I know it's saved my bacon many times. If you can laugh, the bastards haven't beat you, and we live to fight another day.

I have transferred all the "Capitol Punishment" cartoons to a new blog of their own, and you are invited to stop by and take a look.

Let the hilarity ensue!

Birthday Prediction

My dad sent me this in my birthday card. It is a cutout from a newspaper that my grandmother put in her 'birthday book' the day I was born. A native of Massachusetts, she passed away last year at the age of 93, having been alive for both times that the Red Sox won the World Series.

All I can say is - doo-doo-doo-doo (cue Twilight Zone music...)

Mo' Money, Mo' Money, Mo' Money!

GAAAAAAH!

Yes, Karl Rove got a raise.

He and all his co-'assistants to the President' received a nice little $4,200 cost-of-liv ing raise, bringing their salaries up to $165,200.

This from the party who is against a minimum wage, much less a living wage.

I recently received some comment along the likes of "If liberals say $9 an hour minimum wage is 'compassionate', then $100 an hour is extra-super-duper compassionate'" or some such nonsense. This 'logic' is supposed to point out the stupidity of having a minimum wage. Pay is supposed to be driven by the market, regardless of whether a person can survive on that pay for a full-time work week. Tough beans. Suck it up. Work harder, you lazy scum.

But, let's see here...employees on the lower end of the compensation scale - 'gift analysts', trip coordinators, staff assistants and the like - who make around $30,000, did not receive raises. Perhaps their cost of living did not go up like Karl's did.

Wait just a sec - did I hear 'cost-of-living'? You mean, getting more money not because you're doing more work, but because things cost more?

Wow. That smacks of tax-and-spend liberalism to me.

Check out the figures here.

La La La - We're Not Listening...

One question I have been asking myself incessantly is "why aren't people acknowledging what is so very obvious?" When the voter fraud is so blatant and endemic, why are people unwilling to even talk about it?

I watched Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", and something he said at the beginning of the film flipped the light switch on for me. I'm paraphrasing (he said it much better) but in essence, he said that if people were to admit that global warming was indeed a real issue, then they would be morally bound to do something about it.

This is where we're at, I think. There is so much that is so wrong in our government, and if we were to really admit, really acknowledge the truth, then we would have to take action.

The idea of having to make such a major change is terrifying. Because if we do acknowledge that there was massive voter fraud in the 2000 and 2004 elections, we would have to dismantle the government. So we can't (even people of good faith and conscience) admit even the idea, the whisper, the whiff of voter fraud. No one is prepared to deal with the complete upheaval that would be required. And do you think these thugs would roll over and say, "Yeah, you're right! We'll be going now..." No, I don't think so either.

So, the alternative is to cling to the fiction. Better to relegate it (and everything else being done so brazenly, so audaciously by these criminals) to the Konspiracy Korner. Because no one is ready to deal with what would have to happen if it were admitted to be true - or, worse, if we tried to take our country back and found that we could not.

We're All Conspiracy Nutbags Now!

The first time I remember hearing the phrase 'conspiracy theory' was in grade school about Sirhan Sirhan. I didn't understand it, and I wasn't particularly interested. I've always thought of myself as rational, reasonable, not given to wild speculation. But, I find myself in the rather embarrasing position of being a full-fledged conspiracy - if not nut, then at least fellow-traveler.

It still stuns me that people can actually say the words 'pre-emptive strike' like it's perfectly reasonable! My god, if anyone would have told you in 2000 what we'd be doing in 2006, wouldn't you have thought they were crazy?

If, listening to and reading the baying media beagles relentlessly hounding Bill Clinton and his distasteful-yet-perfectly-legal affair, you were told that in 2006 the MSM would be frightened little mice afraid to make a peep about a president's wrongdoing, no matter how egregious, for fear of being accused of treason, wouldn't you have shook your head, rolled your eyes and spoken pityingly of tin-foil hats?

And now we're talking about spying on Americans before 9/11 (a fat lot of good that did in preventing a terrorist attack!) and 'foiling terrorist plots' that aren't even plots? Yes, we must arrest them for merely wanting to be terrorists! You only have to stretch a tiny bit further to get into Thought Police Land. Or, maybe it's already here. They look like they could want to be terrorists!

All the 9/11 stuff, all the PNAC stuff, all the vote-stealing stuff, the New World Order, The Carlyle Group. Skull and Bones - count me in! I believe! Anoint me, initiate me into the secret societies! Teach me the arcana and the special handshake! Nothing sounds far-fetched to me any more. The wackier and more improbable it is, the more I'm willing to consider it. Art Bell, forgive me for ever doubting you!

What crazy place are we in and how the hell can we get out?

BFF?

I'm Sorry, But This Is Too Good To Pass Up...

Found this on a page with some other very funny pix.

New Feature - Tar Baby!

Yes, lots of people have passed on during his time in office - like 2700 American soldiers...he just doesn't care who dies, does he? 'Kenny Boy' probably died of a broken heart from the way Dubya threw him under the bus.

(hat tip to Catherine at Povertybarn)

Fasting For the Troops - Code Pink

I'm not going to make a big deal of it here, but you can go to the site and find out more for yourself. I'm doing this as a personal meditation. Also, don't forget about the Kommandos! I'll be deploying some Hooterville Hellcats today.

I'm live-blogging my fast on my diary at My Left Wing.

Update: I made it for 24 hours, which was my goal.