Obscanity: You'll know it when you see it

For an old guy, McCain sure has a short memory – did he really call segregation the worst chapter in American history?

Um… has he forgotten SLAVERY?

I am on a few conservative newsletter lists – you know, just to keep an eye on those who would spread lies and try to brainwash people in the right wing. I got an email from Human Events today that made me snort. Here’s the line that really got me:

“We will not stand for the stealing of elections — the tainting of our democracy — by those who wish to subvert the rule of law.”

OH REALLY? A particular Supreme Court decision comes to mind that indicates otherwise.

No, seriously? The conservatives – INVENTORS of voter disenfranchisement – are concerned that the Democrats are going to “steal” this election?

Seriously?

Let’s review here: ACORN, a relatively small blip on the radar of this election, is required BY LAW to submit every voter registration that it receives, regardless of whether it personally feels that a form is suspect. None of these registrations will actually be PROCESSED if they cannot be confirmed. Nobody is going to accidentally send Mickey Mouse a sample ballot. I promise.

Compare this alleged “voter fraud” (which is actually not voter fraud, but rather, registration fraud – and not on the part of ACORN) to voter registration in Nevada in the last Bush election, when it was discovered that the Republicans had held a voter drive and then destroyed and thrown away Democratic voter registrations so that those voters would turn up on election day and be unable to cast a ballot.

Compare it to the 2000 Florida election, when thousands of Floridians were prohibited from voting because their names were “similar” to the names of felons and former felons, or people whose voting rights had been restored, or who had only been convicted of misdemeanors, which does not eliminate the right to vote.

How about the police roadblocks that kept black Floridians from voting in that same election?

How about the Diebold CEO that promised to “deliver” Ohio to Bush in 2004? Those machines, you know, the ones with no paper trail, which studies have shown are easily hacked, and which can be programmed to ignore votes cast for certain candidates?

How about THIS election, where Republicans are looking at every possible option to prevent people from voting, including lying to students about their voting eligibility based on their parents’ tax returns, and seeking to block any person whose house is in the process of foreclosure by claiming that they no longer have an eligible address from which to register (even if they still LIVE there)???

Seriously? The Republicans are going to start talking about voter fraud and election-theft? The Republicans, who fare better when fewer people are allowed to vote?

Absolutely. Let’s talk about it.

Kennedy Townsend: ACORN Smear is Effort to Cover Up Massive GOP Push to Undermine 2008 Elections Through Coast-to-Coast Vote Suppression – MarketWatch.

A must-read – you wouldn’t believe what the Republicans are doing to try to keep people from voting in this election!

AWESOME. Send to everybody you know. There is SO MUCH MORE we could be worried about right now. I saw that one couple sacrificed all their vacations for the next couple of years so they could donate $35,000 to the Yes on 8 campaign. Holy crap. Do you know how many LIVES you could have saved with that money? And you wasted it on Prop 8? It’s like being granted a wish, any wish in the world, and wasting it on designer jeans or a cute purebred puppy. If you want to make sacrifices for the greater good, make it mean something. Like our Yom Kippur prayer book said, “Always look after your own soul and another’s body, not another’s soul and your own body.”

YouTube – No on 8 PSA: NO vs YES

Joe. My. God.: Yes On 8 Worker Attacked.

Wow. I have never read such a blatantly biased article about something that may or may not have happened like they said it happened. They’ve been killing us, beating us, and torturing us for YEARS, and encouraging violence against us, but god forbid one of them gets a black eye and a couple of stitches, and suddenly they’re brutally beaten, “seriously injured,” and are turned into martyrs for the cause? Let’s ask Matthew Shepard how badly he thinks Jose was injured. Maybe we could see what Lawrence King thinks of Jose’s black eye. Let’s ask Sakia Gunn if she thinks Jose’s injury is serious.

Oh wait, we can’t – because they’re DEAD.

Then again, it’s entirely possible this “assault” was staged in order to garner negative publicity for the No on 8 campaign. At this point I wouldn’t put anything past the Yes on 8 bigots.

The REALLY funny thing is that this guy is a “native of Mexico” who “just” became a citizen 2 months ago. Hm. Weren’t you people (Yes-on-8ers) the same ones voting to deny public services to “natives of Mexico” only a few years ago? Aren’t you the same people who rail on Mexicans, whether or not they are citizens? Aren’t you the ones who try to fight any Spanish-language education in our schools for fear that Spanish will replace English as the national language? And yet suddenly you’re willing to use them as poster children for your cause?

What. The. Fuck. Seriously?

Your dreams (and nightmares) about Sarah Palin. – By Abby Callard and David Plotz – Slate Magazine.

So I guess I’m not the only one having Palin nightmares – although in mine she brings about the apocalypse and seems to enjoy doing it…

U.S. ready to debut plan – Oct. 13, 2008.

Do you ever wonder if this isn’t just the greatest heist of all time? Do you wake up in the middle of the night sometimes wondering how much of that $700 billion of our money is going to wind up in the offshore bank accounts of the top .05% of America’s wealthiest Republican puppeteers? Do you ever wonder if King Georgie is going to help himself to a share of it before he heads out of office? How many of Wall Street’s CEOs are REALLY not going to see massive financial perks from this bailout?

How much of this money is going to bail out the economy, and how much of it is going to leak out of the economy into the wealthiest Americans’ personal vaults?

I have no answers – only lots and LOTS of questions.

Bush: ‘Lot of work to do’ before leaving office – CNN.com.

Please, Mr. Bush, we can’t afford any more of your “work.” Try not to destroy the world any more in the last few months, okay? Just give it a rest. You deserve a rest – you’ve already done such a bang-up job… just leave well enough alone and don’t break anything else? Please? FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS SACRED AND HOLY?

So it looks like it’s not enough to call Obama by his first name – radical wingnuts have started calling him “Barack Hussein Mohammad Obama.” I am not sure if they are just trying to make some kind of “subtle” point, or if they really believe that his middle name is Hussein Mohammad. Either way, they’re delusional. The name “Mohammad” appears nowhere in Obama’s name, and the only reason “Hussein” is in there is that he was named after his father, Barack Hussein Obama.

By the way, let’s look at that name, Hussein. What is so wrong with that name, other than the mere coincidence of it being connected to Saddam Hussein? There are plenty of patriotic Americans who have names like Hussein, Hasan, Huseyn, etc. Are you going to point fingers and say that every single person in this country whose last name is McVeigh is a domestic terrorist, or that every person named Adolph, Adolf, Adolfo, or any similar derivative might as well just come out as a Nazi right now? Perhaps the opposite is true and every person named Moses is a prophet, and everybody named Albert is a genius.

By the way, might I remind people that King Hussein of Jordan was a friend of Yitzhak Rabin (he even spoke at his funeral), and was one of the first leaders of an Arab nation to actually make peace with Israel? If we have to call Barack Hussein Obama by his full name, who is to say the inference people make shouldn’t be that he is somehow connected to THAT Hussein instead of the more unfortunate comparison to the Iraqi dictator?

Words are tricky things, “my friends,” but they’re not opaque. If you’re going to start trying to use word tricks to turn people’s opinions, be prepared for people to see right through them.

With friends like Sarah Palin, who needs enemies?! I would rather see somebody supporting Israel by trying to further peace in the Middle East, rather than supporting Israel blindly in the hopes that the resulting wars will bring about the End of Days just a little bit sooner, or because as long as Israel holds out, there’s still a chance all the Jews will move there and either accept Jesus or die.

I don’t want this woman anywhere near the international peace process – or the proverbial “red button.” Religion is a personal matter, but not when her religious motivations will guide her every move in office. A religious politician – EVERY politician, really – has to have some level of humility; as we’ve seen from the past 8 years, when an official believes he has God’s mandate to rule and has been placed there to do God’s work and have God speak through him… well… I think we know how well that goes.

Does Sarah Palin Have a Pentecostal Problem? – TIME:

And finally, a videotape surfaced of a 2005 service at the Wasilla Assembly of God Church, the Pentecostal church that Palin attended for most of her life. In the scene captured on video, Palin stands at the front of the sanctuary while a visiting African pastor prays that God will help her gubernatorial campaign and protect her “from every form of witchcraft.” Later in the same service, the pastor complains that “Israelites” held too many prominent positions in business, a comment that has further alienated Jewish voters.

Sarah Palin And The Anti-Semitism Question – The Jed Report:

Yesterday, Ben Smith posted a remarkable story about Sarah Palin’s attendance at an anti-Semitic sermon delivered at her church just two weeks ago.

The sermon, given by the executive director of Jews for Jesus, blamed Jewish victims of terrorism for the attacks which claimed their lives. If Jews had just converted to Christianity, he said, they would have lived.

This is crazy, paranoid stuff, and it is far beyond anything Jeremiah Wright ever said, yet we went through six weeks of nonstop scrutiny over his politically extreme statements.

Sarah Palin and the Jewish community | Op-Ed Contributors | Jerusalem Post:

FINALLY, THERE is the matter of two anti-Israel politicians – Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan. In February Palin in an interview lavished praise on Ron Paul. There is also a controversy over whether Palin has supported former presidential aspirant Pat Buchanan. To be fair there is no evidence that Palin shares either of these Republicans’ anti-Israel creed. However, since the beginning of the GOP narrative within the Jewish community is that Obama can not be trusted because of a handful of people who have endorsed him. If this guilt by association standard is one the McCain stands by, then they also need to deal with Palin’s past support for anti-Israel politicians.

Sarah Palin’s Jewish Problem – Michael Fox – Open Salon:

In his talk at Wasilla on August 17, 2008, with Palin in the audience, Brickner described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God's "judgment of unbelief" on Jews who have not converted to Christianity.
…
At the conclusion of Brickner's sermon, the congregation contributed money for Jews for Jesus' mission of converting
the Jews and and prayed that Jews would come to accept Jesus.
…
John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate has already cost him the vote of at least one prominent Jewish politician — former New York City Mayor Ed Koch.

Koch, who endorsed George W. Bush in 2004, said that McCain’s choice of Palin has led him to endorse Barack Obama.

“She’s scary,” Koch said.

Let me say it one more time: I do not believe John McCain is being sincere when he tries to “calm down” his supporters by telling them they don’t have to “fear” Obama. If McCain really wanted to tone down the rhetoric and stop the fear-mongering, he would tell his vice-maniac (and I really do think she’s gone maniacal at this point) to back the hell off. Is he telling her to tone it down? Nope. Instead, he’s letting her run around saying whatever she wants, and getting the crowds all riled up, and then he gets to come out with a little wink and pretend to be the good guy, being all, “now now, let’s not get crazy or anything… here, have some more Palin Kool Aid!”

Seriously. John McCain, if you really want to tone down the hate-mongering and vile rhetoric, then tell Sarah Palin to shut her freakin’ trap and stop trying to paint Obama as a radical Arab Islamist terrorist baby-killer, and stop letting Palin encourage and incite vile mob behavior in her audiences, who have been known to shout racial epithets and death threats.

In light of all the money pouring in from the Mormon Church to help pass Prop 8 (I just had a deja vu moment and almost wrote Prop 22), it is nice to see that there are at least some in the LDS Church who understand what the marriage equality movement is about.

Well, that is just skeezy. One of the ads that comes up in my Google ad feed reads, “Support Marriage Rights / Get Involved in Discussions on Gay Marriage. Learn More Today.” You click on it, and it takes you to a YES on Prop 8 page! What the fuck? Prop 8 protects no marriages; if it passes, marriages will be destroyed, and thousands of future marriages will be barred. I don’t see how this protects anybody’s marriage rights, or protects anybody’s children, as the website loudly proclaims.

It does take away my marriage rights, though. This is not a political issue – it is about people’s lives. Real people. When you vote, think about the fact that there are actual, real people facing real and tangible harm if this proposition passes. And yes – those real people include the thousands of children being raised by same-gender couples in California. Marriage discrimination hurts them, too. If we really believe children are better off when their parents are married, shouldn’t we seek to encourage this healthy environment by letting their parents get married?

Rage rising on the McCain campaign trail – CNN.com.

I have to wonder if this isn’t all a ploy by the McCain campaign to get these hateful messages out to the public while still making McCain look like the good guy for defending him. After all, McCain’s people are the ones who have been spreading all these lies about Obama in the first place – why should we believe they are attempting to combat them with any ounce of sincerity?

Panel: Palin abused power in trooper case – CNN.com.

OH, LOOK. More of the same. BIG surprise.

Why is it that when a Democrat is found to have violated some sort of law or ethics code, other Democrats criticize the bad behavior and the person who acted wrongly, but when a Republican is found to have acted similarly, Republicans call “partisan attack” and try to turn it around on the people who are identifying the wrongful act? They also do this with reporting – if somebody reports something on something terrible, like, say, prisons set up across Europe for the purpose of torture, or fabricated CIA “intelligence,” Republicans want to ignore the story itself and just kill the messenger.

Do Republicans just believe they truly can do no wrong, and any allegation of wrongdoing MUST be false? Seriously? Just how much hubris can we take from these people?

Something to keep in mind in the coming election. Why haven’t we been given any information about McCain’s mental health? Why were only a few select reporters overloaded with thousands of pages of medical records and only given a short amount of time to look at them, with no permission to copy or record them? What is McCain hiding? And who will run his presidency when he becomes too senile to do it himself? My guess? Palin.

By the way, I had a dream last night. It was terrible – Sarah Palin somehow was in charge of the world and had literally brought on the apocalypse. It was awful – I’m talking burned out buildings, brown and grey sky, vast wasteland, hardly any people left. Scary stuff.

The Supreme Court of Connecticut has become… yet another high court to rule that marriage discrimination against same-gender couples is unconstitutional. This makes Connecticut the third state to allow same-gender marriage. I would say it was the third court to make this ruling, but I think people underestimate the number of state supreme courts that have ruled against marriage discrimination. For the record, they are: Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York (for out-of-state marriages), California, Connecticut. Other states, like Alaska and Hawaii, have seen court decisions become void because the states were allowed to pass DOMA amendments, which are entirely unconstitutional but have yet to be successfully challenged.

The reason DOMA is unconstitutional is that it violates the original constitution itself – not even an amendment – by flying in the face of the Full Faith and Credit clause, which directs that states give full faith and credit to other states’ public acts, records, and judicial proceedings. Marriage, and later divorce, has been established as a public act/record and if you get married in any state, you are married in all states – and if you get divorced in any state, you are divorced in all states. For states to recognize some out of state marriages and not others violates the 14th Amendment. If states want to recognize out of state marriages, they cannot pick and choose which marriages they will recognize. Let them stop recognizing ALL out of state marriages, divorces, and adoptions – let’s see how well that works! Let’s see how well that protects families!

Interesting quote:

State Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, a Republican of Fairfield, issued a statement today saying: “While I believe these decisions are better left to elected representatives, it is ultimately the province of the State Supreme Court to interpret our constitution. The Court carried out that responsibility today and ruled that the institution of marriage in Connecticut must include same-sex couples. Whether people agree or disagree, we all need to respect the Court’s decision and abide by the ruling.” (Read more)

Now, why is it that they recognize this in Connecticut, but not in California?

If CA’s Proposition 8 passes, it will amend the CA constitution to define marriage as only existing between a man and a woman, and will overturn the historic CA Supreme Court decision that recognized the unconstitutionality of marriage discrimination.

Even if you don’t live in California, I hope you will consider contributing a small amount to the No on Prop 8 campaign. The people supporting Prop 8 have had money pouring in all over the country lately because everybody knows that whichever way this proposition goes, it will have long-term ramifications for the rest of the country. Their commercials are running NONSTOP around California, and they are full of lies and fear-mongering – and they are working, as recent polls show.

The proponents of Prop 8 are scaring people into believing that churches will lose their tax-exempt status if they refuse to perform same-sex marriages (NOT TRUE), and they are claiming that school children will now be forced to learn about Prince Charming marrying a prince – also not true! The claims they are making are outrageous lies – but they are desperate at this point. They’ve even claimed that Christians will be put in jail if same-sex marriage is legal! Many people are looking for any excuse possible to justify voting yes on 8 – please help EQCA fight these lies so there are no excuses left!

Please, if you care about marriage equality, please consider making a small donation – every dollar helps fight this horrible amendment!

A really great article / Obama endorsement – from Esquire, of all places.

After all, as a young man with his potential, he could have headed straight to midtown Manhattan and made a fortune. Instead, he took a church job working for poor people in Chicago, and for his troubles, he and those poor people have been viciously jeered by the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin. Such is their regard for the common good. And such is Obama's promise. And in that, however inchoately and however diffidently, Obama stands not only against Bushism, but against Reaganism, which gave it birth. And that is more than enough. (Read more)

Meanwhile… read what women have to say about Sarah Palin… this could change but when I visited the page, the vast majority of the comments were from intelligent women who felt Sarah Palin’s nomination is both ridiculous and insulting. Good reads.

Oh. My. Gosh. Everybody in America needs to take eleven minutes out of their crazy schedules and watch this commentary about Sarah Palin. Every last bit of it is pure truth, and scary as all hell. I’m only sorry it’s on MSNBC and not on network television, where more people could see it.

If you’re even THINKING about voting for a ticket with Sarah Palin on it, you need to see this video. He has her so spot on – he’s raised so many questions that have been floating out there about her – for example, if Obama has been “pallin’ around” with terrorists (i.e. former anti-Vietnam war radicals who have reformed themselves and now work toward improving Chicago’s school system), then what does Palin have to say about her affiliation with the Alaskan Independence Party, founded by a man who by his own admission hates America? Who literally said he hates America and refuses to be buried under her flag? And what of her relationship with the pastor who “laid hands” on her and cast away any forms of witchcraft which might be getting in her way of becoming governor? (and who, I might add, threw in some lines in there about letting Palin bring the nation to god…) You’ll have to watch this video to find out his sordid past – which the people in the Wasilla church thought was just fab, by george!

A great article from the LA Times:

Still, just because gay marriage is nothing new for the general public doesn’t mean kids necessarily understand the complete concept. But that doesn’t have as much to do with homosexuality as it does with the fact that some young people can’t tell the difference between getting married and going on a really long date. So maybe marriage class should be mandatory — with an emphasis not on gay or straight but, rather, “wait!” (As in, “until you’re older.”) (Read more)

‘Bride’ and ‘groom’ being restored to California marriage forms – San Jose Mercury News.

Wow, I’m sure all those people out there who were worried about losing the right to heterosexual marriage will be so relieved that they don’t have to vote yes on Prop 8 anymore!

Seriously, though. There were a lot of people who were put off by the Party A and Party B forms, so hopefully this will assuage their concerns.

Palin aside, if this doesn’t scare the hell out of you, I don’t know what will:

“McCain is a social conservative, and he’s given every indication that his appointees would be conservative, especially since that’s the traditional way to repay the Republican base for helping elect you,” said Michael Dorf, a professor at Cornell Law School and a former clerk for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. “Obama’s whole message, meanwhile, is about uniting people and listening to the other side. And he is close to a number of core centrist Democratic thinkers about the court, so it’s likely that he would pick people who are fairly centrist.” (Read more)

Bailout Provides More Mental Health Coverage – NYTimes.com:

WASHINGTON — More than one-third of all Americans will soon receive better insurance coverage for mental health treatments because of a new law that, for the first time, requires equal coverage of mental and physical illnesses. (Read more)

I understand now why Sarah Palin doesn’t seem to be concerned about her lack of knowledge, preparedness, or qualifications for the office of the Vice Presidency. She thinks she’s got God on her side. She thinks this is her chance to “turn the nation around” and bring them to the lord. If this woman becomes president, you can kiss your First Amendment rights goodbye – she’ll appoint somebody like the guy in this video to interpret the Constitution, and you can be damned sure he’ll find Jesus there.

And by the way… what Average Joe Sixpack goes to a witch-doctor/exorcist before taking public office? This is worse then Ashcroft saying he anointed himself with Crisco.