Define Conservatives vs. Liberals

Steven Hart, of The Opinion Mill, has come up with a fitting tribute to Christine Todd Whitman's post-9/11 legacy, by naming respiratory problems attributed to the air she assured our fellow American's was safe:

The Opinion Mill

So, I propose that those respiratory problems stemming from exposure to the air near Ground Zero be called "Whitman lung," in honor of the good moderate Republican soldier who helped let them happen. And every time a rescue worker coughs up bits of bloody gravel, we'll call that a Republican thank-you. After all, the Republicans love to pay tribute to America's heroes.

56,000 Divorces the Army during Bush's wars? I bet the marriage rate is down as well. What will the American Family Association have to say about this astounding statistic? I bet it's something like, "While war can cause a considerable strain on military families, at least 'the gays' haven't been able to destroy the sanctity of marriage."

Army Teaches Troops How to Pick a Spouse

Defense Department records show more than 56,000 in the Army — active, National Guard and Reserve — have divorced since the campaign in
Afghanistan started in 2001.

Officials partly blame long and repeated deployments which started after the invasion of
Iraq in 2003 and stretched the service thin.

Apparently, John Hinderaker doesn't think changing a spying policy from FISA approved (aka Law of the Land) to a non-FISA compliant warrantless domestic spying program warrants approval from congress.

Can one imagine what Hinderaker's reaction to a Democratic President's similar abuse of power would be?

Hoekstra's letter does nothing to solve the problems created by Bush's abuse of power. In fact, shooting the messanger is just a desparate attempt to protect the president, the vice president, and the attorney general from criticism.

Power Line: Blowing the Whistle on the CRS

Blowing the Whistle on the CRS

We wrote about the partisan, low-quality work being done by the Congressional Research Service on intelligence issues here and here. Now the Republicans in Washington have finally begun calling the CRS to account. Today, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, wrote to CRS Director Daniel Mulholland, critiquing the Service's report on the President's alleged failure to adequately brief the Congressional intelligence committees.

I think Bush may correlate the term Democracy with Christian Fundamentalist Democracy like we have in the US today. Of course, if our Christian fundamentalists had their way, we wouldn't live in a democracy either: it would be a theocracy like the ones winning electoral support in the Middle East.

Informed Comment

...the elections that Bush trumpets in all four countries, and in Palestine, which he did not mention in this regard, were rebukes to Bush, not affirmations of him. The Afghans elected warlords, the Iraqis put in the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Muqtada al-Sadr's people (the ones who killed Cindy Sheehan's son) along with the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood and some Baathists. The Shiite parties of Hizbullah and Amal have new weight in Lebanon. The fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt got 88 seats, an unprecedentedly large number.

These elections were Middle Eastern referendums on Bush, and he lost every one hands down. Bush's main accomplishment in the Middle East since 9/11 has been to strengthen Muslim fundamentalist parties everywhere in the region.

It's amazing that most major media outlets missed this important initiative coming out of the President's State of the Union speech this week:

President Creates Cabinet-Level Position To Coordinate Scandals

In his State of the Union address to the nation last night, President Bush announced a new cabinet-level position to coordinate all current and future scandals facing his party.
Enlarge ImagePresident Creates Cabinet-Level Position To Coordinate Scandals

President Bush announces his plan to manage the numerous scandals of his administration.



"Tonight, by executive order, I am creating a permanent department with a vital mission: to ensure that the political scandals, underhanded dealings, and outright criminal activities of this administration are handled in a professional and orderly fashion," Bush said.

Will Alito be as conservative as many liberals feared now that he's the final decision make on life or death issues like this one? So far --surprisingly -- no.

Supreme Court Fuels Death Penalty Debate - Yahoo! News

The Supreme Court last considered a related case in 2004. An Alabama death row inmate had claimed that his damaged veins would require prison doctors to cut deep into his flesh to deliver the chemicals. He won the right to pursue his claim in a limited ruling by Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor and still is pressing his case.



O'Connor retired on Tuesday and was replaced by Justice
Samuel Alito, whose first case was the death penalty appeal from Missouri. He broke ranks with the court's conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices
Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas, who voted to allow the execution of Michael Taylor. They were outvoted by Alito and the court's more liberal members.

Watch the ad and try to guess what's wrong with it. I couldn't figure out what the "problem" was until I read the explanation below.

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Verizon pulled yet ANOTHER ad in response to far-right complaints

The "Society for the Prevention of Misandry (hatred of men) in the Media" complained that a Verizon ad unfairly attacked fathers. You really need to see the ad. It's hysterical. Yet some out-of-nowhere group of "men's rights" advocates complain, and Verizon pulls what is clearly a fine ad.

Watch the "offending" ad for yourself. See what Verizon pulled vs. what it supports:

Look no further than Bush's 2003 state of the union address where he claimed he proposed:

President Bush
announced a $1.2 billion hydrogen fuel initiative to reverse America's
growing dependence on foreign oil by developing the technology for
commercially viable hydrogen-powered fuel cells to power cars, trucks,
homes and businesses with no pollution or greenhouse gases. The
hydrogen fuel initiative will include $720 million in new funding over
the next five years to develop the technologies and infrastructure to
produce, store, and distribute hydrogen for use in fuel cell vehicles
and electricity generation. Combined with the FreedomCAR (Cooperative
Automotive Research) initiative, President Bush is proposing a total of
$1.7 billion over the next five years to develop hydrogen-powered fuel
cells, hydrogen infrastructure and advanced automotive technologies.

We haven't heard much about that over the past three years. But more money than that is unaccounted for in the Iraq debacle.

Bush to Promote Fuel-Saving Technologies

Trying to calm anxieties about soaring energy costs, President Bush is using his State of the Union address this week to focus on a package of energy of proposals aimed at bringing fuel-saving technologies out of the lab and into use.

Will we hear about Bush's "coalition of the homophobic" during his state of the union address? Shameful.

'Bigotry Conquers All,' Gay Rights Groups Say of U.S. Vote at UN - Yahoo! News

''It is astonishing that the Bush administration would align itself with Sudan, China, Iran, and Zimbabwe in a coalition of the homophobic,'' Long said.

Rights advocates said the Bush administration's international posture matched its increasingly strident and discriminatory bent at home. Religiously and socially extremist elements of the U.S. population and among Bush's supporters--to whom many pundits attributed the president's 2004 re-election-- have been increasingly loud and militant over the past year, according to human rights activists.

I don't believe Bush really hates gay people enough to want to ban same-sex marriage. But he does hate them enough to use gay bashing as a campaign issue. It did a great job diverting debate away from Bush's failure to capture Osama bin Laden, the wasteful war in Iraq, and his failed energy policies.

A Look at Bush Promises Past

-2004: Bush called on Congress to extend the Patriot Act, set to expire in 2005. With the budget deficit mushrooming, the president proposed few new domestic initiatives. He backed a constitutional ban on same-sex marriages.

The gay-marriage proposal flared briefly as a campaign issue, then receded. The Patriot Act was not extended.