This blog will focus on political images I have found all around the Internet, though I will intersperse some commentary and quotes that I find interesting.
WASHINGTON — George W. Bush, despite all his recent bravado about being an apostle of small government and budget-slashing, is the biggest spending president since Lyndon B. Johnson. In fact, he's arguably an even bigger spender than LBJ.
The new chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, expressed deep concerns that the long counterinsurgency missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have so consumed the military that the Army and Marine Corps may be unprepared for a high-intensity war against a major adversary.
He rejected the counsel of those who might urge immediate attacks inside Iran to destroy nuclear installations or to stop the flow of explosives that end up as powerful roadside bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan, killing American troops.
Instead, Gerberding’s prepared testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee included few details on what effects climate change could have on the spread of disease.
The Department of Homeland Security quietly moves closer to an invasive "Secure Flights" proposal that requires government-issued credentials for all air travelers -- and government permission for each flight! International "Advance Passenger Information System" rules were published Monday (effective February of 2008), making the U.S. version much more likely to pass.
At the GOP debate the other night, Mike Huckabee made an odd claim.
“Most” of the signers were clergy? Is that true? Actually, no.“When our founding fathers put their signatures on the Declaration of Independence, those 56 brave people, most of whom, by the way, were clergymen, they said that we have certain inalienable rights given to us by our creator.”
Only one of the 56 was an active clergyman, and that was John Witherspoon. Witherspoon was a Presbyterian minister and president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University).
“The people of Iraq, the Parliament, the Council of Representative and the government of Iraq, all say no, big fat no, N, O, No military bases for Iraq because we believe that is in direct encroachment to our sovereignty, and we don’t need it.”
Three days after Americans saw the Bush administration's counterterrorism chief say the Iraq war has likely not made the United States safer from terrorism, the official announced his resignation, citing health reasons.
A 33-year-old former youth minister of an Alabaster church has been charged with crossing state lines to have sex with a minor.
Donald Brent Page of Calera is accused of traveling to Memphis on Oct. 6 to meet who he thought was a 13-year-old girl for sex, according to an affidavit prepared by an investigator with the Memphis FBI Crimes Against Children Task Force.
If Iran continues on its current course, Cheney said the U.S. and other nations are prepared to take action. The vice president made no specific reference to military action.
"We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," he said.
At a news conference Wednesday, President Bush said suggested that if Iran obtained nuclear weapons, it could lead to a new world war.
Remember this, from the Bill of Rights, in our Constitution?
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
And then note this and tell me what is wrong with it...
From Air America.According to the Washington Post: “Verizon Communications, the nation's second-largest telecom company, told congressional investigators that it has provided customers' telephone records to federal authorities in emergency cases without court orders hundreds of times since 2005….
A Vatican official suspended after being caught on a hidden camera making advances to a young man says he is not gay and was only pretending to be gay as part of his work.
In an interview published yesterday, Monsignor Tommaso Stenico told the daily La Repubblica he frequented online gay chat rooms and met with gay men as part of his work as a psychoanalyst. He said that he pretended to be gay in order to gather information about "those who damage the image of the Church with homosexual activity."
Brown County GOP Chairman Donald Fleischman has resigned his post, says a spokesperson, after being accused of enticement and fondling of an underage boy, reports the Green Bay Press-Gazette Saturday.
From 10/26/2007 Progress Report.
IRAQ -- FOUR-FOLD INCREASE OF U.S. MILITARY AIR STRIKES IN IRAQ UNDERMINES COUNTERINSURGENCY STRATEGY:
Earlier this week, USA Today reported that "the U.S. military has increased airstrikes in Iraq four-fold this year, reflecting a steep escalation in combat operations aimed at al-Qaeda and other militants." The increased use of air strikes, which often occurs in densely-populated areas, has been condemned by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq. Though October "has seen the smallest number of Americans killed in Iraq than any other month since March 2006," the trade off for "greater safety for our ground troops" through the increased use of air strikes means an increase in "local hostility." Such an increase in hostility undermines the counterinsurgency strategy of Gen. David Petraeus. As the U.S. Army's field manual on counterinsurgency, which Petraeus co-authored, states, "an air strike can cause collateral damage that turns people against the host-nation government and provides insurgents with a major propaganda victory." Max Bergmann of the National Security Network notes that "all this talk about a new counter-insurgency strategy -- adopting less kinetic approaches, emphasizing the security of Iraqis, the need for U.S. Soldiers to take more risk and operate under stricter rules of engagement, etc., etc. - seems really hollow if at the same time, we are lobbing four times as many bombs from the air than we were before."
This is exactly what we've come to expect from the Bush administration: Contraception Foe Named to Contraception Post.
The Department of Health and Human Services appointed Susan Orr - who has spoken out against contraception - to a post responsible for U.S. contraception programs. Orr, who will be acting deputy assistant secretary for population affairs, has been directing child welfare programs in another branch of HHS. Prior to joining the Bush administration, Orr was senior director for marriage and family at the Family Research Council, a conservative group that favors abstinence-only education and opposes federal money for contraception.
The richest one percent of Americans earned a postwar record of 21.2 percent of all income in 2005, up from 19 percent a year earlier, reflecting a widening income disparity among different classes in the nation, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing new Internal Revenue Service data.
The data showed that the fortunes of the bottom 50 percent of Americans are worsening, with that group earning 12.8 percent of all income in 2005, down from 13.4 percent the year before, the paper said. Read more…
From Reuters via Yahoo via Crooks and Liars
A voucher program designed to send low-income children in the District to better-performing private schools has allowed some students to take classes in unsuitable learning environments and from teachers without bachelor's degrees, according to a government report.
The shortcomings are detailed in a draft prepared by the Government Accountability Office about the $12.9 million D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. The GAO said the program lacks financial controls and has failed to check whether the participating schools were accredited.
The colonel was furious. "Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers." He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad's Green Zone. The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV. His account was confirmed by the head of another private security company.
The story of the scribes and Pharisees bringing a woman caught in the act of adultery (where was the man?) before Jesus to see whether he will obey the law of Moses and agree that she should be stoned is a familiar one. It contains one of the Bible's most memorable sayings, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her" (8:7). The entire passage is, unfortunately, an interpolation. It is not in the oldest manuscripts we have of the gospel of John. It was evidently added by a later scribe during the copying process.
The kingdom Jesus preached was radical. Not only are nations irrelevant, but families are, too: he instructs those who would be his disciples to give up all they have and all those they know to follow Him.
The only acknowledgment of God in the original Constitution is a utilitarian one: the document is dated “in the year of our Lord 1787.” Even the religion clause of the First Amendment is framed dryly and without reference to any particular faith. The Connecticut ratifying convention debated rewriting the preamble to take note of God’s authority, but the effort failed.
Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday she would sign an executive order rescinding President Bush's restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
The presidential candidate also said she would bar political appointees from altering or removing scientific conclusions from government research without a legitimate reason for doing so.
"The Bush administration has declared war on science," the New York senator said. "When I am president, scientific integrity will not be the exception it will be the rule."
More reaction from around the web to the assholes who think stalking a 12-year-old and his brain-damaged sister is what "politics" is all about: John Cole, now a former Republican thanks to this
incident:If you look through this family’s dossier, it appears they are doing everything Republicans say they should be doing- hell, their story is almost what you would consider a checklist for good, red-blooded American Republican voters: they own their own business, they pay their taxes, they are still in a committed relationship and are raising their kids, they eschewed public education and are doing what they have to do to get them into Private schools, they are part of the American dream of home ownership that Republicans have been pointing to in the past two administrations as proof of the health of the economy, and so on.
In short, they are a white, lower-middle-class, committed family, who is doing EVERYTHING the GOP Kultur Kops would have you believe people should be doing. They aren’t gay. They aren’t divorced. They didn’t abort their children. They aren’t drug addicts or welfare queens. They are property owners, entrepeneurs, taxpayers, and hard-working Americans. I bet nine times out of ten in past elections, if you handed this resume to a pollster, they would think you were discussing the prototypical Republican
voter. Hell, the only thing missing from this equation is membership to a church and an irrational fear of Muslims and you HAVE the prototypical Bush voter [...]I simply can not believe this is what the Republican party has become. I just can’t. It just makes me sick to think all those years of supporting this party, and this is what it has become. Even if you don’t like the S-Chip expansion, it is hard to deny what Republicans are- a bunch of bitter, nasty, petty, snarling, sneering, vicious thugs, peering through people’s windows so they can make fun of their misfortune.
I’m registering Independent tomorrow.
The WaPo’s Steven Pearlstein had the spot-on response to yesterday’s debate for the Republican presidential field:
To hear it from the Republican presidential hopefuls, the only way for the party to win back the trust of voters on economic issues is to start telling the truth.
Well, fellas, what are you waiting for?
Instead, for two hours yesterday, the nine white men who would be president were each peddling the Big Lie that the only way to ensure economic growth is by cutting all the taxes ever created — and when you’re finished with that, cutting them some more….
It is becoming clear, not just from this and previous debates but also from their speeches and position papers, that the leading Republican candidates aren’t serious about economic issues.
