Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Hillary Clinton has grabbed a record amount of campaign cash for a quarter — $26 million dollars (and $10 million more transferred from earlier Senate campaigns), according to CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04/01/clinton.money/

This is huge news. It means that Hillary Clinton is going to be able to generate a lot of buzz for herself, and a fair amount of inevitability. Some might say this is a bad thing. But I say it is the sign of a good leader: someone who is able to generate an air of obviousness about what she wants to do, so that everybody follows along. If Hillary Clinton can manage to do this, then I would posit that she is, by definition, a highly skilled leader. And I say good for her. We could use someone who is competent in the Oval Office.

Yesterday here on the Irregular Diaries, a new writer named Rusty celebrated the fact that Senator Hillary Clinton has been able to gather huge amounts of money to spend on her campaign. I can’t share in that celebration.

The reason: The more money a candidate makes, the more suspicious I get. I know very well that most of the money that presidential candidates bring comes from the rich and powerful. So, the bigger the stash of campaign donations a presidential candidate makes, the more indebted that candidate is to the rich and powerful. Thus, the more money a candidate raises, the more I doubt that the candidate will make a good president.

Besides, what does Hillary Clinton actually stand for? Does anyone know? It seems to me that Hillary Clinton represents the rich and powerful, and is motivated only by her own ambition. I just don’t trust her.

… for right-wing nut cases, is that she is a woman and not ashamed of it. Yes, the Christian fundies have their knickers in a twist over the fact that Hillary Clinton is a woman and not just content to stand by her man, but determined to run for President.

But isn’t it great that just about everyone else isn’t focussing on what it means that Hillary Clinton is a woman? Senator Clinton is being evaluated for her policy positions and her stated priorities for a presidency. Know what that means? It means that most of us in America (Christian fundies) excluded have grown up and started looking at a leader’s content of character and history of action. Aren’t you proud to see this come to pass?

While Mitt Romney could only get $20 million in contributions, Rudy Giuliani had just $15 million and John McCain had to settle for a paltry $12.5 million, Hillary Clinton dominated with $26 million in campaign contributions. Hillary Clinton is simply dominant. And what is much more impressive than even that is that Senator Clinton managed to collect her $26 million in contributions with 80% of donors giving just $100 or less. These 80% — some 40,000 donors — represent the American heartland, not some bigwigs, and they will be able to give again and again and again as Senator Clinton needs the money without hitting campaign contribution maximums. The numbers alone show that Hillary Clinton is on her way to an impressive, dominating presence in the 2008 campaign. The big boys of Republican politics have nothing to show compared to Hillary Clinton.

Made you look, fundamentalists!

No, I’m not talking about the end of the world of evangelical Christian mythology, the rapture that is supposed to leave a bunch of empty cars on the freeway in Arkansas as a precursor of Satan’s wrath on Earth. I’m talking about Iraq.

The end times of the Iraq War are nigh!

The following short statement was released by Senator Russ Feingold today: “The President says he supports our troops, yet he wants to keep them in the middle of an Iraqi civil war indefinitely. We cannot afford to continue the President’s disastrous Iraq policy, which has weakened our national security and undercut our fight against those who attacked us on 9/11. The bill Majority Leader Reid and I have proposed gives the President the time and the funding he needs to safely redeploy our troops from Iraq by March 31, 2008.”

Let March 31, 2008 be the time of the second coming… of peace. I’m surprised, but impressed, that Senator Feingold has the support of Senator Harry Reid for this legislation to set a firm end for the Iraq War before one year from today.

Oh, how I wish Russ Feingold were running for President in 2008.

I’m still waiting for the Library of Congress to release the text of Feingold and Reid’s legislation.

Bush does it again. Everyone remember when King Shrub II got John Bolton jammed into the UN? Welp, he’s repeated his antics only this time with Belgium. Let’s read, shall we?

Bush Bypasses Senate to Name Ambassador

Bush bypasses Senate to name ambassador
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer 38 minutes ago

President Bush named Republican fundraiser Sam Fox as U.S. ambassador to Belgium on Wednesday, using a maneuver that allowed him to bypass Congress, where Democrats had derailed Fox’s nomination.

The appointment, made while lawmakers were out of town on spring break, prompted angry rebukes from Democrats, who said Bush’s action may even be illegal.

Democrats had denounced Fox for his donation to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 presidential campaign. The group’s TV ads, which claimed that Sen. John Kerry exaggerated his military record in Vietnam, were viewed as a major factor in the Massachusetts Democrat’s election loss.

Recognizing Fox did not have the votes to obtain Senate confirmation in the Foreign Relations Committee, Bush withdrew the nomination last week. On Wednesday, with the Senate on a one-week break, the president used his power to make recess appointments to put Fox in the job without Senate confirmation.

This means Fox can remain ambassador until the end of the next session of Congress, effectively through the end of the Bush presidency.

“It’s sad but not surprising that this White House would abuse the power of the presidency to reward a donor over the objections of the Senate,” Kerry said in a statement.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he plans to ask the Government Accountability Office to issue an opinion on whether the recess appointment is legal.

Recess appointments are intended to give the president flexibility if Congress is out for a lengthy period of time, such as the four-week adjournment in summer. But Dodd said the law was not intended to circumvent lawmakers’ approval.

“This is really now taking the recess appointment vehicle and abusing this beyond anyone’s imagination,” said Dodd, a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. “This is a travesty.”

Bush also used his recess appointment authority to make Andrew Biggs deputy director of Social Security. The president’s earlier nomination of Biggs, an outspoken advocate of partially privatizing the government’s retirement program, was rejected by Senate Democrats in February.

Presidents since George Washington have made appointments during congressional recesses to fill positions in the executive and judicial branches. Bush has used the authority more frequently than some — but not all — of his most recent predecessors, making 171 so far, compared with 140 for President Clinton over two terms, 77 by his father in one term and 243 by President Reagan during two terms.

Some of Bush’s more notable recess appointments include John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton arrived at the U.N. in August 2005 after being appointed during a congressional recess because he twice failed to be confirmed by the Senate. Still unable to get Senate backing, he stepped down in December.

Others include include William Pryor and Charles Pickering (news, bio, voting record) as federal appeals court judges, in 2004, and Otto Reich as an assistant secretary of state, in 2002.

Fox, a 77-year-old St. Louis businessman, gave $50,000 to the Swift Boat group. He is national chairman of the Jewish Republican Coalition and was dubbed a “ranger” by Bush’s 2004 campaign for raising at least $200,000. He is founder and chairman of the Clayton, Mo.-based Harbour Group, which specializes in the takeover of manufacturing companies.

Fox has donated millions of dollars to Republican candidates and causes since the 1990s.

In answer to questions about the Swift Boat donation, Fox has said he gives when asked, insisting he was not involved with the writing of the ad scripts and never saw them before they aired but had been aware of the general thrust of the group.

Fox issued a statement saying he is “delighted and honored” to accept the ambassadorial appointment.

“As the son of a man who fled Europe to find freedom and a better life, I am especially humbled by the opportunity to return to that continent as this nation’s representative,” he said.

Senator Hillary Clinton is using the bully pulpit of her presidential campaign to promote activism among citizens. Sign the petition Clinton started that demands Alberto Gonzales resign for inserting politics into Justice and then LYING about it. Unforgiveable! Thank you, Hillary Clinton, for giving Americans something better to do about injustice in the world than going shopping for duct tape.

Earlier this week, it was reported that the remains the Catholic Church has claimed are those of Joan of Arc are fakes, part of a fraud perpetrated by the church to keep believers enthralled.

The obvious question now is: Where are the real remains of Joan of Arc?

The deeper question that few people will think to ask is: Are there any remains of Joan of Arc?

A person cannot have remains unless that person has died. Now that we see that the Catholic Church was willing to create a hoax involving the fake dead body of Joan of Arc, we have to consider the most frequent reason for creating a fake dead body. Usually, when people create a fake dead body, it is because the death itself has been faked.

It is now reasonable to assume that Joan of Arc never really died.

Do not discount the Egyptian connection. The body parts that were used to create the fake remains of Joan of Arc were from a mummy in Egypt. The ancient Egyptians were known, through secretive rituals of the very sort that Joan of Arc was accused of, for using techniques to extend the lives of political leaders, such as Joan of Arc, to the point of immortality.

Where is Joan of Arc now, and why is she being kept alive?

The Xinhua news agency is reporting that “large amounts of pine pollen were found among the relics”.

Is it a coincidence, then, that Pine Gap in Australia is home to one of the world’s secret military bases used for communicating with extraterrestrials in UFOs?

Any rational adult can connect the dots. Joan of Arc is alive, and is planning an alien invasion of planet Earth in revenge for the Catholic Church’s attempt to burn her at the stake. Her recorded experiences are consistent with the experiences of people abducted by UFOs in modern times.

Now that Joan of Arc’s death has been exposed as fraudulent, the alien invasion is likely to come later. We need to prepare now, or we’re all going to die at the hands of Joan of Arc and her Martian friends, bent on revenge!

It’s been a tired refrain of the knee-jerk pro-war right wing of American politics that “we have to fight them over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here”. There, in this statement, refers to Iraq. Here refers to the United States of America, or as the right wingers prefer to call it, The Homeland.

This slogan in favor of war disintegrates like cotton candy in a rainstorm when it is realistically evaluated. The most obvious problem is that there was no threatening terrorist activity in Iraq until the invasion of Iraq by the USA inspired it there. Every year that the American military does its work in Iraq, there are more terrorists there, not fewer. So, by being over there, the American military is creating more people who would like to hurt us here.

The right wingers insist that this isn’t so, despite the evidence to the contrary, but they acknowledge the existence of the problem in their continued obsession with keeping foreigners from crossing the border into the United States. Take, for example, the statement by Republicans congressional candidate Keiran Michael Lalor, who states on his campaign web site,

“Kieran has seen the necessity of a muscular defense. He knows that confronting terrorists on their turf is essential to thwarting attacks on ours. He also understands that fighting them over there while letting them in over here is a deeply flawed policy. According to Kieran, true homeland security requires protecting our borders and prosecuting illegal immigrants and those who hire or enable them.”

Mr. Lalor’s justifications for the love of war and for the hatred of foreigners run so fast together that they end up contradicting each other. First, Lalor says that we have to fight terrorists in Iraq so that we don’t have to deal with terrorist here in the United States. Then, in the very next breath, Lalor says that we have to fight against terrorist infiltrators here in the United States.

If Lalor really believes that fighting a war in Iraq prevents the need to fight against terrorist infiltrators in the United States, then why is Lalor proposing that the American government fight the war in Iraq AND fight the threat of terrorist infiltrators here in the United States? If Lalor believed the words coming out of his own mouth about Iraq, he would say that we don’t need to worry about terrorists infiltrating the United States. The war in Iraq would prevent them from coming here, by Lalor’s own theory.

The problem is that Lalor doesn’t really have an actual theory of war or a theory of terrorism. All Lalor has is an ideology that promotes war and promotes a Security Cult of the Homeland. Neither the war nor the Homeland Security system are founded in rational needs. Rather, they are founded upon the thrill some people feel in the thrills of hunting and fighting.

Let them get their thrills in the private sphere. Let them go turkey hunting, and train to fight in the boxing ring, if they’re looking for an adrenaline rush. Their blood lust should not be allowed, however, to direct the American identity.

Enlisted Soldiers Oath

 Enlisted Oath: I, ___, do solemnly swear  (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;  and that I will obey the orders of the president of the United States and the orders of  the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God. 

 Officer Oath

Officer Oath: I, A.B., do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.  

http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj02/win02/keskel.html

Senate/House Oath

 do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
http://www.emailyoursenator.com/oath.html

President Bush doesn’t want Americans to do anything besides go shopping. But President Clinton would ask more of Americans. Senator Hillary Clinton has announced her plan to form a national Public Service Academy: “Modeled after the military service academies, the Public Service Academy would provide a four-year, federally subsidized college education for more than 5,000 students a year in exchange for a five-year commitment to public service following graduation. Graduates of the Academy would serve their country for five years, creating a new generation of young people dedicated to public service.” We could have a new, even greater Greatest Generation if Hillary Clinton is elected president.

At this late hour and in the wake (to coin a media term) of the Virginia Tech shootings, I recall a story about our beloved kook, Irreverent Patty Robertson (yes, I hold him in great disdain and make no allusions otherwise) making a “prediction bestowed upon him by god” (or some such nonsense) about a mass killing in late 2007. You can find this jewel of a prediction here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0hWAxJ3_Js

Now, what I find myself pondering is whether or not he’ll claim the Virginia Tech shooting is his “prophecy” come true (despite that this is still early to mid ‘07 and not late ‘07). That is, assuming he remembers this prediction in the first place.

To say that I’m indignant over this bit of news would be an understatement. I support a woman’s right to chose under any circumstances, and I find the idea that there’s not even a provision for a woman’s health to be…deplorable, to say the least.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070418/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_abortion

Justices uphold abortion procedure ban

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 9 minutes ago

The Supreme Court’s new conservative majority gave anti-abortion forces a landmark victory Wednesday in a 5-4 decision that bans a controversial abortion procedure nationwide and sets the stage for further restrictions.

It was a long-awaited and resounding win that abortion opponents had hoped to gain from a court pushed to the right by President Bush’s appointees.

For the first time since the court established a woman’s right to an abortion in 1973, the justices said the Constitution permits a nationwide prohibition on a specific abortion method. The court’s liberal justices, in dissent, said the ruling chipped away at abortion rights.

The 5-4 decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

Siding with Kennedy were Bush’s two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, along with Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

The law is constitutional despite not containing an exception that would allow the procedure if needed to preserve a woman’s health, Kennedy said. “The law need not give abortion doctors unfettered choice in the course of their medical practice,” he wrote in the majority opinion.

Doctors who violate the law could face up to two years in federal prison. The law has not taken effect, pending the outcome of the legal fight.

In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the ruling “cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court.”

Dr. LeRoy Carhart, the Bellevue, Neb., doctor who challenged the federal ban, said, “I am afraid the Supreme Court has just opened the door to an all-out assault on” the 1973 ruling in Roe. Wade.

The administration defended the law as drawing a bright line between abortion and infanticide.

Reacting to the ruling, Bush said that it affirms the progress his administration has made to defend the “sanctity of life.”

“I am pleased that the Supreme Court has upheld a law that prohibits the abhorrent procedure of partial birth abortion,” he said. “Today’s decision affirms that the Constitution does not stand in the way of the people’s representatives enacting laws reflecting the compassion and humanity of America.”

It was the first time the court banned a specific procedure in a case over how — not whether — to perform an abortion.

Abortion rights groups as well as the leading association of obstetricians and gynecologists have said the procedure sometimes is the safest for a woman. They also said that such a ruling could threaten most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, although Kennedy said alternate, more widely used procedures remain legal.

The outcome is likely to spur efforts at the state level to place more restrictions on abortions.

“I applaud the Court for its ruling today, and my hope is that it sets the stage for further progress in the fight to ensure our nation’s laws respect the sanctity of unborn human life,” said Rep. John Boehner (news, bio, voting record) of Ohio, Republican leader in the House of Representatives.

Jay Sekulow, a prominent abortion opponent who is chief counsel for the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, said, “This is the most monumental win on the abortion issue that we have ever had.”

Said Eve Gartner of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America: “This ruling flies in the face of 30 years of Supreme Court precedent and the best interest of women’s health and safety. … This ruling tells women that politicians, not doctors, will make their health care decisions for them.” She had argued that point before the justices.

More than 1 million abortions are performed in the United States each year, according to recent statistics. Nearly 90 percent of those occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and are not affected by Wednesday’s ruling. The Guttmacher Institute says 2,200 dilation and extraction procedures — the medical term most often used by doctors — were performed in 2000, the latest figures available.

Six federal courts have said the law that was in focus Wednesday is an impermissible restriction on a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

“Today’s decision is alarming,” Ginsburg wrote in dissent for the court’s liberal bloc. She said the ruling “refuses to take … seriously” previous Supreme Court decisions on abortion.

Ginsburg said the latest decision “tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.”

Ginsburg said that for the first time since the court established a woman’s right to an abortion in 1973, “the court blesses a prohibition with no exception safeguarding a woman’s health.”

She was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens.

The procedure at issue involves partially removing the fetus intact from a woman’s uterus, then crushing or cutting its skull to complete the abortion.

Abortion opponents say the law will not reduce the number of abortions performed because an alternate method — dismembering the fetus in the uterus — is available and, indeed, much more common.

In 2000, the court with key differences in its membership struck down a state ban on partial-birth abortions in a challenge also brought by Carhart. Writing for a 5-4 majority at that time, Justice Breyer said the law imposed an undue burden on a woman’s right to make an abortion decision in part because it lacked a health exception.

The Republican-controlled Congress responded in 2003 by passing a federal law that asserted the procedure is gruesome, inhumane and never medically necessary to preserve a woman’s health. That statement was designed to overcome the health exception to restrictions that the court has demanded in abortion cases.

But federal judges in California, Nebraska and New York said the law was unconstitutional, and three appellate courts agreed. The Supreme Court accepted appeals from California and Nebraska, setting up Wednesday’s ruling.

Kennedy’s dissent in 2000 was so strong that few court watchers expected him to take a different view of the current case.

Kennedy acknowledged continuing disagreement about the procedure within the medical community. In the past, courts have cited that uncertainty as a reason to allow the disputed procedure.

“The medical uncertainty over whether the Act’s prohibition creates significant health risks provides a sufficient basis to conclude … that the Act does not impose an undue burden,” Kennedy said Wednesday.

While the court upheld the law against a broad attack on its constitutionality, Kennedy said the court could entertain a challenge in which a doctor found it necessary to perform the banned procedure on a patient suffering certain medical complications.

The law allows the procedure to be performed when a woman’s life is in jeopardy.

The cases are Gonzales v. Carhart, 05-380, and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, 05-1382.

God is good, so the Christians say. So, if this God character of theirs is so good, how come he promises to taking vengeance against non-Christians? The second epistle to the Thessalonians, in the Christians’ holy book, proclaims,

“The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Jesus is going to take vengeance for his crucifixion by attacking non-Christians with flaming fire, thousands of years after the fact? How is that vengeance? I didn’t have anything to do with the crucifixion. Why attack me with flaming fire?

What is flaming fire in particular anyway, and how is it different from fire that does not flame?

Christians say the Bible is great literature, but honestly, it reads more like a chat room rant.

Just a little over a month ago, I reported on the convergence of billions of missing honeybees with an army of sea cucumbers marching slowly toward Manhattan to wreak havoc on our civilization. For some, this report may have stretched credulity. After all, how could Antarctic sea cucumbers and North American honeybees coordinate their attacks over such a long distance?

Now, science is giving us the answer, although, as usual, the scientists can only think halfway through the implications of their work. As Canadian TV reports scientists are concluding that honeybees are leaving their hives en masse because of signals from cell phone systems now active around the world. It seems that honeybees use the same frequencies as cell phones do to communicate and to navigate.

In other words, honeybees have found a way to tap into our wireless networks and use them for their own purposes. They’ve been flying around, collecting nectar, doing their little dances, buzzing over our cell phones, and waiting until the time is right.

We know that honeybees are social animals. Just consider what honeybees would do if hive could communicate with hive, across long distances. Why, they’d do just what comes naturally. They’d join their little societies together to form larger societies, with one very powerful queen at the center, plotting and controlling all the rest.

It seems reasonable to presume, then, that it is the honeybees who are responsible for planning the coming attacks against New York City.

There are signs now that the coalition of invertebrates moving against New York City is expanding. National Geographic magazine reports this month that bedbugs are returning to Manhattan, after being wiped out there generations ago. The bedbugs are infiltrating the most private chambers of people’s homes, breeding there, listening, forming sleeper cells. The bedbugs are already becoming aggressive, even biting people when they have the chance.

Their actions are consistent with a species hungry for vengeance.

This morning I recieved the following in my email from a student. It is intented to be inspirational, or at minimum cautionary. My response to the student is included at the end.
This is very true……Our God is a wonderful and forgiving God, but what he says is true…..Do not mock him, and be sure not to put anything past him. Our God is merciful, but there are to many people today who do not fear Lord…. that’s the problem. Read the good Book!
DID YOU KNOW THESE FACTS? I SURE DIDNT TILL NOW
Death is certain but the Bible speaks about untimely death!
Make a personal reflection about this….. Very interesting, read until the end…..
It is written in the Bible (Galatians 6:7):
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked:
for whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap.
Here are some men and women who mocked God :
John Lennon (Singer):
Some years before, during his interview with an American Magazine, he said:
“Christianity will end, it will disappear. I do not have to argue about that. I am certain.
Jesus was ok, but his subjects were too simple, Today we are more famous than Him” (1966)
Lennon, after saying that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, was shot six times.
Tancredo Neves (President of Brazil ):
During the Presidential campaign, he said if he got 500,000 votes from his party, not even God would remove him from Presidency.
Sure he got the votes, but he got sick a day before being made President, then he died
Cazuza (Bi-sexual Brazilian composer, singer and poet):
During A show in Canecio ( Rio de Janeiro ), while smoking his cigarette, he puffed out some smoke into the air and said: “God, that’s for you.”
He died at the age of 32 of AIDS in a horrible manner.
The man who built the Titanic
After the construction of Titanic, a reporter asked him how safe the Titanic would be.
With an ironic tone he said: “Not even God can sink it”
The result: I think you all know what happened to the Titanic.
Marilyn Monroe (Actress)
She was visited by Billy Graham during a presentation of a show. He said the Spirit of God had sent him to preach to her. After hearing what the Preacher had to say, she said:
“I don’t need your Jesus”.
A week later, she was found dead in her apartment
Bon Scott (Singer)
The ex-vocalist of the AC/DC. On one of his 1979 songs he sang: “Don’t stop me, I’m going down all the way, down the highway to hell”.
On the 19th of February 1980, Bon Scott was found dead, he had been choked by his own vomit
Campinas (IN 2005)
In Campinas , Brazil a group of friends, drunk, went to pick up a friend…… The mother accompanied her to the car and was so worried about the drunkenness of her friends and she said to the daughter holding her hand, who was already seated in the car:
“My Daughter, Go With God And May He Protect You..”
She responded: “Only If He (God) Travels In The Trunk, Cause Inside Here….. It’s Already Full ”
Hours later, news came by that they had been involved in a fatal accident, everyone had died,
the car could not be recognized what type of car it had been, but surprisingly, the trunk was intact. The police said there was no way the trunk could have remained intact. To their surprise, inside the trunk was a crate of eggs, none were broken .
Christine Hewitt (Jamaican Journalist and entertainer)
Said the Bible (Word of God) was the worst book ever written.
In June 2006 she was found burnt beyond recognition in her motor vehicle
Many more important people have forgotten that there is no other name that was given so much authority as the name of Jesus. Many have died, but only Jesus died and rose again, and he is still alive
“Jesus”
P.S: If it was a joke, you would have sent it to everyone.
So are you going to have courage to send this?.
I have done my part, Jesus said
“If you are embarrassed about me,
I will also be embarrassed about you before my father.”

Here’s how I replied:
So…
Whatever God does is by definition the good.
If we want to be good, God should be our role model.
So if someone mocks us, we should kill them in some horrific way that makes it look like we had nothing to do with it.
I’m afraid I don’t find this sort of thinking very inspiring. In fact it makes me nervous to think that people are inspired by stuff like this.

Senator Hillary Clinton reacted to the 5-4 Gonzales v. Carhart decision the same day:

“This decision marks a dramatic departure from four decades of Supreme Court rulings that upheld a woman’s right to choose and recognized the importance of women’s health. Today’s decision blatantly defies the Court’s recent decision in 2000 striking down a state partial-birth abortion law because of its failure to provide an exception for the health of the mother. As the Supreme Court recognized in Roe v. Wade in 1973, this issue is complex and highly personal; the rights and lives of women must be taken into account. It is precisely this erosion of our constitutional rights that I warned against when I opposed the nominations of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito.”

Senator Clinton wouldn’t have put John Roberts and Sam Alito on the bench. That’s why we need to make sure that Senator Clinton, our party’s best bet in 2008, receives all the support she can get. Please consider making a donation today: any amount will be of great help not just to Senator Clinton’s campaign but to the reproductive rights of women across the country.

Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland was the first Democratic woman elected to the Senate (rather than be appointed first). And now Barbara Mikulski is endorsing another first: the first woman president, Hillary Clinton. Says Mikulski:

“She works every day to advance women’s rights, by standing up for the women’s basketball team at Rutgers and leading the legislative effort for equal pay to become a reality for women. As the first Democratic woman elected to the Senate in my own right, I am honored to join Senator Clinton in this historic effort to break the last barrier for women in public life.”

The winner of the South Carolina Democratic Presidential Debates, the first in a season of debates, was in my mind without a doubt Hillary Clinton. Senator Clinton completely defied her image as shrill by expressing herself humbly, admitting her mistakes, and laying out her political case in a clear and concise way. I liked the Senator’s no-nonsense style in presenting her ideas without getting hyper (Gravel) or rambling (Richardson) or fake (Edwards). Don’t get me wrong: I agree with Senator Joseph Biden who said that [almost] any of the people on that stage last night would make an excellent president. But the person in the debate to whom most people on stage and off looked for guidance, the person who made the strongest case in the short time allotted to her, was Hillary Rodham Clinton. Senator Biden’s best line of the night: “Whichever Republicans think they really want Hillary Clinton as an opponent are either stupid or crazy.” She showed she was a real competitor last night.

Please consider sending a campaign contribution to help Hillary Clinton become our next president. Visit HillaryClinton.com now!

Over at the California Progress Report I read something that strongly resonated with me:

“The San Francisco Chronicle article in this morning’s paper, summed up the situation in a nutshell with the following paragraph which I think hit the nail on the head:

Parsing through both her speech and that of Obama, it is hard to find major differences on issues and policies, and most delegates were hard pressed to articulate the differences, except on the perhaps on the war in Iraq, where both candidates favor withdrawal and have voted for withdrawal of troops. When it comes to the issues of health care, education, the environment, there is broad general agreement.”

I felt this watching the debate, too: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama don’t really have that much policy difference between them. Senator Clinton emphasizes expanded health care coverage a great deal more, but Senator Obama does not disagree with that. Senator Obama likes to talk about how he opposed the war in Iraq “from the beginning,” which is really convenient because he was not in the position of having to do anything about it at the time, but now Senator Clinton has essentially moved to his position on the war (surprise, people of excellent minds reconsider and change).

The main differences between them are:

1. OK, I admit it, Barack Obama can be more fiery at times on the stump. He is a grassroots organizer. Hillary Clinton has extensive contacts within the political establishment and works well with the movers and shakers.

2. Hillary Clinton has a lot more experience, going back to the 1970s, in politics, advocacy and government. Barack Obama’s experience is good. But you just can’t deny that Hillary Clinton has more experience.

The two most popular Democratic politicians have different styles and appeals. They can speak effectively to different audiences. They have similar or at least compatible policy agendas. And while Barack Obama certainly has enough experience to be president, Hillary Clinton has a great deal more experience than the more junior Senator does.

The conclusion is obvious to me: our party’s ticket in 2008 should be a Clinton-Obama ticket. Then, in 2016, Barack Obama should run for president in his own right, capping off the Clinton legacy with one of his own.

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P.S. People here have been casting aspersions upon me without any proof. This is why I do not respond in comment sections of blogs; I know from hard experience that very hurtful flame wars happen there. Yes, I am a Hillary Clinton fanatic. No, I do not work for the Hillary Clinton campaign. I am a citizen who cares very, very, very much. That is all you need to know.

I read an article in this morning’s New York Times about how Barack Obama went from describing himself as a skeptic to describing himself as a Christian believer. Not so coincidentally, this conversion from skepticism to religious faith took place at the same time that Obama began his political career.

Now, as I hear Barack Obama give his speeches, it seems that he’s trying to use religious tones to get citizens to give their support based on the power of feeling rather than the power of depth and sense. It all seems like a self-conscious put-on, like Obama believes what everyone else says about him, and loves the sound of his own voice.

Maybe Barack Obama has picked up the support of a lot of religious voters with this approach. I can say this for me, however. The more that Barack Obama goes along using religion as a prop in his campaign, the less I identify with his campaign. I would appreciate a genuinely skeptical candidate, smart enough to doubt when doubt is called for, rather than a candidate who is willing to surrender skepticism when the call to power is heard.