Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

So far, Palin hasn’t said anything that the Republicans haven’t been saying for the last eight years. She’s proving herself to be little more than a parrot for the same old policies that have been given a nice little mask.

And after all the prep she’s had, they never told her the word is pronounced nu·cle·ar?

Oh no they didn’t!

Keep on screwin’ her, Sammy.

I am quite disgusted right now.

Democrats to let offshore drilling ban expire

Democrats to let offshore drilling ban expire

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer 15 minutes ago

Democrats have decided to allow a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next week, conceding defeat in a months-long battle with the White House and Republicans set off by $4 a gallon gasoline prices this summer.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., told reporters Tuesday that a provision continuing the moratorium will be dropped this year from a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running after Congress recesses for the election.

Republicans have made lifting the ban a key campaign issue after gasoline prices spiked this summer and public opinion turned in favor of more drilling. President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling in July.

“If true, this capitulation by Democrats following months of Republican pressure is a big victory for Americans struggling with record gasoline prices,” said House GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio.

Democrats had clung to the hope of only a partial repeal of the drilling moratorium, but the White House had promised a veto, Obey said.

The House is expected to act on the spending bill Wednesday. The Senate is likely to go along with the House.

“The White House has made it clear they will not accept anything with a drilling moratorium, and Democrats know we cannot afford to shut down the government over this,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “We look forward to working with the next president to hammer out a final resolution of this issue.”

While the House would lift the long-standing drilling moratoriums for both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, a drilling ban in waters within 125 miles of Florida’s western coast would remain in force under a law passed by Congress in 2006 that opened some new areas of the east-central Gulf to drilling.

Just last week, the House passed legislation to open waters off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to oil and gas drilling but only 50 or more miles out to sea and only if a state agrees to energy development off its shore. It quickly became clear that measure would not get the 60 votes needed in the Senate.

Republicans called that effort a sham that would have left almost 90 percent of offshore reserves effectively off-limits.

The Interior Department estimates there are 18 billion barrels of recoverable oil beneath the Outer Continental Shelf, about half of it off California.

While the ban on energy development will be lifted if the Senate goes along with the House action, it doesn’t mean any federal sale of oil and gas leases in the offshore waters — much less actual drilling — would be imminent.

The Interior Department’s current five-year leasing plan includes potential leases off the Virginia coast but probably would not be pursued unless the state agrees to energy development. And the state is unlikely to do so without Congress agreeing to share federal royalties with the state.

The congressional battle over offshore drilling is far from over. Democrats are expected to press for broader energy legislation, probably next year, that would put limits on any drilling off most of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Republicans, meanwhile, are likely to fight any resumption of the drilling bans that have been in place since 1981.

John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, has promised to make offshore oil drilling a priority if elected president. He has called for developing the oil and gas resources along all of Outer Continental Shelf and for the federal government to share royalties with states who go along with drilling.

Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama has said he would support limited drilling in certain areas — possibly the South Atlantic region — if it is part of a broader energy plan to shift the U.S. away from oil to alternative fuels and more energy efficiency.

The debate over offshore drilling is not expected to subside in the first months of the next presidency — no matter who sits in the White House.

Lifting the drilling ban gives considerable momentum to the underlying bill, which includes the Pentagon budget, $24 billion in aid for flood and hurricane victims and $25 billion in loans for Detroit automakers in addition to keeping the government open past the Oct. 1 start of the 2009 budget year.

But Democrats decided not to use the must-pass measure as a battering ram to carry an extension of unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless past White House veto promises, prompting grumbling among some lawmakers. Efforts to boost food stamps and give states billions of dollars to help with Medicaid bills also fell through.

But the measure would double, to $5.2 billion, funding for heating subsidies for the poor, Obey said.

The measure also would provide more than $600 billion to fund the 2009 budgets for the Pentagon, Homeland Security Department and the Veterans Affairs Department. Nine other spending bills for the 2009 budget year starting Oct. 1 remain unfinished.

Bush had threatened to veto bills that don’t cut the number and cost of pet projects known as “earmarks” sought by lawmakers in half from current levels or cause agency operating budgets, taken together, to exceed his request. Obey said, however, the White House would reluctantly sign the measure.

Democrats have shown themselves to have all the spine of a wet noodle. They’ve got control of Congress and yet they’re still letting Republicans have their way? They’re letting the ban on offshore drilling expire even though we know that all the drilling in the world will do next to nothing to help?

Can we fire all these bastards? Something is very, very wrong when you’ve got one party that’s as red as a stoplight and the only alternative to that way of thinking has turned a pretty dark shade of pink.

With all the talk about Sarah Palin and her latest question-evasions, I thought the economy has been getting less than it’s needed share of coverage. After all, just a couple of days ago the stock market was in a crisis, the DOW dropped around 400 points in a day, AIG pretty much went bankrupt, and gold set a record for most gain in a single day by ground from around $740 bucks a troy ounce to $860 a troy ounce.

More Americans are focusing on the economy, a place where John McCain has admitted he sucks at and Sarah Palin has established herself to be incapable of balancing a budget.

So for this crisis, what is Bush’s solution? Set aside 700 billion dollars to buy shit assets without a plan to have that money paid back.

Here, I’ll let you read for yourself.

Bush team, Congress negotiate $700B bailout.

Bush team, Congress negotiate $700B bailout
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writers 33 minutes ago

The Bush administration asked Congress on Saturday for the power to buy $700 billion in toxic assets clogging the financial system and threatening the economy as negotiations began on the largest bailout since the Great Depression.

The rescue plan would give Washington broad authority to purchase bad mortgage-related assets from U.S. financial institutions for the next two years. It does not specify which institutions qualify or what, if anything, the government would get in return for the unprecedented infusion.

Democrats are pressing to require that the plan help more strapped borrowers stay in their homes and to condition the bailout on new limits on executive compensation.

Congressional aides and administration officials are working through the weekend to fill in the details of the proposal. The White House hoped for a deal with Congress by the time markets opened Monday; top lawmakers say they would push to enact the plan as early as the coming week.

“We’re going to work with Congress to get a bill done quickly,” President Bush said at the White House. Without discussing specifics, he said, “This is a big package because it was a big problem.”

The proposal is a mere three pages long, but it gives sweeping powers to the government to dispense gigantic sums of taxpayer dollars in a program that would be sheltered from court review.

“It’s a rather brief bill with a lot of money,” said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., the Banking Committee chairman. “We understand the importance of the anticipation in the markets, but we also know that what we’re doing is going to have consequences for decades to come. There’s not a second act to this — we’ve got to get this right.”

Lawmakers digesting the eye-popping cost and searching for specifics voiced concerns that the proposal offers no help for struggling homeowners or safeguards for taxpayers’ money.

The government must bail out the financial system “because if we don’t, it will have a tremendous impact on American consumers, homeowners, taxpayers and the rest,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in San Francisco.

But, she added, “We cannot deal with this unless this bailout helps families stay in their homes.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. said “we cannot allow ourselves to be in denial about the threat now facing the world economy. From all indications, that threat is real, and the consequences of inaction could be catastrophic. Every single American has a stake in preventing a global financial meltdown.”

The proposal would raise the statutory limit on the national debt from $10.6 trillion to $11.3 trillion to make room for the massive rescue.

“The American people are furious that we’re in this situation, and so am I,” the House’s top Republican, Ohio Rep. John A. Boehner, said in a statement. “We need to do everything possible to protect the taxpayers from the consequences of a broken Washington.”

Signaling what could erupt into a brutal fight with Democrats over add-on spending, Boehner said “efforts to exploit this crisis for political leverage or partisan quid pro quo will only delay the economic stability that families, seniors, and small businesses deserve.”

Bush said he worried the financial troubles “could ripple throughout” the economy and affect average citizens. “The risk of doing nothing far outweighs the risk of the package. … Over time, we’re going to get a lot of the money back.”

He added, “People are beginning to doubt our system, people were losing confidence and I understand it’s important to have confidence in our financial system.”

Neither presidential candidate took a position on the proposal. GOP nominee John McCain said he was awaiting specifics and any changes by Congress.

Democratic rival Barack Obama used the party’s weekly radio address to call for help for Main Street as well as Wall Street.

Their language reflected a tricky balance that politicians in both parties are trying to strike, just six weeks before Election Day: Back a plan that doles out hundreds of billions to companies that made bad bets and still identify with the plight of middle-class voters.

Besides mortgage help and executive compensation limits, Democrats are considering attaching middle-class assistance to the legislation despite a request from Bush to avoid adding items that could delay action. An expansion of jobless benefits was one possibility.

Bush sidestepped questions about the chances of adding such items, saying that now was not the time for posturing. “I think most leaders would understand we need to get this done quickly, and you know, the cleaner the better,” he said about legislation being drafted.

Treasury officials met congressional staff for about two hours on Capitol Hill on Saturday. Discussions centered on how the plan would work, and Democrats proposed adding the executive compensation limits and new foreclosure-prevention measures. Details of those changes were not available Saturday, as staff aides worked to draft them. Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson conferred by phone for about 20 minutes in the afternoon, gauging how the negotiations were unfolding.

Among the key issues up for negotiation is which financial institutions would be eligible for the help. The proposed legislation doesn’t make it clear, leaving open the question of whether hedge funds or pension funds could qualify.

The proposal does not require that the government receive anything from banks in return for unloading their bad assets. But it would allow the Treasury Department to designate financial institutions as “agents of the government,” and mandate that they perform any “reasonable duties” that might entail.

The government could contract with private companies to manage the assets it purchased under the rescue.

Paulson says the government would in essence set up reverse auctions, putting up money for a class of distressed assets — such as loans that are delinquent but not in default — and financial institutions would compete for how little they would accept.

I understand the need for quick action in a case like this, but trying to rush through a bill of 700 BILLION dollars with only two days of debate and thus far no assurances that John Q is gonna be able to keep a roof over his head and little or no stipulations as to getting the money back aside from Bush’s word that “we’ll get a lot of it back over time”? Yeah, considering his track record I’m less than reassured.

Actually, I’m horrified.

Oh, I just loved the part about the national debt. From $10.6 trillion to $11.3 trillion if the bill passes. Whoopie.

In other news; 40 people in a Pakistan hotel were killed by a suicide bomber.

The war’s dragging on, people are dying, Oklahoma has been under a heat advisory for almost over a week solid now, the government is gleefully stripping away our rights on both sides of the isle, and all the other outrages I may have missed have largely been unreported. So I have to ask this question;

Why is it, with all the things Americans should know and be aware of both within our borders and regarding the world at large, that when I turn on CNN I don’t see an article about any of that but a story running about how a 73-year old geezer is the most popular porn star in Japan.

Seriously, CNN, what the fuck?! Why is this news?

First thing I see when Yahoo pops on is this little gem of a story.

Bush to lift executive ban on offshore drilling

By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer 24 minutes ago

In another push to deal with soaring gas prices, President Bush on Monday will lift an executive ban on offshore drilling that his stood since his father was president. But the move, by itself, will do nothing unless Congress acts as well.

The president plans to officially lift the ban and then explain his actions in a Rose Garden statement, White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

There are two prohibitions on offshore drilling, one imposed by Congress and another by executive order signed by former President Bush in 1990. The current president, trying to ease market tensions and boost supply, called last month for Congress to lift its prohibition before he did so himself.

But Perino said Bush no longer wants to wait. She pinned blame on the leaders of the Democratic Congress, noting that no action has been taken on this issue.

“They haven’t even held a single hearing,” Perino said. “So we are going to move forward, and hopefully that will spur action by the Congress.”

Asked if Bush’s action alone will lead to more oil drilling, Perino said, “In terms of allowing more exploration to go forward? No, it does not.”

The president, in his final months of office, has responded to record gas-prices with a series of proposals, including more oil exploration. None would have immediate impact on prices at the pump, according to White House officials, who say there is no quick fix. But starting action now would help, they say.

Bush’s proposal echoes a call by Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, to open the Continental Shelf for exploration. Democrat Barack Obama has opposed the idea and instead argued for helping consumers with a second economic stimulus package including energy rebates, as well as stepped up efforts to develop alternative fuels and more fuel-efficient automobiles.

“If offshore drilling would provide short-term relief at the pump or a long-term strategy for energy independence, it would be worthy of our consideration, regardless of the risks,” spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement. “But most experts, even within the Bush administration, concede it would do neither. It would merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for thirty years.”

Congressional Democrats have rejected the push to lift the drilling moratorium, accusing the president of hoping the U.S. can drill its way out a problem.

Bush says offshore drilling could yield up to 18 billion barrels of oil over time, although it would take years for production to start. Bush also says offshore drilling would take pressure off prices over time. In addition, the president has proposed opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, lifting restrictions on oil shale leasing in the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and easing the regulatory process to expand oil refining capacity.

Congressional Democrats, joined by some GOP lawmakers from coastal states, have opposed lifting the prohibition that has barred energy companies from waters along both the East and West coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. A succession of presidents, from Bush’s father — George H.W. Bush — to Bill Clinton, have sided against drilling in these waters, as has Congress each year for 27 years. Their goal has to been to protect beaches and coastal states’ tourism economies.

Surprise, surprise, an oil barron is gonna lift a ban on offshore drilling and then lay the blame on the Democrats.

“I didn’t wanna do it, they MADE ME do it!” Schoolyard reasoning from our Commander in Theif.

And Obama wants another round of checks? A wonderfully bad idea, if you ask me. Throw money at the problem and see it go straight into the oil companies’ pockets rather than actually providing a meaningful solution to the problem.

At best, I was a half-hearted supporter of Obama’s. I was never overly enthused by him, though there were some periods where I thought I’d be able to call myself an Obama supporter with a measure of dignity. Over the last few weeks, that illusion has been shattered.

For all his talk and all his charm, Obama’s showing me now what I can expect in the future; more of the same old G.W.B. bullshit. As I look on his stances on the FISA amendments and now the faith-based bullshit, I can’t help but be left to reflect on our current situation.

Over the last 8 years, two presidential terms, George Bush has pulled some of the most unlawful actions in American history with impunity. Anything he wanted, he got on a golden platter. Anything illegal he did was turned a blind eye to by those sworn to uphold the rule of the law. I am now convinced that this attitude has forever ruined American politics and will lead us into a new age where corruption runs unchecked.

Obama now knows he’s got a 50-50 chance of getting the presidency and that Americans are pretty pissed at Republicans so the pressure’s pretty well off him now. And he’s been shown that the president can snub his nose at the law and Congress will roll over like the impotent, toothless tiger that it’s become.

And really, what choice do we, the people, have but to grin and bear it? There’s nothing that I know of which can force a reform to the corrupt politicains we now have in office. There’s no third party I can vote for because rarely, if ever, does a third party get on the ballet here in Oklahoma. Any time a third party gets media attention, it seems, it is laughed down until it crawls back under it’s rock.

The only thing I can think of, which I’ve mentioned before, is revoke the guarenteed spots on the ballots for Republicans and Democrats, but I know that won’t happen with the government the way it is now. I honestly want to know what can be done to change the way things are. I know, call my senator and voice my opinion, but even then the shit that shouldn’t be passed through congress is still being passed.

I thought I was going to vote this year, but I’m now seeing myself with the same options as when I thought Hillary Clinton was going to get the nomination; a choice between a Republican and a Republican Lite. Which one will shit on the Constitution less?

Obama, I thought you were the voice of change, I thought you were a voice of hope, but now I see what’s under the sheep’s clothing and I’m not impressed.

Will America ever return to the way it was before Bush got into office?

Are modern pirates still bucklers of swashes?

Why didn’t I get a pony for my 16th birthday?

En lieu of the recent posts on the main blog about the FISA ordeal, I thought I should share this little story I came across when I logged on to Yahoor today.

(Link)

Senate delays eavesdropping vote
By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 39 minutes ago

The Senate on Thursday signaled support for granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the government conduct warrantless eavesdropping, a sign that the contentious provision may be headed for approval next week.

On a strong 60-36 vote, senators rejected an amendment that would have killed the immunity provision and strengthened the powers of a secret court to oversee the surveillance of phone calls and e-mails that involve people inside the United States.

Further action on the legislation was delayed until Monday, pushing Congress closer to a Feb. 1 deadline for enacting a new law. If a new law is not signed by the president by then, some eavesdropping practices that are now legal would be prohibited.

The Bush administration is insisting that any new law also protect from potentially crippling civil lawsuits those telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on Americans after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, R-Nev., blamed Republicans for the delay, saying they were trying to block a series of amendments majority Democrats sought to offer.

“It appears the president and Republicans want failure. They don’t want a bill,” Reid said.

The draft bill, written by the Senate Intelligence Committee, would update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The law, first enacted in 1978, dictates when federal agents must obtain court permission before tapping phone and computer lines inside the United States to gather intelligence on foreign threats. Agents may tap lines outside the country without court oversight.

It was the second time in six weeks the Senate had taken up the FISA modernization bill, only to see action stymied. Reid abruptly closed down debate in December when it became clear the Senate couldn’t finish work before the holiday break.

Most vexing to the intelligence agencies, without an extension of the law the government would return to needing individual court orders to listen in on any communication that passes through U.S. telecommunications switches and computer servers — even those that are between people who are outside the country. This is not required by FISA, according to legal experts, but became the practice over time to provide firms with legal protections.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, and Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., on Thursday proposed extending the existing law for 30 days to buy the Senate additional time to produce a bill. The House completed its version of the bill last fall.

In a move to resolve the immunity issue, the key impasse on the legislation, the White House ended months of resistance Thursday and agreed to give House members access to secret documents about its warrantless wiretapping program.

The Bush administration is trying to persuade the House to agree to retroactively shield from liability those companies that helped the government eavesdrop on Americans without the approval of the FISA court. About 40 such civil lawsuits are pending against telecommunications firms, and the administration says if the cases go forward they could reveal information that would compromise national security. It also contends that the companies could be bankrupted if the lawsuits are successful.

The companies were helping the administration carry out the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, a still-classified effort that intercepted communications on U.S. soil without oversight from the FISA court from Sept. 11, 2001, to Jan. 17, 2007.

Reyes and Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House intelligence panel, requested access to the White House documents in May. House Democrats say they will not support telecom immunity without seeing them first. Some senators were given access to the documents last fall.

The documents include the president’s authorization of warrantless wiretapping, Justice Department legal opinions going back to 2001, and the requests sent to the telecommunications companies asking for their assistance.

I’m trying really hard to be surprised these days…really hard…

I’m still lazy, so here’s another comic;

I should make a big noteworthy post, being the first one after the record ice storm came through my town, but I’d rather post a comic:

A follow-up to the story of the Saudi government punishing a rape victem located here.

News Article

Saudis defend punishment for rape victim
Wed Nov 21, 9:19 AM ET

The Saudi judiciary on Tuesday defended a court verdict that sentenced a 19-year-old victim of a gang rape to six months in jail and 200 lashes because she was with an unrelated male when they were attacked.

The Shiite Muslim woman had initially been sentenced to 90 lashes after being convicted of violating Saudi Arabia’s rigid Islamic law requiring segregation of the sexes.

But in considering her appeal of the verdict, the Saudi General Court increased the punishment. It also roughly doubled prison sentences for the seven men convicted of raping the woman, Saudi news media said last week.

The reports triggered an international outcry over the Saudis punishing the victim of a terrible crime.

But the Ministry of Justice stood by the verdict Tuesday, saying that “charges were proven” against the woman for having been in a car with a man who was not her relative.

The ministry implied the victim’s sentence was increased because she spoke out to the press. “For whoever has an objection on verdicts issued, the system allows an appeal without resorting to the media,” said the statement, which was carried on the official Saudi Press Agency.

The attack occurred in 2006. The victim says she was in a car with a male student she used to know trying to retrieve a picture of her. She says two men got into the car and drove them to a secluded area where she was raped by seven men. Her friend also was assaulted.

Justice in Saudi Arabia is administered by a system of religious courts according to the kingdom’s strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Judges have wide discretion in punishing criminals, rules of evidence are vague and sometimes no defense lawyer is present. The result, critics say, are sentences left to the whim of judges. A rapist, for instance, could receive anywhere from a light sentence to death.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack avoided directly criticizing the Saudi judiciary over the case, but said the verdict “causes a fair degree of surprise and astonishment.”

“It is within the power of the Saudi government to take a look at the verdict and change it,” McCormack said.

Canada’s minister for women’s issues, Jose Verger, has called the sentence “barbaric.”

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said the verdict “not only sends victims of sexual violence the message that they should not press charges, but in effect offers protection and impunity to the perpetrators.”

I’m sorry, but you can try to make any excuse you want to explain away this type of behavior but I can’t view this sort of thing as anything less than the most outrageous, disgusting, immoral perversion of justice that I’ve seen in a very, very long time.

Every so often I’ll see something that can fill me with such disgust and outrage it becomes difficult to express my feelings. This is one of those times.

And to anyone who claims that the members and writers of Irregular Times give Islam a free ride while harping on Christianity, I’m about to prove you wong.

Female rape victim gets 200 lashes and jail
From correspondents in Riyadh
November 16, 2007 07:15am

A COURT in the ultra-conservative Islamic kingdom of Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail.
The 19-year-old woman - whose six armed attackers have been sentenced to jail terms - was initially ordered to undergo 90 lashes for “being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape,” the Arab News reported.

But in a new verdict issued after Saudi Arabia’s Higher Judicial Council ordered a retrial, the court in the eastern town of Al-Qatif more than doubled the number of lashes to 200.

A court source told the English-language Arab News that the judges had decided to punish the woman further for “her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media.”

Saudi Arabia enforces a strict Islamic doctrine known as Wahhabism and forbids unrelated men and women from associating with each other, bans women from driving and forces them to cover head-to-toe in public.

Last year, the court sentenced six Saudi men to between one and five years in jail for the rape as well as ordering lashes for the victim, a member of the minority Shi’ite community.

But the woman’s lawyer Abdul Rahman al-Lahem appealed, arguing that the punishments were too lenient in a country where the offence can carry the death penalty.

In the new verdict issued on Wednesday, the Al-Qatif court also toughened the sentences against the six men to between two and nine years in prison.

The case has angered members of Saudi Arabia’s Shi’ite community. The convicted men are Sunni Muslims, the dominant community in the oil-rich Gulf state.

Mr Lahem, also a human rights activist, said yesterday the court had banned him from handling the rape case and withdrew his licence to practise law because he challenged the verdict.

He said he has also been summoned by the ministry of justice to appear before a disciplinary committee in December.

Mr Lahem said the move might be due to his criticism of some judicial institutions, and “contradicts King Abdullah’s quest to introduce reform, especially in the justice system.”

King Abdullah last month approved a new body of laws regulating the judicial system in Saudi Arabia, which rules on the basis of sharia, or Islamic law.

This is the kind of people who the USA supports. We’re allies with Saudi Arabia even though the majority of the terrorists who hijacked the planes on 9/11 were from there and we’re even sending them military equipment.

When I first read this, I admit, I found I could easily renounce an anti-violence ideal if it meant I could deal some Old Testament type punishment on the people involved with this story, but right now it’s making me feel sick to my stomach.

Religion of peace my achin’ ass.

I’ve been browsing through some fundamentalist religious quotes on Fundies Say The Darndest Things and from what I can tell most of those quotes can be broken up into five basic categories:

-Anti-Evolution
-Anti-Homosexuality
-Anti-Abortion
-Anti-other religions
-Miscellaneous

Now, while I could go and tackle each and every one of those points and their reasons behind them, I want to focus on the Anti-Homo part of it during this entry.

I’ve heard many justifications for this type of bigotry and they’ve come in many forms from calm explanations to near hysterical SHOUTING IN ALL CAPS-LOCK!!!1!111!!

But whatever form it takes on it always seems to come back to one thing: “Its an abomination against God” and to support this stance and their own bigotry they’ll site Leviticus 18:22. However most of these same people, when you point anything else out they’ll say that the New Testament did away with the Old Testament and therefore the Old Testament is now invalid. Except, just now to confirm what I was already pretty sure of, I looked up the book of Leviticus, and guess what I found?

Leviticus is a part of the Old Testament.

Now, rather than use the point of eating shell-fish to counter their argument and show them as hypocrites, I’m just going to start pointing out what they already believe; that Jesus’ sacrifice rendered the Old Testament obsolete (seeing as they seem so intent on ignoring Matthew 5:18-19 and Luke 16:17 when it suits them) and that therefore Homosexuality must be just fine so long as those damn homos except Jesus as their savior. After all, the Old Testament is invalid according to them, right?

Now, if they somehow claim that homosexuality is a sin and yet the Old Testament is still void, I feel I’d be well justified in pointing out their hypocrisy.

Tonight I was researching various topics on paganism and ancient revivalism when I came across a Wikipedia article about a group of pagans in Greece who were trying to gain equal rights in the eyes of the Greek government. It seems that prior to 2006, all religions except Christianity, Judaism and Islam had been banned. An Athenian court seems to have overruled that.

The story regarding this can be found here (I may post a separate diary entry about this later).

When I read about their desire to be allowed to worship in the Parthenon, I looked it up on Wikipedia for clarification. The article listed pollution hazards and I found myself curious enough to read on. It seems that acid rain from the growth of Athens and the exhaust from cars has caused irreparable damage to the sculptures in the Parthenon.

Pollution is a bad thing, not only for the harm it does to ourselves and our environment but for the harm it does to our history. When historical landmarks and wonders of the ancient world are threatened by our pollution, isn’t it time to do something?

I see this and then I see conservatives calling for less restraints put on pollution control and I find it hard to believe that they could be so caviler and arrogant not to see the harm that is already happening. Is there nothing at all more important than grabbing for that extra dollar?

‘lo and behold, what do I find when I wake up and log into Yahoo this morning?

(link)

Bush vetoes water projects bill
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer 22 minutes ago

An increasingly confrontational President Bush on Friday vetoed a bill authorizing hundreds of popular water projects even though lawmakers can count enough votes to override him.

Bush brushed aside significant objections from Capitol Hill, even from Republicans, in thwarting legislation that provides money for projects like repairing hurricane damage, restoring wetlands and preventing flooding in communities across the nation.

This level of opposition virtually assured that Bush would have a veto overridden for the first time in his presidency. He has used the veto very sparingly for most of the time he has been in office, but has made more use of it recently.

“When we override this irresponsible veto, perhaps the president will finally recognize that Congress is an equal branch of government and reconsider his many other reckless veto threats,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

“More than two years after failing to respond to the devastation and destruction of Hurricane Katrina, he is refusing to fund important projects guided by the Army Corps of Engineers that are essential to protecting the people of the Gulf Coast region.”

The $23 billion water bill passed in both chambers of Congress by well more than the two-thirds majority needed to vacate a veto and make the bill law.

Bush objected to the $9 billion in projects added during negotiations between the House and Senate. He hoped that his action, even though it is sure not to hold, would cast him as a friend to conservatives who demand a tighter rein on federal spending.

But Bush never vetoed spending bills under the Republican Congress, despite budgetary increases then, too. Attempting to demonstrate fiscal toughness now, in the seventh year of his presidency, carried the risk being criticized for doing too little, too late or as waging a transparently partisan attack against the Democrats who now run Capitol Hill.

The president took the gamble, making it part of a broader effort to more pointedly and frequently take on Democratic leaders.

The legislation originally approved by the Senate would have cost $14 billion and the House version would have totaled $15 billion. Bush and a few Republicans complained that the final version was larded with unneeded pet projects pushed by individual lawmakers — sending the overall cost of the bill much higher.

“Only in Washington could the House take a $14 billion bill into a conference with the Senate’s $15 billion bill and emerge with a compromise that costs taxpayers over $23 billion,” said White House press secretary Dana Perino.

She also said Bush vetoed the bill because it is “fiscally irresponsible” and falls outside the scope of the Army Corps’ mission.

Critics noted that the bill piles more work on the Army Corps of Engineers, which already has a backlog of $58 billion worth of projects and an annual budget of only about $2 billion to address them.

If Bush is overridden, the measure would give a green light to projects in virtually every state. It only authorizes the projects; the actual funding must be approved separately.

The authorizations include:

_$3.6 billion for major wetlands and other coastal restoration, flood control and dredging projects for Louisiana, a state where coastal erosion and storms have resulted in the disappearance of huge areas of land;

_nearly $2 billion for the restoration of the Florida Everglades;

_nearly $2 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers to build seven new locks on the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers;

_$7 billion for various projects related to hurricane mitigation in Mississippi and Louisiana, including assuring 100-year levee protection in New Orleans;

_hundreds of smaller dredging, wetlands restoration and flood control projects across the country.

The Congressional Budget office says the bill includes projects that, if fully funded, would cost $11.2 billion over the next four years and $12 billion in the decade after that. The bill also calls for increased oversight of the Corps, requiring an outside review of water construction projects.

The veto was Bush’s fifth. Four of those have come since Democrats took over Congress in January, but this one was unusual because it also pits the president against a sizable number of lawmakers from his own party. Previous Bush vetoes include two of bills allowing expanded federal research using embryonic stem cells, and a spending bill that would have required troop withdrawals from Iraq.

Last month, Bush vetoed a major expansion of a children’s health insurance program, also over objections from some Republicans. But he has far more partisan unity on that issue than on the water projects bill. It was the first time Bush went into a veto knowing it was a futile effort. This turns the tables somewhat on him, as he has been criticizing Democrats almost daily for wasting time by passing legislation they knew he would not accept.

Isn’t it funny that now that there’s a Democratic majority in Congress Bush is finally taking the packaging off his veto pen? Ain’t it also funny that Bush considers things that will cost around 14 billion over the next 14 years to help fix some badly needed things is “fiscally irresponsible” and yet I just found an article that report economists are speculating that the war in Iraq could balloon to over $1 TRILLION dollars. Whether that is true or not that same article is reporting that the daily cost is over $200 million a day.

Which is fiscally irresponsible? Adding in things to help protect American citizens from natural disasters and restore the environment for $14 billion, or continue an occupation of a foreign nation that serves as nothing but a black hole for the economy and is turning this into the most expensive military campaign in American history?

You want to be fiscally responsible? Pull troops out of Iraq and STOP GIVING TAX BREAKS TO COMPANIES FOR OUTSOURCING AMERICAN JOBS!

I fear the title of this entry may be misleading but this is something that’s interested me for the last minute and a half.

A while back a article was written on the main page about British claiming territory in Antarctica (link) and was subsequently followed up in a diary by Iroquois (link) but a short while ago I found myself reflecting on the amusement I had partaken in that little gambit.

One of the things I got to thinking about was, what if I really did have a nation in Antarctica as well as everyone else who claimed territory there in the original posting? Granted my own nation wouldn’t end up taking up half the continent, but that’s beside the point.

Now I’m going to sit back and think about what kind of government I would found and what kind of policies would be set up and I’m going to try and be as thorough as I can (including little selfish items I’d like to have).

Now, I and a group of people along with myself arrive on Antarctica with one old ship, possibly a surplus World War 2 era U.S. cruiser, which I’ll call the Avalon and two very large wooden square-rigged merchant ships full of supplies which we’ll call the Achilles and the Soyuz (if any of you have a problem with this so far, eat me, this is MY story). We crack through a narrow area in the ice and arrive on land. I go ashore and plant my flag, my new nation has just been founded.

Let me start off with the basics.
- New Atlantis (in lieu of a better name)
- Government type: Representative Democratic Socialism
- Capitol Location: 63°14′5.02″S 57°15′25.15″W
- Draft a Constitution

Okay, we’ve got that out of the way, what’s first on the agenda? Well, we’re in Antarctica, and its cold. There’s very little (near nothing) by way of materials for construction and industry (unless we live in igloos) and we’ve gotta build a shelter of some sort. What are my options and what do we have at our disposal?

The ships are jam packed with cold weather gear, food, and various tools. However, the only materials we have to build with are the ships themselves. One of the first things I’d order would be one of the ships be dismantled and the wood used to construct living facilities. any piece of wood that can’t be used in constructing will be set aside for firewood.

- Dismantle the Soyuz, construct five communal living quarters and smaller storage sheds.

The sails from the ship will be stripped and used for extra blankets. For now, the Avalon will be used as a Capitol building.

Second on the agenda, food is looking good so far, but without being resupplied we will soon run out and be forced into cannibalism. I’d have to open contact with other nations and ask for help until we can become self sustaining. One of the first things to be purchased from a neighboring nation would have to be greenhouse equipment and plant seeds.

- Open contact with a close-by nation and request supplies.

Third on the agenda, crops are growing nicely and we even have some surplus. So, we trade them to a small nation for extra building supplies and solar generators. With the supplies we get we’ll construct further living quarters and greenhouse facilities.

- Secure further building materials and power-sources.

Now, some of my citizens will be growing restless at this time, so the next thing to do would be to send the Achilles along the coast and send a few people inland to scout possible sites for mining various ores that can be traded or sold. we can only last on the dependency of others for so long, so one of the top priorities of mine would be to find a way to make my nation economically stable. Because Antarctica is a vast frozen tract of nothingness, the only way to be able to do that would be to dig.

- Locate possible minerals for extracting.

Its been a while now and the Achilles has since returned as well as a number of the scouting parties. There are a few sites that can provide limited mining, but on the whole little else. After a time, enough revenue can be acquired from these mineral deposits to allow for the construction of larger living facilities as well as a general store with the next supply shipment to arrive on the Achilles from its last journey from Chile.

- Construct general store and further living facilities, try to allow more room for the citizens to expect some measure of privacy.

Soon I find a piece of mail on my desk aboard the Avalon from the French government requesting to set up a long-term research outpost in my nation. Apparently the conditions they’re looking to study are localized within my borders. With this comes an idea, I’ll rent them the land and make available to them my facilities at a low price. With this comes the added revenue of whatever the researches buy at my general store.

- Rent land to foreign nation for research purposes.

Now I have a steady income and I can afford another building, this time well stocked with research equipment. And because of the location of my nation and my capitol on the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, I am in a position which places New Atlantis at a near highway for researchers traveling to various outposts in Antarctica and I’m starting to see an economic growth as scientists and researchers stop off to reequip themselves and spend a few nights in a warm bed in one of my new hotels. With this influx of visitors I’m finding more immigrants arriving and my capitol is starting to expand.

- Begin building more commercial areas, start laying down a concrete road system.
- Construct a solar and wind generated power plant.

Next thing I find is that I am being advised to start collecting official taxes and begin providing public services.

- Found the first official police department, fire department, hospital, educational system and set up a tax collectors office.

As more ships arrive on a regular basis and with the Avalon now firmly iced in I have to find a way to keep the waterways clear. After contacting a foreign nation to purchase a surplus icebreaker, I’ll have to consult with my city engineers about building a port to properly receive new ships.

- Build a harbor to allow easier loading and unloading of supplies, equipment, and personnel as well as an airport.

Now as my capitol grows, settlers are migrating outwards along the coat and founding new cities and finally I am faced with the growing need to build a military force to counter the acts of piracy that we’ve been experiencing along the trade routs. Currently my only form of defense is the Avalon but it is still being used as the administrative facility for my government. Beside the port I commission the construction of a drydock as well as the design and construction of three medium sized destroyers and two new cruisers.

- Found a Navy

The new cruisers are given the names USNA Vostok and USNA Lafayette while the destroyers are given the names USNA Tesla, USNA Cousteau, and USNA Scotia. As the Vostok, Cousteau, and Tesla are patrolling the shipping lanes and the Lafayette and the Scotia are anchored outside the harbor, I decide its best to put the drydock to further use and commission the construction of two large research vessels named the NAR Discovery and the NAR Endeavour and send them to conduct research at the behest of my scientific advisers.

- Begin scientific research into arctic conditions.

As my nation grows further I find more issues start to arise, including establishing an embassy and lobbying for entry into the United Nations. Also I find the need to establish a standing army and a space program.

- Contact Heckler & Koch, purchase 50 G36E assault rifles and 50 H&K416 assault rifles for a 100 man army.
- Construct space facility and reusable space vehicles.

This is just some of what I would do should I found my own Antarctic nation, just talking about some of the ways I would get things started. What would you do with your nation?

I really didn’t think they could be this out of touch with the American people.

GOP Rivals Argue Who’s Most Conservative

GOP rivals argue who’s most conservative
By LIBBY QUAID, Associated Press WriterMon Oct 22, 6:31 PM ET

Republican front-runners Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney defended their conservative credentials in the face of pointed attacks from campaign rivals Sunday night in the most aggressive debate to date of the race for the White House.

“You’ve just spent the last year trying to fool people about your record. I don’t want you to start fooling them about mine,” Arizona Sen. John McCain bluntly told Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.

Former Sen. Fred Thompson made Giuliani his target, saying the former New York mayor supported federal funding for abortion, gun control and havens for illegal immigrants.

“He sides with Hillary Clinton on each of those issues,” added Thompson, referring to the New York Democrat who leads in the polls for her party’s presidential nomination.

The clashes in the early moments of a 90-minute debate prompted former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to say he wanted no part of a “demolition derby” with others of his own party. “What I’m interested in is fighting for the American people.”

Whatever their disagreements among one another, the eight rivals agreed on one issue. They took turns criticizing Clinton, the Democratic front-runner.

Asked whether she was fit to be commander in chief, Romney replied, “I’d vote no.”

Giuliani said he agreed with one thing the former first lady said recently. “I have a million ideas. America cannot afford them all,” he quoted her as saying as laughter filled the debate hall. “I’m not making it up.”

McCain said Clinton had recently tried to spend $1 million on a Woodstock Museum, commemorating perhaps the most famous counterculture event of the 1960s.

“Now my friends I wasn’t there. I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event,” he said.

“I was tied up at the time,” he deadpanned, and the audience rose to applaud the reference to the five and a half years McCain spent as a prisoner of war during Vietnam.

The debate was the first since Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas dropped out of the race, winnowing the field. The remaining rivals stood on a stage at a resort 10 miles from Walt Disney World, fielding questions at an event broadcast by Fox News Channel.

The leadoff Iowa caucuses are scheduled for Jan. 3, 2008, for Republicans. In their most recent debate, Oct. 9, Giuliani and Romney swapped charges with each other, vying for primacy in the race.

This time they largely ignored each other. Instead, Giuliani’s lead in the nation polls, as well as Romney’s perceived strength in early voting states, made them obvious targets for McCain and Thompson.

The first question went to Giuliani, asked whether he was more conservative than Thompson. “I can’t comment on Fred,” the former mayor said.

He then added that he had brought down crime, cleaned up Times Square, cut taxes and eliminated the city’s deficits. “I think that was a pretty darned good conservative record,” he said.

Giuliani took a more conservative position on gay marriage than he has thus far, saying he would support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage if states begin to legalize it.

Giuliani lived with an openly gay couple after separating from his second wife, Donna Hanover, and one member of the couple said at the time that Giuliani promised to marry them if gay marriage was ever legalized.

Attacked by the former Tennessee senator moments later, Giuliani fired back at his antagonist. “Fred has problems, too,” he said. He said Thompson was the “single biggest obstacle” in the Senate to legislation limiting the ability of individuals filing lawsuits to recover unlimited damages.

“He stood with the Democrats over and over again” on the issue, Giuliani added.

Thompson said he believed states should decide whether to limit lawsuits in their own states.

Republicans in Congress tried for years to pass legislation that would cap damages in lawsuits, but never succeeded before losing their majority to Democrats in 2006.

Romney was asked about McCain’s earlier claims that he had shifted positions on a number of issues to appeal to conservative Republicans.

The former Massachusetts governor responded that he was proud of his record, particularly since the state had an overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature. “I fought to make sure we kept our taxes down. I fought for pro-growth strategies. I cut taxes,” he said.

Moments later, though, McCain personally turned on Romney.

“Governor Romney, you’ve been spending the last year trying to fool people about your record. I don’t want you to start fooling them about mine,” he said.

Saying he would run on his record as a conservative, McCain added, “I don’t think you can fool the American people. I think the first thing you’d need is their respect.”

Coming up next, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain debate the looming threat of of a domino effect of the Red Menace. Stay tuned!

Kind of scary when you think about it.

Link

70 Punished in Accidental B-52 Flight
By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press WriterFri Oct 19, 7:58 PM ET

The Air Force said Friday it would punish 70 airmen involved in the accidental, cross-country flight of a nuclear-armed B-52 bomber following an investigation that found widespread disregard for the rules on handling such munitions.

“There has been an erosion of adherence to weapons-handling standards at Minot Air Force Base and Barksdale Air Force Base,” said Maj. Gen. Richard Newton, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations.

Newton was announcing the results of a six-week probe into the Aug. 29-30 incident in which the B-52 was inadvertently armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and flown from Minot in North Dakota to Barksdale in Louisiana without anyone noticing the mistake for more than a day.

The missiles were supposed to be taken to Louisiana, but the warheads were supposed to have been removed beforehand.

A main reason for the error was that crews had decided not to follow a complex schedule under which the status of the missiles is tracked while they are disarmed, loaded, moved and so on, one official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

The airmen replaced the schedule with their own “informal” system, he said, though he didn’t say why they did that nor how long they had been doing it their own way.

“This was an unacceptable mistake and a clear deviation from our exacting standards,” Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne said at a Pentagon press conference with Newton. “We hold ourselves accountable to the American people and want to ensure proper corrective action has been taken.”

Newton acknowledged that the Air Force needs to “restore the confidence” lost among the American people after the August incident, which raised questions about the safety of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

“We are making all appropriate changes to ensure this has a minimal chance of ever happening again,” Wynne said.

Newton said the flight in question resulted from an “unprecedented string of procedural errors,” beginning with a failure by airmen to conduct a required inspection of the missiles before they were loaded aboard the B-52 bomber at Minot. The crew flying the plane was unaware nuclear warheads were on its wing, though it wasn’t explained what role they played in the mistake.

Highest among those to be punished are four officers who were relieved this week of their commands, including the 5th Bomb Wing commander at Minot — Col. Bruce Emig, who also has been the base commander since June.

In addition, the wing has been “decertified from its wartime mission,” Newton said.

Some 65 airmen have been decertified from handling nuclear weapons. The certification process looks at a person’s psychological profile, any medications they are taking and other factors in determining a person’s reliability to handle weapons.

After it was loaded with the missiles, the B-52 sat overnight at Minot, flew the next morning to Louisiana, and then sat on a tarmac again for hours before anyone noticed the nuclear warheads.

Newton avoided repeated questions on what extra security would have been required if crews had known the nuclear weapons were on the plane. But another official later said privately that security was increased as soon as the nuclear warheads were discovered.

The Air Combat Command ordered a command-wide stand-down — instituted base by base and completed Sept. 14 — to set aside time for personnel to review procedures, officials said.

The incident was so serious that it required President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to be quickly informed.

Wynne prefaced his remarks about the B-52 incident by saying that, in publicly confirming that nuclear weapons were involved, he had authorized a one-time exception to U.S. policy, which states that the location of nuclear weapons will never be confirmed publicly. He said he made this exception because of the seriousness of the episode and its importance to the nation.

The weapon involved was the Advanced Cruise Missile, a “stealth” weapon developed in the 1980s with the ability to evade detection by Soviet radar. The Air Force said in March that it had decided to retire the Advanced Cruise Missile fleet soon, and officials said after the breach that the missiles were being flown to Barksdale for decommissioning.

___

On the Net:

Air Combat Command: http://www.acc.af.mil

Have we had nuclear weapons for so long our military is becoming caviler in regards to their handling?

Bush veto of child health bill sustained
By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago

House Democrats on Thursday failed to override President Bush’s veto of their pre-election year effort to expand a popular government health insurance program to cover 10 million children.

The bill had bipartisan support, but the 273-156 roll call was 13 votes short of the two-thirds majority that supporters needed to enact the bill into law over Bush’s objections. The bill had passed the Senate with a veto-proof margin.

The State Children’s Health Insurance Program now subsidizes coverage for about 6 million children at a cost of about $5 billion a year. The vetoed bill would have added 4 million more children, most from low-income families, at a cost of $7 billion annually. About 600,000 adults also participate in the program.

To pay for the spending increase, the bill would have raised the federal tax on cigarettes from 39 cents to $1 a pack.

“This is not about an issue. It’s about a value,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said just before the vote. “For the cost of less than 40 days in Iraq, we can provide SCHIP coverage for 10 million children for one year.”

Forty-four Republicans voted to override Bush’s veto; that was one fewer than the number of GOP members who voted Sept. 25 to pass the bill. Only two Democrats voted to sustain Bush’s veto, compared with six who had voted against the bill. The two were Reps. Jim Marshall of Georgia and Gene Taylor of Mississippi.

“We won this round on SCHIP,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said. She said a million-dollar lobbying campaign by several labor unions and advocacy groups to turn enough Republican votes for a successful override did not work.

Bush, anticipating that the veto would stand, has assigned three top advisers, including Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, to try to negotiate a new deal with Congress.

“It’s now time for us to get to the hard work of finding a solution and get SCHIP reauthorized,” Leavitt said. “We also have a larger task, to provide every American with the means of having an insurance policy.”

Republican opponents of the bill said it would encourage too many middle-income families to substitute government-subsidized insurance for their private insurance. The bill would have given states financial incentives to cover families with incomes up to three times the federal poverty level — $61,950 for a family of four.

“That’s not low-income. That’s a majority of households in America,” said Rep. Wally Herger, R-Calif.

The bill said that illegal immigrants would remain ineligible for the children’s program, but Republicans seized on a section that would have allowed families to provide a Social Security number to indicate citizenship. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said it is too easy to get a false number, which would give an opening for thousands of illegal immigrants to enroll.

But Democrats said the bill’s original focus remained intact. States would earn bonuses for signing up low-income children already eligible for the program but not enrolled.

“Under current law, these boys and girls are entitled to their benefits,” said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich. “Continuing to not provide them with coverage is a travesty.”

Bush has recommended a $1 billion annual increase, bringing total spending over five years to $30 billion — half the level called for in the bill that he vetoed.

Some public opinion polls indicate support for expanding the program. Sixty-one percent said Congress should override Bush’s veto of a bill expanding the program, according to a CNN-Opinion Research Corp. poll released Wednesday. Blacks were more likely than whites to favor overriding Bush’s veto.

___

On the Net:

Information on the bill, H.R. 976, can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov/

(This version CORRECTS in the second paragraph `two-thirds that majority supporters’ to `two-thirds majority that supporters …’)

Yeah, here’s a surprise.

I still find republican hypocrisy rather amusing. It’d be downright funny if it didn’t harm so many people.

I caught this when I came online today and it got me to grin a bit.

[b]Dems: Override children’s health veto[/b]
By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 51 minutes ago

Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana asked his colleagues on Saturday to override President Bush’s veto of legislation that would expand a popular children’s health insurance program.

“Every Republican must decide whether they will stand with the president and his veto, or stand with our children and their right to a healthy future,” Baucus said in his party’s weekly radio address.

House Democrats have scheduled for this week a vote to override the president’s veto of legislation that would increase spending for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program by $35 billion over five years. Bush has called for a $5 billion increase.

The effort is not expected to succeed. An override requires a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate, and the earlier House vote fell about two dozen votes short. The Senate approved the increase by a veto-proof margin.

The program provides health insurance to children in families with incomes too great for Medicaid eligibility but not enough to afford private insurance. Bush has said the bill is too costly, goes beyond the program’s original intent and shifts too much insurance burden onto the government rather than private providers.

Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Tuesday that Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt had called him seeking to compromise on the bill, but he refused.

“We want to prevail,” Baucus said then.

He said Saturday that the president is telling millions of parents that they don’t deserve the same basic care for their kids that Bush had for his.

Are the Democrats finally growing a spine? Maybe not, but I still hope they can override this veto.

For a few years now I’ve had slight tinnitus. For those of you who have never heard of it, tinnitus is a ringing in the ear caused by exposure to unnatural loud noises and it can vary in intensity from just being perceptible in total silence to nearly or totally deafening. The mechanisms that cause this ringing are often torn fibers, called cochlear hair cells, in the eardrum. Its not a romanticized ailment like cancer or AIDS and is thus not well known but it is very prevalent to the point that about one in four people have reported a ringing of the ears. Its not a ringing that stops, and you can’t block it out because its not an external sound.

For years there has been no cure. For the better part of 30 or 40 years my dad has lived with it and has often said that in any given situation it is the loudest thing he can hear. When my ears started ringing after a concert about four or five years ago he told me there was nothing to be done and I’d just have to live with it. Back then I refused to believe there was nothing to be done because he hadn’t followed up on any medical advancements made since he was told about it.

Recently I found that there are things that can be done for it but I’ve also found that the next problem I’m facing is finding a doctor that even knows about tinnitus, even among audiologists. My dad has lived under the impression for so long that nothing can be done that he refuses to believe that nothing still can be done, even after finding a clinic in which they told him things can be done.

Now, a few hours ago I read an article that tells how stem cells can be used to stimulate the growth of cochlear hair cells in mice. With further research this could lead to a possible cure for things like tinnitus. This is an example of how Bush’s continued ban on stem cell research directly affects Americans. Not just a few, but one in four. People might ask me how a stem cell ban will affect me, and I can tell them that it deprives me of my right to silence.

Bush: Kids’ health care will get vetoed

By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 4 minutes ago

President Bush again called Democrats “irresponsible” on Saturday for pushing an expansion he opposes to a children’s health insurance program.

“Democrats in Congress have decided to pass a bill they know will be vetoed,” Bush said of the measure that draws significant bipartisan support, repeating in his weekly radio address an accusation he made earlier in the week. “Members of Congress are risking health coverage for poor children purely to make a political point.”

At issue is the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a state-federal program that subsidizes health coverage for low-income people, mostly children, in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private coverage. It expires Sept. 30.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers announced a proposal Friday that would add $35 billion over five years to the program, adding 4 million people to the 6.6 million already participating. It would be financed by raising the federal cigarette tax by 61 cents to $1 per pack.

The idea is overwhelmingly supported by Congress’ majority Democrats, who scheduled it for a vote Tuesday in the House. It has substantial Republican support as well.

But Bush has promised a veto, saying the measure is too costly, unacceptably raises taxes, extends government-covered insurance to children in families who can afford private coverage, and smacks of a move toward completely federalized health care. He has asked Congress to pass a simple extension of the current program while debate continues, saying it’s children who will suffer if they do not.

“Our goal should be to move children who have no health insurance to private coverage — not to move children who already have private health insurance to government coverage,” Bush said.

The bill’s backers have vigorously rejected Bush’s claim it would steer public money to families that can readily afford health insurance, saying their goal is to cover more of the millions of uninsured children. The bill would provide financial incentives for states to cover their lowest-income children first, they said.

Many governors want the flexibility to expand eligibility for the program. So the proposal would overturn recent guidelines from the administration making it difficult for states to steer CHIP funds to families with incomes exceeding 250 percent of the official poverty level.

You heard it, folks. Bush keeps flappin’ his gums about how important the kids are but when it comes right down to it what is his message?

Fuck the little bastards.

I caught this on Yahoo news a couple minutes ago and once again I find myself angry and indignant with our appointed leader. I would say that it’s hard to believe, but then again unless it’s something to help save lives or improve quality of life he’ll rubber stamp it. Get troops out of Iraq? Research to save lives? Can’t have that now, can we?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070620/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_stem_cells

Bush to Veto Stem Cell Bill

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer 13 minutes ago

Pushing back against the Democratic-led Congress, President Bush intends to veto a bill Wednesday that would have eased restraints on federally funded embryonic stem cell research — work that supporters say holds promise for fighting disease.

At the same time, Bush will issue an executive order directing the Health and Human Services Department to promote research into cells that, like human embryonic stem cells, also hold the potential of regenerating into different types of cells that could help treat illness.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Tuesday that Bush would outline an initiative that could make federal funding available for research on additional “pluripotent” stem cells — ones that can give rise to any kind of cell in the body except those required to develop a fetus.

The president has accused majority Democrats of recycling an old measure that he already vetoed and argued that the bill would mean American taxpayers would — for the first time — be compelled to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos.

“The president supports and encourages stem cell research — including using embryonic lines — as long as it does not involve creating, harming or destroying embryos,” Fratto said. “That is an ethical line that should not be crossed.”

Democrats made the legislation a top priority when they took control of the House and Senate in January, but they don’t have enough votes to override Bush’s decision.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid appealed to Bush on Tuesday not to veto the bill. He said the measure acknowledges the ethical issues at stake and offers even stronger research guidelines than exist under the president’s current policy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used Bush’s veto threat as a reason to send out an e-mail letter soliciting contributions to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to help elect more Democrats.

“By vetoing a bill that expands stem cell research, the president will say `no’ to the more than 70 percent of Americans who support it, `no’ to our Democratic Congress’ fight for progress, and `no’ to saving lives and to potential cures for diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson’s,” Pelosi wrote. “He will say `no’ to hope.”

In light of the veto, Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who planned to be at the White House event, sought support for a stem cell bill he is sponsoring. It has passed the Senate but has not yet been taken up by the House.

“My stem cell bill, which passed the Senate with broad bipartisan support, offers a clear alternative for our colleagues in the House to significantly expand federally funded stem cell research, while ensuring no taxpayer dollars are used for the destruction of human embryos,” Coleman said.

Coleman urged Democrats who favored the bill Bush was to veto to get behind his legislation.

“Those who support the stem cell research bill … are at a definitive crossroads,” he said. “Do they seek to advance lifesaving research for millions of Americans suffering from serious disease or do they, in fact, prefer to keep stem cell research at a political stalemate? ”

This will be the third veto of Bush’s presidency. His first occurred last year when he rejected legislation to allow funding of additional lines of embryonic stem cells — a measure that passed over the objections of Republicans then in control. Earlier this year, he vetoed legislation that would have set timetables for U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq.

Opponents of the latest stem cell measure insisted that the use of embryonic stem cells was the wrong approach on moral grounds — and possibly not even the most promising one scientifically. They cite breakthroughs involving medical research conducted with adult stem cells, umbilical cord blood and amniotic fluid, none of which involve the destruction of a human embryo.

The science aside, the issue has weighty political implications.

Public opinion polls show strong support for the research, and it could return as an issue in the 2008 elections.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared in Hanover, N.H., this week with a child who has diabetes and a paralyzed 23-year-old to urge Bush not to veto the bill. Last month, the issue was a topic at a debate with Republican presidential hopefuls in California.

The bill Bush is vetoing passed Congress on June 7, drawing the support of 210 House Democrats and 37 Republicans. That was 35 votes fewer than needed to override a veto. The Senate cleared the bill earlier by a margin that was one vote shy of the two-thirds needed to overcome Bush’s objections.

According to the National Institutes of Health Web site, scientists were first able to conduct research with embryonic stem cells in 1998. There were no federal funds for the work until Bush announced on Aug. 9, 2001, that his administration would make the funds available for lines of cells that already were in existence.

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.

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.

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.

Well I’ve gone for a vacation to see my friends in the United Kingdom and have since returned home to the USA. What have I found out on my trip there? Lots of big things (rationality for the most part) and some small things (including tax in the listed prices). I’ve found different attitudes as well; people don’t feel a need to run their mouths like Americans do while at the same time I didn’t feel ignored like I do walking down the streets in the USA. It’s really a change from the things I’m used to. Statistically I believe the UK has more CCTV cameras than any other nation in Europe and yet I didn’t feel like I was being spied upon like I do here in the USA. These are things people don’t usually think about until they see a new country.

But there are other topics I’d like to talk about; a couple of which I’m sure will get the CIA on my ass.

When I got home I found a packet waiting for me. It was from an e-bay order I’d placed before I left. I now have a big old 3′x5′ USSR flag hanging up on my bedroom wall. Now allow me to re-print what I’ve already posted on an online journal I keep regarding this flag.

I don’t like what the USSR did to the people in its territory, nor do I like what Stalin did during his time in office. These things, these human rights violations, disgust me.

The reason I display this flag in my room is because it is easily recognized as a communist symbol. I, myself, am a democratic socialist but because there are no socialist flags that can be quickly recognized, and because socialism and communism are so closely related, I display the hammer and sickle because it is the closest thing that mirrors my political and economic views. Then, when someone questions its presence, I can take the time to explain it to them (like I am now doing).

I don’t mean to offend anyone by hanging up this flag (unless they start bitching me out about it while making no valid points against it [or unless I don’t like them anyway]), I am merely stating a political and economic view.

…that and it looks cool.

Now, what else do I want to talk about? Ahh, a movie I’m fond of: Silent Hill. Has anyone bothered to watch this film? It’s a movie adaptation of a video game (don’t groan yet) and I’ve found it to be one of, if not the best game adaptations I’ve ever seen. It holds to the game’s atmosphere while also exploring new themes. It’s a film I’d recommend to those who even aren’t fond of video games, just keep in mind that it’s a horror film and likely not something you’ll want to show to your kids if you don’t enjoy them seeing people getting killed.

It also has a theme that I have dubbed “Christianity Run Amok” as well as a scene that I call “The Almighty Titty Twister.” If you decide to see the movie, you’ll know it when you see it. To those of you who have seen it, try not to give away any spoilers.

In other news I’ve also been taking an interest in photography as well. I still enjoy target shooting with firearms and the two share commonalties but I also find it nice to be able to capture my target on film rather than blowing holes in it. Though photography doesn’t give that adrenaline rush that the contained explosions of target shooting gives. Still, fun times are to be had by both.

Also I’ve found the joys of this website deviantART.com and I’ve also got an account there where I post my photography (which can be found here if anyone is interested).

Well, I think I’m going to wrap this up. I know this doesn’t really have anything to do with politics or religion, but to tell the truth I’ve found the subject of both to be…depressing. I wanted to talk about some other things tonight, things of a more personal nature because…well, I’m not gonna yank a reason out of my ass, I just wanted to talk about something else for a change. I’ll be back to my political and religious stuffs in my next post.

Whatever your religion may be (or lack thereof) Happy Holidays!

…and fuck you too, Bill O’Reilly.

Some people just can’t win for losing, can they? When I saw this on Yahoo News I was about to go to sleep, so I figured that if it wasn’t mentioned when I woke up I’d post it.

So here it is:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061021/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terror_detainees

U.S. jailed man once tortured by Taliban

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press WriterSat Oct 21, 8:11 AM ET

Abdul Rahim insists he’s an apolitical student who fled a strict father. But he’s fallen into a black hole in the war on terror in which first the Taliban and then the United States imprisoned him as an enemy of the state.

Arrested by the Taliban in Afghanistan in January 2000, Rahim says al-Qaida leaders burned him with cigarettes, smashed his right hand, deprived him of sleep, nearly drowned him and hanged him from the ceiling until he “confessed” to spying for the United States.

U.S. forces took the young Kurd from Syria into custody in January 2002 after the Taliban fled his prison. Accusing him of being an al-Qaida terrorist, U.S. interrogators deprived him of sleep, threatened him with police dogs and kept him in stress positions for hours, he says. He’s been held ever since as an enemy combatant.

Rahim’s story is one of several emerging from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay as defense lawyers make bids to free their clients while the Bush administration tries to use a new law to lock them out of federal courts.

After the Supreme Court overturned President Bush’s plans for commissions to try detainees, Bush obtained a new law from Congress barring federal courts from hearing appeals for release by any alien “properly detained as an enemy combatant.” The Justice Department told district and appellate judges this week they no longer have jurisdiction to hear dozens of such pending cases.

A court fight over that is certain.

Calling the move to strip jurisdiction “a direct attack on our constitutional structure,” Federal Public Defender Steven T. Wax in Portland, Ore., said, “We will litigate that as hard as we can in whatever forum we can find, because they are wrong.”

Other detainees whose lawyers filed new evidence in U.S. District Court motions this month include:

Adel Hassan Hamad, a Sudanese charity worker arrested at 1:30 a.m. July 18, 2002, in his Peshawar, Pakistan, apartment. Co-workers swear he was a hospital administrator with no connection to terrorists. A dissenting U.S. Army major on the panel that reviewed the unclassified and secret evidence against him called it “unconscionable” to detain him because some employees of the same charity may have supported terrorist ideals.

Nazar “Chaman” Gul, a 29-year-old Afghani who thought he was working as an armed fuel depot guard for the Karzi government installed by U.S. forces. The man who hired him swears that was the case, but he is accused of being a member of a terrorist group. The lawyers say he has been mistaken for a commander of that terror group, named Chaman Gul, also held at Guantanamo.

All three are represented by Wax and his assistants. Wax’s staff traveled to Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates to gather dozens of sworn statements from co-workers, relatives, fellow inmates and people who knew these detainees but haven’t spoken to them in years. These newly filed accounts substantiate details of the detainees’ denials that they were terrorists.

“These clients are not enemy combatants,” Wax said in an interview. The new law “does not apply to people who are not enemy combatants,” he said.

Wax said it would be unconstitutional to apply the jurisdiction-stripping bill retroactively to existing cases. And he said the Supreme Court has ruled before that it has the final say over its jurisdiction in these so-called habeas corpus petitions for release from custody. Following President Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus for prisoners of war, the high court in 1866 set a man free after finding he was not a prisoner of war, Wax noted.

The government feels differently about Wax’s clients.

“Multiple reviews have been conducted since each detained enemy fighter was captured, including for these three individuals,” said a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon. “There is a significant amount of evidence, both unclassified and classified, which supports continued detention of these detainees and others at Guantanamo.”

Now 28, Rahim, buttressed by testimony from friends and relatives, says he wound up in Afghanistan in a bid to escape his father, a strict teacher of Islamic education who objected to his borrowing money outside the family for a college trip. With his father holding his passport, he tried futilely to get from his home in the United Arab Emirates to Europe or Canada.

Finally a friendly diplomat got him deported to Afghanistan where he and others say he hoped to be declared a refugee and moved to Europe by international aid agencies. He says the Taliban conscripted him and sent him against his will to the Al Farouq terrorist training camp. When he tried to leave 18 days later, they imprisoned him, he says.

In spring 2000, Abu Dhabi television broadcast a video of a tearful, fidgeting Rahim saying a U.S. agent recruited him to find Osama bin Laden. “I deserve to die … but if the Taliban let me live, I want to spend the next 22 years fighting for jihad,” he said.

On Jan. 17, 2002, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft said U.S. forces found five videotapes in the ruined Afghan home of bin Laden aide Mohammed Atef — one of the men Rahim says directed his torture. Ashcroft said the tapes show young men delivering “martyrdom messages from suicide terrorists” and identified one as “Abd Rahim.”

Rahim’s attorney Stephen Sady said any Taliban tapes of Rahim “were the product of torture” and no different from false confessions Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., made to stay alive in a North Vietnamese prison.

“After two years the Americans came and saved me from the prison,” Rahim told U.S. officers. “I told them about the videotape the Taliban made of me … it created confusion to the point that the Americans believed I was working with al-Qaida.”

He added: “Nothing changed in my life. I was taken from prison to prison.”

Welcome to the United States of Fear, ruled by King Shrub II.

The more time passes on in politics, the more I want to vomit. All I see is corruption by all parties and it never seems to get better. So, I have an idea on how to get the kind of government we want.

Keep the three party system, but no longer give republicans and democrats and guaranteed spot on any ballot. Maybe if they actually had to work to get a spot on the ballot, they’d shape up and quit looking out only for themselves.

Yet more AP goodness about the loving treatment by American soldiers.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060918/ap_on_re_mi_ea/in_american_hands

U.S. war prisons legal vacuum for 14,000

By PATRICK QUINN, Associated Press Writer

In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.

Disclosures of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have won rebuke from leading voices including the U.N. secretary-general and the U.S. Supreme Court. But the bitterest words come from inside the system, the size of several major U.S. penitentiaries.

“It was hard to believe I’d get out,” Baghdad shopkeeper Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi told The Associated Press after his release — without charge — last month. “I lived with the Americans for one year and eight months as if I was living in hell.”

Captured on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have passed through U.S. detention, the vast majority in Iraq.

Many say they were caught up in U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were “mistakes,” U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross.

Defenders of the system, which has only grown since soldiers’ photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib shocked the world, say it’s an unfortunate necessity in the battles to pacify Iraq and Afghanistan, and to keep suspected terrorists out of action.

Every U.S. detainee in Iraq “is detained because he poses a security threat to the government of Iraq, the people of Iraq or coalition forces,” said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a spokesman for U.S.-led military detainee operations in Iraq.

But dozens of ex-detainees, government ministers, lawmakers, human rights activists, lawyers and scholars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the United States said the detention system often is unjust and hurts the war on terror by inflaming anti-Americanism in Iraq and elsewhere.

Building for the Long Term

Reports of extreme physical and mental abuse, symbolized by the notorious Abu Ghraib prison photos of 2004, have abated as the Pentagon has rejected torture-like treatment of the inmates. Most recently, on Sept. 6, the Pentagon issued a new interrogation manual banning forced nakedness, hooding, stress positions and other abusive techniques.

The same day, President Bush said the CIA’s secret outposts in the prison network had been emptied, and 14 terror suspects from them sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to face trial in military tribunals. The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the tribunal system, however, and the White House and Congress are now wrestling over the legal structure of such trials.

Living conditions for detainees may be improving as well. The U.S. military cites the toilets of Bagram, Afghanistan: In a cavernous old building at that air base, hundreds of detainees in their communal cages now have indoor plumbing and privacy screens, instead of exposed chamber pots.

Whatever the progress, small or significant, grim realities persist.

Human rights groups count dozens of detainee deaths for which no one has been punished or that were never explained. The secret prisons — unknown in number and location — remain available for future detainees. The new manual banning torture doesn’t cover CIA interrogators. And thousands of people still languish in a limbo, deprived of one of common law’s oldest rights, habeas corpus, the right to know why you are imprisoned.

“If you, God forbid, are an innocent Afghan who gets sold down the river by some warlord rival, you can end up at Bagram and you have absolutely no way of clearing your name,” said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch in New York. “You can’t have a lawyer present evidence, or do anything organized to get yourself out of there.”

The U.S. government has contended it can hold detainees until the “war on terror” ends — as it determines.

“I don’t think we’ve gotten to the question of how long,” said retired admiral John D. Hutson, former top lawyer for the U.S. Navy. “When we get up to ‘forever,’ I think it will be tested” in court, he said.

The Navy is planning long-term at Guantanamo. This fall it expects to open a new, $30-million maximum-security wing at its prison complex there, a concrete-and-steel structure replacing more temporary camps.

In Iraq, Army jailers are a step ahead. Last month they opened a $60-million, state-of-the-art detention center at Camp Cropper, near Baghdad’s airport. The Army oversees about 13,000 prisoners in Iraq at Cropper, Camp Bucca in the southern desert, and Fort Suse in the Kurdish north.

Neither prisoners of war nor criminal defendants, they are just “security detainees” held “for imperative reasons of security,” spokesman Curry said, using language from an annex to a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the U.S. presence here.

Questions of Law, Sovereignty

President Bush laid out the U.S. position in a speech Sept. 6.

“These are enemy combatants who are waging war on our nation,” he said. “We have a right under the laws of war, and we have an obligation to the American people, to detain these enemies and stop them from rejoining the battle.”

But others say there’s no need to hold these thousands outside of the rules for prisoners of war established by the Geneva Conventions.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared last March that the extent of arbitrary detention here is “not consistent with provisions of international law governing internment on imperative reasons of security.”

Meanwhile, officials of Nouri al-Maliki’s 4-month-old Iraqi government say the U.S. detention system violates Iraq’s national rights.

“As long as sovereignty has transferred to Iraqi hands, the Americans have no right to detain any Iraqi person,” said Fadhil al-Sharaa, an aide to the prime minister. “The detention should be conducted only with the permission of the Iraqi judiciary.”

At the Justice Ministry, Deputy Minister Busho Ibrahim told AP it has been “a daily request” that the detainees be brought under Iraqi authority.

There’s no guarantee the Americans’ 13,000 detainees would fare better under control of the Iraqi government, which U.N. officials say holds 15,000 prisoners.

But little has changed because of these requests. When the Americans formally turned over Abu Ghraib prison to Iraqi control on Sept. 2, it was empty but its 3,000 prisoners remained in U.S. custody, shifted to Camp Cropper.

Life in Custody

The cases of U.S.-detained Iraqis are reviewed by a committee of U.S. military and Iraqi government officials. The panel recommends criminal charges against some, release for others. As of Sept. 9, the Central Criminal Court of Iraq had put 1,445 on trial, convicting 1,252. In the last week of August, for example, 38 were sentenced on charges ranging from illegal weapons possession to murder, for the shooting of a U.S. Marine.

Almost 18,700 have been released since June 2004, the U.S. command says, not including many more who were held and then freed by local military units and never shipped to major prisons.

Some who were released, no longer considered a threat, later joined or rejoined the insurgency.

The review process is too slow, say U.N. officials. Until they are released, often families don’t know where their men are — the prisoners are usually men — or even whether they’re in American hands.

Ex-detainee Mouayad Yasin Hassan, 31, seized in April 2004 as a suspected Sunni Muslim insurgent, said he wasn’t allowed to obtain a lawyer or contact his family during 13 months at Abu Ghraib and Bucca, where he was interrogated incessantly. When he asked why he was in prison, he said, the answer was, “We keep you for security reasons.”

Another released prisoner, Waleed Abdul Karim, 26, recounted how his guards would wield their absolute authority.

“Tell us about the ones who attack Americans in your neighborhood,” he quoted an interrogator as saying, “or I will keep you in prison for another 50 years.”

As with others, Karim’s confinement may simply have strengthened support for the anti-U.S. resistance. “I will hate Americans for the rest of my life,” he said.

As bleak and hidden as the Iraq lockups are, the Afghan situation is even less known. Accounts of abuse and deaths emerged in 2002-2004, but if Abu Ghraib-like photos from Bagram exist, none have leaked out. The U.S. military is believed holding about 500 detainees — most Afghans, but also apparently Arabs, Pakistanis and Central Asians.

The United States plans to cede control of its Afghan detainees by early next year, five years after invading Afghanistan to eliminate al-Qaida’s base and bring down the Taliban government. Meanwhile, the prisoners of Bagram exist in a legal vacuum like that elsewhere in the U.S. detention network.

“There’s been a silence about Bagram, and much less political discussion about it,” said Richard Bennett, chief U.N. human rights officer in Afghanistan.

Freed detainees tell how in cages of 16 inmates they are forbidden to speak to each other. They wear the same orange jumpsuits and shaven heads as the terrorist suspects at Guantanamo, but lack even the scant legal rights granted inmates at that Cuba base. In some cases, they have been held without charge for three to four years, rights workers say.

Guantanamo received its first prisoners from Afghanistan — chained, wearing blacked-out goggles — in January 2002. A total of 770 detainees were sent there. Its population today of Afghans, Arabs and others, stands at 455.

Described as the most dangerous of America’s “war on terror” prisoners, only 10 of the Guantanamo inmates have been charged with crimes. Charges are expected against 14 other al-Qaida suspects flown in to Guantanamo from secret prisons on Sept. 4.

Plans for their trials are on hold, however, because of a Supreme Court ruling in June against the Bush administration’s plan for military tribunals.

The court held the tribunals were not authorized by the U.S. Congress and violated the Geneva Conventions by abrogating prisoners’ rights. In a sometimes contentious debate, the White House and Congress are trying to agree on a new, acceptable trial plan.

Since the court decision, and after four years of confusing claims that terrorist suspects were so-called “unlawful combatants” unprotected by international law, the Bush administration has taken steps recognizing that the Geneva Conventions’ legal and human rights do extend to imprisoned al-Qaida militants. At the same time, however, the new White House proposal on tribunals retains such controversial features as denying defendants access to some evidence against them.

In his Sept. 6 speech, Bush acknowledged for the first time the existence of the CIA’s secret prisons, believed established at military bases or safehouses in such places as Egypt, Indonesia and eastern Europe. That network, uncovered by journalists, had been condemned by U.N. authorities and investigated by the Council of Europe.

The clandestine jails are now empty, Bush announced, but will remain a future option for CIA detentions and interrogation.

Louise Arbour, U.N. human rights chief, is urging Bush to abolish the CIA prisons altogether, as ripe for “abusive conduct.” The CIA’s techniques for extracting information from prisoners still remain secret, she noted.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government’s willingness to resort to “extraordinary rendition,” transferring suspects to other nations where they might be tortured, appears unchanged.

Prosecutions and Memories

The exposure of sadistic abuse, torture and death at Abu Ghraib two years ago touched off a flood of courts-martial of mostly lower-ranking U.S. soldiers. Overall, about 800 investigations of alleged detainee mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to action against more than 250 service personnel, including 89 convicted at courts-martial, U.S. diplomats told the United Nations in May.

Critics protest that penalties have been too soft and too little has been done, particularly in tracing inhumane interrogation methods from the far-flung islands of the overseas prison system back to policies set by high-ranking officials.

In only 14 of 34 cases has anyone been punished for the confirmed or suspected killings of detainees, the New York-based Human Rights First reports. The stiffest sentence in a torture-related death has been five months in jail. The group reported last February that in almost half of 98 detainee deaths, the cause was either never announced or reported as undetermined.

Looking back, the United States overreacted in its treatment of detainees after Sept. 11, said Anne-Marie Slaughter, a noted American scholar of international law.

It was understandable, the Princeton University dean said, but now “we have to restore a balance between security and rights that is consistent with who we are and consistent with our security needs.”

Otherwise, she said, “history will look back and say that we took a dangerous and deeply wrong turn.”

Back here in Baghdad, at the Alawi bus station, a gritty, noisy hub far from the meeting rooms of Washington and Geneva, women gather with fading hopes whenever a new prisoner release is announced.

As she watched one recent day for a bus from distant Camp Bucca, one mother wept and told her story.

“The Americans arrested my son, my brother and his friend,” said Zahraa Alyat, 42. “The Americans arrested them October 16, 2005. They left together and I don’t know anything about them.”

The bus pulled up. A few dozen men stepped off, some blindfolded, some bound, none with any luggage, none with familiar faces.

As the distraught women straggled away once more, one ex-prisoner, 18-year-old Bilal Kadhim Muhssin, spotted U.S. troops nearby.

“Americans,” he muttered in fear. “Oh, my God, don’t say that name,” and he bolted for a city bus, and freedom.

___

EDITOR’S NOTE — The Associated Press staff in Baghdad and AP writers Andrew Selsky in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Matthew Pennington in Kabul, Afghanistan; Anne Plummer Flaherty in Washington, and Charles J. Hanley in New York contributed to this report.

I just saw this when I logged onto YIM. I thought everyone here would like to see it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060918/ap_on_re_mi_ea/photographer_detained

U.S. holds AP photographer in Iraq 5 mos

By ROBERT TANNER, AP National Writer

The U.S. military in Iraq has imprisoned an Associated Press photographer for five months, accusing him of being a security threat but never filing charges or permitting a public hearing.

Military officials said Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi citizen, was being held for “imperative reasons of security” under United Nations resolutions. AP executives said the news cooperative’s review of Hussein’s work did not find anything to indicate inappropriate contact with insurgents, and any evidence against him should be brought to the Iraqi criminal justice system.

Hussein, 35, is a native of Fallujah who began work for the AP in September 2004. He photographed events in Fallujah and Ramadi until he was detained on April 12 of this year.

“We want the rule of law to prevail. He either needs to be charged or released. Indefinite detention is not acceptable,” said Tom Curley, AP’s president and chief executive officer. “We’ve come to the conclusion that this is unacceptable under Iraqi law, or Geneva Conventions, or any military procedure.”

Hussein is one of an estimated 14,000 people detained by the U.S. military worldwide — 13,000 of them in Iraq. They are held in limbo where few are ever charged with a specific crime or given a chance before any court or tribunal to argue for their freedom.

In Hussein’s case, the military has not provided any concrete evidence to back up the vague allegations they have raised about him, Curley and other AP executives said.

The military said Hussein was captured with two insurgents, including Hamid Hamad Motib, an alleged leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. “He has close relationships with persons known to be responsible for kidnappings, smuggling, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and other attacks on coalition forces,” according to a May 7 e-mail from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner, who oversees all coalition detainees in Iraq.

“The information available establishes that he has relationships with insurgents and is afforded access to insurgent activities outside the normal scope afforded to journalists conducting legitimate activities,” Gardner wrote to AP International Editor John Daniszewski.

Hussein proclaims his innocence, according to his Iraqi lawyer, Badie Arief Izzat, and believes he has been unfairly targeted because his photos from Ramadi and Fallujah were deemed unwelcome by the coalition forces.

That Hussein was captured at the same time as insurgents doesn’t make him one of them, said Kathleen Carroll, AP’s executive editor.

“Journalists have always had relationships with people that others might find unsavory,” she said. “We’re not in this to choose sides, we’re to report what’s going on from all sides.”

AP executives in New York and Baghdad have sought to persuade U.S. officials to provide additional information about allegations against Hussein and to have his case transferred to the Iraqi criminal justice system. The AP contacted military leaders in Iraq and the Pentagon, and later the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad.

The AP has worked quietly until now, believing that would be the best approach. But with the U.S. military giving no indication it would change its stance, the news cooperative has decided to make public Hussein’s imprisonment, hoping the spotlight will bring attention to his case and that of thousands of others now held in Iraq, Curley said.

One of Hussein’s photos was part of a package of 20 photographs that won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography last year. His contribution was an image of four insurgents in Fallujah firing a mortar and small arms during the U.S.-led offensive in the city in November 2004.

In what several AP editors described as a typical path for locally hired staff in the midst of a conflict, Hussein, a shopkeeper who sold cell phones and computers in Fallujah, was hired in the city as a general helper because of his local knowledge.

As the situation in Fallujah eroded in 2004, he expressed a desire to become a photographer. Hussein was given training and camera equipment and hired in September of that year as a freelancer, paid on a per-picture basis, according to Santiago Lyon, AP’s director of photography. A month later, he was put on a monthly retainer.

During the U.S.-led offensive in Fallujah in November 2004, he stayed on after his family fled. “He had good access. He was able to photograph not only the results of the attacks on Fallujah, he was also able to photograph members of the insurgency on occasion,” Lyon said. “That was very difficult to achieve at that time.”

After fleeing later in the offensive, leaving his camera behind in the rush to escape, Hussein arrived in Baghdad, where the AP gave him a new camera. He then went to work in Ramadi which, like Fallujah, has been a center of insurgent violence.

In its own effort to determine whether Hussein had gotten too close the insurgency, the AP has reviewed his work record, interviewed senior photo editors who worked on his images and examined all 420 photographs in the news cooperative’s archives that were taken by Hussein, Lyon said.

The military in Iraq has frequently detained journalists who arrive quickly at scenes of violence, accusing them of getting advance notice from insurgents, Lyon said. But “that’s just good journalism. Getting to the event quickly is something that characterizes good journalism anywhere in the world. It does not indicate prior knowledge,” he said.

Out of Hussein’s body of work, only 37 photos show insurgents or people who could be insurgents, Lyon said. “The vast majority of the 420 images show the aftermath or the results of the conflict — blown up houses, wounded people, dead people, street scenes,” he said.

Only four photos show the wreckage of still-burning U.S. military vehicles.

“Do we know absolutely everything about him, and what he did before he joined us? No. Are we satisfied that what he did since he joined us was appropriate for the level of work we expected from him? Yes,” Lyon said. “When we reviewed the work he submitted to us, we found it appropriate to what we’d asked him to do.”

The AP does not knowingly hire combatants or anyone who is part of a story, company executives said. But hiring competent local staff in combat areas is vital to the news service, because often only local people can pick their way around the streets with a reasonable degree of safety.

“We want people who are not part of a story. Sometimes it is a judgment call. If someone seems to be thuggish, or like a fighter, you certainly wouldn’t hire them,” Daniszewski said. After they are hired, their work is checked carefully for signs of bias.

Lyon said every image from local photographers is always “thoroughly checked and vetted” by experienced editors. “In every case where there have been images of insurgents, questions have been asked about circumstances under which the image was taken, and what the image shows,” he said.

Executives said it’s not uncommon for AP news people to be picked up by coalition forces and detained for hours, days or occasionally weeks, but never this long. Several hundred journalists in Iraq have been detained, some briefly and some for several weeks, according to Scott Horton, a New York-based lawyer hired by the AP to work on Hussein’s case.

Horton also worked on behalf of an Iraqi cameraman employed by CBS, Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, who was detained for one year before his case was sent to an Iraqi court on charges of insurgent activity. He was acquitted for lack of evidence.

AP officials emphasized the military has not provided the company concrete evidence of its claims against Bilal Hussein, or provided him a chance to offer a defense.

“He’s a Sunni Arab from a tribe in that area. I’m sure he does know some nasty people. But is he a participant in the insurgency? I don’t think that’s been proven,” Daniszewski said.

Information provided to the AP by the military to support the continued detention hasn’t withstood scrutiny, when it could be checked, Daniszewski said.

For example, he said, the AP had been told that Hussein was involved with the kidnapping of two Arab journalists in Ramadi.

But those journalists, tracked down by the AP, said Hussein had helped them after they were released by their captors without money or a vehicle in a dangerous part of Ramadi. After a journalist acquaintance put them in touch with Hussein, the photographer picked them up, gave them shelter and helped get them out of town, they said.

The journalists said they had never been contacted by multinational forces for their account.

Horton said the military has provided contradictory accounts of whether Hussein himself was a U.S. target last April or if he was caught up in a broader sweep.

The military said bomb-making materials were found in the apartment where Hussein was captured but it never detailed what those materials were. The military said he tested positive for traces of explosives. Horton said that was virtually guaranteed for anyone on the streets of Ramadi at that time.

Hussein has been a frequent target of conservative critics on the Internet, who raised questions about his images months before the military detained him. One blogger and author, Michelle Malkin, wrote about Hussein’s detention on the day of his arrest, saying she’d been tipped by a military source.

Carroll said the role of journalists can be misconstrued and make them a target of critics. But that criticism is misplaced, she said.

“How can you know what a conflict is like if you’re only with one side of the combatants?” she said. “Journalism doesn’t work if we don’t report and photograph all sides.”

On one of my other commonly visited web-sites I posted an artical after reading this post by Peregrin Wood and it has sparked off a debate on terrorists and torture.

One of the members, whom I disagree with (to put it nicely and under a heaping helping of sugar) and whom is a conservative (but not a republican, oh no, perish the thought!) said he thinks torture should be illegal but is just fine with “extreme tactics.” This statement got me thinking about an anti-smoking commercial I once saw.

Tell me, if I take a rabid, vicious, snarling, snapping, growling German Shepherd named Fang and rename him “Fluffy”…is anyone gonna want to pet him?

That’s all they’re doing now. It’s not torture, it’s “extreme tactics!” Torture is immoral and illegal! We’re not doing anything illegal; we’re just using “extreme tactics.” That’s a mighty thick coat of veneer and sugar.

A pile of shit by any other name is still a pile of shit. If I call it mud, will the kids want to play in it?

The Daily Record

30 August 2006
MIRACLE IS SUNK

A PRIEST has died after trying to demonstrate how Jesus walked on water.

Evangelist preacher Franck Kabele, 35, told his congregation he could repeat the biblical miracle.

But he drowned after walking out to sea from a beach in the capital Libreville in Gabon, west Africa.

One eyewitness said: “He told churchgoers he’d had a revelation that if he had enough faith, he could walk on water like Jesus.

“He took his congregation to the beach saying he would walk across the Komo estuary, which takes 20 minutes by boat.

“He walked into the water, which soon passed over his head and he never came back.”

And people wonder why I think religion can be a bad thing.

That preist can have all the religion and faith he wants, but I’ll still take science and a life vest.

Last night, I went with my dad to rent some films from the local 7-11 and when we were checking them out, this guy came in and asked to use the bathroom, but the clerk told him the bathroom shuts down at 8:30pm. This confused both my dad and myself, but while I was content to shrug my shoulders and chalk it upto stupidity, he had to ask the obvious.

“Why 8:30?” he asked. He sounded incredulous but otherwise polite, but he cashier got huffy in her reply of “It’s for my safety.”

Now, when someone starts talking like a smartass in the way she did, he’s gonna feel the need to make them sound like an idiot. So he said, “Why? You afraid the toilet’s gonna overflow?”

With that remark, I could literally see her puff up with righteous indignation and she threw out a retort that you could tell was one she thought was the one that would shut him up. And she also said it louder than was necessary; “No, I’m afraid someone will come out here and kill me!”

To which my dad’s reply was; “Oh that start that at 8:30, huh?”

After that, she clamed up and didn’t say anything else and I couldn’t hide my laughter.

But reflecting on that, I started thinking about other retarded “security measures.” See, if someone was gonna kill her, they’d do it when coming through the front door, not when coming out of the can. And besides, if someone was gonna kill her, why would a locked bathroom stop him, unless his weapon of choice is a plunger and a roll of T.P.

When I was going to middle school after the Columbine shootings, they started putting up metal detectors and searching the kids as they came into the school but there were more holes in their security than a block of swiss cheese.

They had barred off all the entrances except the ones closest to the parking lot in order to funnel the to the metal detectors. But the doors they were using opened up to a set of secondary stairways.

First off, if you wanted to avoid the metal detectors all together, all you had to do was, after you came up the first set of stairs to the main floor, just turn left and go right up to the second floor where there were no metal detectors! Both my locker and my first class were on the second floor, but at least a third of the kids would go up this stairway, walk down the hall, then go down the main stairway and to their class, all with never being searched.

Another flaw with their security was that when looking through a kid’s backpack, it’d largely be just a token glance and they wouldn’t even open their binders (which can easily hide a large pistol and a good amount of ammunition).

And another, most glaring flaw, was that once the bell rang they would start putting up the walk-through scanners, whether or not there were still kids who haven’t been searched. Like they think any kid who’s going homicidal and is gonna start blowing hell out of their school is gonna make a real effort to be on time.

So let’s see, even with all this money spent on security for schools, how hard would it be to go on a shooting spree?

Show up ten or fifteen minutes late with your shotgun and handguns, stick them in your locker, and wait until lunch. When they let out, go to your locker and you’ll be on the six o’clock news.

I’ve seen this type of security in practice with the government, as well as the local gas stations and middle schools and I can’t help but wonder why we’re spending so much money on security measures that don’t work. We could take about half or two thirds of the security funding and give every school in America brand new textbooks and computers as well as keeping up the wonderful level of security that we currently have.

~ Damen

Lately I’ve taken to reading turn of the century literature (Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, etc.) and I’m quite proud of myself, to be frankly honest. The kids of stories such as those that I just listed above are often hard to read for most people, such as my father, because of how the dialect and sentence structure has changed in the last one hundred years or so. Myself, I can read them and enjoy them.

But one common thing I’ve noticed in almost all of the stories is that, if these stories can be taken as an indicator of how people were back then, I’m honestly surprised that the human race survived from all the damn fainting that’s in them. Currently, I’m reading Dracula and thus far I have counted a minimum of around seven people fainting or coming close to it. In one of the Sherlock Holmes stories I had read, a woman (Watson’s future wife) fainted after hearing that Holmes and Watson were shot at.

In these stories people faint over things which, in this day and age, would merit a pair of wide eyes. And the cure-all for a faint or near faint? BRANDY! I wonder, did it ever occur that people might have been fainting because they were loaded up on the brandy as a cure for nearly fainting? Like I said, I’m surprised the human race survived all the fainting. I’m pretty sure more than a few people must’ve cracked their heads open after hearing about that really bad hangnail Mary got that evening.

One of the problems I have with the novel Dracula isn’t so much the fainting, but more how Bram Stoker, when referring to a child, would use either the words “child” or “it” rather than “the boy,” “the girl,” “he,” or “she.” Is that how kids were viewed to Mr. Stoker? As an “It”?

Other than that, these are good books, which I shall have to return to. I just wanted to do a mini-rant.

~ Damen

After posting this on this other website I frequent, I felt it was too much for me to keep it only on one site. I’m reposting everything I’ve written there with just a few alterations that address that board specifically.

Before logging on, I had to sit for a while and seriously consider whether or not to post this. It’s a link to a flash video and I feel I should give Echolette credit because she sent me this a long time ago after she and I had a discussion about Pit Bulls, more specifically American Pit Bull Terriers, and back then I couldn’t watch it without crying.

I know, it’s unmanly for me to admit that I cried when I saw it but fuck all that shit, it’s the truth.

I bring this topic up because recently my dad and I adopted two stray dogs off the streets, the first of which was a female American Pit Bull Terrier whom my dad named Leona.

I feel I should tell the story of how we came about to adopting her.

For a long time (all my life, in fact) I had been bugging my parents for a dog. I’ve always been a cat person, always loved cats, always will love them. However, I had always felt that I was missing out on something when it came to cats and dogs and I’d always wanted a pet dog. I have three favorite breeds and I came about them in different ways and at different times.

My first love has been the Siberian Husky. The first time I saw it as a little kid that breed struck me as the most beautiful on earth. Everything about them was gorgeous from their eyes to their coats. I’ve been around a few of them and I’ve found them to be a good dog to have as a pet, so long as you don’t own other small animals and have a fence that’ll go down a few feet.

The second dog I’ve got on my favorites list is the German Shepherd for many of the same reasons as the Siberian Husky. But I think the real reason I was drawn to that type of dog was from watching the movie K-9 with Jim Belushi and Jerry Lee. That dog cracked me up. Recently my dad took me to one of his friend’s and he and his wife owned a pure blood German Shepherd named Queen. That dog was a goof, as long as you threw her tennis ball she’d adore you.

My third favorite dog was the Pit Bull. My friend Tim owned a Pit Bull named Dro and I had been around them off and on for a long, long time. The first time I met Dro I was scared shitless, not because I had heard all the bad news about Pit Bulls but because here’s this 80 pound mass of drooling dog and he’s wantin’ to jump on me. Being still in my early to mid teens I was scared shitless of that dog for a long time. The first time I’d met him, Tim opened the door and I swear it would have turned into a scene right out of Marmaduke if he hadn’t caught Dro by the collar. In all the years that I knew him he never once tried to bite me and only bit one person, that being a woman who surprised him at the wrong moment.

After my initial shock it took me a long time to keep from tensing up when I’d see him. How long you ask? Days? Weeks? Heh, try years. At first it was a grudging pet once in a while but he was persistent and so lovable that I finally started playing with him. Yes, that old dog won me over and it damn near became that I’d spend more time with that dog than I would with Tim.

He had a few quirks that made him lovable, one of which was this one time he took Tim’s mom for a drag down 19th street. I’m not talking walking along and tugging her after him, I’m talking she was off her feet and he was dragging her along behind him. You might be thinking “Oh, that’s not right” but all Tim’s life I never looked at her as a good mother so I was busting up when I heard about that little stunt.

Another of the things he would do that was so endearing was that he would start howling whenever we would sing “Happy Birthday” or when Tim would play “Beautiful” by Christina Aguilera. That dog had some since in him after all.

Now Tim’s uncle had been at war with his neighbors for a long time for whatever reason and normally I wouldn’t mention that had it not been for the fact that Tim was living with his uncle during this time. One day, Tim was coming home from his friend’s place when he saw everyone was out back and there was an animal control truck out front. He went into the backyard and found Dro in the neighbor’s back yard, cowering in their dog house with blood running down his face. The neighbors had called in saying he was a mad dog and because my state has a No Tolerance law, all a dog (Pit Bull) has to do is be accused of being rabid or trying to attack someone and it’ll be put down. To this day we are convinced that his neighbors attacked Dro then had him put down.

I think the bloody pipe laying by his neighbor’s back porch had something to do with that suspicion. To this day I miss Dro, but he was the dog that won me over into liking Pit Bulls.

Now, a few months ago my dad told me about a stray dog in the neighborhood that was scared of it’s own shadow. I asked what kind it was and he said he didn’t know. The way he kept talking he made it out to be a small dog and with a rare exception, I hate small dogs. Most of them are toe biters to me. After I asked him about it, he was saying “No, no, it’s a large dog. Looks kinda like a boxer.”

Anyway, I hadn’t seen this dog at all for about a week or two after dad told me about it until one day we were leaving and I saw this black dog in our next door neighbor’s yard looking curiously over at me. First second I saw it I said to myself “That’s a Pit Bull.” I told my dad this and he refused to believe me and I kept pressing the subject because I knew I was right, damn it. He kept telling himself and everyone else that it was a boxer/lab mix and I just gave him a look like that let him know I wasn’t buying it and would say that he was full of shit. After a few weeks of drilling it into his head he started saying “She might have some Pit Bull in her” and I was just thinking “duh.”

It wasn’t until one of his friends who had raised Pit Bulls said that she was a Pit Bull without a doubt and that was all it took to convince him and here I am sitting here furious and thinking “WHAT THE FUCK HAVE I BEEN SAYING FOR THE LAST TWO FUCKING MONTHS?!” Just…motherfuck, he won’t listen to me just because I’m his son. I guess in his eyes I’m still a little baby shitting my diaper and don’t know what I’m fucking talking about so I have to tell his friends to tell him.

But this is not a rant post.

The first time I saw this dog it was clear she had been abused. She was all skin and bones, terrified of everyone, and had even chewed her leash in half to run away and was dragging it behind her when she came to our block. Everyone on our corner took pity on her. The Vietnamese people who live on the corner let her stay in a dog house in their back yard. My dad took to putting some of our cat food out for her at night because it was during the closing winter months when she came to us and was still kinda chilly. He had taken to befriending her and it took a month before she warmed up to him. I took her a week to get used to me.

After a while we had not only coaxed her into our yard but also onto this old couch we have outside.

Heh, that couch was her first real security zone and once she got on it you couldn’t get her off short of picking her up and carrying her off. She was also curious about new places and really enjoyed seeing our jungle of a back yard.

After that, it took her another month and a half before she would even stick her nose inside the door. She was terrified of about everything, but she eventually came inside and staked out a spot by the front windows.

For a long time that was her spot and she’ll still go over there from time to time.

I think it was around then that we’d officially adopted her.

But since then she has come a long way from when we’d first met her. She’s still a little skittish around people, but she won’t bolt at the first sight of them. She can also be fairly lazy and a regular couch potato when inside. She’s taken to sleeping in the recliner I enjoy sitting in (that hussy) and she’s really good with kids.

People are drawn to her to such an extent that it’s really a sight to behold.

Now some of you may be wondering why I’m posting this on a political website but I feel that the subject of Pit Bulls are very much a matter of both personal beliefs and politics since the introduction of Breed Specific Legislation.

BLS is a law that will restrict or ban pit bull type dogs and list them as “vicious animals.” People say that it’s in their nature to be mean. They say that they’ll just suddenly snap without warning or that they’re more prone to biting than any other dog. This is an image that has been trotted around in the media and is largely untrue. This has become so prevalent that San Francisco has enacted a mandatory spaying/neutering of Pit Bull type dogs and Denver has enacted an outright ban and started seizing Pit Bulls from their owners and having them put to sleep.

People miss identify all sorts of dogs and will call them Pit Bulls because of their general appearance. People have said right and left that Leona looks like a boxer but the only reason she does is because her ears and tail haven’t been cut off. Because of that, more often than not people will think she’s some other breed. It is the flip side of this reason that people lump all these different dogs into the Pit Bull heading.

I have come to find out that Pit Bulls were bred to be aggressive towards other animals but friendly towards humans. However, when raised around other animals they’ll generally be a sweet and even tempered kind of dog.

Now I come to the original reason I created this topic.

I’ve been telling you all about my experiences with American Pit Bull Terriers so you can understand my point of view as an owner of one of these dogs and maybe get an idea of my own experiences with this breed.

When I created this post I did so after watching again that flash video Echolette sent me so long ago. For me, it has become even more…relevant.

I want to pass it along to everyone here but I feel the need to warn you, if you have the same attitude towards these animals as Echo and me, this video and the images in it will be burned into your memory for a long time. I urge you to see it, but if you’re squeamish go ahead and click the back button on your browser.

The Pit Bull Problem

I saw this linked from one web site I frequent to another that I visit less often, and I felt it was worth showing to everyone here. When I saw where this happened, I arched an eyebrow but in truth I wasn’t surprised. I have the misfortune of living in the same state so I know quite well what these people are like.

But, without farther adieu, I present you with the story written by Chester Smalkowski along with a foreword from the American Atheist News editor.

The original post can be found here.

JUST ANOTHER SALEM
by Chester Smalkowski

Web Posted: July 8, 2006

From the AANEWS Editor: Below, we are reproducing, “as is” and
un-edited, the account circulating on the internet and the
democraticunderground.com web site penned by Chester Smalkowski and
aptly titled “Just Another Salem.”

It is his personal story about the ordeal he and has family have been
swept up in after their daughter, Nicole, refused to join a prayer
circle during a basketball game at their local high school. Nicole,
instead, recited the “godless” Pledge of Allegiance.

From there, events went out of control. Chester Smalkowski and family
members attempted to hold a conversation with the high school
principal. That turned into a physical altercation, Mr. Smalkowski was
arrested under a battery of charges, and the authorities offered to
dismiss the case if the Atheist family fled the state.

monthly special American Atheists joined in the subsequent criminal
case, and Chester Smalkowski — battling incredible “Bible Belt” odds
in the courtroom — was found innocent of the charges. News of that
can be found on the American Atheists web site..

Edwin Kagin (ekagin@atheists.org), National Legal Director for
American Atheists, is preparing a federal action which will touch on a
number of issues in the Smalkowski case including violations of this
Atheist family’s civil rights.

Chester Smalkowski vented his thoughts about this experience on a
blog. AANEWS is reproducing this story for the benefit of our readers,
unedited and in its original format. This conveys the honest,
emotional, “from the heart” sentiments of Mr. Smalkowski, and
constitutes one man’s recollection of an agonizing experience due to
religious intolerance and fanaticism.

American Atheists welcomes support so that we may continue our efforts
on behalf of Chester Smalkowski and his family.

There are lessons to be learned. Perhaps the most important, though,
is that “it can happen here,” in America, in the year 2006.

— Conrad Goeringer,
AANEWS - American Atheists

JUST ANOTHER SALEM

The bailiff took the piece of paper from the foreman of the jury and
handed it to the Judge. He opened the paper and while staring at it he
nodded. The courtroom was silent and the jury stared straight ahead.

I have been in many situations where my life or limb were on the
line but I was still in the game and had a hand to play. But not here,
here I just sat waiting for the verdict.

Though I worried about being sent away for five years on bogus
charges, my dread was the Christian mob. They knew I must be found
guilty in order to slow or stop the civil case being filed in Federal
court. Since the start of my daughter’s stand against the public
schools disregard for the law of the land, it was imperative to run us
out of the county to make any civil action non valid. With me in jail
for five years running my family out would be a whole lot easier, or
so they might have thought.

The courtroom was packed for it is the Bible belt. There was no
love in this courtroom.

The loving Christians brought their children to hear the verdict.
They brought the town. They brought ministers. I even saw another
Judge in the back of the room. The Judge who in an earlier hearing
while slapping an inch thick stack of papers on his bench saying with
a list of witnesses this big you had better be a good boy. It was lies
then, it was lies now and the DA knew it! (She was later forced to
hand over a written statement she denied for over a year existed!)
People prayed openly for a conviction. Many holding their bibles.
During the trial the Prosecutions side of the courtroom was packed.
Only my son and Edwin Kagin’s wife, Helen sat behind me, but now there
was not enough room in the whole courtroom.

Yet now the so-called victim, the 325 lbs victim, the ex Marine,
hurrahs, was nowhere to be found. Neither was the woman assistant
district attorney anywhere to be found. Whose vindictive, bogus case
this was from the start.

What sort of place is this?

Well this is not the place for a little debate in a coffee shop
with the sweet salt air rolling up from San Francisco bay. This is a
place where the children write on their schoolbooks the south will
rise again. This is a place where they say that black people caused
slavery! Where they burn rock CD’s. Mormons are the tools of Satan.
That my daughter is gay cause only homosexuals vote for Kerry and
Christians vote for Bush. Atheists worship Satan! Where religious
fanaticism is fused with political rhetoric and political leaders
pander to this madness. This place has a sickness, a malignant disease
and it is spreading. Edwin saw it first hand.

There has not been many a trial with a Not Guilty verdict in this
county for years. The head DA is good friends with the self-righteous
in the courtroom and greets them all by name. You know the type.

Many old women in the courtroom are taking notes. Others have been
taking notes at every hearing for the past year and a half! They
strain to listen not wanting to miss one juicy word. With the pens and
pads they write continuously. The pads shaking with every push of the
pen. Even writing down what my children spoke amongst themselves.

Blue gray haired old Christian spinsters bitter for wasting all
those fruitful years now just waiting for those pearly gates. These
are truly the wicked. You have seen them before. With their bogus
self-righteousness they strut and sneer. How far we have not come.

Others had walked out into the hall and warned a police witness
saying that justice must be served, that justice better be served. The
judge called a hearing on the threat.

He warned the crowd that if it happens one more time he would have
no choice but to throw out the case. He was between a rock and a hard
place. He knows my lawyers are watching and the loving Christians are
out for my blood, and they are watching too. The law, elections and
politics were all in play. The Judge left the court for his chambers
and stayed away for a quite awhile.

The Christians, the loving Christians! Praying to a God whose wings
are dripping in the blood of innocent men, woman and children down
through the ages. Truly hypocrisy is one of their commandments and the
blood of the innocence one of their sacraments!

Christian against Christian, Christian against Moslem, Christian
against Mormon. Basically Christian against anyone or anything that
challenges their pathetic little fairy tale.

Go to any Indian reservation and see the lies and broken promises
by a country with “Under God” in their pledge.

I assume I need not have to explain about the loving hymns sung in
church on Sunday and beatings of black slaves on Monday. But on Monday
night the good old Master has a little tippy toe over to slave huts
for a little brown sugar. While the queen of the manor is in the
master bedroom past out on an opium tonic. Praise the Lord!

Well that was then but now the court was about to hear the verdict.
There was a feeding frenzy about to begin with the dirty little
atheist and his family put in their place with him in jail and the
family run out of town. Like the teacher told my daughter “This is a
Christian country and if you don’t like it get out!”

I could hear my heart beat in my ears and I dreaded the cheers from
the righteous mob that were about to begin. The pain of having my
family being in the front row to witness this swirling cesspool of
hatred come to its inevitable end with my head on a pike, sucked the
air right out of my lungs.

It was truly just another Salem. Different time and place. Same
characters with new names. Oh, no gallows or big oak tree this time.
But if they could they surely would. How far we have not come. I know,
I already said that but do you really understand what a tragedy it
means? The whole universe is ours if we want it but instead we must
gravel in the dirt having to debate the obvious.

I have been standing against injustice most of my life. It is my
nature. I am a child of the 60’s and proud of it. But what of my poor
family? They stood so proud and strong. They are tougher than I will
ever be. I had told them do not cry. Do not give these bastards any
satisfaction. I told my wife if I see you cry I will surely loose it.
I said it is in the Federal courts we will set things right and send
that wall higher than it has ever been. On the wall behind us was a
painting of the signing of the Declaration.

The judge handed the verdict to the clerk. The only sound was the
paper. The paper in the clerk’s hands with the hand written words that
spelled my doom, my family’s fate and the inevitable cheers from the
Christian mob.

With my guts in my throat and no air to breathe. The court clerk
read the decision of the jury.

We the jury find the defendant:

On the charge of Aggravated Assault and Battery:
Not Guilty!

On the charge of Assault and Battery:
Not Guilty!

On the charge of Assault:
Not Guilty!

On the charge of Battery:
Not Guilty!

Not a word, not a sound. The lynching had been cancelled. I took my
first free breath in almost two years. I looked at the jury and mouth
the words thank you. I gazed at the floor as floodgates opened, I
dared not move my head that others might see. Charley don’t cry, but
free air has its effects.

With all their praying, lies, crooked cops, warning that justice
better be done, packing the courthouse with their followers, Even a
teacher on the jury who had taught at the Hardesty School. (Our motion
to take her off the jury denied.) Not guilty was still the outcome.
The evidence was obvious. This was a bad case. And 12 men and women
had the guts.

From the start of this legal fight my lawyers said Atheism must be
kept out. That it was a no go in the Bible belt. I was just adamant
that Atheism be brought in. For it is the reason. It was the motive
for all the lies and hate. I felt it was about time that this dirty
little secret of hate, persecution, Christian madness and hypocrisy is
brought out into the light of day. When I told my lawyers this they
all gave me the same bewildered stare.

So one by one, I dropped one lawyer then two. Then I had a hard
time in finding another one. My third lawyer was still trying to
convince me to keep my atheism out even up till the day of the trial.
I still said no. Somewhere along the line I talk to the ACLU out of
San Francisco. Who let me know my first civil lawyer was not telling
me the whole story. I was advised by them and many others to complain
to the Bar about him.

You see he never told me that the prayer in itself is illegal. That
the schools in this area were not following the state and federal
funding guidelines. When I asked him after finding out from the ACLU.
He said yes it is against the law.

I told him I want to have it stopped. He told me he would not for
he was a Christian and he believed there should be school prayer. His
statement floored me for it bordered on madness. I said what you
believe and what you do for a client is two different things and that
you took an oath. He still refused.

It did not matter to him that I had already given him $10,000
dollars. He knows we are not rich. So I wrote a letter to him to
complain about his refusing to take my daughters civil case where it
should have gone from the start. And I asked for my money back. He
sent me a bill for another $5000 saying it was the charge for reading
my letter and wasting his time.

In my search for a civil attorney it became clear that no one would
touch this case. In all of Oklahoma I could not find an attorney. My
criminal attorney said he would look at it but only after I paid him
his $15000 for the criminal case. He sent me a letter that the funds
for the criminal were coming too slow and suggested that I seek other
counsel for the civil matter. But even after he got his $15000 he
would only take it if I paid him more. (Now that I have won the
criminal case he wants on the civil. Suffice to say he is off the
civil!)

Eventually I contacted the American Atheist, which was referred to
me by Edward Tabash, who was referred to me by a Mr. Robert Tierman. I
told them my problem in finding an attorney willing to take church and
state case in which the people are blatantly breaking the law. Yet no
one will take it. American Atheist, being out of another state, could
not refer me to anyone. But they said they would try to help. The ACLU
out of Oklahoma City refused. They sent me some standard letter. It
really hurt that I did not even rate a return call or a reason. I felt
betrayed, lost and confused.

Was this the United States? Where freedom reigns?

The whole family was under constant stress. Police trying to get
search warrants to the property by having ex-employees file false
statements. Other cops trying to hire ex-cons to beat me up. The whole
town knows of it! The Sheriff trying to have my bond pulled by the
bail bondsman when there was no legal way to do it. My kids have been
out of school since November. Principal’s son saying should he get a
gun when he sees my daughter and my son. DA has yet to reply to our
concerns. The Department of Human Services comes to my place saying
they received a complaint that I starve my kids. It was even obvious
to them the charge was bogus.

We have become very good at using back roads. The police follow us
around. Traffic tickets that when challenged were dropped in court.
Not to mention the stares and whispers, the betrayal from employees,
one of my healthy dogs dying. Brush fires starting up upwind.

An FBI agent even said, “You aren’t kidding”. When it was obvious
someone followed us and was watching our meeting out in the middle of
nowhere. I was told about a few things. All I can say is that some of
the crooks out here now charged with crimes wore badges and guns! But
he could not help my family and me. Not without witnesses willing to
come forward. One scared witness left the state. The last words she
spoke to me were, Chuck I don’t want to end up dead in a ditch!

Just what you would expect life to be like out here in the Bible
belt!

The roller coaster of emotions we went through every minute, every
day. It was truly a hell. There were days we spoke little. Other days
we spoke late into the night. You get to a point you become numb, but
it doesn’t last. For it is all aboard and you are on the roller
coaster again.

My poor family. They were standing tall. But they would not even be
in this place if it were not for me and my bright idea about
centralizing our business. We all missed the desert. The free open
Mojave Desert. My family did not ask for this. They deserved better. I
saw them all suffering.

Many a night I would sit in the barn alone with a pint of scotch
and look at the high beams and the rope on the wall.

Then out of the blue my wife received a call from Ellen Johnson who
said they had a lawyer that can help us, an Edwin Kagin who is their
legal director. Well I called him up, and our civil case is up and
running.

Edwin Kagin also by my request came to my criminal case for the two
cases are obviously interrelated. There were also other reasons.

Simply stated without Edwin Kagin, Ellen Johnson and American
Atheist I would be in jail now, or worse. Without them, we would have
no federal case on separation of church and state. The only group, the
only lawyer that would stand with my family and me to protect the wall
and not cringe at me wanting to put atheism as part of my defense.

In Edwin’s opening statement American Atheist magazine was shown.
The crowd almost rioted. He explained that Atheism was not a dirty
word and that it was a conclusion. That my family and I are not devil
worshippers. We just have no Gods. It was the basis of the case. It
was the danger. It was the truth. Yet the only lawyer to go there
freely was Edwin Kagin.

In a world where superstition is the norm and those who seek
another path are ridiculed or worse. Being an atheist takes guts.
Freedom is never freely given. The good fight is always there.

Oh you can hide yourself in the latest sitcom or have one or two
more scotch and waters but the good fight is still there. You can run
to your malls and buy yourself crazy with credit card frenzy. But the
good fight is still there. You can look away and deny allegiance. But
the good fight is still there. These are the times that try men’s
courage. You can debate till you’re blue in the face. It will not
change a damn thing.

Our forefathers are on our side in this fight. Trust me. From Adams
to Madison to Jefferson and Paine they all knew the dangers of a
Theocracy. They wrote the Constitution to assure it. And within the
federal courts we can protect this nation from a Theocracy.

The wall between the church and state must stand. But the wall is
being battered and cracks now appear. The Christians are at the gate
attempting to breach the wall and send us back down the road to an age
of darkness, bloodshed and fear. My family and myself are willing to
stand and fight the good fight. If we lose some skin, so be it. We
have no more else to give. We are financially done. Thanks to American
Atheist, Ellen Johnson and Edwin Kagin for the first time we do not
fight alone.

Please stand together with us and fight the good fight. The fight
that our forefathers began. Lets make the wall so high between Church
and State that they who wish to tear it down will know better and be
content with staying in their churches.

For freedom has never been free! There can be no freedom for all if
the wall does not stand.

The wall must stand.

Chuck, Nadia, Nicole, Czeslaw and Bridgette Smalkowski

Help Us Grow

You enjoy coming on here calling us chickens and cowards. Yet you ain’t even got balls enough to sign a user name to your posts.

I have a question for you, you festering pile of twat vomit. Can you find anything with some semblance of intellect to refute us with? I’ve got good money that says you can’t, hence why all you can do is spout hateful remarks and try to be a little e-bully.

Tell you what, bonehead, why don’t you go out and get some sun. Talk to some people. Go somewhere. Do something. Go play with your GI Joe’s.

In short, quit being a little piss-ant bitching out people you’ve never even met and who couldn’t really care what you have to think if all you can say is unproductive bitching.

~ Damen

In Peregrin Wood’s post earlier, the question was asked;

Are the right wingers hoping for Armageddon?

I have to answer that question.

Yes, they are hoping for Armageddon.

I’m not being a smart ass, I really think they are. It’s the most logical explanation for the reasons behind their actions. Let’s look at this long and hard. Many christians and, most recently Star Jones, have said that atheists can’t be trusted because we don’t feel that we have to answer to a higher power. However if you look at the track record of the religious right in power they have become the most amoral people on the planet. They have started Holy Wars and are now looking to start fighting even more nations.

Someone once said that Bush thinks Armageddon is coming anyway so he doesn’t care how many things he fucks up while in office. I think whoever said that is right.

I would trust an atheist with an atomic bomb a lot quicker than I would a christian and I don’t say that because I’m an atheist myself.

Atheists know that this is the only life we’re going to get so we better do it right the first time.

On the flip side, christians think that no matter what they do, so long as they don’t mock the holy spirit, all they’d need to do is ask for forgiveness and they’ll get into heaven. And then everything will be all sandy beaches and umbrella drinks.

So sit back and take a long look at what’s going on in office. Holy wars, civil rights violations, power grabbing, money hoarding, and now possible expanded wars. This is what you get when those in power think the world is going to end anyway. This is what you get when christian fundamentalists get into office.

This is what you get when those in power think all they have to do is say sorry to god to make everything better.

I write this while on the edge of sleep, so forgive me if I seem to ramble.

For quite a while I’ve been dwelling over the liberties that we’re losing. All sorts of things but most of all I find that political dissent these days has more of a chance of getting you locked up than it did just ten years ago. Back in the ’60’s people would be locked up for protesting against the government but the difference is that back then you would get a trial. We’ve seen now that you don’t even have to be a dissident to be locked up without trial or the expectation that you won’t be tortured. I have been thinking about this for a while but I’d just made a comment in Jim’s $5 Dollar Donation post saying that Abbie Hoffman would be proud and that sparked an urge to look him up on Wikipedia. I found a quote that went well with what I had been thinking about.

“You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.” ~ Abbie Hoffman

That made me think about the things I’ve heard and read about over the last few years. Conservatives saying that disagreeing with Bush is paramount to treason; people being interviewed by the Schutzstaffel…erm…I mean Secret Service (one SS is as good as the other) because of their bumper stickers or posters that are hanging in their private homes; blatant spying against American citizens, and now an anti-flag burning amendment.

If one uses Abbie Hoffman’s words as a guide, the United States is no longer a truly free country.

That said, I want to call attention to the actions of the Bush Administration during the past few years. At their height they were constantly screaming about how we were going to be attacked…any minute now. Every day they’d say that and shout “9/11!” and damn near every American would jump and stand in line giving the Bush Administration anything they wanted and doing it with a smile. And thinking about that and how they’re still using 9/11 for political vote whoring and still going on and on about how we’re about to be attacked by evil doers, it has brought me to the quote I shall leave everyone with.

“Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” ~ Hermann Göring

Good night,
~Damen

Do you ever think about cows? I do. Let’s see what cows can teach us about politics.

LIBERAL
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Instead of giving your neighbor one of your cows, you write to
your congressman, demanding that he pass legislation for more
government programs to help your neighbor get a cow.
You hold a concert to raise awareness for the cow-lessness.
Barbara Streisand sings for the cow-less, who couldn’t attend
because ticket prices are so expensive that only people with 3
or 4 cows can afford to attend. You wear a ribbon that signifies that
you care about cow-less people, even though you really haven’t done
anything to help them at all.

CONSERVATIVE
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
You cram four cows into the space for one and get more cows.
Cows get sick –hey, pump ‘em full of antibiotics and you save money.
Feed them ground-up sheep brains and you save more.
Fatten them fast on growth hormone, then butcher quick before they die.
Deny any link between sick consumers and your practices.
Hire spin artists to dismiss Mad Cow disease.

DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to
support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow,
which was a gift from your government.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other,
pays you for the milk, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd
one. You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when one cow drops dead.
You spin an announcement to the analysts
stating you have down sized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary
cow and produce twenty times the milk. They learn to travel on
unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer,
give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don’t know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have four cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have eight cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really
have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don’t milk them because you cannot touch any creature’s
private parts.
Then you kill them and claim a US bomb blew them up while they
were in the hospital.

IRAQI CORPORATION
You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send radio tapes of their mooing.

POLISH CORPORATION
You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

CALIFORNIAN
You have a cow and a bull.
The bull is depressed.
It has spent its life living a lie.
It goes away for two weeks.
It comes back after a taxpayer-paid sex-change operation.
You now have two cows.
One makes milk; the other doesn’t.
You try to sell the transgender cow.
Its lawyer sues you for discrimination.
You lose in court.
You sell the milk-generating cow to pay the damages.
You now have one rich, transgender, non-milk-producing cow.
You change your business to beef.
PETA pickets your farm.
Jesse Jackson makes a speech in your driveway.
Cruz Bustamante calls for higher farm taxes to help “working cows.”
Hillary Clinton calls for the nationalization of 1/7TH of your farm
“for the children.”
Gray Davis signs a law giving your farm to Mexico.
The L.A. Times quotes five anonymous cows claiming you groped
their teats.
You declare bankruptcy and shut down all operations.
The cow starves to death.
The L.A. Times’ analysis shows your business failure is Bush’s fault.

DICTATORSHIP
You have two cows.
The government takes both and shoots you.

ENVIRONMENTALISM
You have two cows.
The government bans you from milking or killing them.

FEMINISM
You have two cows.
They get married and adopt a veal calf.

FEUDALISM
You have two cows.
Your lord takes some of the milk.

TOTALITARIANISM
You have two cows.
The government takes them and denies they ever existed.
Milk is banned.

PURE COMMUNISM
You have two cows.
Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM
You have two cows.
You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

FASCISM
You have two cows.
Give the milk to the government.

PURE FASCISM
You have two cows.
The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

NAZISM
The government shoots you, takes the cows and feeds one to the army and the other to the police.

ANARCHISM
Keep the cows.
Steal a few more cows.

ANARCHY
You have two cows.
Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to kill you and take the cows.

CONSERVATISM
Milk the cows, enbalm the cows, freeze the milk, nuke the cows to keep from spreading the disease.
Phase out over five years the amount of milk you’re required to give to the government.

LIBERALISM
Give the milk back to the cows.
Let them escape.
Put the cows on the Voter Registration list.

LIBERTARIANISM
Milk the cows and keep it for yourself; hope the populace can find milk elsewhere.

MILITIAISM
Start shooting if they come for your cows.

MILITARIANISM
You have two cows.
The government takes both and drafts you.

PURE DEMOCRACY
You have two cows.
Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures.
The press dubs the affair “Cowgate”.

BRITISH DEMOCRACY
You have two cows.
You feed them sheeps’ brains and they go mad.
The government doesn’t do anything.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY
You have two cows.
Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY
You have two cows.
The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
You are associated with (the concept of “ownership” is a symbol of the phallocentric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.

COUNTER CULTURE
Wow, dude, there’s like… these two cows, man. You got to have some of this milk!

You all probably know me, at least by name. I’m God and I’m going to borrow Damen’s account for a little while. I know this goes against my usual method of butting out of humanity’s business (after the New Testament, of course. I was a pissed off old bastard way back when) but fuck it, I’m God and I’ll do whatever the hell I want.

I just want to clear a few things up tonight. First off, I did not talk to Pat Robertson. He heard a voice in his head telling him that if he puts his fingers to his scalp and squints really hard he’ll look like a gypsy and get money. What do you know, but it worked. If I were going to tell anyone My plans for the human race, who in their right mind would think I’d tell a doofus like Pat Robertson?

Secondly, Pat Robertson is not one of my children. He sold his soul to Lucifer back when he was 14 to clear up his pimples and for a lay from Lilith. The devil cleared up the acne for an hour, but Lilith wouldn’t go near him. Someone tell me why I kicked her out of Eden again? That girl’s got brains and standards.

Now, for those of you who live in Virginia, I’m sorry I sent that hurricane your way. I was just getting really pissed at Patty and I kinda went Old Testament on his ass. Back in the day I could have got him with that hurricane or maybe a lightning bolt but I threw my arm out when at the Holy Baseball game. I tried to trick Chronus with a sliding curve and pulled a muscle. I’ve never been able to send My wrath exactly where I want it since then. And to make matters worse, Chronus ended up hitting the winning home run anyway.

Also, I wanted everyone to know that F.G. Fitzer was right and to look out for storks with their tongues hanging out of their beaks.

~ God

P.S. I am not infallible and I don’t have a personal hand in creating every human on earth. If I did, do you honestly think I would create George Bush?

I recently posted an article on communism and socialism and one of the recent visitors to this website left a comment in that post.

In response to one of Comrade Stalin’s flippant remarks in which he has to say

Our Peoples Health care will make sure you could see a doctor Free.
(Of course doctors will receive a Government salary set by me, so
can’t say about quality).

This is another argument I always see against communism and by extension, universal healthcare. However what these people fail to see is that all it would take to ensure quality healthcare for everyone in the USA (yes, that includes you, Bill Gates), is to just take maybe five or ten percent from the military budget. A few billion here and there and everyone can have a decent level of healthcare. And, quite frankly, I think healthcare should be available to everyone, not just those who can afford it.

And now I foresee people screaming at me “If we reduce the military funding we won’t be able to stop the axis of evil!” Bullshit. We already spend more money on the military than the rest of the planet combined, so a few billion ain’t really gonna make much of a difference. Shit, if we cut the military spending by half we could solve all of our domestic problems and most of the problems of the rest of the world. But no, the Navy has to have their new Super Carriers, the Airforce has to get it’s next squadron of F-22s, the Marines just can’t survive without their XM8s and XM-29s and gods forbid the Army has to give up it’s next batch of Abrams tanks and Apache helicopters! Why, without these things, we can’t fight the evil doers! Want to see how utterly fucked up the military budget is? Take a look here.

You honestly telling me that without a fraction of that we can’t fight the evil doers and ensure a standard of medical care? Are you fucking insane?

Never mind that the trillions of dollars we’ve spent on a pointless war could have funded a fucking transatlantic tunnel from New York to England. For the price of the Iraq war, we could have had fucking quality healthcare, funding for cancer research, planned parenthood, AIDS research, as well as being able to feed all the starving children. Yes, I’m going to throw out the christian fundamental belly-achin’ when they see something they don’t like “WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!?” Are these people really telling me that they would rather give the military bottomless funds in the exchange for the illusion of security (a huge advanced army didn’t stop some loons from flying themselves and civilians into those buildings, did it?) rather than give their kids the very real security of healthcare when they need it? When I see christian fundamentalists bitchin’ about homosexuality and sex in the media and start screaming WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN! yet remain silent when the proposal for universal medical care is shot down in congress I have to clench my teeth to keep from screaming at the ceiling because of these sexually repressed homophobes. According to these people, they’d rather let the children die of a preventable illness because they can’t afford the shot but god forbid these youngsters see a couple of dudes swapping saliva!

People say that universal medical care paid for by the government won’t be of the best quality, then tell me why fucking Cuba has a medical and education system that’s second to none? Why is it that most of the civilized world will provide healthcare to it’s citizens free of charge while the USA tells it’s citizens to go die in the gutter. Tell me why the USA has a oh-so-much better system than Cuba, the UK, Canada, etc, etc, etc. Tell me why it’s better to let insurance decide which life-saving treatments it will pay for but not others? Why is Viagra covered in insurance, but not abortion or heart transplants? Yeah, great system of ours. The best of quality in healthcare…but only if you can afford it, otherwise we just have to stabilize you, then boot you out and bill you $50 bucks for an aspirin.

Tell me all of that and tell me against why communism is so bad and capitalism is so great.

~ Damen

There are a few things I question about American ideals in general. Well, let’s not beat around the bush, there are a lot of things I question about American ideals. But one thing has always been at the top of my questions: Why do so many Americans hate communism?

Now I know the history about communism and socialism and I know about the two most notorious nations to claim these as their economic systems. Respectively Russia and Germany. And I can understand how the history of those two nations would give communism and socialism a bad name. But the more I’ve come to learn, the more I see a difference and how people mistake Communism with Stalinism. Communism in and of itself is, to the best of my understanding, an economic system in which the wealth is distributed evenly and the means of production is owned by the state and the nation becomes a classless society. Socialism is the economic system in which the means of production is controlled by the workers. I have to ask myself; what is so bad about that?

Around the 1950’s, a fella came into office by the name of Joseph McCarthy and he gained support by whipping up Americans into an anticommunist frenzy. He equated a communist with being a traitor. Doesn’t that go against the constitution and the intention of the founding fathers that you should be free to practice whatever political view you have as well as whatever religious view you have?

More to the point, I have to ask myself; what is so great about capitalism? We live in a capitalist nation (violently capitalist in my opinion) and what has it brought? A few individuals gain wealth at the expense of the masses. The majority of the population is left to struggle or else starve while 1% of the population lives in a mansion that can be as large as a city block and a property line that’ll stretch from here to the west coast. The vast minority of people living in this country get access to the finest medical care available while the majority are left without treatment and basically left to die; gods forbid they need a surgery like a heart transplant. Those upper crust people also have the money to be able to buy votes from politicians to keep the minimum wage from being raised, then reward them with nice jobs once they’re out of office. The CEO of an oil company gets 400 billion dollars in a retirement package while the average guy gets…AARP. Yeah, that’s real equal. To me, the system of capitalism is little more than a modern usage of the ancient European ideas of nobility. The lords of the land (the wealthy 1%) make money from the peasantry (the other 99%) while doing almost none of the work. The only difference here is that the lords have no obligation to protect their peasants. In fact, come war time, they’ll do whatever it takes to keep from fighting.

I look at the examples of communism and I see a much better way of thinking. A classless society, medical care for everyone, a living wage, a standard of living, education for the poor and so forth.

But what gets me is why, why do so many Americans hate communism? What has given them these anticommunist ideals? Why didn’t Americans rally in the streets after Bush turned down Castro’s offer of 1,500 doctors after Katrina? If communism is so bad, why has Venezuela offered us oil so cheaply after the ecological disasters of the last two years?

People tell me “The USSR broke up and Cuba’s citizens are starving; that’s proof that communism doesn’t work” but to me it’s just proof that communism would work if the most powerful nation on the planet wouldn’t refuse trade with anyone who does business with a communist country.

I write this and I’m not sure if I’ll be investigated by the Department of Homeland Insecurity. Has the McCarthyism of the ’50’s and ’60’s died down enough for me to speak freely about counter-capitalist ideals? I strongly doubt it, but I feel I should use my right to free speech and voice my opinion even if it does go against the status-quo. Isn’t that the essence of liberty? Isn’t that the ideals enshrined in the constitution? Is it really treason for people to search for a better way of life if they keep getting screwed by the current system?

There have been many conservatives and republicans who will, after hearing me voice my liberal opinions, call me a commie. Well shit, if wanting progressive change in the government; wanting the government to ensure a living wage; and feeling that everyone has a right to medical care and education rather than just those who can afford it and let the rest die then yeah, I guess I am a pinko leftist commie. If that’s what being a commie means then I’m as red as a fucking traffic light.

I guess I should sum this up. I don’t understand why so many people hate communism after looking around at what has become of a capitalist country.

For those of you who have been following the discussion in the post I made earlier entitled Bob Smith and the Tree Huggers, you’ll note that USMarine has recently stated that the USA was founded for god and also basically told me to leave the country if I didn’t believe in said god.

Damen,

First off if you dont belive in God, why dont you get out of the country that was founded for him, your contridicting your own ideals, obviously you do belive in him why else would you live in America, hmmm how does it go ” I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to The Republic for which it stands, ONE NATION UNDER GOD, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Yes, that’s all well and good but when you look at history without a handy-dandy set of Bible-Noculars in front of your eyes you’ll see things quite differently.

I have already said this before but it bears repeating because I fear that our good friend USMarine will skip over what I said a second time.

For those who may think USMarine is right and the USA is somehow founded for god I want you all to take a moment to direct your attention to the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Seems kinda cut and dry there. No religion in the government. Kinda hard to miss, what with it being in the first sentence and all. But apparently USMarine missed it, or he just didn’t really know what it meant. Well, that’s fine, but then he went on to say to Jim

Jim,

Sir, how is that claiming superiority over anyone, I am stating that it would be contridictory to say I dont belive in shoes but yet still wear them every day kinda get where im coming from?, no sir they are the ones that need to “own what they say” if you dont belive this country was founded for God then you dont know history or the pledge of allegiance. nor should you live here.

Now this is a shocker to me. USMarine wants to talk about knowing history? Okay, let’s just take a look at history and see if he’s right, shall we?

In the Treaty of Tripoli (which was signed by John Adams) it states in Article 11:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

There it is, a little something from history which states that the United States is not founded on the christian religion. So one must ask how, if the USA is not founded on the christian religion, can it be founded for the christian god? The answer here is, it’s not.

USMarine also uses the Pledge of Allegiance to justify his stance because it has “Under God” in it. Well, he wants to tell us to look at history? He should look at it first because the Pledge of Allegiance did not have Under God in it when it was adopted in 1892.

A quick search on Wikipedia.org will show you what I mean, but I’ll just save you the time.

Addition of the words “Under God”

Docherty’s message began with a comparison of the United States to ancient Sparta. Docherty noted that a traveler to ancient Sparta was amazed by the fact that the Spartans’ national might was not to be found in their walls, their shields, or their weapons, but in their spirit. Likewise, said Docherty, the might of the United States should not be thought of as emanating from their newly developed Atomic weapons, but in their spirit, the “American way of life.” In the remainder of the sermon Docherty sought to define as succinctly as possible the essence of the American spirit and way of life. To do so, Docherty appealed to those two words in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. According to Docherty, what has made the United States both unique and strong was her sense of being the nation that Lincoln described: a nation “under God.” He took the opportunity to tell a story of a conversation with his children about the Pledge of Allegiance. Docherty was troubled by the fact that it did not include any reference to the deity. Without such reference, Docherty insisted that the Pledge could apply to just about any nation. He felt that the pledge should reflect the American spirit and way of life as defined by Lincoln.

After the service concluded, Rev. Docherty had opportunity to converse with President Eisenhower about the substance of the sermon. The President expressed his enthusiastic concurrence with Docherty’s view, and the very next day, Eisenhower had the wheels turning in Congress to incorporate Docherty’s suggestion into law. On February 8, 1954, Representative Charles Oakman (R-Mich), introduced a bill to that effect.

Senator Homer Ferguson, in his report to the Congress, March 10, 1954, said that “the introduction of this joint resolution was suggested to me by a sermon given recently by the Rev. George M. Docherty, of Washington, D.C., who is pastor of the church at which Lincoln worshipped.” This time Congress concurred with the Oakman-Ferguson resolution, and Eisenhower opted to sign the bill into law appropriately on Flag Day (June 14, 1954).

A little history lesson and you’ll find that until 1954 the words “Under God” were never mentioned.

What many people fail to remember is that despite what the Founding Fathers may have believed in, whether they were religious or not, they set up a secular government, one of the first in history, and they did it because they knew what happens when you mix religion into the government. When religion is allowed to take part in the proceedings of the government, it will open the door to tyranny. But I think I can do better to quote one of the wiser men of our nation.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. ~Thomas Jefferson

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. ~Thomas Jefferson

~Damen

This is a story I wrote not too long ago for another website. I had made a flippant remark that, when it comes to abortion, this one member of that site had said that he’s against it because a fertilized embryo will become a fully-formed human and therefor to him humans are alive from the time of conception. I has responded with “Saplings will become trees, but that doesn’t stop me from mowing over them. He asked if I were equating trees with humans and I corrected him by saying “No, I’m equating sapplings with a fetus.” He responded by saying “Okay, well, that’s the same thing, as far as I’m concerned.”

The story that follows expands on that line of reasoning.

—

Bob Smith and the Tree Huggers

One bright and sunny weekend Bob Smith was getting some much needed yardwork done. As he was pushing his mower across the grass, a blond man with a beard and wearing a tie-dye T-shirt stopped in front of Bob Smith’s house.
“STOP!” the blond man yelled; “Turn off that mower!”
Bob was curious, so he did as the man said. Now that he could hear over the engine, he inquired; “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t you see it?” the man asked and pointed to a patch of ground a few feet in front of the mower.
“See what?” All that he could see was grass.
“That tree you’re about to murder!”
Bob Smith peers long and hard at the patch of ground, but he can not see a tree. He is starting to become convinced that this fellow is a loon; “Buddy, there is no tree there.”
The blond man walked over to the patch of earth, pointing as he went and leaned down until his finger was touching a plant barely a half inch high but visible through the grass; “This tree!” he shouted.
Bob Smith, now looking on in disbelief, turned and glanced at his cherry tree. The plant this man (who Bob was now thinking of as a “Hippie”) was an offshoot of the main cherry tree. He had mowed over many of those saplings before because if he didn’t they would take over his yard and kill off his flower beds.
“That’s not a tree,” he says, “It’s just a sapling. That’s a tree,” He jerked his thumb towards the cherry tree a few feet away.
“It makes no difference,” the hippie said sternly, “A tree is a tree from the moment it sprouts.”
Bob Smith was now tired of this conversation and started up the lawnmower once again, “It’s not a tree, it’s a sapling and I don’t have the time or money required to tend to another tree,” and proceeded to run the lawnmower over the sapling, chopping it in half. The hippie gaped at Bob and said “You wait, we’ll put a stop to this!”

The weekend after next, Bob Smith was pulling his lawnmower out of the garage when he saw a group of people sitting on his lawn and holding signs with sayings like “Lawn Care is MURDER!” and “What about the saplings?!” on them.
“What’s going on here?” Bob Smith asked as he approached the group.
“We’re going to stop you from killing this tree,” the blond hippie from two weeks ago told him. He was wearing a handcuff around his wrist and the other end was laying over another cherry tree sapling.
“This is ridiculous,” Bob said and went back inside to call the police and have this group of people dispersed.
“No, this is serious,” A woman wearing a white T-shirt with a picture of a sprout and a leaf and with ‘Let Me Live’ written across her chest; “We’re stopping a murder!”
An hour later, the police arrived and the crowd was forced off Bob Smith’s lawn. The next day, a Sunday, there was a knock on Bob Smith’s door. When he opened it to see who was there, a television camera and a microphone were forced into his face and cameras started flashing so much he was nearly blinded.
“Mr. Smith!” a female voice called out, “How does it feel to commit a murder?”
“Are you going to kill any more trees today?” a male voice called as a second camera was shoved through the doorway. Bob forced the door shut as more and more cameras and microphones were thrust at him. After another call to the police, and another hour of yelling, the reporters were made to leave. That night as he was watching the 6:00 news, Bob was shocked to see his face featured on Weasel News (We Lie, You Believe) with the words ‘Lawncare or Murder?’ under his picture.
“This crime must end!” the Hippie was yelling into a microphone from what looked to be in Bob’s own neighborhood. “How many more trees will cut down before they even have a chance to grow up and know life?”
After the story gained mass attention, more and more hippies started writing their congressmen demanding something be done. There was such a flood of letters that, even though it was being done by only a minority of people, that small group was so vocal that finally a ban on lawncare was enacted to stop the murder of innocent trees.

Five years later, Bob Smith’s lawnmower was rusting in his garage and his yard was now over run by cherry trees. They had choked out his other flowers and turned his once presentable lawn into a grove so thick it was difficult to get to his car. Because the law passed required him to not only allow the trees to grow, he was made to care for them and was now running into debt from the cost of water and fertilizer. Other people were in the same boat as Bob Smith, trees, weeds, and vines choked yards and the roots were destroying roads and sidewalks. Baseball, football, golf, and soccer games were soon abandoned because it was against the law to cut down trees.

But at least the hippies were happy.

Yesterday was an interesting day, to be sure. I woke up around down to the sounds of rain falling. Not much, but we’re finally starting to get some. After a while, I went back to sleep and woke up a couple hours later and the wind was howling. This was something of a shocker, even for someone who’s used to high winds.

My dad and I went for a ride to the lake and the wind had kicked up so much dust that the horizon was a dark brown. I couldn’t see across the lake clearly, the shore on the other side was hidden behind the sand. A power plant about 5 or 7 miles away which was usually clearly visible was little more than a tan outline. The wind blew so hard that I’m still rubbing sand out of my eyes.

Before the forums went down, a topic was posted about discussing the strange weather we’re having. this aptly belongs in that thread. This is what happens during global warming: not only do we have a bad drought but high winds will turn my town into something that is darkly reminiscent of the Great Dust Bowl. The winds will blow away the topsoil and render the ground infertile.

Before I was concerned, but now I’m worried.

~Damen

I’m not sure how accurate this is, but this morning after I cooked breakfast (chicken marsala [not the average breakfast]) my dad got onto me about the fact that I’d bought some styrofoam cups a while back.

When I’d bought them, I checked them to make sure I could recycle them. In fact, I have one of those little white bastards right next to me now and it has a triangle made from three arrows and a little 6 right in the middle. Last I checked, that was a mark put on things that you could recycle. Now I am one of those people who likes styrofoam cups. It has a nice texture, it won’t slip out of my hand as easy when it gets wet from condensation, it keeps my drink cool or warm for a long, long time compared to glass or plastic, and from the markings, you can recycle them.

Apparently, that’s not the case as told to me by my dad, who has dealt with the recycling company that the city contracts to. From what he told me; the company won’t take plastic sacks, styrofoam cups, or cardboard. This seemed stupid to me, after all, isn’t the point of recycling to recycle those things with that little triangle on them?

The recycling company is more than happy to take aluminum and plastic. I had to wonder why, but then I thought; aren’t those the most profitable things to recycle? I can’t help but think that is the only reason why this company would take some materials and not others. Am I alone in this theory?

If this is the case, I can only shake my head and think: well, this is Oklahoma I live in. I still have yet to hear a policy enacted by the local government that makes sense to me. Maybe I’m just too liberal?

~ Damen

P.S. This is my first diary post.