Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Yesterday, the official government-paid Chaplain of the United States Senate made special time in the legislative day for a government-established ritual of Christian prayer. The prayer was given by Timothy Keller of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, who begged his Christian God to “empower us, as a nation, to love all that You do command.”

You know, where I come from empowerment refers to a state in which people are able to create the means to act according to their own consciences. Empowerment as I understand it does not refer to the ability to learn to love the things that one is commanded to do. Where I come from, we call learning to love the things we are commanded to do as surrender or acquiescence or submission.

I don’t particularly appreciate some preacher being given a designated government-funded pulpit in order to preach that I should become the happy slave of his deity. In an empowered nation, there’s a separation of church and state to prevent that sort of thing.

As the remaining Roman Catholics in the United States wonder why their numbers are declining, they might want to take a look at the name of one of their organizations in Missouri:

Leadership Team of the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood of O’Fallon

Just a thought, but perhaps a name such as this one does not communicate suggest that the Roman Catholic Church remains relevant and reliable very effectively.

Democrats’ Health Care Plan Is Not About ‘Health’ or ‘Caring’ reads the headline from Fox News.

Yeah? Well, Fox News doesn’t have any foxes nor any news.

So there.

Woo hoo! The more I look at Sarah Palin’s political record, the more it looks like a political fun house… or a mad house, maybe.

Now it turns out that Irish blogger Maman Poulet managed to catch Sarah Palin in a big fat lie that the mainstream media never even bothered to check out.

Sarah Palin said that she had lots of foreign policy experience because she had been to Ireland, Germany and Kuwait. Better revise that, GOP. It seems that Palin wasn’t being honest about the Ireland part.

Maman Poulet discovered that Sarah Palin’s supposed trip to Ireland consisted of a layover of an hour or two in a sequestered part of Ireland’s Shannon Airport when her plane on the way to Kuwait stopped for refueling. Does that count as visiting Ireland, and having foreign policy experience there? Sure, if you’re running for Vice President of the Wasilla High School Student Council.

It’s a shameless padding of Palin’s resume that indicates more about her lack of experience than about her qualifications to succeed John McCain and become President of the United States.

The Republicans say that Sarah Palin should be elected Governor because she has executive experience – although it’s in very small communities. Sarah Palin has had experience running a business, however. She was the partial owner of a car wash in Anchorage, Alaska. Together with her husband, she held 40 percent of the car wash’s ownership.

And how did Sarah Palin do with the executive experience of running a small business? Lousy. She ran the business into the ground because she couldn’t be bothered to keep up with paperwork. Sarah Palin failed to file legally required reports or to pay the state licensing fees for the business, and so the car wash was shut down.

In addition to the car wash, Sarah Palin was the owner and operator of a marketing consultancy with the odd name of Rouge Cou. Rouge Cou is a rough translation into French of the American phrase redneck. Actually, the French translation should have been Cou Rouge. Sarah Palin couldn’t even get that right, and the consulting business closed after it failed to get even one client.

With this record of executive failure, why should Sarah Palin be given the position of Vice President under the elderly and most-likely-to-die-in-office President in American history, John McCain?

Sarah Palin is no friend of small towns in America.

How many small town main streets across the USA have died when Wal-Mart parked its trucks on the outskirts of town and built a big box store, stealing all the customers that small business relied upon? Those big box stores can offer low, low prices because they sell stuff made in sweatshop factories in countries like China and India, and because they have powerful lobbyists working for them in Washington D.C.

Big box stores ruin small towns.

So, what did Sarah Palin do as mayor of the village of Wasilla? She welcomed the big box stores to set up shop on the edge of town. Practically rolled out the red carpet for them.

Wasilla resident Anne Kilkenny says of that when she was mayor, Sarah Palin, “turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots.”

If you want America to turn into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots, then Sarah Palin is your kind of politician. If not, then you need to take a stand now and join with those Americans working to make sure that Sarah Palin is never placed within a heartbeat of being President of the United States.

The name Democratic Underground is a great idea. If only the DemocraticUnderground.com web site would follow through with the underground approach that its name suggests.

The people over there pretend to have a lot of guts. They dish out the abuse when it comes to attacking George W. Bush. One person there blasted Bush’s decision to ignore Cindy Sheehan, saying of Bush, “He didn’t have the balls to even talk to Cindy Sheehan!”

Ooh, but what does the Democratic Underground do when the Democrats start to support George W. Bush? What happens when it’s Nancy Pelosi who refuses to debate Cindy Sheehan?

Well, then the Democratic Underground just whistles and looks the other way, pretending there isn’t a problem. Or, worse, they censor dissent, kicking people off their web site for daring to criticize Nancy Pelosi and praise Cindy Sheehan.

That’s what they did to the following video: They banned it from being shown on DemocraticUnderground.com. Open discussion of politics isn’t allowed there. It’s just a place for Democratic dittoheads to parrot the party line. How pathetic.

Democratic Underground? Please! They’re more like Democratic Overground.

Under the cover of darkness, the American military entered the town of Baiji last night. Residents tried to get away from the assault, and then were gunned down by American helicopters as they fled.

Eight civilians were killed. Among the dead were two boys, one eleven years old and one eight years old.

The town’s police chief called the American attack “a criminal act”.

It’s not the first time this has happened. The United Nations has called for tough investigations of American attacks from the air against civilians in Iraq. Those investigations have not come.

They call this a “war”. What kind of war is it in which the strongest military in the world attacks children after their bedtimes?

On CNN, March 1, 2008, Hillary Clinton warned against making Barack Obama the Democratic presidential nominee, saying, “…everyone knows that John McCain will make this election about national security, that is a given. And it will be imperative that we have a nominee who is able to stand on that stage with Senator McCain, and I believe I am the person best able to do that.”

That, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. In a year when the Republicans are weak, she plans on allowing the Republican nominee to determine what the election is about. In the meantime, she will just stand on the stage, content to be there.

Barack Obama understands that the strongest Democratic presidential nominee will be the one who doesn’t wait around for the Republican to set the terms of the election. Barack Obama has the key concepts to set the terms of the election according to strong progressive Democratic values, not according to mere response to Republican tactics.

Democrats deserve a nominee who doesn’t begin the race by surrendering the terms of the contest.

Supporters of Hillary Clinton are getting very upset that their candidate, who they thought a few months ago was “inevitable”, is now losing to Barack Obama. They’re using arguments against Barack Obama that just don’t make any sense.

One of my favorite arguments they use is that Barack Obama will never be able to withstand attacks from the Republican Party because the only Republican he’s ever had to run against is Alan Keyes. What these Hillary Clinton supporters don’t seem to understand is that such an argument only works in Hillary Clinton’s favor if Barack Obama is not winning in the electoral competition against Hillary Clinton.

Think about it for just a little bit. If Barack Obama really is such a sissy wimp who will be ripped apart by the Republicans, and Hillary Clinton is such a tough campaigner who can take on anybody, then how come Hillary Clinton is losing to Barack Obama?

Another argument that Hillary Clinton supporters have begun to use that I really don’t like is that Barack Obama will be defeated by the Republicans because he isn’t Republican enough. This argument suggests that the Democrats ought to nominate a Democrat who supports Republican policies, in order to get the Republican vote. It’s the best justification that they can come up with for Hillary Clinton’s vote to help George W. Bush go to war in Iraq.

That argument was used by Thomas Buffenbarger, a Clinton supporter in Youngstown, Ohio who took to the stage at a Clinton rally yesterday to warm up the crowd before Hillary Clinton herself arrived. He didn’t speak much in praise of Hillary Clinton. Instead, he attacked Barack Obama. Here’s a sample Buffenbarger had to say:

“The Barack show is playing to rave reviews sold out at college campuses after college campus. Standing room only crowds to hear his silver-tounged orations. Hope, change, yes we can? Give me a break! I’ve got news for all the latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies crowding in to hear him speak. This guy won’t last a round against the Republican attack machine. He’s a poet, not a fighter.”

This latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing slur ought to sound familiar. It’s the same attack that the Republican Club For Growth used against Howard Dean’s presidential campaign in 2004. Why are surrogates for Hillary Clinton using Republican attakcs against Barack Obama?

I would like for the Hillary Clinton campaign to come out and explain what it has against lattes, and why Birkenstocks are to be hated. I would really love for Hillary Clinton to explain why she is arranging for people to speak on behalf of her campaign who hate hybrid cars.

I’ve got news for the Thomas Buffenbargers of the Democratic Party: If you think that you can arrange for Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination by attacking environmentalists, attacking young people, attacking institutions of education, and for goodness sakes attacking people who like coffee, you’ve got another thing coming.