Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

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.

Look at what’s going on in seemingly sedate Central NY:

Whoda thunk? The “if you need a ride” note at the top adds a nice touch.

Flag, flag, flag. All Republicans seem to talk about these days is flags. Which candidate loves the American flag more than the others? Which candidate has the most flag lapel pins on their jacket? Which presidential candidate has licked the flag out of adoration, and had flag pudding for lunch?

The flag is an obvious symbol for love of country.

So, the question is this: Why are Republicans so concerned that they people might not love America? Why do they think that America isn’t worthy of being loved?

I think it’s because they don’t understand what makes America worthy of love. They know that they’re supposed to love the flag, and the national anthem, and the Fourth of July and all that, but they don’t know why.

That’s because Republicans don’t understand that what they’re supposed to love are the principles upon which the American nation is founded, not the symbols that represent those principles.

Because the Republicans don’t understand the principles, they get obsessed with the symbols. Ironically, the Republicans attack the principles of the American nation in order to protect the symbols.

Republicans don’t love America. They just love the flag, and the national anthem, and the Fourth of July. There’s a big difference.

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

My WordPress blog started going flakey this afternoon when I tried to update it for my weekend class. There is no announcement that I can find about any new upgrades or new products being added, just a totally redesigned format for writing posts and a spate of frustrated comments in the forum.

I have been thinking about moving my Wordpress blog to its own domain, but with whatever is wrong with it, I don’t dare try it now. Of course it’s not backed up–WordPress says they back it up so you don’t have to.

I can’t tell if this is related to the problems associated with the release of version 2.5 someone here wrote about earlier, or if it’s something completely different.

Until they get it fixed, stay away from Wordpress altogether.

UPDATE: WordPress has now announced they have updated the dashboard, which is what they call the page for editing posts and changing blog parameters. The main bugs so far seem to be with spell check, widgets, and posting images. You may have noticed I posted an image I needed for my class here in the diaries for a few hours yesterday. Thanks, Irregular Times. I have now created a new blog over at Blogger.com for posting images.

Liberals may decry Republican double standards, citing the proliferation of prostitution whenever the Republicans are in power. I say,  bring back the hookers.  It lets the interns off the hook.

There were many who said that Bill Clinton’s sexual indiscretions were a personal problem and had nothing to do with the way he was able to govern the country.  I thought that too, until I became part of the federal government through the United State Peace Corps.

Think of this: Monika Lewinsky was an employee, an intern.  Bill Clinton was her boss.  Is any employee ever really free to turn down the boss?    And when the CEO of a corporation is doing something, can the rank and file ever really say there is anything wrong with someone else doing it?

The culture within the federal government during the time I was associated with it said no.  If you turn down one of those Washington types, the current wisdom went,  your career wouldn’t last. Maybe that’s why the Peace Corps publicizes it’s surveys about “feelings” instead of the actual number of assaults or its fifty percent attrition rate, which they try to hide from the public.  Sexual harassment within the agency is a totally taboo subject–the people most likely to do it are the same people responsible for reporting and stopping it. Maybe that’s why Peace Corps volunteers feel pressured to find a romantic interest with local clout as soon as they are in country. Or why the Peace Corps–and Chris Dodd–worked so hard to defeat the Peace Corps Safety and Security bill that would have established an Ombudsman for volunteers as well as an independent Inspector General.

Can you imagine–the IG, the guy responsible for oversight of the agency, reports to the agency’s director.  That might be all right for agencies where those making judgments have some job security in the form of civil service protection, but Peace Corps is under a five-year rule. Most employees have their contracts renewed every two and a half years, up to a maximum of five years, a good formula for producing rubber stamps.

Bill Clinton didn’t just have an affair, like former President Harding and presidential hopeful McCain.  He got involved with an employee, and he got away with it, creating a predatory atmosphere for female employees throughout the federal system.  His actions paralyzed his administration and its ability to enact any of its ideals in his second term.  Hillary Clinton did not have any good options.  If she stood by her man, she would be an enabler of something corrosive in the political system.  If she didn’t, she would lose everything she had worked for in her entire political life, as well as the opportunity to make a difference in the future with her considerable talents. I have nothing but admiration for the way Hillary Clinton has carried herself and served the country.  But I have a bad taste in my mouth about bureaucrats who are sexual predators and the corporate cultural that lets them get away with it.

Let’s get that out of the government offices and back into the brothels where it belongs.

The two words have become, in the last week, buzzwords. They’ve becoming annoying, as many candidates start trying to insert them into every sentence they can, without knowing anything more than that doing so is what their campaign consultants tell them to do.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking, however, that these words mean nothing. In the election of 2008, hope and change have profound meaning.

The meaning of hope is best understood when it’s remembered that hope is not just some vapid, foggy notion of good things happening in the future. Hope is the opposite of fear.

Hope requires courage. An authentic message of hope is a signal to all who are brave enough to unbow their heads and heed it that there is no more need for cowering. Hope is the understanding that there is no need to “balance” freedom with security, because freedom is our security.

Hope is the idea that we have the power to turn our backs on fear and walk away from it.

Change means that things don’t always have to be the way that they have been. Change is the answer to those who say that we have to make choice between our ideals and our actions. Change is the argument against those who say that America just isn’t ready to do what’s right.

Change is the idea that prove ourselves ready to do what’s right by doing it, not by hoping that the time will be right some time later.

This week, there have been a lot of presidential candidates using the words “hope” and “change”, thinking that just by using those words, they will catch enough of the persuasive power of Barack Obama to have a chance of winning the New Hampshire primary.

Here’s where I get a hokey: I believe that there’s a difference between them and Barack Obama. I believe that Barack Obama understands what the concepts of hope and change mean, and understands why they are important, in a way that the other presidential candidates, with the possible exception of John Edwards, do not understand.

It’s more than just a little exasperating the way that many Americans are only now paying attention to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, only considering his candidacy when it became popular to do so. However, we here at Irregular Times have been following Barack Obama for years now.

I won’t speak for the other writers here, but here’s what I have concluded about Barack Obama: I think that he understands the historical moment in a way that the other candidates do not. I also think that, often, Barack Obama loses sight of that understanding. Sometimes, it’s quite clear that Barack Obama becomes distracted by the political moment, and forgets the significance of the historical moment. It’s then that he loses track, and betrays the promise of hope and change. Look around here at Irregular Times, and you’ll find my strong objections at the times when he has lost track in the past.

However, I am willing to cast my vote for Barack Obama. It’s not because I think that he’s a hero. It’s not that I think he will change things for us, or give us hope.

In fact, if Barack Obama could change things for us, or give us hope, I think he’d be the wrong choice. Democracy is not something that anyone can do for us.

Rather, I am willing to cast my vote for Barack Obama because I believe that he’s seen and comprehended an authentic vision of hope and change for America. Because of that, I believe that he’ll be more likely to listen to the side of America that is willing to say that we can do better, and that we no longer need to be afraid.

Barack Obama may, like many successful politicians, become arrogant. It then becomes our duty to speak loudly against his arrogance. In fact, even as Barack Obama surges toward the Democratic nomination, it is our duty to remind voters of Obama’s shortcomings, as well as his assets.

In doing so, if he is willing to listen, we will help Barack Obama gain political strength, by keeping him close to the course of his motivating vision.

If I’m wrong, and Obama is not willing to listen, then he isn’t worthy of the presidency, and our criticism will have the merit of preventing his corrupted influence on the government.

I’ve said that I am willing to cast a vote for Barack Obama, but I am not committed to doing so. In America, we should not so much elect presidents as hold them on a leash.

That goes for Barack Obama as much as anyone else.

I’m not a Republican myself. I’m a Democrat’s Democrat. Yet, I can recognize that many Americans are dedicated Republicans, and they have their needs too… needs that can be served by a good Democratic leader like Hillary Clinton.

Over at New York Newsday yesterday, there was a great story about a woman named Shannon Mallozzi. Mallozzi has been a Republican all her life, but she’s campaigning for Hillary Clinton now.

Republican Rupert Murdoch is supporting Hillary Clinton for President too. Plenty of Republicans supported Bill Clinton. If they supported one Clinton, they can support another.

I know that it’s supposed to be a political taboo to cross party lines and support someone on the other side. Haven’t we all had enough of those kind of rules now?

At long last, America can finally breathe a sigh of relief and come together. I think it’s time. Time for Republicans to support Hillary Clinton for President.

I am shocked to see someone who calls himself Frank Liberal daring to criticize Hillary Clinton, who has done more to carry water for liberal causes than Frank Liberal could hope to in an entire lifetime.

We have the duty to elect a Democrat as President in 2008, or we are serving the dark mission of the Republican Party. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that there is any other choice.

Yet, this Frank Liberal character chooses to focus on Hillary Clinton’s supposed schemes to spread lies about Barack Obama. Frank Liberal should concern himself with the lies of Rudolph Giuliani, not the lies of Hillary Clinton.

Whether or not we agree with all the policies and positions of a particular Democratic candidate, it is time for us to unite behind one Democratic candidate for 2008. The time for debate is over. America needs unity, and the unity candidate is Hillary Clinton!

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.

In North Carolina, Democratic candidate for the United States Senate Jim Neal has acknowledged that he is gay. Actually, he has never hidden that he is gay, so it’s kind of like Liza Minelli acknowledging that she has short hair.

The major point of communication from the Jim Neal for Senate campaign is that Neal’s sexual orientation is no big deal. My reaction to the news so far is in line with that. I read the news with a “hmm” and not much more.

What would be a big deal is if the North Carolina Democratic Party now rushes to find another candidate to challenge Senator Elizabeth Dole, because the Democratic Party isn’t willing to support an openly non-heterosexual candidate. That would be a big deal. It would be a sign of craven cowardice.

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.

They call it “The Curse of Machu Picchu”. Oh, of course the academics and the newspaper reporters who write about their “mainstream” so-called findings won’t use that term.

It doesn’t take an advanced degree in paleontological microbiology to see that something is rather fishy about the death of Gene Savoy, the archaeologist who made a career out of discovering ancient lost cities in Peru, at sites such as Gran Pajaten, Gran Saposoa and Gran Vilaya.

Notice something in common about these ancient lost cities? They all begin with the word “Gran”, which my sources tell me is the ancient Incan word for “curse”.

So we come to the Curse of Machu Picchu. True, Gene Savoy did not discover Machu Picchu, but he did go there after it was discovered, and was linked with the original explorer of Machu Picchu, contaminated with a form of curse-by-association that locals call “appacaboyo”.

Too bad for Mr. Savoy that he never stopped to consider that the lost cities of the Incas were lost for a reason. Savoy’s son, who denies the rumors of a curse, admits that his father befell many disasters while attempting to unearth that which the tropical rainforests had reclaimed.

Gene Savoy contracted deadly diseases, was bitten by poisonous snakes, and chased by angry indigenous soldiers, all while working to uncover the secret cities of darkest Peru. Now, Gene Savoy has died.

Coincidence? If you believe that, I’ve got a lost city in Peru to sell you at a rock bottom price.

HRC = Hillary Rodham Clinton
HRC = Human Rights Campaign

I have just learned from one of my church friends that the liberal insurgents in our congregation are trying to get our pastor to lead us in activities related to Torture Awareness Month. “June is Torture Awareness Month!” they say. Not in my America, sister! In my America, we celebrate Flag Day and the Fourth of July, thank you very much!

It explains a lot about these liberals that they’ll try to spend all of June just being aware of torture. Think about that for a minute, will you? All these liberals are trying to think about torture all month long. It’s enough to send anyone into a state of profound moral depravity!

I, for one, think that it’s moral important for America to be humble. Yes, America may be torturing evildoers in secret prisons, but there’s a reason that those prisons are kept secret. Our government is trying to demonstrate humble leadership.

Sure, we’re torturing, but we don’t have to brag about it, do we? This torture awareness movement seems just too prideful, if you ask me.

I’ve been out working as a grassroots organizer for the Republican get out the vote effort, and so I haven’t come back to my regular email account to resume my political writing until after this ungodly election. Well, let me tell you what I found on my return: Anal sex spam!

Oh, it’s not just any kind of marketing campaign. No, no. I believe in the free market, but there has to be limits to free speech, and that limit comes when I am sent a message, without my permission, detailing the smutty thrills of “her first double anal”.

What is the message in this email, I wonder? How are we to interpret this?

Well, for one thing, I see that this is just her first double anal! The liberals who send out this spam to attack me and my political work clearly intend all people who come here to pick up the message that having two throbbing cocks shoved up the rectum isn’t something that a woman will do just once in her life. Oh, no! It’s something to do over and over again. Sodomy is thus normalized! Shame.

Don’t doubt for a second that it’s the hollywood liberal Barbra Streisand fans who are sending me all this nasty spam. How do I know? The number of sex spam in my email box this morning was 1776.

Oh, how these nasty liberals mock America!

Tucker Carlson last Wednesday on MSNBC (My Special Neighbor, Bishop Carlson):

It is wrong, blasphemous, and sinful for you to suggest, imply or help other people come to the conclusion that the U.S. government killed 3,000 of its own citizens, because it didn’t!

I am incredibly grateful to Bishop Carlson for his new edict, but in relating it to my friends and neighbors, I need a bit of theological backing. I need to find is the Biblical passage in which dissent against a government identified as blasphemy. I figured Exodus would be the one, or maybe Leviticus, but no luck there. Can you help me in my exegesis?

I am so sick of all these liberals who say that we ought to pull out of Iraq before achieving our mission. Would they have said that we should just run away when King George the Seventh told our country that we could not be independent? They would have just handed over all North America to the red Indian instead of defending their homes. Cowards!

Well, I am reminded of those times when America did not cut and run. Like World War II. Now that was a man’s war!

But the leftists silly patsies can’t help but complain. They say that we should not have bombed the homes of those kamakaze loving Nippon supporting Emperor worshipping chinks in Hiroshima and Nagaski. They say that the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were “victims”. Victims!

Let us never forget that those so-called victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki made the decision to be born in Japan. They were given the chance to live elsewhere, but they chose the rising sun, soaked in American blood!

So, I remember that we had no choice but to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We saved those ungrateful Japanese from the terror of an American invasion, and they had the nerve to complain about a little radiation. Hell, my supermarket uses radiation to sterilize my sirloin steak, and I don’t complain!

We should follow the great example of World War II now. If the liberal squiberals want to pull our soldiers out of Iraq, fine! Let’s redeploy our soldiers to the Persian Gulf, where they can watch as we send nuclear missiles raining down on Baghdad and Fallujah to wipe them off the face of the Earth forever!

This will be a merciful act, saving American lives and Iraqi lives too. No more war! A peace will settle down upon Iraq after we obliterate their cities, and then they’ll never complain again that our liberation isn’t good enough for them.

You know, when I first heard that Mel Gibson had said, while being arrested recently in California, some “offensive things,” I was really really worried. I thought maybe the star of Lethal Action had said “Stem cell research is not such a bad thing” or “Gay? OK!” or “F**k, but those Buddhists really have a point there.” That would have been a level of career-destroying offensiveness, for sure.

But then I read the actual police report of Mel Gibson’s remarks while being arrested for driving after drinking the communion wine (what’s wrong with that? nothing but being RELIGIOUS!). Here’s all the nicest guy in Hollywood ever said:

“My Life Is Fucked” — Well, that’s all Jesus said, really. All our lives are “fucked,” until we accept Jesus as our personal savior!

“You Mother Fucker. I’m Going to Fuck You. You’re Going to Regret You Ever Did This to Me.” — Everybody knows these are lines from Mel Gibson’s latest film, A Trial of Faith, about a man whose wife leaves him for a chinchilla in a state with same-sex marriage, triggering a crisis of faith that involves a lot of swearing at God. But don’t worry — the movie shows in the end that God can handle being sworn at, and eventually forgives Gibson. In the meantime, come on, the Saucy Aussie was just rehearsing his lines!

“I Own Malibu” — OK, well maybe he does. That’s a good thing to know: he’s a property owner, a good upstanding citizen and all. A nice factual statement.

“I’m Going to Get Even With You” — said to the police officer, this makes sense. Mel Gibson, upright conservative Christian paragon that he is, is only telling the nice office that he’s not going to “get odd” with him tonight. No fag boy, that Mel Gibson! We all breathe a sigh of relief.

“Fucking Jews” — well, they do “that,” you know. That’s how they perpetuate their scheme to overtake all the world’s population and turn them into banking customers!

“Are You A Jew?” Good thing to know, because if so, there’s one more Jew who needs a nice New Testament sent to them as a thank you gift and chance at salvation!

“The Jews are Responsible for all the Wars in the World.” OK. So. Well. This looks really bad. At first glance. But when you consider that um, well, with the hypotenuse of the square of the Pythagorean Theorem in the second case, the smiggledy smaggle of the plumbum in green mainly takes the exclusionary clause in an unnecessarily literal manner. You know what I mean? See, no problem!

Thank you, Mel Gibson, for continuing to show the gracious goodness of Christian conservatism the whole world through. I am your number one fan, and you are my hero!

My favorite Republican Senator, Ken Blackwell, has hit the nail on the head again:

I think homosexuality is a lifestyle, it’s a choice, and that lifestyle can be changed. I think it’s a transgression against God’s law, God’s will. The reality is again … that we make choices all the time. And, I think you make good choices and bad choices in terms of lifestyle. Our expectation is that one’s genetic makeup might make one more inclined to be an arsonist, or may make one more inclined to be a kleptomaniac. Do I think that can be changed? Yes.

Well, he hit one nail, that’s for sure. You can choose to not be gay. I know because it is just common sense. Not even regular common sense. God’s common sense! And you can choose not to be an arsonist. And you can choose not to be a kleptomaniac. It is true because it is in the Bible! God said it, in Revelations I think, and that settles it!

But here’s the question. Can you choose not to be a gay, kleptomaniac arsonist? I ask because I wonder if that much effort is possible. If it takes X amount of effort to choose not to be gay, does it take 3X effort to choose not to be a gay, kleptomaniac arsonist? Or is it not a linear thing, X+X+X? Is it more like it would take X*X*X effort to choose not to be gay? Or is it not even an exponential thing? Could it be a logarithmic transformation of effort required? Wow, that would be a lot! They say with God all things are possible, but even this faithful Fran turns into a doubting Dorothy when thinking about a logarithmic transformation of effort!

Can someone with a divinity degree help me out with this theological conundrum? I’m asking because I have this friend who needs that kind of help and I want to let this friend of mine know about it. Thank you!

Poison In Our Libraries!

That’s the headline at one of my trusted news sources, GOP USA. Internationally respected author Steve Crampton gives us the whole story of poor Laurie Taylor, whose children went to middle school in a public (come on, she should have home schooled her kids to keep them away from the Jesus haters, but for this moment, let’s forgive her) school district that had another middle school in it that had a copy of a book in its library. That book’s name: It’s Perfectly Normal.

We have two clues about what’s going to happen next. First, we have a public school, which means something bad must be going on. You know the score: kids from the wrong side of town mixing with your dears, socialist principals, and lesbian teachers. Second, a book entitled It’s Perfectly Normal. Come on: whenever a book has to say “It’s Perfectly Normal,” you just know that the “It” is not going to be normal, because otherwise they wouldn’t have to come out and say it in the first place.

So Laurie Taylor went to the principal of the school that’s near to the school where her kids go to school, and asked that principal to remove the book. Why? Because it has pictures of naked people in it, and it talks about (shhh!) s-e-x. S-e-x and naked people are just not normal. S-e-x and nakedness are sick and deviant. They are poison to our culture. They are poison to our society, whether the people who are in it recognize that or not. Jesus wore clothes, and he didn’t have s-e-x, and that’s good enough for me!

Laurie Taylor is right to demand that this book with naked people and references to s-e-x be made inaccessible to all children in her town. S-e-x and nakedness are poisonous ideas, and like all poisonous ideas, they should not only be removed from schools but banished from our homes.

Let’s by all means burn the s-e-x books in our schools, but let’s not stop there. Let’s take it home. I bet you’re thinking about s-e-x and nakedness right now. Well, stop it, and slap yourself for the offense. Like I said, Jesus wore clothes, and he didn’t have s-e-x. That’s good enough for me, and that should be good enough for you!

A report from this morning’s Christian Silence Ministry indicates that just before Representative Bob Ney (R-OH) took an all-expenses-paid golfing junket to Scotland with corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff, then met with Abramoff’s clients for an hour and a half less than a week later, and then promoted legislation benefiting those clients, he listened to Heavy Metal music with hidden Satanic messages in it. If only we stopped the Sodomites in Hollywood from making that nasty, evil-infested music, none of this business would ever have happened to that nice, sweet Mr. Ney. Let’s take away the IPods from our representatives — your member of Congress could be next!