Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

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!

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.

In my writing about the upcoming Raw Spirit Festival, which will be attended by Dennis Kucinich and at which Elizabeth is giving a keynote speech, I’ve come across some strange and shady characters, hucksters who go even further than selling snake oil. Some, like Jasmuheen, make money by convincing people that they don’t need to eat food in order to get nutrition.

One thing that Jasmuheen has in common with a lot of the speakers at Raw Spirit Festival is that she doesn’t use her real name. She insists upon being called Jasmuheen, even though her real name is Ellen Greve. I suppose that having someone named Ellen tell you that you can live on sunlight and prana energy is deemed less credible than if someone named Jasmuheen says the same thing.

An unusual number of people involved in Raw Spirit Festival are using aliases instead of their real names. Count the founder of the festival as among these. She calls herself Happy Oasis.

One of the name changers of Raw Spirit is Jameth Sheridan, who writes on his Health Force web site in an attempt to explain why he changed his name. He says he wanted to change his last name so that he could share a family name with his wife without forcing her into the patrilineal system of taking the last name he was born with. But why choose the name Sheridan? That’s not at all clear. “After much consideration, the name that felt the most right was Sheridan. This name has personal meaning for both of us,” says Jameth, ambiguously.

What about Jameth? Well, that’s almost his given name. Jameth was born with the name James, and “did call himself “James” briefly; a fine name indeed, but it did not fit for him. Thus, the name “Jameth” was born.”

I’m confused by this half-explanation. Why would the name Jameth fit this man better than the name James? Is it just that Jameth wanted to seem a bit more exotic?

What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but if we renamed roses “celestial sky love blossoms”, most of us couldn’t bring ourselves to talk about it without feeling silly.

Why have so many people involved in Raw Spirit Festival chosen to change their names or use pseudonyms for the sake of the business related to Raw Spirit? There isn’t anything necessarily sinister about a pseudonym. Ann Landers was not the real name of the advice columnist. Still, I’m left wondering what brings so many people with cooked names to a Raw Spirit conference. I’m assuming that Elizabeth Kucinich will be speaking under her legal name, and not as Redwood Aura.

It seems that J. Clifford here at Irregular Times isn’t the only one who finds Ron Paul’s political philosophy bizarre and illogical. I found an interesting old article from the St. Louis Riverfront Times about Ron Paul’s attendance at a conference of politicians demanding that the United States withdraw from the United Nations.

The date of the article: July 11, 2001. Two months to the day before the attacks of September 11, 2001, Ron Paul was advocating that the United States pull out of efforts to cooperate with the other nations of the world. That doesn’t show the best of judgment, does it?

The writer of the article, Ray Hartmann, attended that conference as a journalist, and observed Ron Paul, among other politicians. Here’s what Hartmann observed about Ron Paul’s behavior at the time:

The lieberals are at it again, trying to distract from our nation’s most important Holy Days by naming new “holidays” (NOTE the changed spelling!) all over the place. The latest is World Day Against Child Labor, which happened earlier this week. First of all, it’s a WORLD holiday, not a national one, which is completely in sync with plans for One World Government of Gog and Magog. Second, it’s completely unsupportive of responsible parental choices. I had to set the table and darn the socks and sort the laundry when I was a child. What’s wrong with that? Are we treating out kids like some kind of veal, with muscles too tender for good old fashioned work? What’s wrong with asking your son to take out the trash he makes? For goodness sake! This secular liberal push for “holidays” promoting irresponsibility and laxity amongst our children — I’m sure while still giving them an allowance! — is taking us very close to the edge of tolerability.

You know, I have just about had it up to here with my fellow conservative commentators in the media. Cal Thomas refers to Connecticut voters as Taliban Democrats for picking Ned Lamont and calls them religious zealots — as if there’s anything wrong with religious zealotry! Ho hum. Our Vice President Dick Cheney calls Lamont supporters “Al Qaeda types,” which is a nice sentiment, but the use of “type” makes it seem as if Lamont supporters were born that way, when it is clearly a lifestyle choice. John Gibson calls such voters “Khmer Rouge Democrats” and says they stack skulls up in piles. Now that’s warming up a bit, but we could do better than that, I think.

The h-e-double-toothpicks with moderate, easygoing epithets like these, I say! Literally! I suggest we go for the most realistic label we can find, the destination for the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the Khmer Rouge: Beelzebub himself. These Democrats are “Beelzebub Democrats,” endorsing the Horned One in their voting behavior, casting America into a lake of eternal fiery torment, and dooming virtuous God-fearing Christians such as myself to a six year term of thoroughly undeserved annoyance on the evening newscast with that Frenchy LaMont. Beelzebub Democrats it is!

ABFreedom thinks he’s asking the right question:

Will the LIEberal attitude even with unlimited funding solve the literacy problem?

I know ABF’s heart is in the right place. But ABF’s problem here is in even asking the question.

OF COURSE “the LIEberal attitude” won’t solve the literacy problem! Lieberal attitudes are attitudes of lying! How can you solve a problem when you’re lying! How can you learn anything when your teacher is lying to you? I mean, if the liberals out there were teaching our kids, knowing how much they lie about everything, how could little Susie trust that I does come after E except after C, or that “sh” doesn’t make a “zzzzz” sound?

If the liberals were in charge, they wouldn’t be teaching phonics — they’d be teaching Phonyics!

The point is that absolutely everything in the worldview of these Lieberals is geared around twisting truth into knots that aren’t truth knots, but become twisted lie knots. They are the rejects of the world, so we should all (r)eject them — to Sweden! Of course they couldn’t figure out teaching issues. They couldn’t even figure out a figure 8! Ha!

Oh, you lieberal sillies are getting their panties in a twist again!

This time, you’re upset that our dear President George W. Bush stopped an investigation into his conduct, using the power of the government that is, of course at his disposal. He got elected, duh, it’s his government, he can do what he wants to with it!

What’s funnier than this typical liberal stupidity is their suggestion that everybody “fix” things by writing a letter to the editor, calling a Congressman on the phone, or marching in the street or something like that. But they miss the point. Nothing will ever, ever be accomplished by trying to get people to change things for the better. The liberals would do much better if they learned to pray (it’s spelled P-R-A-Y) with fervor for the changes they wanted to see happen, and then learned to wait for God’s grace to make itself evident in the world.

That’s how real change will come about. Not stupid liberals insulting other people in the media!

Idiots!

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!