Those Wacky Democrats!

I fucking hate Democrats.

Out of Sight, (shit) Out of Luck

I know the last eight years of tyrannical horror haven't completely robbed me of my humanity because I still find shit like this appalling.

Kudos to the Washington Post for having the balls to run this story about Gina Gray - the new Public Affairs Directors at Arlington Memorial Cometary - being run out of her job for trying to publicly honor our fallen soldiers.

Some choice cuts:

But in one area, Rummy's Rules still pertain: the attempt to hide from public view the returning war dead.

When Gina Gray took over as the public affairs director at Arlington National Cemetery about three months ago, she discovered that cemetery officials were attempting to impose new limits on media coverage of funerals of the Iraq war dead -- even after the fallen warriors' families granted permission for the coverage. She said that the new restrictions were wrong and that Army regulations didn't call for such limitations.

Six weeks after The Washington Post reported her efforts to restore media coverage of funerals, Gray was demoted. Twelve days ago, the Army fired her.

To break this down, just in case anyone who happens upon this post hasn't been keeping abreast of this situation (and there's a lot going on, so it's easy to miss this type of stuff), Donald Rumsfeld - known to all his close friends by his nickname, Satan - had this great idea for how to market the war in Iraq. They wouldn't allow for any real reporting of the horrors of war. In this way, they felt they could keep the people from turning against this war, a la Vietnam (a war in which the horrors were broadcast into every home in America).

This is pure genius. However, like much of the genius of the Bush administration, it has underlying insidious overtones, and it quickly tended toward the truly heartless. As troops began coming home in bodybags, they were not honored as many fallen soldiers have been in previous wars. Not only that, but the troops who have given their lives - given their lives to protect these freedoms that the men who run this country allegedly value so much - have been resoundingly ignored.

When Rummy left, there was a move to soften the image of the Defense Secretary. However, this apparently did not mean actually honoring American heroes. It simply meant a solid PR campaign for our new Defense Secretary, Robert Gates. People were fired, to be sure. But make no mistake. Nothing has actually changed.

Stories like this are the reason I refuse to talk shit on Obama for the next few months. Stories like this are the reason that I may stop speaking kindly to supporters of the opposition. Stories like this make me want to fucking vomit.

And if we don't do everything we can to make sure John McCain doesn't win the White House, we're just going to see more and more stories like this.

I'll leave you with this quote, my favorite from former Public Affairs Director, Gina Gray:

"Had I not put my foot down, had I just gone along with it and not said regulations were being violated, I'm sure I'd still be there," said the jobless Gray, who, over lunch yesterday in Crystal City, recounted what she is certain is her retaliatory dismissal. "It's about doing the right thing."

Indeed.

time magazine can has freedoms

nathan thornburgh over at time magazine (one of those news websites in paper form that old people like to read) has published a fairly lengthy article giving the rise of the ron paul revolution and bob barr's libertarian campaign their due. called libertarians: a (not so) lunatic fringe, it breaks the libertarian movement down in fairly good detail, and details the difficulty holding the disparate parts of the movement together:

It's tempting to think of Libertarianism as nothing more than old-school Republicanism, but it's always been partially left-wing, drawing from a long history of American anarchism. The modern challenge is to unite those two wings--or, as magician (and stalwart Libertarian) Penn Jillette told me, "Convince the dope guys that the gun guys are O.K., and vice versa." And many Libertarians believe the time is now. It helps that the U.S. has been throttled for a century by two parties whose core differences are narrowing. The current general election has seemed at times a contest about who can crib off the other party's platform more, from McCain's enthusiasm for using government to fight global warming to Obama's hedging on warrantless wiretapping. For an electorate having a harder time distinguishing Coke from Pepsi, there's a thirst for something--anything--new.

i've said it before and i'll say it again - now is the time for the two party system to start to fall apart. according to the article (and various polls, i'm sure), barr's current approval rating stands at 6%, which is just about the same amount as obama has over mccain in national polls.

while the libertarian party alone probably won't supplant or destroy either party, they will likely serve a role similar to the uk's liberal democrats. while their economic theories are further left than american libertarians, they are equally committed to the philosophies of classical liberalism as promoted in texts like john stuart mill's on liberty.

incidentally, on the strength of their anti-war platform, labour's increasing nanny-statism, and conservatives just generally being assholes, the liberal democrat share of parliament is now up to just under 10% as of the 2005 general election. voter support was even higher, at 22% of the total vote.

i know joeverkill has mentioned voting for barr in the face of obama's supposed civil rights compromises. what about the rest of you? anybody have any libertarian interest?

rove takes oddly-timed vacation

from think progress:

This [thursday] morning, Karl Rove refused to appear before the House Judiciary Committee to testify about the politicization of the Justice Department, despite a subpoena. During the hearing, Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) revealed that Rove had not only skipped out of the hearing, but had skipped out of the entire country.

apparently rove had never mentioned this to congress previously.

karl rove is now to the point of being amusingly criminal. now that he's off the bush staff (or at least, off the payroll) it's just fun to watch him squirm while congress tightens the noose.

think progress and their friends in the progressive nerdosphere are insisting this means karl rove has 'fled the country'. while normally if a public figure skipped town in these circumstances, i'd simply brush that off as some leftists trying too hard to read between the lines, and assume that the person subpoenaed would be back quickly to testify. but this is karl rove we're talking about.

this reminds me of a conclusion that rupert and i have come to, and relish in bringing up whenever one of these kooks does something wacky: the bush administration has long ago fallen into what espn blogger/resident-annoying-boston-sports-fan bill simmons refers to as "the tyson zone". named after mike tyson, it is a state of being for a public figure in which "if a friend said, "Did you hear that (fill in celebrity's name) just (fill in the insane behavior: urinated on a police officer, began breeding unicorns, etc.)?", I would have no problem believing it was true." i'm pretty sure that moment arrived when dick cheney shot a guy in the fucking face.

either way, i just can't wait until we actually get rove. the second he gets threatened by jail time, this disingenuous little piggy is going to squeal, and congress will have plenty of evidence to impeach and try everyone right up to emperor george. then we'll find out about all the really crazy stuff they've been doing.

link.

Fox & Friends need to go to a Kaplan comedy seminar

Okay, this may be the least important subject anyone has discussed on this blog since I’ve been here (and yes, I’m counting Rupert’s posts about wanting to doink Lara Logan), but I had to write something about those doctored photos on Fox & Friends. You know, the ones that make those New York Times writers look like puppets in the Land of Confusion music video:

Here are the pictures:
Okay, so even without the actual photos for comparison, it’s obvious the photos are doctored: Reddicliffe has smears running down his forehead and Steinberg’s chin is the size of a Coke can. Anyone with half a brain can see it, but then we are talking about people who watch Fox News so who knows how many thousands were fooled?
But did Fox & Friends set out to deceive people? I don’t think so. I don’t think Rupert Murdoch’s grand schemes for world domination hinge on convincing the public that New York Times writers look like characters from Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!

I think it’s something far scarier. I think they though they were being funny.
Is it just me, or since The Daily Show got big have there been a lot more people in the media and politics trying to be Jon Stewart and utterly, utterly, utterly failing. They tell jokes that you’re not even completely sure are supposed to be jokes, except there’s no other plausible explanation for why someone would say it, like McCain’s wife-beating rib-tickler that I posted about recently. Or Bernie Goldberg’s “I got some bad news before I came out; a guy from Newsweek called and said that Al Franken had flushed [my] book down the toilet.” Zing! Or Ann Coulter’s “We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' crème brulee. That's just a joke, for you in the media.” Nice save with the clarification at the end, Ann. You wouldn’t want someone to take that out of context and make you look crass.
Actually, maybe I should lay off Ann. You see, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that she’s not really the horrible human being she appears to be, and is, in fact, a Sacha Baron Cohen character.

I think Cohen has a crack team of makeup wizards do him up in the morning, he does the cable news rounds, and a few years from now they’ll edit all of the footage together into a movie and it will be high-larious. I mean, what other plausible explanation is there for the shit she says? “If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine. Very niiiice!” “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building. High five!”

I seem to notice the not-funny jokes more on the right, but they’re certainly there in the center and the left, too. Every clip of Beat the Press I’ve ever seen has been painful. Keith Olbermann: stop it with the silly voices. Just fuckin’ knock it off. And Jeremiah Wright? Dude, what the fuck?! With the “white” voice and the Kennedy voice and the Brittish voice? What was the fucking point of that, besides proving to America that you’re the poor man’s Robin Williams:

But at least there’s one media personality you can count on to be consistently hilarious, albeit unintentionally:

Here’s what Bill had to say about those doctored photos from Fox & Friends:

“And now for perhaps the most hypocritical situation we have ever seen…Fox & Friends poked a little fun at Steinberg for misrepreporting the situation, as he does all the time. And they used an unflattering characature of him. Well, some folks at The Times are outraged… Now this is rich, because here are the charicatures The New York Times used of me when they slashed my book, Culture Warrior… You notice the horn in there?!”

Here’s the image in question. You notice the horn in there?! Or, as most of us know it, the cartoon speech bubble?!

Okay, just off the top of your head, what’s the big difference between the two sets of charactitures that make them completely different animals. That’s right! The New York Times doctored Bill’s photos so heavily that the end product looks like a hand-drawn illustration! Those bastards!
Actually, I think Cartoon O’Reilly is a much more accurate likeness than Photoshop Steinberg. See?:

If The Times had run a picture of Bill looking like this, then he’d have something to crow “hypocrisy” about:

Notes from the Right-Wing: Budget F**cked, McCain Still Bad at Math

I'm Joeverkill, and these are some quick Notes from the Right-Wing.

Barack Obama is making no promises about reducing the country's budget deficit. Meanwhile John McCain is claiming he can balance the thing by 2013, though experts seem skeptical. From the AP:

Barack Obama says John McCain's plan to balance the budget doesn't add up. Easy for him to say: It's not a goal he's even trying to reach.
Not only does Obama say he won't eliminate the deficit in his first term, as McCain aims to do, he frankly says he's not sure he'd bring it down at all in four years, considering his own spending plans.
"I do not make a promise that we can reduce it by 2013 because I think it is important for us to make some critical investments right now in America's families," Obama told reporters this week when asked if he'd match McCain's pledge
...Obama's criticism of McCain's pledge as "overly ambitious" is backed up by fiscal experts.
"Hypothetically it's possible to get to a balanced budget by 2013, but not under the policies that McCain has proposed," Bixby said. "The policies he would propose would actually add to the deficit when you take them all together."

What about earmarks? McCain's always ranting about earmarks.

[E]armarks accounted for just $17 billion of the $2.9 trillion budget this year.

As per usual, both sides are pissing Joeverkill off. Obama's planning on increasing federal spending, which irritates me, but at least he's being up-front about it. John McCain is simply refusing to do the math on his own budget plan, and that's inexcusable. But on the other hand, at least he's talking about reducing spending.

The thing that's really disappointing about all this is that we conservatives don't have a reasoned voice in this. We have John McCain, who is claiming stuff like the ability reduce spending while increasing our already bloated standing army by about 30%. It's infuriating.

So for this country's rational conservatives -- on the off chance that they might stumble upon this blog -- Joeverkill proposes a few bullet points for decreasing the budget.

- Get out of Iraq. That saves about $200 Billion a year on top of military overhead.
- Cut all non-elite units of the Army by 80%. This can be accomplished immediately by not recruiting for non-elite for for one year and nine months. Close bases and stop equipment orders in proportion to troop cuts. Saves about $88 billion.
- Cut the budgets for new F-22's, V-22's, F-35's, missile defense, and C-130 by 80%. Eliminate the budget for F-18's. Saves about $15 Billion.
- Raise the retirement age to 70. I'm not able to pull together had enough data to say for certain, but conservatively I'd estimate that this would save about $100 Billion.
- Cut the Department of Education's budget by half. What exactly do they do, anyhow? Saves $26 Billion.
- No farm subsidies. Saves $70 Billion.
- No more faith-based initiatives. Saves $20 Billion.
Sum total: $519 Billion per annum.

These are just a few roughly hashed-out points. I could cut deeper into this country's bloated, wasteful, stupid spending policies, but I think I've proved my point. If we followed the bullet points above and maintained our present level of taxation, we're at a surplus of about $119 Billion per year. Granted, it would still take about 75 years to eliminate the national debt, but it's better than widening it by $400 Billion a year, right?

... right?

... anybody?

I'm Joeverkill, and this has been Notes from the Right-Wing.

The Time to Fight

It's no surprise to me, really, that we've all grown a bit complacent in the blogging. During the primaries, we were all very excited.

Fuck it, I'll cut the crap. The deal is we were all terrified. We were terrified of having to choose between two shitty candidates again. Then we won that battle. And since then, we've gotten a bit complacent.

However, I'm calling this a call to arms. We are not remotely out of the woods yet. And even before the two parties have their respective national conventions, we have this:



This is what we're up against.

Look, I know. I know it's not like any of us are really doing that much to change anything by writing here, or at least that's surely how it feels. It's how I feel.

But during the primaries, this blog made me more passionate. It made me more informed. It made me care more than I already did. Most importantly, this place kept me sharp, thus making it easier for me to cut through bullshit outside the blog. It helped me hit people with quick facts and truths to combat all the lies that were out there.

Like so:

Did you know that Obama's vote was cast as it was due to the mounting evidence that Illinois was putting innocent people to death? I can't find a citation for this, because you can't google "obama" and "death penalty" anymore without hearing about the recent Supreme Court decision.

However, I found this report from the New York Times, detailing Illinois' moratorium on executions, due to the rising number of overturned convictions in the state.

So he wasn't "weak on crime" he was actually "strong on not just executing black people every time somebody dies of unnatural causes."

Just wanted to clear that up.

Pissed about FISA?

Get a load of this.



((((speechless))))

now he just seems like a smelly hippie

some of the more ignorant religious zealots out there would have you believe that this is and has always been a christian nation, just because some of the things they wrote included the phrases say "Year of Our Lord," or "Almighty". anyone with an inquisitive mind and an iq above 80 is able to figure out that that's not true, and even if it was, a nation of christians is not the same thing as a christian nation. even george w bush, of all people, was audacious enough to have someone in his staff who is actually literate edit out references to religious skepticism when quoting thomas jefferson at a 4th of july speech at monticello.

nonetheless, if some of y'all still dun get it, here's a little piece of interesting history for you: the jefferson bible. also known as the life and morals of jesus of nazareth, it cuts out most of the mythological junk like the virgin birth, the resurrection, and that time he jumped right into agent smith's torso and made him explode (i haven't been to church in years, so bear with me). all that's in the book is the dude's life and what he said.

from the la times:

The big question now, said Lori Anne Ferrell, a professor of early modern history and literature at Claremont Graduate University, is this:

"Can you imagine the reaction if word got out that a president of the United States cut out Bible passages with scissors, glued them onto paper and said, 'I only believe these parts?' "

"He was a product of his age," said Ferrell, whose upcoming book, "The Bible and the People," includes a chapter on the Jefferson Bible. "Yet, he is the least likely person I'd want to pray with. He was more skeptical about religion than the other Founding Fathers."

still don't believe me, jesusfreaks? you're probably saying something like "well, where is this supposed bible?"

interwebs, bitch! or amazon, your call.

either way, i have a mental image of this secular jesus. he kinda looks like this: