Aaron Hill, The Hill, October 28, 2007 First Lady Laura Bush said Sunday that she is much more involved in policy than many people think and then went to bat for her husband on children’s health care and foreign policy. Calling the state children's health insurance program (SCHIP) :a perfect issue" for Democrats to demagogue on, Bush waded into largely uncharted public territory for her by taking exception to the party that opposes the president. The first lady appeared genuinely upset about the Democrats' tactics on the issue. "Its really easy to blame people for so-called voting against children," Bush said in an interview on Fox News Sunday. The first lady went on to say that the bill would cover children who are not poor and added that the program is often used to cover adults. "The president is very anxious to work with Congress and to come up with something that both he and they can be proud of," she said. Read More Here

Jana Riess, Christianity Today, November/December 2007 The Year of Living Biblically, One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible A.J. Jacobs Simon & Schuster, 2007 400 pp., $25 We've all seen the email: a letter to a fundamentalist pastor thanking him for his helpful insights on how vital it is to live all the laws of the Bible. But, the letter-writer continues, this uncompromising stance does raise some sticky questions. How and when should you stone adulterers and Sabbath-breakers? What is the best way to inform your first wife that you'll be adding to the family by taking a second and third? How many human slaves should you strive to own, and where can they be purchased nowadays? The point of the email, of course, is to sardonically highlight just how far we have come from the culture of biblical times, and how impossible it is to speak of living the Bible literally when our own world is so different. And yet many of us try, out of devotion, to arrive at an unspoiled, untainted biblical meaning - discovering how ancient ways of pleasing God might be relevant for our times. Such is the agenda of A. J. Jacobs' achingly funny memoir The Year of Living Biblically. Jacobs, the author of The Know-It All, begins by describing himself as a secular Jew. ("I'm Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant. Which is to say: Not very.") In spite of his own detachment from religion, he is increasingly curious about the ways it influences 21st-century American life. Rather than standing on the sidelines or casting himself as an aloof pundit, he dives in head first and decides to spend a year living all the commandments of the Bible - that's right, all of them. A sampling: He hires an earnest New York shatnez tester to ensure that his garments don't mix wool and linen (Deut. 22:11). Read More Here

BartCop.com Volume 2063 - Bitch TV In Today's Tequila Treehouse...

	Fearing Fear Itself
	Religio-crazy vote
	Why S.D. ain't no N.O.
	Mukasey is pro-crime
	Hillary Goes For The Kill
	Graham may oppose
	Pot lady kills herself
	Rumsfeld flees France
	Ambrosio stops traffic

 http://www.mujca.com/amy.htm Amy was there - she watched #7 fall.

Since then she has participated in the treasonous media cover-up of the 9/11 inside job, accepting over $100,000 from the CIA-disinfo-disseminating Ford Foundation to "report on the aftermath of 9/11." 

Amy, you will one day find yourself on the scaffold, condemned to hang alongside the other Goebbels-style traitors and mass-murder-coverup-conspirators from the corporate media you pretend to criticize.  

They, at least, make no pretense of being anything but shills for the powers that be--which makes your crime infinitely worse than theirs. 

Your silence and lies about 9/11 have murdered over half a million Iraqis and destroyed Constitutional governance in the USA. 

Amy Goodman, je t'accuse -- et je te condemne!  (I  show you -- and I you condemn.)

Dear Church of Reality Members, I am in the process of creating a candidate questionnaire. These are questions sent to political campaigns asking candidates where they stand on specific issues. I plan to give one of these to Bill Clinton when I see him this Friday. I just started writing questions and this is what I have so far. Looking for ideas. 2008 Candidate Questionnaire

Dear Candidate,

The Church Reality is a religion based on believing in everything that is real. We are the Reality based community and we consider Reality as something sacred. If not for Reality, we wouldn’t be here. Our membership has strong Reality based values and our religion requires its members to vote. Our view is that if you don’t vote then you don’t really care about Reality. We identify ourselves as Realists and we put Reality first in our lives.

We would appreciate it if you would take a few minutes to fill out our candidate questionnaire so we can let our membership understand your views so that we can determine if you will make a good leader.

1. As an elected official do you believe that you have a duty to the people to put reality first when making the important decisions that affect all of us citizens?

Yes _____ No _____ Do you consider the definition of WISDOM to include having a firm grasp on reality? Yes _____ No _____ Are you willing to identify yourself as a reality based candidate and are you willing to make reality part of your campaign message? Yes _____ No _____ Do you believe that all religions (Christians, Jews, Muslins, Buddhists, Realists, Hindus, etc.) all have equal standing under the Constitution? Yes _____ No _____ Does reality play an important part in your religious life? Yes _____ No _____ Do you believe that many of the problems in society today are a result of political leaders turning their back on reality? Yes _____ No _____ Church of Reality doctrine includes the Principle of Positive Evolution outlining a duty of Realist to ensure the positive progress of humanity, that we leave a better world for the next generation that the one we inherited from our previous generation. We call the future the Sacred Direction. Is this a value that you also share?Yes _____ No _____We believe that every time someone says the word Reality that the world becomes a little smarter. Do you agree with this statement? Yes _____ No _____ Do you believe that it is important to teach children about reality in school? Yes _____ No _____ Do you believe that anything exists outside of reality? Yes _____ No _____ The Church of Reality doctrine includes the Principle of Peace stating that although war is sometime necessary it is always considered to be a failure to achieve peace. Is this a value you share?Yes _____ No _____Marc Perkel First One Church of Reality "We're Realists and we vote!"Note: Contact Marc at marc@perkel.com

Steve Hargreaves, CNN, October 26, 2007 NEW YORK -- With oil prices setting records over $90 a barrel - and $100 looking ever more likely - experts say there's a good chance drivers will see $3 gasoline before the end of the year. "Three dollar gasoline in this market is unavoidable," said Stephen Schork, publisher of the industry newsletter the Schork Report. "At this rate, we're going to see $4 a gallon." Crude oil prices have soared nearly 30 percent over the last month, mainly over fears that supply won't meet demand, a falling U.S. dollar, and what some say is a high degree of speculative investment money. But so far drivers have been lucky. The national average price for gasoline has risen barely one cent, going from $2.81 last month to $2.82 this month, according to the motorist organization AAA, although in many areas of the country gasoline is already over $3. Analysts have said the relatively stable gasoline price is due to slack demand following the high-demand summer driving season. $90 oil won't kill the bull But the relatively cheap gas prices are causing profit margins to slip for refiners, who have to pay top dollar for crude but aren't passing along the extra costs for consumers, yet. Read More Here

Eric Alterman, The Nation, October 25, 2007 When lamenting the loss of endangered species, consider the plight of the embattled "liberal hawks." Back in their salad days, when George W. Bush's approval ratings were sky-high and "Mission Accomplished" was not yet a poignant punch line, they spread their talons wide, leveling accusations left and left. According to the editors of The New Republic, for instance, those liberals who refused to get aboard Bush's friendship train to Baghdad were motivated by "abject pacifism" characterized by "intellectual incoherence," with views all but indistinguishable from "pierced-tongued demonstrators." Today, amid the vast wreckage in Iraq that is the direct result of the policies they promoted, some members of this marvelously adaptable species have successfully reinvented themselves. They're older and wiser but still victims of the same pacifistic, incoherent, pierce-tongued liberals who sometimes go so far as to liken them to neoconservatives. Roger Cohen, writing recently on the New York Times op-ed page, complained, "As America bumped down to earth, 'liberal' lost the mantle of political insult most foul. Its place was taken by the pervasive, glib 'neocon.'" You thought the Iraqis had it bad, what with a destroyed, dysfunctional country and massive amounts of mindless murder and the like. But look at what Cohen & Co. have had to endure: Christopher Hitchens, columnist for Slate and Vanity Fair and bestselling author; Thomas Friedman, columnist for the New York Times and bestselling author; Peter Beinart, contributor to Time, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and celebrated author; Paul Berman, distinguished writer in residence at NYU and celebrated author; George Packer, correspondent for The New Yorker and celebrated author; Jeffrey Goldberg, correspondent for The Atlantic, formerly of The New Yorker and celebrated author; Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate and future celebrated author; Michael Ignatieff? Leon Wieseltier? Well, don't cry for them, Hillary Clinton. Now examine the case of the complainant himself. Roger Cohen is the former foreign editor of the New York Times, now editor at large of the International Herald Tribune, author of its "Globalist" column, international writer at large for the Times and frequent guest columnist for its op-ed page. In these various capacities, he unleashed a double-barreled barrage of personal insults last December against what he called "hyperventilating left-liberals [whose] hatred of Bush is so intense that rational argument usually goes out the window." The column, which contained an avalanche of abuse, offered exactly one example: the nutty Scottish MP George Galloway, who had long ago been kicked out of the British Labour Party. Read More Here

April Marciszewski, The Tulsa World, October 27, 2007 Attorneys for Oral Roberts University, President Richard Roberts and three other administrators alleged Friday in court filings that three former ORU professors are trying their lawsuit in the media. ORU and the administrators said in their legal motion that publicity allegedly manipulated by the professors and their attorneys could lower the possibility of a fair trial. They want the professors and their attorneys barred from talking about the case outside of court. The court filings Friday were the first made by ORU and the administrators since the professors sued them Oct. 2 for allegedly wrongfully firing them or forcing them to resign. "Plaintiffs and their counsel are abusing the judicial process by using it as a basis for press conferences and publicity," the motion states. ". . . The barrage of news coverage is especially damaging" because the professors and their attorneys have included unsubstantiated, detailed allegations of misconduct with their lawsuit "when even plaintiffs admit they do not know if those statements are true." The motion refers to a report allegedly compiled by Roberts' sister-in-law, Stephanie Cantees, that Roberts has said consists of false rumors. The professors claim they were fired or forced to resign because they turned over the report to ORU's board of regents. Read More Here

Frank Rich, The New York Times, October 28, 2007 With the new president heading off to his Texas vacation during that slow news month of August 2001, I wrote a column about a man who would never be president: Rudy Giuliani. Banished from Gracie Mansion after dumping his second wife for Judith Nathan, New York’s lame-duck mayor had been bunking for two months with a gay couple. No brand-name American politician had ever publicly done such a thing, so I decided to pay a visit to Rudy’s home away from home. His Honor was out that day, but Howard Koeppel, a garrulous Queens car dealer, and his partner, Mark Hsiao, a Juilliard-trained pianist, were gracious tour guides to their 32nd-floor apartment on East 57th Street. I asked Mr. Koeppel, a born comic, whether it was unexpected that Rudy would live with an openly gay couple. “I don’t know if it’s any more unusual than him wearing a dress,” he deadpanned. On a more sober note, Mr. Koeppel told me that the connubially challenged mayor was an admirer of his and Mr. Hsiao’s relatively “idyllic life” and had assured them that “if they ever legalized gay marriages, we would be the first one he would do.” That this same Rudy Giuliani would emerge as the front-runner in the Republican pack six years later is the great surprise of the 2008 presidential campaign to date, especially to the political press. Since the dawn of the new century, it has been the rarely questioned conventional wisdom, handed down by Karl Rove, that no Republican can rise to the top of the party or win the presidency without pandering as slavishly as George W. Bush has to the most bullying and gay-baiting power brokers of the religious right. When Rudy’s candidacy started to show legs, pundits and family values activists alike assumed that ignorant voters knew only his 9/11 video reel and not his personal history or his stands on issues. “Americans do not yet realize how far outside of the mainstream of conservative thought that Mayor Giuliani’s social views really are,” declared Tony Perkins, the Family Research Council leader, in February. But despite Rudy’s fleeting stabs at fudging his views, they are well known now, and still he leads in national polls of Republican voters and is neck and neck with Fred Thompson in the Bible Belt sanctuary of South Carolina. Read More Here

Real Time With Bill Maher, October 19, 2007 And finally, New Rule: If the choice in '08 is between Rudy and Hillary, "values voters" must do the Christian thing and choose Hillary. Of course, I think all religion is nuts, but at least she practices it the way Jesus suggested: privately. Like a Dick Cheney energy meeting. Plus, she's raised an admirable daughter, while Rudy's kids couldn't hate him more if they were New York City firefighters. And let's not forget, Hillary didn't commit adultery. Her husband did. And afterwards, she did the Christian thing and forgave him. And then she had a GPS unit implanted in his penis. But the important thing is, she forgave him! Now, I bring all this up because this weekend in Washington is the "Values Voters Convention." Three days of peace, love and hypocrisy. Where the Republican frontrunners will spend the week kissing the asses of 2,000 social conservatives who despise liberals, homosexuals, Muslims, Mexicans and Nobel Prize winners. And who believe the sound of a condom wrapper being opened makes angels die. Read More Here

Warning to Older and More Cynical Readers: This is a Morality Tale A girl I knew centuries ago before my hair turned gray and my belly hid my belt buckle told me a tale about her mother. It started as a tragic story: Her father had died in a car accident when she was a young girl, leaving few assets and a pile of bills behind, and her mother was left as sole support of her and her only child. My friend said her mother went back to college for a few classes to complete her degree and then went out to look for a job, with her only previous experience two years of secretarial work at an ad agency. At the age of 36, and after much rejection due to her gender and lack of experience, her mother was finally hired by a major US corporation as a marketing trainee. Flash forward a few years, and Mom had been promoted several times; in fact, she had become something of a spokeswoman for the company. The little family of two moved to a nice suburban home, and her mother began dating a guy regularly. Things were skiddely-doo until her mother's company had a safety problem with one of its products. Mom was elected to be the voice of the corporation; she wrote press releases and appeared on TV and radio staunchly defending the safety of the product and her employer's integrity. Meanwhile, Mom was privately warning her friends and family not to buy the damn thing; the group suing the corporation was right -- it was unsafe, and secret internal company memos had been warning of it for years. My friend was appalled by her mother's rank hypocrisy. She had brought her up to be honest and responsible, and her mother had always punished her for lying, and now Dear Old Mom was telling a hundred lies a day, eyes wide open and with a smile on her face. A few times, my friend tried to talk to her mother about her public deceptions, but Mom blew her off with a laugh: "It's just business talk," she'd say, waving her daughter away casually, "don't take it so seriously." One day things reached a head. My friend had told a lie about where she had been the night before and what she had been doing. Mom found out the truth and hit the ceiling: "How could you lie to me like this? You weren't raised to act this way!" Of course, my friend fired back with both barrels, condemning her mother bitterly for her blatant hypocrisy -- lying to the public that something was safe when she knew it wasn't. Her mother replied with something like, "My 'lying' as you call it, is what puts a roof over your head, what puts food on the table! Don't you get high-handed with me, young lady -- those jeans you're wearing were bought with money I made from my job! That's no excuse for you to lie to me! You just don't understand the way business works!" (Incidentally, did I mention Mom was a Nixon Republican?) I read that Karl Rove has a teenage son named Andrew; I wonder if he has raised him to lie to others, especially his own father? Or, like my friend's mother, does he get upset when his kid tries to put one over on him, but dismisses with a wave of the hand what he has done for a living as just "the way business works"? Knowing the way these things usually go, Andrew Rove is going to grow up to become a liberal, work for the ACLU, and write a book condemning Dad's lack of ethics and trying to understand what motivated him. At least, that's pretty close to what my friend did in her Mom's case, only her book will probably go unpublished.

Randall Mikkelsen, Reuters, October 26, 2007 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The main U.S. disaster-response agency apologized on Friday for having its employees pose as reporters in a news briefing on California's wildfires that no journalists attended. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, still struggling to restore its image after the bungled handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, issued the apology after The Washington Post published details of the Tuesday briefing. "We can and must do better, and apologize for this error in judgment," FEMA deputy administrator Harvey Johnson, who conducted the briefing, said in a statement. "Our intent was to provide useful information and be responsive to the many questions we have received." No actual reporter attended the hastily called news conference in person, although some camera crews arrived late to film incidental shots, officials said. A spokeswoman for Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who has authority over FEMA, called the incident "inexcusable and offensive to the secretary." "We have made it clear that stunts such as this will not be tolerated or repeated," spokeswoman Laura Keehner said. She said the department was considering reprimands. The White House said: "It was just a bad way to handle it." The Bush administration has faced criticism previously over accusations it masked public relations efforts as journalism. Read More Here

BartCop.com Volume 2062 - Electric blue badness. In Today's Tequila Treehouse...

	Bush's WW3 Rhetoric
	No More Freedom?
	Republican Hot Flashes
	Even 'Brownie' gets it
	CA. Copters grounded?
	Rudy waterboarding
	San Diego vs Katrina
	Huckabee's Holocaust
	Beckins as Steno Judy

http://www.adl.org/PresRele/HolNa_52/5155_52.htm A few days ago, the Anti-Defamation League expressed displeasure with former Arkansas' governor Mike Huckabee's use of the term "holocaust" in conjunction with abortions in the United States. While I agree with the League that using "holocaust" in conjunction with anything other than the Holocaust is insensitive and should be discouraged, this issue is larger than one speech by a conservative Presidential candidate. Huckabee is not the first to equate abortion and genocide. In fact, among Southern Baptists, Huckabee's denomination, this rhetorical device has been employed for as long as I can remember. Although they may not be able to give a reason other than an appeal to the book of Psalms as to why abortion is wrong, they feel that it is murder on a large scale. The fact that Huckabee is parroting this phrase to a group that sympathizes with it is no surprise. I'm sure that any who truly believe that abortion is murder feel that it compares with genocide, but I know that there are also those who use inflamatory terms like this to capitalize on the knee-jerk reactions that will follow. Huckabee most likely feels that we as a nation are allowing mass murder on a daily basis. I honestly hope that he will find a way to balance his emotions about this issue with the need to keep from trivializing the most evil act in recent (if not all of human) history.