BartCop.com Volume 2061 – Seriously…
In Today’s Tequila Treehouse…
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Bush’s Free-Fire Zones |
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Rudy & Waterboarding  |
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San Diego Top Ten |
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Rudy Awakening |
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Mishandled Torture |
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Wars cost: $2.4 trillion |
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Armenian Genocide |
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Left-Stopping Hillary |
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Alba’s Eva Crush |
The 2008 election is turning out to be a contest of candidates that no one seems to be able to get behind. Given the huge issues that face the United States from Iraq and terrorism to the economy you would have thought we would have gotten a better group of candidates that the two parties could support.
There are national polls that show that each party has one candidate that is polling well ahead of the rest. The problem with the two so called front runners is that not too many people in their respective parties actually like them. When examining more localized polls they show a much tighter race.
Even in a tighter race the negatives for the top tier candidates outweigh the positives. Looking at the Republicans one has too wonder what the GOP is thinking. Their current front runner Rudi Guiliani is demonized by the Christian right for his liberal views on gays, guns and abortion. It is wondered aloud how Guiliani could possibly win the GOP nomination and the general election without the support of this crucial voting block. On the Democratic side its not much better. Hillary Clinton as front runner is demonized by much of the left wing of the Democrats for her hawkish views on Iraq and Iran.Without the support of this wing of the party how does Clinton expect to win the nomination and then the general election.
All this mess with parties doesn’t even include the input of independents who are sure to swing this election. A recent poll of independents revealed that most independents are not impressed with any of the major candidates but do seem to swing more left than right in this election cycle.
Unfortunately for the electorate the alternative to Guiliani and Clinton are not offering much more than the front runners. On the right you have Romney and McCain and on the left you have Obama and Edwards. None of the four has mustered enough support among their own parties to even make a dent in the world of independents.
This election, one that is of crucial importance to the United States and its allies could unfortunately come down to the lesser of two evils. The question is what are those two evils.
Michael Cooper, The New York Times, October 25, 2007
DAVENPORT, Iowa – At a town hall meeting here last night, Rudolph W. Giuliani expanded upon his views of torture. Here is a transcript of the exchange.
Linda Gustitus, who is the president of a group called the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, began her question by saying that President Bush’s nominee for attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey (who happens to be an old friend of Mr. Giuliani’s) had “fudged” on the question of whether waterboarding is toture.
“I wanted to ask you two questions,’’ she said. “One, do you think waterboarding is torture? And two, do you think the president can order something like waterboarding even though it’s against U.S. and international law?’’
Mr. Giuliani responded: “Okay. First of all, I don’t believe the attorney general designate in any way was unclear on torture. I think Democrats said that; I don’t think he was.’’
Ms. Gustitus said: “He said he didn’t know if waterboarding is torture.”
Mr. Giuliani said: “Well, I’m not sure it is either. I’m not sure it is either. It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it. I think the way it’s been defined in the media, it shouldn’t be done. The way in which they have described it, particularly in the liberal media. So I would say, if that’s the description of it, then I can agree, that it shouldn’t be done. But I have to see what the real description of it is. Because I’ve learned something being in public life as long as I have. And I hate to shock anybody with this, but the newspapers don’t always describe it accurately.”
(Applause)
Justin Juozapavicius, The Associated Press, October 24, 2007
TULSA, Okla. — Oral Roberts University, which has been engulfed in accusations of lavish spending by its president, faces a crippling debt load, the evangelical school’s board of regents chairman disclosed Wednesday.
Regents Chairman George Pearsons told The Associated Press that ongoing maintenance costs and low financial support from donors have put Oral Roberts University $55 million in debt. University spokesman Jeremy Burton said Wednesday evening the actual debt figure is actually $52.5 million.
“Honestly, we’ve been struggling financially,” Pearsons said. “Really my goal and it’s a big one my goal is to obliterate the debt.
“It is the desire of the board to be able to manage our finances in such a way that we can start chopping off debt here and there.”
University president Richard Roberts has taken a temporary leave of absence while fighting a lawsuit claiming out-of-control spending, and his father, Oral Roberts, has returned to Oklahoma from California to take a greater role in guiding the school he founded in 1963.
The 5,700-student university is a product of Oral Roberts’ ministry, which grew from Southern tent revivals to one of the most successful evangelical empires in the country.
The university reported nearly $76 million in revenue in 2005, according to the Internal Revenue Service, and one former regent said its endowment once approached $60 million. Its endowment today exceeds $34 million, a university spokesman said. Its operating budget for 2007-2008 was more than $82 million.
What do you do if you are a Michigan Republican’t who’s concerned that your long-time comfortably incumbent Congresscritter appears to be headed for a tough election?
Why, you harrass his potential opponents:
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. – A politically conservative student armed with a video camera and a Web site is trying to force a Democratic congressional candidate out of his teaching job at Central Michigan University.
Dennis Lennox, a 23-year-old junior, has posted videos on YouTube of himself questioning assistant professor Gary Peters about campaigning for office while holding a prestigious position at the university.
Some say Lennox is persistent. Others accuse him of pandering for attention.
Before I even start, I would like to say that I have absolutely nothing against breast cancer survivors. I also think that the groups that support awareness of breast cancer are doing a good thing. I’m not trying to say that any of these people are evil, malicious, or just out for sympathy, so please don’t think that this is what I am trying to say.
However, I have noticed lately that every time I turn on the television, I see an ad about breast cancer — Susan G. Komen Foundation, doing self exams on the eleventh of every month, and even (shudder) being someone’s bra. Given the amount of attention that breast cancer receives, one would think that it strikes at least half, if not more, of the female population.
Garrison Keillor, Salon, October 24, 2007
There is a natural division of labor in politics: The Republicans fuss about the sanctity of marriage and getting God back in the schools and the Democrats about healthcare and the $8 billion that vanished in Iraq, and so far the Republicans are doing a better job. God is in the schools, the same as He is in Nebraska or even in Dallas, and marriage looks to be doing OK, since the White House is not in charge of it. Meanwhile, the Pentagon and the Justice Department are investigating fraud in Iraq, one grain of sand at a time, and we are likely to have answers in a decade or two.
I suppose that $8 billion is not so much considering that the war will cost $200 billion this year alone, and yet one is curious to know why the G-men can’t find out where it went, at a time when the Current Occupant is so very concerned about keeping medical benefits away from undeserving children. Hundreds of millions paid to the gunslingers of Blackwater, but an American family with a seriously ill child has to tap-dance backward through a gantlet of government forms to prove they really, really, really are desperate.
As the old adage says, the little thieves get hung and the big thieves get richer and richer. When it comes to larceny, it pays to be ambitious.
If you were looking for a political platform, God and marriage would be a good bet, sort of like promising to make the sun rise. A part-time job with time left over to supervise the moon and the stars. It is so much more satisfying than the dreary business of investigating what happened to those suitcases full of bricks of $100 bills in Iraq during the Bremer years and tracking down the good Republicans who served over there — the young folks with no prior experience in accounting or finance who were put in charge of the stock exchange and the national budget.
BartCop.com Volume 2060 – No more years.
In Today’s Tequila Treehouse…
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Double Standards |
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Madness as Method |
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Americans are dumb |
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What’s wrong with W? |
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Gestapo Inheritance |
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Kurds attack Turkey |
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Suicide is not Painless |
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Sopranos Finale |
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Victoria Principal flees |
BartCop radio show 128 is now online and available to BartCop subscribers. Bart comments on segments of Bill Maher including the 9-11 truth crowd heckling, Chris Matthews actually says something intelligent and other surprises. The California fires have got Bart’s attention and somebody better do something about global warming right #@$@# now! Some Mike Malloy, other bits and great music round out this week’s show.
David Plotz, Slate, October 24, 2007
The Colorado Rockies and Boston Red Sox will play for the World Series starting Wednesday night. Colorado and Boston aren’t just the best teams in baseball—they’re also perhaps the two most faith-based organizations in the game. The Colorado Rockies’ emphasis on Christianity was first reported by USA Today in 2006 and has recently received more coverage. In recent years, the Red Sox have also had an abundance of evangelical Christians in their clubhouse, including Curt Schilling, Tim Wakefield, and Jason Varitek. In 2000, David Plotz asked why so many athletes have strong religious beliefs and tried to figure out whether God is ever responsible for on-the-field heroics.
It wasn’t so long ago that sports fields were the devil’s playground. Babe Ruth could commit five of the seven deadly sins before noon and hit three home runs by dinner. In Damn Yankees, it was Satan, not God, who offered the Washington Senators a pennant in exchange for a player’s soul. (Lesson: Offense wins games. Demons win championships.)
But today there are Angels in the Outfield, and God seems to be following pro sports more intently than any Vegas bookie. Several months before the Super Bowl, St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner, a devout Christian, declared, “The Lord has something special in mind for this team.” The Rams won the Super Bowl last week because of a Warner touchdown pass. As the clock ticked to zero, the quarterback yelled, “Thank you, Jesus!” In post-game interviews, Rams receiver Isaac Bruce—who claims that uttering the word “Jesus” saved him from injury in a car crash and healed a pulled groin—described catching the winning pass: “That wasn’t me. That was all God. … I had to make an adjustment on the ball, and God did the rest.” (Thanks to God’s invisibility, the Rams were not penalized for having 12 men on the field.)
Why is God so busy on the gridiron?
Brent Budowsky, The Hill, October 23, 2007
As the president speaks of World War III and potential war with Iran with fevered rhetoric in a near-hysterical atmosphere, the world stands at a moment of great danger.
For Democrats as a leadership party and the Congress as a co-equal branch of government, it is a moment of truth, and recent history does not augur well.
World War III?
For the president to speak in terms of World War III is extreme, irrational and distempered, and for a Democratic Senate to pass an Iran resolution in this atmosphere of fear and frenzy makes 2007 and Iran look ominously similar to 2002 and Iraq.
It has not been widely noted, but the original version of the Iran resolution included a section calling on the United States to use all economic and diplomatic means to address the problems surrounding Iran.
This section, amazingly, was dropped from the final version that passed. Which senators did not support including diplomatic and economic means of achieving American goals in a resolution that passed at such a dangerous moment?
Hey kids! This is my first attempt at posting something for the BartBlog, so I’d like to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Tom, and I’ve been blogging for a little more then five years now. My current digs can be found here, at the Funny Farm. I’m also contributing to the American Street from time to time. And there’s all the regular stuff that ordinary people have to deal with – job, family, friends, etc. etc. – eating up the hours. So I wouldn’t expect too much bloggy goodness coming from these parts to be appearing on these pages, if you know what I mean. And I think you do.
Anyways,… I wanted to share a few tidbits with you:
- I personally experienced a small taste of the Reich wing intimidation machine on the job;
- another personal anecdote to share with you: on Sunday, I had lunch delivered to my home from one of the local restaurants. When I answered the door for the delivery man, I was wearing one of these: (more…)
For years feminists and prochoicers have pointed out that women have abortions whether or not the procedure is legal.
That was true here before Roe v. Wade, and it is true today in countries where abortion is restricted or banned. The difference is that when abortion is legal it is a remarkably safe procedure; when it is illegal, women are injured, women die, children are left motherless. (True, these are already-existing, sinful children, not embryos or fetuses, but still.) This simple public health argument has gotten lost in a thicket of theology, sexual morality, “family values,” politics, spin and outright disinformation. The coat hanger has become a political cliché, a relic of the ’60s, like the peace sign. Oh, that old thing.
Now comes an article in The Lancet that shows in cold hard data how right we’ve been all along. (more…)
David Segal, The Washington Post, October 22, 2007
PITTSBURGH – Looking for a perfect little weekend vacation this fall? Here’s a travel tip you don’t hear very often: Head to Pittsburgh. Right away.
Seriously, get in the car and read this story later, because when you’re done reading, you’ll wish you’d left 10 minutes ago. There are towns with better vistas, sure, and there are getaways with more sunshine. But only Pittsburgh is the scene of the fabulously tawdry and surpassingly vicious spectacle that is the divorce of Richard Mellon Scaife.
Remember him? The cantankerous, reclusive 75-year-old billionaire who’s spent a sizable chunk of his inherited fortune bankrolling conservative causes and trying to kneecap Democrats? He’s best known for funding efforts to smear then-President Bill Clinton, but more quietly he’s given in excess of $300 million to right-leaning activists, watchdogs and think tanks. Atop his list of favorite donees: the family-values-focused Heritage Foundation, which has published papers with titles such as “Restoring a Culture of Marriage.”
The culture of his own marriage is apparently past restoring. With the legal fight still in the weigh-in phase, the story of Scaife v. Scaife already includes a dog-snatching, an assault, a night in jail and that divorce court perennial, allegations of adultery.
Oh, and there’s the money. Three words, people.
No. Pre. Nup.
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The Tattlesnake — They Can’t See the Gorilla, or the Pile of Elephant President in the Middle of the Room Edition
The Science They Hate Proves the ‘Doors’ of Perception are Shut to the Neocon’s ‘Stone Age Brains’
The sub-head of The Telegraph (UK) article “Did You See the Gorilla?” reads: “Our Stone Age brains may simply be unable to cope with the pace of modern life…”
But not all of us have ‘Stone Age brains’ as the article goes on to elucidate. In the various university experiments testing human perception, about half failed to notice what was going on, roughly similar to the Duke University experiments conducted decades ago to show the weakness of eyewitness testimony.
(more…)