A REAL Soldier Takes on Phony "Patriot" Draft Dodger Limbaugh

It's a thing of beauty and you can see it here.

Again I ask: what right do these right-wing assholes like Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, O'Reilly, Beck, Savage, O'Beirne, Malkin, et al, have to judge the patriotism of ANYONE?? Who in the hell decided that they get to decide who a "real American" is?

BTW, the military's identification with the Republican Party has dropped sharply. And donations to Democrats by members of the military now account for 40% of the total of all donations.

I guess those soldiers just hate America. Just ask Rush "Anal Cyst" Limbaugh, the toughest talking draft dodger in America.

I'm Discouraged; I'm Taking a Break for a While

I was hoping after the 2006 elections that the Democrats would actually fight back against the most unpopular president in modern American history and his corrupt, despicable gang of enablers in both Congress and the media.

I was wrong. The Democratic Party continues to cave in to the little son of a bitch every damn time.

This Petraeus bullshit was the last fucking straw. No, we can't defund the g-d damned war, but we can pass a resolution condemning an ad, thus making the Democrats look like utter fools and cowards, and, by the way, diverting attention away from actual issues. (Ooooh, we have to condemn a newspaper ad or Limbaugh and Fox "News" will call us unpatriotic. WTF is that??)

So right now, I'm utterly discouraged. The country is sliding into economic crisis, the Rightwing bastards are screaming for a war with Iran that will plunge the world into disaster, the little son of a bitch just asked for $200 BILLION more for his g-d damned war (and he'll get it), Blackwater mercenaries simply kill people in Iraq with impunity, our international standing has never been lower, and the corporate media spits on the Democrats, lies about them constantly, and holds them to an outrageous double standard. And what does the leadership of my party do? Surrender. Cave in. Ignore its strongest supporters. Cower in fear before Mr. 29% approval. Meanwhile, the progressive agenda that the American people actually favor (see my post, The Myth of a "Conservative America" right here) is ignored as conservative special interests continue to ride roughshod over the vast majority of the American people.

So screw it. I'm so sick and tired of politics right now I could puke. This country is DYING and my party's leadership doesn't have the nerve or the vision to stop it.

So I've got to think things over. I'll try to be back by 1 October. In the meantime, can I urge my few loyal readers and the occasional new reader to do me a favor? Look into the archives you see listed on the right side of this blog. Dive into them and see for yourself. I have fought my heart out in this little tiny blog. There are more than 1,300 posts over the last two years. Virtually every one of them has been in support of the Democratic cause. I'm wondering why the hell I'm doing it any more.

I have been a Democratic activist since 1992, when I converted from the Dark Side. I have poured time, energy, and money into building a Democratic majority that would fix the sicknesses and lies that are killing America. I've fought for the Democrats with all my heart.

I just wish they'd fight for me once in a while.

Go Alan, Go!

Perenniel nutjob loser Alan Keyes, that is. He's made it official--he's in the Republican presidential race! Way cool, Alan! Force the Republican Party even farther toward the lunatic Right! Yes, Keyes doesn't think that people like Sam Brownback are conservative enough, so it's Alan to the rescue of the Sodom and Gomorrah that is modern America. Keyes perfectly represents the views of the hardest core right wing fanatics who make up the Republican base. Most Republican candidates are leery of appearing too much in bed with such voters. My DD has some thoughts here:

The fact that the front-runners are putting this crowd at arm's length reveals that they have at least an inkling of what we've known for a while: that the so-called "moral conservatives" as they like to call themselves are a fringe element in the country and are largely responsible for the losses among independents that the party has suffered. Contrary to what they like to believe, they do not have a monopoly on morality or on values. Sadly for Republicans who seek to win nationally, they are also an extremely active and vocal portion of the Republican base (McCain's HQ phone lines have reportedly been tied up with callers demanding that he appear at the debate tomorrow) and I think it's quite telling that while the Democratic candidates flock to their base, the mainstream Republican candidates are fleeing from theirs.

Well said. Yes, contrary to their fairy tales of moral superiority, too many so-called "Values Voters" are perfectly OK with the U.S. using torture. They're fine with bombing and killing nasty brown people. Many of them call people who look like Alan Keyes "nigger" in private. Many hate immigrants not because they're illegal but because they're dark skinned. They don't mind that 20% of U.S. children live in poverty. They are mostly indifferent to the 47,000,000 without health insurance. They fully support a president who has conducted a tragically unnecessary war that has killed, maimed, or traumatized tens of thousands of brave young Americans. They are the spiritual representatives of all that is worst in us--our hatreds, our prejudices, our indifference to the suffering of other people, our raging intolerance. They want America to be a theocracy. They despise science. They hate our Constitution and would be delighted to live in a right wing religious dictatorship. Many would gladly see their opponents censored or killed. They would imprison or exterminate gays as well. Yes, these are "Alan's People", all right. And I say he's welcome to them. The more the Democrats can wrap these wretched, lunatic right wingers around the throats of the major Republican candidates, the more crushing the victory the Democrats will win in 2008.

Digby Hands the Social Conservatives Their Collective Asses

and in the process rips Rudy Giuliani a new rectum right here:

Many social conservatives are phonies, and the rest are willing dupes. I'm not sure why people are still surprised by this. How many diaper wearing wingnut senators and teenage boy-chasing conservative congressmen does it take to prove that the whole family values campaign was just another market tested bludgeon with which to hit liberals over the head?

(J. Miller: Whoo-hoo!)

I used to argue endlessly about this, citing things like porno viewing numbers and divorce and abortion statistics in the heartland which proved that the supposed "real Americans" were just as loose in their personal lives as everyone else. Many readers argued with me and said that I was projecting --- the social conservatives may be rigid and small minded, they said, but they are sincere. And when I pointed out that the brouhahas about Janet Jackson's nipple and that blond desperate housewife jumping into a black football players arms had more than a tinge of racial rather than moral outrage, I was told that I was wrong: people really were stunned at such overt sexuality on television, despite the fact that there is a ton of explicit sexuality on television that barely raises an eyebrow...

[Citing right wing apologists for Giuliani]: And now we have GOP it-boy Rudy Giuliani, a man whose history makes Bill and Hillary Clinton look like Ma and Pa Kettle, being offered all kinds of excuses for his positions on the issues and his own sewer of a personal life...

The truth is that "family values" for the most part is just a phrase certain tribal conservatives use to assert their moral superiority over the rest of us, probably in an attempt to deflect the fact that they are, at heart, cruel bigoted small-minded jerks. And there is no more cruel, bigoted, small-minded jerk than Rudy Giuliani, the poster boy for the newly pragmatic Republican Party. (You remember the Republicans, don't you? The party that lived by its principles and talked straight, unlike the terrorist loving hippies?)

Oh yeah, baby! Many of these right wing Republican clowns would rather die 10,000 deaths than have their own personal lives examined in public. And the assertion that "Red States" are morally superior to "Blue States" is pure out and out bullshit. Some examples, as presented by the gloriously rampant J. Miller:

States With the Highest Divorce Rate by Political Affiliation


[By the way, liberal Commie-Hippie Massachusetts has the LOWEST divorce rate in the United States.]

Red states are also by far the worst in terms of infant mortality, receiving more money from the Federal government than they pay in taxes (that good 'ol conservative self-reliance), and any number of other indicators.

Face it: SOCIAL CONSERVATISM IS A CROCK OF HYPOCRISY AND LIES, and it has never--and will never--be anything else.

Very Cool

Check this out. It's a series of views going from 10 million light years from earth to the subatomic level, moving in (or out) by a factor of 10 each time. Absolutely mind boggling. Try putting it on manual so you can control the speed of the presentation.

It Was the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Him

George W. Bush's presidency was already stalled and stagnating on 10 September 2001. Nine months after having stolen the presidency and eight months after having been sworn in, Bush was hovering at 50% approval and his program was languishing. Then came the horrible events of the next day. Bush performed wretchedly on 9/11, sitting like a helpless idiot for long minutes after America had come under attack, fleeing across the country afterward and keeping his head down (contrary to the right wing mythology propagated later) like the pathetic, incompetent coward he is. But he recovered his equilibrium and the nation overwhelmingly rallied to him. Americans of all political persuasions supported him, and the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan received near unanimous support. So what did Bush do with our national unity and resolve? He turned 9/11 into a cudgel to attack the Democrats and smear the patriotism of anyone who dared to question him and his vicious, snarling vice president. By early 2002, Karl Rove, Bush's top political advisor, was already urging Republicans to use 9/11 to their electoral advantage.

Aided and abetted by Fox "News" and the rest of the right wing slime machine, all dissent was mercilessly attacked. War veterans were called traitors for criticizing Bush, aka Dear Leader, in the tradition of North Korea's Kim Jong-il. The Republicans shamelessly campaigned on the corpses of the 9/11 dead, using their charred and mangled bodies as GOP campaign fodder. The lunatic right shouted that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11--on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. The attacks were used to help justify the tragically wrong decision to invade Iraq, an invasion which was also brutally politicized by the radical right. And above all, the constant fear mongering by the Bush Administration, supported by a compliant, groveling press corps, allowed Bush to win the narrowest reelection of any incumbent since 1916. In other words, the Al Qaeda attacks on America of 11 September 2001 were a godsend to Bush. They rescued his miserable, failing presidency and gave him an enormous weapon with which to ram through the program of far-right extremism which threatens this country's very survival as a free nation. They were, in short, the best thing that ever happened to him. They allowed this utter loser to present himself as a great statesman, when in fact he has failed at everything he has ever done in his life.

So remember, when you hear the right wing screaming for blood in Iran and using the Iraq war as a way to attack the Democrats, where it all began. It began when Bush and Cheney started thanking their lucky stars for Osama Bin Laden, the greatest gift the Republican Party has ever received--and vice versa.

(By the way, be sure to check out Eschaton's thoughts on all of this right here. It's a list of things we must do to help stop the madness the right wing Republicans have unleashed on us. And by God, don't let that lying SOB Giuliani keep using 9/11 to gain the White House. We're not going to allow another Republican fraud to fail his way upward.)

If You Care About the Things I Care About, Read This

It's a post you need to see, and it's right here.

I wouldn't ask if I didn't think it was of the highest importance.

Those Bad Little Republican Boys

Right here.

Har!

"The Complete Failure of Republican Economic Policy"

The inimitable bonddad strikes again right here, calmly and systematically destroying right-wing claims of superior economic policy. The evidence he marshals is impressive and his conclusions are devastating: so-called "Supply Side Economics" as practiced by the last three Republican presidents was and is simply a shell game, where economic growth was financed by the accumulation of enormous debt. (In fact, 70% of America's national debt, from 1789 to the present, has been accumulated under Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II.) This debt has put us in a horrendous hole. bonddad supplies the numbers and facts:

Let’s look at tax revenues to see how they have responded. First, remember that Bush first cut taxes in 2001 and again in 2003. So let’s go back to the first tax cut to see what happened from that point forward. According to the Congressional Budget Office’s Historical Budget Data, total revenue from individual taxpayers was $994 billion in 2001 and $1.043 trillion in 2006. Since the fourth quarter of 2001, the GDP price deflator has increased from 103.1221 to 117.003 (this was the price deflator in the third quarter of 2006 when the federal government’s fiscal year ends). This is an overall increase of 13.46%. In short, after adjusting for inflation, the overall increase in tax revenues from 2001 when the first tax cutting began is nothing to write home about.

And how was the mediocre economic performance of Bush purchased? bonddad again:

Total Federal Debt

09/30/2000 5,674,178,209,886.86
09/30/2001 5,807,463,412,200.06
09/30/2002 6,228,235,965,597.16
09/30/2003 6,783,231,062,743.62
09/30/2004 7,379,052,696,330.32
09/30/2005 7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2006 8,506,973,899,215.23

In other words, Junior put our "prosperity" on the credit card, and our children and grandchildren will have to pay the price. Read the whole thing--and then resolve to throw these profligate, reckless bums out next year.

Delusional, Pathetic Liar Bill O'Reilly Reaching New Depths of Idiocy

Don't believe it's possible? Check it out here.

O'Reilly hates it when anyone dares to speak up against his lunatic, far-right wing thuggery. He's a laughable, thin skinned tool, a little wimp crying about how the Big Mean Liberals have dared to ridicule and criticize Bill-O himself!! Aw, poor Bill-O.

By the way, did you ever notice how Billy Boy avoids any forum where he doesn't control the microphone? I think this can be traced back to when Al Franken publicly humiliated him a few years ago. O'Reilly has since stayed under his rock at Fox "News".

He's too much of a coward to do anything else.

Rudy Giuliani: The Fraudulent "Hero" of 9/11

Watch this video right here and tell me this lying con artist deserves to be president. If you've got a pulse, you'll be outraged and disgusted.

I Think I'm Gonna Love It!

It's this wonderful site here from the Massachusetts Democratic Party detailing the REAL record of the most two faced, phony, dishonest, double talking Republican in the race, Mitt Romney. (Think of the competition he had to beat. Now that's impressive.) Check it out!

How the Bush-Cheney Regime Crushes Iraq Whistle Blowers

Guess what happens to people courageous enough to expose the enormous fraud being perpetrated by Republican-connected firms in Iraq?

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers - all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.

"It was a Wal-Mart for guns," he says. "It was all illegal and everyone knew it."

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn't know whom to trust in Iraq.

For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.

Almost $9 BILLION in reconstruction funds unaccounted for? Don't ask if you know what's good for you. More than 190,000 weapons simply vanished into the hands of our enemies? Keep your mouth shut. For above all, the right wing criminals who run our government follow the code of silence unto death, and no one can violate it.

Really, it's as if our government were being run by the Mafia.

Then again, maybe our government IS the Mafia.

Doonesbury Gets It Right

Check it out here.

Heh heh heh.

(Thanks to Paul Claycomb!)