The Evangelical Crackup

The New York Times has a great piece this Sunday on the Religious Right and The Republic Party current struggles.

Sitting with his wife in a quiet living room with teddy bears on the bookshelves, Carlson, who is 70, told me he is one member of the movement’s founding generation who has had second thoughts. He said he still considers abortion evil. He called the anti-abortion protests “prophetic,” in the sense of the Old Testament prophets who warned of God’s wrath. But Carlson was blunt about the results. “It didn’t really change abortion,” he said.

“I thought in my enthusiasm,” he told me with a smile, “that somehow we could band together and change things politically and everything will be fine.” But the closing of Dr. Tiller’s clinic was fleeting. Electing Christian politicians never seemed to change much. “When you mix politics and religion,” Carlson said, “you get politics.”

In more recent battles, Carlson has hung back. On the Sunday before the referendum on a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, Carlson reminded his congregation that homosexuality was hardly the only form of sex the Bible condemned. Any extramarital sex is a sin, he told his congregation, so they should not point fingers.

The thing the “Religious Right” forgot is that the separation of Church and State was never meant to protect the Government from Religion, but protect Religion from Government and the corrupting influence of political power.

FEMA Too Busy Holding Fake Pressers To Share The Facts

Storm readiness shortfalls kept secret

The state of Louisiana and the Bush administration are refusing to disclose analyses that would let the public know where gaps exist in the government's hurricane preparation and response plans, including evacuation, medical services and shelters.

Citing national security concerns, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has refused to turn over "gap analyses" conducted on 18 coastal states, from Maine to Texas, that are susceptible to hurricanes. FEMA officials say that because the reviews discuss "critical infrastructure," they are not available to the public under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

Louisiana emergency preparedness officials first referred questions to FEMA and then declined to provide further information about ongoing problems in planning for hurricanes.

 

A Soliders View 'I Don't Think This Place Is Worth Another Soldier's Life'

The Washington Post:

"When we first got here, all the shops were open. There were women and children walking out on the street," Alarcon said this week. "The women were in Western clothing. It was our favorite street to go down because of all the hot chicks."

That was 14 long months ago, when the soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, arrived in southwestern Baghdad. It was before their partners in the Iraqi National Police became their enemies and before Shiite militiamen, aligned with the police, attempted to exterminate a neighborhood of middle-class Sunni families.

Next month, the U.S. soldiers will complete their tour in Iraq. Their experience in Sadiyah has left many of them deeply discouraged, by both the unabated hatred between rival sectarian fighters and the questionable will of the Iraqi government to work toward peaceful solutions.

Asked if the American endeavor here was worth their sacrifice -- 20 soldiers from the battalion have been killed in Baghdad -- Alarcon said no: "I don't think this place is worth another soldier's life."

While top U.S. commanders say the statistics of violence have registered a steep drop in Baghdad and elsewhere, the soldiers' experience in Sadiyah shows that numbers alone do not describe the sense of aborted normalcy -- the fear, the disrupted lives -- that still hangs over the city.

We have made it so much better there, NOT !

It's Time For A 3rd Party

The Republic Party is Evil and the Democrat Party is a bunch of Morons:

TPMMuckraker has this little bit on the idiots running the House Judiciary Committee:

This summer the House Judiciary Committee launched an effort to collect tips from would-be whistleblowers in the Justice Department. The U.S. attorney firings scandal had shown that much was amiss in the Department, and with the danger of retaliation very real, the committee had set up a form on the committee's website for people to blow the whistle privately about abuses there. Although the panel said it would not accept anonymous tips, it assured those who came forward that their identity would be held in the "strictest confidence."

But in an email sent out today, the committee inadvertently sent the email addresses of all the would-be whistleblowers to everyone who had written in to the tipline. The committee email was sent to tipsters who had used the website form, including presumably whistleblowers themselves, and all of the recipients of the email were accidentally included in the "to:" field -- instead of concealing those addresses with a so-called blind carbon copy or "bcc:".

McCain Slams Giuliani, while he still backs Mukasey

McCain Rebukes Giuliani on Waterboarding Remark

Rudolph W. Giuliani’s statement on Wednesday that he was uncertain whether waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique, was torture drew a sharp rebuke yesterday from Senator John McCain, who said that his failure to call it torture reflected his inexperience.

“All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today,” Mr. McCain, who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, said in a telephone interview.

Of presidential candidates like Mr. Giuliani, who say that they are unsure whether waterboarding is torture, Mr. McCain said: “They should know what it is. It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture.”

Boy the guy at the helm of the “straight talk express” has become nothing more then a political shill. Bash Rudy, but still support Mukasey after his almost identical performance?

Minnesota's Mini-Mitch

This clown has reinvented himself more times then Mitch Romney, based on the political winds of the moment.

The Strib reports : Coleman did Woodstock, but says no to federal money

Sen. Norm Coleman attended Woodstock and even did a video for a planned museum commemorating the famous music festival. But the Minnesota Republican voted against spending $1 million to help with the effort, saying government has better things to do with its money.

Yeah that’s it, our cultural history doesn’t mean shit if it takes money away from building our arsenal back up for the upcoming air campaign in Iran. We’re Thinking about you Paul!!

You Didn't See Anything........

The Washington post reports

From CIA Jails, Inmates Fade Into Obscurity
Dozens of 'Ghost Prisoners' Not Publicly Accounted For

On Sept. 6, 2006, President Bush announced that the CIA's overseas secret prisons had been temporarily emptied and 14 al-Qaeda leaders taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But since then, there has been no official accounting of what happened to about 30 other "ghost prisoners" who spent extended time in the custody of the CIA.

Some have been secretly transferred to their home countries, where they remain in detention and out of public view, according to interviews in Pakistan and Europe with government officials, human rights groups and lawyers for the detainees. Others have disappeared without a trace and may or may not still be under CIA control.

The bulk of the ghost prisoners were captured in Pakistan, where they scattered after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

So much of what this administration does is so beyond the pale to be almost comical if it wasn’t so truly evil.

All I can think of is the Penguins in the movie Madagascar trying to break out of the zoo and Skipper saying “You didn’t see anything”

The Republic Party - White Male Menopause?

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post has a brilliant piece on Republican Hot Flashes;

The latest was the Senate vote Wednesday in which Republicans, supported by a handful of red-state Democrats, narrowly scuttled the Dream Act, a bill that would have provided a path to citizenship for some young undocumented immigrants -- but only those who did everything this country once found worthy and admirable in pursuit of the American dream.

Under the proposal, men and women who fulfilled several conditions -- they had to be under 30, had to have been brought into the country illegally before they were 16, had to have been in the United States for at least five years and had to be graduates of U.S. high schools -- would have been given conditional legal status. If they went on to complete two years of college or two years of military service, they would have been eligible for permanent residency.

Let's see. Here was a way to encourage a bunch of kids to go to college rather than melt into the shadows as off-the-books day laborers -- or maybe even gang members. And here was a way to boost enlistment in our overtaxed armed forces. Aren't education and global competitiveness supposed to be vital issues? Aren't we fighting open-ended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

The vote against the Dream Act was so irrational, so counterproductive, that it seemed the product of some sort of hormonal imbalance.

1984 - 2007 Hey Orwell was only off by 23 years or so

Big Brother is here, it just gets sicker every day;

The Washington Post reports on the latest Orwellian tactic by the Bushies:

FEMA has truly learned the lessons of Katrina. Even its handling of the media has improved dramatically. For example, as the California wildfires raged Tuesday, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy administrator, had a 1 p.m. news briefing.

Reporters were given only 15 minutes' notice of the briefing, making it unlikely many could show up at FEMA's Southwest D.C. offices.

They were given an 800 number to call in, though it was a "listen only" line, the notice said -- no questions. Parts of the briefing were carried live on Fox News (see the Fox News video of the news conference carried on the Think Progress Web site), MSNBC and other outlets.

Johnson stood behind a lectern and began with an overview before saying he would take a few questions. The first questions were about the "commodities" being shipped to Southern California and how officials are dealing with people who refuse to evacuate. He responded eloquently.

He was apparently quite familiar with the reporters -- in one case, he appears to say "Mike" and points to a reporter -- and was asked an oddly in-house question about "what it means to have an emergency declaration as opposed to a major disaster declaration" signed by the president. He once again explained smoothly.

FEMA press secretary Aaron Walker interrupted at one point to caution he'd allow just "two more questions." Later, he called for a "last question."

"Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?" a reporter asked. Another asked about "lessons learned from Katrina."

"I'm very happy with FEMA's response so far," Johnson said, hailing "a very smoothly, very efficiently performing team."

"And so I think what you're really seeing here is the benefit of experience, the benefit of good leadership and the benefit of good partnership," Johnson said, "none of which were present in Katrina." (Wasn't Michael Chertoff DHS chief then?) Very smooth, very professional. But something didn't seem right. The reporters were lobbing too many softballs. No one asked about trailers with formaldehyde for those made homeless by the fires. And the media seemed to be giving Johnson all day to wax on and on about FEMA's greatness.

Of course, that could be because the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters. We're told the questions were asked by Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of external affairs, and by "Mike" Widomski, the deputy director of public affairs. Director of External Affairs John "Pat" Philbin asked a question, and another came, we understand, from someone who sounds like press aide Ali Kirin.

Rudy's Revisionist Resume

Crook’s and liars has the MSNBC video

He just makes the shit up…..it's time he gets called on it!!!

It has changed the world

The YouTube generation will have an impact …….check it out

FEMA to the Rescue

The good news is FEMA showed up in California. The bad news is they came to fix the levees.

Will Durst

Bush Administration- More Orwellian Behavior

White House Slashed CDC Warming Report

The White House significantly edited testimony prepared for a Senate hearing on the impact of climate change on health, deleting key portions citing diseases that could flourish in a warmer climate, documents obtained by The Associated Press showed Wednesday.

The White House on Wednesday denied that it had "watered down" the congressional testimony that Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had given the day before to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

When will it end???

***Update: Science Progress has the original uncut statement

2.4 Frickin' Trillion Dollars

Iraq, Afghan wars could cost 2.4 Trillion by 2017 – report

The total cost, including debt servicing, of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could reach 2.4 trln usd by 2017, a report by the Congressional Budget Office found. The report, by the body which provides non-partisan budget analysis for Congress, said higher estimates for total spending for the wars could top out at 1.7 trln usd by 2017.

What on earth are we doing there…………..Paulie W told us this would be so cheap and easy.

Bush Admin too busy screwing up Iraq to take care of things at home

Gov't Auditors Warned Bush Administration About Poor Firefighting Plans

The Government Accountability Office, Congress's nonpartisan auditor, issued stark warnings earlier this year on shortcomings in the administration's plans to fight fires.

In a June report, the GAO report faulted the U.S. Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, and other agencies for failing to accomplish the "fundamental step" of planning out what assets and resources were needed to prepare for approaching fire seasons. Meanwhile, disaster response problems that have become all too familiar in recent years were also identified: administration officials placing resources where they were politically expedient, and using poorly performing contractors to accomplish critical national tasks.

The Orange County Register today appeared to show how these warnings manifested. The paper faulted federal planners for erecting red tape that prevented the use of more DC-10 airplanes to drop flame retardant on areas that were on fire.

"It would be nice to have more such planes available, don't you think?" an editorial in the paper asked. "If the federal government had had its way, even this one almost certainly wouldn't be flying this week....One can understand a certain amount of caution from the Forest Service, but this is bureaucratic overkill."

 

Bush ordered Torture himself

 US uses 'methods of the most tyrannical regimes'

More than 100,000 pages of newly released government documents demonstrate how US military interrogators "abused, tortured or killed" scores of prisoners rounded up since Sept. 11, 2001, including some who were not even suspected of having terrorist ties, according to a just-published book.

In Administration of Torture, two American Civil Liberties Union attorneys detail the findings of a years-long investigation and court battle with the administration that resulted in the release of massive amounts of data on prisoner treatment and the deaths of US-held prisoners.

"[T]he documents show unambiguously that the administration has adopted some of the methods of the most tyrannical regimes. Documents from Guantanamo describe prisoners shackled in excruciating 'stress positions,' held in freezing-cold cells, forcibly stripped, hooded, terrorized with military dogs, and deprived of human contact for months."

Most of the documents on which Administration of Torture is based were obtained as a result of ongoing legal fights over a Freedom of Information Act request filed in October 2003 by the ACLU and other human rights and anti-war groups, the ACLU said in a news release.

President Bush gave "marching orders" to Gen. Michael Dunlavey, who asked the Pentagon to approve harsher interrogation methods at Guantanamo, the general claims in documents reported in the book.

 

Tutu gets it right - refuses invite unless St Thomas reinstates Toffolo

The archbishop refuses to come to campus unless professor's demotion is reversed.    

 

Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu says he will not accept an invitation to speak at the University of St. Thomas unless a demoted professor is reinstated as director of the university's peace and justice studies program.

"I will make an acceptance on my part dependent on your reinstatement and the clearing of your file," the Anglican archbishop wrote to Cris Toffolo, who was dismissed from her position on Aug. 1 following a dispute over whether Tutu should be invited to speak at the St. Paul campus.

The Rev. Dennis Dease, the university president, reversed himself two weeks ago, apologizing for barring Tutu, and issued an invitation to Tutu to speak at a campus forum.

Doug Hennes, a university spokesman, said Tutu informed Dease on Monday of his position.

"Archbishop Tutu sent an e-mail to father [Dease] thanking him for his letter in which he said he made the wrong decision and he praised him for being willing to take that position," said Hennes. "And he also said he would be happy to visit the campus, but on the condition that Prof. Toffolo be reinstated and any negative remarks about the incident be removed from her academic file."

 

I wrote earlier that Tutu should decline this invitation; however he is using his visit as leverage to right the wrong done to Prof. Toffolo, wise man!

More biting tongue - getting painful

Companies Seeking Immunity Donate to Senator

Executives at the two biggest phone companies contributed more than $42,000 in political donations to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV this year while seeking his support for legal immunity for businesses participating in National Security Agency eavesdropping.

The surge in contributions came from a Who’s Who of executives at the companies, AT&T and Verizon, starting with the chief executives and including at least 50 executives and lawyers at the two utilities, according to campaign finance reports.

The money came primarily from a fund-raiser that Verizon held for Mr. Rockefeller in March in New York and another that AT&T sponsored for him in May in San Antonio.

Mr. Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, emerged last week as the most important supporter of immunity in devising a compromise plan with Senate Republicans and the Bush administration.

This Administration is so Orwellian it just boggles the mind

NASA refuses to disclose air safety survey

Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized.

NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly.

Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers……….

The AP sought to obtain the survey data over 14 months under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

"Release of the requested data, which are sensitive and safety-related, could materially affect the public confidence in, and the commercial welfare of, the air carriers and general aviation companies whose pilots participated in the survey," Luedtke wrote in a final denial letter to the AP

How can we believe anything that this Administration says on any topic….they lied about the cost of plan D, about WMD in Iraq, staying the course, the cost of the war, domestic spying, the Katrina Levees, running a deficit, mercury poisoning, about Race and Health Care……..and so on and so forth