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SATURDAY
2.21.04 / 10:45
/ LINK
Bush at 48% - It's beginning to look a
lot like Christmas
Here
the latest Fox poll which, as TPM
points out, they curiously omit from their website, being "fair
and balanced" as they are.
It may be beginning to look a lot like Christmas, but somebody
could still pull another convenient war out of his bag.
TOP
2.21.04
/ 10:45 / LINK
Republican shill rides again
As if he hasn't done
enough damage to the environment with his last presidential run,
it looks like Ralph Nadir (sic) is running again.
Josh Marshall (see sidebar left: Talking Points Memo) has a few
remarks about this long, tall shill for anti-democratic Republicans
everywhere.
If anybody supports this guy they should consider themselves
a neoconservative dupe.
TOP
2.21.04
/ 10:00 / LINK
There's the Tango, the Foxtrot, and the
Sidestep; it's all just one wierd dance
In a bid to sidestep
political sentiment same sex couples are applying for, and being
issued marriage licenses in, not only San Francisco, but in other
locales as well.
But gay-marriage opponents are on
the move too. "In New Mexico ...Attorney General Patricia
A. Madrid moved swiftly to shut down an effort in a county near
Albuquerque to follow San Francisco's lead. Ms. Madrid said through
a spokeswoman that same-sex marriage licenses issued Friday in
Sandoval County violated state law."
Attorney General Madrid hopped into her conservative SUV to cut
'em off at the pass because "... the Sandoval County clerk,
Victoria Dunlap, said she ... began issuing the licenses because
a same-sex couple requested one last week. After conferring with
the county attorney, Ms. Dunlap said, it was determined that
she had no grounds to deny the couple a license. By midday Friday,
she had processed 35 applications from same-sex couples with
dozens of others waiting in line."
Meanwhile Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Terminator, jumped
in to terminate the San Francisco (same-sex) fire saying that
"San Francisco's actions are directly contrary to state
law and present an imminent risk to civil order."
Arnold's view seems to be that the state might collapse into
a giant same-sex grope similar to the heterosexual one he perpetrated
himself. How selfish of him. How come he gets to have all the
fun?
Why is this happening all of a sudden? Jesse H. Choper, professor
of constitutional law at the University of California, Berkeley
said, "The plain effort by the gay rights movement is to
have the law take the initiative, to replace the political sentiment."
It's kind of a preemptive strike you might say. And according
to the Bush Policy, this is a perfectly reasonable option in
the face of threatening moves by an enemy. Moves such as a constitutional
ammendment attack.
Mr. Choper called the strategy
a bid to sidestep political and public opinion, which remains
largely opposed to same-sex marriages.
The Times article references
a poll showing that 44% of all Californians favor allowing gay
and lesbian couple to marry, while 58% in the San Francisco bay
area do. But the interesting thing about that is, 44% is not
a shabby number considering what it probably was just 10 years
ago.
Things change. Sometimes for the better.
Related: Here
and here and
here.
TOP
2.21.04 / 9:15 / LINK
Jose Padilla 'R us
I've thought for a long
time that lack of imagination is more debilitating than lack
of intelligence. You may be able to think on your feet, be clever
with numbers, or awesome at constructing intricate houses of
cards, but if you lack imagination you can be very dangerous
to yourself and those around you. A nation populated by citizens
who lack imagination will eventually flatten itself against the
wall they just couldn't envision.
The particular wall I'm thinking about is the one that could
pen in any citizen indefinitely without recourse to justice if
the president and John Ashcroft have their way with alleged terrorist
Jose Padilla. If the government can lock up Mr. Padilla incommunicado,
they can lock up anybody.
Where the lack of imagination comes in is that most American's
seem to be unable to imagine that an executive action applied
to Jose Padilla can just as well be applied to them. This is
exactly why we have a constitution.
In light of the Republican president's radical take on the idea
of liberty and justice under the law, "The Supreme Court
agreed on Friday to consider whether President Bush had the authority
to detain indefinitely an American who was seized on American
soil by declaring him an enemy combatant."
As the NY
Times story goes on, "The justices said they would agree
to the request to review a ruling in December by a federal appeals
court in New York that Mr. Bush had overstepped his constitutional
bounds in detaining the man, Jose Padilla, and denying him access
to a court or any review outside the executive branch."
In the fifties and sixties conservatives used to excoriate Soviet
communism for what this Republican adminstration is doing now
in the name of patriotism.
Maybe George Bush is just president of the wrong country. As
he said more than once, things would be so much easier if this
were a dictatorship ...and he was the dictator. Maybe
he hasn't given up on the idea.
TOP
2.21.04 / 9:07 / LINK
More oozing mendacity
Here's one more instance
of the mendacity that oozes from the Bush administration in a
steady stream. No matter how you cut it, this White House does
not believe in open government. Though they spout patriotic lines,
this administration is, in deed, anti-democratic.
As this
article in today's NY Times reports, "The Central Intelligence
Agency has acknowledged that it did not provide the United Nations
with information about 21 of the 105 sites in Iraq singled out
by American intelligence before the war as the most highly suspected
of housing illicit weapons."
"The contradiction is significant because Congressional
opponents of the war were arguing a year ago that the United
Nations inspectors should be given more time to complete their
search before the United States and its allies began the invasion.
The White House, bolstered by Mr. Tenet, insisted that it was
fully cooperating with the inspectors, and at daily briefings
the White House issued assurances that the administration was
providing the inspectors with the best information possible."
So here we go again, the two Georges (Bush and Tenet) bamboozling
the Head Count (us) as they point their fingers at each other
in their colossal charade.
These guys don't even try to be subtle.
TOP
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DICTATOR IN
WAITING?
"You don't get
everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier."
Describing what it's like to be governor of Texas.(Governing
Magazine 7/98)
-- From Paul
Begala's "Is Our Children Learning?"
"I told all four that there
are going to be some times where we don't agree with each other,
but that's OK. If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck
of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator," Bush
joked.
-- CNN.com,
December 18, 2000
"A dictatorship would be
a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it, "
[Bush] said.
-- Business
Week, July 30, 2001 |
