Of Patriotism and Blind Loyalty

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it". -Mark Twain

There have always been patriots who have stood up against those who who'd use power in office to take advantage of the American people and scare them into a false sense of what being a patriot really is. Fortunately, there have always been people who would stand against this type of abuse of power, people with enough courage to say to the power-hungry fear-enabler, that they're full of shit.

Edward R. Murrow is an example of what it means to be a patriot. You see, back in the 1950's, Republican Junior Senator Joseph McCarthy found his way to political power by making false accusations of people and their ties to the big scare of yesteryear, Communism. Whenever some jumped on McCarthy's bullshit, he would fire back with another accusation of having connections or ties to Communist influences. When McCarthy's witch hunts reached to the point of American citizens fearing their neighbors, friends, even their own family members of having ties with Communists, Murrow and his team at See It Now on CBS had the courage and the strength to expose the bully-boy tactics of McCarty. His most memorable quote was his scathing attack against the Junior Senator and asking all Americans who disagree with McCarty's tactics, to not keep silent.

His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men

Unfortunately, during that time, you also had enablers, people who allowed McCarthy to carry on with his reckless assaults on others.

During the 1952 Presidential election, the Eisenhower campaign toured Wisconsin with McCarthy. In a speech delivered in Green Bay, Eisenhower declared that while he agreed with McCarthy's goals, he disagreed with his methods. In draft versions of his speech, Eisenhower had also included a strong defense of his mentor George Marshall, a direct rebuke of McCarthy's frequent attacks. However, under the advice of conservative colleagues who were fearful that Eisenhower could lose Wisconsin if he alienated McCarthy supporters, he cut these parts from later versions of his speech.[33][34] The deletion was discovered by a reporter for the New York Times and featured on their front page the next day. Eisenhower was widely criticized for giving up his personal convictions, and the incident became the low point of his campaign.[35]

With his victory in the 1952 presidential race, Dwight Eisenhower became the first Republican president in 20 years. The Republican party also held a majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate. After being elected president, Eisenhower made it clear to those close to him that he did not approve of McCarthy and he worked actively to squelch his power and influence. But he never directly confronted McCarthy or criticized him by name in any speech, thus perhaps prolonging McCarthy's power by showing that even the President was afraid to criticize him directly.

Unfortunately, the Republicans played only a third of the part. The Catholic community, even the Kennedys themselves helped support McCarthy.

One of the strongest bases of anti-Communist sentiment in the United States was the Catholic community, which composed over 20% of the national vote. Although the great majority of Catholics were Democrats, as McCarthy's fame as a leading anti-Communist grew he became popular in Catholic communities across the country, with strong support from many leading Catholics, diocesan newspapers and Catholic journals.[27] At the same time, some Catholics opposed McCarthy, notably the anti-Communist author Father John Francis Cronin and the influential journal Commonweal.[28]

McCarthy established a bond with the powerful Kennedy family, which had high visibility among Catholics. McCarthy became a close friend of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., himself a fervent anti-Communist, and was a frequent guest at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport. He dated two of Kennedy's daughters, Patricia and Eunice,[29][30] and was godfather to Robert F. Kennedy's first child, Kathleen Kennedy. Joseph Kennedy had a national network of contacts and became a vocal supporter, building McCarthy's popularity among Catholics and making sizable contributions to McCarthy's campaigns.[31]

Unlike many Democrats, John F. Kennedy, who served in the Senate with McCarthy from 1953 until the latter's death in 1957, never attacked McCarthy. Asked once by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. why he avoided criticism of McCarthy, Kennedy said, "Hell, half my voters in Massachusetts look on McCarthy as a hero."[32]

Today's power-hungry fearmongers are the same person as McCarthy was 55 years ago. Take Rudy Guiliani's comments on how Democrats would bring about another 9/11 if he or the GOP isn't elected as President as an example.

Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.

But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped. “If any Republican is elected president —- and I think obviously I would be the best at this —- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said.

The former New York City mayor, currently leading in all national polls for the Republican nomination for president, said Tuesday night that America would ultimately defeat terrorism no matter which party gains the White House.

“But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have?” Giuliani said. “If we are on defense [with a Democratic president], we will have more losses and it will go on longer.”

“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.”

He added: “The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.” After his speech to the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner, I asked him about his statements and Giuliani said flatly: “America will be safer with a Republican president.”

Like last time there is a patriot who stands up against the politics of fear: Keith Olberamann.

Insisting that the election of any Democrat would mean the country was "back… on defense," Mr. Giuliani continued:
"But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have. If we are on defense, we will have more losses and it will go on longer."

He said this with no sense of irony, no sense of any personal shortcomings, no sense whatsoever.

And if you somehow missed what he was really saying, somehow didn't hear the none-too-subtle subtext of 'vote Democratic and die,' Mr. Giuliani then stripped away any barrier of courtesy, telling Roger Simon of Politico.Com, quote…

"America will be safer with a Republican president."

At least that Republican President under which we have not been safer… has, even at his worst, maintained some microscopic distance between himself, and a campaign platform that blithely threatened the American people with "casualties" if they, next year, elect a Democratic president - or, inferring from Mr. Giuliani's flights of grandeur in New Hampshire - even if they elect a different Republican.

How dare you, sir?


"How many casualties will we have?" - this is the language of Bin Laden.

Yours, Mr. Giuliani, is the same chilling nonchalance of the madman, of the proselytizer who has moved even from some crude framework of politics and society, into a virtual Roman Colosseum of carnage, and a conceit over your own ability — and worthiness — to decide, who lives and who dies.

And like last time, there are the enablers, people who neither have the courage, nor the backbone, to stand up and speak truth to power..........this time, they're Bush apologists, the last of a shrinking minority that still are lock-step behind this man's destructive policies, and the scaremongering from other candidates.

Democrats can complain all they want about the "politics of fear," and blah-blah-blah, but Democrats (and liberal pundits) have made a habit of accusing President Bush of making us less safe. Hillary's response to Rudy's comments also give the same implication, and Obama's response is equally pathetic. Now, what's interesting about their responses is that both of them apparently don't have the courage to appear at a debate put on by FOX News, yet they take offense to criticisms of their abilities to handle the threat of terrorism. Well, like it or not, if they can't handle FOX, they can't handle terrorists.

So, the Democrats need to stop whining and playing the victim, and start addresses the facts of the criticism. The reason why they don't is because they can't. Remember what John Kerry said during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention? "Any attack will be met with a swift response." Well, that may sound good in liberal circles, but I believe in the conservative strategy of getting the terrorists before they attack us.To put it differently, Republicans believe in going on the offense, and Democrats believe in playing defense.

Cheers to Rudy for telling it like it is.

Even though this nation has had it's fair share of scaremongers and enablers, we should always remember that we have always had patriots, people with courage to speak the truth, have always guided us from dark places in our history, back into the light.

And the next time some Bush apologist calls you unpatriotic for not following Bush's leadership over a fucking cliff, tell them this: who is more unpatriotic - the man who speaks truth to power, or the man who enables the president to keep ruling like a king, doing nothing?

The perks of pissing off Bush apologists

Who knew pissing off Bush apologists would pay off like this?

To Jonathan...

Who commented:

Be careful how you vote.

Cause you'll never know when your country will wind up with an incompetent and an intellectually-challenged president like Dubaya.


Well, Jonathan--I must forgive you for your shallow thinking. I mean, as a 16 year old and a probable victim of indoctrination by liberal teachers, your life's experience has not allowed you to see reality.

So for yours, and for the edification of your fellow shallow thinkers, many well into their forties, I bring you the following, courtesy of EJECT! EJECT! EJECT!

Somewhere in Texas, a Village is missing its Idiot. I chose this one first since it's the only one that has a particle of real wit. But the Bush is an idiot meme is very tired, and the most cursory look causes it to fall apart like -- how can I make them understand? -- like a lemon almond biscotti left too long in a grande' caffe verona.

For starters, you can of course point to the fact that the man did graduate from both Harvard and Yale, but that was with a C average, and clearly, the idea of being merely in the middle of the pack of those getting advanced degrees from America's two preeminent universities cuts you no slack from those community-college theater major drop-outs who love to level the charge.

So let's leave that aside for a moment – Poppy's connections and all that – and take a moment to look at this, if you will:



This is a Convair F-102 Delta Dagger. It is a second-generation, supersonic fighter-interceptor. It cruises at 845 mph.

There were some minor aerodynamic problems with the F-102. For example, at certain power settings and angles of attack – like, say, take-off -- the jet compressor would stall and the aircraft would roll inverted. It is no picnic, skill-wise, to fly a modern F-16 with advanced avionics and fly-by-wire flight control systems. The workload on the F-102 was far higher. The F-16 has an accident rate of 4.14 occurrences per 100,000 flight hours. The F-102's accident rate was more than three times that: 13.69 per 100,000 hours. 875 F-102A interceptors were built; 259 – almost 30% - were lost to accidents or enemy action while serving in Vietnam.

George W. Bush flew hundreds of hours in the F-102.

Now look at this:



This is the cockpit of the F-102 Delta Dagger's successor, the F-106 Delta Dart (I could not find an F-102 panel, but they would have been very similar)

Now, picture yourself in this chair, at 40,000 feet, traveling at one and a half times the speed of sound. Now imagine that someone has painted the windows white – you are flying on instruments. Now imagine that not only do you have to be able to fly blind, by referencing these instruments, but that you also have to stare into that orange jack-o-lantern of a radar, and interpret a squiggle that will lead you to your target. Now imagine that in addition to not hitting the ground, or your wingman, and watching the squiggle, you also have to turn those switches on the right side panel to activate weapons systems, to overcome enemy countermeasures…without looking outside, as you hurtle through air at -40 degrees F, air so thin that should you lose pressure, you have about 4-6 seconds of consciousness before you black out and die.

I maintain that the instant George W. Bush closed that canopy and took off on the first of his many solo hours in an F-102, it is quite impossible that he was either an idiot or a coward.

Here is a random question from the instrument rating exam I had to pass a few years ago.

Refer to figure 91:



What should be the approximate elapsed time from the BOSEMAN (BZN) VOR to the DUBOIS (DBS) VORTAC if the wind is 24 knots from 260 degrees and your intended True Air Speed is 185 knots? (The magnetic variation is 17deg. E)

A. 33 minutes
B. 37 minutes
C. 39 minutes

(It's C., obviously)

If he had been a civilian rather than military pilot, Dubya would have had to have passed 60 questions like this with at least 70% correct. Questions on weather, radio communications, mechanical systems, aerodynamics, pilot physiology, airspace, navigation and a hundred other things. But, since he was military, he also had to know how to operate that primitive in-flight radar, plus weapons systems, rules of engagement, electronic warfare, hydraulics, fuel systems…it goes on and on.

People like Michael Moore and Bill Maher and Keith Olberman would not be able to figure out how to close the canopy on an F-102. These people would be weeping with fear when those afterburners light up and you barrel down that runway hoping that engine doesn't flame out and roll you inverted into the asphalt, or when you're rocketing through the soup at 300mph watching two little needles chase each other, praying the next thing you see out the window is a runway and not a mountain goat.

George W. Bush is not stupid. It's not possible to be a moron and fly a supersonic jet fighter, and everyone knows it.

To which I responded:

Leo, I really can't understand why in God's name you'd still support this man.

This is a man who's idea of restoring honor and integrity to the White House is by surrounding himself with yes-men who kiss his ass at every turn, instead of hiring qualified people to positions of power and importance.

This is a man who took our nation to war with the wrong country and now refuses to come to the inconvenient truth that he f***ked up and it's time to leave and let the Iraqis figure out what they're going to do with their country.

This is a man who equates protecting our freedoms with wiretapping our phones.

This is a man who equates bi-partisanship with having a rubber-stamp Congress carry out the wishes of the executive branch.

If that's what makes me a liberal, then i'll wear the badge with honor.

Not a bad birthday present, no?

Shameless

When the Virgina Tech shooting happened, I, like many Americans, were shocked and stunned that this is happening again. I was hoping that we could come together and grieve with the students, professors, administrators, and family members about the lost souls who were killed unnecessarily in the worst campus shooting in American history, and put aside the debate over who knew what, what should have happened, what didn't happened, etc.

I was wrong. Again.

Even in the face of an unspeakable tragedy like the VA Tech massacre, right-wingers somehow found a way to make the massacre look like it was the victim's fault; that instead of fighting back, they ran for their lives, even jumping out of classroom windows to get away from the madman who was unloading on the students. It's the kind of attack that only a self-serving, heartless and spineless coward could ever say or make.

Nathaniel Blake and John Derbyshire are the two cowards who could stoop to such a low.

The first pair of remarks were from Blake, a blogger at Human Events.com:

College classrooms have scads of young men who are at their physical peak, and none of them seems to have done anything beyond ducking, running, and holding doors shut. Meanwhile, an old man hurled his body at the shooter to save others.

Something is clearly wrong with the men in our culture. Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys and protecting others: in a word, courage. And not a one of the healthy young fellows in the classrooms seems to have done that.

When Kip Kinkle opened fire in Thurston High School a few years back, he was taken down by students, led by one who was already wounded. Why didn’t that happen here?

Like Derb, I don’t know if I would live up to this myself, but I know that I should be heartily ashamed of myself if I didn’t. Am I noble, courageous and self-sacrificing? I don’t know; but I should hope to be so when necessary.

Are you out of your fucking mind, Blake? Really? You have no right, and absolutely no right whatsoever to judge what the students should have and should not have done during the mayhem that took place. What the students did was basic human nature; any one of us would have ran for their lives to avoid being shot at. This isn't some kind of Rambo/Die Hard action movie where the bad guy is stopped and the hero gets to walk away bloodied up and scarred, jackass. But since you feel you're such a tough guy, why don't you sign up to fight in Iraq, chickenhawk? Let's see if you have the stones to wake up one morning and praying that you or your men aren't the casualties of a roadside bomb or an IED.

John Derbyshire over at National Review Online, however, had the most disgraceful posting about the aftermath of the campus shooting:

As NRO's designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake—one of them reportedly a .22.

At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren't very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can't hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damage—your chances aren't bad.

Yes, yes, I know it's easy to say these things: but didn't the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything? As the cliche goes—and like most cliches. It's true—none of us knows what he'd do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I'd at least take a run at the guy.

You're right about one thing, John. This isn't like Rambo. THE STUDENTS YOU MOCKED WERE ACTUALLY KILLED IN COLD BLOOD.

Of course, there were other right-wingers who are just as guilty of politicizing the VA Tech shooting. Debbie Schlussel concluded that the VA Tech shooter might be part of a terrorist attack, our good friend Ralph exploits the tragedy by blaming liberals for exploiting the VA massacre themselves, and the trolls over at News Hounds use two threads to shrill for the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution.

Earlier I said I was wrong again because this isn't the first time rank-and-file conservative talking heads have exploited a tragedy to further their own agendas.

Ann Coulter smeared the Jesery Girls - the nine wives who lost their husbands on 9/11 - to sell another one of her pointless books.

Even before the body count was full in New Orleans, Sean Hannity tried to politicize the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

And let's not forget how this Bush Administration used the fears the American people to sell us a bullshit war based on false information and lies.

There's only one word to really describe the actions of the frauds who use tragedy to further their own agenda: Shameless.

A Good Year: The 10 best movies of 2006

1.) Babel - An amazing achivement that stood out more than any other movie this year. Director/producer Alejandro Gonzales-Inarritu weaves perfectly four stories on three continents, in six languages(including sign language), to show us an inconvenient truth about our civilization - admit the growing leaps and bounds of communication, we are still at a failure to listen to our fellow human beings because of barriers ranging from cultural to racial to emotional. Now that terrorism has re-entered into the mix and has become a global concern after 9/11, it is more important than ever to listen.

2.) United 93 - Quite simply filmmaking's finest hour. Paul Greengrass honors the sacrifice of the 37 passengers aboard United Flight 93 by taking out the blame and the uber-glorification and filming the morning of the 9/11 attacks, the decisions made by the air traffic controllers in New York, the confusion and unpredictability of the military, and the harrowing 90 minutes on-board flight 93 and their decision to fight back, in real time - basically, we only know what the military, the air traffic controllers, and the passengers knew. There's no pointing fingers. No brand of Hollywood bullshit. Yes, it gut-wrenching. And yes, it's a tough pill to swallow. But it's a film that will shake and move you.

3.)Little Miss Sunshine - On the surface, this bittersweet & dark indie comedy looks like any other familiar family dramedy: a completely dysfunctional family heads out onto the open road, bound to run into obstacles ranging from the tragic to the slapstick, but barley hanging on out of love for their youngest sibling. That family is the Hoovers, that road trip is to California, the obstacles are a broken transmission on the yellow VW bus, having them to push the damn vehicle every time they stop, the tragedy is the death of a family member, and the sibling holding them together is Olive, played with great heart from 9 year-old Abigail Breslin. It would all be so formulaic if it weren't for the brilliantly funny and moving screenplay from Michael Arndt that deals with America's obsession of winning & beauty pageants.

4. Dreamgirls - My only bitch with an otherwise dazzling love letter to Detroit's Motown scene and a lost era of American music, is that Beyonce's part as Deena, the lead singer of the Dreamgirls........how should I put this.......falls flat. But when you're enjoying most entertaining musical since Chicago, you tend to forget the little things. And especially when you have some unforgettable musical numbers, great performances by Jamie Foxx as Curtis, the hustling car-salesman-tuned manager of the Dreamgirls, selling out the soul of Motown and the identity to make it on the pop charts and lay at white clubs and Eddie Murphy in his best performance as Jimmy "Thunder" Early, a womanizing soul singer who gets sucked in with the Dreams and watches as his success becomes a nightmare of drug use and soul-less pop shit, and American Idol reject Jennifer Hudson stealing the show and breaking your heart as Effie, one of members of the Dreams. She damn-near brings down the multiplex with "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going". I challenge anyone not to watch that scene and A.) not be in awe of Hudson's singing and B.) not applaud her solo in the theater.

5. Happy Feet - Or how Warner Bros.'s animated spectacle of Mumble, the only penguin from Emperor Land who doesn't have a Heart Song, is banished from his own home, meets up with Latino penguins(don't ask) & a so-called 'guru' penguin, and saves his kind from starvation by appealing to the humans' better nature through his tap dancing, makes Pixar's "Cars" look like a fucking joke. Not only is this the best animated movie of the year(thanks to great comedic work from Robin Williams and beautiful and breathtaking detail of Antarctica), it's a cartoon that has something to say.

6. The Departed - Martin Scorsese's filmmaking is like fine wine: it ages over the years and it still tastes so fucking good. His latest crime drama shows him at the top of his form with his Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon at their best as State Policemen for the city of Boston, one who's acting as a rat for the police to bring notorious mobster Frank Costello down, the other, the other acting as Costello's spy. Both are in too deep trying to complete their own motives. Jack Nickelson is electrifying as Costello, the ruthless thug escaping the police and trying to silence one of his boy's who's acting as a rat for the police. But at the heart or Scorsese's picture is a tale of betrayal, how corruption eats takes hold a person and eats at that person's soul overtime, and the people caught in the middle who are so in deep that they can't tell up from down.

7. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - Sure, the screenplay is unpredictable and silly. But when you have Johnny Depp stealing the show, once again, as Capt. Jack Sparrow on another misadventure, this time trying to save his skin from having to repay a blood debt to Davy Jones by finding the Dead Man's Chest, kick-ass action sequences, great visuals, Keria Knightley and Orlando Blood reviving their roles as Mr. and Mrs. Eye Candy, and mostly having the best time at the movies this year, what's there to bitch about?

8. Apocalypto - Say what you will about Mel Gibson, but he knows how to make a breathtaking epic. And he does so here, with his story on the final days of the Mayan Empire, and one man's struggle to save his family after his village was destroyed by the Mayans. Gibson's drama not only includes the most exciting and heart-pounding chase sequence this year, it also parallels how we abuse and destroy our environment and send kids to Iraq as collateral damage as a means to end terrorism.

9. Borat - To say that Sasha Baron Coens' role as a journalist from Kazakhstan is a work of comic brilliance, isn't doing the performance justice. Coens' character is a masterwork that will join the ranks of Cartman, Andy Kauvman, Dr. Strangelove, Austin Powers and others as some of the great comic works of out time. Borat is both a drop-dead, gut-bursting, laugh-till-it-hurts comedy/mockumentary and a sad, scary look into the heart of ignorant, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, foreign-hatin' , gun-lovin', Red state America.

10. An Inconvenient Truth - The documentary that can scare the living hell out of you, and still carry a PG rating. This a wake-up call to everyone, regardless of political identity, to start taking care of our planet before it literally goes under. Al Gore and filmmanker Davis Guggenheim offers up insight on global warming, the consequences of having out heads firmly up our asses and ignoring the signs, some nice humerous moment to liven up the scary, and give hope with tips to counter global warming.

Partisanship at its worst

If you're wondering how high this Bush Administration has set the bar on partisanship, take a look at former top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Monica Goodling. See, Monica was a student at Regent University. When she was a student then, education took a backseat to religion.

The Regent Law School, located in Virginia Beach, VA, was founded in 1986, after Oral Roberts University's law school closed and donated its library to Regent University.[1] The law school was accredited by the ABA in 1989 and had an enrollment of 489 students in 2006.[2] Currently, the school offers a J.D. degree, which is typically completed in three years of full-time study or four years of part-time study.[3] 61% of Regent students pass the bar on their first attempt; the Virginia state average is 74%.[4]

In the Fall 2006 entering class, 333 of 630 applicants were offered admission.[2] Of 333 students accepted, 161 matriculated.[2] In the entering class, the median Law School Admission Test (LSAT) score was 153 and the median undergraduate grade-point average was 3.30.[2]

Regent Law was ranked in Tier 4 by U.S. News, the lowest ranking and essentially a tie for 136th place out of 170 schools surveyed.[5] The Princeton Review ranked the school fourth in the country for quality of life, based on "student assessment of: whether there is a strong sense of community at the school, how aesthetically pleasing the law school is, the location of the law school, the quality of the social life, classroom facilities, and the library staff."[6]

Those numbers, however, didn't stop the Bush Administration from taking in over 150 Regent graduates to federal government positions as exampled from the report from the Boston Globe:

In a recent Regent law school newsletter, a 2004 graduate described being interviewed for a job as a trial attorney at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in October 2003. Asked to name the Supreme Court decision from the past 20 years with which he most disagreed, he cited Lawrence v. Texas, the ruling striking down a law against sodomy because it violated gay people's civil rights.

"When one of the interviewers agreed and said that decision in Lawrence was 'maddening,' I knew I correctly answered the question," wrote the Regent graduate . The administration hired him for the Civil Rights Division's housing section -- the only employment offer he received after graduation, he said.

That same report also reported this frighting statistic:

The changes resulted in a sometimes dramatic alteration to the profile of new hires beginning in 2003, as the Globe reported last year after obtaining resumes from 2001-2006 to three sections in the civil rights division. Conservative credentials rose, while prior experience in civil rights law and the average ranking of the law school attended by the applicant dropped.

To cap it off, all 150 graduates of Regent University who are in positions of power in the Bush Administration have one person to thank to this: the founder of the Christian Law School, televangelist Pat Robertson.

Yes, Pat Robertson.

The same guy who stated that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez should be assassinated.
The same guy who used his non profit organization Operation Blessing to make diamond and gold deals with African dictators Mobuto Sese Seko and Charles Taylor.

That is how high the Bush Administration has raised the bar on partisanship.

American Idol: the new three-ringed freakshow

It's official: American Idol has become nothing but a pathetic freakshow. I say this not as a fan, but as an observer of the downward spiral AI is heading in. Well, I probably shouldn't have said that AI wasn't anything but a pathetic freakshow, it was always a mess to begin with. If it wasn't the screwball contestants, it was the money-shot feud between Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul. If it wasn't that, then it was the water cooler discussions ranging from, 'is Paula Abdul out of her fucking mind?' to , 'is Paula Abdul a pill-popper?' to 'did Paula Abdul pull a Bill Clinton?', and if it wasn't that, then it was the marginally to no-talented hacks America falls in love with and votes for almost every year(excluding Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson).

This year, AI has completely gone to the dogs.

First it was the Antonella nude photos. The latest scandal is that Season 2 finalist Olivia Mojica made a sex tape with her former boyfriend. But what makes this year's AI such a mess is that America's voting for the WORST possible candidate for winning the whole enchilada: Sanjaya Malakar. My God, i've listened to some shitty singers before, but how this man is even in the running to be the next AI is un-fucking-believable. With all the incompetence, the drama and the sex scandals this year on Idol, i'm not sure whether i'm watching a re-run of the Monica-gate scandal or witnessing the latest Bush fuck-up from one of his incompetent cronies!

All I can say is this: Please America, use some common sense and quit voting for Malakar; this is how we elected George Bush as President!

Are Bush backers really this ignorant and stupid?

It is utterly amazing how divorced from reality Bush supporters are. From his job approval, to his handling of the Iraqi War, that small minority of Americans are still by his side, even though 2/3rds of Americans clearly see just how incompetent and untrustworthy the Bush administration have, and continue to be. Case in point: conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh talking to Dick Cheney:

RUSH: It may not just be Iraq. Yesterday I read that Ike Skelton, who chairs -- I forget the name of the committee -- in the next defense appropriations bill for fiscal '08, is going to actually remove the phrase "global war on terror," because they don't think it's applicable. They want to refer to conflicts as individual skirmishes, but they're going to try to rid the defense appropriation bill, and thus official government language, of that term. Does that give any indication of their motivation, or what they think of the current plight in which the country finds itself?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Sure. Well, it's just flawed thinking. I like Ike Skelton. I worked closely with Ike when I was secretary of defense. He's chairman of the Armed Services Committee now. Ike's a good man. He's just dead wrong about this, though. Think about it. Just to give you one example, Rush. Remember Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, an Al-Qaeda affiliate. He ran a training camp in Afghanistan for Al-Qaeda, then migrated after we went into Afghanistan and shut 'em down there, he went to Baghdad. He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the Al-Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then of course led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. He's the guy who arranged the booming of the Samarra mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence between Shi'a and Sunni. This is Al-Qaeda operating in Iraq, and as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq. There's no way you can segment out and say, "Well, we'll fight the war on terror in Pakistan or Afghanistan but we can separate Iraq. That's not really, in any way, shape, or form related." It's just dead wrong. Bin Laden has said this is the central battle in the war on terror...

That same day, the Pentagon issues a report, debunking the claim that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al-Qaeda terrorist network. Unfortunately, this is not the first time Cheney out and out lied about the link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda. A year after the president declared "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended," the 9/11 Commission Report found that

the panel had no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein had assisted al-Qaeda in preparing or executing the 9/11 attacks. The Report notes in Chapter 2 that "Bin Laden had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army."

And yet, Cheney is still lying about the debunked link, and lied about it again on Limbaugh's show.

What's even more amazing are the levels of blatant hypocrisy coming from the mouth of Cheney and the right-wing water carriers about Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syria.

RUSH: A couple of quick more things before you have to go. What's the administration's view today, what's the emotion, what are you thinking about Speaker Pelosi's trip to the Middle East, specifically the conveyance of the incorrect message to Bashar Assad in Syria about peace talks with Israel?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it's not helpful. I made it clear earlier that I thought this created difficulties, if I can put it in a gentle form. Obviously, she's the speaker of the House and ought to travel to foreign nations and ought to conduct visits.

RUSH: She's not entitled to make her own foreign policy, is she?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: She's not entitled to make policy. She, in this particular case, by going to Damascus at this stage it serves to reinforce, if you will, and reward Bashar Assad for his bad behavior. He's done all kinds of things that are not in the interests of the United States, including allowing Syria to be an area from which attacks are launched against our people inside Iraq. He obviously was heavily involved, right now, in supporting an effort by Hezbollah to try to topple the government in Lebanon. This is a bad actor, and until he changes his behavior he should not be rewarded about visits by the speaker of the House of Representatives.

Oddly enough, neither Cheney, nor Rush dare spoke of the three Republican Senators who visited Syria and talked to President Assad, just like Pelosi did.

And yet, with all the evidence of the lies and hypocrisy coming from Cheney's mouth, that minority still defend the Administration's load of bullshit, lies, and spin.