BunkBlog

When the Republicans ran the Senate, they made a huge deal over not being able to put certain nominees for the Supreme Court and other appointments to a “up or down vote,” due to the threat of a filibuster from those evil Demoncrats.  The Dems, in typical spineless fashion, agreed to a “compromise” in which they agreed to not filibuster and the Republicans agreed to do whatever the hell they wanted to do.

Now, the Democrats are just barely in charge of the Senate, and they can’t get anything significant past the Republican filibuster machine.  Return habeas corpus?  Filibuster.   DC getting a Representative? Filibuster.  12 different spending bills?  Filibuster.  In fact, there are a record-setting number of threatened filibusters this month, with 56 cloture motions contrasted with 21 motions in the same period of 2005.

Why is this not a big story on the news?  In the GOP Senate, the cloture issue was brought up and the drum beaten loudly and frequently for all the 24-hour news networks to fill the airwaves.  Now, with arguably more important issues being blocked, it’s just considered business as usual.  I guess it’s true – marketers are all Republican.  These Democrats can’t seem to figure out how to get public support for anything.

One of my coworkers was bemoaning the proposal to restore habeas corpus rights to the suspects in Guantanamo.  I tried to get him to understand that the rule of law is dependent on treating everyone, friend or foe, as a human being with certain inalienable rights.  That phrase may be in some document you’ve heard of but probably never read completely.

Anyway, I just don’t get it.  There are so many people who seem to think that, just because someone has been apprehended and stored in the extra-national prison in Gitmo, they are automatically evil and their life is forfeit.  Since when did accusation equal conviction?  How can allowing them a day in court in any way weaken our national strength or safety?

Just as popular speech doesn’t need protection, but only the unpopular speech, so too do obviously innocent people not need their rights protected as strongly as the suspicious ones.  Nobody would be able to get away with randomly throwing people into prison, one would hope.  But, if the selection wasn’t random, but instead fit in with preconceived notions of what a bad guy looked like, or where a bad guy lived, or what religion a bad guy held…all bets are off.  Making decisions based on emotion rather than on evidence and facts leads to a very slippery slope.  Of course, maybe this is all a vast conspiracy, and someone has been looking at ways of converting a democracy into an authoritarian dictatorship.  Hint: look in Austrian history in the 1930s, or Zimbabwe today.

This is quite frightening.  55% of those polled think the Constitution of the United States established a Christian nation.  There is not one mention of any deity in the Constitution; not one.
Half say teachers should use the Bible as a factual textbook in history classes.  Seriously?  Did you know there’s no archaeological evidence for the Jews wandering in the desert for forty years?  Did you think that three million people might have left a slight impression?

56% think that freedom of religion applies to everyone.  The others say that there are some groups that don’t deserve the same freedom they want for themselves.
On the plus side, “only” 25% say the First Amendment goes too far, which is better than five years ago, when it was half.

Every so often, Ted Nugent shows up on Faux News or in a print publication, and he gets to hold the unenviable position of the Cool Republican. After all, according to conventional wisdom, most of the entertainment industry is filled with crazy lefties, but Nugent is the edgy guy in the GOP.

He’s so edgy, he brought a couple of weapons on stage (they appear to be M16s, so they are probably AR-15s) , and waved them around. Ooh, edgy. And then, he screamed obscenities about a variety of Democratic politicians. Edgy. He told Senator Obama (who he respectfully calls a piece of shit) to suck on his machine gun. Um, edgy? Senator Clinton, lovingly called a worthless bitch, is told to ride a gun into the sunset. WTF?

In an interview with Sean Hannity, Nugent spoke of Democrats (in response to a former Hustler writer saying he had dibs on Rush Limbaugh for conservative hunting season), “I find it just reprehensible that they would recommend violence, not to mention murder and shooting people and assassinating people. This is bizarre.”

You’re right, Nuge. It is bizarre.
You can find the video if you search online. I’m not linking to that crap.

U.S. military deaths in July of each of the past five years, in Iraq:

July 2003: 48
July 2004: 54
July 2005: 54
July 2006: 43
July 2007: 80

U.S. military deaths in Iraq, this year, with 2006 figures in parens:

January: 83 (62)
February: 81 (55)
March: 81 (31)
April: 104 (76)
May: 126 (69)
June: 101 (61)
July: 80 (43)

So, exactly how is the surge working? Michael O’Hanlon of the “liberal” Brookings Institution said, “I think we have reduced the amount of violence overall.” Um…Maybe he doesn’t understand numbers so good. If you want to say that the violence decreased in July, you may have a point, but the violence always decreases in July in the Mideast – it’s a jillion degrees there, and even psychos with bombs get heat stroke.

Iraqi citizens also had an increase in month-to-month and year-to-year casualties, of approximately 25% in both cases.  So, while U.S. military casualties in July went down from June, the Iraqi casualties actually increased.  But the surge is working.

* for some values of “working” that can’t be measured

As if there hasn’t been enough evidence that two of our branches of government are at war, Scott Jennings actually claimed today that his job description was covered by executive privilege. WTF? His job is secret?

From my local elected representative:

Democrats in Congress are once again attempting to take on the role of Commander in Chief and make the irrational decision to pull out of Iraq without any sort of post-pull out strategy.

This implies that the Republicans made a rational decision to a) invade, b) occupy, c) de-Baathify, d) disband the Iraqi military, e) Everything Else. You can’t bitch about your opponent being irrational if you have no rational response.  By the way, why does nobody in the media seem to bring up the 1993 Congressional vote to defund and withdraw from Somalia, as a comparison?  We forget even recent history, it seems.  The Republicans want to portray the desire to get the heck out of Iraq as something unprecedented, when it is actually very precedented.  For that matter, why has Congress completely abdicated its responsibility for declaring war?  We haven’t had an actual declared war since 1945, yet we’ve been shooting at other people almost every day since then. Separation of powers?  That Constitution sure is a pesky thing.

There’s a great deal of scientific information in this interview, but it’s interesting enough even for laymen to read, I think. The basic story is that fructose and sucrose are not the kinds of sugars we evolved to consume in large quantities, so they mess up our body chemistry and make us pigs. The good doctor even demonizes orange juice (any kind, including organic fresh-squeezed).

Good news, though – eating oranges is good for you. Some of this is sort of common sense, if you think about how we ate 20,000 years ago compared to now. Our bodies haven’t changed in that time, but our diets have changed vastly. Nobody drank orange juice before industrialization; they ate oranges. Nobody drank sodas; they drank water. So, those people who decry processed foods, here’s another data point to use in your quest to return to a diet better designed for our natural metabolisms.

I thought I saw this headline on my newspage this morning: IKEA set to approve new nuclear mission to N.Korea.

IKEA, IAEA, what’s the difference, right?

Every time I see a headline such as MILF Leader to Run for Governor, I have to remind myself that some acronyms have different meanings in the Philippines than in the States.

Most headlines I’ve seen are trumpeting the second veto of President Bush’s 6+ years in office as him vetoing the “Iraq withdrawal bill” or “troop pullout bill.”  Strange how few of them (looking through Google News, um…ABC and VOA) call it the Emergency Spending Bill or Iraq War Funding Bill, which are also accurate (possibly more accurate) pseudonames for the thing.

The President has used every rhetorical trick in the book to make himself look principled on this, including asking all network television stations to carry his explanation this evening.  Is it really appalling that the only two vetos this man has on his record are for two things that a substantial majority of Americans oppose him on? Most people are in favor of increasing funding for stem cell research; the Religious Right oppose it so the President opposed it.  Most people are in favor of some form of drawdown in our failed adventure in Iraq; the Project for the New American Century is opposed to it so the President opposed it.

Two vetos, two statements to the American people that are equivalent to a pair of upraised middle fingers.  What a legacy.

Randall Tobias, the abstinence-only advocate, hires escort service!
Here’s a guy who has been telling people for years that nobody should be having sex outside marriage, but he gets “massages” from the notorious escort service in DC. Ah, can you feel the hypocrisy?

Speaker Pelosi went to Syria Tuesday, and that made the Republicans scream that she was overstepping her authority and confusing the Syrian government. So, when Republican Representatives Wolf, Pitts, and Aderholt met with the Syrian president on Sunday, how was that different?

The Democratic-controlled Congress is talking quite loudly about finding ways to defund the war in Iraq, with the caveat that they will never allow the soldiers to be less defended than they are now. This, predictably, means they are Defeatocrats and are giving up, micromanaging the war, and otherwise overstepping their reasonable place in the government. In 1993, when the Republican-controlled Congress voted to defund the war in Somalia, with the caveat that the soldiers would be well-defended during their redeployment, how was that different?

Is it really so much to expect some sort of consistency from people in public office? Do they really think that nobody will notice? Do they forget about videotape? Astounding.

It’s apparently a very good week for twisted videos from YouTube.

If you haven’t heard of the controversial art show featuring a giant chocolate Jesus figure, posed as if being crucified but minus the cross, too late. It’s been canceled. The hotel where it was being shown says they cannot guarantee the safety of the show, as they’ve received threats of violence and even death threats against the artist and the show backers. That’s how you convince people you’re reasonable and have the power of right and goodness on your side – threaten them with death. So, are we going to hear anyone say that Christianity isn’t really a religion of peace, as we’ve been hearing about Islam?

Of course, the entire art exhibit would have languished in total obscurity if not for the protests against it. Apparently the protestors’ parents never told them, “ignore him, he’s just trying to get attention.”

This photo essay points out a few of the problems I have with the pro-war movement. They trust the central government and they love the flag, and they believe that patriots love war.

The pro-war group equates being anti-war with being anti-soldier. Considering how many soldiers and veterans are anti-war, that seems unlikely. Although we were trained to go to war, no sane person yearns for it. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

The trust of a strong central government goes against the themes we see in the Constitution. You might have heard of the Constitution; it’s what helps define the rights of the citizenry and what powers we, the people, allow the central government to have. If you’ve ever actually read the thing, you may have noticed a strong distrust of elected representatives, and particularly a distrust of a strong executive officer.

And the co-option of the American flag as being a symbol of war and something which no anti-war demonstrator is permitted to hold is just shameful. Not only is it shameful that the pro-war folks believe that the flag is something to hide behind while you kill people, it’s shameful that the anti-war folks don’t have the guts to use the flag themselves. We the people not only have the right but the duty to question our elected representatives. The decisions made in Washington are our decisions, as a country. And when we disagree with those decisions, it is our job to make our employees account for themselves. Those people in DC are not better than us, they are not superior to us, they work for us. When we willingly bow to them and say their decisions cannot be questioned, we invite them to do what they will in all things. When the Iraq War has over 70% disapproval from the citizens of this country, if we didn’t see people calling for a pullout, we’d be telling the people inside the Beltway that they can run roughshod over all the less important opinions as well.

I don’t understand how so many people, presumably graduates of high school or even college, can be so credulous or just plain stupid. Just in the past week, I’ve seen a few surprising things folks say and seemingly believe.

Many people continue to promulgate the story about Speaker Pelosi demanding a giant aircraft to fly cross-country. In case you’re one of those not involved in the reality-based world, the House Sergeant at Arms requested a larger plane for the Speaker than her predecessor had. The reason for that is because the Speaker, due to security concerns, is expected to fly nonstop to her home district from DC. Hastert lived in Illinois, Pelosi lives in California. Basic physics, folks.

A strange number of folks continue to blame President Clinton for everything wrong in the world, and when that doesn’t work, they just try to say that whatever bad things President Bush does are okay because Clinton did them too. Except they get facts grossly wrong. A letter in last week’s newspaper said that Clinton was responsible for thousands of deaths, and at least Bush hasn’t been convicted of perjury. Well, Clinton wasn’t convicted of any crime either, so huh? And, as for the thousands of deaths, I find no data to support that. If we are discussing only deaths of US citizens, Clinton’s forays into various locales caused approximately 100 deaths. If we include civilians or enemy combatants killed in Bosnia, Somalia, Kosovo, et cetera, the numbers undoubtedly rise into the thousands but probably (by most estimates) not above 15,000. But, to be fair, if we want to blame President Clinton for anyone who died in military actions he promoted, we need to blame President Bush for all deaths related to military actions he promotes; that number is somewhere above a half million, by all estimates that use real numbers instead of guesses.

Ann Coulter called John Edwards a faggot. I honestly don’t get it. Is the woman so completely unhinged that random gibberish is falling from her lips now? Has there ever been the slightest indication that Edwards is not straight, if that was even relevant? Of course, Coulter has a history of calling every man in the Democratic party gay: Al Gore is a “total fag,” Bill Clinton had the “whiff of the bathhouse,” etc. I love that she implied that Clinton was gay, cuz that horndog was chasing every skirt he saw, but no slacks.

And, naturally, Al Gore continues to be harassed by the Right even though he’s not remotely close to an elected office. Latest jabs are that he’s overweight (ooh!) and that his house in Tennessee uses a lot of electricity, and is therefore producing greenhouse gases at a hypocritical rate. The people who make this attack are usually the same folks who deny that greenhouse gases cause global warming, science be damned. Makes you wonder why they would point out that something they don’t believe is happening is being exacerbated by someone’s actions to begin with. Secondly, the Gores do use a substantial amount of electricity, but they pay double the market rate in order to buy only renewable energy. So, no greenhouse gases there after all. I still wonder about why anyone with a small family needs to use 20 times as much electricity as the national average, even when you include the security detail and offices on the premise. But, it’s not increasing greenhouse gases. Darn facts sure cause trouble.

Ah, the irony.  Ned “Carlos Mencia” Holness has used the power of the DMCA to get the YouTube video of his joke-stealing smackdown removed.  So, um…it’s okay for you to use other people’s material without credit for your own profit, but not for someone else to show that you have been doing so?  Ouch, my head.

Joe Rogan has a MySpace page, and a well-known dispute with Carlos Mencia. Understand, Carlos is actually Ned Holness, and is not Mexican. When put on the spot, Mencia..er, Holness will actually admit these things. Further, it is not a secret that he steals jokes from other comedians and uses them in his act. George Lopez says so, Joe Rogan says so, anyone who thinks they aren’t going to lose a career about it says so.
And that’s where it gets truly surreal. Since Joe Rogan has millions of dollars from doing NewsRadio and Fear Factor and Ultimate Fighting, he no longer needs to fear the loss of a gig.  He called out “Carlos Menstealia” when Rogan was leaving the stage at the Comedy Store last week. Pauly Shore (son of the owner) banned Rogan, even though there is video on the internet of about 8 different comedians agreeing that Mencia is a plagiarizing douchebag. Next chapter in the saga – Rogan and Mencia are both represented by the same talent agency. Well, they were yesterday.  Now, Mencia is represented by that agency.

This is some bizarre shit, but I love that Rogan has the balls and the security to actually stand up for something here. And the entertainment industry is just plain evil.

So, when the Democratic minority threatened a filibuster against something of importance, like the lifetime appointment of a candidate they found objectionable, that’s an unprecedented[1] abuse of procedural rules and the minority should just shut up and color, straight up-or-down vote time. When the Republican minority filibusters[2] a non-binding resolution with as much importance as declaring today National Chocolate Day, it’s perfectly reasonable, even though it ends with the sponsor of the bill voting against it? Seriously, flip flop?

[1] This word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
[2] Not threatens, actually blocks a vote.