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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What moronic wanker of a “security expert” decided that the Adult Swim guerrilla advertising devices were improvised explosive devices? Improvised Light Bright, maybe!

They shut down significant portions of Boston for these things.  Look at them.  Would you have done anything besides say, “that is the ugliest creature to flip me off ever?”

General Schoomaker says the Army ‘will break’ without more troops. He also wants to use the Guard and Reserves as just more active duty troops. And people wondered why I didn’t join the Reserves when I separated from the Army. Why get out if you’re not getting out?

I find it interesting that in the NY Times story about Ted Haggard admitting to buying drugs, the gay escort who outed him is referred to by his full name. As anyone knows, whoever is written up in the news with his middle name is a serial killer or child molester.

Of course, the Reverend says he was tempted, bought the drugs, but did not use it. Why, then, are there multiple voice mail messages, which ask for “more product” in increments of 100 or 200 dollars?  If you don’t do drugs, why would you get more of it?

The current political climate is very sad.  The Democrats are going to make some gains (whatever magnitude) this year, and it’s going to be almost entirely due to the Republicans screwing up.  How many ads have you seen or read that boil down to, “Vote Democrat, because we’re not fans of George Bush”?  That’s just pathetic.  They have no ideas of their own or they think if people knew their ideas they wouldn’t vote for them.

Thinking Republicans (there are many I know personally, so they must exist in greater numbers than the Congress would indicate) are appalled at the lack of conservative values this batch of numbskulls have shown. Small government?  Nobody’s seen a GOP White House reduce the size of government in 30 years. Personal freedom? Can you say wiretaps and gay marriage?  The party that used to (claim to) be in favor of “get out of my life” policies is now the more intrusive one.

And yet, the Democrats still have a hard time capitalizing on this weakness in their opponents except to say, “we couldn’t screw it up as much as the current folks, could we?”

We’re doomed.

The folks over at JoeUser are a bit more right-wing than most large groups online, it seems. They’re not even, in general, libertarian but definitely a preponderance of Bush-lovers. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se; it does make for some interesting discussions at times. This post stimulated a lot of responses, most of them (to my mind) unthinking. The original poster is a retired Colonel and was sharing his personal economic status change over the previous year, as contrasted with the “great news” about the economy that is trumpeted on Fox News. He was, of course, attacked as an idiot on multiple occasions. The fact that few people on that board seem capable of spelling much correctly does distract me, but here’s one correctly spelled response that jumped out at me:

People don’t know if they are better off or not.

Oh, well, then. We’ll just tell people they’re better off, and even if their checkbooks tell them differently, they’ll believe us.

I love the persecution complex the GOP has. Even after gaining control of the House, Senate, White House, and (more or less) the Supreme Court, they still act like they’re some minority under attack. Hey, when you’re in charge you don’t get to be the underdog! Don’t claim the Democrats are doing something underhanded because ABC breaks a story making your party look sleazy; maybe you should use that Ethics Committee before someone gets indicted.

So, Mark Foley is a pedophile scumbag, who thinks going into alcohol rehab will somehow help his image. Oh, wait! Today he’s claiming that he was molested by a clergyman as a child. Oh, well, that certainly excuses this behavior.

Watch out for the Democrats, they’re out to get you!* Booga booga booga! And, right on cue, the GOP pundits pop up on all the news shows, attacking Democrats and claiming that the kids being targeted by Foley aren’t innocents but were working it. Huh?

*This would require the Dems to find their spines and ideas, so don’t hold your breath.

Quick followup to my previous post on our new dark ages. I’m continually astounded at the weasel words journalists use, rather than just saying what is objectively true.

Many Democrats opposed the legislation because they said it eliminated rights of defendants considered fundanamental to American values, such as a person’s ability to protest court detention and the use of coerced tesimony as evidence.

Yes, they said that. Of course, a good newspaper would have said, “Which is 100% true.” Don’t just repeat that some say this and some say that; report what the actual law actually says, why don’t you? Yes, they did eventually say these things, but someone who skimmed the article would see a typical “two opposing and equal views” passage, rather than “one side is eviscerating the Constitution” passage.

And now the GOP will try to portray the Democrats as soft on terrorists because a few of them resisted the bill (and not very vocally – filibuster Roberts but not the removal of judicial review, habeas corpus, and the Geneva Conventions?). Of course, the Democrats, if recent years are any indication, will find no coherent voice to retort, “We’re not soft on terrorists. The Republicans, however, are anti-American, as they gut the Constitution and revoke 800 years of legal tradition.”

My elected representatives continue to prove they have no honor.

On September 20, 2001, the President said:

[The terrorists] hate our freedoms — our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

Well, I guess we’ve given in then. Those freedoms are now exclusively available only if the executive branch of the federal government allows you to have them. There is no recourse, there are no checks or balances, there is no transparency in government. Congratulations, Bin Laden, you won.