So far Right, they can't see                           the Middle any more   To folks on the right hand side of the debate, there IS no debate, only a blind agenda. They don't want to hear arguments, they don't want to listen, they just lecture.

Religious Right Nutjobs
 

May 2005: Pastor Chan Chandler of the East Waynesville Baptist Church in Waynesville NC kicked out nine members of his congregation, because they refused to support George Bush. Many others from the congregation quit in protest. Less than a week later, confronted with his own stupidity, and saying it was all just a "misunderstanding," he left his own church. By the way, he's 33, been there just a couple of years, and one of the people he ousted had been with the congregation FORTY years.
 

Pat Robertson can never keep his mouth shut at the appropriate moment. He's said plenty of wacky things over the years. But in May 2005, he said something just remarkably stupid. He said he disapproves of the notion of Muslims in government jobs, and would never want a Muslim as a judge. He's afraid of what somebody of "their religion" might do in that position.  Well, Pat, I'm watching people of the Christian faith, of which I'm one, pull all sorts of crap in the name of the Lord, including trying to circumvent the laws and judges of our land every chance they get.

In January 2005, Robertson said that God told him: "I will remove judges from the Supreme Court quickly, and their successors will refuse to sanction the attacks on religious faith." 

He also said, "I heard it from the Lord" that President Bush will pass Social Security and tax reform, and that Muslims will turn to Jesus Christ. Previously, God had told him he would become president of the USA. He later predicted that Bush would win in a blowout. Wrong again, and again.

Pat said that 2005 would see the end of terrorist threats and attacks. He's only off a little bit there. Or, uh, wait. Actually, 2005 is turning out to be the WORST year since before 9/11 for terrorist attacks.

Pat said that 2005 would be a banner year for the stock market. Well now, it ain't. In fact, we're seeing an economic slowdown. Stick to your day job, Pat. Oh, wait, this IS your day job, making up bullshit and claiming you got it from God.

Summer 2005: Pat Robertson said that the US government should "take out" Hugo Chavex of Venezuela. In other words, assassinate the guy. When asked WHY he would say something so wacky, intead of explaining himself, he claimed he never said it. When confronted with the videotape of his own TV show in which he DID say that, he hemmed and hawed. What an idiot.

He is batting 0 for everything right now. In fact, Pat, many religious conservative groups have come out AGAINST Bush's nutty Social Security ideas. Man, that connection you have with God must be pretty fuzzy. Wait, Pat, I'm getting a message right now ..... God is talking to me .... He says ...... wait a minute ...... yeah, there it is. He says you're an idiot.
 

The Ethics Mess

The GOP said, in 1994, that with their newfound majority rule in Congress, they would clean up the ethics mess. Instead, all they did was clean up. For themselves. And they changed ethics rules to save people's asses in their own party, and ousted people, even their own party members, from the ethics committee, when they complained about the buddy system.

When it looked like Tom DeLay was going to get spanked yet again by the Senate ethics committee, DeLay himself helped orchestrate the dismissal of its Republican chairman, and the swapping out of two other members. The Senate also changed the rules to make it just about impossible for ethics charges to go forward. Because of the huge political fallout, and dissension even among the party faithful (plus lotsa bad PR), the Senate voted to undo those rule changes, so an investigation of DeLay could go forward.

The rules that the GOP changed, by the way, were the same rules they themselves had put into place years earlier in order to snare Democratic leaders. The most egregious things they pulled were changing the rules to make it almost impossible for Democrats to initiate a probe of DeLay; allow DeLay to keep his job if he was indicted (which looked likely at the time); and oust the chairman and two other members of the Ethics Committee after they helped reprimand DeLay.

Previously, DeLay had been formally reprimanded by the ethics committee four times for sleazy stuff.

May 2005, two GOP members of the ethics committee recused themselves from any action against DeLay, citing conflict of interest. Apparently they contributed money to DeLay's legal defense fund months before being assigned to the committee. Okay, so WHY were they assigned to the committee in the first place, since DeLay's issues were already known at the time? Hmmmmmm?????

Check out the Tom DeLay section below for more details of their sleaze.

Judicial shenanigans ..... them there activist judges
 

Quick note: EIGHTY PERCENT, or four out of five Americans, and that's across the board for Democrats, Republicans, and those who claim no affiliation, want a thorough examination of all judicial nominees, not just a rubber stamp. And fully forty-six percent don't trust Bush to nominate good people.

During his presidency, Bill Clinton had more than SIXTY of his judicial nominees blocked by the GOP.  Democrats blocked only ten percent of Bush's judicial nominees, but according to Bill Frist, that's way too many. He doesn't want honest debate, he wants a RUBBER STAMP for the president. So he wants to change the rules on nominees, requiring only a majority vote, and blocking a 200-year-old rule, the filibuster, so these nominees can sail through without debate. This was dubbed "the nuclear option" by the GOP's own Trent Lott (who got booted scandalously enough after voicing his support for a racist party of the 1940's). But now the GOP, sensing the negative connotations of the term "nuclear option," now call it the "Constitutional
option." It's just another term, like "liberal" or "activist."

Democrats have threatened to kill Senate business if the GOP pulls this nonsense off. Many Republicans are backing off, sensing the backlash from both the Democrats and the public at large.

Judges are labeled "activists" when, simply enough, their decisions conflict with the GOP, who apparently had no problem with activism on the part of the Supreme Court when they intervened in the Florida election mess and declared Bush the winner over Gore. Yeah, no problem then.

One of  the most virulently out-of-the-mainstream judges that Bush wants is Priscilla Owen. She always rules in favor of corporations over individuals, every single time. Whether you like or dislike Roe V. Wade, it's the law of the land, but not according to Owen. She's a typical far right wing judge. Bill Frist put her up first for renomination, just to be a dick. Our current Attorney General of the United States, a wholly unqualified guy named Alberto Gonzalez, who once authored a memo authorizing torture of military prisoners, pronounced Owen "out of the mainstream" when both of them were in Texas. Suddenly, she's okay?
 

Bill Frist is all in a knot about judicial nominees. Democrats have blocked only TEN of Bush's many nominees. That seems more than reasonable. They've let THE VAST MAJORITY go through (the GOP blocked SIXTY of Clinton's nominees, by the way). But that's not good enough for Frist. Rather than reasonable levels of debate, he wants no questions asked. In other words, Congress is supposed to be a rubber stamp for the president. And so he wants to change the rules of Congress and disallow filibustering. Even his own colleagues are wary of this option.

In an attempt to once again control the flow of information, members of the GOP have been told not to refer any longer to the anti-filibustering moves as "the nuclear option," but rather call it "the Constitutional option," so that they don't look quite so dastardly. This is an interesting change, since it was first called "the nuclear option" by one of their own previously-disgraced members, Trent Lott. You might remember him as the guy who bemoaned the fact that the "Dixiecrats" of Strom Thurmond weren't victorious in the 1948 elections, apparently forgetting that the Dixiecrats were ardent segregationalists. It got Lott pretty much drummed out of the leadership.

The sudden interest in "activist" judges has been spawned by two items: 1) the righteous removal of Ten Commandmants displays from public places (no mixing of church and state, as it says in the CONSTITUTION), and 2) the Terri Schiavo case. The Ten Commandmants thing is a no-brainer, since by law you can't promote religion in the context of government. And with regards to Schiavo, one of the judges who ruled against the parents was pushed (unsuccessfully) at the Senate by Bush in his first term, and he's now resubmitting the guy. AND HE VOTED AGAINST SCHIAVO'S PARENTS. So he's supposedly a conservative, and worth a filibuster fight, but he's apparently on the wrong side of a right-wing test case.

What all these religious right-wing nuts don't get is, when all the courts, one after another, rule against you, as in the Schiavo case, it's not activism. They are following the law. They are following the Constitution. If you don't like the rules, you don't just get to change them. Take your ball and move to France.

Bad Policies

The GOP is populated by idiots who make decisions based on polls and trying to get re-elected, rather than good sense and public service. Check it out.

Gas prices. April 2006, the GOP dolts recommend giving every American taxpayer $100 to help with gas prices. Okay, this is f____d up for a whole bunch of reasons. First, it would go to all federal income tax payers. So the rich commodities trader who takes the train gets the same hundred bucks that the self-employed delivery guy who fills up twice a week. Second, it would cost BILLIONS, and do no more to help anybody long term than the tax rebate that helped turn the surplus into a deficit early in Bush's first term. Fiscal conservatives have called this idea "the worst idea we've heard this year."

Gay marriage ban. We have deficits, war, a stagnant economy, an entire globe who hates the USA, the Iranians wanting nukes, the North Koreans WITH nukes, the North Koreans trying to test missiles, and so on, and these GOP bastards waste time and money trying to keep gays from getting married. Holy horseshit, gays aren't screwing up the country, the GOP is screwing up the country.

Bush says that Americans have reached “a consensus” on the subject of gay marriage, which was his excuse ; in fact, only 42% of Americans agree with him, which is down over 20% from a couple of years ago. Bush KNEW this amendment would fail in committee, but it was a sleazy attempt to suck up to his evangelical core. Even a close friend of his said that Bush “doesn’t give a shit” about the amendment. 

Even anti-gay nutjob Fred Phelps (link) says that Bush only proposed the amendment to suck up to the religious right.
 

Flag burning. Like a gay marriage ban, this issue is conveniently trotted out because the GOP is in trouble. "Let's look patriotic, and ban something that hardly ever happens." Seriously, flag-burning is not a serious problem. When's the last time YOU saw or heard of anybody in the USA burning a flag? Plenty of people who do it get pummeled by bystanders, while others get prosecuted for vandalism or disorderly conduct. Not a problem. But these Republican dickheads want to modify the Constitution for the sake of their political agenda. NOTHING is sacred to them, including the law of the land.
 
 

 

TOM DELAY The Hammer gets nailed, for his sleazy tactics

June 2006: DeLay is still f___g up his party. A judge has ruled that he withdrew from the ballot, meaning his party may not be able to replace him on that ballot. 

MARCH 2006: DELAY has given up his seat. He won't run for re-election. Woo-hoo !!!!

JANUARY 2006: DELAY IS GIVING UP ON TRYING TO KEEP HIS MAJORITY LEADERSHIP POSITION, after his "good, dear friend," lobbyist Jack Abramoff, copped a plea deal and will start naming names. 

The guy who took his place as majority leader once had to apologize for HANDING OUT CHECKS FROM A TOBACCO COMPANY to fellow Congressmen ON THE FLOOR OF THE HOUSE. He did this as the House was debating legislation affecting the tobacco industry. So they replaced a big sleazeball with a slightly smaller sleazeball.
 

Tom DeLay of Texas was known for only one thing, for yeeeeears : he went after Clinton. Wasn't known for passing legislation, wasn't known for doing his job, he was known for going after Clinton. THE END. Way to serve the constituency.

DeLay, the House majority leader, a GOP scumbag, has been spanked four times altogether by the Ethics Committee.

He threatened Electronic Industries Alliance, a trade group, for not hiring a Republican as its president.

He created the "appearance" that Westar Energy execs were given special privileges at a golf junket because they donated tens of thousands to a Texas political action group associated with DeLay. At the time, the House was considering an energy bill that Westar had an interest in.

He got nailed for using government resources in order to push his redistricting of Texas, in a shameless move aimed at solidifying GOP control over the state at the expense of voters' rights. DeLay actually contacted the FAA to have them hunt down Texas Democrats who had left the state in order to avoid giving the Texas legislature a quorum on the redistricting issue. The redistricting was sleazy enough as it was, but then he used government resources to make it worse. The redrawing of the voting map was found by a state committee to be in violation of the Voting Rights Act, and just plain ill-advised. But politically-appointed state officials let it stand anyway.

DeLay got caught offering to endorse the son of another representative in a race, provided the old man voted the GOP's way on the over-priced, corporate giveaway Medicare drug bill. He also threatened retaliation if the vote went the WRONG way.

This is nothing new. DeLay is well-known for offering all sorts of incentives to get his way, and for punishing those who vote their conscience over party agenda. Reps who don't vote the way DeLay insists often find themselves facing challengers from within their own party in subsequent elections.

DeLay has also been accused of using his state PAC to launder corporate cash to Texas state campaigns in 2002, a violation of state law that is also being investigated by an Austin district attorney. Naturally, that D.A. is currently being lambasted by partisan attack dogs.

After the committee did its job, DeLay arranged for the chairman and two members to get yanked out of it. The Senate also voted  to cchange the committee's rules to make it virtually impossible for DeLay to be further investigated.

Ten Republican former members of Congress wrote a letter to the House leadership opposing the changes made to the ethics committee, calling them "obvious action to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay."

Even Newt Gingrich, and Republican Rick Santorum, called on DeLay to come clean.

Finally the massive public outcry caused Dennis Hastert, speaker of the unspeakable house, to change the rules right back. The interesting thing is, it was the GOP that put the previous rules into place to begin with, in 1997, allowing members of one party to initiate a probe. But when it hurt them, they abolished it.

Anticipating a possible indictment of DeLay, the House also changed the rule saying that a member had to step down from a leadership slot if indicted.

Now we find out that Jack Abramoff, sleazy lobbyist, paid for various fundraisers and trips that DeLay took, including overseas. Abramoff himself is in quite a bit of trouble. The payoffs included meals, hotels, golf outings, and other events.

• DeLay's political action and campaign committees have paid his wife and daughter more than $500,000 since 2001. While this may or may not be legal, C'MON. Half a mil?
• DeLay attempted to use a children's charity to circumvent limits on soft money in 2004, until unwanted attention forced him to back out.
• For the GOP convention in 2004, DeLay wanted to park a cruise ship near the city as a private hotel for lawmakers, lobbyists, and other guests. Bad P.R., centered on the notion that big contributors would have special access to lawmakers, forced him to scrap the idea.
• Publicity forced DeLay to return legal defense cash donated by registered lobbyists. This guy has no shame at all.
• DeLay took a business-sponsored trip to Korea, and once again broke House rules.

DeLay is a bit of a political leper these days. Even the president reportedly is no friend.

May 2005: DeLay has his undies in a wad over a line in an episode of "Law and Order,"in which two judges are killed by two right-wing extremists. One officer in the show says "Maybe we should put out an APB for somebody in a Tom DeLay t-shirt." It's a reference to the inflammatory language used by DeLay after the Terri Schiavo debacle, in which he said, "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." DeLay complained that the producers of the TV show "manipulated" his name. Producer Dick Wolf responded, "I do congratulate Congressman DeLay for switching the spotlight from his own problems to an episode of a TV show."
 

He also said "We will look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president," forgetting that he's part of an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable Congress that thumbs its nose at the American people by creating gigantic deficits.
 

October 2005: DeLay finally got indicted for manipulating campaign funds. In essence, he was prohibited from giving money to candidates in certain situations. So he would donate it to third parties, who then would give it to those candidates. His response was a series of attacks, including paid advertisements, going after the prosecutor, calling him a liberal Democrat. In fact, the guy has indicted more Democrats than Republicans. But this is how DeLay does it.

November 2005: Right after proclaiming his innocence and getting the original judge booted off his case in Texas, Delay ended up apologizing for misuse of funds, claiming it was a boo-boo. A couple of days later, proceedings on the crookery of GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff revealed that Delay's staff provided access to to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, after Abramoff's Indian tribe clients gave a quarter-million dollars to an environmental group founded by Norton. AMusingly enough, Delay claimed he had no knowledge of his staff doing this for a man he once called "one of my closest and dearest friends." 

The Abramoff story just gets funnier and funnier. No sooner did Delay claim that that all the charges were false, then he fessed up about a financial indiscretion, calling it a mistake, and paying it off. A week later, a former top aide (turned lobbyist) pleaded guilty to illegal fund-raising activities and agreed to testify against Abramoff.

BILL FRIST   Physician, pimp thyself

Bill Frist, an actual medical doctor, said in an interview with George Stephanapolous that he "didn't know" if AIDS could transmitted through tears or sweat. In fact, it cannot. He also said that condoms have a failure rate of  %15.  Actually, it's more like 2%, and a lot of that has to do with incompetency.

There's nothing like an expert who will prostitute his scientific knowledge for the sake of a religious and/or political agenda. In this case, the Far Right hates contraception, even though it's a GOOD THING in many cases. As in disease control and population control.

October 2006: Frist officially surrenders in the War on Terror, when he suggests that the Taliban (who used to run Afghanistan and sheltered Osama Bin Laden) join the Afghan government.

Frist established an AIDS charity. And sure enough, it donated a couple million to AIDS causes. But the $4.4 million it raised came from just 18 donors, many of whom had big business in front of Congress at the time. The charity also paid ridiculously large consulting fees to political insiders, including a guy hooked up with Frist's apparently illegal stock sale.

He once again whored his so-called medical talents in the Terri Schiavo case, saying that after he viewed an old videotape of her, his observatino was that she was responsive. After her autopsy revealed that she was completely and utterly brain-damaged and incapable of responding to a damn thing, he never bothered to correct himself.

Frist also continues to hammer away at abstinence programs, despite multiple polls which indicate that kids who pledge abstinence are far less likely to use protection when they finally give into nature's urges.

In this regard, Frist is merely following his leader. Bush likewise ignores solid science whenever it clashes with agenda.

Frist pushed the "nuclear option" to stop Democratic filibustering against Bush's judicial nominees, even though all the newspapers, and plenty of folks from his own party, said it was the wrong thing to do, and would effectively turn our democracy into what James Madison called "the tyranny of the majority." Checks and balances go out the window.

At Princeton, Frist's alma mater, they held a "filibuster against Frist" event, in which people have were speaking, reading, going on and on, for literally hundreds of hours, in protest of Frist's threats against Senate rules. They held a protest in DC as well. They even have a website (who'd have guessed?) at www.filibusterfrist.com.  Check it out.

November 2005: Frist didn't like it when Democrats forced a closed door meeting of the Senate, to have a discussion on the long-promised but never executed investigation of whether the administration doctored evidence against Saddam Hussein. By end of day, the GOP agreed to finally look into it, as they've been saying they would for months. Frist complained that the meeting was "an affront to the United States of America." Huh? Maybe the real affront is your party not bothering to investigate the president's obvious bullshit when it came to starting the war.

May 2006: With polls indicating that the public prefers Democrats over the GOP by double digits, Frist is once again resurrecting the "anti gay marriage" amendment, to rally the faithful. We have a ridiculous Republican-generated deficit, a war we can't get out of, immigration problems, terrorism, Iran and North Korea, ad infinitum, and this pinhead is pushing his anti-gay crap again. Who gives a shit? Fix Medicare, get out of Iraq, start working on the debt, you f____g DUMMY.

I'll give Bill Frist credit on one thing: he's pushing for a windfall profits tax, to nail the oil companies who have taken advantage of the hurricane mess and pushed oil prices through the roof. God knows Bush and Cheney won't do a thing to harm the obscene profits of their oil buddies. 

Jean Schmidt

I just HAD to mention this piece of shit. Rep. Schmidt of Ohio decided to comment in the House on Democratic Rep. John Murtha's call for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. He wasn't serious, of course, but trying to get the debate going. Murtha was a Marine, wounded twice in Viet Nam. He has always supported military action, including the Iraq war, and Cheney has referred to him several times in the past as an ally. Schmidt declared in the House, "cowards cut and run, but Marines never do." She was roundly booed, and later asked for her comments to be stricken from the record, and she also apologized. But she was f____g dumb enough to say that stuff in the first place.

At the time, she claimed to be delivering a message from another state rep. But THAT guy claims he never discussed Murtha with her.

March 2007: Schmidt's rampant stupidity strikes again. After a tour of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where horrendous conditions for wounded Iraqi vets were found, Schmidt said that the whole problem mwas "overblown," and blamed it on mold found behind a single air conditioner. Apparently she wasn't there before the massive cleaning and repainting that's already taken place. Dum-de-dum-dum. How the hell did t his bimbo get elected?

This Republican scumbag resigned his seat in the House of Representatives after tearfully admitting taking cash, a yacht, antiques, vacations, and cash for his daughter's graduation party from a variety of defense contractors over six years. One sleazeball went so far as to buy Cunningham's house at a huge premium, then dumping it for a huge loss a year later, in a lame attempt to hide another bribe.

This guy is part of the GOP wave that was meant to clean up what they perceived as the sleaze of the Clinton era. But it's been one scandal after another.

GOP = Grungy Old Perverts

Plenty of GOPers have gotten in deep doo-doo for sexual misconduct in the last couple of years. So much for the party of Values.

October 2007: Washington state representative Richard Curtis, who's voted consistently with his GOP colleagues against gay rights (civil rights protections as well as domestic partnerships), told police that he was being blackmailed by a gay guy. The gay guy, nickamed "Stallion" (this is too f____g funny), claims that Curtis offered him a thousand bucks for sex, then backed out of paying him. Somehow the other guy ended up with Curtis' wallet. Whether the gay hustler ends up charged with blackmail, or Curtis gets charged with making a false report to police (to whom he ADMITTED the gay sex), the only thing that really matters is, it's yet another GOP hypocrite voting one way and living another. The other real shame is the impact on Curtis' wife and kids.
 

August 2007: Super right-wing nutjob Larry Craig of Idaho got busted this previous June in a bathroom at the Minneapolis airport for trying to solicit anonymous gay sex. He says it was all a misunderstanding, but in fact he was already being investigated by a newspaper in his state and by others for his sexual leanings, given that he has consistently voted aginst gay marriage, and was a ravenous hound when going after Bill Clinton. In a hilarious rant on "Meet the Press" back in 1999, he called Clinton "a nasty boy, a bad boy, a naughty boy," something that now appears not only as clownish as it did then, but downright ironic. The GOP went ga-ga on him when it came out this month that he'd pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, and kept the whole thing secret. He'd been working with the Mitt Romney campaign. Showing no grace whatsoever, Romney gave a televised statement dumping his relationship with Craig, and called the man's actions "disgusting," not bothering to slip in any nice words about Craig's decades-long service to his state, or expressing any sympathy for the man or his family. The Republican Party shit all over him, demanded he resign, kicked him off committees immediately, without any due diligence at all, showing as much disloyalty as their idiot boss Bush. Craig made it a double-whammy when he decided to quit, and then he UN-quit. He originally said he'd resign by the end of September, then said he'd resign if his appeal didn't pass before the end of September, and THEN decided that he'd hang around in the Senate until his appeal was over, however long that would take. And THEN he decided he's hang around no matter WHAT. Appeal denied, but he's keeping his seat. And guess what else? The 2008 GOP convention is to be held in Minneapolis, the site of Craig's indiscretion. Oh joy.

March 2007: Newt Gingrich reveals that he was having an extramarital affair while ramrodding the Clinton impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky mess. What a f____g hypocrite.

September 2006, Florida Rep. Mark Foley got caught sending sicko emails and private messages to teenaged Congressional pages. The GOP leadership in Congress was aware of this behavior going back a couple of years, but only one guy tried to get him to knock it off. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, that well-known lap dog, also knew, and did squat. Foley's aide gave the usual "this is not a big deal" story, but he was wrong. Foley was obliged  to step down. For some goofy-ass reason, any votes for his stand-in in the upcoming election go to him. Makes no sense. And what does Foley say to try to excuse himself? Alcoholism. "I strongly believe that I am an alcoholic and have accepted the need for immediate treatment for alcoholism and related behavioral problems." What a lame cop-out.  I'm a drunk, so please excuse me. Dickhead.

It gets even worse. Former pages are coming forward left and right to tell their lurid Foley stories. So THEN this piece of shit releases the information that he was (allegedly) molested by a clergyman in the 60's, when he was an altar boy. This little tidbit was released without context, meaning that he's leaving it out there as some other kind of excuse. What a dick!

Conservatives, including Michael Reagan and the Washington Times, called for Hastert to resign. The fat boy says he didn't know about Foley until recently, but a fellow Republican says he told Hastert a couple of years back, and nothing was done.

John McCain, massive suckup

I used to like this guy. He pissed off Bush, he followed his own path, he didn't seem anchored to the evangelicals who vote one frigging issue and let the rest of the world go to hell. But starting in early 2006, McCain started sucking up to the religious right. He visited them, started using their code words, started betraying his values. (Don't think that "religious" equates to "values"  ...... the religious right hasn't spoken up much as the Bushies have given massive tax breaks to the rich and allowed the poor to get much poorer the last few years). 

McCain completely fell off the cliff in October 2006 when he blamed the totally fried North Korean situation on ....... the Clintons. Yeah, Fox News is dumb enough to blame Jimmy Carter, which is even dumber. But they're just a bunch of media whores. McCain actually has a position of responsibility. Blaming a president who's been out of office awhile, after the current president has aggravated and mishandled the situation up to the PRESENT, is pure idiocy. He's kissing the right's ass, as he prepares for his 2008 presidential run.

Lobbyist losers

Jack Abramoff has already been caught breaking the rules with regard to paying for stuff he shouldn't. After all, he's a lobbyist, and not allowed to pick up tabs for members of Congress. Yet he's paid for all manner of niceties for Tom Delay, including dinners and trips. Delay has called Abramoff "one of my closest and dearest friends." Well, sure he pays for stuff.

On top of his illegal lobbying efforts regard ing Delay, Abramoff is also being investigated for his activities while lobbying for Indian tribes. Besides the improprieties, he's also been caught in email calling his Indian clients "stupid," "moronic," "idiots," "troglodytes," and "monkeys."

While he was taking cash from one tribe to help their interests in Texas, he was taking money from ANOTHER tribe, in Louisiana, that specifically didn't want any more casinos in Texas. Holy conflict of interest, Batman!

It just gets better. His deli in downtown DC closed down, and a private religious school he started in Maryland in 2001 also closed, and some of the teachers, who apparently didn't get paid, are suing Abramoff.

DENNIS HASTERT -- had a fundraiser at Abramoff's restaurant in DC in 2003, and didn't pay for it, UNTIL spring 2005, when it was pointed out by the press. Hastert was also one of the biggest Congressional recipients of money from Jack Abramoff. Hastert's under fire, as he should be, for not controllling ANYBODY in this mess. Everybody saw it coming, and Hastert did jack squat.

REP. BOB NEY of Ohio had to cough up his chairmanship of the House Administration Committee, after he got named in the Abramoff mess. Who asked him to step down? HIS OWN PARTY.

JANUARY 2006: Abramoff copped a plea deal with the Justice Department, and will start naming names. He ripped off his clients, bought and paid for lawmakers, and did it all so openly and arrogantly that even the chairman of the RNC didn't want anything to do with him a while back.

While doing the perp walk, Abramoff was dumb enough to wear a black fedora, to go with his $2000 black trenchcoat. With all that cash wrapped around his plump frame, he looked like a Chicago mobster.

JEB BUSH

The president's brother Jeb is the governor of Florida. This means that he was part of the evil cabal that stole Florida for W. in 2000. Make no mistake, the state was stolen. Several investigations and studies subsequent to the election, and the activist, intrusive Supreme Court decision that put W. on the throne, revealed the shenanigans that made all this happen. He allowed a member of the state cabinet, Katherine Harris, to act illegally as an agent for his brother's campaign, including on the night of the election.

He's concentrated power in the gov's office like no other current governor. But his seemingly successful right wing agenda has a serious dark side. Teachers unions say his vouchers hurt public schools that need the most help. His state income tax cuts benefit the wealthy and the business class while shorting individuals, and he's limited judgments to worthy individuals in medical malpractice cases. His reform of voting procedures, using electronic machines (that were to make up for the hanging chad debacle in his state) leave no paper record. If a machine screws up, you'll never know what someone's vote SHOULD have been.

Civil rights activists hate him.

Just like his brother's education "reforms," Jeb's are built on hot air. Florida has manipulated test scores to simulate school improvements, and the state's graduation rate is worst among states.

Just like his brother's tax cuts, Jeb's tax cuts mostly benefit the wealthy, i.e. those who don't need it. In the meantime, Florida is having a hard time paying for social programs.

Jeb also stuck his neck out in the Terri Schiavo mess, and made a fool of himself, trying to circumvent the law and abusing his power in the process. The conservative, religious right loves him for it, but the vast majority completely disagreed with it, and that includes plenty of evangelicals. After Schiavo's autopsy indicated she was completely brain damaged and couldn't possibly have been as responsive as her parents and all those religious nutjobs claimed she was, Jeb Bush had to instantly distract from that by calling for an investigation of whether her husband had tried to provide care for her when she was originally taken ill, even though all that happened many years ago. In other words, it's just like his brother the president trying to distract from the war by saying we were going to Mars. Look at the investigation of the husband, not at the medical evidence that makes us look like idiots.

Jeb has to leave after his current term, because of term limits on the office. He says he won't run for the White House, and in fact there are too many people lining up for it already on the GOP side, but don't be surprised if he runs in 2012.

THE SCHIAVO MESS

This is a sad, sad story. A young woman fell into a vegetative state, her husband and her parents began a years-long battle, and finally it sparked a ridiculous, unnecessary intrusion by the federal government which ultimately blew up in the GOP's face.

Terry Schiavo was a vibrant young woman who collapsed and suffered a heart attack, apparently from the effects of bulimia. She ended up in a vegetative state. Her husband tried various kinds of therapy, but pretty much her brain was flat.
 

SCHIAVO: THE LEGAL STUFF TAILS OFF, THEN THE POLITICIANS INTERVENE

Her parents fought with the husband for a decade. Naturally, they wanted their child to live and get better, but no way it was going to happen. The husband had legal jurisdiction, and finally wanted to let her die. The parents went to judge after judge, and regularly got defeated. They went "shopping for judges," in fact, trying to find one that would finally agree with them. The Florida courts sided with the husband, appeals courts, the Florida Supreme Court, everybody.

The Florida legislature, completely ignoring the will and lawful decisions of the courts, stuck their nose in it as well. So did Florida governor Jeb Bush, the president's brother.
 

SCHIAVO: THE FEDS STICK THEIR NOSE IN IT

Then Congress, led by Tom DeLay, who was probably hoping to distract people from all of his own ongoing legal and political troubles, convened Congress for a late-night session, calling members back to DC at a cost of more than five million dollars to taxpayers, so they could vote on emergency legislation (which was doomed from the beginning) to push for a review of the situation by federal courts, EVEN THOUGH all the state courts in Florida had already taken their shot at it.

Some of the legislators who claimed to be so emotional over the entire case couldn't even correctly pronounce Terri Schiavo's name during their oratories.

Bush flew in from Texas, where he's perpetually on vacation, to sign the bill.

The first federal judge said he wouldn't change things.  Reps for the parents declared Judge Greer "no longer impartial" and "an advocate for Terri's death."  Uh-huh. A federal judge WANTS this woman to die. Right. They called him "no longer impartial," just because he wasn't partial to their agenda.

So they shopped for an appeals court. The three-judge panel also let stand the order. Another appeal, to the entire appeals court, ruled 10-2 to let stand the order. So THEN it was off to the Supreme Court, while Jeb Bush thrashed about, saying the Florida legislature should do something (again). FYI, the Florida attorney-general (who succeeded Jeb as governor) did NOT back Jeb in this issue. The AG's own physician-dad advised his son that he'd seen Schiavo's brain scans, which were utterly flat. Side note: this former AG, new gov, also a Republican, has far more progressive path than Jeb. Even more popular in his state than Jeb was, he's pushed forward voters' rights, stem cell research, hurricane relief, health care, teacher retention and other education issues, and concerns on global warming, all things that Jeb did a shit job on.

N.B. One of the judges who ruled against Schiavo's parents is a judge who got blocked as one of Bush's nominees, and was later renominated. The irony fairly drips in this one.
 

SCHIAVO: THE FEDS RUN AWAY WITH THEIR TAILS BETWEEN THEIR LEGS

Two days after this Congressional waste of time and cash, Bush himself said there was nothing more he or Congress could do.

This case is typical of anything Bush gets involved with. When the judges don't rule in his favor, they are wrong, they are activist, they are anti-Christian. But what about the activist judge who had the feeding tube re-inserted into Shiavo the first time, after it was pulled out?

DeLay, trying to gather the troops, reinforce the base, and look manly, declared the courts as activist, the new buzz word, and said that the men who made those decisions that ended Schiavo's life would pay the price for their behavior. What it sounded like was physical threats. In the shadow of the murder of a federal judge's family in Chicago, and the killing of a judge and others in an Atlanta courtroom, it was very foolish language to spout.

DeLay also said that the courts, by making these lawful decisions, were "thumbing their nose at Congress and the president."   Apparently he forgot the fact that the courts actually understand the law, the Constitution, and followed those laws, far more intelligently than Congress ever could have. So what about Congress and the president thumbing their noses at the law?
 
 

SCHIAVO ....... So what did we observe from all this? Exactly this.

Political arrogance and hypocrisy: Bush and DeLay and the whole right wing claims they're all pro-life, pro-family, pro this and that. But when it comes right down to it, that's all just election rhetoric. They took their one shot at this case, to shore up their claim on their right-wing constituency, but they should have polled first. When it became obvious that even a vast majority of Republicans didn't want them involved, they abandoned their high and mighty pro-life stance and headed for the hills.

More GOP fiscal waste: They blew over FIVE MILLION DOLLARS for this one case, and all for political purposes. They ignored the greater good. There is actually nothing special about this case. Cases like this Schiavo-Schindler tragedy happen every single day in this country, and they're decided between family and doctors. Congress and the president should have had NOTHING to do with it. Even among citizens identifying themselves as evangelical Christians, the majority thought they should have stayed out of it.

They didn't really care, in the end: Terri Schiavo didn't appear on Tom DeLay's website until late in the month of March '05. When he saw an opportunity for political gain, he suddenly made this HIS cause. He spoke in front of a pro-family group (as if there's an anti-family group somewhere) and said that God had given them Terri Schiavo as a way of elevating their other causes. So he even admitted using her for other purposes. Scumbag.

Tom DeLay claimed that Schiavo was "just like any other handicapped person." Uh, no. She wasn't handicapped, you dummy, she was fried.

Hypocrisy Part 2: Tom DeLay hypocritically enough said it was a terrible thing to disconnect Schiavo from a feeding tube, even though a few years back his own family disconnected DeLay's father from life support. And make no mistake, a feeding tube of the type Schiavo was hooked to IS life support. Doctors consider it more of a life support system than a respirator, because of the complexity. It's a very complicated procedure to hook up the feeding system directly to a patient's digestive system, and very special, expensive stuff has to be pumped into them, since they can't digest like regular folks.

Hypocrisy Part 3: Bill Frist, Senate majority leader who used to be a heart surgeon, admitted he hadn't examined Schiavo and had only reviewed a videotape of her "for an hour or so," and concluded that she was NOT in a vegetative state. This is the same Frist whose ideas on contraception and AIDS are totally unscientific. So he once again prostituted his medical and scientific knowledge when it conflicted with his political agenda.

Bush and DeLay and the rest of the idiots claim they're pro-family, but then they stuck their fingers into a family matter. If they're so damn pro-family, then they should stay OUT of family matters.

Illegal and unethical government intrusion: Bush and the whole GOP claim that they're all for smaller government and states' rights, but this is the most intrusive administration we've ever seen. They didn't like the state judges' decisions, so they interfered with them, then found that the federal judges agreed with the state judges. They hauled the entire federal government into a family matter.

Religious nutcases: Several religious individuals got hysterically stupid on this one as well. One priest went to her to give her communion for Easter, but ended up only giving her a drop of wine, claiming that her lips were too dry for her to receive bread. Actually, dummy, she would have choked on it. She's not capable of swallowing anything. Another preacher, by name of Mahoney, got on TV and was literally screaming into the camera, having gone totally nuts, and along with others, claimed that Schiavo stated that she wanted to live. Uh, no. She didn't say a damn thing. She couldn't. Except in their feeble little minds.
 

The Amazing Do-Nothing GOP-controlled Congress
 

HERE'S THE REAL, TRUE REASON THE GOP SUPPORTS BUSH'S SURGE, despite the fact that the American public overwhelmingly does NOT: Look at what Republicans have been doing for YEARS, namely spending money like drunks and not worrying about how to pay for it. They keep putting off the notion that one day, the bills must be taken care of. They're going to let somebody else in the future deal with that. Well, when it comes to Iraq, the longer they support Bush's war, including the new "surge," the longer they can put off saying the obvious, that this has been a disaster. They're just going to punt. Eventually, of course, this will bite them in the ass, because at some point very soon they will have to admit to what everybody else knows and has been saying all along.

And by the way, the "surge" is a big fat lie. Look here for the details.

FINALLY WITH THE DEMOCRATS IN CONTROL, THINGS STARTED TO MOVE. But the GOP is still running interference for the idiot-in-chief. Democrats, and more than a few Republicans, want to debate the course in Iraq. But rather than embarrass their commander, and rather than do anything to help Iraq or American troops, the GOP members in Congress would rather just stall. They've blocked debate. They're afrfaid of the truth, which is that they've been flogging a policy that has caused death and destruction and isolation, as well as incomprehensible debt for the USA.
 

A quick word about Congress.....

When the GOP took the majority in Congress in '94, they said it was because Americans were tired of ethics scandals. Then the GOP immediately suspended a variety of ethics rules over several years, to protect their own evil-doings. So much for cleaning up.

In 2006, the GOP-dominated American legislature was rightly called the "Do-Nothing Congress." They passed virtually nothing useful. They sure named enough shit after people, and they continued to push the deficit further and further into space. Republicans chronically inserted last-second amendments into bills and voted on them after midnight, so these amendments couldn't be read or challenged. They released paper copies of bills for others to examine, then passed DIFFERENT versions of them. 

They exercised no oversight, allowing spending to go out of control, allow Bush to fund the war with special appropriations that received no budgetary scrutiny, they didn't ask HOW the money was spent, they allowed Cheney's old buddies to soak up a lot of that cash without auditing, they ELIMINATED the Iraqi spending auditor when he found too much waste and fraud being performed by Republican-connected contractors, and in general they asked no questions. They FAILED TO DO THEIR JOBS. 

And then at the end of 2006, they left the federal government unfunded, figuring they'd let the new Democratic leadership clean up the mess. This Republican Congress was the worst this nation has ever seen.
 

After five weeks of screwing off for the summer of 2006, the American do-nothing Congress returned to work, if you can call it that, to vote on a bill to ban horse-slaughtering. THIS is what they waste their time on. Massive deficits, millions of uninsured citizens, unsecured
borders, endless war in Iraq, a flagging economy, and they vote on horses. Holy shit.

Previous to that, they'd failed to perform the job of checks and balances. They let the president get away with consistently violating the law, and failing to enforce the law when it was violated by others. No oversight. They let the vice-president's former company rip off American taxpayers. 

They've also spent the USA into a giant black hole. They spend money we don't have on things we don't need. 

And when there's the deficit, a disastrous war they signed off on, porous borders, runaway gas prices, and a million other things wrong, they waste their time on gay marriage bans and flag-burning, neither of which affects anybody's life day to day in a negative way.