JABbering Stooge

Carey Lee Cramer, best known as the nutjob responsible for the unoriginal "Daisy Girl 2" attack ad in sElection 2K, has been convicted of "aggravated sexual assault of a child, two counts of indecency with a child by contact and one count of indecency with a child by exposure," according to the McAllen Monitor. He has been sentenced to six years in prison, ten years probation, a $30,000 fine, and must register as a sex offender everywhere he goes.

An added bonus: one of the accusers in the case is the girl who starred in "Daisy Girl 2." Jeff Goldstein would be proud.

How much do you want to bet that Republicans will blame this one on Clinton’s Almighty Penis, the way that Ann Coulter blamed the Almighty Clenis for Enron, WorldCom, etc.?

Images courtesy of the Project for the Old American Century:

From the Sydney Morning Herald: "Fines to further curb Chinese media"

CHINA’S censors have moved to strengthen their already considerable powers by proposing that media outlets be fined up to 100,000 yuan ($17,000) every time they report on "sudden events" without clearance from government officials.

Under the draft law, officials will be given discretion to handle emergencies or "sudden events", including the right to ban reporting on developing events.

The bill does not define "sudden events", but previously the phrase has included natural disasters, major accidents, social unrest and public health issues.

So why is a clampdown on the media in China apropos to right-wing reaction to the BankSnoop story? The primary right-wing "argument" is that al-Qaeda is too stupid to realize that their financial transactions are being monitored without the aid of the "treasonous librul media" (which apparently includes the Wall Street Journal - no friend of the Democrats). Never mind that Keith Olbermann effectively demolished this "argument" both by playing a montage of Bush declaring that the U.S. government was going after terrorist finances (Crooks and Liars video here), and by pointing out that SWIFT itself was highlighting it’s anti-terrorist finance measures both on its website and in its own magazine - Dialogue.

But does this devastating revelation that in order to call the NYT traitors, they’d have to call The Most Holy George W. Christ a traitor, too, have any effect at all on the Rethuglican Noise Machine? HELL NO!

The National Review has called for the revocation of the Times’ press credentials.

The House is expected to bring to the floor today a resolution condemning the papers that published the story (minus the Wall Street Journal, of course).

And then there’s the self-proclaimed arbiter of unhingedness, Michelle Malkin. In a blog post pimping her op-ed, "OMG T3h NYT is t3h fscking 3vil!!!!!!!!1!!1!!!!!!!!1!!!!", Malkin calls for a boycott of the Times’ sponsors. Color me confused, but doesn’t that sound suspiciously like the law being proposed in China back up at the top of this post? (Mind you, this is the same Michelle Malkin who equates goofballs prancing around in ridiculous outfits with saboteurs.)

I guess that just answered the question of whether or not the righties want all newspapers in the U.S. to become like the Pravda (and in many ways, they already are).

I’ll wait for you to finish giving back everything you ate for the last two days at that mental image.

Ready? Here we go!

As we speek, I’m filling out the form letter to Congress in regards to the Pledge Protection Act (H.R. 2389) over at Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. AU’s cut-and-paste text appears as normal, my contribution appears in bold italics.

Dear Congressman Lamar Smith,

As your constituent, I urge you to oppose the Pledge Protection Act, H.R. 2389 that would slam the courthouse doors on religious minorities to assert their fundamental constitutional rights. This legislation is an attack on our very system of government.

I believe it is imperative to leave the independence of the federal judiciary intact and not undermine the crucial separation of powers at the heart of our government.

Most importantly, I believe in the rights of religious minorities. H.R. 2389 would undermine the longstanding constitutional rights of religious minorities to seek redress in the federal courts. As a result, this legislation will seriously harm religious minorities and the constitutional rights of countless individuals.

Christians, both left-wing and right-wing, make up about 85% of the population of this great country. This huge advantage of numbers renders any "threat" from religious minorities laughable. This is simply too extreme a measure to be taking if one were merely concerned with "equal rights" for the majority religion.

But then, it never was about ensuring equality for Christians, was it?

Once again, I urge you to oppose the Pledge Protection Act, H.R. 2389. This is an important issue and one I will be following.

Sincerely,

J. A. Baker

I would strongly suggest that others write to their Congresscritters, even if it won’t do any good. They have to know that they serve at the pleasure of their constituents, and will be voted out if they don’t listen.

Well, I guess we shouldn’t be surpised at the manufactured outrage of the brownshirts in charge. Their arguments, when they bother to make them at all, consist of two main fronts:

1. The terrorists are too stupid to realize that the federal government is rifling through their financial records without help from the New York Times.

2. The "Bush-hating" New York Times is committing treason by revealing this information. (A corollary to this is that the NYT is the only paper so blinded by Bush Derangement Syndrome as to do this. Sadly, No!)

Here in Austin, we’ve got a wingnut regular in the Letters to the Editor section of the local fishwrap: one Rev. James A. Andrews. Usually, he limits himself to the usual wingnut theocrat masturbatory sessions (OMG! T3h g4ys R cumming to rape UR kidzz and give them t3h g4y!!!!1!!! OMG! Chixx0rz get to control their bodies?! NOOOOOOOO!!!!!111!!!11!). This time, however, he’s channeling Adam Yoshida’s Glennocidal Tendencies and calling for the nuking of not just North Korea, but Iran, as well. Check it out:

Just detonate some nukes

I tend to go ballistic when I hear a politician or media commentator use the phrase, "put it on the table."

Huh? Great…already he’s diving into Pastor Swank territory with that, er, rather unusual phrasing. Well, at least he’s not giving voice to creepy homoerotic fantasies the way the Swankster tends to do.

The latest craziness is the battle between North Korea and Iran to see how much the United States and the rest of the world will "put on the table" to get them to restrict their nuclear and rocketry madness.

Paging Rev. Andrews, Pastor Swank just called. He’d like his plans for rewriting the English language back. Seriously. I think the phrase you’re looking for is "take off the table." We’re taking options off the table. Now I’m sure that Bush and the rest of the right-wingers would love to put the Nookyular Option (and only the Nookyular Option) on the table, but the rest of us (the sane ones) are trying to take it OFF the table.

I have a simple solution to their dilemma: Using the Russian and our stockpiles of nukes, simply strategically place an assortment of these arm-twisters in a variety of locations in each country and, without warning, detonate them.

Holy schnikes. He just did Adam Yoshida one better. Not only does he think we should nuke Iran and North Korea, but he thinks the we should steal a page from al-Qaeda’s playbook and do it terrorist-style! Can you possibly get more nutty than that? Bonus: he thinks we can get the Russians to go along with this crazy scheme!

Then, having received their attention, we could get on with the disarmament plans.

Oh, we’ll get their attention alright. Just not in the way you’re expecting hoping:

On second thought, that may have been your plan all along - provoke the terrorists into nuking one of our cities. Since the primary target would likely be New York, Chicago, D.C., or some other large city heavily populated by "libruls," you’d probably roll on the floor laughing your @$$ off for about an hour or so before breaking out the pitchforks and torches.

See, it’s not all that big of a problem, and it will serve to reduce further the world’s abundance of WMDs.

Ummm…actually, it is that big of a problem, Mr. The Only Way to Get Rid of Nukes is to Use Them.

In less than 24 hours, the Senate will vote on the Communications, Consumers’ Choice and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 which, if passed as is, would utterly destroy the concept of network neutrality - the idea that no one site on the web should have priority over others in terms of access speed. This has been the guiding principle of the Internet from the very beginning, and has helped fuel the rapid growth of the economy in the 1990s, not to mention allow the very existence of blogs, YouTube, etc. To destroy this is to destroy the very democratic nature that the Net thrives on. And yet, that is what the big Telecom companies like AT&T (the same AT&T, by the way, which has been helping the government spy on average Americans) would like to do.

Oh, sure, Net Neutrality opponents will couch it in the favorite terms of the Free Market Fundamentalists - the competition of free markets is the only answer to EVERY problem, t3h B1g Gubmint is t3h 3v1l!!!!!!1!!11!!, etc. They’ve even gone so far as to create Astroturf™ organizations whose sole purpose is to spread these poisionous lies about network neutrality.

Fortunately, these excuses don’t fly - even among some conservatives.  For instance, the right-wing blog L’Ombre de l’Olivier has a stellar demolition of the anti-net neutrality forces’ chief arguments here. It’s worth it to read the whole thing, but here’s the money shot:

So, given that adding prioritization is not a cost-free exercise why are the telcos so keen to prioritize rather than throw bandwidth at the problem? Its obvious isn’t it? they figure they can make more money by charging a premium for access to an artificially starved network. Its like a post office that deliberately throws away 10% of second class mail so that it can charge a premium for "guaranteed delivery" first class mail. If you wonder why people are salivating at WiMAX and 1001 other wireless alphabet soups this would be why. The telcos have got themselves a near monopoly on bandwidth and they would like to reap what monoploly profits they can from their monopoly.

But that’s not all.  This is most definitely a bipartisan issue - it’s not about being a liberal or a conservative, it’s about being a concerned American citizen.  And indeed, organizations on both the left and the right are lining up against this travesty.  Over on the Huffington Post, Eli Pariser notes:

Telecom companies also like to paper Congress with propaganda implying that Internet freedom is somehow a left-wing issue. Tell that to the Christian Coalition, Gun Owners of America, Instapundit, the business executives, and the many libertarians who are fighting right along with MoveOn, the inventors of the Internet, thousands of bloggers, and the SavetheInternet.com Coalition in support of Net Neutrality.

As Craig Fields of the Gun Owners says, when the left and right agree on an issue like Internet freedom, "it’s been my experience that what Congress is getting ready to do is basically un-American." On the proposal to destroy Net Neutrality, most Americans would probably agree.

Hell, Google thought this issue was important enough that it chose it as its very first lobbying campaign.  If the premiere search engine on the net is this worried about the future of the engine of its prosperity, then maybe the rest of us need to take notice.

And it goes beyond even the flawed arguments against network neutrality.  If Net Neutrality goes down in flames, it allows the Telecoms to set up a system that has been charitably described as "toll booths."  In reality, it would serve more like a "protection" racket. (Say, that’s a nice website.  It would be a shame if nobody were allowed to access it…) And with nobody refereeing the Net to make sure everyone can access all web sites equally, it makes it easy for Telecoms to completely block access to any site they don’t like.  Considering the fact that nine of the top ten political donations from the telecommunications industry donated to Republicans, and that for the last decade, Telecoms have donated to Republicans over Democrats by a margin of as much as 2 to 1, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the first targets of such extortion would be liberal blogs and Democratic Congressmen and candidates.  It would certainly explain why the American Conservative Union and the "nonpartisan" Center for Individual Freedom are totally onboard for this sick joke.

So if you have free time in the next 8-12 hours, make sure you let your Senators know that you want them to keep the Internet in the hands of We The People, and vote in favor of Net Neutrality.  If they don’t care enough to save democracy on the Internet, and they’re up for re-election this time around, make sure you vote them out!

* In case you’re wondering, the title of this post comes from a line of dialogue in the Babylon 5 second-season episode "Revelations."

At least, that appears to be the message from The Most Holy George W. Christ’s Rubber-Stamp Congress.

SAN ANTONIO — Fort Sam Houston has received 1,300 utility service termination notices for delinquent bill payments, which officials blamed on a major budget shortfall.

CPS Energy warned commanders at the post to pay $4.2 million by Wednesday or risk losing power. The post is three months behind on its bills, but both Army and utility officials said the two parties were talking and no cutoff was imminent.

Once again, I must ask just WHO is "stabbing our troops in the back?" Oh wait, that’s right. In GOP Bizarro World, "supporting the troops" means "shutting the hell up."

Arsonists torch gay books in Chicago library, according to WBBM 780 in Chicago.

And yet, according to the usual suspects (I, II, III, IV, V), conservative "Christians" (yes, those are scare-quotes) meekly accept the things they rail against - it’s only the "evil" Muslims that commit violence against anyone and anything that they disagree with.