JABbering Stooge

Freedom for Me, but not for Thee

I must say that I am in shocked awe at the destructive capabilities of the thugs who have hijacked the Republican Party. It has taken them a mere pair of decades to do what no external military force could in all of America’s 229-year history – they have reduced our once firm democratic institutions to rubble and made a mockery of the American ideals of freedom and tolerance for differing opinions. I shall present a small sample of the continuing litany of crimes against democracy being perpetrated in your name below.

Today’s the big day. I want to encourage all readers to get out and vote. I encourage all to vote his/her conscience, but if you want my advice, here is how I would vote:

• California: Vote AGAINST any proposition supported by Gov. Schwarzenegger.

• Texas: Vote AGAINST Proposition 2.

• Maine: Vote AGAINST the referendum to repeal the state’s anti-discrimination legislation.

• New Jersey: Send Jon Corzine to the governor’s mansion.

• Virginia: Ditto for Tim Kaine.

• Ohio: Vote FOR the amendment to create a bipartisan commision to draw congressional districts and to oversee elections.

If all these things come to pass, we have a decent shot at taking back this country from the thugs who have hijacked it.

(See original post on the old blog here - originally posted Nov. 8, 2005 1:39 PM)

Last week, the student newspaper at Texas State included in its Wednesday issue an election guide discussing the statewide ballot initiatives and local elections that Texans will be voting on this Tuesday. The feature peace was a point-counterpoint on Proposition 2, complete with boxing-themed graphics. Though the newspaper’s website declined to post the debate, I have it archived in my personal web space (anti-Proposition 2, pro-Proposition 2). I would like to take this opportunity to rip the pro-Proposition 2 piece to shreds.

In any sane universe, a KKK endorsement would doom any political cause. But in the Bizarro World that is Texas, it can only help to bring out the GOP’s theofascist base in droves to vote for it - dollars to doughnuts they think the Klan’s endorsement of Proposition 2 is some nefarious "librul plot to allow the queers to recruit our kids into a Satanic lifestyle."

Fortunately, humor columnist John Kelso has just the antidote - reenact that scene from Braveheart where the Scots moon the English.

Incidentally, the web site that Kelso points readers to is here.

UPDATE (11/6/05): It seems that I was a bit prescient in my prediction that Prop. 2 supporters would see KKK support as a "librul plot." My brother, who hates all things liberal, said as much after watching last night’s news report on the KKK rally.

(See original post on the old blog here - originally posted Nov. 2, 2005 2:24 AM)

Someone must’ve finally gotten around to giving the co-dependent Democrats their long-needed spine injection. Invoking an arcane Senate rule, Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) forced the Senate into closed session to discuss the long-DeLayed Phase 2 report on Plamegate.

The upshot is that this throws Bush’s nomination of Scalito completely off the news cycle - sort of a procedural "f— you" to Bush for his return to a complete disregard for advise and consent in the wake of conservatives scuttling the Harriet Miers nomination (she wasn’t Nazi enough for them).

Needless to say, the Republicans were not happy that the Democrats dared to do something other than shut up and meekly take their daily @$$-reaming. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) spent his face time lying about the progress (or lack thereof) of the report.

But Bill Frist (R-Insider Trading) takes the cake with his comments:

Since I’ve been majority leader, I have to say, not with the previous Democratic leader or the current Democratic leader, have I ever been slapped in the face with such an affront to the leadership of this grand institution.

Yeah, how dare those evil, terrorist, spawn-of-Satan Democrats actually stand up for a change? How dare they place national security above petty partisan politics?

For the next year and a half I can’t trust Sen. Reid.

Guess what, Cat Killer - none of the grassroots level Dems EVER trusted you from the get-go.

The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership.

Oh, quit whining. I assmue you know how to abuse the Senate rules better than Sen. Reid allegedly does. You could’ve easily spiked the closed session by illegally declaring any and all statements that do not verbally fellate Commander Codpiece irrelevant and abruptly resume normal Senate operations. I mean, it’s not like the Republicans have abused power in that fashion before, right?

They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas.

Yeah, and they’re a bunch of poopy-heads, too! >_<x

(See original post on the old blog here - originally posted Nov. 2, 2005 1:42 AM)

Bill O’Reilly’s really been on a Gestapo kick of late:

From the October 28 broadcast of Westwood One’s The Radio Factor with Bill O’Reilly:

CALLER: Bill, this is the time of war. She [Plame] was a WMD analyst. She wasn’t monitoring troop movements in India or something like that. She was working on this country’s most pressing concern. This is an important issue, and I got one point about the media. If you want true, no-spin facts about this case, you can’t do better than mediamatters.com.

O’REILLY: Ah! All right. Anyway, we get another nut on the air. That’s the worst part of doing this. Ninety percent of the callers are good, and then you get nuts. Now, we should go to their house. We should all go because I can get their addresses when they call in. We can trace them back, and we should all go over and surprise them.

From the June 20 broadcast of Westwood One’s The Radio Factor with Bill O’Reilly:

O’REILLY: And when he [Durbin] went out there, his intent was to whip up the American public against the Bush detainee policy. That’s what his intent was. His intent wasn’t to undermine the war effort, because he never even thought about it. He never even thought about it. But by not thinking about it, he made an egregious mistake because you must know the difference between dissent from the Iraq war and the war on terror and undermining it. And any American that undermines that war, with our soldiers in the field, or undermines the war on terror, with 3,000 dead on 9-11, is a traitor.

Everybody got it? Dissent, fine; undermining, you’re a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they’re undermining everything and they don’t care, couldn’t care less.

And then there’s O’Reilly’s penchant for cutting off, shouting down, belittling and bullying any guest who so much as gives voice to any opinion he doesn’t like (which is basically anyone who disagrees with him in the slightest).

(See original post on the old blog here - originally posted Nov. 1, 2005 4:19 AM)

Noted plagiarist Ann Coulter is at it again. Appearing on the October 27 edition of The Big Story with John Gibson, Coulter dropped this nugget of wisdom:

COULTER: I think that is not going to inure to the Democrats’ benefit, to be having this obviously political prosecution of a political enemy. No, that just shows them to be the fascists that they are.

Compare and contrast with this little-known Coulterism:

"My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that’s because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism." - MSNBC February 8, 1997

Hypocrisy, thy name is Ann Coulter!

(See original post on the old blog here - originally posted Nov. 1, 2005 4:00 AM)

MSRNC has a partial transcript of Rita Cosby giving Tom DeLay air time to give voice to his paranoid delusions of persecution.

Accompanying the partial transcript is the following picture:

Tell me that isn’t JeffyLube in the right foreground.

(See original post on the old blog here - originally posted Oct. 22, 2005 9:50 AM)

Saturday made me proud to be a Carnegie Mellon alumnus. In case you’re wondering, the second running of the DARPA Grand Challenge was run this past Saturday. The goal of the challenge is do design an autonomous vehicle to traverse an under-300 mile, off-road course in the Mojave Desert in under 10 hours.

Last year none of the entries was able to complete the 150-mile course. The vehicle that travelled the farthest was known as "Sandstorm," created by a team from Carnegie Mellon.

This year, the race was shortened to 132 miles and the prize money doubled to $2 million. Four contestants were able to finish in the time allotted: Stanford University’s "Stanley" (First Place - 6 hours 53 minutes, effective speed 19.1 mph), Carnegie Mellon’s "Sandstorm" (The same one that went the farthest of all entries last year, Second Place - 7 hours 5 minutes, effective speed 18.6 mph) and "H1ghlander" (Yes, that’s an attempt at l33t, Third Place - 7 hours 14 minutes, effective speed 18.2 mph) and The Gray Team’s "Kat-5" (Fourth Place - 7 hours 30 minutes, effective speed 17.5 mph).

Interestingly enough, CMU’s coverage of the event notes that the Standford Racing Team was lead by two Carnegie Mellon luminaries - Professor Sebastian Thrun and Dr. Mike Montemerlo, who earned his doctorate at CMU. So technically, CMU or someone related to CMU took the top three positions at the event.

But more importantly than institutional accolades is the fact that the success of this challenge brings an automated highway system that much closer to reality.

(See original post on the old blog here - originally posted Oct. 10, 2005 2:06 PM)

A couple of examples of recent stories about how the right wing is flushing freedom down the toilet for your perusal.

Albertsons to customers: You’re too stupid to decide for yourself what magazine content is appropriate.

Acting on orders from the Religious Reich, or perhaps worried about losing the fundamentalist dollar for not having Bible displays every five feet, the Albertsons chain of grocery stores has pulled the October issue of Seventeen from its shelves because…wait for it…an article tried to teach young girls the basics of keeping their nether regions healthy!