Remember To Shave

Well, I guess there isn't much you can do but joke about it when you are targeted by animal rights groups and depicted by a man in drag. I'm sure this PETA spoof is the least of Star's concerns or worries.

"If you're Star Jones Reynolds, beware on April Fool's day. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals will target the co-host of 'The View' with a parody of Jones Reynolds, to be unveiled outside the ABC studio on Friday.

PETA will display a new 'Fur is a Drag' ad featuring 6-foot-tall cross-dresser Flotilla DeBarge dressed in a large white wedding gown and a white fur coat splashed with blood.

'As long as no laws are broken, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,' Jones Reynolds said in a statement Thursday to The Associated Press. 'I hope his hair and makeup look fabulous and he remembers to shave.'

PETA has listed Jones Reynolds four times on its annual 'worst dressed' list, citing her fondness for fur."

... and you know she is not going to stop wearing furs!

Pantalones En El Fuego

... or something like that! It is bad enough that the Bush camp is going around telling blacks that they are getting gyp'ed by social security because they die earlier than whites, but his lie to the hispanic population is just flaming!

Blacks aren't the only Americans whose shorter life expectancies (compared with whites) are being used by the Bush administration to promote Social Security reform. The White House is claiming that Latinos should support changes to the system because they collect Social Security for fewer years, on average, than whites do. There are several problems with that line of thinking, but the biggest one, according to Slate political correspondent William Saletan, is this: It's a lie. A U.S. Census Bureau report shows that Latinos outlive whites by an average of three years, he noted last week. So has the administration changed its strategy since Saletan pointed out the error? Yes. "The White House no longer obliquely implies that Latinos die younger than whites do," Saletan reports. "It now repeats that falsehood explicitly."

At one of those infamous "town hall" meetings held this week in Nevada, Vice President Dick Cheney declared, "Life expectancy, for example, among African Americans and Hispanics is less than it is for others. They get a worse return, if you will, out of Social Security than others because they don't live long enough to draw the benefits that was equal what they've paid into the system over time. So it is an important consideration."

And the press has done little to debunk the myth, Haletan says. A story appearing this week in The Wall Street Journal reported, "For African-Americans ... [Republicans] argue that personal accounts offer a better deal; blacks' shorter life expectancy, the argument goes, means they collect traditional Social Security benefits for a shorter period and thus would help their families more with personal accounts they could leave to heirs. They argue that Hispanics would benefit for the same reason."

No Culture Of Life In Iraq

So now we are starving the children of Iraq and they are worse off than they were under Sadaam.

"Acute malnutrition among Iraqi children aged under five nearly doubled last year because of chaos caused by the US-led occupation, a United Nations expert said yesterday.

Jean Ziegler, the UN Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food, said more than a quarter of Iraqi children do not have enough to eat and 7.7% are acutely malnourished - a jump from 4% recorded in the immediate aftermath of the US-led invasion.

Reporting to the commission's headquarters in Geneva, the Swiss professor claimed the situation was 'a result of the war led by coalition forces'.

If confirmed, the estimates would be an indictment of an occupation which was supposed to improve the lives of a population crushed by Saddam Hussein."

She Lies Like A Rug!

I think it takes big balls to shake someone's hand and lie directly to their face. But, I guess after watching Condoleezza Rice during the 9/11 hearings as well as her confirmation hearings, I already knew what she was made of.

March 16, 2005
"Secretary of State Rice says she discussed the potential sale of F-16 fighter-jets to Pakistan with Indian officials, who have long opposed the plan. She also talked about selling the jets to India.

But Ms. Rice said at news conference Wednesday in New Delhi it is too soon to expect any deals to be signed with either country.

'We are going to continue to have broad discussions about the security needs, about the defense needs of India. I'm quite certain that when I go to Pakistan that I will have discussions about the defense concerns and the defense needs of Pakistan,' said Ms. Rice. 'But there has been no such agreement, and as I've said to you, I don't expect that there are going to be any announcements out of this.'"

Nine days later ...

March 25, 2005
The United States has agreed to sell about two dozen sophisticated F-16 fighter planes to Pakistan, a diplomatically sensitive move that rewards Pakistan for its help in fighting the war on terror, but has angered next-door rival India.

President Bush (news - web sites), who is spending holiday time at his Texas ranch, spoke on the phone Friday with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who told Bush of his "great disappointment" over the decision, Sanjaya Baru, the prime minister's spokesman said.

Singh said that sales to Pakistan would endanger security in the region, Baru said. New Delhi is worried that arming Pakistan with the advanced jet fighters would tilt the military balance in South Asia and could adversely affect the ongoing peace dialogue between India and Pakistan.

Lying heffa! I know your mamma raised you better than that!

Rapists For Schiavo!

So a repentant rapist is now on a mission that includes prohibiting women from a save and legal abortion. Gee, That means that if his victim ended up pregnant, she's have no choice but to produce his spawn. Seems like he still has issues and the need to dominate women.

As protests outside the hospice housing Terri Schiavo in her final days mounted last week, numerous newspaper reports, many based on an Associated Press account, mentioned or quoted 10-year-old Joshua Heldreth and/or his father, Scott Heldreth. Josh was one of several youngsters arrested for crossing police lines in Pinellas Park, Fla., in an effort to take water to Schiavo.

None of the stories revealed that Scott Heldreth, a religious activist and anti-abortion crusader, is a registered sex offender in Florida-- until The Charlotte Observer mentioned it on Sunday.

A widely published AP story on Sunday by Allen G. Breen had painted a warmer picture of the Heldreths, noting that it was young Josh who insisted that his father take him to the protests from their home in North Carolina, not the other way around. “God’s with me,” Josh said.

The article continued: “Scott Heldreth, a veteran of the Operation Rescue and Operation Save America campaigns against abortion, didn't intend to join this fight, until his son asked to be brought to Pinellas Park. ‘My wife and I, we felt like if God really put it on his heart, we should come down, to allow him to live out what God had put on his heart,’ says Heldreth, a carpenter.”

They say the greater the sinner, the greater the saint. I'd love to know what kinds of other things are in the backgrounds of those in the religious right.

Attack Of The Smart People

Help me out here folks! What, exactly, does this imply about the intellect of "Christians"?

'Christians are a lot more bold under Bush's leadership, he speaks what a lot of us believe,' said Mummert.

'We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture,' he said, adding that the school board's declaration is just a first step.

I went to parochial schools through college. I learned about evolution and learned the biblical accounts of creation . Sorry, I think that people who are so concerned about their children receiving religious instruction need to fork up the bucks to pay for them to attend a Christian school - and even then they'd better check the curriculum because my Catholic education came from "the intelligent, educated segment of the culture."

Even More Rocket Science

Geeeeees! Who knew?:

"Women are not only more different from men than we knew. Women are more different from each other than we knew -- creatures of 'infinite variety,' as Shakespeare wrote.

'We poor men only have 45 chromosomes to do our work with because our 46th is the pathetic Y that has only a few genes which operate below the waist and above the knees,' Willard observed.

'In contrast, we now know that women have the full 46 chromosomes that they're getting work from and the 46th is a second X that is working at levels greater than we knew.'

[...]

The researchers learned that a whopping 15 percent -- 200 to 300 -- of the genes on the second X chromosome in women, thought to be submissive and inert, lolling about on an evolutionary Victorian fainting couch, are active, giving women a significant increase in gene expression over men.

As The New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade, who is writing a book about human evolution and genetics, explained it to me: 'Women are mosaics, one could even say chimeras, in the sense that they are made up of two different kinds of cell. Whereas men are pure and uncomplicated, being made of just a single kind of cell throughout.'"

Socrates Is Dead ... Again

Filed under "Is Our Children Learning," I cannot believe this:

According to a legislative staff analysis of the bill, the law would give students who think their beliefs are not being respected legal standing to sue professors and universities.

Students who believe their professor is singling them out for "public ridicule" – for instance, when professors use the Socratic method to force students to explain their theories in class – would also be given the right to sue.

"Some professors say, 'Evolution is a fact. I don’t want to hear about Intelligent Design (a creationist theory), and if you don’t like it, there’s the door,'" Baxley said, citing one example when he thought a student should sue.

Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, warned of lawsuits from students enrolled in Holocaust history courses who believe the Holocaust never happened.

Similar suits could be filed by students who don’t believe astronauts landed on the moon, who believe teaching birth control is a sin or even by Shands medical students who refuse to perform blood transfusions and believe prayer is the only way to heal the body, Gelber added.

Well, students during my undergrad years would have been suing for days. Those Jesuit priests were quick to whip your tail with a little socratic dialogue to help you sound out your questions and arguments. I recall my roommate coming from a Theology class one afternoon totally stoked by what she'd witnessed. Apparently, another student (whom she happened to know as a rich girl from her home town) made some snooty remark about seeing a woman in the local bakery purchasing a birthday cake with food stamps. The professor/priest promptly questioned her as to whether she believed that poor people deserved to have birthday cakes too. Yes, the girl was red-faced and miffed. But had she ever thought that, just perhaps, even poor people deserve to have a happy birthday - even if it meant buying a cake with government supplied food stamps?

I hardly think that exchange was about a liberal professor trying to insult or berate this student because she'd expressed her gut response. I'm sure her belief was that if you are poor, you should be buying food with her tax dollars. Part of learning should mean growing to say "Gee, I never thought of it like that before." I submit, then, that part of learning is learning to THINK! If a professor can no longer question a student who is there to learn, why is the student even there? I think this is more about some conservatives not wanting students to ever open their minds, learn to think or have opinions that deviate from the narrow views they were raised with. For that, someone ought to be sued.

Killing The Lamb Of God

Regardless of what George W. Bush's true faith is, he allowed Karl Rove to turn it into a campaign tool to appeal to a block of voters who felt they'd been marginalized by our separated church and state. He talks the talk like a pro yet his non-Christian policies make him no more than a charlatan. The Christian right gets lip service about gay marriage, abortion and prayer in schools yet seem to be blind to the fact that the very things that Christ would not do are being carried out in plain sight by their devout Commander in Chief.

As we enter another Easter Season, it's become all too obvious that if Christ returns, those who hate in his name will slime him, then kill him.

Christ was a long-haired peace activist who would have been sickened to his soul by the war in Iraq. "Blessed are the peacemakers" Jesus said in his defining Sermon on the Mount. "Turn the other cheek...Love thy neighbor."

Such hippie-radical ideals are the "Christian" right wing's worst nightmare. The GOP would never tolerate an upstart like Jesus gathering a following in the face of their corporate-fundamentalist crusade. These are self-proclaimed Christians who love power but would despise the actual Christ, just as they love a Zionist Israel but believe actual Jews are doomed to Hell.

In the wake of Jesus's inspiring life of non-violent rebellion, a perverse liturgy weighted by twenty centuries of intolerant bloodthirsty bigotry has erupted in his name. Attacks on people of color, on nations with oil, on humans of the same gender who love each other, on youth who enjoy sex….all have become staples of a new fundamentalist crusade doing in Christ's name things that would have left him horrified.

In large part through the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus came to be viewed as Divine because he spoke eloquently for a gracious, loving God.

Karl Rove, Tom DeLay, George Bush and their corporate-fundamentalist minions speak to and for a very different kind of God, one at war with the Deity described by Christ.

Bush-Rove's Master is a spiteful dictator, defined by hate and greed, intolerance and hypocrisy.

Christ kicked the moneychangers out of the temple. Today's Republicans have enshrined them.

Christ spoke of a God of compassion and joy.

Today's "religious" right wingers worship Meanness of Spirit, a greed-driven war-loving totalitarianism. The only way to salvation, they say is THEIR way, through a nature-hating Authority that tramples all Jesus preached.

If That Don't Do

... Then they'll try something new. If all else fails, try to manipulate young people with notions of patriotism - even if it means appealing to the parents to steer their loved ones into enlisting. Then call up folks who've already done their time. What is it these kooks don't get? Getting killed in Iraq doesn't sound like a good 'career' option to most.

"The Army is forecasting that all three elements - active, Guard and Reserve - will fall short of their targets for March and April. That means they will have to make up the lost ground this summer - traditionally the best recruiting season - in order to meet their full-year goals.

'I'm clearly not going to give up,' Harvey said. 'At this stage we still have six months to go' before the recruiting year ends Sept. 30. 'I've challenged our human resource people to get as innovative as they can. And even as we speak we've got a number of new ideas.'

One of those new approaches is designed to persuade more parents to steer their children to the Army.

'We're going to appeal to patriotism,' he said.

That might be done through a new advertising campaign, he said. He also is encouraging more members of Congress as well as senior Army leaders and Army boosters to spend time in local communities touting the benefits of military service.

The Army also has increased the number of recruiters on the street by 33 percent and is offering bigger signup bonuses. Last week the Army announced that the National Guard and Reserve were raising the maximum age for recruits from 34 to 39 in order to expand the pool of potential enlistees. The regular Army could not raise the maximum age without congressional approval.

In a related matter, the Army said more people in the Individual Ready Reserve - those no longer in uniform and not obligated to train - are going to be hearing from the Army in the weeks ahead. The Army has revised upward the number of IRR soldiers it plans to put on active duty, from the 4,402 announced last summer to 4,653. Of those given mobilization orders so far, 370 have failed to report for duty, according to Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, an Army spokeswoman. An additional 2,229 have asked for delays in their reporting dates or for exemptions."

Counting the months until the draft is reinstated ...

No Longer Shocked Or Awed

I look forward to reading this blog - even if the posts are generally a depressing view of what it is like to live in Iraq as an Iraqi citizen. We can listen to the dribble about how we're building schools and hospitals (as we should since we blew them up - some favor!). Just as Bushco was doing the Sunday talk show circuit to tell everyone, once again, that we'd done the right thing by invading a sovereign nation two years ago, Iraqis noted the occupation milestone as well.

A seemingly endless 40 minutes later, there was a slight lull in the bombing- it seemed to have gotten further away. I took advantage of the relative calm and went to find the telephone. The house was cold because the windows were open to keep them from shattering. I reached for the telephone, fully expecting to find it dead but I was amazed to find a dial tone. I began dialing numbers- friends and relatives. We contacted an aunt and an uncle in other parts of Baghdad and the voices on the other end were shaky and wary. Are you OK? Is everyone OK? Was all I could ask on the phone. They were ok but the bombing was heavy all over Baghdad. Shock and awe had begun.

Two years ago this week.

What followed was almost a month of heavy bombing. That chaotic night became the intro to endless chaotic days and long, sleepless nights. You get to a point during extended air-raids where you lose track of the days. You lose track of time. The week stops being Friday, Saturday, Sunday, etc. The days stop being about hours. You begin to measure time with the number of bombs that fell, the number of minutes the terror lasted and the number of times you wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of gunfire and explosions.

We try to put it out of our heads, but it comes back anyway. We sit around sometimes, when there's no electricity, or when were gathered for lunch or dinner and someone will say, Remember two years ago when ... Remember when they bombed Mansur, a residential area When they started burning the cars in the streets with Apaches when they hit the airport with that bomb that lit up half of the city when the American tanks started rolling into Baghdad?

Remember when the fear was still fresh- and the terror was relatively new- and it was possible to be shocked and awed in Iraq?

Hijacking The Iraqi Vote

I heard this story of votes being hijacked last week on Flashpoint - a program on Pacifica radio in Northern California. I was waiting to see how long it would take to hit the alternate media. I just don't know how to present things like this without seeming totally cynical. But we don't really want democracy in Iraq any more than previous conquerors did. We want a place to secure our oil interests but democracy may mean an Islamic theocracy that violates our plan. Given our own election hijinks in America, I'm hardly surpised that we've taken our voter supression routine on the road.

The interim Iraqi constitution was dead on arrival. The Bush administration just hasn't accepted this fact. It had no chance of survival had the Shi'a won an outright majority of the vote in the Iraqi election. 'If it [i.e., the percentage of Shi'a votes] had been higher, the [Shi'a] slate would be seen with a lot more trepidation,' a senior U.S. State Department official said, once the official Iraqi election results were announced on Feb. 14. The problem is, there is good reason to believe that the percentage of votes for the Shi'a was higher much higher. Well-placed sources in Iraq who were in a position to know have told me that the actual Shi'a vote was 56 percent. American intervention, in the form of a 'secret vote count' conducted behind closed doors and away from public scrutiny, produced the Feb. 14 result.

The lowering of the Shi'a vote re-engineered the post-election political landscape in Iraq dramatically. The goal of the U.S., in doing this, is either to guarantee the adoption of the U.S.-drafted interim constitution, or make sure that there are not enough votes to adopt any Shi'a re-write. If the U.S.-drafted Iraqi constitution prevails, the Bush administration would be comfortable with the secular nature of any Iraqi government it produces. If it fails, then the Bush administration would much rather continue to occupy Iraq under the current U.S.-written laws, than allow for the creation of a pro-Iranian theocracy. In any event, the Shi'a stand to lose.

Whether this re-engineering will succeed in the long run has yet to be seen. What is clear, however, is that many senior Shi'a know the real results that occurred on Jan. 30, and will not walk away from what they believe is their rightful destiny when it comes to governing of Iraq: a Shi'a controlled state, operating in accordance with Shar'ia law.

The post-election 'cooking' of the results in Iraq all but guarantees that the Shi'a of Iraq will rally together to secure that which they believe is rightfully theirs. This journey of 'historical self-realization' may very well ignite the kind of violent backlash among the Shi'a majority in Iraq that the U.S. has avoided to date. It could also complicate whatever strategies the Bush administration may be trying to implement regarding Iraq's neighbor to the east, Iran. But in any case, the American 'cooking' of the Iraqi election is, in the end, a defeat for democracy and the potential of democracy to effect real and meaningful change in the Middle East. The sad fact is that it is not so much that the people of the Middle East are incapable of democracy, but rather the United States is incapable of allowing genuine democracy to exist in the Middle East.

He's Fristin' Kidding Me!

In addition to the hypocrisy of Bush's 1999 Futile Care Law vs. his current, and politically expedient, "culture" of life, it seems that Senate Majority Leader, and culture of life trumpeteer, also has some inconsistent pre-Rove views on life and death. How he can be pro-life and for baby killing at the same time?

"Frist wrote a book in 1989 called Transplant where he advocated changing the definition of 'brain dead' to include anencephalic babies. Anencephalic babies are in the same state as Terri Schiavo except that she suffered a physical trauma that put her into a vegetative state while the anencephalic babies are born that way.

This remarkable discovery buttresses the argument that Frist's advocacy for Schiavo is wholly political. How does he explain this remarkable inconsistency? Here is the relevant passage on Frist as quoted by the New Republic in 2003:

'And, although Frist writes frequently about the ethical issues surrounding transplants--for example, the question of when death begins--he approaches these issues in starkly scientific terms, with little patience for religious objections.

'Near the end of the book, for example, Frist suggests changing the legal definition of 'brain death' to include anencephalic babies, who are born with a fatal neurological disorder but show just the slightest hint of brain-stem activity. Such a change would make it possible to harvest their organs for transplant--something the Catholic Church and pro-life groups oppose. 'Three thousand anencephalic babies were born a year, enough to solve our demand many times over--but we never used them.'' [The New Republic, 1/27/03]

It would seem to me that even an anencephalic baby would have a soul and therefore be entitled to the same options for life that other babies have - even if expectancy isn't very long. A natural death might mean that the organs cannot be suitable for harvesting and transplants but how can a pro-life doctor even suggest using these babies using these babies as spare part repositories?

With parental approval, I might not have a problem with a baby, who has no chance, giving the gift of life to multiple people. But Bill Frist definitely should.

Still Stuck

I just don't get why Bush's evangelical supporters aren't in uproar over the Texas Futile Care Law. Why is it that they can rally behind the one woman who is about to be starved to death and not the many who have been and will be.

One option is to simply put forth incontrovertible facts – say, by including in each story quoting a Republican lawmaker, the fact that a one-page GOP memo leaked last week called the Schiavo case "a great political issue" that would appeal to the party's base and potentially result in the defeat of Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida.

That's not to say that there are not genuine values at stake for congressional Republicans, many of whom truly believe that removing Schiavo's feeding tube would be a moral wrong. If their actions are cynical, they aren't completely so, and reporters would be doing a disservice by suggesting as much – just as they would be by ignoring the memo all together.

There is one bit of context, however, that seems particularly salient, and it involves a six-month old boy named Sun Hudson. On Thursday, Hudson died after a Texas hospital removed his feeding tube, despite his mother's pleas. He had a fatal congenital disease, but would have been kept alive had his mother been able to pay for his medical costs, or had she found another institution willing to take him. In a related Texas case, Spiro Nikolouzos, who is unable to speak and must be fed through a tube because of a shunt in his brain – but who his wife says can recognize family members and show emotion – may soon be removed from life support because health care providers believe his case is futile.

The Hudson and Nikolous cases fall under the Texas Futile Care Law, which was signed into law by then-governor George W. Bush.

Bush, however, flew from Texas to Washington early this week to sign legislation authorizing federal courts to review Schiavo's case. The president felt that the Florida courts, which had reviewed the case several times over the past seven years, had failed in their duty: "In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life."

When Is Adultery Not Adultery?

I am not sure if it is his appearance or his message that sometimes irritates me more but in many ways I agree with Shmuley Boteach on the Schiavo dilemma. I don't care if Mrs. Schiavo is a vegetable or lost at sea, Mr. Schiavo is still married and living and breeding children with his common law wife just bugs me. I am far from being an evangelical, a devout Catholic or in any way close to agreeing with the religious right on anything. But I just don't see why this man is so bound and determined to stay married to a woman when he has obviously moved on. Mind you, I wouldn't have had a problem if he, who was still young at the time of Terri's collapse, had just told her parents: "I need to divorce your daughter and start a new life." No one would have blamed him. They were obviously willing to take care of their daughter. But somehow, parties on both sides seem to have dropped into a permanent impasse and power struggle. I don't even think it is about Terri as much as it is about both sides wanting to be right and win.

Also, I question how harshly a woman - if her husband were in the same condition - would be viewed if she'd taken up house with and had children by another man. I suspect she'd be labeled, among other scurrilous things, a scarlet woman and the courts would probably not have a problem granting custody to his parents since his wife and presumed caretaker had moved on with another life. And yes, I think had Christopher Reeve's wife decided to bail on him, there would be public outcry to the high heavens.

Good thing for all of us that Christopher Reeve was not married to someone like Michael Schiavo. His wife Terri made a casual comment to him, or so he claims, that should she ever be reduced to a severely disabled state, she would want to die. Schiavo has certainly devoted himself to fulfilling her request.

Unlike the Reeves, in this particular exchange between wife and husband there was apparently never an attempt to encourage Terri to embrace life. Michael Schiavo could easily have said, "Honey, however you are, I will always love you. So get such silly ideas out of your head." Instead, he promised his wife that, should she become mentally incapacitated, he would move heaven and earth to have her die. And they say that there are no good husbands left in America.

I recognize that there is a difference between physical paralysis and mental incapacity, and that in this sense the Reeve and Schiavo stories differ. But the central similarity is that both involve one spouse revealing to the other the wish to die if he or she became mentally or physically incapacitated. In the Reeve case, a wife sees it as her obligation to inspire her husband to choose life. In the Schiavo case, the husband makes not even a limited effort to dissuade his wife from her death wish, although she is speaking with him as a young person in her early twenties.

Moreover, are physical paralysis and mental incapacity really that different? To a man like Christopher Reeve, who led an extremely active life, being confined to a wheelchair was the worst thing that could happen. And yet his wife told him he had not changed, that there was something inside him that could never be broken. His quintessence had not been affected by the fall.

The same is true for the mentally handicapped. Doesn't a parent love his child even if the child is born with the most severe mental infirmity? Can't a man remain devoted to his wife if she loses her mental faculties? We see this kind of devotion in spouses of Alzheimer's patients all the time. Clearly, Michael Schiavo does not share this perspective. Whatever he once saw in his wife was lost as soon as she suffered severe brain damage.

America has never quite witnessed a husband like Michael Schiavo - a man who is prepared to take on the might of the United States government to ensure that his wife ends up six feet under. And who could fault him? After all, a promise is a promise unless, of course, it's a promise of fidelity in marriage.

Sprung!

These folks are coming totally unhinged. Now they want Gov. Bush order police action to have Terri Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted. As disheartened as I am that this woman will be starved and dehydrated to death, currently our laws say that her husband has the last say on her fate. That's that! If that isn't that, there are thousands of other patients who will need saving too! What about them?

The "auxiliary precautions" of Florida government in this case the Florida supreme court have failed Terri Schiavo. It is time, therefore, for Governor Bush to execute the law and protect her rights, and, in turn, he should take responsibility for his actions. Using the state police powers, Governor Bush can order the feeding tube reinserted. His defense will be that he and a majority of the Florida legislature believe the Florida Constitution requires nothing less. Some will argue that Governor Bush will be violating the law. We think he will not be violating the law, but if he is judged to have done so, it will be in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., who answered to a higher law than a judge's opinion. In so doing, King showed respect for the man-made law by willingly going to jail (on a Good Friday); Governor Bush may have to face impeachment because of his decision.

In taking these extraordinary steps to save an innocent life, Governor Bush should be judged not by the opinion of the Florida supreme court, a co-equal branch of the Florida government, but by the opinions of his political superiors, the people of Florida. If they disagree with their governor, they are indeed free to act through their elected representatives and impeach him. Or they can vindicate him if they think he is right. But he should not be cowed into inaction he should not allow an innocent woman to be starved to death because of an opinion of a court he believes to be wrong and unconstitutional.

... And leave Dr. King out of this! He, for one, would be battling for a decent Medicaid budget and for the indigents that Bush wants to die - at the hospital's discretion - if they cannot pay for care.

Bush's Electric Slide

Let's see ... It is probably about time for another Osama tape or another attack on American soil. Bush is going to need something to get his approval ratings up because, despite his mantras to the public, his numbers are sliding fast.

As mentioned earlier, Congressional approval ratings have fallen since last month and are at their lowest point since 1997, and President Bush’s job approval ratings have also declined. 43 percent now approve of President Bush’s handling of his job as President; 48 percent disapprove.

36 percent approve of President Bush’s handling of the economy, and 53 percent disapprove. Bush’s approval rating on Iraq has also dropped; 39 percent approve, down from 45 percent in late February; 53 percent now disapprove.

No AK-47's For You!

I saw reference to this Rumsfeld quote on another site, the first thing that came to mind was "heck, we have more than 100,000 AK-47's on the streets here in the US." How stupid, then, is Rummy for even forming his mouth to ponder why Venezuela would want or be allowed to have the same weapons?

Is he freaking kidding?

"The Bush Administration very deliberately allowed the Federal assault weapons ban to expire last fall. Since the ban expired, it is quite likely that there are more than 100,000 new assault weapons like AK-47s in the United States.

In the past six weeks, such assault weapons have been used in horrible high-profile shootings in Dallas and Tyler, Texas; Los Angeles, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; Ulster, New York and Akron, Ohio. Six were killed and seven were wounded in the shootings.

Now, the U.S. is trying to prevent the government of Venezuela from importing 100,000 AK-47s, out of concerns the government of President Hugo Chavez plans to use the guns to quash political opposition.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking in Brazil yesterday, said 'I can't imagine what's going to happen to 100,000 AK-47s...I can't understand why Venezuela needs 100,000 AK-47s. I personally hope it doesn't happen. I can't imagine, if it did happen, it would be good for the hemisphere.'

'The Administration is right -- Venezuela shouldn't be allowed to flood its streets with military-style assault weapons,' said Michael Barnes, president of the Brady Campaign and a former member of Congress who was an authority on Latin American affairs. 'Only the United States should be allowed to flood its streets with military-style assault weapons.'"

I already think that our imperialistic attitude is waaaay past old and arrogant but this is positively comical! Common street hoods (some of them minors) can get access to assault weapons yet we want to question why a sovereign nation (one that is a top oil producer and sees the saliva running from our mouths over it) might want a few?

I'm dying here!!!

Kofi's Pre-emptive Reform

Kofi is taking action before "bull in a china shop" Bolton reports to his post as US Ambassador to the UN. Though many of the reforms seem to be a direct response to our pre-emptive actions in Iraq, his proactivity can be seen as a good thing.

If there is one thing on which both critics and supporters of the United Nations agree especially since the enormous row over the Iraq war it is that the world body is in need of reform. America and its allies were exasperated at the UN's failure to agree action against Saddam Hussein's regime. Opponents of the war were equally angry at the UN's failure to stop America from launching it. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, there was the revolting spectacle of Britain and France sucking up to Lansana Conté, the tinpot dictator of tiny Guinea, because the UN's rules had given him one of the Security Council's rotating seats. Earlier, there was the equally stomach-churning sight of the tyrannical Libyan regime getting a turn at chairing the UN's Commission on Human Rights. Then there was the gross embezzlement that has been uncovered in the UN's $70 billion oil-for-food programme in Iraq not to mention the UN's prolonged inaction while the mass slaughter has continued in Sudan's Darfur region.

Fearing that the UN was sliding into irrelevance, Kofi Annan, its secretary-general, set up an international panel, mainly of former heads of government and ministers, which late last year suggested sweeping reforms (see our profile of Mr Annan). On Monday March 21st, Mr Annan presented his recommendations for change, based on the panel's conclusions, to a gathering of the UN's 191-member General Assembly. He is calling for an expansion of the Security Council, so that it better reflects the global realities of today though he did not specify how the council's membership and veto rules should be changed. The Commission on Human Rights would, he proposes, be replaced by a smaller human-rights council, on which it would be harder for tyrants to get seats. To avoid repeats of past stalemates, the UN would agree a definition of terrorism, which would be incorporated in a new anti-terror treaty. It would also adopt clearer principles on when military force is justified.
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Don't Get Whiplash From The Backlash

At least some of these folks get it ... and have sense enough to speak out against their leader running roughshod over the principles of their party and over the United States constitution. I was wondering how long it would take for the real Republicans to go "whoa Nelly" and at least attempt to reign in this fool of a President who doesn't seem to have the basic principles of democratic government down. Unlike John McCain whom, I think is making a mistake by being one of Bush's point guards, these guys understand the body they were elected to and their responsibility to uphold the law.

'To simply say that the 'culture of life,' or whatever you call it means that we don't have to pay attention to the principles of federalism or separation of powers is certainly not a conservative viewpoint,' said former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga.

Allan Lichtman, who chairs the history department at American University in Washington, said the intervention of Congress and Bush to try to overturn the decision by Schiavo's husband not to prolong her life is the antithesis of several conservative principles.

'It contradicts a lot of what those behind it say they believe: the sanctity of the family, the sacred bond between husband and wife, the ability of all of us to make private decisions without the hand of government intervening, deference to states and localities as opposed to the centralized government,' said Lichtman.

Terri Schiavo suffered brain damage in 1990 when her heart stopped briefly. She can breathe on her own, but has relied on a feeding tube to keep her alive since.

The feeding tube was removed Friday under a Florida court order, but Congress passed a law Monday requiring a federal court review of the case in the hope that the judge hearing it would order the tube reinserted. U.S. District Court Judge James Whittemore of Tampa rejected the plea of Schiavo's parents to do that.

The case evolved into a cause for social 'right to life' conservatives who oppose abortion and euthanasia. Bush justified the action, saying the case was complex but that it was better to err on the side of life.

But Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia voted against the legislation, saying it goes against the conservative principles of federalism.

'That the misfortunes of life vested upon Theresa Marie Schiavo are a human tragedy, no one can deny. I said my prayers, as did many Americans, as we attended religious services this Palm Sunday,' he said. 'I believe it unwise for the Congress to take from the state of Florida its constitutional responsibility to resolve the issues in this case.'"

I am letting out the tiniest, most cautious sigh of relief that clearer heads are peeking out and, perhaps, will even prevail.

I Ain't One To Gossip

... so you didn't hear this from me. This is just frickin' wierd

BUSH'S BALDIES....I saw this picture over on Julie Saltman's site yesterday and found it....disturbing. I mean, I had heard that Bush had a thing for bald-headed people, but this went far beyond that. It seemed — what? Haunting? Evocative? Alarming?

I'm not sure. But I went back for another look today. I couldn't help myself. What the hell is he doing? So I googled and found a whole collection of pictures of Bush rubbing the heads of bald men, including the (apparently) original source of this picture. I don't know who took it, though, only that it was "submitted by Webster" on or about February 15th, and it seems to be the only one where Bush is laying down a full bore smooch, not just copping a quick feel.

... and speaking of copping a feel (or not), here is a Michael Jackson spoof.

Roses Really Smell Like Boo-Boo-oo

I have to admit, I was a little worried when pro-life, Harry Reid was selected to be the Minority Leader. But, so far I think he has been doing an excellent job of keeping his foot up the Republican's behinds. Him clarifying the partisan verbiage regarding personal or private accounts is just another example.

"What's in a name? Would a personal account by any other name smell as sweet?

Apparently not, according to strategists in the two political parties.

In the Social Security debate, one of the most ferocious struggles is over language, whether President Bush is proposing to create 'personal' or 'private' accounts in the program, whether he is really proposing the 'privatization' of Social Security.

Mr. Bush complained last week that ' 'privatization' is a trick word,' intended to 'scare people.' Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, interrupted a news conference to correct a reporter who asked about 'personal' accounts.

'It's 'privatization,' ' Mr. Reid said, adding that 'personal accounts' was 'the Republican term.'

The staff of the House Franking Commission, which regulates the political content of Congressional mail that goes out at taxpayer expense, has weighed in with advice on which versions of the word 'privatize' can be used to describe the president's plan. (The distinction revolves around the difference between 'full' and 'partial' privatization.)

This is not simply a semantic exercise. Real issues are at stake, the sides agree. Mr. Bush has proposed letting younger workers divert part of their payroll taxes into private (or personal) investment accounts.

Democrats say that amounts to a fundamental revision of the 70-year-old program, draining huge sums of money from it, reducing the government's role and exposing individuals to far more risk - in short, at least partly 'privatizing' it."

A rose by any other name may smell the same ... But, if roses really smell like ...

(HT Ezra Klein)

Harvard Not Giving Passes To Girls With Nice Asses?

Well, we know from all the hoopla about Condoleeza Rice's globe hopping wardrobe that clothes do leave quite an impression. But this woman claims her mode of dressing has cost her opportunities for advancement at Harvard.

"A Harvard University librarian claims in a lawsuit that she has been rejected repeatedly for promotion because she is black and is perceived as just a 'pretty girl' whose attire was too 'sexy.'

As a jury was chosen Monday to decide her federal lawsuit, Desiree Goodwin said she's been rejected for 16 jobs at Harvard since 1999, when she completed her master's degree in library science after attending night classes at Simmons College for 4 1/2 years.

Goodwin, 40, also has a master's degree in English literature, seven years of experience in the library of Boston College and another nine years as an assistant librarian at Harvard.

'I feel no matter how much education I achieved or how many contributions I made, there was nothing I could possibly do that would impress them so that they would open the door for me to allow me to advance,' Goodwin said during a court recess.

She said she was shocked when, in late 2001, her supervisor told her she would never be promoted at Harvard. In court documents, Goodwin said her supervisor told her she was 'a joke' at the university's main library, where she 'was seen merely as a pretty girl who wore sexy outfits, low cut blouses, and tight pants.'

She said after the conversation with her supervisor, she modified her appearance and wore more conservative clothing, but she continued to be turned down when she applied for better positions.

Goodwin says in her lawsuit that she has suffered emotional distress and lost $150,000 in wages as a result of Harvard's failure to promote her since 1999.

Harvard denies that it has discriminated against Goodwin. University spokesperson Joe Wrinn would not discuss the case Monday, citing the impending trial. But in earlier interviews, Wrinn noted that Goodwin's case was dismissed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.

A jury of seven men and one woman was chosen to hear the case, with opening statements scheduled for Tuesday."

I have no real comment on this except to say that people still have a hard time connecting smart and pretty as far as women are concerned. It seems as though you either have to "dumb" down or "cute" down. Let's see how it pans out. A settlement might be nice.

What Plan?!

This is getting tiring. President Bush has not presented a plan. Once again, he has the country divided and fearful by chanting a message of privitization. What the heck is John McCain talking about?

"President Bush and Sen. John McCain put on another showing Tuesday of their good-cop, bad-cop routine on Social Security, trying to prod Democrats into cooperating with rather than opposing the president's drive to create private accounts within the system.

Bush emphasized the positive, continuing to assure current and near-retirees their benefits would not change under his plan and promising that credit would be duly shared if Washington politicians can come together to fix Social Security's long-term fiscal ills.

'Bring your ideas forward, please,' the president told a mostly darkened auditorium here. 'If we're going to solve this problem, it's not going to be a Republican idea or a Democratic idea. It's going to be an American idea.'"

All Bush had to do was attempt to lead a bi-partisan effort to find a long-range plan to keep Social Security solvent. Instead, he tosses out some capitalistic scheme, that his own daddy thinks is dumb, that scares people into thinking - one way or another - that their futures won't be safe! This man is a piece of work. Can he present one plan, agenda or goal that isn't rooted in manipulation and fear-mongering? John McCain, who once may have had my support for President, has lost all credibility with me now that he has attached his suction lips to George W. Bush's backside! I don't know who the dems will have up in 2008 for Pres but I do know I'll be voting "anybody but McCain!"

Didn't Tell Us About The Crack

Speechless ...

"As police searched for the mother of a first-grader who passed out crack cocaine at his Chicago Heights school on Friday, believing it was candy, other parents expressed outrage Monday that they weren't notified about the incident.

'I was really upset they didn't tell us,' said Nancy Flores, 26, whose third-grader attends the public school, Lincoln. 'There are numerous things that can happen. He could have taken it home, he could have ate it.

'Thank God nothing happened . . . but they took away from us the ability to be alert,' she said, referring to school officials.

Lincoln Principal Elmer Joyce said a letter explaining the situation was being sent home with all students on Monday, and one wasn't sent out earlier for several reasons.

'By the time everything had been settled [on Friday] . . . school was over,' Joyce said. 'And we didn't really know exactly what the substance was; it hadn't been tested.'

Besides, police had asked the school to stay mum 'because it was an open investigation,' he said."

Attention! Back Away From The Table Please!

A few months ago, I pulled out of the grocery store parking lot and found myself next to a van that had just emerged from the McDonald's drive-thru that was also in the mall. I saw a beefy young man nearly devouring a Big Mac in one bite. I actually gasped. I am positive that he'd supersized that order. But it did make me think about the sheer gluttony that I witness constantly. We all have our vices but America just seems to have bred a few generations of people who have no concept of portion control or when to back away from the table. So, it is no surprise that the up and coming generation will be dying from obesity related problems at ages younger than their parents. Inhaling Big Macs, big gulps and double orders of fries won't help.

"Americans ought to be worried. The prospect of shorter life spans for today's children deserves serious attention.

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine last week suggested that increasing obesity could cause today's kids to become the first generation in more than 200 years to have shorter life expectancies than their parents. The scientists said the decline in life spans could be as much as five years.

That possibility is by no means certain. Other factors, such as advances in medical treatments, could more than offset the negative effects from obesity.

Even if there are ways to ease the health burdens of an ever-fatter population, however, American kids, parents and policy-makers should work on changing consumption patterns and increasing exercise. The rising obesity rate threatens to trigger more diabetes, heart troubles and other health problems.

Americans already spend an extraordinary amount of money on health care. Maybe science and even more spending can erase the threat of shortened life spans. But why would anyone wish the quality-of-life impairments associated with unnecessary health problems on today's kids? Prevention is always best."

Jive Turkey

For a minute, I thought I had dreamed this BS. I thought I heard a report of Donald Rumsfeld blaming Turkey for the strength of the insrugency. Sure enough, he passed the buck again

"Asked if he had any regrets looking back at the US campaign of the past two years, Mr Rumsfeld said he wished US troops had not been 'blocked' from entering Iraq through Turkey, saying this had boosted the insurgency.

'Given the level of the insurgency today, two years later, clearly if we had been able to get the 4th Infantry Division in from the north, in through Turkey, more of the Iraqi, Saddam Hussein, Baathist regime would have been captured or killed,' Mr Rumsfeld said on Fox.

'The insurgency today would be less,' he said, adding that the resulting thrust of the US invasion through southern Iraq had enabled many insurgents to evade capture in the north.

Diplomatic tensions between the two NATO allies over Washington's desire to use Turkey as a launch pad for penetrating northern Iraq chilled after the Turkish parliament, dominated by the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), refused the US permission to open a northern front in Iraq through southeast Turkey. "

Mr. Rumsfeld, Turkey is an Arab Democracy. You know, the kind of government that we are supposedly trying to help build in Iraq. Their parliament voted and decided it was against their interests to allow us to use their country as a front in the war. That is how democracies work - at least when they work. I cannot believe that two years later, you are blaming a democratic nation - who has specific strategic, political and security issues of their own - for your inability to adequately plan and predict key consequences of our invasion. It boggles the mind!

Further, and filed under "pot meet kettle," how can you form your mouth to say this?

"The important thing is that they be competent people. They have to be darned careful about making a lot of changes just to be putting in their friend or to be putting in someone else from their tribe or from their ethnic group."

What a turkey!

UPDATE: So glad I am not the only one who found Rumsfeld's comments about Turkey totally bizarre.