
"Golly Gee kids, I am be sure is hope there ain't another big bad TERRA attack by them thar EVIL-DOERS cuz you is know we HAVE TO BE AFRAID OF THEM, oh yeah and tell your mommy & daddy to VOTE REPUBLICAN cuz we'll keeps yous safe..."
+BLEEP+BLEEP!+ Taking the DUH out of Florida! Plus much much more! And...PLEASE remember to *** CTRL D / BOOKMARK ***...because my inner-lesbian loves you!!! http://Twitter.com/Lu666Cifer http://GPlus.To/DrLuCifer http://Facebook.com/Lu666Cifer *** Grazie mille!
Damn right I'm a liberal
Dan Kurtzman, who keeps the political snark fires burning over at About.com, wrote a terrific piece for his recent book, How to Win a Fight with a Conservative. We present it here with the author's kind permission:
Liberal Manifesto
Liberals believe in clean air, diplomacy, stem cells, living wages, body armor for our troops, government accountability, and that exercising the right to dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
Liberals believe in reading actual books, going to war as a last resort, separating church and hate, and doing what Jesus would actually do, instead of lobbying for upper-class tax cuts and fantasizing about the apocalypse.
Liberals believe in civil rights, the right to privacy, and that evolution and global warming aren’t just theories but incontrovertible scientific facts.
Liberals believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment that (1) prohibits another Bush from ever occupying the White House, and (2) prevents George W. Bush from ever becoming baseball commissioner before he does to our national pastime what he did for America.
Liberals believe in rescuing people from flooded streets and rooftops, even if they’re too poor to vote Republican.
Liberals believe that supporting our troops means treating our wounded vets like the heroes they are, and not leaving them to languish in rat-infested military hospitals under the outsourced management of incompetent cronies who think they’re running a Taco Bell franchise.
Liberals believe in pheromones, sex ed, solar panels, voting paper trails, the common good, and that, no matter how fascinating a story it may be, a president should never sit around in a state of total paralysis reading "My Pet Goat" while America is under attack.
And above all, liberals believe that it’s time to come together as a country and put a collective boot in the ass of shameless conservative fearmongers, hate merchants, and scapegoaters who are sucking the freedom out of all our souls.
Laced up! Ready to go!
Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, February 21, 2008
Note: I keep trying to find words to describe John McCain's wife, Mrs. John McCain. And the only thing I can come up with is: Please don’t kill me.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Sebago Lake Ice Fishing Derby and Winterfest: 1
Days 'til Bush and Cheney leave office: 333 (Ha Ha! Three butts mooning Bush!)
Number of pharmaceutical company sales reps in 1995: 35,000
Number of pharmaceutical company sales reps in 2007: Nearly 100,000
(Source: SmartMoney via The Week)
Projected percentage of U.S. population in 2050 who will be foreign-born: 19%
Foreign-born population in 1910: 15%
(Source: TIME)
Tonight's expected low temperature in Baghdad: 43°
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the patriotic bully card just as long as you let them. I've said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were "German dogs." They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The MINUTE someone impugns your patriotism for opposing this war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means. That, or you could just piss on them elegantly, as Rep. John Murtha did. Or eviscerate them with wit (look up Mark Twain on the war in the Philippines). Or point out the latest in the endless "string of bad news."
Do not sit there cowering and pretending the only way to win is as Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party can't get up and fight, we'll find someone who can.
---January, 2006
EU officials furious as Washington says it wants extra data on all air passengers
Bush administration is calling for armed air marshals on transatlantic flights. Photograph: Eric Meola/Getty Images
The US administration is pressing the 27 governments of the European Union to sign up for a range of new security measures for transatlantic travel, including allowing armed guards on all flights from Europe to America by US airlines.
The demand to put armed air marshals on to the flights is part of a travel clampdown by the Bush administration that officials in Brussels described as "blackmail" and "troublesome", and could see west Europeans and Britons required to have US visas if their governments balk at Washington's requirements.
According to a US document being circulated for signature in European capitals, EU states would also need to supply personal data on all air passengers overflying but not landing in the US in order to gain or retain visa-free travel to America, senior EU officials said.
And within months the US department of homeland security is to impose a new permit system for Europeans flying to the US, compelling all travellers to apply online for permission to enter the country before booking or buying a ticket, a procedure that will take several days.
The data from the US's new electronic transport authorisation system is to be combined with extensive personal passenger details already being provided by EU countries to the US for the "profiling" of potential terrorists and assessment of other security risks.
Washington is also asking European airlines to provide personal data on non-travellers - for example family members - who are allowed beyond departure barriers to help elderly, young or ill passengers to board aircraft flying to America, a demand the airlines reject as "absurd".
Seven demands tabled by Washington are contained in a 10-page "memorandum of understanding" (MOU) that the US authorities are negotiating or planning to negotiate with all EU governments, according to ministers and diplomats from EU member states and senior officials in Brussels. The Americans have launched their security drive with some of the 12 mainly east European EU countries whose citizens still need visas to enter the US.
"The Americans are trying to get a beefing up of their visa-waiver programmes. It's all contained in the MOU they want to put to all EU member states," said a diplomat from a west European country. "It's a very delicate problem."
As part of a controversial passenger data exchange programme allegedly aimed at combating terrorism, the EU has for the past few months been supplying the American authorities with 19 items of information on every traveller flying from the EU to the US.
The new American demands go well beyond what was agreed under that passenger name record (PNR) system and look certain to cause disputes within Europe and between Europe and the US.
Brussels is pressing European governments not to sign the bilateral deals with the Americans to avoid weakening the EU bargaining position. But Washington appears close to striking accords on the new travel regime with Greece and the Czech Republic. Both countries have sizeable diaspora communities in America, while their citizens need visas to enter the US. Visa-free travel would be popular in both countries.
A senior EU official said the Americans could get "a gung-ho frontrunner" to sign up to the new regime and then use that agreement "as a rod to beat the other member states with". The frontrunner appears to be the Czech Republic. On Wednesday, Richard Barth of the department of homeland security was in Prague to negotiate with the Czech deputy prime minister, Alexandr Vondra,
Prague hoped to sign the US memorandum "in the spring", Vondra said. "The EU has done nothing for us on visas," he said. "There was no help, no solidarity in the past. It's in our interest to move ahead. We can't just wait and do nothing. We have to act in the interest of our citizens."
While the Czechs are in a hurry to sign up, Brussels is urging delay in order to try to reach a common European position.
"There is a process of consultation and coordination under way," said Jonathan Faull, a senior European commission official involved in the negotiations with the Americans.
To European ears, the US demands sound draconian. "This would oblige the European countries to allow US air marshals on US flights. It's controversial and difficult," an EU official said. At the moment the use of air marshals is discretionary for European states and airlines.
While armed American guards would be entitled to sit on the European flights to the US, the Americans also want the PNR data transfers extended from travellers from Europe to the US to include the details of those whose flights are not to America, but which overfly US territory, say to central America or the Caribbean.
Brussels has told Washington that its demands raise legal problems in Europe over data protection, over guarantees on how the information is handled, over which US agencies have access to it or with whom it might be shared, and over issues of redress if the data is misused.
The Association of European Airlines, representing 31 airlines, including all the big west European national carriers, has told the US authorities that there is "no international legal foundation" for supplying them with data about passengers on flights overflying US territory.
The US Transport Security Administration has also asked the European airlines to supply personal data on "certain non-travelling members of the public requesting access to areas beyond the screening checkpoint".
The AEA said this was "absurd" because the airlines neither obtain nor can obtain such information. The request was "fully unjustified".
If the Americans persevere in the proposed security crackdown, Brussels is likely to respond with tit-for-tat action, such as calling for visas for some Americans.
European governments, however, would probably veto such action, one official said, not least for fear of the "massive disruption given the huge volume of transatlantic traffic".
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet
Thursday, January 31, 2008
In heavily redacted documents released by the Ministry of Homeland Security, we learn that the State Department, Pentagon, Justice Department, CIA, National Security Agency and other leviathan agencies consider “hackers, bloggers and even reporters” a threat to national security.
In “dozens of detailed, mock disasters,” the Associated Press reports, these “villains” launch “electronic attacks” against “computers at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.” Adding to the treason, a “major news network” refuses to air its sources when reporting the fictional attacks, as of course we know the media is expected to serve the state. In the real, non-Bushzarro world, of course, the corporate media would never run such a story, but never mind, the Ministry would have us believe it is the 1970s, back when newspapers on occasion ran investigative journalism.
“The $3 million, invitation-only war game simulated what the U.S. described as plausible attacks over five days in February 2006 against the technology industry, transportation lines and energy utilities by anti-globalization hackers,” the Associated Press continues. In other words, as the Ministry would have it, “plausible attacks” come not from an imaginary al-Qaeda, the CIA created terror group, but rather from people opposed to the globalist plan to turn the world into a slave plantation based on the China model.
The mad stampede of new residents into Florida is finally slowing down, the inevitable result of high taxes, miserable traffic, overcrowded classrooms and other unappealing urban problems.
According to the Census Bureau, the state's population grew by only 1.1 percent during the 12-month span ending last July 1. That's a significant dip from the 1.8 percent increase recorded the previous year, and it drops Florida's growth rate to 19th in the nation.
This is a cause for relief, not panic. Any lull in the avalanche of incoming humanity should be eagerly welcomed by the 18.3 million souls already living here. The last thing we need is more warm bodies clogging the roads, schools, courts, jails and hospitals.
A break is long overdue. It's not a crisis but rather an opportunity. At long last, state and community leaders might be forced to intelligently confront the economic blowback from decades of inept planning and greed-fueled runaway growth.
With each passing day, Florida is becoming a less desirable place to live. For the first time in modern memory, moving companies report that they're transporting more families out of the Sunshine State than into it.
The disenchantment is widespread and deep-seated, judging by a new Mason-Dixon survey that was released by Leadership Florida, a group founded by the state Chamber of Commerce.
Of more than 1,100 residents interviewed by telephone in November, 43 percent said their quality of life has declined over the last five years. That's an eye-popping number, up 7 percent from 2006.
More evidence that lots of people see their Florida dream dissolving: Of those surveyed, only 24 percent said they think things will get better during the next five years. Thirty-seven percent believe the state will become a worse place to live during that time.
The increasingly glum outlook of many Floridians isn't just a reaction to off-the-chart property taxes and insurance rates, as politicians want us to believe.
More and more folks are figuring out what serious urban planners have known for a long time: Run-amok growth doesn't pay for itself. Taxpayers always get stuck with the bill for sprawl and also with the hometown ills it brings. By an overwhelming margin of nearly three-to-one, Floridians polled in the Leadership Florida survey oppose higher population densities in their neighborhoods -- a view that resonates fairly evenly among registered Democrats, Republicans and independents.
A majority of residents, 52 percent, believe local governments are ''not effectively managing growth'' in their communities. The figure is unchanged from 2006, and the Mason-Dixon pollsters describe the sentiment as ``strong and and consistent among all groups and across the state.''
Respondents were divided evenly when asked whether new people moving into Florida was good or bad. The question is rarely even whispered among politicians, many of whom live in fear of antagonizing the developers, bankers and road builders who bankroll election campaigns.
The beleaguered sense among many Floridians -- that they're not only being overtaxed but overrun -- will not soon go away. Politicians who resist calls for strict land-use reforms and continue to shill for special interests risk being dumped from office by those whom they've ignored.
It's happened already in scores of municipalities where voters got fed up watching their green spaces malled and paved while the waterfronts went condo.
The social equation isn't complicated. The more people you cram into a place, even a place as vast and geographically diverse as Florida, the more stressful life becomes for everybody. It also becomes more expensive. Ask anyone in New York or California what happened to their taxes as the populations of those states swelled.
A bipartisan group that advocates semi-sane growth policies, 1000 Friends of Florida, last year predicted that the state's population would double to 36 million by 2060, and that seven million acres of agricultural land and wilderness would be converted to concrete and asphalt.
That was before the real-estate market tanked and the subprime mortgage racket imploded, but there's no denying that even an overcrowded Florida continues to hold some mythical allure, whether you live in Dubuque or Port-au-Prince.
Despite their rising disillusionment, about 62 percent of those interviewed for the Leadership Florida poll said they'd still recommend the state as a place for friends or relatives to live.
For strangers? Maybe not. Because growth is an exalted industry unto itself, rather than the natural result of a broadening economic base, lawmakers have always focused on attracting hordes of new residents at all costs. The first casualty of such a fast-buck mentality is the quality of life.
One out of five Floridians surveyed in November say they are ''seriously considering'' moving elsewhere.
This is what's known as a message. And, for those who've sold out Florida's future to enrich their campaign coffers, it breaks down like this:
Enough.
The band members include: lead singer John "Methuselah" McCain, two fingered Hammond organ player "One-Trick Rudy" Giuliani, drummer Mitt "Gringo" Romney, on duck calls Fred "Frankenberry" Thompson and Mike "Huckster" Hucklebee on bass guitar.
Hear is the list of the songs from the LP:
Edwin Chen Mon Dec 24, 12:03 AM ET
Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush's diplomatic passport will acquire a slew of new country stamps during his final year in office as he tries to rebuild the U.S.'s international standing and create a foreign-policy legacy beyond Iraq.
The president plans trips to the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America, which would make 2008 his busiest year abroad. While his major domestic initiatives may get stalled by a Democratic majority in Congress and the gridlock caused by election-year politics, he still has an opportunity to exert his influence overseas.
``When it comes to foreign policy, he's not a lame duck; he can do a lot,'' said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who served as director of policy planning at the State Department until June 2003.
Bush, 61, came into the White House promising a humble foreign policy and eschewing nation-building and foreign entanglements. That changed after the Sept. 11 attacks, when he adopted a style supporters hail as visionary and critics call cowboy diplomacy.
While the president will strive to strengthen alliances, it won't come at the expense of continuing to prosecute the war on terror, said Jim Jeffrey, the deputy White House national security adviser.
``We want to be well-perceived in the world,'' Jeffrey said in an interview. ``But more importantly, we want to formulate policies that will protect the American people.''
Travel Itinerary
In early January, Bush flies to Israel for his first visit as president. While in the region, he also will visit the West Bank, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The trip is a follow-up to the Israeli-Palestinian talks that the U.S. hosted in Annapolis, Maryland , last month.
In February, Bush will tour Africa, where U.S. public health initiatives are popular. That will be followed by an April North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Romania, a June U.S.-European summit in Slovenia, a July meeting of Group of Eight leaders in Japan, the summer Olympics in China and a November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Peru. Bush is likely to visit other, nearby countries during those trips.
Many presidents focus on international affairs in their final year as a way to compensate for their waning influence at home. For Bush, it's unlikely to provide an escape.
``Bush also has problems at home, but he has even bigger problems with the rest of the world,'' said Andy Kohut, president the Pew Research Center in Washington.
Attitudes Overseas
A Pew study of public opinion in 47 nations found ``extensive'' anti-Americanism and ``increasing disapproval'' of the cornerstones of U.S. foreign policy.
A perception that Washington acts unilaterally was shared by 89 percent of the French, 83 percent of Canadians and 74 percent of Britons. America's image in most Muslim nations is ``abysmal,'' Pew said.
The exception, Pew found, is Africa, where the U.S. image remains positive, especially in Ethiopia and Kenya.
Given such results, ``going around the world won't make things necessarily worse'' because ``it's difficult to see how they could be any worse,'' said Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former national security council aide in the Clinton administration.
Bush will have considerable U.S. public support for trying to improve the nation's image abroad, according to Joseph Nye, a political scientist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who co-chaired a study of U.S. foreign policy in November.
`Unbalanced'
``There's a thirst in the country to restore America's standing in the world, a feeling that we've been unbalanced in our approach,'' Nye said.
The report of the commission headed by Nye and Richard Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state under Bush, said the U.S. must reinvigorate multilateral alliances and abandon its post-Sept. 11 ``angry face.''
Democrats long have criticized Bush's doctrine of pre- emptive war to prevent terrorist attacks and the rhetoric he used to confront adversaries such as Iran. Some of the president's fellow Republicans have started to call for a reversal as well.
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, 52, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, wrote in the January/February edition of the journal Foreign Affairs that the administration's ``arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad.''
Jeffrey rejected the idea that Bush acts unilaterally, citing the multilateral talks with Iran and North Korea.
Coalitions
``The model is multilateral: Form a coalition of countries,'' Jeffrey said. ``This is what people accuse us of not doing. We're doing it all over the world.''
As Bush engages in global diplomacy between now and Jan. 20, 2009, he and his counterparts will be doing ``a very fine calculation,'' said Jim Steinberg, dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin, who served as former President Bill Clinton's deputy national security adviser.
He said some world leaders will prefer to deal with Bush rather than his successor, who will be an unknown quantity. Others, he said, will wait to deal with the next president, setting up ``an interesting dynamic at the end of an administration.''