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Archive for March 2005
Department of Health and Homophobic Services
Posted by Clif on 03/31/05 at 9:10 pm
Category: Gay IssuesThe Department of Health and Human Services has put up an abstinence web site. It is supposed to give talking points to parents to encourage teen abstinence. But, of course, the mullahs at HHS couldn’t stop there. The site advises parents to find therapists to cure children they suspect might be gay.
Ineffective “curative” therapy teaches gay youth that there is something wrong with them. Kids kill themselves because of crap like this. “Culture of life” indeed.
Snow Job in Bozeman
Posted by Clif on 03/30/05 at 9:15 pm Category: Lying Republicans
Treasury Secretary John Snow must think that people in Bozeman, Montana are pretty gullible judging from what he said in a speech there today:
For the life of me, I can’t imagine why anybody would argue against young workers having the ability to invest and build a better retirement for their future. It costs the Social Security system nothing to do so, it will cost current and near-retirees nothing.
Let’s do the math here. We’re going to divert money from the trust fund into personal accounts and pay the same benefits to current and near-term retirees without any additional cost to anyone. Uh-huh. I think we can call this the “tooth fairy” theory of social security payment because it obviously contemplates the miraculous appearance of funds under millions of pillows.
In more unguarded moments the Administration has candidly said the exact opposite of what Snow is saying and has admitted that the Administration’s plans will entail “trillions” in transition costs.
The man in charge of the Federal Treasury is either a bald-faced liar or a raving idiot (or both). Sleep well (on all that money you should now go stuff in your mattress).
Say Something
Posted by Clif on 03/30/05 at 6:13 pm Category: Miscellaneous
It’s International Blog Comment Week. Leave a comment, an insult, a profound thought, a nonsense phrase, your pet’s name, or an expletive.
Via eRobin at The American Street.
Sen. Box Turtle Lectures on International Law
Posted by Clif on 03/30/05 at 8:40 am Category: Loathsome Republicans
Senator John Cornyn, allegedly a law school graduate, demonstrates in the current issue of National Review the legal acumen (or lack thereof) that secured him a seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senator Cornyn is beside himself that a ruling of the International Court of Justice on the right of foreign defendants in criminal cases to receive consular visits might become applicable in the United States and prevent the execution of a Mexican citizen:
Our Founding Fathers fought the Revolutionary War precisely in order to stop foreign governments from telling us what our laws say. . . . And of course, every federal judge and justice swears an oath to “faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me…under the Constitution and laws of the United States.”I fear, however, that today some judges may be departing so far from American law, American principles, and American traditions, that the only way they can justify their rulings from the bench is to cite the law of foreign countries, foreign governments, and foreign cultures — because there is nothing in this country left for them to cite for support. What’s more, citing foreign law in order to overrule U.S. policy is especially offensive to our constitutional democracy, because foreign lawmaking is in no way accountable to the American people.
Senator Cornyn thinks he can win the argument (and he probably can with the less-than-astute readership of National Review) by shouting “Fuhrrin” a lot, which he does six times in the short passage we just quoted. Unfortunately, Cornyn doesn’t understand what’s “fuhrin” law and what’s U.S. law. Perhaps he was at a steer-roping on the day in his Con. Law class when they covered this provision of the U.S. Constitution:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.
This means that the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations is U.S. law, as is its provision allowing the International Court of Justice to resolve disputes about the Convention’s interpretation. Senator Cornyn should stick to box turtles and other lower life forms with which he has more evident affinity.
Thanks to Michael at Here’s What’s Left for pointing out Cornyn’s article.
JJGG Is No JJSS
Posted by Clif on 03/29/05 at 12:29 pm Category: WankersThe once esteemed National Press Club is having a panel on blogging and has invited “Jeff Gannon,” the fake reporter, fake blogger, and real male hooker, to appear as a spokesman for hookers bloggers and reporters. Examples of Jim/Jeff Guckert/Gannon’s “reportage” have mysteriously disappeared from the Internet but you can visit JJGG’s two-month-old blog and judge for yourself as to whether JJGG ought to be on any panel other than a sex workers’ panel in Las Vegas.
Sean-Paul at The Agonist has an open letter, which I’ve signed, asking the National Press Club to put John Avarosis, a real blogger who was responsible for, er, exposing JJGG on the panel. What fun!! It would be almost as good as having Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman in the same room and, since Mary and Lillian are both dead, John and JJGG would be the next best thing, even if JJGG is a rather dim-witted stand-in for Mary McCarthy.
Read the letter. Call the Press Club. How often can you do the right thing and have fun doing it?
Now, about the title to this post. The first commenter to explain the reference correctly wins a copy of James Wolcott’s Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants.
Fund-Foolery
Posted by Clif on 03/29/05 at 7:23 am Category: Wingnuts
Over at the Wall Street Journal’s site for its second-string liars, John Fund makes a completely bogus attempt to accuse liberals of hypocrisy for having different views of the Terri Schiavo and Elian Gonzales cases:
In both cases, those who were unhappy with the courts’ decisions strained to assert the federal government’s power to produce a different outcome. The difference is that in Mrs. Schiavo’s case, Congress backed off after passing a bill that merely asked a federal court to hear the case from scratch, something that U.S. District Judge James Whittemore declined to do. By contrast, those who wanted the federal government to intervene in Elian Gonzalez’s case went all the way, supporting a predawn armed federal raid on the morning before Easter to seize the 6-year-old boy despite a federal appeals court’s refusal to order his surrender.On Thursday, April 20, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals–the same court that rejected the pleas of Terri Schiavo’s parents last week–turned down the Justice Department’s request to order Elian removed from the home of his Miami relatives. Moreover, the court expressed serious doubts about the Justice Department’s reading of both the law and its own regulations, adding that Elian had made a “substantial case on the merits” of his claim. It further established a record that Elain, “although a young child, has expressed a wish that he not be returned to Cuba.”
The Reno Justice Department acted the next day to short-circuit a legal process that was clearly going against it. On Good Friday evening . . . the department obtained a “search” warrant . . . . Armed with that dubious warrant, the INS’s helmeted officers, assault rifles at the ready, burst into the home of Elian’s relatives and snatched the screaming boy from a bedroom closet. . . .
Where were Mr. Frank and other liberals when the Clinton administration decided to sidestep a federal appeals court and order an armed raid against Elian Gonzalez? According to some reports, Gov. Jeb Bush considered seizing Mrs. Schiavo, à la Elian, and taking her to a hospital so she could be fed. But he did not do so. “I’ve consistently said that I can’t go beyond what my powers are, and I’m not going to do it,” the governor says. Janet Reno and the Clinton administration showed no such restraint when it came to Elian Gonzalez.
Fund’s characterization of the 11th Circuit opinion is, simply put, a crock of shit. The appeals court did not refuse to order Elian’s surrender. The Justice Department did not ask the Court for an order removing the boy from the Gonzales home and, of course, the appeals court couldn’t have “turned down” something the Justice Department did not ask for. Nor did the Clinton administration “sidestep” the appeals court.
Here’s what actually happened. The court granted the motion of the Gonzales family that Elian remain in the United States pending the appeal of the INS’s denial of his asylum request. Elian was removed from the relatives’ home and returned to the custody of his father in the United States where he remained, in complete compliance with the court’s order, until the Miami relatives lost their appeal of the INS’s refusal to consider their asylum petition.
Of course, if Fund had told the truth — apparently something of a congenital difficulty with him — he couldn’t have made up all this nonsense about liberal hypocrisy. For more on the odious Mr. Fund, go here.
Link via the ever gullible Kathryn Lopez at America’s Shittiest WebsiteTM, who, of course, believed Fund’s nonsense.
Why Does Google Hate The Easter Bunny?
Posted by Clif on 03/28/05 at 8:33 am Category: Wingnuts
Michelle “Internment Spa Lady” Malkin is having a hissy fit because Google didn’t do a cute little graphic for Easter. Of course, the reason for that is that Google is run by a bunch of terrorist-loving, America-hating secular humanist liberals who have hired illegal gay Guatemalan nannies to destroy our way of life and force our children to speak Spanish instead of English. Needless to say, there is no boo-hoo-hooing from Michelle over the failure of Google to commemorate Passover, Ramadan, Lord Krishna’s Birthday, Diwala or Barangay Day.
On another point, has anyone else noticed that the picture of Michelle on her site has, uh, morphed into something that looks more like a character from Final Fantasy VI and less like an actual human being? Further proof, I suppose, that Michelle’s primary demographic consists of basement-bound 19-year-old male Freepers.
Stopping for Lunch
Posted by Clif on 03/27/05 at 11:16 am Category: Red States, Gay Issues
Kansas is considering a bill that would make discrimination based on sexual orientation illegal. The folks at Westboro Baptist said that even having a hearing on the bill would send the legislators to hell:
The Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee this week heard testimony about a bill that would make it illegal in Kansas to discriminate based on sexual orientation in cases involving employment, housing and public accommodations.Senators on the panel heard from the Rev. Fred Phelps, a Topeka minister known for his anti-homosexual picketing, as well as some of the minister’s family members.
Shirley Phelps-Roper quoted scripture and warned committee members not to pass the bill.
“The very bringing up of this issue like it is open for discussion is what will take your souls to hell,” she told the committee.
After Phelps-Roper had spoken, Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, stood to leave a bit early. As he slipped out a side door, he whispered to some in the audience, “If I’m going to hell, I might as well go to lunch.”
Although Hensley’s remark is worth a chuckle, you have to wonder why on earth the Kansas legislature would ever give a forum to the whack jobs from Westboro Baptist Church.
Judge Greer Killed Them
Posted by Clif on 03/26/05 at 2:38 pm Category: White House
After five days of deafening silence, President Bush has finally mentioned the shootings in Red Lake. And, not surprisingly, he had something jaw-droppingly stupid to say about it. This may indeed be the most loathsome thing Bush has yet said:
As we help the families in this community, we must do everything in our power to prevent tragedies like this from happening. Children benefit from a sense of community, and the support and involvement of caring adults. To keep our children safe and protected, we must continue to foster a culture that affirms life.
That’s right. You heard that correctly. Judge Greer, Michael Schiavo, and Planned Parenthood killed Chanelle Rosebear and the other kids at the Red Lake Middle School. If Terri Schiavo still had her feeding tube, those kids would still be alive. Pay no attention to the guns behind the curtain.
And while we’re talking about stupid reasons for what happened at Red Lake, here’s one that does mention the guns. According to the NRA, the problem in Red Lake was that the teachers weren’t packing heat.
If you have any tears left, this would be a time to shed them.
Thanks to BarkBarkWoofWoof and Why Now? for the NRA link.
Sanctorumonius Scumbag
Posted by Clif on 03/26/05 at 12:37 pm Category: SantorumRick Sanctum Santorum, as you may remember, bilked a Pennsylvania school district out of $100,000 in payments to home school his kids last year by falsely telling the school district that he and the 26 little Santora actually lived in the district. Diehard apologists for the devout Senator no doubt argue that the burden of feeding all those hungry kids left Santorum strapped for cash and with no other choice than telling a little white lie to the school authorities.
But Santorum wasn’t so strapped that he couldn’t pay $83,000 over the last two years to charter planes for himself — thanks to the generosity of donors to Santorum’s “leadership” PAC. Why, Rick even used funds from his leadership PAC to pay for his cups of coffee from Starbucks. But Pennsylvania taxpayers were still supposed to shell out $100,000 for Rick’s kids.
Yet another example of Republican “moral values” at work.
Cowboy and Indians
Posted by Clif on 03/26/05 at 7:42 am Category: White House
Bush stopped clearing brush and rushed back to DC to sign the “Terry Schiavo Leave No Persistent Vegetable Behind Act” on Palm Sunday. The following Monday the worst school shooting since Columbine occurred on the Red Lake Indian reservation in Minnesota, leaving 10 people dead. What has George said about that between then and now, five days later? Nothing.
Even though he couldn’t find time to issue a public statement on Red Lake, George has had the time to do these things since the shooting:
White House sources say the President planned to say “the only good injun is a . . . ” until they stopped him and thought it was best that he say nothing at all.
Oh, and for the record, Clinton addressed the nation the next day after Columbine, cancelled a political trip to Texas, and dispatched a team of couselors to Columbine.
Ugly Does as Ugly Is
Posted by Clif on 03/25/05 at 10:49 am Category: Red States, Gay Issues
The state of Arkansas allows employers to fire employees because they are gay. Legislation to change this was proposed and quickly swatted down in committee hearings. Those hearings, as reported in the Arkansas Democrat [sic] Gazette, provide an insight, both sad and amusing at once, into the intellectual acumen of your average Arkansan.
Rep. Timothy Hutchinson, RLowell, who opposes the bill, said . . . the bill would offer “special protection” to gays. He said the law doesn’t protect overweight people, bald people or ugly people, who all are targets of discrimination. “I fit into all three of those categories, by the way,” Hutchinson said.
Hutchinson managed to get elected notwithstanding being fat, bald, ugly and stupid, so it’s hard to take his claim of discrimination seriously.
But the prize whopper goes to an Arkansas attorney who demonstrates that absolutely anyone can pass the bar in Arkansas:
Mike Moore, a Little Rock attorney who represents the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, spoke against the bill. He said he gives advice to businesses all the time in hiring and firing, to help them avoid lawsuits. He said he asks about the race and sex of the workers and the people making decisions about their employment to help determine whether there’s discrimination. “If this bill is passed, we have to go much further in delving into the private lives of our employees to determine the sexual orientation of both the decision maker and the affected employee,” he said.
Attorney Mike is worried about the “private lives” of gay employees figurin’ that they don’t mind gettin’ fired as long as they don’t have to say that they’re gay. Uh, Mike, the thing is nobody can claim rights under the statute unless they’re willing to admit they’re gay, so the privacy thing won’t be an issue for them. So, put down your bar license, put your hands in the air and step back before we have to call the Bar Examiners on you.
American Taliban
Posted by Clif on 03/24/05 at 8:27 am Category: Civil Rights
The Mutawa’een, the Saudi “religious police,” roam the Kingdom enforcing Islamic religious laws, lashing unveiled women, arresting unmarried men and women dining together in restaurants. Couldn’t happen here, of course. Not so fast, buster.
In Tallahassee, Florida proposed legislation would permit the Tallahassee police officers to arrest people for behavior they deem immoral, like “gay kissing.”
And deep within the Justice Department, there is a “religious rights” unit that investigated a Texas Tech University professor who would only write letters of recommendation for students who affirmed that evolution was “the central, unifying principle of biology.”
Bet you didn’t know that W stands for Wahhabism.
The Purpose Driven Lie
Posted by Clif on 03/24/05 at 8:12 am Category: Lying Republicans
One of the very bestest things about being a Congressman, the linguistically-challenged Steve King (R - Iowa) is no doubt saying to himself, is being able to get up on the floor of the House where you can make up shit about people and actually get away with it ’cause of somethin’ calling itself the “Speech or Debate” clause. “How cool is that?” Steve is saying to himself.
Because it let him say this:
It is always important to understand the potential for the motives.And as I added up these dollars, the settlement for medical malpractice, $250,000 preliminarily and the court then ruled another $1.4 million to Terri Schiavo and $600,000 awarded to Michael Schiavo, that is $2,225,000 awarded in her behalf. Of that one can assume approximately $800,000 went to attorneys fees and costs.
Now, additionally the court ordered $750,000 to go into the Terri Schiavo trust account. Now, that was pledged to go for her rehabilitation, her care, her medical treatment, and her tests. And that was a pledge made by her guardian, Michael Schiavo. But of that $750,000, these are the most conservative numbers that I can produce, there was $486,941 that went to attorneys’ fees to promote her death, not her care; another $10,929 to Michael Schiavo for expenses; another $55,000 to the bank for, assumedly, administrative fees.
When you do the math on this and shake this down, it breaks down to this: approximately $2 million out of that $2.25 million against her interests into the pockets of attorneys and into the pockets of Michael Schiavo and into the pockets of the bank for administrative fees. Less than $200,000 was committed to her care over all of these years, 13 or 14 years.
And I think this illustrates a potential for a conflict of interest
So, you see, Michael Schiavo, according to Steve, wants to kill Terri to get his hands on all that dough in Terri’s trust fund. Problem is that not one thing Steve said is true.
According to the report of the Guardian Ad Litem that was appointed for Terri by the Florida legislature, the malpractice award resulted in more than $750,000 to Terri, which was put in a trust fund, and $300,000 to Michael for loss of consortium. The Report says that Terri’s trust fund “was meticulously managed and accounted for and Michael Schiavo had no control over its use.” As of December 1, 2003, the date of the Guardian’s report, the trust fund had been exhausted on Terri’s medical care.
The $2.25 million dollar figure is a figment of King’s overactive imagination. All the press reports, such as this one, put the award at over $1 million, which is consistent with the figures given by the Guardian Ad Litem.
King is also apparently more than a little arithmetically challenged. By the time he finishes all his number figgerin’ he’s convinced himself that $200,000 had been spent on Terri, who could do absolutely nothing for herself, over 14 years. That’s $14,285 per year or $40 per day! You can’t even get a room over at the Red Roof in Dubuque for that, much less hospice care. But since Steve is just making up numbers, why bother with making them credible?
Calling Steve a scumbag would, of course, be an insult to other scumbags.