Republican Party Dupes Christian Conservatives

Ken AshfordGodstuff, Republicans1 Comment

It’s always been pretty clear to me that Republican Party really doesn’t give a damn about Christian conservatives, but they tolerate and cow-tow to them because they need the votes.

Never has this theory been more evidence than this revelation, exposed by Salon:

Up-and-coming Republican hacks would do well to watch closely the ongoing Senate investigations of superstar lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his former business partner Michael Scanlon. The power duo stand accused of exploiting Native American tribes to the tune of roughly $66 million, laundering that money into bank accounts they controlled and then using it to buy favors for powerful members of Congress and the executive branch.

But they sure did know how to play the game.

What does this have to do with Christian conservatives?  Check out what the Salon report says about a memo from a Tom Delay congressional aide:

Consider one memo highlighted in a Capitol Hill hearing Wednesday that Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, sent the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana to describe his strategy for protecting the tribe’s gambling business. In plain terms, Scanlon confessed the source code of recent Republican electoral victories: target religious conservatives, distract everyone else, and then railroad through complex initiatives.

"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them." The brilliance of this strategy was twofold: Not only would most voters not know about an initiative to protect Coushatta gambling revenues, but religious "wackos" could be tricked into supporting gambling at the Coushatta casino even as they thought they were opposing it.

How do you like them apples, "wackos"?

I echo what’s said at Sisyphus Shrugged to religious conservatives:

While I admire the principles of people who genuinely feel that they have to vote in accordance with their religious beliefs, I think it’s important that you realize that

a) these people are totally playing you
b) you’re supporting politics that are hurting you badly
c) nobody’s God likes torture and mercury-poisoned babies
d) unlike me, they don’t admire your principles. They think you’re stupid.

If you want your Republican party back, you might want to consider voting accordingly.

Catholic Church Making Sense

Ken AshfordGodstuffLeave a Comment

Vatican As organized religions go, I like Catholicism.  I mean, if you absolutely need to have silly rituals and stuff in order to worship God, the Catholic Church, it seems, is the way to go.  So many rules and rituals.  Stand, sit, beads, wafers, old men in Rome with funny hats, confession booths — it’s a real hootenanny.

But mostly, I’m digging the Catholic Church because they are, well, reasonable:

A Vatican cardinal said Thursday the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason.

Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the "mutual prejudice" between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church and is part of the evolution debate in the United States.

The Vatican project was inspired by Pope John Paul II’s 1992 declaration that the church’s 17th-century denunciation of Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension." Galileo was condemned for supporting Nicolaus Copernicus’ discovery that the Earth revolved around the sun; church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.

That’s Me In The Corner, Doing Another Friday iPod Random Ten

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

LosingreligionHaven’t done this in a while.

  1. Sledgehammer – Tufts Beelezebubs
  2. Intimacy – The Coors
  3. Losing My Religion (Unplugged) – REM
  4. Brown Rice/Karmapa Chenno – Shadowfax
  5. Respect – Aretha Franklin
  6. I Can Feel Your Heartbeat – The Partridge Family
  7. Mile Marbhaisg (A Thousand Curses) – Capercaillie
  8. Losing My Religion – Tory Amos
  9. La Vie Boheme – Rent (Original Broadway Cast)
  10. Hoedown – Emerson, Lake & Palmer

That’s a pretty ecelectic mix.  Odd that "Losing My Religion" shows up twice, even though I have 2,366 songs on the ol’ pod.  Mmmmm . . . I wonder how "random" iPod’s shuffle feature is.

An Amazing Paragraph

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/IdiocyLeave a Comment

The whole post is lunacy, but the first paragraph alone is full of astonishing lies and wishful thinking.  This is what John Hindrocket says at Powerline:

The Democrats appear to be putting all their eggs in the pre-war intelligence basket, but why?  Certainly not because they actually believe it’s a legitimate issue.

We believe it is a legitimate issue.  End. of. story.

Several investigations have already concluded that the Bush administration didn’t manipulate pre-war intelligence, and the Democrats, from Bill Clinton on, made all the same claims about Saddam’s weapons, etc., that the Bush administration did.

(1) First of all, NO investigation concluded that.  There are only two investigation relating to pre-war intelligence.  Phase II of the investigation by Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is supposed to look at how intelligence was used by the Bush Administration, and they have been dragging their feet on the investigation, subpoenaing witnesses, etc. (much less having a conclusion).  This is what Reid griped about the other day.

The other investigation relating to pre-war intelligence didn’t even look into the Bush Administration’s use/manipulation of pre-war intelligence.  Here’s a passage from the Overview section of the commission’s report, which couldn’t be more clear:

Finally, we emphasize two points about the scope of this Commission’s charter, particularly with respect to the Iraq question. First, we were not asked to determine whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That was the mandate of the Iraq Survey Group; our mission is to investigate the reasons why the Intelligence Community’s pre-war assessments were so different from what the Iraq Survey Group found after the war. Second, we were not authorized to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments they received from the Intelligence Community. Accordingly, while we interviewed a host of current and former policymakers during the course of our investigation, the purpose of those interviews was to learn about how the Intelligence Community reached and communicated its judgments about Iraq’s weapons programs–not to review how policymakers subsequently used that information.

(2)  As for what statements by Clinton that were the same as those of Bush, I’ve addressed that here.

Back to Hindrocket’s amazingly stupid paragraph:

Moreover, the whole idea that the administration would use Iraq’s WMDs as a "pretext" for war is stupid. If the administration knew Saddam didn’t have the weapons, then it also knew its "pretext" would be exposed as soon as the invasion was complete.

What morons!  Let me explain this (again) in simple terms:

Nobody KNEW for sure whether or not Saddam had weapons.  But the Bush Administration, in its statements to the people, said they DID know for sure.  And that’s the lie!!!  The Bush Administration even hid the fact that, within the Intelligence Community, there was no consensus or agreement.

No one would be dumb enough to go to war on the basis of a claim that was not only wrong, but would quickly be shown to be wrong. So the Democrats aren’t acting in good faith, they’re playing politics.

No one would be dumb enough to not understand the difference between saying something is 100% true, and saying they BELIEVE that something MIGHT be true.  In other words, if you don’t know something for sure, and say that you do, then that’s lying!!

Got it?  Jeeeez!!

But Clinton Said So…

Ken AshfordIraq, Right Wing Punditry/IdiocyLeave a Comment

The silliest talking point coming out of the right these days is actually a rather old one.

It’s the point that "everyone thought there were WMD".  To bolster this talking point, winger inevitably offer up statements by President Clinton.

I’m not sure this what wingnuts think this appeal to Clinton is supposed to do.  Do they think liberals all worship Clinton, and it will silence our criticism of Bush (since the two supposedly "agreed")?

It should be pointed out that whatever Clinton believed, he didn’t believe that invading Iraq was the solution.

But for the rest of the story, I hand the wheel to Dave Johnson at Seeing The Forest:

A standard Republican talking point about Iraq is that "everyone thought there were WMD" and then they cite statements by President Clinton and others.

Here’s what they are leaving out. At the end of 1998, after Iraq expelled UN weapons inspectors, President Clinton ordered a bombing campaign that completely wiped out Iraq’s weapons capabilities. For good.

Clinton statement to the nation, Dec 16, 1998:

“Earlier today, I ordered America’s armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.

… Warplanes aboard the USS Enterprise combined with more than 200 cruise missiles from eight Navy warships to converge on Iraqi targets at 5:06 p.m. EST (1:06 a.m. Baghdad time).

The attack by U.S. and British forces against Iraq broadened and intensified yesterday, as salvos of missiles pounded scores of targets throughout the country and the skies over the Iraqi capital filled with the flash of huge explosions, the smoke of distant conflagrations and the brilliant red tracings of antiaircraft fire.

The second wave of strikes by allied cruise missiles – by far the heaviest attack against the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein since the end of the Gulf War in 1991 – came as Washington continued to be roiled by the historic question of President Clinton’s possible impeachment. The twin crises, each compelling enough to transfix the nation, overlapped and crescendoed throughout an extraordinary day.

… Officials said the latest strikes included about 100 cruise missiles – about half as many as on Wednesday, but with 2,000-pound warheads that were twice as large as those used the first night. Among the targets of the raid were air fields, chemical plants, missile production and storage facilities, air defense systems and Iraq’s surface-to-air missile sites, according to Pentagon officials.

Not a single U.S. or British casualty has been reported in about 70 hours of intensive airstrikes involving 650 sorties against nearly 100 targets. A total of 415 cruise missiles were launched, Pentagon officials said, including 325 Tomahawks fired by U.S. Navy forces and 90 heavier cruise missiles deployed from Air Force B-52s.

… "Saddam may rebuild, and attempt to rebuild, some of this military infrastructure in the future, just as he has replaced many facilities, including lavish palaces, after Desert Storm," Cohen said, referring to the aftermath of the Gulf War. "But we have diminished his ability to threaten his neighbors with both conventional and nonconventional weapons."

And then, following that attack, "Between 1999 and 2001, the U.S. and British-led air forces in Iraq dropped 1.3 million pounds of bombs in response to purported violations of the no-fly zones and anti-aircraft fire from Saddam Hussein." (Thanks to Raw Story)

And, of course, the Republican reaction to Clinton wiping out Iraq’s WMD capabilities? (Keep in mind as you read this all their bluster about the supposed threat of WMD as they ramped up the propaganda leading to the war…) Republicans skeptical of Iraq attack on eve of impeachment vote

"I cannot support this military action in the Persian Gulf at this time," Lott said in a statement. "Both the timing and the policy are subject to question."

"The suspicion some people have about the president’s motives in this attack is itself a powerful argument for impeachment," Armey said in a statement.

And THAT’S the rest of the story.

The Michael Brown E-mails

Ken AshfordDisastersLeave a Comment

Ex-FEMA director Michael Brown is the gift that keeps on giving, as a symbol of Bush Administration incompetence.  From the New York Times:

In an e-mail message sent on Aug. 29, the day the hurricane struck, Mr. Brown exchanged messages about his attire with Cindy Taylor, deputy director of public affairs at the agency, according to the report.

"My eyes must be deceiving me," Ms. Taylor wrote to him, apparently referring to public appearances he had made. "You look fabulous–and I’m not talking about the makeup."

Mr. Brown, in turn, responded: "I got it at Nordstroms. … Are you proud of me?" An hour later, he added: "If you’ll look at my lovely FEMA attire you’ll really vomit. I am a fashion god."

Democrats said that Mr. Brown also found time to e-mail his assistant to inquire about a sitter for his dog. "Do you know of anyone who dog-sits," he wrote on Aug. 30, the day after the hurricane struck. "If you know of any responsible kids, let me know. They can have the house to themselves Th-Su."

In another instance, on Aug. 29, he sent Ms. Taylor a message that Democrats said suggested he was overwhelmed. "Can I quit now," he wrote. "Can I come home?" A few days later, he wrote a similar message to an acquaintance, saying, "I am trapped now, please rescue me."

Plamegate: Most Serious Scandal In Three Decades

Ken AshfordPlamegate3 Comments

Via Atrios, Editor & Publisher takes a look at a recent CBS poll and tells us that the public thinks the Valerie Plame scandal is more important than any scandal in the past 30 years. Here are the numbers:

  • Plamegate: 86% important 12% not important

  • Clinton-Lewinsky: 62% important, 37% not important

  • Whitewater: 49% important, 45% not important

  • Iran-Contra: 81% important, 19% not important

  • Watergate: 78% important, 22% not important

It’s important to note that these survey numbers are contemporaneous with the related scandal.  In other words, this is NOT people looking back on Watergate from today‘s vantage point with 78% saying it was important.  Back then, at the time, 78% said Watergate was important.  Compared with 86% today for Plamegate.

North Carolina Turning Blue

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

Raleigh News & Record:

President Bush’s approval rating in North Carolina continues to decline, according to a poll released Friday by Elon University. The poll found that 41 percent of those questioned approve of Bush’s handling of the job of president. That is down from 45 percent in a poll Elon did in April and 52 percent from a poll the university did in March."

I thought things seems bluer around here.

Even William F Buckley Gets It

Ken AshfordPlamegateLeave a Comment

Bill Buckley:

The importance of the law against revealing the true professional identity of an agent is advertised by the draconian punishment, under the federal code, for violating it. In the swirl of the Libby affair, one loses sight of the real offense, and it becomes almost inapprehensible what it is that Cheney/Libby/Rove got themselves into. But the sacredness of the law against betraying a clandestine soldier of the republic cannot be slighted.

Humbled

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/IdiocyLeave a Comment

What I tried to do here ("Michelle Malkin – Queen of Bullshit"), Ornicus did 100 times better here.  A sample:

It isn’t Democrats who sprayed racist, pro-Bush graffiti on Democratic campaign HQ in Sacramento, or stole computers from Democrats in Ohio, or set campaign signs afire in Louisiana, or spread blood and innards around the front door of Bush critics. It isn’t Democrats firing workers for their presidential choices.

[In fact, I tried keeping a running tally during the election of reports of thuggery from both right and left, and tracked it at a post called Thug Watch. Though I’m sure there were some reports that I missed on both sides, the reports of thuggery from the right, as you can see, outnumber those from the left by a factor of more than 2-to-1.]

It isn’t Democrats, Michelle, who have denigrated the service of war heroes; it’s people like you. And it isn’t Democrats who are delivering a steady stream of "bestselling" books attacking liberals as subhuman scum: calling them innately treasonous, identifying them with terrorists, the "enemy within" with a "mental illness." Going on talk shows and saying that the best way to talk to a Republican is "with a baseball bat, preferably."

As for the "assassination" themes, Michelle, it wasn’t a left-wing blogger who posted the following remark at the height of the 2004 campaign:

Rope. Tree. Justice. The only three things that Qerry deserves for his "service".

No, as a matter of fact, that was a blogger who resides on your blogroll.

It was that same blog, in fact, that earlier urged the use of violence against another blogger and even provided directions to that person’s home on his blog. I’m not aware of any left-wing bloggers having done that.

Indeed, for all the left-wing wackery out there — and there’s no doubt plenty of it — what you don’t see is this kind of eliminationist rhetoric.

After all, Michelle, it wasn’t a prominent Democrat who publicly hypothesized about what would happen to the crime rate if all black babies were aborted. It wasn’t a prominent Democratic radio talk-show host in Seattle who said of a U.S. Senator — yes, the same Dick Durbin whose remarks you find completely out of line: "This man is simply a piece of excrement, a piece of waste that needs to be scraped off the sidewalk and eliminated."

It isn’t the most prominent liberal talk-show host in the country who jokes that we shouldn’t "kill all the liberals" — instead, we should "leave enough so we can have two on every campus — living fossils — so we will never forget what these people stood for."

It wasn’t a prominent member of the "liberal" media who opined that we ought to incarcerate everyone who works for Air America.

It wasn’t a Democratic congressman who opined that we ought to ship liberal dissenters to Iraq to serve as "human shields."

It wasn’t left-wing letter writers who attacked former USA Today editor Al Neuharth and recommended he face execution for treason. Al Neuharth, mind you — not exactly Mr. Liberal.

Bay of Morons

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

White House Ducks Prewar Intel Questions

WASHINGTON – The White House sought to deflect politically charged questions Wednesday about President Bush’s use of prewar intelligence in Iraq, saying Democrats, too, had concluded Saddam Hussein was a threat.

"If Democrats want to talk about the threat that Saddam Hussein posed and the intelligence, they might want to start with looking at the previous administration and their own statements that they’ve made," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

He said the Clinton administration and fellow Democrats "used the intelligence to come to the same conclusion that Saddam Hussein and his regime were a threat."

(Emphasis added).

And, as Shakespeare’s Sister points out, that’s the lamest excuse ever. 

Bush & Co, relied on Clinton-era intelligence to convince the country that Saddam posed an "imminent threat". 

Let me say that again…

Bush & Co, relied on Clinton-era intelligence to convince the country that Saddam posed an "imminent threat". 

And when it all went south, who do the Bushies duck behind to avoid culpability?

Clinton!

Idiots.  Does it occur to them that maybe — just maybe — the problem was them relying on outdated intelligence (and massaging the recent intelligence)?

What’s next?  Is Bush going to invade Cuba based on Kennedy-era intelligence?  And then, when it turns out that Cuba doesn’t have nuclear weapons, give the lame excuse, "Hey!  Don’t blame us!  Kennedy thought Castro had nukes!!"

Mr. 35%

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

How low can Bush’s approval rating go?  The CBS lede paragraph says it all:

Bush’s low job approval is far below that of some of his two-term predecessors at this point in their second terms. In November 1985, President Reagan had a 65 percent approval rating, and Bill Clinton’s job approval in November 1997 was 57 percent. Bush’s rating is higher than Richard Nixon’s was at the same point in his administration.

"Yeah, but he’s embroiled in a second-term scandal", you cry.

Yeah, and so were Clinton, Reagan, and Nixon.  But Clinton and Reagan never went below 40% (in fact, Clinton never went below 50%).  Compared to Bush, only Nixon — and even then, only at the very height of Watergate (January through resignation in 1974) — was lower.

Stupid Wingers Roundup

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/IdiocyLeave a Comment

Shorter Jason: The fact that Jimmy Carter was fooled in 2003 by the Bush Administration’s overstating of WMD intelligence means that the Bush Administration didn’t mislead anybody.

Shorter K-Lo at the Corner: The fact that Jay Rockefeller was fooled in 2002 by Bush Administration’s overstating of WMD intelligence means that the Bush Administration didn’t mislead anybody.

Shorter Leon H:  I think that fetuses are "people".  Since I think that, liberals must think the same thing.  Which means that liberals are hypocrites if they complain about 2,000+ dead U.S. soldiers, but don’t complain about abortions.

A Racism Primer For Wingnuts

Ken AshfordRace, Right Wing Punditry/IdiocyLeave a Comment

Conservative blogs today are all out-of-joint because certain people have attacked Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, a black Republican.

The Washington Times is stirring the brew, with articles saying things like this:

Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat, said Mr. Steele invites comparisons to a slave who loves his cruel master or a cookie that is black on the outside and white inside because his conservative political philosophy is, in her view, anti-black.

Now, is what Salima Marriott says "racist"?  The conservative pundits are screaming "yes".

But it’s not.

"Racism" is making generalizations — usually negative, but not always — about an entire race.  Let’s look at some examples:

(1) "All blacks are lazy and shiftless" is clearly racist, because it makes a negative generalization about a race.

But . . .

(2) "All blacks are good dancers" is also racist, because it makes a (postive) generalization about a race.

Now we’ll make it slightly more complicated:

(3) "Michael Jordan and Tiger Wood are probably good dancers".  Again, this is racist because it rests on the assumption that all blacks are good dancers, and since Jordan and Wood are black, they too must be good dancers.  It is not necessarily insulting to Jordan or Wood, but it rests on a racist assumption (see #2 above).  It insults the entire race by generalizing and falsely lumping blacks together as have a common trait.

(4) "Michael Jordan is an asshole".  This comment is NOT racist.  Why not?  Because it makes no negative generalizations about Michael Jordan’s race; it merely insults Michael Jordan (who just happens to be black).

(5)  "Donny Osmond is like a slave who loves his cruel master".  This comment is NOT racist.  Why not?  Because it makes no negative generalizations about any race.  It makes no generalizations (positive or negative) about Donny Osmond’s race ("unbelievably Caucasion").  It makes no generalizations (positive or negative) about slaves’ race ("black").

Now, we return to Marriot’s comment in the quote above (and slightly edit it for demonstrative purposes):

(6)  "Mr. Steele is like a slave who loves his cruel master".

This is NOT racist.  This isn’t making any generalizations about an entire race.  It isn’t saying that ALL blacks have a common trait.  It isn’t saying that ALL blacks are like slaves who love their cruel masters.  It is merely saying that Mr. Steele has those traits.

Now if #5 is NOT "racist", why should #6 be viewed as "racist"?   There’s no earthly reason.  The only difference in the two statements is the subject of the sentence: Donny Osmond vs. Michael Steele.

And that’s the problem with conservatives.  They confuse attacking a person who happens to BE black, with attacking that person’s entire race.  You know why?  Because they see color, that’s why.

To them, if you criticize a conservative who happens to be white, then you are "unhinged".  But attack a conservative who happens to be a minority, and you are "racist" (as well as being "unhinged"). 

But these people don’t know what "racism" means!!!

And I know why.

Because many of them are racists.