I'm an idiot

I was fooling around with some files and I did something wrong so our old pal Blogger is back until I figure out what I did to my Movabletype installation. I may have to remove everything and install from scratch.

Baby steps

George "I'm a War president" Bush made history yesterday with the following statement:

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government, and to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility."

-- George W. Bush, September 13, 2005

This may be the only time that he has even hinted at making a mistake. I won't count his attempt to dodge the question during a presidential debate when he answered, "Now, you ask what mistakes -- I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them." And while he said yesterday, "I take responsibility," look at the words that precede it. First he tries to spread the blame to "all levels of government," and then he qualifies his statement by adding, "to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right."

I wonder what Bush's inquiry into "what went right and what didn't go right", headed by Bush himself, will find. I bet anything that falls into the "what didn't go right" category will be things that the state and local governments did or didn't do. Maybe he will admit that the appointment of Michael Brown to head FEMA was one of those mistakes that he hinted at during the debate.

But I applaud the War President for taking responsibility. In the years to come he will have to take responsibility for many more things. When he and Rummy are sitting before the War Crimes Tribunal they will have to answer charges of genocide that they directed in Fallujah. They bombed the city and cut off power and supplies, the US bombed hospitals and mosques, they allowed women and children to leave the city-- but not men--and then gave orders to shoot and kill men whether they were armed or not. That sounds like genocide to me--even if the United States did it.

Will the War President take responsibility for violating the Article 147 of Geneva Convention(IV)(among others).

Art. 147. Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the present Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.

Anyhow, I'm proud of you Georgie. You still have to work on it, but you are are making baby steps.

Site of the Day

Reality Check

It has been two years since Bush invaded Iraq with the Shock & Awe^TM Show so it is time for a reality check.

• 1520 US military deaths


• 176 "Coalition" deaths


• 11,220 US wounded in action


• 212 foreign contractors killed in Iraq


• 24 journalists killed, at least six of them killed by US military


• thousands and thousands of dead Iraqi civilians


• American taxpayers have paid over $156 Billion so far


• No WMD


• No link between Iraq and 9/11


• There is a link between Iraqi Oil and Bush's War

File under: Politics, Iraq, War

Only Christians

In her latest post Dumbgirl posits that it is only Christians who change the world for the better. She goes on to ask:

"I'd love to see a long list of non-Christians who have changed the world for the better."
-- Amy "Dumbgirl" Proctor

Someone mentioned Gandhi and she admitted that he was a non-christian who changed the world for the better. I know that she would not allow me to comment there so here is a brief list of some other non-christians who have changed the world for the better:

• Thomas Jefferson
  
• Tenzin Gyatso
  
• Margaret Sanger
  
• Shirin Ebadi
  
• Friedrich Nietzsche
  
• Pythagoras
  
• Bill Gates
  
• Steve Wozniak
  
• Benjamin Franklin
  
• Elie Wiesel
  
• Voltaire
  
• Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa
  
• Ani DiFranco
  
• Socrates
  
• Plato
  
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
  
• Eddie Vedder
  
• Aristotle
  
• Euclid
  
• Confucius
  
• Siddhartha Gautama Buddha
  
• Lao Tzu
  
• John Adams
  
• John Quincy Adams
  
• Richard Leakey
  
• David Hume
  
• Wangari Maathai
  
• Vandana Shiva
  
• Aung San Suu Kyi
  
• Bertrand Russell
  
• ...

A statement like that is just stupid. Is she that wrapped up in christianity to see beyond it? Is she unaware that there are non-western cultures? At least sixty-seven percent of the world's population is non-christian.

File under: Religion

Attention people of "faith"

You must be coming here because you long for my message...

Message #1

My message today is that you should follow the lead of the United Church of Christ. Instead of saying who isn't good enough to be a christian they welcome anyone who is interested. Instead of pointing at the people who are suffering because they are poor or sick the UCC's Justice and Peace Action Center acts as an advocate for those without a voice. Instead of praying that those in need find God and comfort it out through its Neighbors in Need program.

There are others that do similar things, but this is the one with which I am most familiar. In fact, I would guess that the hate-spewing bigots that call themselves christians are a small minority. They are just the most noticeable.

I call on those of you who call yourselves "Christians", to work within your congregation or parish to move in this direction; to work for those who need help. And do so without asking for anything in return; no strings. No need for the recipients to convert or attend church services or to personally accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Do what is right and good things will follow.

Message #2

Also, more news on fake news. Please see this frontpage story from yesterday's New York Times:

Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News
By DAVID BARSTOW and ROBIN STEIN
Published: March 13, 2005

File under: Politics,Religion

Dumbgirl is hot

In her post entitled "Democracy & Freedom Are On the March!!" Dumbgirl regurgitated some Bush Administration propaganda about the United States making the world safe for democracy or something. One of her followers commented about the report in The Lancet that found 100,000 Iraqi civilians died because of American intervention in Iraq. I tried to correct her mistaken interpretation of the study; Dumbgirl promptly deleted my comment and banned my ip.

I tried again with another comment on the topic of Dumbgirl accepting public assistance in the past and her belief that she should not have her tax dollars used to pay for abortions.

All women should receive free pre-natal care, free births, and receive a stipend to care for the baby once it is born and free health care for children.

Amy, do (you) approve of your tax dollars going to pay for breast augmentations and liposuction for military people?
see: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040726ta_talk_schaler
Abortion maybe abhorrent to you but breast augmentation and liposuction are abhorrent to me. Why should I pay for military women to have bigger boobs?

March 9, 2005 | Rob

Dumbgirl responded:

Rob,

I will address you once, then never again.

As for the military breast augmentations, keep in mind that they are not all for vanity reasons. Medical care in the military has in the past covered masectamies (sic) for removal of the breast due to cancer and tumors, but not an implant to recover the form. If you think that these "boob jobs" are sickening, that's on you, but for the military to cosmetically replace the breast taken through surgery is very humane. As for doing it for vanity purposes, I am opposed to this. It is unnecessary and frivolous. However, being the anti-conservative that you are I'd think you'd 1) like seeing "bigger boobs" and 2) believed in bigger (pardon the pun) government.

So because I am liberal, or as she says "anti-conservative", that means that I like seeing "bigger boobs"? Actually I think big plastic breasts are as disgusting as abortions, but I am not going to try to pass laws or amend the Constitution to stop women from doing either.

And I'm for "bigger government"? Bigger than Dubya's government and his record budget deficit? I'm for a big government in the right places. If by big government she means keeping people out of poverty or making sure that people get health care and stuff like that, then okay, I'm for big government. If she means filling up the prisons with non-violent drug offenders and building a missile defense system, then no.

She goes on:

Finally, I can only assume you bypass my IP bans because you need to hear what I have to say. I am being sincere when I suggest you have a longing inside for the message of Jesus, since you beat down my internet door to come in and hear it. True, you attempt to discredit it, but I believe this is your attempt to quite your conscience and justify your own views to yourself. This is typically what people in need of saving do: if they know they need saving, they accept. If they don't want to change their lifestyle or their minds, they make it their life's work to make the truth wrong (which cannot be done) This really has little to do with me (unless you just think I'm hot) and everything to do with you.

Oh yeah, I think she's hot. Uh huh. Middle-aged, Catholic mothers of four are my thing.

I am not "longing for the message of Jesus" either. I know what it is and I agree with it. She is the one who discredits the message of Jesus more than I do. Would Jesus volunteer to work for George Bush and jump out of a plane to shoot at Muslims to secure a supply of oil? Or would Jesus be one of the millions of people protesting Bush's decision to invade and occupy Iraq?

"People in need of saving"? Saved from what? I need to be saved from over-zealous christians who think that they know what is best for their neighbors and the rest of the world.

Actually I'm on my own little anti-witnessing campaign. Every week I have christian pamphlets left in my door. On my radio, where I once picked up local community radio stations, I get a satellite feed from Tennessee or somewhere with christian preachers. In the public or university library when I check out a book there is a pretty good chance that there is a Chick tract in it. I guess it is okay for christians to come univited into everyone else's lives.

I am just trying to do my part to provide an alternative to "all Bush, all Jesus, all the time". If I comment and she deletes it then at least I know that she read it.

I am sick of the holier-than-thou attitudes of these people.

I am also sick of Rick Santorum's weaselly face. He will lose in 2006.

And now the baby is crying so I may have to come back and edit later.

File under: Religion,Hypocrites

Quote of the Day

"[W]hat ever happened to turn the other cheek" and garbage like that. Guess what? That only works for so long and the time has come for us to stand up to what we know is evil and wrong. Bottom line is MAJORITY RULES and, well, I think you are sweating because we might just have a majority.
--Alice, Christian wife and mother

That's one Christian housewife who is mad as hell and she's not going to take it any more.

File under: Religion, Hypocrites

Where have I heard this before?

Of course you can't believe anything this guy says because he's a member of the Liberal Media, but this all sounds familiar:

Neocon Amorality

By Robert Parry
March 3, 2005

For a government that wraps its actions in moral absolutes about good versus evil, while deriding liberal relativism, the Bush administration may rank as the most committed in modern American history to an ends-justify-the-means ethos.
[more]

File under: Politics

On Religion

And other stuff

Much of my mother's side of the family belongs to the United Church of Christ (UCC). I was raised in the UCC--Sunday School, confirmation, youth group, etc. My problem was that I never believed in God so as soon as I graduated from high school I stopped going to church. Looking back on it now I see that God was a very small part of the experience. The focus of the local church was (and is) community, except for the 45 minutes on Sunday morning that were set aside for God talk. I still support the UCC--financially and otherwise. My niece and nephew also go to that church so I've been back for baptisms and children's programs.

My dad's family is Roman Catholic. My son is (or will be) Catholic. Not because I agree with the Church on a lot of things, but because I think that every person should get a good religious education. There is a fine line between education and indoctrination, so I will have a lot work to do. His mother is a practicing Catholic. As a child she attended the Methodist vacation bible school and did other things with protestant churches and she is pretty open to other religions. We discussed other options like joining the Unitarian Universalist congregation, but because of her experience and because she regularly attends mass it just makes sense to take him along. I think that my job will be to help him see that there is no one true religion and to help him get a background in comparative religion.

My personal, face-to-face contact with fundamentalist christians has been very limited. They've invited me to Wednesday night Bible study, I've been handed cassette tapes of 'christian rock', but I also I worked a summer job with a few girls from a nearby bible college. The college girls were very nice normal people. They were intelligent and witty and I enjoyed talking to them.

I also had another job that took me into people's homes to work with their children. (I know, people let a liberal atheist in their homes with their children!) It is a real eye-opener to go into the homes of strangers. And I've seen everything; from the homes where the children have their own suites with a bedroom, bathroom, and playroom with full entertainment center to the hot, smelly 40 year old trailer with cockroaches scurrying about. The children, however, were pretty much the same. Infants like to be held and talked to, toddlers want someone to play with them, and the 4 to 8 year olds ask question after question. Of course, each has her own personality but the differences are not due to income or ethnicity or anything like that. I loved that job. Well, I loved the part of it that involved the kids.

Anyhow, for some reason I visited a lot of fundamentalist Christian home schoolers. I always felt bad for those kids. First, because they were getting a really poor 'education' but also because they were generally lacking social skills and the one thing that they were learning was hate. They were being taught that anyone who disagrees with the their parents is worthless and going to hell. I don't know, it's hard for me to decide if it is worse that these children get a poor education from their mothers or for them to be in public school with their parents trying to get the curriculum changed to include 'Creation Science' and a morning prayer. I always wonder what the school prayer people would think if their kids were forced to say or attend Muslim prayers at school. Would they still be in favor of school prayer?

File under: Religion

The word of the day is...

MUSEUM

(via Jasmine)

File under: Politics

Quote of the Day

"The court finds that the president has no power, neither express nor implied, neither constitutional nor statutory, to hold petitioner as an enemy combatant."
-- Judge Henry Floyd

Jose Padilla, who has been detained for almost three years as an "enemy combatant", must be charged or released within 45 days. Judge Floyd, a Bush appointee, went on to write that to rule otherwise would "be to engage in judicial activism." And we all know what Dubya thinks of "activist judges".

Craniopagus Parasiticus

I am interested to know what my anti-abortion, pro-life, pro-war christian friends think about this (see below) They probably have to check with Karl Rove or Jerry Falwell to see what they should think.

Op to remove baby's second head

Doctors have operated successfully to remove a second head from a 10-month-old baby.

Manar Maged was originally one of conjoined identical twins, but her sister failed to develop in the womb.

As a result she was born with a second head attached to her own - a condition known as craniopagus parasiticus.

Manar, who was otherwise healthy, underwent a 13-hour operation at Benha Children's Hospital, Cairo, on Saturday. She is reported to be stable.

Doctors said the second head was capable of smiling and blinking - but not of independent life.
[more]

Although that second head is not capable of living on its own it is technically alive. Is it wrong to remove (kill) that beautiful little face?

Dubya is no FDR

Gia recently posted about The New 20 Commandments; that reminded me of FDR's Second Bill of Rights.

Second Bill of Rights
Every American is entitled to:

• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries, or shops or farms or mines of the nation;


• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;


• The right of farmers to raise and sell their products at a return which will give them and their families a decent living;


• The right of every business man, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
  
• The right of every family to a decent home;


• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;


• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, and sickness, and accident and unemployment;


• The right to a good education.

George W. Bush doesn't even deserve to be metioned in the same sentence as FDR, but look at the difference in the two. FDR spoke about protecting the rights of people. Bush does everything in his power to protect corporations.

I was just listening to FDR's 1936 acceptance speech at the DNC in which he said this:

Governments can err, presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales.

On which scale will Mr. Bush's sins be weighed?

After the United States was attacked in 1941 FDR addressed the American people and said:

On the road ahead there lies hard work -- gruelling work -- day and night, every hour and every minute.

I was about to add that ahead there lies sacrifice for all of us.

But it is not correct to use that word. The United States does not consider it a sacrifice to do all one can, to give one's best to our nation, when the nation is fighting for its existence and its future life.

It is not a sacrifice for any man, old or young, to be in the Army or the Navy of the United States. Rather it is a privilege.

It is not a sacrifice for the industrialist or the wage earner, the farmer or the shopkeeper, the trainmen or the doctor, to pay more taxes, to buy more bonds, to forego extra profits, to work longer or harder at the task for which he is best fitted. Rather it is a privilege.

It is not a sacrifice to do without many things to which we are accustomed if the national defense calls for doing without it.

After the United States was attacked in 2001 George Bush told the American people to go shopping. We must keep corporate revenue flowing.

Dubya Quote of the Day

"I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."
-- Governor George "Dubya" Bush to Doug Wead in 1998 or 1999

Random thoughts on a Sunday

• More people voted against George "Dubya" Bush in 2004 (57,695,898) and in 2000 (54,916,568) than voted for Reagan in 1984 (54,451,521).


• 51% is not a Decisive Victory or a Mandate!


• Bill Clinton has been out of office for more than four years yet Republicans are still bashing him.


• Some people claim to "follow the evidence", but even after almost two years of US occupation and NO evidence of WMD (the reason Dubya gave to the American people for starting a war) they still support the war and the man who has sent more than 1,500 American servicemen and women to their deaths.


• There is no Social Security Crisis.


• Why has Bush not been impeached for lying to Congress?


• Dubya does not care about the Iraqi people, all he cares about are US economic and strategic interests in the region.


• Congratulations to Dubya and Rummy on their recent awards.

Bush quote of the day

"[I]n America or anywhere else, the sign of a healthy and vibrant society is one in where there's an active press corps. Obviously, there has got to be constraints."
-- George "Dubya" Bush, 24 February 2005

Constraints? What kind of constraints?

Whoever, when the United States is at war,...shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States...shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both.
from US Sedition Act

Moving up the charts

I am number 281 on the

^{...and I'm not even christian}

Oh, Irony...

"We must always remind Russia, however, that our alliance stands for a free press, a vital opposition, the sharing of power and the rule of law."
-- George "Dubya" Bush, 21 Februaray 2005

Does anyone else see any irony in that statement? The Bush Administration has been trying to be more like the Putin Government yet Bush went before the world and admonished him. Does Bush support a free press at home? Vital opposition? Sharing of power? Ha. And the rule of law has been flaunted by this administration over and over.

Talk amongst yourselves

I'll be gone for a few days. The baby is going in the hospital for surgery so I'll be there until Wednesday or Thursday. His aunt is still there recovering from her stroke so we will get to spend some time with her as well.