State Sen. Patricia Miller, R-Indianapolis, has withdrawn her proposed legislation to regulate assisted reproduction.
She’ll try again. We’ll complain—loudly—again.
Denied
Spy in the White House
A marine who has worked in the White House for at least three years, most recently in the office of Dick Cheney, is being accused of espionage.
Both the FBI and CIA are calling it the first case of espionage in the White House in modern history.Awesome. Good job with that whole security thing, Bush & pals, you idiots.
[…]
"I don't know of a case where the vetting broke down before and resulted in a spy being in the White House," said Richard Clarke, a former White House advisor who is now an ABC News consultant.
Federal investigators say [Leandro Aragoncillo, 46], a naturalized citizen from the Philippines, used his top secret clearance to steal classified intelligence documents from White House computers.
In 2000, Aragoncillo worked on the staff of then-Vice President Al Gore. When interviewed by Philippine television, he remarked how valued Philippine employees were at the White House.
"I think what they like most is our integrity and loyalty," Aragoncillo said.
[…]
Officials say the classified material, which Aragoncillo stole from [Cheney’s] office, included damaging dossiers on the president of the Philippines. He then passed those on to opposition politicians planning a coup in the Pacific nation.
[…]
Since [his arrest last year], officials say Aragoncillo has started to cooperate. He has admitted to spying while working on the staff of Vice President Cheney's office.
(Hat tip, AMERICAblog.)
Register Your Disgust
Separated at Birth?
You decide.
(She’s been reminding me of someone, and I couldn’t figure out who until awhile ago. Then I realized it was the esteemed Salacious B. Crumb, which seems even more fitting, considering he could probably be aptly described as the "work-wife" of a hideous dictator, too.)
Rumor
Pre$$titutes is reporting a rumor (just a rumor!) that over a dozen indictments in the Plame case may be imminent.
I like rumors.
Splitsville
Newlyweds no more. Nick and Jessica have thrown in the towel on their picture perfect marriage. Who woulda thunk it?
Better luck next time, kids.
Dr. Dobson is a Very Knowledgeable Man
Tim Grieve wants to know what Dr. James Dobson, patriarch of Focus on the Family and professional wingnut, knows that we don’t.
While other leaders of the religious right are reacting cautiously to the nomination of Harriet Miers, Dobson says he's all in. Karl Rove lobbied for the support of the Focus on the Family leader even before Miers' name was announced, and his efforts paid off: On his radio show, Dobson is telling listeners that they should get behind Miers now.Now, I never thought I’d find myself in the position of defending the good Dr. Dobson, but the truth is, he is a very knowledgeable man, so I think we ought to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one. As proof of just how wise he is, I’d like to share with you some things I’ve learned from his famous book on child-rearing, Dare to Discipline, a copy of which my mother recently gave me off her very own bookshelf. (That’s right—my mother read Dr. Dobson’s handbook on child-rearing, and if I’m not all the proof you need at how successful his recommendations are, then I don’t know what ever could convince you.)
What makes Dobson so comfortable with Bush's nominee? He won't say, exactly. "Some of what I know I am not at liberty to talk about," Dobson tells the New York Times.
[…]
Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, who has had his spats with Focus on the Family before, says that if Dobson knows some secret about Miers, he should share it with the rest of the class -- especially if he heard the secret straight from the White House. "It seems to me, all of the [information] the White House knows about Harriet Miers should be made available to the Senate and the American people," Salazar says. "If they're making information available to Dr. Dobson -- whom I respect and disagree with from time to time -- I believe that information should be shared equally with a U.S. senator."
Today, I’m going to share with you some things I learned from Dr. Dobson’s “Glossary of Narcotic Slang,” which provides parents with a handy guide from a knowledgeable source on drugs, the doctor himself. Now, this isn’t the whole list, mind you, because I want you to go out and buy the whole book, but hopefully this will give you an idea of how clever Dr. Dobson is and make you better able to trust his judgment on the estimable Ms. Miers.
Acid Heads—Users of LSD
(Actually, I knew that one before I read Dr. Dobson’s helpful glossary, since I used to be one, but I thought I’d throw it in, for those of you who didn’t know.)
Boxed—To be in jail.
Bread—Money.
“C”—Cocaine.
Dealer—Drug supplier.
Establishment—Organized society as we know it today.
Fink—Informer.
Gay—Homosexual.
(See—now I didn’t even know that was “Narcotics Slang.” Where would I be without Dr. Dobson’s help?)
Goof Balls—Barbiturates.
“H”—Heroin.
Heat—Police.
I’m flush—I have money.
I’m holding—I have narcotics, can make a deal.
I’m looking—I wish to buy.
Kick—Abandon drug habit.
Nickel bag—$5 purchase of narcotics.
Rat—Informer.
Turning tricks—Prostituting.
Wasn’t that helpful? Now you see how knowledgeable Dr. Dobson is, and why we ought to trust him, don’t you?
Next time from Dare to Discipline: A Moment for Mom.
Unbelievable
A federal court in New York has ruled that the Salvation Army may hire and fire employees according to their religious beliefs -- even though it receives most of its money for social services from the government. The ruling earlier this week is considered a major court victory for the Bush administration.Hat tip to Devo (in comments).
Goodbye, Agi
Agi T. Prop is saying goodbye. I understand why, although I will miss him terribly...until he shows up again, which I say with the hope that he will not want to stay away. Much love, Agi.
Ditto, Rox. At least temporarily. Sigh.
Are You A Poor American?
Well then, you'd better get used to some new flavor surprises at the dinner table. Because 'ol "Spending Cuts" Dubya is at it again.
Lawmakers Welcome Bush Spending Cuts Vow
While everyone else rolls their eyes in disbelief.
WASHINGTON - President Bush's conservative allies in Congress hope his vow to use some of his political capital pushing for more budget cuts will persuade lawmakers to help pay for hurricane relief without bloating the deficit. But they are hungry for more than just promises.
Bush told reporters Tuesday that Congress should pay for as much of the relief as possible by cutting federal spending somewhere else.
Beware, oh beware of that "somewhere else."
"I'll work with members of Congress to identify offsets and to free up money for the reconstruction" following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, he said.
Tough-on-spending lawmakers such as House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, and a band of mostly junior conservatives welcomed a renewed presidential campaign for fiscal discipline, recognizing that it is the only way to make balky members of Congress go along.
"The president's call to reduce spending is of incalculable value to those of us fighting to respond to the needs of this disaster without raising taxes or adding to the national debt," said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.
Ahem.
*Sip of water*
*Throat Spray*
*Clears throat*
ROLL BACK THE GODDAMNED TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY, YOU MORONS. THERE'S YOUR SOLUTION.
But no, no one ever listens to me. Of course, you can see where this is going.
Congress is on track to consider later this month legislation to impose curbs on the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled, student loan subsidies for banks, farm subsidies and food stamps.
Oh, of course, of course... cutting social programs! Screw those on Medicaid... forget the poor... students shouldn't be in those Liberal universities anyway... and food stamps? Sheesh! They just use those things to buy cigarettes!
This just never fails to amaze me, and quote like this one:
But many of those ideas — such as trimming farm subsidies, raising rates for federally subsidized electricity and increasing the airline ticket tax — have little support on Capitol Hill. Others, like making veterans pay a bigger share of their health care costs and cutting grants to state and local governments, get rejected year after year.
...are cold comfort, because if they don't trim these particular social programs, they'll slice away at another one rather than come within sniffing distance of the wallets of the rich. In my social work classes, one of the things that is hammered into our brains on a daily basis is the fact that we have no money. Our organizations have had their budgets cut, there is barely any money to make social programs run, and we have to work with what we have. It's just taken as a given that people are not going to get the help that they desperately need, because there's just no money.
Some people will just have to do without medical care, or therapy, or medications, or food.
Meanwhile, rolling back Bush's obnoxious tax cuts for the rich, reducing corporate welfare, and any other number of cuts could be made to take care of our money problems. George Bush, who has presided over a federal spending Mardi Gras that would make classical conservatives retch, who has still not issued one veto in his two terms, is planning on robbing the poor yet again and hack away at decimated programs to pay for his mistakes.
Let the poor drown again. We can just create more to replace them.
Leader of Senate: All fellow members of the Roman senate hear me. Shall we continue to build palace after palace for the rich? Or shall we aspire to a more noble purpose and build decent housing for the poor? How does the senate vote?
Entire Senate: FUCK THE POOR!
UPDATE: And in the meantime, we're spending $500,000 on this. Gee, maybe we could have spent that money on, oh, I don't know...
ACTUAL FISH THAT HUNGRY PEOPLE COULD HAVE EATEN???
Jesus jumping jackrabbits...
(From Mel Brooks' "History of the World, Part 1". Springtime...for cross-posts, and Germany...)
Polls and '06 Election News
Bush’s job approval is stuck at 43%, according to a new Zogby poll.
The survey finds that, despite a more favorable rating for Hurricane Rita preparation and leadership, President Bush continues to be viewed in negative terms for the government’s performance during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It also finds that his signature strong issue, the War on Terror, has ticked downward slightly, and his handling of the war is now approved by a minority of voters.Meanwhile, in some east-coast gubernatorial races…
Massachusetts:
A new University of Massachusetts poll shows Gov. Mitt Romney (R) trailing in the state’s gubernatorial race. Against Attorney General Tom Reilly (D), Romney is behind 38% to 53%, and against Secretary of State William Galvin (D), Romney trails 42% to 46%.New York:
All three Democrats are ahead in a potential matchup with Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey (R).
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer (D) "buries any of four possible Republican contenders for New York State Governor," according to a new Quinnipiac poll.New Jersey:
Possible matchups:
- Spitzer over Randy Daniels 60% to 15%
- Spitzer over Thomas Golisano 56% to 22%
- Spitzer over William Weld 60% to 16%
- Spitzer over John Faso 60% to 14%
In a GOP primary, Golisano leads with 33%, followed by 8% for Faso, 7% for Daniels and 6% for Weld.
Political Wire has seen a new Penn, Schoen, Berland poll (D) of the New Jersey gubernatorial race that shows Sen. Jon Corzine (D-NJ) leading Doug Forrester (R) 46% to 33%.Pennsylvania:
Pennsylvania voters give Gov. Ed. Rendell a 46 - 38 percent approval rating, one of his lowest marks ever, but he still holds double-digit leads over any likely Republican challenger in his bid for reelection next year, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.And finally, The Hill reports that the GOP is having problems mounting Senate candidates in some key races. And an update on that story, which noted Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) was without a Democratic challenger… Jack Carter, son of former president Jimmy Carter and a Las Vegas resident, has thrown his hat in the ring.
Indiana Wants to Control My Uterus
Following on the heels of D's post below, I'd like to point out that the requirements one would have to meet to receive a “certificate of satisfactory completion of an assessment required under the bill” indicates that the insane legislation being proposed on my state is not only seeking to ban pregnancies for single mothers, lesbians, and gay men via surrogate, but also straight, married women who aren’t religious.
Miller says that assisted pregnancy is totally unregulated. The bill would bar any doctor from assisting in a pregnancy through intrauterine insemination, donation of an egg, donation of an embryo, in vitro fertilization and transfer of an embryo, and sperm injection without making a number of "determinations" about the "suitability of the candidate.Reading through the proposed legislation, I see that parents seeking a pregnancy through medical means would also have to produce financial records, documentation of previous marriages “and an assessment of the impact of the prior marriage on the intended parents' relationship,” “the intended parents' child rearing expectations and values,” criminal records, child care plans, and a whole slew of other information, which, when taken as a whole, seems to indicate that Indiana doesn’t believe that anyone but straight, rich, Christian families with no past divorces and a stay-at-home mom are deserving of medical assisted procreation.
Women seeking treatment would have to provide a certificate of satisfactory completion of an assessment required under the bill.
Among the determining factors is a requirement that the women be married to a person of the opposite sex. The assessment would contain a description of the family lifestyle and automatically exclude lesbians. Women would also have to provide proof that they have participated in faith-based or church activities.
Talk about The Handmaid’s Tale—fucking hell! This is some scary, scary shit. Forget the Ten Commandments in a frigging courtroom; this may be the most unbelievable encroachment on the separation of church and state I have ever seen. Legislating whether someone can have a child based on whether one is straight? married? religious? Absolutely despicable. I am ashamed of my state, and I have some calls to make.
Also writing on this: The Heretik, with a round-up of others writing on the issue, Pam, Marla at Julien's List, Feministe, Our Word, What She Said, Pandagon, Majikthise, Cookie Jill at Skippy, Echidne, The Booman Tribune, King of Zembla, Expostulation, John Howard, The Fulcrum, Evil Li-brul Overlord, Evil Mommy.
Come on, guys—The Heretik, The King, John, and Charles2 can’t be the only boys who feels some outrage over this one!
Happy Blogiversary…
…to Shakespeare’s Sister!
One year ago today, I posted my very first entry, called “Young Bones Groan,” which is the first line of the Smiths’ song Shakespeare’s Sister, after which this blog is named.
In the past year, I’ve picked up three incredible contributors, for whom I am grateful every day, fantastic guest bloggers, a huge blogroll of amazing bloggers (many of whom blogrolled me well before I probably deserved it), and what is arguably the cleverest, funniest, most interesting community of readers in the whole of the blogosphere (of which John Howard was the first). Thanks for making this fun and meaningful.
And a huge thank you to Mr. Shakes, who encouraged me to do this in the first place, and has never, for even a single, solitary moment, been anything less than the wholly biased champion each of us needs when we pursue what we love.
Onward and upward…
Question of the Day
Should Bush be impeached?
(That's what After Downing Street wants to know, so they're raising money to get pollsters to ask. In the meantime, what do you think?)
GOP Out of Control
Aside from the neck-deep corruption, the hacktastic appointments, the bloated deficit, and the rest of their idiocy, and despite plummeting support for their maniacal agenda, they continue to stumble forth with one bad idea after the next.
Bush, who by the day looks ever more determined to fashion himself the dictator of a martial state, has suggested that the military should be used to contain a possible epidemic of avian flu.
He said the military, perhaps the National Guard, might be needed to enforce quarantines if the feared H5N1 bird flu virus changes enough to cause widespread human infection.Too much Outbreak. Go get some fresh air.
"If we had an outbreak somewhere in the United States, do we not then quarantine that part of the country? And how do you, then, enforce a quarantine?" Bush asked at a news conference.
"It's one thing to shut down airplanes. It's another thing to prevent people from coming in to get exposed to the avian flu. And who best to be able to effect a quarantine?" Bush added.
Meanwhile, House Republicans are attempting to ram through a bill that seeks to ensure college students hear "dissenting viewpoints" in class.
The measure's chief promoter, Marxist-turned-conservative activist David Horowitz, says an academic bill of rights will protect students from possible political "hectoring" and discrimination by their professors. "We have enough institutions in America that are political. Let's keep [universities] above that fray," he adds.This is absurd. All one hears from conservatives when liberals have the audacity to criticize any of the GOP policies or nominations is Don’t complain—you didn’t have the votes; we have a mandate. Well, the president waved bye-bye to that (dubious) mandate awhile ago now, and, contrary to the popular belief among his base, that doesn’t give him and the GOP-controlled Congress license to militarize whenever they want, or strong-arm universities into teaching what they want, or any of the other ridiculous compulsory adherence to conservative philosophy they may collectively try to legislate. I’ve got no problem with Bush wanting to nominate conservative judges—I mean, it stinks to high heaven from my political perspective, but that’s why winning elections is important. When you lose, you don’t get to choose. But I have a big problem with his nominating hacks, and messing around with education curricula, which ought to be decided by experts in the associated fields, and ignoring the majority on major issues like stem cell research and reproductive choice. Satisfying his waning base at the expense of the rest of the American people is unacceptable, both when he does it and when Congress does it. End of story.
But professors say Mr. Horowitz really is trying to silence liberal faculty members. "It's an invitation for the government to get involved in the internal affairs of the university," says William Scheuerman, a political scientist at the State University of New York at Oswego, and president of the state's faculty union. "We don't want Big Brother here."
[…]
Roger Bowen, general secretary of the American Association of University Professors, the faculty union, dismisses Mr. Horowitz's assertion that he is only acting to protect colleges. He sees a bill of rights as an attempt by conservative politicians to "rectify what they believe is an ideological imbalance" on the campuses. Because it "comes at a time when power in Washington is heavily tilted in one direction, that concerns me," he adds.
Open Yapper, Insert Foot
Gee golly gosh. Think Tom "Ball-Peen" DeLay is feeling really sorry that he opened his big pie hole and vomited forth this statement?
I'm sure he's not going to be tut-tutting about taking your beatings in prison like a man anymore, either.
(Tip 'o the Energy Dome to August. Cross-posts are GO!!)
Incestuous Administration
Everyone is all tied up with everyone else, and the same names keep popping up over and over in different scandals than the ones during which we may have learned their names—Abramoff’s got ties to the White House, Bolton’s got ties to Judy Miller, etc. Yesterday, MSNBC ran the following photo alongside an AP story on Harriet Miers with a cryptic caption:
Harriet Miers, at the time staff secretary, is
Familiar date, no? Today E&P notes:
Indeed, that was the date, a little over a month before 9/11, that President Bush was briefed on the now-famous “PDB” that declared that Osama Bin Laden was “determined” to attack the U.S. homeland, perhaps with hijacked planes. But does that mean that Miers had anything to do with that briefing?Awesome choice, Mr. President. You’ve done the nation proud.
As it turns out, yes, according to Tuesday's Los Angeles Times. An article by Richard A. Serrano and Scott Gold observes that early in the Bush presidency “Miers assumed such an insider role that in 2001 it was she who handed Bush the crucial 'presidential daily briefing' hinting at terrorist plots against America just a month before the Sept. 11 attacks.”
Meanwhile, there’s no information at all at Give ‘Em Hell, Harry about Miers at all, no less an explanation as to why the Senate Minority Leader would endorse this woman.
Fatties
A new study has found that 90% of men and 70% of women in America will become overweight by the end of their lives.
Once again, I’m a trend-setter!
On a side note: Yet another annoying article that completely ignores the possibility that one can be fat and healthy. Yes—it is possible; see LeMew here and Ampersand here. Weight and health are not inextricably linked; what matters is one’s underlying healthfulness, and there are plenty of overweight people whose blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar levels, joints, hearts, etc. are just fine, in spite of what we’re meant to believe. I’m a total chubster, and yet I've hiked 20 miles in a day with no problems (and, frustratingly, without losing a bloody pound!). Read this Scientific American article for information on how the obesity hysteria has been overblown. We don’t need to hate fat; we just need to love health.
