Stand Up and Holla! provides AmCop with the following exclusive peek at a new ad campaign occurring in his city:

speakingcorpse writes:

My letter to CBS upon hearing the news that the network would run ads during "60 Minutes" attacking Clinton for leaving America "vulnerable to terrorists," though they refused to run MoveOn's ads during the Super Bowl:

I am sad and afraid, not to say terrified, after hearing that you will run anti-Clinton ads during "60 Minutes." Why are these OK to run but not MoveOn's anti-Bush ads? Really, I'm not writing as a Bush-hater, but as a concerned citizen. Is this fair? Are you an independent network? Are Republicans "more equal" than Democrats? Hearing stuff like this makes me really afraid for the future of an independent press in America, and, by extension, afraid for the future of our Republic. Please, act in the public interest! Don't abandon your audience for the sake of quick profit! Help us!

Click here to contact CBS.

http://richardperle.blogspot.com/

speakingcorpse writes:

Here is an excellent column, which makes the point that it is up to us voters whether or not America will become a country in which torture is legal and human dignity is embodied by the corpse of FBI informant/genocide-advocate Ronald Reagan. I only disagree with this statement:

Voters -- ultimately the most important source of pressure on democratic politicians -- can petition their congressmen, their senators and their president for more [investigation]. If they don't, the elections will be held, the subject will change. Without a real national debate, without congressional approval, without much discussion of what torture actually means and why it has so long been illegal at home and abroad, a few secret committees will have changed the character of this country.

No, if the nation fails to investigate the crimes of its leaders, because voters don't care whether ragheads are raped, then the national character will not have been changed by the secret committees that ordered the torture at Abu Ghraib. Our failure will show us the true character of the nation, but this character will not be somehow new, not changed by recent events orchestrated by secret committees. It will be what it always was--bankrupt and stupid. Perhaps it is not. But if the torture gets flushed down the national toilet hole of denial, then we will be proven not only to be, but to have always been, a nation of criminals.

Scats writes:

The most succinct argumentation I've yet seen on the matter:

Now we can just tell conservatives that in order to salvage our national pride from the dread French (or Singaporese!?!? At a quarter of our costs! The bastards!) we should overhaul our healthcare delivery system and institute universal single-payer. We'll reduce government waste and influence, be able to spend some of that cash on a shiny new missile defense or another tax cut (or servicing the, ahem, debt). They'll get elected by a landslide in the bargain and may even be able to throw another war on the cheap!

But how are they going to run a political campaign without all that drug and insurance money? Not to mention that it would violate the basic principle of morality that people should not get something for nothing. Much better is the current arrangement where we get something for four times what it costs Malta. Much more moral to extravagantly waste everyone's money to benefit a small segment of the population.

But hey, at least we're kicking the crap out of Sierra Leone. Boo-ya! How ya like me now, Malawi!?

...where the hell is Malawi? Wes?

My home state of Maryland has committed murder against an unarmed individual man:

Maryland Executes Oken

A trio of chemicals -- color-coded red, green and blue by a team of hidden executioners -- was pumped into Oken's veins starting at 9:09 p.m. Within minutes, they rendered him unconscious, paralyzed his lungs and, finally, stopped his heart. Witnesses said there were no complications.

Well, looks like Justice was served. Just the way Jesus would have liked it, no doubt.

At 5:08 p.m., Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s office faxed the defense a three-paragraph statement announcing that the governor had denied a request to partially commute Oken's capital sentence to life without parole.

Ehrlich (R), a strong supporter of the death penalty, repeatedly had pledged since taking office that he would carefully review any case that came before him. This was his first opportunity to do so, and Ehrlich wrote that he had employed "a deliberative process," examining all the facts and judicial opinions, and "as thoughtful decision making as I am able to summon in this so tragic matter."

In an interview earlier in the day, Ehrlich said he was not troubled by the weight of the decision. "That's why I get paid," he said. "Executives make decisions. If you have difficulty making tough decisions, maybe you shouldn't be an executive. It's part of the job."

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. is now guilty of murder. He should be arrested, locked up, and tried as a murderer. He will also, if the Christian view of the cosmos is accurate, have to face God and the possibility of spending eternity in hell for being an unrepentant murderer.

Apart from whatever issues Ehrlich may or not have pending before the seat of Divine Justice, it is obvious that he is an evil Republican son of a bitch who cares as little for human life as his evil robotic Republican cohorts.

Shame on the people of Maryland for electing this motile, sound-emitting, convict-murdering, SUV-driving column of solid shit.

Quote from this grinning turd, who I just heard on NPR discussing his new book, "Paradise Drive" (a book about how you should drive your full-sized black SUV up to the top of Liberty Mountain and then, with the engine running, and while viewing "The Passion of the Christ" on portable DVD, blow your brains out):

"There's no politics in the book."

The country now has a choice to make between death/lies, and life/truth. The choice is very simple. Because this is what fascism struggling to gain a foothold must look like.

Bush Reasserts Hussein-Al Qaeda Link



My own, absolutely verbatim transcript of this video:

Oh the reason I keep insisting, uh, there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda. This administration never said that the 9-11 attacks were orchestrated between Iraq and Al Qaeda. We did say there were numerous con-tacts between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. For example Iraqi intelligence officers met with Bin Laden, the head of Al Qaeda, in the Sudan. There's numerous contacts between the two. I always said that Saddam Hussein was a threat. He was a threat because he had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. He's a threat because he was a sworn enemy to the United States of America, just like Al Qaeda. Now he was a threat, because, uh, because he had terrorist connections not only Al Qaeda connections, but other connections to terrorist organizations. Abu Nadal [sic] is one. Uh he was a threat because he provided safe haven, for terrorists like Zarqawi, who is still killing innocent inside of Iraq. Now he was a threat and the world is better off and America is more secure without Saddam Hussein in power.

Just keep talking. Just keep forming those sounds and emitting them through that hole. Because you know what happens to big bad lying babies? They get their big bad baby lies smacked right out of their dirty mouths. That's right. You want some? I mean you really want some? Just say that again. I dare you.

A good letter from the New Yorker.

[Just realized it's not online, so I can't link it; but it's about how the Republicans in the 1950s nurtured a coded, white-directed language of "rights" (namely the right to lower taxes and higher property values) which helped teach government-subsidized red staters to vote their race, rather than class, consciousness. Today, the term "urban" is coded the same way (i.e., non-white) even though, as we know, states with large urban populations receive far less federal lucre per capita than the yokels.]

Of course, as we know, Republicans have no problem with coloreds as long as they speak in tongues in addition to ebonics. And plus, as Randi Rhodes frequently notes, gay is the new black. No doubt we'll soon hear cries from the plains about married gay couples lowering property values in addition to lowering values, despite all evidence (see San Francisco real estate market) to the contrary.

Scats writes:

What happens when you break ranks:

Goldberg is positioning himself for a future falling out with Sullivan and giving the nod to the wingers to let loose the hounds. It will be interesting to see how far they go in making Sullivan pay for his ostensible treachery and what Sullivan's audience will do. We may have another David Brock in the making.

If so, this is great news. Taken together with Tony Blankley's recent cartoonishly anti-Semitic comments it looks as though the Right is reverting to form. All of the '90's category mishmash that gave guys like Sullivan a career is coming to an end as the reactionary wing of the party increasingly kicks it old-school. The more they make being a social conservative a necessary concomitant of being an economic conservative the more constituents they lose. When you take off that genteel cosmopolitan David Brooks/Andrew Sullivan mask to reveal Michael Savage then you've just lost the center.

Now if they could just alienate Drudge somehow.

speakingcorpse writes:

You know the Times must have been bombarded with disgusted and exasperated letters when they publish six negative responses to David Brooks's latest foray into sociological analysis. Brooks had argued in his last column that the "partisan divide" in our country reflects conflicting values within the "elite" class--businessmen and managers admire Bush, intellectual professionals admire Kerry. This is absurd for all the obvious reasons, starting with the fact that Bush can't "manage" any sort of organization, let alone the federal government. I particularly enjoyed one of the letters, which objects to Brooks's remark that Democratic leaders tend to place less value on "discipline" (what kind? "message" discipline? mass execution? state terrorism? secret forced sodomy?) than on "self-expression." The letter writer enumerates all of the ways in which John Kerry has lived a relentlessly focused and disciplined life. He then concludes the letter simply by remarking that the "idea of self-expression is even more comical." The letter writer seems to suggest not just that "self-expression" is an absurd criterion for leadership, and that Democrats are more concerned with competence; he really seems also to suggest that the whole question of "self-expression" is absurd in the context of this campaign because Bush is not a self and is incapable of any form of expression. But perhaps I'm reading too much into it; see for yourself! The main point is that the Times must have had to spend hours reading all the anti-Brooks letters. How soon before they have to find a new "moderative conservative voice"? And who will it be?

Actually, I have an idea: given that Reagan's passage "across the bar," between insentient states, has turned him into a "national figure" who transcends party lines, he can no longer be referred to as the sunny neo-fascist that he was. So he is therefore necessarily a "moderate conservative." Thus it appears that Bush, the hard conservative, will have trouble taking on the mantle of Reagan reborn, or disinterred; you know which corpse I would vote for. Bush can't be the new Reagan because Bush is so "ideological," whereas Reagan "redefined the political center." Therefore, I propose that Ronald Reagan replace David Brooks as the new "moderate conservative voice" at the New York Times.

Dawkins writes:

Juan comes out of the closet with an Op Ed in today's NYTimes, "Bush Shouldn't Write Off the Black Vote." He confirms something we've suspected for a long while: that he's a brain-munching zombie fuck face.

Juan touches on Bush's treatment of black people!

"By giving Ms. Rice and Mr. Powell so much clout, President Bush is miles ahead of any other president, Democrat or Republican, in his treatment of black people."

Juan reminds us that Bush's people have "talent" and/or "ability":

"More important, the president, by appointing people of genuine talent and ability, has created a climate where tokenism is rarely part of the debate."

Head scratcher:

In private conversations, administration officials make the case that they want the black vote. But it is also clear that they are not planning to work hard to get it - in part because they are still angry over the black response to their efforts in 2000.

Why, and on what grounds, are the Bush people "angry over the black response to their efforts in 2000"? What would justify "anger" that they didn't get more response from black people? And what, by the way, were these "efforts"? To suppress black access to voting in Florida and throughout the south? Help us here, Juan.

For a laugh:

"As governor, Mr. Bush took the conventional conservative position that hate crimes legislation could lead to a dangerous increase in prosecutorial power."

Remember when Bush saw an increase in prosecutorial power as "dangerous"?

Amen!:

"…The president needs to begin reaching out to black Americans. Fortunately, he has a lot to say."

From the McSweeney's website:

Please join us on Thursday, June 24th at 8PM when Tin House and McSweeney's team up to present a benefit for 826NYC, featuring music by David Byrne, David Gates And His Enablers, and readings by Robert Coover, Susan Choi, Dave Eggers, Rick Moody, Elissa Schappell and host Jonathan Ames.

Thursday, June 24 - 8PM
The Old First Reformed Church
729 Carroll Street (at 7th Avenue) in Brooklyn.
$25

Tickets can be purchased in person at the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company (372 Fifth Ave. in Brooklyn) or over the phone by calling (718) 499-9884 during business hours.

MoveOn.org writes:

Today, we're asking MoveOn members to pledge to see the film on the opening night -- Friday, June 25th. (If you can't make it on Friday, pledging to go on Saturday or Sunday is fine, too). It'll be fun, of course -- you'll be watching the movie with lots of other MoveOn members. It'll also send an unmistakable message to the media and theater owners that the public is behind this movie.

To see the Fahrenheit 9/11 trailer and pledge to see the movie on the opening weekend, go to:

http://www.moveonpac.org/f911/?id=2948-1379109-7hDULiPviGBwGzV8o8zEOA

I've been out of town, and am posting this late. GWBush.com has evidently removed the massive tombstone from immediate prominence. But rest assured the flags flying tall above the gas stations, post offices, libraries and court houses of western PA are still (at least when I left yesterday afternoon) flying at half mast.

Dawkins writes:

By now, I'm sure you are aware of the way in which the Bush campaign website has entirely given over its look and content in favor of a massive tombstone for Reagan. I invite you to witness it yourselves:

http://www.georgewbush.com/

This is not an isolated, Reagan-only incident, however. Since it began its $70 million-plus campaign of negativity against John Kerry, the Bush campaign has ceased referencing George W. Bush as an aspect of its campaign. Instead, the enterprise is entirely anti-Kerry, pro-Reagan, and as we go forward, presumably pro-Ray Charles, anti-Kerry's VP, and then as we get into the late-summer/early-fall "surprise" season, what we can only now imagine:

Pro-Osama-capture?

Anti-massive NYC terrorist attack?

Pro-End Times Conflagration-Third World War in the Holy Land?

Mercifully, the new shape of the Bush campaign will spare us the image and sound of Bush, but, like a gangrenous curse on the American body politic, it will cannibalize the good, the bad, the hidden, and the apparent in the world. The Bush campaign will become a campaign against America, destroying and devouring everything, until the Bush campaign becomes America, and America is no more.

Blicero adds: The America that stands tall in your heart can never be devoured. (Especially if you suffer a coronary attack and/or die.)

Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides

President George W. Bush’s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind.

In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as “enemies of the state.”

Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.

Story.

From an Ed Gillespie campaign email last week:

Yesterday, at the “Take Back America Conference” for liberal activists, Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton introduced George Soros with effusive praise.

Then in his remarks Mr. Soros--the billionaire supporter of John Kerry and MoveOn.org--equated the attacks of September 11 to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse and went on to say, “The war on terror has taken more innocent victims than the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

Unbelievable.

"Unbelievable"? Whether you agree or disagree with the prospect of killing a lot of people in order to ostensibly make ourselves safer, would anyone in their right mind disagree that, after all the bombing in Afghanistan and Iraq, after all the politico-ethnic slaughter in Uzbekistan and god knows where else, that the war on terror has not, in fact, quite literally and mathematically, "taken more innocent victims than the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001"?

Anyway, here is what Soros actually said:

I think that the picture of torture in Abu Ghraib, in Saddam's prison, was the moment of truth for us, because this is not what this nation stands for.

(Applause)

I think that those pictures hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself, not quite with the same force because in the terrorist attack we were the victims. In the pictures we were the perpetrators, others were the victims. But, there is, I'm afraid, a direct connection between those two events, because the way President Bush conducted the war on terror converted us from victims into perpetrators.

(Applause)

This is a very tough thing to say, but the fact is that the war on terror as conducted by this administration has claimed more innocent victims than the original attack itself.

(Applause)

So I think that the American public has now seen that they have been misled, and they've turned against the Bush administration and I think that we are now well underway of the bust.

See--the photos and terrorist attacks both shocked and disgusted us; therefore, according to Gillespie, Soros has "equated" the two.