Jeez, this Republican crybaby crap over John Kerry’s comments is just pathetic. It’s amazing to me that the GOP has a reputation for toughness when they throw temper tantrums over meaningless shit. Watching the President of the United States use his bully pulpit to shed crocodile tears is just embarrassing. Maybe the Democrats should just go silent in this last week before the election, lest we bruise the feelings of those delicate little flowers in the Republican party.

As far as the substance of Kerry’s remarks, I don’t give a damn what he said. The only reason this is getting any play at all is because the media and right-wing are desperate to turn Democratic momentum on its head. If the GOP can get people to spend the last week of the election obsessing over the smug jerk from Taxachussets, then they might change a few independent minds. Moreover, the media love, love, love the “Democrats are a house divided” storyline and will jump on any Democrat who says something like “I disagree with Sen. Kerry’s remarks”.

We’ve seen this exact same scenario unfold countless times in response to similarly “controversial” remarks by Howard Dean, Al Gore, and others. If Republicans were so concerned about civility, why would they support racist ads like the ones accusing Democrats of wanting to murder black babies? The GOP sickening and deliberate attempts to distract voters from the real issues in this race shows how little respect they have for voters. The American people aren’t stupid. They’re tired of the GOP’s manufactured outrage machine.

Over the weekend I was walking around Forest Lawn Memorial Park and stumbled upon the Court of Liberty. It was a pretty standard tribute to the Founding Fathers, but on one side of a rather lage mosaic was this quote that seems more true now than ever before :

So true. Our freedoms haven’t been taken away, they were given away by a populace that has been crippled by fear. With each “accountability moment” that has passed, the American people have agreed to allow the “gradual and silent encroachments” of our freedom to continue. With an election just one week away, here’s hoping that we can finally heed the words of the father of our Constitution and reclaim our liberty from powerful elites who see the Bill of Rights as little more than a technicality.

For anyone looking for a good last-minute Halloween costume idea, here’s one based on the scariest movie of the year :

I’m not much of an animal rights guy, but I caught a bit of a rodeo competition on TV at the gym today and was reminded how awful I think they are. It’s not just the fact that rodeos are a senseless exploitation of animals, but the more I think about it the more the whole thing strikes me a bizarre and primal bit of brutality that really has no place in modern society. Yes, I suppose some would say that it’s a celebration of the old west or other nostalgic claptrap, but the whole premise is just backwards and primitive. Honestly, how else can you describe a contest in which a person jumps onto the back of an angry animal to see how long they can stay on? That’s some real cave-man shit.

Unlike it’s even less-civilized cousin (not that it’s anything to brag about), the bull fight, rodeos take a curious zoomed-in view at the conflict between men and animals. The bull is led into a pen where it gets pissed off, a person jumps on its back, the gate is opened, the animal bucks around until the person falls off, and then the animal is re-captured for the whole stupid cycle to repeat itself. But the competition itself is only concerned with the time between when the gate opens and the man hits the ground, which almost gives the illusion that this captive animal is in some topsy-turvy way the victor. Nevermind the fact that every aspect of this contest was a foregone conclusion.

Looking at the bigger picture, the rodeo is an obvious metaphor for the struggle between man and nature since it’s pretty much a spectator version of the taming of wild animals, but what’s the point of such a show in 2006? When human beings have domesticated or captured pretty much every species we’ve been able to find, it’s probably time to admit to ourselves that we’ve won the whole “man vs. nature” thing (at least on this scale). When we’ve raped and pillaged the planet though hunting and fishing, habitat destruction, pollution, global warming, domestication, and extinction, taking a victory lap through the food chain by using the lives of animals like some sort of sport is pretty shallow and empty.

Digby points out a good contradiction in the GOP’s stance on stem cell research :

The Republicans are taking a new tack on stem cells. In response to the Michael J. Fox “backlash” Ken Mehlman just said on CNN that Jim Talent supports stem cell research but he just doesn’t think the government should pay for it. He pointed out that nobody says that the private sector shouldn’t pursue stem cell research. What’s the problem?
. . .
This argument worked back in the day with the Hyde Amendment banning public money for abortion because some people object to the expenditure on moral grounds. Maybe it will work again. But I don’t think stem cell research has ever had the kind of visceral punch that abortion has and the benefits to everyone are far more obvious.
. . .
Mostly, though, it undercuts the moral argument the Republicans have been making about their (phony) “culture of life.” Back in the 70’s, when the Hyde Amendment was passed, Republicans could get away with making practical arguments like “people shouldn’t have to pay for things that morally offend them.” But this isn’t the “me decade” anymore. The Republicans are no longer supposed to be just the defenders of traditional values — they are supposed to be true believers. I don’t see how the religious right could support such a “split-the-difference” strategy.

The “culture of life” warriors have been making similar arguments recently in regards to the (imminent) overturning of Roe vs. Wade. Rather than look like the religious extremists that they are, they do their best to assure the mushy middle that repealing Roe won’t outlaw abortion, it’ll just make abortion laws “revert to the states”. Y’know, so Alabama rape victims will be forced to have their babies, but women in California and New York will still have control of their bodies.

Of course these are the same people who insist abortion and embryonic stem cell research are “murder“. Here’s what Tony Snow said in regards to the President’s feelings about stem cells :

Q Can you remind us why the President believes that it is not appropriate to use — that it is more appropriate for stem cells to be thrown away than to be used, in this case, for medical research?

MR. SNOW: The President — I don’t think that’s the choice that the President has presented. What the President has said is that he doesn’t want human life destroyed. Now, you may consider that insignificant, but the President has said — and you have had in a number of cases the Snowflake babies, where some of those fetuses have, in fact, been brought to term and have become human beings. The President believes strongly that for the purpose of research it’s inappropriate for the federal government to finance something that many people consider murder; he’s one of them.

Personally, I think the insistence among conservatives that stem cell research and abortion are murder is completely absurd, but that’s not half as troubling as the thought that there are conservatives who think an act of “murder” is perfectly acceptable as long as it’s decided by the states and isn’t funded with tax dollars. Which reminds me of this great quote that sums up conservatism in a nutshell :

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

-John Kenneth Galbraith

And with the abortion and stem cell debates, we’ve seen this hypocrisy reach to it’s limit. The GOP stance on “murder” is that it’s fine with them as long as it doesn’t happen in their back yard and they don’t have to pay for it. That’s not a defensible position, it’s insanity.

Regarding the imminent legalization of gay marriage in New Jersey, it’s probably worth pointing out that gay people have been getting hitched in Massachusetts for two and a half years now and the gates of Hell haven’t opened up and swallowed the entire country. The right wing’s Chicken Little crap was proven wrong a few years ago and it’s still wrong. The only thing that gay marriages have really changed is that gay people are getting married now. Big deal.

(via Crooks & Liars)

In a sane world, Rush Limbaugh would spend every morning telling fart jokes as part of the “Morning Zoo” crew at a tiny Top40 station in the middle of nowhere, but for some absurd reason, the gatekeepers of the pundit world take this asshole seriously. So here we go with yet another reason to dismiss everything that comes out of the mouth of this overrated shock jock :

Possibly worse than making fun of someone’s disability is saying that it’s imaginary. That is not to mock someone’s body, but to challenge a person’s guts, integrity, sanity.

To Rush Limbaugh on Monday, Michael J. Fox looked like a faker. The actor, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, has done a series of political ads supporting candidates who favor stem cell research, including Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin, who is running against Republican Michael Steele for the Senate seat being vacated by Paul Sarbanes.

“He is exaggerating the effects of the disease,” Limbaugh told listeners. “He’s moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act. . . . This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn’t take his medication or he’s acting.”

Classy guy, that Limbaugh. I’d be willing to bet Rush wouldn’t be so nasty if stem cell research showed promise in curing pill addiction and impotence. Like the rest of his selfish ilk, the only problems Rush ever cares about are his own.

I’m not sure how much good it’ll do, but Google-Bombing the GOP certainly can’t hurt.

–AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
–AZ-01: Rick Renzi
–AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
–CA-04: John Doolittle
–CA-11: Richard Pombo
–CA-50: Brian Bilbray
–CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
–CO-05: Doug Lamborn
–CO-07: Rick O’Donnell
–CT-04: Christopher Shays
–FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
–FL-16: Joe Negron
–FL-22: Clay Shaw
–ID-01: Bill Sali
–IL-06: Peter Roskam
–IL-10: Mark Kirk
–IL-14: Dennis Hastert
–IN-02: Chris Chocola
–IN-08: John Hostettler
–IA-01: Mike Whalen
–KS-02: Jim Ryun
–KY-03: Anne Northup
–KY-04: Geoff Davis
–MD-Sen: Michael Steele
–MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
–MN-06: Michele Bachmann
–MO-Sen: Jim Talent
–MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
–NV-03: Jon Porter
–NH-02: Charlie Bass
–NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
–NM-01: Heather Wilson
–NY-03: Peter King
–NY-20: John Sweeney
–NY-26: Tom Reynolds
–NY-29: Randy Kuhl
–NC-08: Robin Hayes
–NC-11: Charles Taylor
–OH-01: Steve Chabot
–OH-02: Jean Schmidt
–OH-15: Deborah Pryce
–OH-18: Joy Padgett
–PA-04: Melissa Hart
–PA-07: Curt Weldon
–PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
–PA-10: Don Sherwood
–RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
–TN-Sen: Bob Corker
–VA-Sen: George Allen
–VA-10: Frank Wolf
–WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
–WA-08: Dave Reichert

I haven’t even seen it, but I have a feeling the Iraqi hit comedy “Hurry Up, He’s Dead” might be the best TV show ever (via BoingBoing) :

Nearly every night here for the past month, Iraqis weary of the tumult around them have been turning on the television to watch a wacky-looking man with a giant Afro wig and star-shaped glasses deliver the grim news of the day.

In a recent episode, the host, Saad Khalifa, reported that Iraq’s Ministry of Water and Sewage had decided to change its name to simply the Ministry of Sewage — because it had given up on the water part.

In another episode, he jubilantly declared that “Rums bin Feld” had announced American troops were leaving the country on 1/1, in other words, on Jan. 1. His face crumpled when he realized he had made a mistake. The troops were not actually departing on any specific date, he clarified, but instead leaving one by one. At that rate, it would take more than 600 years for them to be gone.
. . .
The newscast opens with an explanation of the show’s underlying premise: it is the year 2017 and the main character, Saaed, is the last Iraqi alive. He is lying face down on a beach with a red suitcase next to him. When he comes to, he is quickly encircled by beautiful women.

Cut to a scene of Saaed clad in a black T-shirt imprinted with “2PAC,” showboating in front of a white stretch Humvee limousine with dancers cavorting all around.

The show’s raucous theme song, which has become a popular cellphone ring tone here and is sung by children in schoolyards, laments that it would be better to be a lowly cat on the street than an Iraqi: “No one asks the cat where you are from, which party you’re from, whether you are an Arab, a Kurd, a Sunni or a Shiite.”

He sings on, “I am the last Iraqi alive, but I still do not own a house,” a reference to the country’s acute housing shortage.

I think somebody forgot to tell Saad Khalifa that things are getting better in Iraq.