Sean Hannity - Great Soviet

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing click to enlargeIf we are going to have freedom of speech then it has to apply to everyone. Certainly Ron Paul is not my candidate of choice but just because he doesn't suit my elective tastes does not mean he should be shut out. Congressman Paul had one helluva weekend, hauling in $4.2 million in what I would call a genius fund raising strategy and if that kind of HISTORIC event should guarantee anything, it should guarantee Ron Paul a seat at the Iowa GOP Debate, but it seems it will not. The same day that Ron Paul made presidential fund raising history, the Iowa GOP announced that its December 4th Republican Debate in Des Moines Iowa to be aired by Fox News, would only include candidates polling at least 5% in presidential polls. The move by the Iowa GOP and Fox News to exclude candidates based on polls at this early stage of the presidential race has outraged Ron Paul supporters and may provoke a large demonstration at the site of the debate. Paul supporters feel the move is a deliberate attempt to censor Ron Paul from the debate. Messages of outrage have been posted on websites and are spreading by email about the debate. At the current pace of fund raising it is possible that Ron Paul may end up with more cash on hand at the end of the quarter than any of the other candidates running in the Republican primary. Sean Hannity after the last debate, continually derided Paul supporters and expressed his disbelief in the polls that featured Ron Paul doing well. This past weekend should come with a good helping of crow, but Sean probably could care less. He has other things to lie about. Democracy only works when all voices are loosed upon the populace. We The People have always done a good job when we hear all sides. When we don't hear all sides, we get things like the Iraq War, Bush listening to every phone call in America, Rove reading all of our emails, and all the rest of it. When we do not hear all voices, we get the corrupt Congress we have today. Now, if I could only loosen up Al Gore's tongue...

Do As Bush Says, Not As He Does

Appearing at The Jaundiced Eye, the Independent Bloggers' Alliance, and My Left Wing. I mean, is he kidding? It was the first phone conversation between Mr. Bush and the Pakistani president since General Musharraf seized emergency powers on Saturday, a move that sent his country into political and legal disarray. During the phone call, Pakistani and American officials said, Mr. Musharraf sought to assure Mr. Bush that his power grab is temporary and that he still plans to call for elections. “My message was that we believe strongly in elections, and that you ought to have elections soon, and you need to take off your uniform,” Mr. Bush said he told Mr. Musharraf. “You can’t be the president and the head of the military at the same time.” You tell 'im, Commander Codpiece! Proving that he doesn't consult our own Constitution often, if ever, our President seems blissfully unaware that his frequent pronouncements that he's Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Services are, in fact, consistent with that document. Legal authority, illegal authority... all the same to him, I guess. So, yes, Mr. President, in our own ostensibly democratic republic you can be president and head of the military at the same time. This is but the latest entry in the Irony is Still Dead files, that have been steadily expanding over the last few days, since Musharraf suspended Pakistan's constitution. This from Generalissimo Bush?! I repeat: Never has a US President painted himself so completely as a military leader, and never has one been less qualified to do so. From day one I have found it sickening the way this Vietnam-avoiding, AWOL-from-the-National-Guard President uses the men and women of our armed services military as set dressing. . . . Bush and his stage manager Rove have done everything in their power to cement the image of Bush Republicans as the embodiment of military authority. Bush has become nothing but a tin-horn dictator. You'd think they'd instigated a military coup, instead of an electoral one. Think of it. An administration of chicken-hawks with the audacity to do what Eisenhower, a former 5 star general, never did. And the punchline? Musharraf really is a general. He, at least, showed up for duty. Where as our power-abusing, constitution-ignoring, dictator-in-training, only plays one on television.

Ron Paul, Meet Guy Fawkes

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing click to enlargeRon Paul, and what will go down in history as a genius fund-raising idea, raked in 4.2 million dollars over this past weekend in honor of Guy Fawkes. With a barage of YouTube videos (best one IMO), MySpace comments, emails and the assorted MeetUp set a goal of 100,000 people donating $100 on Guy Fawkes Day. Who is Guy Fawkes and why does he have his own day? The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, or the Powder Treason, as it was known at the time, was a failed attempt by a group of provincial English Catholics to kill King James I of England and VI of Scotland, his family, and most of the Protestant aristocracy in a single attack by blowing up the Houses of Parliament during the State Opening on 5 November 1605. The conspirators had also planned to abduct the royal children, not present in Parliament, and incite a revolt in the Midlands. The Gunpowder Plot was one of many unsuccessful assassination attempts against James I, and followed the Main Plot and Bye Plot of 1603. Some popular historians have put forward a debate about government involvement in the plot. Guy Fawkes Night (more commonly known as Bonfire Night and sometimes Fireworks Night) is an annual celebration on the evening of the 5th of November. It celebrates the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot of the 5th of November 1605 in which a number of Roman Catholic conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. It is primarily marked in the United Kingdom, but also in former British colonies including New Zealand, parts of Canada, and parts of the British Caribbean. Bonfire Night was also common in Australia until the 1980s, but it was held on the Queen's Birthday long weekend in June. Festivities are centered around the use of fireworks and the lighting of bonfires. There was also a movie made about Guy Fawkes recently titled V for Vendetta derived form the comic book of the same name - a cautionary tale about the Thatcher government. TCD has a character called The Magic Talking Mask Of Guy Fawkes. At the local liberal Apocalyptic Lodge of Allied Mystical Oddfellows, hangs the magical talking mask of Guy Fawkes. The mask will give advice and philosophical wisdom to those that tends the strange artifact. Sometimes it talks to itself. So this was the inspiration behind the super-whammy fund-raising weekend of Ron Paul. To go on the record, I agree with only one of his positions and it is to get out of Iraq YESTERDAY, otherwise, he makes me nervous. I do like the karma of the Ron Paul money, especially since Sean Hannity is doing everything he can to undermine the Paul campaign and its message of "war is bad." Anytime we can get more egg on Hannity's face, the more I like it. P.S. Just a reminder to vote for The Bilerico Project for the best LGBT Blog of 2007. The poll can be freeped HERE

Waterboard the candidates, let's get the truth, start with Rudy

The next time Michael Mukasey is called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee I suggest that he be strapped to a stretcher, a rag placed in his mouth and water poured in the rag until he begins to answer completely and truthfully the questions put to him by the committee. Now that waterboarding has become an accepted form of interrogation in these United States, I recommend that it be utilized not only with Mukasey, but with all future witnesses before committees of the congress. I think that there are subpoenas kicking around out there for Condi Rice and other executive department figures who have been less than forthcoming in past appearances, so perhaps as our favorite republican tough guy Rudy Giuliani says, we should question them aggressively. It might be a good idea if the voting public were able to use the same technique in questioning the presidential candidates on their positions. For the rest of the debates all candidates should be wheeled in strapped to stretchers and aggressively questioned using this simulated drowning method. Using these methods we may begin to get the truth from our "public servants" and declared wannabes. This will not work in Atlanta however, they don't have enough water at the moment to achieve any kind of satisfactory results. Bob Higgins Worldwide Sawdust

What happened to Al Qaeda in Baghdad?

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing click to enlargeGo read this full bore, 100% Bingo article by Kossack, Brandon Friedman. From the diary... As U.S. casualties have continued to drop, many people on the anti-Bush side of the aisle have begun to quietly panic in recent days over this question: "Could George W. Bush and Frederick Kagan have possibly been right about the surge?" Simply put, the answer is no. The surge is not working and George W. Bush and Frederick Kagan were not right. Despite what right-wing blogs are saying, and despite what conservative observers are noting, the plunge in violence is actually the result of an Iraqi political decision made by and implemented by Iraqis—and the drop has little to do with the "surge"—an infusion of 30,000 troops (which wouldn’t fill a Major League stadium) into Baghdad, a city of six million people. What’s happening is really simple—and it’s happening in plain sight, in the traditional media. But it just so happens that, as far as I can tell, no one is connecting the dots. As Friedman points out, The Madhi Army went into a state of cease fire and the violence greatly retracted. Here is my question, where is Al Qaeda? We have been told for months about Al Qaeda being in Iraq and Bush Administration has been trumpeting Al Qaeda as a reason for extending the war in Iraq. Following that line of questioning, where are the Iranian elements? You know, the Iranians that have flooded Baghdad over the years with the sole purposes to kill Americans? What happened to them? Maybe the Iranians and Al Qaeda weren't there to begin with? Maybe this really was a civil war? It isn't the first time Bush claimed something was in Iraq and it turned out it wasn't there. Anyone remember the weapons of mass destruction?