Dump Duhbya

Red Meat

Staying angry: Eight loathsome things about the GOP By Michael Manville, Freezerbox

I’ll vote for Kerry because for all that is wrong with the Democrats, the Republican Party is something else altogether. What was once the Party of Lincoln has become the party of obstreperous children, alternately pouting and bullying, dismissive of complicated problems that aren’t easily resolved and fixated instead on the simplistic and the irrelevant. …

This false face of moderation is one of two grand lies perpetuated by the national GOP. The second lie is victimhood, capital-V Victimhood, forever, victimhood. The party of big money and big business laments endlessly that it is marginalized and persecuted, that the government works continuously against it, that the press distorts and ignores its positions. Only sheer repetition could make this scenario plausible. … Thus a spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert says with a straight face, “it’s extremely difficult to govern when you control all three branches of government.” …

Gott mit uns: On Bush and Hitler’s rhetoric By Bob Fitrakis, Columbus Free Press

President Bush told Texas evangelist James Robinson that “I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can’t explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen . . . I know it won’t be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.”

With 49.3% of New York City residents in a recent Zogby poll believing that some people in our government knew of the 911 attack in advance and allowed it to happen, the President as right-wing evangelical prophet is under siege in his Madison Square Garden bunker. Convention watchers should take careful note of the theocratic nationalist rhetoric at the Republican convention this week.

When was the last time a Western nation had a leader so obsessed with God and claiming God was on our side?

Election

Zell Miller is NOT a Democrat

Text of Zell Miller’s Speech at RNC

[O]ur nation is being

torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrat’s manic obsession to bring down our Commander in Chief. …

For it has been said

so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who

has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.

It is the soldier who

salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn

that flag.

Richard Reeves had the best response to this BUllSHit months ago. mjh

So, the attorney general of the United

States tells me: “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid

terrorists.”

Well, screw you, buddy! What are you trying to say? Are you saying that anyone who talks about civil rights, civil

liberties and the freedom that makes us Americans is a traitor in this undeclared but loudly proclaimed war?

Election

Three Four Very Different Reports on the RNC in NYC (revised)

Christian Science Monitor Blog |

Notebook: At the Conventions
Police cross a line
By Tom Regan

For a few scary moments, it looked like the situation would turn

out very badly indeed. …

The mostly young crowd was afraid. You could sense it. But to their credit they did not yell obscenities at

the police, or strike out in any way. In fact, all the aggression was coming from the other side, especially from the officer in charge.

He pushed at the protesters two or three times, each time without any visible provocation.

I just have to pause here for a moment to

make an observation. How many times have I seen an interview with an arrested protester who claimed he or she had done nothing to provoke

the police. Almost always my reaction has been, “Yeah, sure.” Only now I was seeing this very situation unfold in front of my eyes. These

protesters, while certainly noisy, had obeyed police instructions down the entire length of the street. Now they were being treated as if

they had gotten wildly out of control, but they hadn’t. I know, because I was there.

I saw scenes like this repeated throughout

Tuesday night. There would be an uneasy equilibrium between the police and the protesters, and then for some reason, the police would

start arresting people. I saw it happen at Herald Square, and near 6th Ave and 29th St. In each case, the police seemed to lose control

of the situation, often in ways that they were responsible for themselves.

The Village Voice: Hot Girls, Frisky Delegates: RNC Diary of a

Strip-Club Waitress
Lap-dancing for equal opportunity

Aside from the guy who held a lollipop up to a dancer’s breast and sucked

on it, the Republicans were generally well-behaved tonight. …

They were equal opportunity employers, sampling every race and body

type, giving the dancers–many of whom are immigrants or children of immigrants–the very shot at fortune Arnold spoke of in his speech.

The Village Voice: Cartoons: Sutton

Impact: RNC: Day One by Ward Sutton

The Republican Games 9/1/04 (www.markfiore.com)

Theirs

Rod Knows Bigots

Senator Rod Adair, New Mexico District 33;

Lincoln, Eddy, and Chaves counties

It was revealing in that the Journal yet again, unwittingly, revealed the internal

bigotry that dominates its editorializing, and bleeds over almost daily into its reporting. …

The main objective of both the

Journal and its ideological close relative, the Albuquerque Tribune, as well as several other left-leaning media outlets in the state, is

to damage the Republican Party. … That is the way of bigotry.

Lightning Rod Adair sure is funny. Dendahl,

Buckley, Krauthammer, Thomas, Navarrette, Ramirez, Trevor — what a bunch of commies. Maybe he means Goodman, Cronkite, Belshaw (ha!

might as well count Dave Barry). Oh, I know, he means Richard Reeves (‘Screw You, Buddy’, Reeves wrote in

response to Ashkraft).

Republicans control both houses of Congress and the Presidency; they are working diligently against the

Judiciary. They relentlessly attack the weakest leg of our democracy even as they approve laws allowing conglomerations to buy up and

homogenize the Media, converting news departments into PR readers. All of this wicked duplicity is almost commical, until I read

this:

The Journal’s bigotry is usually the in-your-face variety of the old Democrat Party in its halcyon days of

Jim Crow and segregation.

Wow, zeitgeist! I just wrote “Jim Crow” this morning for the first time in a long time. So,

Adair is saying the Dems are the party of Jim Crow. Hmmm. Where was the GOP during Civil Rights and Voting Rights legislation? About

where they are on women’s rights and gay rights — conservative to reactionary, opposing change (for the good). The Dems sacrificed

those halcyon days and ceded the South to GOP for a generation.

Considering that the Radical Right is furious over affirmative action,

it is funny to read Adair’s detailed census of the NM Republican delegation, right down to non-Anglo-Saxon surnames (wow). Somebody tell

Roddy diversity of opinions counts, too.

Note how many times the Rod uses “bigotry.” This reminds me of rising star deep thinker Alex

Hughes (Lobo) who recently explained that wanting to tax rich people is a form of racism.

Who knew Orwell’s 1984 had become the

Republican playbook. Keep people occupied with endless wars and rewrite the past. Republicans love all people; Democrats invented evil.

Double-plus good! mjh

PS: in case anyone is thinking, ‘Mark is just as big a blowhard only from the left,’ note that I’m not

running for office and I have no desire to dominate your life. Further, I read the brilliant insights of many of these deep thinkers;

they wouldn’t take a second to read my writings.

Mine

A Letter to the Mayor

Dear Mayor Chávez-

We were awakened at 2:30am by a police helicopter swooping in

low over our house (this happens several times every month). It returned again less than an hour later. Now we have been besieged for

over 17 hours.

I understand the police believe these helicopters contribute to their safety and the public’s — I disagree with that

claim. Regardless of that claim, it is impossible to believe that having two police helicopters circling over this part of town for 12

hours has benefited anyone. One can only imagine the cost, but I don’t care about APD pissing away money. I care about my quality of

life which is shattered by this ceaseless noise. There is absolutely no reason for two helicopters to circle endlessly, especially

following a flightpath more than a mile in diameter, at times barely above houses.

From the police chief on down, there needs to be

some training in the effective use of resources. Pilots need some awareness of the havoc they wreck with their disregard of the public

peace. mjh

Letters-to-the-Editor

Journal Watch

ABQjournal: Las Cruces Puts Runway Damage at $1 Million

City

officials said airport staff warned members of the president’s advance team and a pilot that runway 4/22 did not have the weight-bearing

capacity to handle the big cargo jets or the Boeing 757 the president flew in on. …

[Republican?] Mayor Bill Mattiace said the

incident could be a ”blessing in disguise” if the city is able to gain federal funding to build a stronger, longer runway. [mjh:

‘federal funding’? As in ‘money stolen from taxpayers’?]

Well, I’m relieved to see (in my own anecdotal, unscientific

way) that the Albuquerque Journal finally mentioned the damage Bush’s recent visit did to an airport runway in Las Cruces (a few days

after the story broke). I’m even stunned it made it to page one (well below the fold, proving it is still not as important as Kerry’s

crime against commuters). Notice this headline writer doesn’t mention Bush.

I’m still waiting for the editorial demanding Bush pay for the repairs. mjh

Letters-to-the-Editor

Journal Watch, Part 2

ABQjournal Opinion: ‘State of the Art’ Road May Be Headed South [har-har]

After U.S. 550 was completed, the Heartland

Institute, a conservative think-tank hailed the arrangement. “One key factor in the project’s success is that the state is not telling

Koch how to build the road, … (allowing) innovative practices often not available to the public sector.”

Today’s

Journal Editorial deals with problems with US550, formerly NM44. In 521 words, they fail to mention Gary Johnson once. This is the

virtual Gary Johnson Memorial Highway, a road many saw as a great big thank you to conservative Republicans in the Four Corners. Gary

cheated and violated process to build this road in an outrageously unorthodox manner, all the while promising that this was the

innovative way to do things (borrow and stick us with the bill later). Now we see this was not merely incompetence but criminal. Not that

Gary will be held in any way accountable nor brilliant Republican innovations discredited. mjh

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams