Day: February 1, 2006
Exxon Mobil Corp. set U.S. records for annual and quarterly profits Monday as it easily topped fourth-quarter earnings forecasts.Money is No Object as Florida Republicans Race to Meet Ballot Deadline
If they’re going to whip up anti-gay hysteria, they better hurry. St. Petersburg Times:
…dozens of workers, a fleet of 55 vehicles and three aircraft would be pressed into service today to get enough signatures collected for Florida’s anti-gay marriage amendment
Groups seeking to place proposed constitutional amendments before Florida voters this fall have until 5 p.m. today to get enough signatures validated…
Volunteers who support a ban on same-sex marriage in Florida’s Constitution are among those racing against time. Orlando lawyer John Stemberger, chairman of Florida4marriage.org, said the effort was about 200,000 signatures short Tuesday, but he said dozens of workers, a fleet of 55 vehicles and three aircraft would be pressed into service today to get enough signatures collected.
Well. What they lack in popular support, they make up in sheer moolah. Works for me.
As alert PR readers know, Florida Republicans have shelled out $150,000 of the $193,000 raised to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot that will outlaw gay marriage, which is already outlawed by the Legislature. The whole exercise is intended to fire up rightwing voters, and is likely taking place in a voting booth near you too.
Florida: Where There’s a Hate Group for Every Aversion
What a way for Florida to begin Black History Month. The state has the dubious distinction of being No. 2 nationwide in number of organized hate groups. Orlando Sentinel:
Like anybody needed another good reason not to visit DisneyWorld
The state famous for tourism and endless sunshine has a disturbing side. It is home to 43 so-called hate groups, second only to South Carolina, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Montgomery, Ala., organization that has tracked such groups for 25 years…
The center, the Anti-Defamation League and an FBI investigator who has monitored Florida extremist groups attribute the state’s prominence on the hate-group list to its booming population, shifting demographics and the vestiges of racism.
Today, about 19 percent of the state’s population is Hispanic, 15 percent is black and about 4 percent is Jewish. Extremists target all three groups. Florida has about 18 million people.
So I guess there are just more people to hate in Florida? In nearby Jacksonville, according to a graphic supplied with the article, there are two skinhead groups, one neo-Confederate, one neo-Nazi, and two groups classified as “other.” On the other hand, Jacksonville is home to the nation’s third largest Cambodian Buddhist temple as well as the newly launched Stetson Kennedy Foundation. Kennedy, who lives near my own St. Augustine, is the author of The Klan Unmasked, first published in the ‘50s to expose the Klan and a neo-Nazi hate group called the Columbians. Stetson didn’t do his undercover work in Florida but maybe he should have.
Though the total number is small, it’s unclear how many people join hate groups. Few organizations release membership numbers, and those that do likely inflate them.
Generally, experts say, local chapters include a handful to several dozen members. The National Socialist Movement reports about 50 members in Orlando.
“Central Florida,” said Bill White of the National Socialist Movement, “is our strongest growing area in the state.”
Like anybody needed another good reason not to visit DisneyWorld. Still, Tampa is no slouch.
Officials with the Tampa unit of the neo-Nazi National Vanguard would not discuss their activities, referring all questions to Vanguard headquarters in Virginia.
The Tampa group is one of the best organized in the state. It has produced compact discs, rented billboards and flown white-power banners over the Daytona 500. After Hurricane Katrina, members went to Mississippi to help “white families in need.”
Florida. Gotta love it.
Unlike Cindy Sheehan, Pro-War Protester at SOTU Was Not Arrested
What First Amendment: At roughly the same time that Cindy Sheehan was being arrested for wearing an anti-war T-shirt to the State of the Union speech last night, the wife of a prominent Republican congressman, was escorted out of the House gallery because she was wearing a pro-war T-shirt.
It is outrageous that if you wear an anti-war T-shirt you get arrested, but if you wear a pro-war T-shirt you’re escorted out but free to go.
Unlike Sheehan, Beverly Young, wife of Rep. Bill Young of Florida was not arrested. It is unclear whether it was Beverly’s elite status or her pro-Bush message that save her from the hoosegow.
Still, her husband, who has Duke Cunningham’s recently vacated chairmanship in defense appropriations, is hopping mad:
“Shame, shame,” Rep. Bill Young of Florida said on the House floor on Wednesday, condemning the treatment of his wife Beverly by the U.S. Capitol Police.
“She was ordered to leave the gallery, because she was doing … what the president said we should all do,” Young said. “She had on this shirt. A very conservative shirt, long sleeves, high neck, but it says support our troops.”
…Young said a guard at the House chamber called her “a demonstrator and a protester.”
Leaving aside the fact that anyone who wears clothes as casual as T-shirts (especially shirts with slogans printed on them) to official functions like the State of the Union ought to be asked to leave — can’t we have to have some standards? — it is outrageous that if you wear an anti-war T-shirt you get arrested, but if you wear a pro-war T-shirt you’re escorted out but free to go.
UPDATE: The Capitol Police have disputed Beverly Young’s version of events, according to Gainesville.com.:
“She was not ejected from the gallery. She did leave on her own,” said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, who said she could not provide further information.
A quote from Rep. Young in the same article says just about everything we need to know about him:
“I just called for the chief of police and asked him to get his little tail over here,” Young said. “This is not acceptable.”
Tip o’ the hat to CC
Pensito Review: Off the Wires
Israelis Complete Settlement Evacuation
AMONA, West Bank – Club-wielding riot troops dragged away thousands of stone-throwing Jewish settlers Wednesday, evacuating this illegal West Bank outpost in the fiercest clash over settlements since Israel’s Gaza pullout. In the Middle East version of the game of Rock-Paper-Club, club always wins.
Iran, Hamas Reject Bush’s Call for Change
LONDON – Iranian and Hamas leaders rejected President Bush’s call for change in his State of the Union address. Sounds like the Axis of Evil just got a new member.
Collapsed Hall’s Designer Attempts Suicide
KATOWICE, Poland – A designer of the Polish exhibition hall whose roof collapsed and killed 63 people attempted unsuccessfully to commit suicide two days after the accident, an official said Wednesday. There’s a really crass Polack joke here, but we decline to make it.
Georgian Lawmakers Brawl During Debate
TBILISI, Georgia – Rival lawmakers in the Georgian capital’s city council brawled during a debate over the energy crisis suffered by the country in recent days. Wait, that wasn’t a brawl, that was the debate.
Magnitude-5.1 Quake Shakes Tokyo
TOKYO – A magnitude-5.1 earthquake shook central Japan on Wednesday, but there was no danger of a tsunami, the Meteorological Agency said. The danger of an attack by a giant radioactive lizard remained unchanged.
Saudis, Qatar Pledge $33M to Palestinians
JERUSALEM – Israel has frozen this month’s transfer of $45 million in tax rebates and customs payments to the Palestinian Authority while it reviews its options following the Hamas victory in last week’s parliamentary election, an Israeli government official said Wednesday. “They say Israel doesn’t exist, we say, Money, what money?” he added.
Cowardly Bush Terrified of Cindy Sheehan
Cindy Sheehan, via Buzzflash:
This afternoon at the People’s State of the Union Address in DC where I was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright, Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh, Lynn brought me a ticket to the State of the Union Address. At that time, I was wearing the shirt that said: 2245 Dead. How many more?
After the PSOTU press conference, I was having second thoughts about going to the SOTU at the Capitol. I didn’t feel comfortable going. I knew George Bush would say things that would hurt me and anger me and I knew that I couldn’t disrupt the address because Lynn had given me the ticket and I didn’t want to be disruptive out of respect for her…
I had just sat down and I was warm from climbing 3 flights of stairs back up from the bathroom so I unzipped my jacket. I turned to the right to take my left arm out, when the same officer saw my shirt and yelled; “Protester.” He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat and roughly (with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs…
The officer ran with me to the elevators yelling at everyone to move out of the way. When we got to the elevators, he cuffed me and took me outside to await a squad car. On the way out, someone behind me said, “That’s Cindy Sheehan.” At which point the officer who arrested me said: “Take these steps slowly.” I said, “You didn’t care about being careful when you were dragging me up the other steps.” He said, “That’s because you were protesting.” Wow, I get hauled out of the People’s House because I was, “Protesting.”
Bush Makes Science Policy Based on Science Fiction
Beam him up (please!): It is commonly known that President Bush is proudly uneducated, ill-read and uninformed but I, for one, did not know until yesterday that he is making major policy decisions about science based on — not junk science produced by the flat-earthers in his party or even psuedo science like Intelligent Design — but science fiction.
Last night, in his State of the Union speech, the president came out swinging against human-animal hybridization:
Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos.
We can only assume that Laura has been tucking the preznint in with bedtime stories from “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” by H.G. Wells. The novel — which has been made into a movie at least three times, the latest with Marlon Brando — depicts just this sort of a horrific undertaking by a mad scientist on a remote island.
Earlier in the day, in a review of a book about Mr. Bush by the uber-snarky GOP political hack Fred Barnes, I also learned that Mr. Bush has based his entire approach to global warming — specifically that it doesn’t exist — on the teachings of the rightwing sci-fi writer, Michael Cricton:
Barnes also includes plenty of evidence likely to horrify those who oppose Bush (for instance, Barnes reports that the president fundamentally doesn’t accept the theory of global warming and was reinforced in that belief by a private meeting not with any scientist but rather with novelist Michael Crichton, whose novel “State of Fear” revolves around the issue).
The president’s interest in science fiction may also explain his failed plan to send explorers back to the moon and on to Mars a few years back, before he wasted the nation’s disposable income on his misadventure in Iraq.
Backs to Wall, GOP Plays the Bigot Card — Again
Every two years: If it’s an election year, it must be time again for the Republican Party leadership to whip up its base of mouth-breathing knuckledraggers by inciting their terror of gays and lesbians.
The final irony of McCarthy’s reign of terror is that it was an open secret among journalists that he was gay — as was his assistant Roy Cohn (who died of HIV disease in the 1980s) and other members of the commie-baiting committee
Yes, friends, according to Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, the Congress will leave aside petty problems such as the rampant corruption among Congressional Gops, their president’s illegal domestic wiretaps, his staff’s treasonous revelation of the identity of a CIA secret agent, the administration’s lies about the reasons for the war in Iraq — not to mention the health care crisis, disaster recovery in the Gulf states, the collapsing educational system and more — in order to focus on what is really important: preventing gay people from marrying.
The purpose of the Marriage Protection Amendment is not to “protect marriage,” but rather to put Democrats up for reelection in Red and Purple states on the record supporting gay rights (or not) in order to use the record against them among the majority of voters who are sexually confused and intimidated.
This is nasty, cynical political gamesmanship at its sleazy extreme. It is also an indictment of the pathetic low to which the Republican Party has fallen. It is no longer acceptable for them to (openly) express their hatred of African-Americans, Jews, latinos and other minorities. The only group left that is socially acceptable for these these bullies to bash is gays and lesbians.
Of course, as an exercise in lawmaking, the GOP’s last run at
instilling hatred and vitriol into the U.S. Constitution did not work out for them in 2004:
After Senate Republicans’ cloture motion to force a direct vote was defeated in July 2004 and House Republicans failed to secure the 290 votes required for adoption of the amendment in September of that year, the legislation was reintroduced in early 2005. In November, the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution voted the Marriage Protection Amendment into the full committee by a vote of 5-4, positioning the legislation for a reemergence in time for this year’s midterms.
On the other hand, 11 states, including Ohio, put anti-gay initiatives on their ballots that are credited in drawing millions of unsmart Americans to the polls in the presidential elections — and their vote in Ohio may have tipped the balance toward President Bush, thus re-installing him in office.
Of course, as a gay man entering his 27th year of unmarried bliss with my partner, I take this personally. My “gay marriage” has not caused any straight couples to divorce. It is ridiculous on its face.
It is not gay marriage but the Republican Party that is the danger to our society. They are using the same hateful, fear-engendering tactics today that they have been using since the 1950s when, under Sen. Joseph McCarthy, they concocted a campaign of fear of imaginary communists to enflame their base and gain power.
Sen. Frist, his henchmen in the Senate and counterparts in the House follow Joe McCarthy’s tactics, play by play.
