Month: March 2007

McCain: Listen to What I Say But Ignore What I Did

Trish

As each of the Republican front runners in the 2008 presidential campaign competes for the favor of evangelicals — and falls short of their harsh, parochial judgement — we hear the same sanctimonious defense: “But my private life doesn’t influence my public service.”

John McCain is the only the latest in a string of GOP hypocrites that includes Rudy Guiliani and Newt Gingrich.

John McCain, who remarried one month after his 1980 divorce, said Friday that the personal lives of White House hopefuls shouldn’t become an issue in the 2008 campaign

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who remarried one month after his 1980 divorce, said Friday that the personal lives of White House hopefuls shouldn’t become an issue in the 2008 campaign.

“I would like to see this campaign conducted on past record and ambition for the future,” McCain told reporters after a fundraising luncheon in Charlotte, N.C. “I would hope that gossip — or, quote, ‘family issues’ — would not enter into this campaign.”

Well golly, straight talkin’ John, that sounds good. Almost as good as you sounded when you voted to convict Pres. Clinton on impeachment charges for attempting to hide an extramarital affair back in 1999.

The President’s offenses were committed to cover up private not public misconduct. Therefore, if he thwarted justice he did so for the perfectly understandable and forgivable purpose of keeping hidden an embarrassing personal shortcoming that, were it discovered, would harm only his family and his reputation, but would not impair our system of government.

This, too, is an appealing rationalization for acquittal. But it is just that, a rationalization…

The President’s defenders want to know how can I be certain that the offenses, even if true, warrant removal from office. They are not expressly mentioned in the Constitution as impeachable offenses. Nor did the founders identify perjury or obstruction as high crimes or high misdemeanors. Were an ordinary citizen accused of perjury in a civil proceeding he or she would in all likelihood not be prosecuted or forced out of political necessity into a perjury trap.

No, an ordinary citizen would not be treated as the President has been treated. But ordinary citizens don’t enforce the laws for the rest of us…

Presidents are not ordinary citizens. They are extraordinary, in that they are vested with so much more authority and power than the rest of us…And accordingly, regretfully, I must vote to convict the President, and urge my colleagues to do the same.’

Gee Johnny, here you’ve been living all ordinary and stuff, and now you want us to elevate you to superhuman perfection with our votes. No wonder cousin Jon calls you — derisively — “St. McCain.”

Schism: Young Evangelicals Turn Away from Christian Nationalist Agenda

Jon Ponder

The number of liberal evangelicals appears to be growing and this has the Christianists who run the religous wing of the Republican Party ready to howl:

“Are the only really ‘great moral issues’ those concerning abortion, gay marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence?”

A new generation of pastors has expanded the definition of moral issues to include not only global warming, but an array of causes. Quoting Scripture and invoking Jesus, they’re calling for citizenship for illegal immigrants, universal healthcare and caps on carbon emissions.

The best-known champion of such causes, the Rev. Jim Wallis, this week challenged conservative crusader James C. Dobson, the chairman of Focus on the Family, to a debate on evangelical priorities.

“Are the only really ‘great moral issues’ those concerning abortion, gay marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence?” Wallis asked in his challenge. “How about the reality of 3 billion of God’s children living on less than $2 per day? — What about pandemics like HIV/AIDS — [and] disastrous wars like Iraq?”

Not surprisingly, the liberal bent of this new movement has the talibangelists up in arms. Three leaders of the Christian right — professional homophobes Dobson of Focus on the Family, Don Wildmon of the American Family Assn. and Paul Weyrich of American Values — have written a letter that is highly critical of evangelicals who do not follow their strict rightwing political agenda.

The letter took particular aim at the Rev. Richard Cizik, a prominent evangelical lobbyist who has promoted environmental protection as a moral imperative. Citing the creation story in the Book of Genesis, he has called the fight against global warming a directive “straight from the word of God — no doubt about it.”

The letter accused Cizik of “dividing and demoralizing” Christians by pushing this agenda and called on his employer, the National Assn. of Evangelicals, to silence him or to demand his resignation.

Fighting gay civil rights has generated millions of dollars for these religious-political groups, so it is not surprising that they are up in arms.

Rev. Wallis says that his congegants aren’t ready to become Democrats but that younger members are put off by the old evangelical agenda.

He told the Times that during a recent visit to an evangelical college, students were “furious” at Rev. Jerry Falwell because he had recently described global warming as a satanic plot to divert Christians from more pressing moral issues, such as spreading the Gospel.

“James Dobson and the religious right are outside the evangelical mainstream. That’s just a fact,” Wallis told the paper. “That doesn’t mean they have no power. But their monologue is over. Their control of the agenda is over.”

South Carolina Proposes Offering Convicts Freedom for Body Parts

Jon Ponder

So not kidding:

Lawmakers are considering legislation that would let prisoners donate organs or bone marrow in exchange for time off their sentences.

A state Senate panel on Thursday endorsed creating an organ-and-tissue donation program for inmates. But legislators postponed debate on a measure to reduce the sentences of participating prisoners, citing concern that federal law may not allow it.

“I think it’s imperative that we go all out and see what we can do,” said the bills’ chief sponsor, Democratic Sen. Ralph Anderson. “I would like to see us get enough donors that people are no longer dying.”

The proposal approved by the Senate Corrections and Penology Subcommittee would set up a volunteer donor program in prisons to teach inmates about the need for donors. But lawmakers want legal advice before acting on a bill that would shave up to 180 days off a prison sentence for inmates who donate.

South Carolina advocates for organ donations said the incentive policy would be the first of its kind in the nation.

Federal law makes it illegal to give organ donors “valuable consideration.” Lawmakers want to know whether the term could apply to time off of prison sentences.

Newt Was Committing Adultery While Pushing Anti-Gay Marriage Act

Jon Ponder

In the fall of 1996, while the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was being debated, four politicians who were key to its becoming law were adulterers, including two who were involved in adulteries while the bill was being debated.

Gingrich dumped second wife Marianne in 1999 after she had received an alarming medical diagnosis. She should have seen it coming. Newt famously broke up with his first wife to marry her while the first wife was in treatment for cancer.

The world has long known that Pres. Clinton, who signed the bill in September 1996, was having an affair at the time with Monica Lewinsky. But now, for the first time, then-House Speaker Newton Leroy Gingrich has acknowledged that he was having an affair with his current wife, Calista Biseck, while he was married to his second wife, Marianne.

Gingrich confessed his adultery in an interview this week with James Dobson, a professional homophobe who heads Focus on the Family, one of the nation’s most virulent anti-gay organizatons.

Sources say the affair had been ongoing at least three years (and possibly for five years) prior to his divorce in 1999. In any case, it is clear that while Gingrich was cheating on his wife, in his role as Speaker he put the passage of DOMA at the top of the agenda for the House six weeks before the 1996 presidential elections.

And that was the real point. DOMA was a cynical election-year ploy devised by Republicans to drive a wedge between Pres. Clinton and his supporters in the gay community. DOMA presented Clinton with two bad options. If he vetoed it, Republicans would use it to enflame their homophobic base. If he signed it, he would risk dampening support from gays on election day. In the raw calculus of politics, Clinton chose the least risky option and signed it.

The other two adulterous politicians were recently retired Sen. Bob Dole, who was the GOP presidential nominee that year, and who had admitted to having an affair while married to his first wife — and then-Rep. Bob Barr, who first proposed DOMA, and who reportedly was unfaithful during at least one of his three marriages.

Gingrich apparently dumped second wife Marianne after she had received an alarming medical diagnosis in 1999. In true Newt fashion, the Speaker notified his wife that he was ending the marriage during a phone call while Marianne was with her family celebrating her mother’s 84th birthday. Marianne Gingrich should have seen it coming. Gingrich famously broke up with his first wife to marry her while the first wife was in treatment for cancer.

Gingrich is considering running for president in 2008.

Gingrich Got Blown While Attacking Bill Clinton’s Blowjobs

Trish

Good lord.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.

“The honest answer is yes,” Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. “There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There’s certainly times when I’ve fallen short of God’s standards.”

Gingrich argued in the interview, however, that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton’s infidelity.

Because…?

Rightwinger Gripes over GOP ’08 Candidates: ‘They All Suck’

Jon Ponder

While a lot of Democrats aren’t thrilled with their choice of presidential candidates so far for 2008, hardly any of them could be said to “suck.” By contrast, Republicans have reasons to grouse, based on a recent post by Erick Erickson, the CEO of the blog Redstate:

The main problem with the prospect of a Newt ’08 campaign is that the former speaker is wretchedly unpopular. According to a recent Fox Noise poll — yes, a Fox poll — 64 percent of voters said they wouldn’t vote for Gingrich under any circumstances and 44 percent of Republicans said the same.

All the thus-far declared candidates “suck” [Erickson] recently declared at his website. “Let’s just admit it. Every one of the thus far announced Republican candidates for President sucks. From the lecherous adulterer [Rudy Giuliani] to the egomaniacal nut job [Senator John McCain] to the flip-flopping opportunist with the perfect hair [former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney] to the guy who hates brown people [Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo] to the guy we’ve never heard of [California Congressman Duncan Hunter] to the guy who has a better chance of getting hit by a meteor while being consumed by a blue whale being struck by lightening [Kansas Congressman Sam Brownback].”

So who is out there — who is the rightwing version of Al Gore out there waiting in the wings? Why — the Newster, of course:

Part of me, frankly, wants Newt Gingrich to run. Don’t get me wrong (or divorced; my wife can’t stand the guy). I don’t want the former speaker to actually win. I don’t know that I’d trust him with that much power. He is the most articulate, honest defender of conservatism out there. His ideas are bold, they are conservative, and they are good. I don’t agree with him on everything, but it would really be nice for him to get out there and pull everyone else to the right, to tell them why they are wrong, and why they are cowards for standing on the shoulder of Reagan while acting like the Manneken Pis [Wikipedia: “little man piss” in English; a Brussels landmark — a small bronze fountain sculpture depicting a naked little boy urinating into the fountain’s basin] on his legacy.

Amazingly, except the part about the statue, I agree with all of this. I hope Gingrich enters the race because he just about any Democrat with a pulse could beat him. His negatives in polling are so high as to be all but insurmountable. According to a recent Fox Noise poll — yes, Fox — 64 percent of voters said they wouldn’t vote for Gingrich under any circumstances and 44 percent of Republicans said the same.

Run, Newt, run!

Bush Bemoans Language Disadvantage in Latin America

Trish

Bush: “I wish now I had learned to speak Latin”

Protests — from graffiti to waved signs to chanted slogans — greet the president and first lady as they tour Latin America.

Fresh graffiti reading “Get Out, Bush! Assassin!” in bright red letters popped up along busy highways near the locations in Sao Paulo where Bush will appear as he kicks off his Latin American tour.

Viewing the display, with lips moving as he tried to sound out the words, Bush leaned over to the Lauratron 2007 and said, “I wish now I had learned to speak Latin.”

Yes, I’m kidding.

Edwards Says No to Fox Noise Channel

Trish

Go John! Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards turned down a debate opportunity in Nevada if it meant having to deal with Fox “News.”

The state’s Democratic Party — led in part by Sen. Harry Reid, a Mormon — forged a “partnership” with the biased broadcaster, supposedly in order to reach a more diverse group of voters. That would be the “Minds Locked Down Tighter Than Guantanamo” block, I guess. Even they now admit it’s not working.

…in a letter posted Wednesday on the party’s Web site, Democratic Party Chairman Tom Collins said Reid now shares activists’ concerns and “has asked us to take another look.”

Please Understand: Perjury Is Not a Crime When Republicans Do It

Jon Ponder

Conservatives are outraged about the fact that Scooter Libby was convicted on four counts of lying to a grand jury and to FBI agents. Why? Because, they say, Libby is a good and loyal soldier in their cause and, besides, his perjury is a side issue from the revelation of the CIA agent’s identity. They believe Libby should be pardoned immediately.

On “Hardball,” on the day the verdicts were announced, Ed Rogers, the soul of soul-less rightwing authoritarianism, was so upset about the verdict he started to cry. “I am mad about this!” he yelped.

But wait — wasn’t it these same conservatives who drove the nation into the impeachment of Pres. Bill Clinton nine years ago over something really trifling, and tawdry to boot: a perjury about sex?

Conservative bristle at the comparison between Libby’s unimportant perjury and Clinton’s lie, which, as they said back then, posed a threat to our republic. If all this makes your head spin, hang on. It is actually quite simple to explain:

  • Libby was lying to protect the vice president and, thus, America.
  • Pres. Clinton was, you know — a Democrat.

This explains why the same Republicans who railed about “the rule of law” and moaned “What will we tell the children?” in 1998 are now yapping about legal technicalities and whining that the perjury is moot because there was “no underlying crime.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, (R-South Carolina) who was one of the House members who prosecuted the Clinton impeachment, summed up his party’s laws-are-for-Democrats point of view on the Libby verdict:

“When it came to the grand jury, he gave false testimony allegedly about his interaction. But the underlying charge that started this investigation never materialized. So you have to put it in that perspective…It’s a bad story but it’s a different story than the way it started.”

Sen. Kay Baily Hutchinson (R-Texas), who, during the Clinton impeachment said, “Something needs to be said that is a clear message that our rule of law is intact and the standards for perjury and obstruction of justice are not gray,” has changed her tune. On “Meet the Press” last Sunday she said:

“I certainly hope that, if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn’t indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars.”

On MSBNC’s “Hardball” on Tuesday, the day the verdicts were announced, Ed Rogers, the soul of soul-less rightwing authoritarianism, was so upset about the verdict he started to cry. “I am mad about this!” he yelped.

Yesterday, on the same show, Kate O’Bierne, the right’s Mother Superior on all things, said, with a straight face that she believed the jury was simply wrong — that Libby had simply forgotten, then remembered, then forgotten, then remembered again that he originally learned the covert identity of the CIA agent from his boss, Vice Pres. Dick Cheney, not NBC’s Tim Russert.

The rightwing press in lockstep is calling on Pres. Bush to pardon Libby. Despite his having been tried in a court of law by a jury of his peers, they say justice was not done.

This is an amazing display of rightwing hypocrisy — so egregious that you might think they would be ashamed of it. But they aren’t, because in their worldview, they make and enforce the laws, but they are not subject to them. Rules do not apply to them. It’s just that simple.

Update: Here we have the conservative mindset in its full fantastical flower. I happened up this logic-torturing screed written last September by Mark Levin, a girly-voiced troglodyte who made a name for himself as a frequent and fervent pro-impeachment talking head during the Clinton wars. In what follows, he provides talking points for fellow delusionists on how to square the circle in being critical of Libby’s perjury conviction while believing that Pres. Clinton committed a serious crime. It is a wonder to behold:

[…]

Rod Majors: The Latest Rightwing Gay Media Whore – And Porn Star

Jon Ponder

Cpl. Matt Sanchez (left) with unidentifed man at CPAC, inset: Rod Majors

Ted Haggard bought one. Jeff Gannon was one — and now so is Cpl. Matt Sanchez, a U.S. Marine and the darling of CPAC and rightwing luminaries like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly.

What is it with rightwingers and gay prostitutes?

Cpl. Sanchez became a hero to the radical fringe recently when he claimed he’d been called a “baby killer” by liberals on the Columbia University campus, supposedly because he was wearing his U.S Marines uniform.There is apparently no evidence anything of the sort happened — and yet CPAC awarded Sanchez the Jeanne Kirpatrick Academic Freedom Award at its annual creepfest this year.

What they didn’t know is that Rod Majors, the conservative Marine’s evil twin, has appeared in at least a dozen gay porno films and admitted today that he also worked as a male escort who charged $250 for out calls.

Read More:

  • Joe.My.God. broke the story.
  • Andy Towle says he dated Rod Majors a few years ago.
  • Media Matters’ Max Blumenthal writes about the scandal at Huffington Post.
  • And here’s an interview with Rod Majors on a porn industry site. (Not for the easily offended!)