Month: May 2007
President Referred to al Qaeda 39 Times in Coast Guard Address
Political terror: Five years ago, in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks, Pres. George W. Bush had considerable success terrifying the public into supporting him. Today, however, the vast majority of Americans have come to regard George Bush as — at best — a serial prevaricator.
With his credibility is in tatters, and his approval rating mired in the low 30s, all he has left is his base — conservative Americans who are apparently addicted to, and easily manipulated by, fear.
Desperate to keep them in goose-bumps, he has dredged up the scarifying rhetoric from the bad old days. There is no better example of this than the president’s commencement address to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy on Wednesday, when he used deployed the bogeyman of al Qaeda no fewer than 39 times.
The transcript follows, picking up the narrative 15 paragraphs in:
Quote du Jour
We are always making God our accomplice, that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benedictions for any victorious enormity.
— Henri Frederic Amiel, Swiss philosopher
New Cheney Grandchild: GOP Cognitive Dissonance Runs Amok
Above, Lynne and Dick Cheney hold their sixth grandchild, Samuel David Cheney, the son of Mary Cheney and her wife, Heather Poe.
Bush press release titled, “President Calls for Constitutional Amendment Protecting Marriage,” issued Feb. 24, 2004:
After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence, and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization. Their actions have created confusion on an issue that requires clarity.
Bush: “Ages of experience have taught that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society”On a matter of such importance, the voice of the people must be heard. Activist courts have left the people with one recourse. If we are to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America.
…An amendment to the Constitution is never to be undertaken lightly. The amendment process has addressed many serious matters of national concern. And the preservation of marriage rises to this level of national importance. The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honoring — honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith. Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society.
Marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society. Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all. Today I call upon the Congress to promptly pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of man and woman as husband and wife. The amendment should fully protect marriage, while leaving the state legislatures free to make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than marriage.
Alleged Rightwing Terror Cell Uncovered in Virginia – Where Was DHS?
What homeland security: The case of Mark Uhl, the young rightwing insurrectionist caught with a bomb intended for protesters* at the funeral of rightwing political agitator Jerry Falwell, has been transferred from local jurisdictions to the U.S. Attorney’s office for prosecution.
Uhl, 19, a student at Liberty University in Virginia, the college founded by the recently deceased evangelist and professional homophobe, was arrested Monday night. Uhl told authorities the bomb was intended for protesters at Falwell’s funeral on Tuesday.
Investigators say they believe Uhl may not have acted alone — and one member of the terror cell has apparently infiltrated the U.S. military:
Three other suspects are being sought, one of whom is a soldier from Fort Benning, Ga., and another is a high school student. No information was available on the third suspect.
Agencies involved in thwarting the terror attack included the federal ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms), Virginia State Police, the FBI and the Campbell County, Va., Sheriff’s Office. Notably absent from the investigation was the U.S. Dept. Homeland Security.
DHS is AWOL in the investigations into rightwing terrorists in this country, and yet it facilitated the capture in Thailand of John Mark Karr, the mentally disturbed man who falsely claimed to have killed JonBenet Ramsey.
Similarly, late last month, we pointed out that DHS was absent from the investigation that led to the capture of a homegrown terrorist who attempted to plant a bomb at a Texas women’s health center. And yet, DHS facilitated the capture in Thailand of John Mark Karr, the mentally disturbed man who falsely claimed to have killed JonBenet Ramsey.
Overall, the federal agency tasked with protecting the homeland against terrorism has been AWOL in the pursuit of what appears to be an uptick in rightwing terrorism:
– Late in April, 150 federal, state, and local law enforcement officers carried out simultaneous raids in four Alabama counties in a sweep that yielded 130 grenades, a rocket launcher, and 2,500 rounds of ammunition.. In the town of Trussville, it took a U-haul truck to cart away all the materiel. At the Collinsville camper belonging to militia “major” Taymond Dillard, agents first had to defuse trip-wires rigged to explode hand grenades to kill intruders.
– Right-wing vigilantes arrested in a scuffle at one of the May 1 immigration marches, in Washington D.C., [were] found to have a stash of automatic weapons and explosives in his home.
Not only was the nation’s top anti-terror agency involved in the Uhl case, a search of news stories on the Internet three days after his capture found that no law enforcement spokesperson had referred to him as a “terrorist” — nor had any version of the word “terror” been used to describe the case by any mainstream — and therefore purportedly liberal — news outlet.
Conversely, the federal government has labeled animal rights activist Jonathan Paul a terrorist, and may add “terrorism enhancements” to his sentence. Paul pleaded guilty to burning down a slaughterhouse for horse in Oregon in the 1990s. He and other members of the Animal Liberation Front are facing from three to 14 years in prison.
The surge in rightwing terrorism may be a response to the country’s leftward drift away from the authoritarianism of Pres. Bush and the Republican Party. If the trend away from the GOP continues, as Digby says, terror attacks from rightwing extremists are likely to ramp up:
I predict that we are going to see a remarkable resurgence of rightwing violence if the Democrats take full control of the government. These people are always surprisingly cooperative when the government is run by Republicans and then rediscover their “anti-government” beliefs when Democrats share or dominate the government. I can’t imagine why that would be.
Oh, and here’s the kicker about Mark Uhl: Falwell gave him a scholarship to attend Liberty U.
*UPDATE: The Associated Press has updated the story. The protesters Uhl and his compatriots intended to bomb were not liberals. They were members of the bizarre Fred Phelps “God Hates Fags” cult based at the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas. The Phelps said they were protesting Falwell’s funeral because he was a friend to gays. These folks are seriously off their meds.
The Bush Presidency Is Like a Marriage Gone Bad
The first Pres. Bush was once described as “every woman’s first husband.” In a new article at Salon.com, Gary Kamiya argues that the current president’s relationship with the public has become analagous to a failed marriage:
If Congress allows Bush to leave office unimpeached, it risks rendering quaint the system of checks and balances in the Constitution.
America finds itself married to a guy who has turned out to be a complete dud. Divorce — which in our nonparliamentary system means impeachment — is the logical solution. But even though Bush cheated on us, lied, besmirched our family’s name and spent all our money, we the people, not to mention our elected representatives and the media, seem content to stick it out to the bitter end.
As any newspaper advice columnist would say, the healthy thing to do with a bad marriage is to end it. But Kamiya suggests that despite Bush’s falsified casus belli, the lackadaisical preparation and abysmal conduct of the war, his flouting of laws, incompetence and scandals, he will leave office unimpeached. The main reason for this, Kamiya says is obvious:
The Democrats think it’s bad politics. Bush is dying politically and taking the GOP down with him, and impeachment is risky. It could, so the cautious Beltway wisdom has it, provoke a backlash, especially while the war is still going on. Why should the Democrats gamble on hitting the political jackpot when they’re likely to walk away from the table big winners anyway?
This is risky. Allowing Bush to slink away without being held accountable undermines the government’s system of checks and balances between the branches, which could render the U.S. Constitution, well, quaint. If this rogue president gets away with it, what will stop the next?
Son of ‘Dr. Laura’ Accused of Publishing Sadistic War Posts on MySpace
NOTE: Due to a server shutdown on May 22, 2007, the original version of this article was permanently deleted from our database. What follows is back up of a draft of the original. All comments posted to this article were lost.
Laura Schlessinger, the rightwing radio hatemonger, is back in the news. Last week, she told military families to stop whining about life at home while their loved ones are deployed:
In one of the stick drawings, a top-hatted man laughs as he rapes a bound and bleeding woman in front of her family. In another depiction, a man forces a boy to perform oral sex at knifepoint as the child’s mother pleads for her son’s life.
“He could come back without arms, legs and eyeballs, and you’re bitching?”
Now Schlessinger’s son, Deryk, who is serving in the military in Afghanistan, is accused of publishing horrific graphics and messages on his MySpace page:
The MySpace page, publicly available until Friday when it disappeared from the Internet, included cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned “My Sweet Little Habib”; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets.
The site is credited to and includes many photographs of Deryk Schlessinger, the 21-year-old son of the talk radio personality known simply as Dr. Laura.
On one hand, it’s not surprising that a parent as filled with hatred and rage as Laura Schlessinger would produce a child who is a monster — nonetheless, what Deryk allegedly posted here is beyond shocking:
“Yes . . . F–ING Yes!!!” said one blog entry on the Schlessinger site. “I LOVE MY JOB, it takes everything reckless and deviant and heathenistic and just overall bad about me and hyper focuses these traits into my job of running around this horrid place doing nasty things to people that deserve it . . . and some that don’t.”
Deryk Schlessinger seems to imply he may have participated in, or at least was aware of, war crimes and atrocities:
Deryk Schlessinger’s Web site indicated the 21-year-old soldier is stationed in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where, the site’s author writes, “godless crazy people like me,” have become “a generation of apathetic killers.”
The site indicated Schlessinger’s team has survived numerous mortar, rocket and roadside bomb attacks. It also included several graphic cartoons. In one of the stick drawings, a top-hatted man laughs as he rapes a bound and bleeding woman in front of her family. In another depiction, a man forces a boy to perform oral sex at knifepoint as the child’s mother pleads for her son’s life.
Laura Schlessinger often couches the hatred she spews, especially toward gay people, in rhetoric about “family values,” but her son’s alleged posting about horrific acts he may have participated in is not the first time the reality of her own failings as a family member have made news.
In December 2002, the body of Schlessinger’s estranged mother was found in her apartment months after she had died. Schlessinger’s critics claimed she was a hyporcrite “as she had often chastised listeners who said they had broken off contact with their families, calling them selfish.”
Update: The BRAD BLOG reported in September 2004 that Deryk Schlessinger was among the young GOP goons who were caught on tape roughing up protesters at the Republican Convention in New York.
McCain Lost His Temper During Senate Negotiations
Meltdown: Word on the street has it that Sen. John McCain has a bad temper. He needs to keep it under wraps while he runs for president but that may be too difficult:
“[Expletive] you! I know more about this than anyone else in the room,” shouted McCain at Cornyn.
During a meeting Thursday on immigration legislation, McCain and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) got into a shouting match when Cornyn started voicing concerns about the number of judicial appeals that illegal immigrants could receive, according to multiple sources — both Democrats and Republicans — who heard firsthand accounts of the exchange from lawmakers who were in the room …
Things got really heated when Cornyn accused McCain of being too busy campaigning for president to take part in the negotiations, which have gone on for months behind closed doors. “Wait a second here,” Cornyn said to McCain. “I’ve been sitting in here for all of these negotiations and you just parachute in here on the last day. You’re out of line.”
McCain, a former Navy pilot, then used language more accustomed to sailors (not to mention the current vice president, who made news a few years back after a verbal encounter with Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont).
“[Expletive] you! I know more about this than anyone else in the room,” shouted McCain at Cornyn. McCain helped craft a bill in 2006 that passed the Senate but couldn’t be compromised with a House bill that was much tougher on illegal immigrants.
McCain’s staff denied that the senator said he knew more about immigration than anyone else.
Duncan Hunter’s International Fence
GOP presidential candidate Rep. Duncan Hunter, the author of last year’s Secure Fence Act, which mandated extending the existing wall at California’s border with Mexico eastward to the borders of Arizona and New Mexico, is upset that the Bush administration and the Congress have cut “his” fence in half:
[CHRIS MATTHEWS, host of MSNBC’s Hardball]: Will this new bill the president presented today with his coalition of senators, including McCain and Kennedy, do the job of stopping illegal immigration?
HUNTER: Well, I don‘t think it will, because the bill cuts my fence in half.
And … when we passed this bill, which I wrote in October, passed by the House, the Senate passed it 80-19. It provides for 854 miles of double fence across the smuggling corridors of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas …
So, the Senate bill, off the bat, more than cuts the Hunter fence in half. I don‘t like that.
Poll: Solid Majorities of Christians, Conservatives Favor Covering Gays in Hate Crime Law
Much of the organized opposition to the expansion of the hate crime law has come from conservative religious groups, while the nation’s top Republican leader, President George W. Bush, has suggested he will veto the legislation if it reaches his desk. But there is little evidence from these data to suggest that a majority of Republicans, conservatives, or more religious Americans are opposed to the new law.
| Favor % | Oppose % | |
| Republicans | 60 | 34 |
| Independents | 69 | 27 |
| Democrats | 75 | 21 |
| Conservatives | 57 | 37 |
| Moderates | 74 | 22 |
| Liberals | 82 | 15 |
| Protestants | 65 | 30 |
| Catholics | 72 | 23 |
| Other Religion | 74 | 23 |
| No Religious Identity | 74 | 25 |
| TOTAL | 68 | 27 |
