Author: Trish

Make Your Street Downing Street

Trish

How I decided to go into P.R. and marketing is a long story, but “We Are Everywhere” by Chicago 7/8 “conspirator” Jerry Rubin is tucked on my shelf between the A.P. Stylebook and Roget’s. What Rubin called “theatre” back then we now term “guerilla P.R.,” “word of mouth marketing (WOMMA),” and viral marketing, among other things.

That’s probably why I love this idea, posted in the comments at thinkprogress.org, so much.

1. Paint Cardboard White – Then Print ( DOWNING STREET ) On Cardboard

2. Then Tape SIGN To Your Local… Street, Road, Highway Sign – NOW – Repeat

3. Hang ( DOWNING ST. ) Sign Under Your Mail Box

4. Downing Street – On A Stick – As A Yard Sign – What-Ever

Inspired by: snowho. Let’s do it People… ECs

Help Make Every Street… ” Downing Street ”

Until Bush Is Impeached !

Paste… ( Downing Street ) Over Every Street Sign… Across America

OGC adds… And Around the Planet Earth (www.OneGlobalCommunity.com )

Add You & Yours… To this Listing…

Copy, Paste And

Pass It On

Repeat…

More info @ www.AfterDowningStreet.org

Thoughts on Fatherhood from a Man Named Jeb, Whose Kids All Ended Up in the Police Blotter

Trish

The big surprise is that Jeb seems to realize how fortunate he was to have been born a Bush. Certainly, like Paris Hilton, he never would have gotten where he is in life had he been say, Jeb Griswold.

Palm Beach Post:

“I thank God every day that when I was born on February 11, 1953, I came out with my mom who’s my mom, which meant that I got to have my dad, who has been an incredible inspiration to me in every way,” Bush said of his father, former President George H.W. Bush.

You kind of lost of me for a minute, but a big “duh,” there Jeb.

And didn’t George H.W. spawn kids to be proud of?

o George W. — nuff said

o Neil, the poster child for failing at both business (Silverado Savings & Loan) and marital fidelity (Chinese calls girls, divorce and paternity tests)

o Marvin, who was director of the firm that provided electronic security for the World Trade Center and Dulles International Airport, the airport where American Airlines flight 77 originated on the morning of September 11th

o Dorothy, or Doro, as her family calls her, whose husband #2, Richard Koch, is son of the founder of the John Birch Society. His family foundation funds Libertarian causes and conservative think tanks including the Cato Institute. During the Clinton administration, one of his companies, Koch Oil, was charged with 97 counts of covering evidence of a benzene spill in Corpus Christi and another 315 acts of pollution.

o Jeb himself, who is only too happy to give fathers credit for how children turn out.

The governor touted studies that indicate that a child with an involved father is “more likely to meet success, to live a healthier lifestyle, maintain higher self-esteem, and perform better inside and outside the classroom.”

Bush said his own parenthood has been “the most rewarding experience of my life.”

…Bush’s 27-year-old daughter, Noelle, graduated from a 16-month drug court program nearly two years ago after her arrest in 2002 for attempting to obtain the drug Xanax with a forged prescription at a Tallahassee pharmacy.

What dad wouldn’t be proud to take credit for raising his kids when they turn out like that? Makes me kind of tear up just thinking about it. Noelle lives with Jeb and Columba at the governor’s mansion but his sons, George P. and Jeb Jr. (does this family have any imagination at all?) have been exiled to Texas.

While still in Miami, George P. had the police called on him after he broke into his ex-girlfriend’s house at 4 a.m. and began arguing with her father. Twenty minutes after he fled the scene, he returned in his Ford Explorer and tore across the front lawn, grinding a path through the grass.

Jeb Jr. had Tallahassee police summoned after someone called mall security about a couple in the back of a Jeep Cherokee. They found them in the parking lot, both naked from the waist down although Jebby, as he is known, showed his fine Bush breeding by retaining his socks.

If Jeb is half the father that he is a governor, and judging by his kids, I’d say he is, it’s no mystery how they’ve turned out.

Jeb Continues Vendetta on Michael Schiavo; Still Using Terri as His Own Personal “Weekend at Bernie’s of the Bible”

Trish

If you don’t live in Florida (aren’t you the clever one?), you might not have heard the latest about Jeb and the Schiavo case. The autopsy report showed Terri really was beyond hope, and also showed no evidence that abuse caused her collapse to begin with, nor evidence there was any abuse in the 15 years she was in a persistent vegitative state. So you might expect Jeb to say, “Whoops, my bad” for using his office to harass and intimidate Michael Schiavo.

You might, but this is Jeb we’re talking about.

And so the news comes today that Jeb wants to launch an investigation into how long it took Michael Schiavo to call an ambulance when Terri collapsed in 1990. I’m not making this up.

Miami Herald:

One day after an exhaustive autopsy sought to end much of the controversy over Terri Schiavo’s life, and eventual death, Gov. Jeb Bush said he plans to ask prosecutors to investigate whether her husband took too long to call for help on the night she collapsed in 1990…

Bush said he had tried unsuccessfully to reach Pinellas-Pasco County State Attorney Bernie McCabe, who is apparently on vacation, to talk to him about whether law enforcement authorities should look into Michael Schiavo’s actions 15 years ago.

Somebody make it stop!

Too late. They’re going ahead.

St. Petersburg Times:

“We are going to look into the circumstances surrounding the times,” said [McCabe’s chief assistant Bruce] Bartlett, who declined to label the review an investigation. “The governor has expressed concern over that aspect of the case.”

…Bush said he decided to seek the investigation after talking with Dr. Jon Thogmartin, the Pinellas-Pasco medical examiner who spent nearly 11 weeks preparing Schiavo’s autopsy report, and learning that the doctor could not determine what led Schiavo to collapse in 1990.

Thogmartin met with the governor the day before the autopsy report was released publicly.

Meanwhile, a scorching and dead-on column by the Tampa Tribune’s Daniel Ruth calls to task the Jebs and Docktor Frists of the world, along with the talk radio and cable screamers, for publicly tarring and feathering Michael Schiavo.

It is more than understandable Terri Schiavo’s parents Bob and Mary Schindler and her siblings were in a parallel universe of denial over the true state of their daughter’s dire medical condition. They loved her…

But in the service of ratings points, audience share, ambition, ego and hubris, the likes of Glenn Beck, the Madame Defarge of Talk Radio, and his Posse Comitatus of prevarication were more than willing to engage in drive time vigilantism against Michael Schiavo, whose only crime was trying to honor his wife’s end-of-life wishes…

Now at long last, Michael Schiavo has been vindicated by the truth, a foreign concept to all those phony so-called Christians, talk show thugs and politicians looking for a cheap sound bite who were more than ready to treat a brain-dead woman as their own personal “Weekend At Bernie’s” of the Bible.

Limbaugh’s Records a Goldmine of Juicy Tidbits

Trish

Sounds like Rush Limbaugh has plenty to hide in his “doctor-shopping” investigation.

Palm Beach Post:

“Many of the things in these records deal with medical procedures, symptoms, things that are potentially embarrassing for my client to be released,” [Superstar lawyer Roy] Black told the judge. “They are very intimate matters, discussed with his doctors, which are not within the scope of the warrant.”

Wow. Really makes you want to see them, doesn’t it? If you looked through my medical records, the only embarrassing thing you’d find is how much I really weigh. Wonder why Rush has so much more to worry about?

The issue, of course, is whether Rush, whom we already know is a recovering (we hope) drug addict, went to doctors to support his habit. Unless you’re Elvis, it’s hard to believe one doctor would give you enough meds to feed your addiction, or that Rush would have never broken any laws in order to stay hopped up.

Limbaugh, 54, of Palm Beach, has not been charged with a crime. He acknowledges an addiction to painkillers but says he did not doctor-shop.

Doctor-shopping — seeking duplicate prescriptions from different doctors — is a felony, but almost never prosecuted in Palm Beach County.

Well, isn’t it lucky that Rush lives in one of the most privileged areas of the country, where anyone can get pretty much anything as long as they have the cash? But it still boils down to this: either Rush lied to his doctors, Rush did in fact doctor-shop, or Rush goes to doctors who should be prohibited from practice.

In court filings, Black pointed out that all but six of the prescriptions in the records came from two Jupiter doctors who practice in the same office. “There can be no doctor-shopping between them,” Black wrote.

[Judge] Barkdull denied the request but said Black was free to file it again.

Yeah, sure, file some more bogus injunctions. Rush and Roy have tried about every trick in the book to get out of ‘fessing up and getting this over with. When it suits their cause, they say Rush is being unfairly targeted because he’s a celebrity (not a journalist, mind you); when it doesn’t they say, as a public figure, he should have special protection because his records could embarrass him and threaten his career.

Isn’t part of the 12-step program admitting you did wrong?

McCain/Jeb Ticket: Your Worst Nightmare

Trish

Floridians are groaning with horror or rubbing hands with delight – depending on who they are – over today’s Washington Post column by E.J. Dionne. He thinks, Lord help us, John McCain and Jeb Bush could run together in 2008.

But McCain made a crucial decision…in 2004. Courted hard by John Kerry as a potential running mate, McCain said no. He decided he wanted to be president and that it was unlikely he would ever get a Democratic nomination – and implausible that he could win as an independent. His one shot was as a Republican.

Once this choice was made, everything else fell into place. McCain joined the Bush crowd. He gave a powerful speech endorsing the president at last year’s Republican National Convention in New York…Unlike the speeches bashing Kerry and the Democrats by Zell Miller, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rudy Giuliani, McCain’s stuck to policy and praised Bush for his decision to go to war in Iraq.

This allowed McCain to keep his reputation for clinging to the high ground, but it was also important for Bush, whose central policy legacy, for better or worse, will be Iraq.

The standard view of McCain’s choice, especially among Democrats, is that he sold out to Bush for nothing. This assumes that McCain can’t win the 2008 Republican nomination because of the intense opposition he will face from the Republican right, especially from Christian conservatives. It also assumes that Bush will never lift a finger to help McCain.

In Bush’s ideal world, that would probably be true. But the current moment is not ideal for Bush, and the economy, Iraq and the political situation may be even less ideal two and three years from now.

So what about the Jeb part?

Jeb Bush has said he will not run in 2008. But that does not rule him out as a vice presidential candidate. If McCain won, Jeb would be the No. 2 to a president who will turn 72 on Aug. 29, 2008, and might well serve only a single term. If McCain lost, Jeb would have enhanced national recognition for a run in 2012. If picking Jeb is the price of winning over George W., McCain will pay it.

I lost a lot of respect for John McCain during and since the last election. He seems to be the official apologist for everything this administration does wrong, which is a lot of ground to cover. Why would W. need to admit mistakes? He’s got John McCain standing by to explain everything.

I know Jeb isn’t going away but it’s so nice to think of him not being in Florida anymore that I guess I was hoping he would.

How Judge Roy Moore Could Beat Bush and Cheney at Their Own Righteous Game

Trish

It had to happen. Sooner or later, someone even more reprehensible, extremist, and paranoid than George W. Bush or Dick Cheney had to come along. That day is nigh.

Former Judge Roy Moore, who gained national attention when he masterfully staged a showdown in Alabama over posting the Ten Commandments in a courthouse, is looking presidential.

A fascinating and well-researched story in the Boston Globe shows how pumping up the Christian far right might come home to bite Bush/Rove squarely in the ass.

Moore, a Republican who enjoys widespread support in his home state, is poised to run against a vulnerable Republican governor. If he wins, some party strategists speculate, he could defy a federal court order again by erecting a religious monument outside the Alabama state Capitol building.

With the 2008 presidential race looming, President Bush would then face a no-win decision: either call out the National Guard to enforce a court order against a religious display on state grounds or allow a fellow born-again Christian to defy the courts.

Ah yes. Having made a deal with the devil that is the born-again “silent” minority, Bush could find himself out-righteoused. Actually, he already did in the Schiavo case, and those same folks who showed up with bottles of water and homemade cookies to “feed” Terri haven’t forgotten and are behind the Moore campaign.

Polls indicate that Moore, a 58-year-old graduate of West Point, has a good shot at beating Governor Bob Riley in next year’s Republican primary. Riley angered conservatives by signing the largest tax increase in Alabama history in an effort to get the state’s fiscal house in order and make the tax code more progressive…

Meanwhile, the former state chief justice is bolstering his national standing. He has filed amicus curiae briefs in two Supreme Court cases expected to be decided this month that will determine whether displays of the Ten Commandments on public grounds in Texas and Kentucky violate the US Constitution.

On Capitol Hill, Moore is lobbying for legislation in Congress to strip federal courts, including the Supreme Court, of jurisdiction over any challenges to government agencies or officials that acknowledge ”God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government.”

Sounds like Moore is the poster child for “activist judges.” And talk about a victim mentality. This guy has the required pissed-off-with-all-this-liberal-nonsense pique down to a red-faced science.

…In his autobiography, ”So Help Me God: The Ten Commandments, Judicial Tyranny, and the Battle for Religious Freedom,” Moore frequently casts himself as a lone man of principle battling dark forces…

Fully aware that he would attract a lawsuit, Moore hung in his courtroom a redwood plaque of the Ten Commandments. A local ACLU attorney complained; Moore described this as ”the first time the civil rights group attempted to intimidate me.”

He also began opening his court sessions with a prayer. In 1994, six months into his tenure, the ACLU recorded his prayer — and a local star was born.

The media covered the subsequent lawsuit, crowds singing ”Amazing Grace” showed up in support. A year later, Moore launched his race for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.

Moore at least makes no pretense of being a “uniter not a divider.” His world view is strictly us vs. them, and the number that qualifies as “us” is…pretty much just him.

”Roy was never that interested in what the law was versus what he wanted to do,” said James Hedgespeth, the county’s district attorney for 18 years and a Democrat who describes his personal relations with Moore as cordial. ”I always thought the code books in his office were just for decoration. He always felt he knew better than anyone else.”

Expect to hear more from Moore in the dark days ahead. Having empowered the previously marginal Bible literalist beast, Bush/Rove can now figure out how to tame it.

In 2004, after the disciplinary panel had forced Moore to resign, supporters urged him to run for president, but he decided the timing was not right. Phillips compares Moore’s national popularity to that of Pat Robertson, the TV evangelist whose 1988 bid for president divided the GOP, and said Moore is well-positioned to consider his own run.

”There’s no question he would heighten the debate on the whole issue of religion and politics,” Scarborough said. ”And nationally, there is a core following that would be faithful to him.”

Dean To Repugs: Quit Faking Concern for African-American Voters

Trish

This part of Dr. (as long as Condo keeps using it, I’ll use it for Howie) Howard Dean’s comments Sunday aren’t getting as much play as his calling Fox News a Republican propaganda machine, but it should.

Chicago Tribune:

Dean…sharply criticized the Republican Party, which he said has yet to support reauthorizing certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act that expire in 2007.

After barely registering a double-digit showing among black voters nationally in last fall’s election, the Republican Party has intensified its efforts to recruit African-American supporters. Chairman Ken Mehlman is engineering the party’s most aggressive outreach to black voters, frequently speaking in churches and to community groups in an effort to improve the party’s performance before the 2006 mid-term elections and the 2008 presidential race.

Dean said Republicans should not “pretend” to be genuinely interested in courting African-Americans until the party makes a clear statement on the Voting Rights Act.

“The chairman of the Republican Party, as you know, has made a big deal about attracting African-American voters,” Dean said to people attending the conference. “And this is a litmus test. If you aren’t going to support the extension of the Voting Rights Act, I don’t know what right you have to go to a black church and show your face.”

But like so many things Republicans have the gall to do, this one appears to be working. More blacks are switching parties, due in large part to the GOP going after members of black churches. Black Christian fundamentalists must not be any better at resisting cynical Republican manipulation than white Christian fundamentalists.

If you don’t think so, check out the comments of Rev. O’Neal Dozier, the White House’s “go-to” African-American, posted earlier.

God Hates Sodomites, This I Know, ‘Cause the Bible (and Those Voices Only I Hear) Tells Me So

Trish

The other shoe fell and it wasn’t that bad, although there sure are some wackos out there.

St. Augustine, Florida (the nation’s oldest city) kicked off its annual gay pride celebration early and somewhat unwillingly, after a federal court ruled the city had to fly rainbow flags downtown and across the 1920s landmark Bridge of Lions. The city flew other flags for various events, the court pointed out, without criteria that would eliminate commemoration of such sentiments as gay pride.

St. Augustine Record:

Jason Relph of New York City is a former resident of St. Augustine who flew back here for this event.

“The federal court ruling (on the flags) made news in England, Canada and, for some reason, Iceland,” Relph said. “It’s unusual because this is a Southern, conservative town, and this march says we are not ashamed of who we are. It’s an awakening on some level.”

Jordan Buffaloe of Jacksonville arrived with his partner, Shawn Weiker.

“We want people to look past the rainbow flags and into our expressions,” Buffaloe said. “We want to be recognized as individuals. Look past our sexual orientation.”

The other team (in the Seinfeld sense) was pitifully represented by some scary folks who were mercifully outnumbered.

Anthony Russo, 24, held a sign that said, “I hate queers.”

He said homosexuality was “ungodly and immoral.”

Russo and three friends taunted the marchers.

His father, Doug Russo, held a sign that said homosexuals should “repent or burn.”

Russo said homosexuality has been a crime for 200 years of American history.

“Now all of a sudden, it’s not,” he said. “Sin is a reproach to any nation. I’m trying to prevent them from going to Hell. Is that hate? I think it’s concern.”

Homosexuality, Russo said, is caused by “demon possession.” If homosexuals accepted Jesus, he added, they would be saved.

It’s depressingly obvious concepts like demonic possession can be handed down in families, although there are certainly people who rise above such upbringing. But I wonder what Anthony’s going to be like in middle age.

Doug’s mission from God aside, gay pride organizers promised an even bigger event next year. Instead of closing downtown streets, they will apply to use the city’s special events field. Stay tuned…

Pissed Off Diebold Blames Elections Office for Its Failure

Trish

Diebold is puffed up and fuming about the recent successful hack by Black Box Voting on some of its Florida touch-screens. The elections supervisor in the county where the state capital is located had invited the group to see just how secure the voting machines were and now Diebold wants his head on a platter.

Tallahassee Democrat:

An attorney for the company that makes Leon County’s voting equipment told state and county officials Thursday it was “very foolish and irresponsible” for Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho to let an outside group try poking holes in vote-tabulation security systems…

In a blistering letter to Sancho, all seven county commissioners and Paul Craft, the head of voting-system certification in Hood’s elections office, [senior corporate counsel for Diebold Election Systems Inc. Michael] Lindroos said Sancho compromised the security of the system by letting Black Box Voting try to crack it. He said Sancho may have “intentionally and negligently allowed unauthorized personnel to make modifications to your system that are not discernible to you or your IT staff.

Actually, the test proved that it was already impossible to confirm that elections were being conducted reliably. That was the problem there, big boy. But Little Red (State) Glenda Hood, who presides over Florida’s elections and does whatever Jeb wants, is all about punishment – of the good guys.

An aide to Secretary of State Glenda Hood said the Division of Elections “will be contacting all appropriate parties to review this matter.”

Sancho already said he was taking the hacked machines out of commission, so whatever. Meanwhile, Diebold still hasn’t taken any responsibility and just claims the test was rigged.

“Your improper actions, Mr. Sancho, are equivalent to leaving your car unlocked, with the windows down and the keys left in the ignition, and then acting surprised when your car is stolen or the interior vandalized,” wrote Lindroos. “Other examples would be acting surprised if anomalies were discovered after you left paper ballots exposed in an unsecured area and invited individuals of questionable character to visit the room, or asked some unknown person to deliver paper ballots to a central counting location without a trusted escort.”

Well not exactly, according to Bev Harris of Black Box Voting.

Harris…said similar Diebold systems are used in about 800 cities and counties across the country, with three to five employees having access in each jurisdiction, and that the system “should send up a red flare” if a dishonest employee tries to change vote totals.

Harris said Black Box evaded security systems and changed votes without setting off any alarms in its tests.

“It took us less than a minute to replace the Diebold system with something we wrote and to hijack the whole system,” she said. “I would venture to say it doesn’t happen in Leon County, but that’s like saying nobody ever embezzles. When you have 800 jurisdictions and three to five employees with access in each, that’s like saying you’ve got 3,000 to 4,000 employees and none of them will ever try something.”

Hell, if I thought it would get rid of W. & Co. and I might give it a shot myself.

Admit It: You Think So Too

Trish

Borowitz does it again:

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean apologized today for calling Republicans “pretty much a white, Christian party,” saying that he failed to mention that they were “fat and ugly” as well…

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn) lashed out at Dr. Dean from the floor of the Senate…

But hours later, Dr. Dean continued to stoke the controversy with his response to Sen. Frist’s remarks: “I knew I was forgetting something – Republicans are really stupid, too, and Bill Frist, in my opinion, is not even a real doctor.”

In the aftermath of Dr. Dean’s latest remarks, leading Democrats were mulling what to do about their volatile party chief, exploring a range of options including driving him out to the country and ditching him along a secluded road.