Tag: Conservative Values

Wingnut Crackpot Encourages Crystal Balling – Flood his Web Site, Please

Buck Banks

Right of right: Our favorite Goldwater conservative, Richard Viguerie, has issued a challenge to the dozen or so idiots who subscribe to his e-mail newsletter (disclaimer: I just do it for Pensito Review) to gaze deeply into their crystal balls and predict the outcome of the midterms. If you’re a good prognosticator, you’ll get your name posted on Viguerie’s Web site (a dubious achievement sure to wreck your future career opportunities, love life and social network).

So, gentle reader, go to the Vig’s site and lodge a ludicrous prediction (Mark Foley ascends to the presidency! John Kerry doesn’t blow the election for the Democrats!) to consume bandwidth and hopefully aggravate Richie’s hemorhoids. Come on, it will be fun! Let’s get out there and betray some conservatives, kids!

Dear Concerned Citizen,

Regardless of how you’d like the November 7th election to come out, what do you think the results will actually be?

Go to the Conservatives Betrayed website at http://www.conservativesbetrayed.com/survey_110106.php and make your predictions on the key races around the country for Senator, House of Representatives, and Governor.

The top five predictors can have their names and pictures on the websites to recognize their abilities and election seers.

Good luck in predicting the outcome of the elections!

Cordially,

Richard A. Viguerie

U.S. Dept. of Interior Blocking Employee Access to Pensito Review

Buck Banks

Well, maybe: There’s a bit of a tempest in a teacup going on at the Department of Interior, with a number of leading wingnut bloggers getting their panties in a twist over DoI’s recent moves to block access to weblogs. See, a couple weeks ago, an internal report was released that showed DoI employees spend thousands of hours visiting gaming, porn and auction sites when they should be working. DoI has about 80,000 employees with Internet access, but since 1999 has only reprimanded 177 employees for inappropriate Web surfing � 112 of those for skeazing slease while on the job.

Fast-forward to last week. The Interior Department has now started blocking access to a wide range of sites that it has determined are not related to the business of managing the interior of the United States, including weblogs because “some include sexually explicit language, libelous or defamatory commentary, and outrageous language,” Frank Quimby, spokesman for the agency, told FederalTimes.com.

( The funny thing is, DoI’s public affairs office now has to appeal for special access to be able to view weblogs that carry news about Interior.)

However, and here’s the rub � apparently, some wingnut employees tried to visit their favorite neo-Nazi sites, only to be blocked. But they could still visit Daily Kos and a whole slew of lefty weblogs. Gasp! There’s obviously a conspiracy at the top of DoI to prevent employees from being exposed to the brand of truth served up by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill OReilly. But why?

I like this explanation. It�s simple, it�s elegant, and it satisfies Occam�s razor.
� Baron Bodissey

Enter Baron Bodissey of the conservative weblog Gates of Vienna. He was given the task of “investigating” the story. If you have the time, it’s worth reading the article, which is told in a deadpan yet breathless kind of noir Web detective tone, as he drags the reader through every last step of the investigation. Here are a couple of the more interesting excerpts:

She passed me on to the Director of Communications, Mr. Frank Quimby. He was pleasant, and explained that the Department most emphatically did not selectively block conservative blogs. �We block all blogs. We�re still getting the glitches out of the system, so some get through here and there, but we�re blocking all blogs.�

I told him that I would report what he said, but that it strained credulity, because the chance of the system randomly blocking blogs that just happen to have a conservative political content � and not blocking liberal ones � was so small as to be negligible. Someone, somewhere had to have done this intentionally.

Mr. Quimby passed me on to to his deputy, Mr. Ed Meagher, who was more familiar with the technical aspects of their internet filtering system. Mr. Meagher was not as friendly as Mr. Quimby � he bristled at any suggestion that the Interior Department was selectively blocking blogs based on their political orientation. �I can guarantee you 100 percent that we do not do that,� he told me. �We block all blogs.�
[…]

GOP’s Focus on Smaller Government, Like Its Focus on Family Values, Is a Lie

Buck Banks

Bloated bureaucracy: The Republican Party has consistently run on the message of smaller government over the past three decades. One might say consistently and successfully, because it has framed the debate over the size of the government as a defining difference between itself and the Democratic “Big Government” Party.

However, according to a new report, since George W. Bush ascended to the imperial presidency, the government has gotten steadily and rapidly bigger, to a record 14.6 million civil servants, postal workers, contractors and people who work under the auspices of government grants.

‘It hardly matters who produces the goods and services as long as the federal government is honest with the public about the true cost of delivering on the promises it makes.’

Paul C. Light, the study’s author and a government professor at New York University, explains the sudden increase from 12.1 million in 2002 to 14.6 million now:

“This time, almost all of the growth can be attributed from the war on terrorism, which boosted Defense spending for both goods and services systems and covered the continued cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The rest of the hidden workforce held steady at roughly 2.9 million grantees, while civil service employment inched up and postal employment fell.”

This “hidden workforce” is the one that Republicans don’t like to count when they are tallying the smallness of their government versus the largeness of the Democrats’. Light says there are 10.5 million of them, and they absorbed nearly $400 billion in federal contracting funds and $100 billion in federal grants in 2005.

Politicians who focus on the size of the civil service and fail to acknowledge the hidden workforce “encourage the public into believing that it truly can get more for less,” Light said. And the heavy reliance on such workers, while sometimes necessary, makes it more difficult to figure out who is accountable when things go wrong, he said.

“The federal government often uses contractors and grantees to provide talent it cannot recruit, specialized services it cannot produce, competition it cannot generate among its own organizations, and equipment that it cannot and should not build itself,” Light wrote.

“It hardly matters who produces the goods and services as long as the federal government is honest with the public about the true cost of delivering on the promises it makes.”

When it comes down to the federal bureacracy, the Republicans are no better at counting than they are at accountability. But before Democrats concede the big-government argument, what say we let both sides whip out their bureacracy and see whose really is bigger.

Hastert Calls on Jeb to Clean House of Ill Repute

Trish

What’s he smokin’? House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) sent a letter to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush asking the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley. Foley resigned after apologizing for the pain he caused to House pages from across the country.

See if you can follow Hastert’s reasoning on why this is a Florida matter:

“These communications, of which no one in the House Leadership was aware to my knowledge…”

As Speaker of the House, I hereby request that you direct the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to conduct an investigation of Mr. Foley’s conduct with current and former House pages to determine to what extent any of his actions violated Florida law.

These communications, of which no one in the House Leadership was aware to my knowledge, reportedly were sent sometime in 2003. In one of these messages, Mr. Foley stated that he was in Pensacola.

“These communications, of which no one in the House Leadership was aware to my knowledge…” As far as I’m aware, I wasn’t aware.

K. Anyway:

These sexually explicit communications warrant a criminal referral. In so doing, it is important to know who may have had the communications and why they were not given to prosecutors before now.

Therefore, I also request that the Department undertake an investigation into who had specific knowledge of the content of any sexually explicit communications between Mr. Foley and any former or current House pages and what actions such individuals took, if any, to provide them to law enforcement. I request that the scope of your investigation include any and all individuals who may have been aware of this matter-be they Members of Congress, employees of the House of Representatives, or anyone outside the Congress.

Your attention to this serious matter is appreciated. I am also sending to the U.S. Department of Justice a request to investigate whether or not any federal laws were violated by Mr. Foley or anyone else with respect to this matter.

So is Denny trying to say that he isn’t responsible because he doesn’t know Florida law? News flash for you, Hastert: what Foley apologized for is illegal everywhere, not just in Florida. Try another dodge — this one isn’t working.

No word yet on Jeb’s response.

House Set to Join Senate to Screw You Out of Another Right

Buck Banks

So sue me: The House of Representatives is set to vote today on a bill that is either ironically or sarcastically called the Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005, or HR 2679 IH. Nice-sounding title, eh? You’d think it’s intended to protect your right to religious expression, but you’d be wrong.

It’s designed to protect official yahoos who blurt Bible babble or religious hate language or manage to trample someone’s civil rights through some obnoxious conflation of church and state. Let’s say you’re offended by a yahoo acting in his official capacity who spouts a bunch of religious garbage. You can sue sue the yahoo for violating your civil rights underthe Civil Action for Deprivation of Rights, Section 1979 of the Revised Statutes of the United States (42 U.S.C. 1983). But with this new amendment, you can’t make him pay your legal fees and court costs. Here’s the actual language from the bill:

A Bill: To amend the Revised Statutes of the United States to eliminate the chilling effect on the constitutionally protected expression of religion by State and local officials that results from the threat that potential litigants may seek damages and attorney’s fees.

The bill is designed to protect official yahoos who blurt Bible babble or religious hate language

The amendment, which already has passed the Senate, and only needs to be ratified by the House and signed by the Worst President Ever to become law. Talk about deprivation of rights ….

You have to love the language and how they twisted it to make it sound like the amendment is actually protecting officials from the “chilling effect” of the “threat of litigation.” Said another way, it protects the official’s right to spout religious hate language while protecting your right to pay your attorney for suing the bastard. Beauty!

Want to complain to your representative about it? You can do it here.

Thanks to AK for the tip.

Is IRS Trying to Control Churches’ Speech?

Buck Banks

God is my co-defendant: There’s an interesting case in Pasadena, Calif., between the Internal Revenue Service and the liberal All Saints Episcopal Church stemming from a sermon delivered on the eve of the 2004 presidential election. According to the IRS, the sermon crossed the line from religious to political speech, and that could cause the 3,500-member church to lose its tax-exempt status. The church is refusing to knuckle under to the IRS’s bullying, characterizing the agency’s actions at a press conference yesterday as an attempt to quash speech critical of President Bush and the war in Iraq.

The San Jose Mercury News summed up the crux of the matter this way:

The dispute with All Saints centers on a sermon titled “If Jesus Debated Sen. Kerry and President Bush” that was delivered by guest pastor Rev. George Regas on Oct. 31, 2004. Though he did not endorse either President Bush or Sen. John Kerry, he said Jesus would condemn the Iraq war and Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive war.

“I believe Jesus would say to Bush and Kerry: ‘War is itself the most extreme form of terrorism. President Bush, you have not made dramatically clear what have been the human consequences of the war in Iraq,'” Regas said, according to a transcript.

‘We smell intimidation, it smells rotten, and we should not allow any aspect of intimidation to be directed to any member of our great country’
— Maher Hathout of the Muslim Public Affairs Council

The IRS reprimanded the church in June 2005 and asked that it promise to be more careful. Church officials refused.

According to that article, the IRS claims it investigated 90 tax-exempt churches and charities in 2004 and found wrongdoing in 70 percent of the cases. Four — none of them churches — lost tax-exempt status. In 2005, the agency began audits of 70 churches and charities and has 40 cases pending in 2006.

The only church ever to lose tax-exempt status for partisan politicking was the Church at Pierce Creek near Binghamton, N.Y., which was penalized in 1995 after running full-page ads against President Clinton in USA Today and The Washington Times in 1992 during election season.

The dispute, which could cost the church its tax exempt status, has attracted the attention of religious leaders on the right and left, who say the IRS’ actions could make it more difficult for them to speak out on moral issues such as gay marriage and abortion during the midterm election campaign.

At Thursday’s news conference, church officials were flanked by about 40 representatives of mosques, synagogues and other churches.

“We smell intimidation, it smells rotten, and we should not allow any aspect of intimidation to be directed to any member of our great country,” said Maher Hathout, senior adviser of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

All Saints omewhat has the IRS over a barrel because church leaders refused to answer a questionnaire about church practices and policies, requesting instead to have the case reviewed in court before a judge.
[…]

House Passes Voter ID Bill – Must Be White Male Landowner to Vote

Buck Banks

Poll text: In a move that Democrats are decrying as a return to the days of Jim Crow laws, Republican House members yesterday voted overwhelmingly to roll back voter identification laws nearly 100 years. If the bill passes the Senate, voters would be required to show photo identification, proof of Anglo-Saxon descent and proof of land ownership before being allowed to exercise the privilege of voting.

Democrats were quick to condemn the vote as election-year politics. “It’s just not fair,” said Thelma Green of Norfolk, Va. “Everybody knows that blacks, women and renters all vote Democratic.”

‘Border fencing and voter identification legislation are just the first two bills in what we believe is the dawning of a new era in the United States.’
– Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

But Republicans were quick to counter that the new requirements are not without precedent. “Look at our Founding Fathers,” said Biff O’Toole of Norwalk, Conn. “You don’t think George Washington shared the ballot box with his wife or slaves, do you?”

Election officials across the country greeted the bill’s passage with relief: “This should really cut down on our workload,” said Charles D. Classey, supervisor of elections for Trousdale Wilson County in Tennessee. “For one thing, there will be fewer people voting, and in my experience white landowners are more polite and less messy at the polls than other former voters, if you catch my drift.”

The Senate, which consists of almost totally rich white landowners, is expected to take up a similar bill which, with the swift application of cloture, could sail through the Senate with no discussion or amendments, and be on the desk of our rich, white landowning president by late next week.

“Border fencing and voter identification legislation are just the first two bills in what we believe is the dawning of a new era in the United States,” said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

As Midterms Near, GOP Chooses Fences Over Real Immigration Reform

Buck Banks

Fence me in: As Congress struggles mightily to appear to be doing the important work of legislating in the remaining weeks before the November midterm elections, the Republican Party has decided to concentrate on something easy — building a 700-mile-long fence — rather than address the challenge of comprehensive immigration reform. The message is simple: Let’s close off our borders first, then deal with the illegals who then would be trapped inside America. Yep, that message will sell very easily to the same people who still think Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11.

From the Washington Times:

“It’s time to secure the border with Mexico,” Majority Leader Bill Frist said [Monday] night before filing the parliamentary motions to force the House-passed bill onto the Senate floor in a final effort to get a major immigration bill on the president’s desk before the elections.

‘Mr. Frist was for comprehensive reform before he was against it’
— Jim Manley

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Minority Leader Harry Reid, said the move “smacks of desperation” and was a “clear repudiation of President Bush’s call for comprehensive legislation.”
The Secure Fence Act of 2006, which was easily approved by the House last week, contains none of the “comprehensive” measures that President Bush, Democrats and some Senate Republicans have demanded. Those include provisions to grant citizenship rights to about 10 million illegal aliens living in the country and a guest-worker program that would usher hundreds of thousands more foreign laborers into the U.S.
“Mr. Frist was for comprehensive reform before he was against it,” Mr. Manley said.
On the Senate floor [Monday] night, Mr. Frist said he still supports comprehensive immigration reform legislation. But, he said, because no consensus can now be reached on other issues, Congress should move ahead with border security. It’s not “enforcement only,” he said, but “enforcement first.”

This will be the second time the Senate has debated an enforcement bill. The first died a stalemately death when all but two Democrats and 20 Republicans refused to even debate it. Now, there’s a triumverate of senior GOP senators that looks good for derailing the current effort to swap out a fence for comprehensive reform: John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John W. Warner of Virginia.

Those three senators also are bucking the GOP party line on the president’s call for expanded illegal detention and interrogation without representation for the Guantanamo detainees. Frist’s move to file a cloture motion Monday night to limit debate and prohibit amendments to the bill means the three Repug renegades may have to fight a two-front battle in the Senate this week, as Frist is aiming to get the immigration — excuse me, fence-building permit — passed on the Senate floor by week’s end and then sent on to the guy who likes to build fences, not mend them, to sign before the midterms.

When the House last year approved its border-security legislation, it included almost exactly the same fencing provisions. The fence came to symbolize what many Democrats said was an unforgiving bill. They said the fence proved that Republicans harbored a hostility toward immigrants.
But last week, the stand-alone fence bill was approved 283-138, with support from more than 20 Democrats and a handful of Republicans who dropped opposition to the earlier fence proposal.
Still, most Democrats are adamantly opposed to the fence bill, calling it a new “Berlin Wall” and an election-year “gimmick” intended to portray them as weak on security measures. In addition, internal Republican polling has found that immigration is as powerful a motivator for voters as any issue with which Congress is grappling.
“They’re obviously done with legislating for the year,” Mr. Manley said. “Now, they’re just playing to their base.”

Indeed. The question is, how will the Democratic base respond to watching Dem leaders doing their typical hand-wringing and crying foul over such an obvious late-season political ploy.

Will God Change Parties in 2006?

Trish

Finally, some reassurance Americans haven’t totally lost their minds. Only 4 percent believe God belongs to a political party.

According to a study produced by Baylor University and administered by Gallup, 92 percent of us do believe in God. But after that initial agreement, defining who God is gets a little varied.

The study also found belief in an authoritarian God — along with frequent church attendance — is strongly tied to the notion Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks

According to the study, believers hold four very different views about their deity:

Authoritarian — An angry God who metes out punishments to sinful humanity and is very active in their daily lives or worldly affairs.

Benevolent — An active but forgiving God, less willing to condemn or punish.

Critical — A God who judges the world harshly, but doesn’t intervene.

Distant — A God who is neither active in worldly affairs nor angry, a sort of cosmic prime mover.

The study also found belief in an authoritarian God — along with frequent church attendance — is strongly tied to the notion Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks.

I guess we know which God Dick Cheney believes in. The question is how to get God to read a copy of the 9/11 Commission Report.