Abortion IQ Test

Here’s a simple way to test your political IQ. You may be an Unsmart-American if you –

• Believe that George Bush and the leaders of the Republican Party have ever intended to overturn Roe vs. Wade.
• Think former President Bush was surprised after he named David Souter to the Supreme Court that Justice Souter turned out to be liberal on abortion.
• Vote for politicians time after time because they promise you they will overturn Roe vs. Wade, only to find, time after time, that they never do.
• Are clueless to the fact that your unsmart, anti-abortion votes are so dependable that Republican politicians would be fools not to keep the issue simmering in the courts for as long as possible.
• Haven’t noticed that these same politicians are giving your tax dollars as welfare to big corporations, who pay the politicians back in numerous and sundry ways.
• Don’t understand that normal Americans outnumber you by two to one in the belief that a woman – not the government – should decide what she will do with her own body.
• Can’t figure out what your leaders know all two well: If what your fondest wish were to come true and abortion became a campaign issue in state political races, the Republican Party would lose election after election.
• Don’t understand that abortions, legal or not, have always been available to people who can afford them – and, legal or not, they always will. It simply does not matter personally to George Bush, Bill Frist, Tom DeLay and their ilk what happens with Roe.
• Think that normal Americans are ever going to give federal, state and/or local government control over women’s reproductive systems.

Scored a perfect “0,” huh? We thought so.

What they wanted: Red State voters sent the Gops to Washington to slash and burn the federal government. But after making bold promises, the Republicans who control Congress have actually increased the budget, not cut it. However, recent events have forced their hand and now the cuts must come. First they’ll go after the poor, with drastic reductions in food stamps – but next on the chopping block is farm subsidies – a slice out of the Red Staters’ hide:

Under orders to cut agriculture spending by $3 billion, Republicans in Congress have proposed reducing food programs for the poor by $574 million and conservation programs by $1 billion, The Associated Press has learned.

The proposal by the chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., also would cut payments to farmers by 2.5 percent across the board.

The plan faces hostility from congressional Democrats and other critics who say the cuts would hurt food stamps and conservation programs.

Payments to farmers would fall by $1.145 billion over five years. But that is considerably less severe than what President Bush had proposed. Bush had sought a 5 percent reduction in payments, plus a far-reaching plan for capping payments that would cut billions more dollars from subsidies collected by large farm operations.

The AP obtained a summary of the budget-cutting plan. A vote had been scheduled for a vote Thursday in Chambliss’ committee but was put off indefinitely. Congress ordered the $3 billion in cuts in a budget outline passed this year.

The NRA is on a roll in Florida. Following their success with the so-called “Deadly Force” law, the evil lobbying group is trying to arm Florida employees. Florida Times-Union:

A rare and spectacular showdown may be coming in Florida’s Republican Party: Big Business vs. Big Guns…

But the NRA is insistent. The group…has donated nearly $1 million in Florida over the past decade, mostly to Republicans

The dust-up is over the “guns-at-work” bill, which the National Rifle Association began pushing last month in Tallahassee to force all Florida businesses to allow firearms in the vehicles of any employee or visitor. Companies could keep policies banning guns from their buildings themselves but could no longer apply those policies to their parking lots.

The bill is sponsored in the Florida House by none other than Rep. Dennis Baxley, the fruitcake who tried to pass an “academic freedom” law that would have punished liberal college professors who allowed views other than Baxley’s to be aired in their classrooms. That effort failed. We can only hope this one meets the same fate.

Many businesses are either wary of or leaning against the proposal, including heavy-hitters such as Disney and local giants such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield, CSX and Baptist Health System.

But the NRA is insistent. The group, which has donated nearly $1 million in Florida over the past decade, mostly to Republicans, is led in Tallahassee by former national President Marion Hammer. Hammer said the rights of gun owners should be intact in their vehicles, and the proposed law already gives businesses immunity from liability lawsuits in cases of workplace shootings.

Is a lawsuit the worst possible outcome if an employee uses a gun at work? A lot of people don’t think so. […]

Last night, nine Republican senators – including one physician (Tom Coburn of Oklahoma) and two members of the Senate’s Pro-Lynching Caucus (Cochran of Mississippi and Sessions of Alabama) – voted against an amendment to restrict the treatment of prisoners by our military:

Defying the White House, senators voted 90-9 to approve an amendment that would prohibit the use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” against anyone in U.S. government custody, regardless of where they are held.

The amendment was added to a $440 billion military spending bill for the budget year that began Oct. 1.

The proposal, sponsored by Sen. John McCain, also requires all service members to follow procedures in the Army Field Manual when they detain and interrogate terrorism suspects.

Members of the Senate’s newest voting block, the Torture Caucus, include:

• Wayne Allard – Colorado
• Kit Bond – Missouri
• Tom Coburn – Oklahoma
• Thad Cochran – Mississippi
• John Cornyn – Texas
• James Inhofe – Oklahoma
• Pat Roberts – Kansas
• Jeff Sessions – Alabama
• Ted Stevens – Alaska

GOP endangers species: Aren’t conservatives supposed to conserve? There is no limit to the depravity of the rightwing extremists in the Republican Party’s leadership:

Landowners would get major new rights and the federal government would have a smaller role in protecting plant and animal habitat under a House-passed overhaul of the 1973 Endangered Species Act. But Senate approval is far from assured.

“The act has been a failure at recovering species. We have to respond to that and step in and reauthorize the bill, put the focus on recovery and protect private property owners.”
— Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA)

The bill would require payments to property owners if species protection measures foil their development plans, put political appointees in charge of making some scientific determinations and stop the government from designating “critical habitat” for species where development is limited.

The Endangered Species Act, signed into law by President Nixon in 1973, requires the government to ensure its actions don’t jeopardize the survival of 1,268 U.S. species of plants and animals now considered “endangered” or “threatened” by extinction. Those actions can include setting aside habitat for dwindling species that need protected areas to survive and recover; currently, critical habitat has been designated for 466 U.S. species.

The law has helped 16 species — including alligators, deer, falcons and gray whales — recover enough to be removed from the government’s watch list, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Fifteen were removed because the data used to justify government protections were later found faulty; nine were taken off because the species went extinct.

“The act has been a failure at recovering species,” said House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., the bill’s author. “We have to respond to that and step in and reauthorize the bill, put the focus on recovery and protect private property owners.”

Fascist tendencies: It isn’t surprising that the Bush Administration conducted a secret propaganda campaign out of the Education Dept. But why did they buy milk when they could have gotten the cow for free? Armstrong Williams would have gladly disinformed the public for them for nothing but the glory:

The Bush Administration violated laws prohibiting the use of covert propaganda when it secretly paid broadcaster/ columnist Armstrong Williams to promote its education policies, and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said Friday…

The New York Times said the report “provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities….In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated ‘covert propaganda’ in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.”

In the course of investigating the other matters, the GAO uncovered another infraction:

The GAO’s report also uncovered a previously undisclosed case in which the Education Department had commissioned a newspaper article. The article, on the “declining science literacy of students,” was distributed by the North American Precis Syndicate and appeared in numerous small newspapers around the country, according to the report in the Times. The government’s role in the writing of the article, which praised the department’s role in promoting science education, was never disclosed.