Tag: Conservative Values

Source Raw Story:

In a phone call recorded by PageOneQ and blogACTIVE.com, Robert Traynham, Director of Communications for United States Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) has said he is an out gay man who completely supports the Senator.

When asked how a gay man could speak for one of the nation’s most notorious homophobes, Traynham protested that [he] has “been with the Senator for eight years.” Traynham went on to say “Senator Santorum is a man of principle, he is a man who sticks up for what he believes in, I strongly do support Senator Santorum.”

When pressed on whether he supported the Senator’s stands on lesbian and gay issues, Mr. Traynham abruptly ended the phone call by saying “Senator Santorum is a family man. I have been with Senator Santorum for eight years and I am very proud to be with him.”

An attempt to follow-up with a question was met with Mr. Traynham hanging up the phone.

Palm Beach Post:

A judge handed some of Rush Limbaugh’s medical records to prosecutors Wednesday in a blunt ending to the conservative [entertainer’s] battle to keep his medical records private and out of their hands.

Circuit Judge Thomas Barkdull III also returned a thicker stack of records to Limbaugh’s lawyer, Roy Black, at a brief hearing in open court. Barkdull divvied up the records, deciding which would be returned to Limbaugh and which would be forwarded to Assistant State Attorney James Martz for use in the criminal investigation of Limbaugh.

Black’s stack was visibly thicker than Martz’s.

“Mine’s bigger than yours,” Black quipped to Martz before leaving court.

“It’s not the size that matters,” Martz retorted.

The brief handoff ended Limbaugh’s 19-month string of losses in Florida courts over his claim that the records’ seizure was a violation of his privacy rights.

Saw this comparison of the Taliban in the Middle East versus our own special flavor here in America on DailyKos. Drawing this sort of analogy drives the Christianists crazy. “It goes too far,” they say.

Maybe so. But the case can be made that the difference between what they believe and the beliefs of their Islamist counterparts is simply a matter of degree. To wit:

[…]

Rep. Robin Hayes – a Republican from Concord, N.C. – has been caught red-handed, lying to the American people and his constituents, apparently attempting to bolster President Bush’s assertions in a speech Tuesday night that Iraqis were involved in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. connection Hayes made the untrue statements on CNN:

[Hayes said] on Wednesday that the “evidence is clear” that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.

“Saddam Hussein and people like him were very much involved in 9/11,” Rep. Robin Hayes said.

Told no investigation had ever found evidence to link Saddam and 9/11, Hayes responded, “I’m sorry, but you must have looked in the wrong places.”

Hayes, the vice chairman of the House subcommittee on terrorism, said legislators have access to evidence others do not.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said that Saddam was a dangerous man, but when asked about Hayes’ statement, would not link the deposed Iraqi ruler to the terrorist attacks on New York, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania.

“I haven’t seen compelling evidence of that,” McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CNN.

In a speech to the nation on Tuesday night, President Bush once again tried to make an imaginary connection in the minds of the public between the attacks on 9/11/01 and the war in Iraq. He mentioned the events of 9/11 five times in his half hour speech about Iraq.

However, last year the the 9/11 commission appointed by President Bush concluded that no evidence had been found that any “contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship.” And “nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States.”

President Bush said in September 2003 that “We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11 [attacks].”

Nevertheless, Hayes insisted that the connection between al Qaeda and Saddam and “folks who work for him” has been seen “time and time again.”

It’s not just Halliburton living large on the taxpayer dole. Florida’s First Lady recently enjoyed the prize behind Door No. 1: an all-expense paid trip to Japan, along with her personal assistant and chef.

Tampa Tribune:

The trade and culture mission made by Bush’s wife, Columba, her executive assistant, Gail Campbell, and governor’s mansion chef Josh Butler hasn’t yielded business deals for the state thus far, but Butler says that from his perspective, the trip was a success because he returned with Japanese recipes to use at the governor’s mansion. He said he also touted attributes of Florida grapefruit.

Well, there you go. He took the time to mention Florida grapefruit. That’s got to be worth, what, $13,000? Let’s hope so, because that’s how much it cost. For starters anyway.

Three state security agents also accompanied Bush, the sister-in-law of the president.

Citing security concerns, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement declined to say how much it cost the state to provide security.

But what’s money when it comes to touring Japan? Isn’t having fun what life’s about, really?

Among other things, the Bush group visited a Buddhist temple and its rock garden, participated in a tea ceremony in a tea master’s house, ate dinner at one of Kyoto’s top restaurants, and attended a geisha performance.

But not everyone is that thrilled with this particular line item.

Ben Wilcox, executive director of Common Cause Florida, a watchdog group, said details of the trip, especially the inclusion of the chef, raise questions about whether taxpayers’ money was used wisely. “It kind of points out the fact that you can basically justify anything to go on a free trip to a far and exotic land.”

Wilcox said he also was curious why the governor’s office did not post any information about the trip on the governor’s Web site, which details minutia of his wife’s activities.

“You would hope there would be some explanation of the trip and what the state gained from it,” Wilcox said.

No doubt that explanation will be forthcoming, along with all the possible reasons for the Halliburton overcharges. In case you missed it, here are a few details from USA Today:

o $617,000 for double-billed soft drinks.

o $1 million in excessive laundry charges.

o More than $560,000 for unneeded heavy equipment, including tractors and trailers.

o $2.2 million for cargo aircraft and $7.6 million for freight costs that “appeared to be duplicate.”

o $1.4 million to pay 146 workers at a facility that had only 62.

Meanwhile, Florida Republicans are all agog over the state Democratic Party’s accounting errors, including a failure on the part of former chair Scott Maddox to pay $2,600 in property taxes. The house in question was bought from and then rented to the FDP’s soon to be former bookkeeper by Maddox’s company, Spectrum Resources. Debbie Griffin-Bruton announced her resignation after admitting she hadn’t kept up with her job duties in the months following her husband’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis and eventual placement in long-term care.

Tallahassee Democrat:

Courthouse records indicate Griffin-Bruton and her husband, John Bruton, sold their home to Spectrum Resources for $135,000 in the fall of 2002, when Maddox was mayor and she was financial director of the City Parks and Recreation Department. Knowing Bruton, a former city policeman, was suffering from Alzheimer’s, Maddox said he allowed them to stay in the home for a token rent – which he said he waived completely last year when John Bruton went into long-term care.

Maddox said the Brutons were old friends of his family and that Debbie Griffin-Bruton could continue living in the home despite the current tax penalties and fines…

He said the county sent tax bills to his previous address on Plantation Road, although he moved from that home last June and sold it in April…

“We got no notice about it [the Bruton house] being in arrears,” Maddox told the Democrat.

Although the tax amount is small and other Maddox real estate ventures are up-to-date on the tax rolls…the property-tax tardiness could be ammunition for the kind of attack advertising and negative phone banks that spring up in the late days of a campaign.

Oh I don’t know. Do ya think? I mean, if no one minds Columba jetting to Japan and Dick Cheney’s outrageous stock dividends, why would they care about something like this? But I bet they do.

Three attendees at a Bush Social Security rally in Denver in March – Leslie Weise, a lawyer; Karen Bauer, a temporary office worker; and Alex Young, a computer technician – were were summarily tossed out of the event, ostensibly because one of them had an anti-Bush bumper sticker on her car.

Except for Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown,” the story disappeared in the Old Media, until it re-surfaced today in, of all places, the New York Times:

Three months ago, the three were thrown out of a taxpayer-financed Bush Social Security event in Denver by a person they thought was a Secret Service agent, reportedly because of a “No More Blood for Oil” bumper sticker on one of their cars. Similar incidents have occurred at other presidential events around the country, and the three have not been silent since.

Last week they were in Washington demanding to know the identity of the “mystery man” who ejected them…

So does the Secret Service, which … said that it was continuing a criminal investigation into whether anyone had unlawfully impersonated a Secret Service agent, and that when the findings were concluded they would be sent, as is routine, to a federal prosecutor to see if charges should be filed.

And we all be holding our collective breath, won’t we?

The White House was having none of it.

“It’s clear that these three protesters are trying to advance their own political agenda,” Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said in an interview Friday. Asked who the mystery man was, Mr. McClellan did not respond and then said he had no interest in going over yet again the events in Denver on March 21.

So these three citizens had valid tickets to attend a taxpayer-funded event but were tossed out by a Bush political operative who pretended to be a Secret Service agent in order to intimidate them.

This incident just about sums up life under Bush: Citizens who aren’t idealogically pure are removed from a fake event by a thug posing as a government agent.

Yes, you read the headline correctly. And, yes, it is apparently true. Mike Rogers at blogActive has the story. It also got picked up by the New York Daily News gossip column:

President Bush isn’t letting potential howls from the Christian right stop him from nominating an openly gay man as assistant secretary of commerce.

[He] has tapped longtime aide Israel Hernandez for the post, which also carries the title of director general of the United States and Foreign Commercial Service.

The 35-year-old Republican go-getter has been a Bush acolyte since the President’s 1994 campaign for governor of Texas. (Among Hernandez’s duties was supplying the candidate with breath mints, prompting Dubya to dub him “Altoid Boy.”)

Most recently, the graduate of Texas A&M’s George H.W. Bush School of Government served as aide-de-camp to senior White House adviser Karl Rove.

One source tells us Hernandez waited until Bush was sworn in for a second term to formally tell him he is gay. By then, says a source, he’d brought his partner to several official events.

At Hernandez’ confirmation hearing this week, when he was asked to introduce his family to the Senate candidate, he introduced everyone but his life partner. Can you say “self-loathing?”

It is beyond hypocritical – an obscenity, really – that any gay person could work for Rove and Bush as they stoke the fires of bigotry – not out of anything they themselves believe or even give a shit about – but specifically to energize their base of knuckle-dragging, homophobes. The whole thing is just plain evil.

Seattle Times:

Rep. Doc Hastings, already under fire as chairman of the stalled House ethics committee, accepted a $7,800 trip to England in 2000 from a company he championed for a multibillion-dollar contract at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, records released by an advocacy group yesterday show.

In addition, other records released yesterday by a political Web site show that Hastings, a Republican from Pasco, did not file a required travel report for a 2004 trip to a resort on Stuart Island, B.C. That was paid for by another company also working at Hanford.

Hastings has been under fire for not scheduling hearings on ethics allegations against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. DeLay is accused of accepting a trip paid for by lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is under investigation over allegations that he defrauded clients of millions of dollars.

For the past two weeks, Democrats have been trying to link Hastings to Abramoff and the lobbyist’s former employer, Preston Gates & Ellis, an influential law and lobbying firm based in Seattle.

Why do conservative Christians like Rev. Fred Phelps hate the U.S. military?

Six followers of the Baptist preacher from Topeka, Kansas, traveled to Iowa on Wednesday, June 22, 2005, to picket the funeral of a soldier who was killed in the line of duty in Iraq.

While 600 people mourned the loss of Army Spc. Casey Byers at the Iowa National Guard Armory in Denison, [about] 50 yards away…six protesters held signs that said such things as “God blew up the troops.” All six were relatives of the Rev. Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas. They contend that God is punishing the United States for bombing Phelps’ church a decade ago. The group has held similar protests at soldiers’ funerals in Idaho, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Illinois. It plans to go next to Kentucky.”

Rev. Phelps – who made national headlines when he picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepherd, a young man who was viciously murdered in Wyoming because he was gay – told a local paper in Iowa:

“We’re going to picket it… We’re picketing to preach the true nature of what’s going on here, that these IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) are specific methods of the Almighty… because he’s punishing them (the United States military) for bombing the WBC [Westboro Baptist Church].“

Phelps apparently sent a flyer to a local television station, KTIV, announcing his intention to picket at Byers’ funeral:

“When his body is returned from Iraq where he was killed … by an IED – like the IED fags used to bomb Westboro Baptist Church … attempting to stop WBC’s preaching.”

The local paper also said, “Westboro Baptist Church has gained a nationwide reputation for its stance on homosexuals, African-Americans and other religious groups.”

Phelps claims Byers’ death is directly linked to the bombing of their church 14 years ago.

“You can’t set a bomb off at the church of Jesus Christ and not expect any retaliation to happen. Each IED that kills a soldier is a direct intervention from God,” Phelps said.

“In other words, each (soldier) has died for this nation’s sins…”

Soldiers will continue to die because of the WBC bombing, and because they live in a country that is supportive of the homosexual lifestyle, Phelps and his daughter said.

Bartnett said Byers wasn’t homosexual, and doesn’t understand what WBC’s stance on homosexuality has to do with the fallen soldier.

“He was related to this bombing (of the WBC church), because he’s a part of this evil nation (that supports homosexuality),” Phelps said. “Anybody who doesn’t understand that is deaf, dumb and blind.“

Compounding the tragedy for the Byers family, the Des Moines Register reports that Casey Byers’ brother, “Spc. Justin “Paul” Byers, 19, wrote a letter he was going to read at his older brother’s funeral. But he died before he could read the note. Officials say he committed suicide when he was hit and killed by a truck Monday night.”

If holding your breath until you’re red in the face and stamping your foot real hard doesn’t work – and you’re a Baptist – just pretend it did and find something else to be pissed off about.

Orlando Sentinel:

The Southern Baptist Convention voted to end its eight-year boycott of the Walt Disney Co. on Wednesday, an implicit acknowledgment that its “family values” campaign failed to bring the entertainment giant to its knees.

Officials of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, completing its two-day annual gathering in Nashville, Tenn., put the best face they could on the vote.

…The convention, meeting in Dallas in 1997, voted to boycott all parts of the Disney empire, from theme parks to movies, television shows and networks, books and retail items. The resolution cited a departure from the company’s “family values” tradition, in particular, its support of gay days at Disney theme parks and its offer of health benefits to same-sex partners of employees.

However, throughout the boycott, no national financial analyst was able to say the effort had any impact on the company, and analysts were indifferent to Wednesday’s news. Some were unaware the boycott was still in effect.

The company didn’t even know the boycott was still on until the holy announced it was over. How embarrassing.

But not to be discouraged by the fizzled attack on Disney, the righteous quickly regrouped and decided to go after our beleaguered public schools. After all, there are just not enough people trying to stick their noses there.

Delegates also approved a compromise resolution dealing with homosexuality in public schools. Anti-gay resolutions are a staple of Southern Baptist Conventions, and one had been put forward before this year’s gathering calling on Baptists to withdraw their children from public schools.

Instead, the measure that passed Wednesday encourages parents to investigate their children’s public schools to determine whether they are too accepting of homosexuality.

“Homosexual activists and their allies are devoting substantial resources and using political power to promote the acceptance among schoolchildren of homosexuality as a morally legitimate lifestyle,” the resolution says.

Too bad that one about just removing Baptist children from public schools failed. If these folks want their children taught Baptist dogma, they should send them to Baptist schools, rather than try to make public schools conform to their various viewpoints. It seems like life would be more pleasant for everyone.