JUSIPER
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
The latest Republican outing
Complete with frilly panties and a gay escort!
7:54 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Bush Katrinas the Consumer Product Safety Commission
The agency says it doesn't have the money or staffing to stop dangerous merchandise from entering the country. Now it wants to stop Congress from providing the funding.
Ms. Nord opposes provisions that would increase the maximum penalties for safety violations and make it easier for the government to make public reports of faulty products, protect industry whistle-blowers and prosecute executives of companies that willfully violate laws.
The measure is an effort to buttress an agency that has been under siege because of a raft of tainted and dangerous products manufactured both domestically and abroad. In the last two months alone, more than 13 million toys have been recalled after tests indicated lead levels that sometimes reached almost 200 times the safety limit.
Ms. Nord’s opposition to important elements of the legislation is consistent with the broadly deregulatory approach of the Bush administration over the last seven years. In a variety of areas, from antitrust to trucking and worker safety, officials appointed by President Bush have sought to reduce the role of regulation and government in the marketplace. [...]
Ms. Nord, who before joining the agency had been a lawyer at Eastman Kodak and an official at the United States Chamber of Commerce, criticized the measure in letters sent late last week and on Monday afternoon to the Democratic leaders of the committee. She was critical, for instance, of a provision to ban lead from all toys, saying it was not practical. [...]
[...]
Senator Pryor said Ms. Nord’s objections surprised him.
“It’s hard for me to know if it’s just ideological or she is just expressing the wishes of the administration,” Mr. Pryor said. “Either way it comes to the same conclusion, and that is that they say they want more resources, but they are very reluctant to accept those resources.”
Consumer advocates also said they were stunned by the letter.
“It was remarkable to send a letter like that to a committee, when you’re in dire straits and you need increased funding and you’ve acknowledged that,” said Ellen Bloom, director of federal policy at Consumers Union.
The agency has suffered from a steady decline in its budget and staffing in recent years. Its staff numbers about 420, about half its size in the 1980s. It has only one full-time employee to test toys. And 15 inspectors are assigned to police all imports of consumer products under the agency’s supervision, a marketplace that last year was valued at $614 billion.
Through an agency spokesman, Ms. Nord declined to discuss her opposition to the legislation.
Who knew Republicans were for more lead in children's toys? That's a great campaign issue.
7:22 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Monday, October 29, 2007
David Kuo
The man Bush fooled into thinking Republicans wanted to help the poor believes evangelical voters are drifting leftwards. But he's been wrong before... and about most things.
11:25 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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The Dean of the blogosphere bails on Obama
The senator's attempt to be black enough may signal the end of his campaign.
10:39 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Edwards: Hillary is a sellout
Quite a speech, and it lays out one of several cases against the presumptive nominee.
10:32 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sunday, October 28, 2007
Miss McConnell
A corrupt closet case, soon to be just another Republican statistic. The Senate (sexual) minority leader may be the next to go down...in a gay sex scandal.
4:10 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Huckabee slams the Christian Right
They are missing out their one chance at getting a real evangelical elected president,. But evangelical pastors, says Huckabee, have a tin ear when it comes to politics.
Of these, Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister before he became governor of Arkansas, stands out in the polls and in his rhetoric. At last fall’s values-voters meetings, the other candidates focused on establishing their Christian conservative credentials. Huckabee dispensed with that by reminding his audience of his years as a pastor. Then he challenged the crowd to give more money to their churches and talked about education and health care. On the campaign trail, he criticizes chief executives’ pay and says his faith demands environmental regulation. “We shouldn’t allow a child to live under a bridge or in the back seat of a car,” Huckabee said in a recent debate. “We shouldn’t be satisfied that elderly people are being abused or neglected in nursing homes.”
Huckabee told me that he welcomed a broadening of the evangelical political agenda. “You can’t just say ‘respect life’ exclusively in the gestation period,” he said, repeating a campaign theme.
But the leaders of the Christian conservative movement have not rallied to him. Many say he cannot win because he has not raised enough money. Perkins and others have criticized Huckabee for taking too soft an approach to the Middle East. Others worry that his record on taxes will anger allies on the right. And some Christian conservatives take his “gestation period” line as a slight to their movement.
“They finally have the soldier they have been waiting for, and they shouldn’t send me out into the battlefield without supplies,” Huckabee told me in exasperation. He argued that the movement’s leaders would “become irrelevant” if they started putting political viability or low taxes ahead of their principles about abortion and marriage.
“In biblical terms, it is like the salt losing its flavor; it’s sand,” Huckabee said. “Some of them have spent too long in Washington. . . . I think they are going to have a hard time going out into the pews and saying tax policy is what Jesus is about, that he said, ‘Come unto me all you who are overtaxed and I will give you rest.’ ”
2:50 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Bubba's paying close attention
When he appeared on Meet the Press a few weeks ago, he talked up Mike Huckabee, saying he was from his hometown and religious, but "not mad about it." Who knew it was a strategically used catchphrase?
Republicans should not expect that kind of treatment from Southern Baptists again any time soon. In June of last year, in one of the few upsets since conservatives consolidated their hold on the denomination 20 years ago, the establishment’s hand-picked candidates — well-known national figures in the convention — lost the internal election for the convention’s presidency. The winner, Frank Page of First Baptist Church in Taylors, S.C., campaigned on a promise to loosen up the conservatives’ tight control. He told convention delegates that Southern Baptists had become known too much for what they were against (abortion, evolution, homosexuality) instead of what they stand for (the Gospel). “I believe in the word of God,” he said after his election, “I am just not mad about it.” (It’s a formulation that comes up a lot in evangelical circles these days.)
10:13 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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"We've done as much good as we can?!"
Idiots, all. More from the magazine piece:
Today the president’s support among evangelicals, still among his most loyal constituents, has crumbled. Once close to 90 percent, the president’s approval rating among white evangelicals has fallen to a recent low below 45 percent, according to polls by the Pew Research Center. White evangelicals under 30 — the future of the church — were once Bush’s biggest fans; now they are less supportive than their elders. And the dissatisfaction extends beyond Bush. For the first time in many years, white evangelical identification with the Republican Party has dipped below 50 percent, with the sharpest falloff again among the young, according to John C. Green, a senior fellow at Pew and an expert on religion and politics. (The defectors by and large say they’ve become independents, not Democrats, according to the polls.)
Some claim the falloff in support for Bush reflects the unrealistic expectations pumped up by conservative Christian leaders. But no one denies the war is a factor. Christianity Today, the evangelical journal, has even posed the question of whether evangelicals should “repent” for their swift support of invading Iraq.
“Even in evangelical circles, we are tired of the war, tired of the body bags,” the Rev. David Welsh, who took over late last year as senior pastor of Wichita’s large Central Christian Church, told me. “I think it is to the point where they are saying: ‘O.K., we have done as much good as we can. Now let’s just get out of there.’ ”
Welsh, who favors pressed khaki pants and buttoned-up polo shirts, is a staunch conservative, a committed Republican and, personally, a politics junkie. But he told me he was wary of talking too much about politics or public affairs around the church because his congregation was so divided over the war in Iraq.
Welsh said he considered himself among those who still support the president. “I think he is a good man,” Welsh said, slowly. “He has a heart, a spiritual heart.”
10:10 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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From today's must read
In the New York Times:
The generational and theological shifts in the evangelical world are turning the next election into a credibility test for the conservative Christian establishment. The current Republican front-runner in national polls, Rudolph W. Giuliani, could hardly be less like their kind of guy: twice divorced, thrice married, estranged from his children and church and a supporter of legalized abortion and gay rights. Alarmed at the continued strength of his candidacy, Dobson and a group of about 50 evangelical Christians leaders agreed last month to back a third party if Giuliani becomes the Republican nominee. But polls show that Giuliani is the most popular candidate among white evangelical voters. He has the support, so far, of a plurality if not a majority of conservative Christians. If Giuliani captures the nomination despite the threat of an evangelical revolt, it will be a long time before Republican strategists pay attention to the demands of conservative Christian leaders again. And if the Democrats capitalize on the current demoralization to capture a larger share of evangelical votes, the credibility damage could be just as severe.
Unless he loses. Then evangelical leaders will be able to say that Giuliani lost because their voters didn't turn out. The kind of soul searching the Republican Party needs to engage in requires a losing nominee endorsed by conservative Christians.
10:07 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Saturday, October 27, 2007
Cartoon of the week
Via Down with Tyranny.
UPDATE: Make that cartoon of the month.
6:29 PM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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Wednesday, October 24, 2007
One less Senate seat for the Democrats
Bob Kerrey won't run. Was he afraid that his war crimes would become a campaign issue? Surely not in Nebraska! Or did he think Hillary would sink him; most likely he's the first of many Senate seats Hillary will have lost for the Democrats.
12:49 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
Schlafly: GOP candidates stink
Schlafly knows, you don't get to oppress the gays and her fellow women unless you actually win the election. So why dont they at least pretend to care about the unemployed?
Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly says most of the GOP candidates who have been designated frontrunners are globalists. According to Schlafly, candidates Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee all "need to wake up" and realize they need the votes of Reagan Democrats to win.
"I think that's a great mistake for the Republicans. I feel that it's very important that they reach out to people on the jobs issue," Schlafly shares. "I was quite disappointed with the debate that was broadcast from Michigan, which is an economically depressed state, and they didn't appear to have any sympathy or compassion for all the millions of people who've lost their jobs that have moved to China."
6:36 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sunday, October 21, 2007
Saturday, October 20, 2007
"But the Democrats took over, and still the one-party system continues"
The FISA-telcom debacle pushes even the New York Times over the edge.
4:16 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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When was Dick Cavett ever this funny on his show?
Possibly never. But this reminiscence of Richard Nixon is staggeringly funny. George W. Bush, this is your future.
4:12 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Children of war
It's been five years since Bush's invasion. Now the children of fallen veterans are learning more about their dead parents.
4:07 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Brownback is out
Leaving the door wide open for Mike Huckabee. Don't be surprised if he vaults into second place in Iowa in the coming weeks. Don't even be surprised if he wins Iowa outright.
11:58 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Hogwarts shocker: Dumbledore is gay!
From J.K. Rowling herself:
After reading briefly from the final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," she took questions from audience members.
She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds "true love."
"Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause.
She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. "Falling in love can blind us to an extent," Rowling said of Dumbledore's feelings, adding that Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down."
Dumbledore's love, she observed, was his "great tragedy."
"Oh, my god," Rowling concluded with a laugh, "the fan fiction."
Potter readers on fan sites and elsewhere on the Internet have speculated on the sexuality of Dumbledore, noting that he has no close relationship with women and a mysterious, troubled past. And explicit scenes with Dumbledore already have appeared in fan fiction.
Rowling told the audience that while working on the planned sixth Potter film, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," she spotted a reference in the script to a girl who once was of interest to Dumbledore. A note was duly passed to director David Yates, revealing the truth about her character.
Rowling, finishing a brief "Open Book Tour" of the United States, her first tour here since 2000, also said that she regarded her Potter books as a "prolonged argument for tolerance" and urged her fans to "question authority."
Not everyone likes her work, Rowling said, likely referring to Christian groups that have alleged the books promote witchcraft. Her news about Dumbledore, she said, will give them one more reason.
Sure will.
11:18 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Thursday, October 18, 2007
Romney, Bob Jones and the curse of Ham
And they have something in common, too. Bob Jones University didn't permit interracial dating until just after the South Carolina primary in 2000. Mormons, meanwhile, didn't admit African American to the priesthood till 1978. Women of any race, of course, need not apply.
After the death of Joseph Smith, Jr., Brigham Young taught that because blacks inherited the curse of Ham and the curse of Cain, they were ineligible to be ordained to the priesthood. They were also barred from participating in the Endowment or celestial marriage, or from entering the church's temples. Young also taught forcefully against miscegenation and against blacks holding civil office. Church leaders gave many doctrinal explanations for this policy of racial exclusion, the most common being that the souls of black men and women were "less valiant" in the pre-existence during the war in heaven, and therefore were cursed to be born as descendants of Ham, whose lineage was barred from the priesthood. [...]
Brigham Young said, "Shall I tell you of the law of God in regards to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty under the law of God is death on the spot. This will always be so".[3] Critics have interpreted this to mean that any person who married a person of black skin should be subject to death.
And a reminder about the company Mitt Romney keeps these days:
The three Bob Joneses, especially Bob Jones, Jr., sharply criticized the Roman Catholic Church. For instance, Jones, Jr. once said that Catholicism was "not another Christian denomination. It is a satanic counterfeit, an ecclesiastic tyranny over the souls of men....It is the old harlot of the book of the Revelation—'the Mother of Harlots.'" All popes, Jones asserted, "are demon possessed." In 2000, then-president Bob Jones III referred, on the University's web page, to Mormons and Catholics as "cults which call themselves Christian." [...]
Although BJU admitted Asians and other minorities from its inception, it refused to enroll black students until 1971, eight years after the University of South Carolina and Clemson University had been integrated by court order. [...]
In May 1975, as it prepared to allow unmarried blacks to enroll, BJU adopted more detailed rules prohibiting interracial dating and marriage—threatening expulsion for any student who dated or married interracially, who advocated interracial marriage, who was "affiliated with any group or organization which holds as one of its goals or advocates interracial marriage," or "who espouse, promote, or encourage others to violate the University's dating rules and regulations." [45] In a 2000 interview, the then-president, Bob Jones III, said that interracial dating had been prohibited since 1950s and that the policy had originated in a complaint by parents of a male Asian student who believed that their son had "nearly married" a white girl.
7:21 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sunday, October 14, 2007
Sad
Walter Monday endorses Hillary. Worse yet, the great John Lewis did, too.
8:59 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Novak: Buy off GOP congressmen at rock bottom prices!
Ha:
Republican Rep. Tom Reynolds, who nearly lost his upstate New York district in 2006, is holding a Washington fund-raiser Oct. 15 that costs as little as $50 to attend. That unusually low figure reflects generally declining prices in a deteriorating Republican financial climate.
Reynolds' invitation asks supporters to gather ''behind the bar at the bottom of the stairs'' at McFadden's Saloon in Washington to ''tailgate with Tom'' and watch the Buffalo-Toronto hockey game.
While chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee for the 2006 election cycle, Reynolds faced an unusually strong challenge for his seat and won with 52 percent of the vote. He left the committee $16 million in debt after losing control of the House.
6:16 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Saturday, October 13, 2007
A more exhaustive view of the Oral Roberts scandal
It turns out to be the more familiar type of Republican scandal, after all.
5:44 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Thursday, October 11, 2007
Hooray for Chris Dodd
And good luck to him as he uses the mortgage crisis to dismantle the most destructive portions of the bipartisan Bankruptcy Bill.
12:44 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Tuesday, October 09, 2007
"Mr. Bush is movement conservatism’s true, loyal heir."
Paul Krugman tells the ugly truth: Bush's ideology is identical to Reagan's.
9:48 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Bartlett on the GOP candidates
A purveyor of evil on the subject he knows best..
9:22 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Richard Cohen
Wow:
I don't know whether Larry Craig, the senator with an apparent case of restless leg syndrome (as seen on TV commercials), is gay or hetero or bi or whatever. I do know, though, that he is incapable of learning. Having been arrested in a Minneapolis airport men's room, having been compelled (or so he says) into a false confession, having been roundly ridiculed and ostracized by many of his colleagues -- et tu, McCain? -- he has neither the gumption nor the integrity nor the wit to question some of his former positions, which made him, without a doubt, a law-and-order conservative par excellence. Craig wasn't exposed as gay. He was exposed as ineducable.
Along with almost everyone else outside the Senate's Republican caucus -- when the door opens the blast of toxic hypocrisy is enough to deck the average person -- I can see no crime that Craig committed. At worst, he came on a bit to an undercover cop who spends his days protecting the public while seated on a commode and who, dollars to doughnuts, gave Craig a wink or the equivalent thereof. No cop is going to risk hemorrhoids and not come back with some arrests. He does what he needs to do, believing all the time that he is all that stands between Sodom and Gomorrah and the nearby Mall of America.
9:19 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Catholic nuns practice surrender to God
As well they should, since the church, clearly, doesn't have their backs.
In Southern California, where the Roman Catholic Church has agreed to pay victims of pedophile priests $660 million, the archdiocese is ordering nuns out of convents so the buildings can be sold to fund the out-of-court settlement.
Here in Santa Barbara, the sins of the fathers are being visited on the Sisters of Bethany. The three nuns living in a modest building on Nopal Street received an eviction notice last month ordering them to be out by Dec. 31. Earlier "would be acceptable as well," the letter said.
Among those being forced to move is Sister Angela Escalera, 69, who, diabetic and able to get around only with a walker, had hoped to live out her days in the Santa Barbara convent. "This is how the archdiocese is going about getting the money to pay off the victims," said her younger sister, Rosemary Escalera Gutierrez, 64, a former nun in the order.
"She said: 'It's such a heavy price to pay for such an ugly thing,' " said Gutierrez, quoting her sister. " 'Children were being victimized.' " The public storm over the evictions has prolonged an excruciating controversy that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles had hoped to begin putting behind it in July when it agreed to payouts to 508 accusers of 221 priests and other male church employees.
Instead, the new flap has raised the question of how much the church has learned about the crucial business of public perception.
Gutierrez quoted her sister because church officials slapped a gag order on the nuns.
"What's interesting is the church has not learned its lesson. The church thinks Catholics will still follow it without question," said Denise d'Sant Angelo, a member of Save Our Sisters, a local group formed to resist the eviction. "They're still operating under the shroud of secrecy, and secrecy isn't going to be tolerated by Catholics anymore, especially this new generation.
Just a year ago, there were important Catholic blogs that would take the time to cover a story like this. Now they are too busy covering bishop fashion ("Cardinal Queeny has a new miter! How exciting!") and peppering their posts with pompous latinisms to pay attention. But that's what access to power does. And it's a salutary warning to all bloggers, really.
9:12 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Monday, October 08, 2007
Macaca chairing Thompson campaign
Along with Cheney's non-lesbian daughter.
4:21 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sunday, October 07, 2007
Nancy Pelosi
A rare moment of political adroitness:
Chris Wallace seemed particularly intrigued by Mrs. Pelosi’s revelation that she prays for President Bush.
“Do you pray for our soldiers to win in Iraq?” he probed.
“Of course I do.”
“To win?”
“Of course I do. Of course. What a question.”
Well, then, what did she ask for when she prayed for Mr. Bush? Mr. Wallace seemed to imply that he expected her to pray for a presidential fall off his mountain bike.
“I pray for his health, his well-being. I pray that he makes the right decisions for the American people.”
5:51 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Pakistani democracy at work
Lovely:
I. A. Rahman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said while standing in front of Parliament: “This election is a farce; it is a bid to perpetuate authoritarian rule All those who are voting and taking part today, they are just trying to prop up an undemocratic regime.” [...]
Farooq Sattar, a parliamentary leader of the Muttahida National Movement, best known by its Urdu language abbreviation, the M.Q.M., said his party, which is a partner of the governing coalition, was voting for General Musharraf for his stance on terrorism and his macro-economic achievements. “We are voting for the continuity of stability and the democratic process,” he said.
“He is the only candidate, so definitely he will win,” said Aijax Ahmed Chaudhry, a legislator from the ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League.
“You cannot say that the legality or popularity is a problem,” he said.
5:50 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Imprimatur
Kissinger on Don Rumsfeld: "the rottenest person he had known in government." From Maureen Dowd's review of the Schlesinger diaries, which, as Josh Marshall points out, is surprisingly good.
5:23 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Novak: GOP senators knew about Craig all along
Hardly shocking, but it's good to have an unimpeachable source (at least on GOP scandals) reporting it.
5:06 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Friday, October 05, 2007
Oral Roberts University scandal
Surprisingly, these days, nothing gay about it.
_ A longtime maintenance employee was fired so that an underage male friend of Mrs. Roberts could have his position.
_ Mrs. Roberts _ who is a member of the board of regents and is referred to as ORU's "first lady" on the university's Web site _ frequently had cell-phone bills of more than $800 per month, with hundreds of text messages sent between 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. to "underage males who had been provided phones at university expense."
_ The university jet was used to take one daughter and several friends on a senior trip to Orlando, Fla., and the Bahamas. The $29,411 trip was billed to the ministry as an "evangelistic function of the president."
_ Mrs. Roberts spent more than $39,000 at one Chico's clothing store alone in less than a year, and had other accounts in Texas and California. She also repeatedly said, "As long as I wear it once on TV, we can charge it off." The document cites inconsistencies in clothing purchases and actual usage on TV.
_ Mrs. Roberts was given a white Lexus SUV and a red Mercedes convertible by ministry donors.
_ University and ministry employees are regularly summoned to the Roberts' home to do the daughters' homework.
_ The university and ministry maintain a stable of horses for exclusive use by the Roberts' children.
_ The Roberts' home has been remodeled 11 times in the past 14 years.
4:02 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Thursday, October 04, 2007
Wednesday, October 03, 2007