Major Political Changes in the USA

[slum_goddess]

the art mention signifires a trend--the dumbing down of America duie to the politics (ok, it was a stretch )

oh, that! (yeah, i know but try to ignore...it bums me out muchly).

[DudeAsInCool]

the trend goes beyond politics--it is affecting our culture and our faiths..

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

In the Name of Politics

By JOHN C. DANFORTH

Published: March 30, 2005

St. Louis — BY a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians. The elements of this transformation have included advocacy of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, opposition to stem cell research involving both frozen embryos and human cells in petri dishes, and the extraordinary effort to keep Terri Schiavo hooked up to a feeding tube.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/opinion/30danforth.html

Fyi, according to Salon.com:

Danforth is an Episcopal minister who presided at Ronald Reagan's funeral and knelt in prayer and listened to "Onward Christian Soldiers" with Clarence Thomas during the justice's contentious confirmation hearings, but he has never been a favorite of the religious right. As the Washington Post noted in a 2004 profile, Danforth "voted against abortion rights but shied away from a leadership role in the movement." As a senator, he opposed school prayer, opposed the death penalty, and was what his former chief of staff called "an extremely aggressive advocate of the separation of church and state."

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html

[slum_goddess]

those evil terrorist lovin' liberals on issues:

Issue: Abortion

Liberal Position: Favors

Osama bin Laden Position: Opposes

Conservative Position: Opposes

Prayer in School: Liberals Oppose, Osama Favors, Conservatives Favor

Separation of Church & State: Liberals Favor, Osama Opposes, Cons Oppose

read the rest at above link and decide for yourself.

[DudeAsInCool]

The results dont surprise me - religious absolutes think alike :reallymad:

[DudeAsInCool]

Supreme Court Removes Hurdle to Suits Alleging Age Bias

By LINDA GREENHOUSE

Published: March 31, 2005

WASHINGTON, March 30 - Workers who sue their employers for age discrimination need not prove that the discrimination was intentional, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.

Adopting a pro-worker interpretation of the federal law that prohibits age discrimination in employment, the 5-to-3 decision held that employees can prevail by showing that a policy has a discriminatory impact on older workers, regardless of the employer's motivation.

***

In another case involving age discrimination in the workplace, a federal district judge on Wednesday blocked a Bush administration rule that would have allowed employers to reduce or eliminate health benefits for retirees when they reach age 65.

***

Professor Brudney said the decision left important questions to be addressed in future cases, such as whether cost-saving can be accepted as a reasonable justification for a policy that falls more harshly on older workers, who are usually among the highest paid. Judges have disagreed on this issue, he said.

http://nytimes.com/2005/03/31/politics/31s...artner=homepage

[slum_goddess]

The results dont surprise me - religious absolutes think alike  :reallymad:

yeah, everyone who's accused me before: I HATE AMERIKA! especially 'dissent=disloyalty'

[DudeAsInCool]

yeah, everyone who's accused me before: I HATE AMERIKA! especially 'dissent=disloyalty'

Since I am in LA, I rarely get the chance to sound off, 'cause people are a bit more open minded here. Frankly, I love when people start that shit with me, because I can turn the tables. The facts are clear: this administration are the one's who are unpatriotic and rule by un-American principles...

[DudeAsInCool]

Poll: No Nation Should Have Nuke Weapons

WASHINGTON - Most Americans say they do not think any country, including the United States, should have nuclear weapons. That sentiment is at odds with current efforts by some nations that are trying to develop the weapons and by terrorists seeking to add them to their arsenal. not think any country, including the United States, should have nuclear weapons. That sentiment is at odds with current efforts by some nations that are trying to develop the weapons and by terrorists seeking to add them to their arsenal.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/a...s/nuclear_fears

[slum_goddess]

Since I am in LA, I rarely get the chance to sound off, 'cause people are a bit more open minded here.  Frankly, I love when people start that shit with me, because I can turn the tables.  The facts are clear:  this administration are the one's who are unpatriotic and rule by un-American principles...

me too, i love when they try to tell me i'm unamerikan...hahahaha and then if they see my writty, they go on about the 'k' in amerika. i tell them to fuck off and read kafka. :)

[DudeAsInCool]

Report Calls U.S. Intelligence 'Dead Wrong' on Iraq Weapons

By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, March 31 - The American intelligence community was "dead wrong" about Iraq's weapons arsenal in large part because of an outdated Cold War mentality and a vast, lumbering bureaucracy that continues to shackle dedicated and capable people, a presidential commission said today.

...The commission said the erroneous assumption by intelligence agencies that Saddam Hussein possessed deadly chemical and biological weapons had damaged American credibility before a world audience, and that the damage would take years to undo.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/31/politics...artner=homepage

[Wolfie]

Liar, liar, pants on fire. :bigsmile:

[slum_goddess]

'There’s a one-in-959,000 chance that exit polls could have been so wrong in predicting the outcome of the 2004 presidential election, according to a statistical analysis released Thursday. Exit polls in the November election showed Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., winning by 3 percent, but President George W. Bush won the vote count by 2.5 percent.

'The explanation for the discrepancy that was offered by the exit polling firm – that Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polling – is an “implausible theory,'’ according to the report issued Thursday by US Count Votes, a group that claims it’s made up of about two dozen statisticians.

'Twelve – including a Case Western Reserve University mathematics instructor – signed the report. Instead, the data support the idea that “corruption of the vote count occurred more freely in districts that were overwhelmingly Bush strongholds.'’

read more here

*what was that pledge they were taking right before the election? the kool-aid drinkers were lining up to pledge their allegiance to keeping his ass in the shite house no matter what it took? and the guy who owns diebold promised to deliver the election to him...it's a good thing we don't owe any back taxes...i'd be so out on the streets and/or withholding anything i might've owed 15. april. too bad for US that every lib/dem/progressive can't get their shit together and do this in unison; i mean, the blue states fuckin pay for everything.

OT: his little 'social security is fucked' trip, lying to people across amerika has proven w/o a doubt that he does NOTHING in DC, i mean, how long has he been gone now? puh-leeeze

[DudeAsInCool]

Surprised the media hasnt examined the voting thing - I dont believe Bush took Ohio either

[slum_goddess]

Surprised the media hasnt examined the voting thing - I dont believe Bush took Ohio either

Dude, how naive! ;) at this point in time, i'm not surprised at anything the amerikan media doesn't do

[slum_goddess]

iraq fraud can be tried in the US

'WASHINGTON -- Contractors for the former Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq can be sued in U.S. courts under an anti-war-profiteering law, the Justice Department contended in a federal case Friday.

Government lawyers said the federal False Claims Act applies to contracts issued by the CPA, which ran Iraq from shortly after the 2003 invasion until it handed over power to an interim Iraqi government last June.

Although much of the money the CPA used was seized from the former government of Saddam Hussein, U.S. government or military workers distributed it, making fraud against the CPA equal to fraud against the U.S., a group of Justice Department lawyers said in a court brief...' more at above link.

damn, i hope they sue their asses, all of them.

[DudeAsInCool]

Report Calls U.S. Intelligence 'Dead Wrong' on Iraq Weapons

By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, March 31 - The American intelligence community was "dead wrong" about Iraq's weapons arsenal in large part because of an outdated Cold War mentality and a vast, lumbering bureaucracy that continues to shackle dedicated and capable people, a presidential commission said today.

Maureen Dowd called the report a waste of money and said the administration (not the intelligence community) are the ones who should be investigated. Some highlights from the article, "Curveball the Goofball"

  This is the fourth exhaustive investigation that has not answered the basic question: How did the White House and Pentagon spin the information and why has no one gotten in trouble for it? If your kid lied and hid stuff from you to do something he thought would be great, then wouldn't admit it and blamed someone else, he'd be punished - even if his adventure worked out all right for him.

When the "values" president and his aides do it, they're rewarded. Condoleezza Rice was promoted to secretary of state. Stephen Hadley, Condi's old deputy, was promoted to national security adviser. Bob Joseph, a national security aide who helped shovel the uranium hooey into the State of the Union address, is becoming an under secretary of state. Paul Wolfowitz, who painted the takeover of Iraq as such a cakewalk that our troops went in without the proper armor or backup, will run the World Bank. George Tenet, who ran the C.I.A. when Al Qaeda attacked and when Saddam's mushroom cloud gained credibility, got the Medal of Freedom.

Please, no more pantomime investigations. We all know what happened. Dick Cheney and the neocons had a fever to sack Saddam. Mr. Cheney and Rummy persuaded W., "the Man," that it was the manly thing to do. Everybody feigned a 9/11 connection. Ahmad Chalabi conned his neocon pals, thinking he could run Iraq if he gave the Bush administration the smoking gun it needed to sell the war.

Suddenly Curveball appeared, the relative of an aide to Mr. Chalabi, to become the lone C.I.A. source with the news that Iraq was cooking up biological agents in mobile facilities hidden from arms inspectors and Western spies. Curveball's obviously sketchy assertions ended up in Mr. Tenet's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and Colin Powell's U.N. speech in February 2003, laying the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq.

Curveball's information was used to justify the war even though it was clear Curveball was a goofball. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/opinion/04dowd.html?8hpib

[slum_goddess]

outta mah head, Dude....i just posted the above at my site. :)

paul waldman said: '‘…it seems as though no one wants to talk about exactly why all these failures happened, namely the unmistakeable and relentless pressure from the Bush White House on the intelligence agencies to arrive at the conclusion that if we didn’t invade Iraq within minutes, the mighty Iraqi armed forces would land on Coney Island and obliterate every God-fearing American with their terrifying arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, right before they enslaved our women and raped our kittens…’ from here.

and the Guardian's headline is classic: 'US relied on 'drunken liar' to justify war' LMAO! fuckers.

[DudeAsInCool]

and the Guardian's headline is classic: 'US relied on 'drunken liar' to justify war

More From The Guardian:

The Americans never had direct access to Curveball - he was controlled by the German intelligence services who passed his reports on to the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's spy agency.

Between January 2000 and September 2001, Curveball offered 100 reports, among them the claims of mobile biological weapons labs that were central in the US evidence of an illicit weapons programme, but subsequently turned out to be trucks equipped with machinery to make helium for weather balloons.

The commission concluded that Curveball's information was worse than none at all. 'Worse than having no human sources,' it said, 'is being seduced by a human source who is telling lies.'

They used this crap to justify the war in Iraq???%%%!!!! Billions of dollars, 1000s of lives lost... When are the rest of the American people going to walk up and take this sorry-ass Bush regime down. The sad part is that this administration didnt give a damn if they used lies to get their way. The whole thing is just shameful... So much for liberals not knowing what we were talking about - it was a sham and we called it - hell, its even worse of a sham than we thought.

[slum_goddess]

When are the rest of the American people going to walk up and take this sorry-ass Bush regime down. The sad part is that this administration didnt give a damn if they used lies to get their way. The whole thing is just shameful... So much for liberals not knowing what we were talking about - it was a sham and we called it - hell, its even worse of a sham than we thought.

what i find personally repellent is that we were lied to by a dumbass. i mean, if he was fuckin intelligent, i'd feel a bit better but c'mon!

and it's not only me: Bill Hicks at Dominion Theatre, London, 1992: ‘…go back to bed, America: your government is in control…here’s “American Gladiators.” Watch this! … Here’s 56 channels of it. Watch these pituitary retards bang their fuckin’ heads together and congratulate you on living in the Land of Freedom. Here you go, America. You are free to do as we tell you…’

[DudeAsInCool]

Bill Hicks at Dominion Theatre, London, 1992: ‘…go back to bed, America: your government is in control…here’s “American Gladiators.” Watch this! … Here’s 56 channels of it. Watch these pituitary retards bang their fuckin’ heads together and congratulate you on living in the Land of Freedom. Here you go, America. You are free to do as we tell you…’

He must have given that speech when Bush, Sr was still in office...not Clinton

[slum_goddess]

his book is dynamite ('love all the people')

[slum_goddess]

again: scientific analysis suggests presidential vote counts may have been altered

google only has a handful of stories on this (none originating in the states). but i'll ask the ? every amerikan should be thinking: if true/proved, does this mean his ass is grass? further, will he leave? i'm betting NO.

[Kooperman]

again: scientific analysis suggests presidential vote counts may have been altered

google only has a handful of stories on this (none originating in the states). but i'll ask the ? every amerikan should be thinking: if true/proved, does this mean his ass is grass? further, will he leave? i'm betting NO.

The fact that there is so little curiosity/outrage about the last election gives you the answer to your question. The manipulation, intimidation and brainwashing of the mainstream media has allowed a successful coup by the conservative cult. Bloggers don't have enough visibility to ignite an investigation into voting improprieties...only a bold and inquiring press can do that.

[slum_goddess]

you're the voice of reason, something i can never be. i felt alienated back there before we left but not as much as i felt a few months ago...not by those i knew but just by the general vibe--all those flags and ribbons...the emotional climate, the tone totally sucked. (and everyone looked so much straighter than i remembered...all dressed in tommy fuckfinger or gap...no imagination, nothing original or even remotely different.

[Kooperman]

It's a struggle for me to think about 4 more years of this climate, but I can see small signs, such as the backlash against Tom DeLay in the MM, which keep me going and talking. I know that one day all of us who question what's going on will be vindicated.