I said I would call out Christine O'Donnell as a double coward if she refused to answer questions from any press outlet other than Fox News. Sure enough, she's taking Sarah Palin's advice and refusing to answer questions from mainstream media outlets, even CNN.
Christine, you are running for United States Senator. For you to refuse to answer questions about serious matters like whether or not you've been living for the last several years on campaign contributions, or whether you didn't pay your taxes, then it's obvious you just want to represent the right-wing population of Delaware -- those people who don't know what's really going on because all they listen to is Fox News and Rush Limbaugh -- and not the people of Delaware as a whole. You have no business running for this office if you are not willing to face these charges and explain them to the people you expect to represent. If these charges are unfounded, then you should have no problem answering these questions from any legitimate media outlet.
Sadly, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell failed in the Senate on a vote of 56-43 when it was filibustered by the Republicans. It is now obvious that it's impossible to get anything passed through Congress without 60 votes. In that case I think the filibuster rule must be changed. It is unlikely, if not impossible, that any one party will have a clear 60 votes in the Senate ever again. That means that our government, as it is currently constructed, has ceased to work.
The fact that patriotic, talented Americans are precluded from serving in the military due to the circumstances of their birth is anti-Democratic, anti-American, and obviously discriminatory. This should have been overturned long ago. This is another example of legislation the Obama administration should have put forward while the Democrats had a larger majority in the Senate.
Obama should now use the option of executive order to at least end the dismissal of gay military personnel under DADT. The vast majority of the people of this country, as well as the majority of our military leaders, are in favor of overturning this discriminatory policy. It looks like he'll have to take matters into his own hands now that Congress has become so dysfunctional.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Kooky right-wingers and other musings
OK, I can't resist giving my two cents about Christine O'Donnell, the Tea Party/Republican candidate for Senate representing Delaware. On Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect in 1999 she said she dabbled in witchcraft, had a picnic date on an altar that still had blood on it, but that she never joined a coven (well, thank goodness for that)! In explaining this she tried to shrug it off by asserting that everyone has odd friends in their high school days.
Now, it's been a looooong time since high school, so I must search my brain cells... I remember drinking a little vodka one of the neighbor kids sneaked out of the parents' liquor cabinet. Let's see... oh yeah, there was that time I actually skipped school (on senior skip day with the boyfriend I ended up marrying a few months later, much to my regret now, but I digress). Anyway, I was grounded for an entire month and told quite firmly by my parents that I would surely be on my way to juvenile jail if I kept it up (and I was a straight A student), so no more skipping school for me! Hmmm... well, there was... no.... maybe that time... nope, definitely not very exciting... gee, you know, I can't remember ever doing anything that rivals hanging out with witches on a non-Halloween evening or having a picnic on a Satanic altar! Darn!! Well, my school must have just been oddly -- what's a good word -- boring.
Gee, what's that I hear from the right? The silence is deafening! They're all thinking, "oh crap - here we find someone who looks, dresses, walks and talks like Sarah Palin, she wins the primary and this comes out?" Can you just imagine what they would say if this was the Democratic candidate we were talking about? Holy cow, they'd be shoving each other out of the way to get to the microphones like a bunch of first graders playing musical chairs!!
Now, the masturbation thing is just darn funny, I don't care who ya are... but saying that homosexuals are mentally ill really ticks me off, Christine!
BTW, there is a world of difference between Satanism and Wicca. Wiccans don't believe Satan exists, and worship nature. OK? Everybody straight now?
Now frankly I do think this was a long time ago and it kind of amounts to making a mountain out of a molehill, seriously, but I'm still going to call coward on Christine, who cancelled her planned Sunday talk show appearances. Get yer right-wing ass up there and talk to the people, Christine, and if you follow Sarah Palin's advice and only go on right-wing nut friendly Fox News, I'll call double coward on ya!
Anyway, I must get on to Newt Gingrich, who has gone from disgusting (need I recount the story of how and when he told his first wife he wanted a divorce? slimy!!) to downright whacked. Lately he's been saying some pretty coookooo things, like saying Obama has a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" view. So 1) he's trying to reinforce this ridiculous idea that our President was not born in the U.S., and 2) he says "anti-colonial" like it's a bad thing, but as Bill Maher pointed out on Larry King Live recently, our Founding Fathers thought being anti-colonial was pretty cool. You would think that Obama had hung on his father's every word since birth, but as we know Obama Sr. saw his son for maybe 12 minutes of his life, so I'm not sure where Newt is going with this... for someone who used to have the exalted post of Speaker of the House it's truly sad to see how low he's sunk.
A new right-wing crazy enters the fray! Joe Miller, Tea Party Senate candidate from Alaska, says that unemployment benefits are unconstitutional! Whoa, there, Joey... I seem to recall that Americans pay unemployment insurance out of their paychecks so they can get those benefits if they ever need them, and besides, if they didn't get unemployment checks they would get... welfare checks! Well, that's soooo much better. What a ninny.
On the other hand, I have to give a shout-out to Colin Powell, who seems to be the only grown-up in the Republican Party these days. He reiterated that the President is a Christian and that he was born in the U.S., despite crazy attempts on the right to say otherwise, calling the ridiculous attacks on Obama "nonsense." He's the only one in that party I've heard make any sense lately!
Ummm... since when did a person become a celebrity when their only claim to fame is having an unplanned teenage pregnancy while their mom was running an unsuccessful campaign for vice president, soon to be followed by said mother quitting the governorship of the state after a year and a few months? **Sigh**.
Now, it's been a looooong time since high school, so I must search my brain cells... I remember drinking a little vodka one of the neighbor kids sneaked out of the parents' liquor cabinet. Let's see... oh yeah, there was that time I actually skipped school (on senior skip day with the boyfriend I ended up marrying a few months later, much to my regret now, but I digress). Anyway, I was grounded for an entire month and told quite firmly by my parents that I would surely be on my way to juvenile jail if I kept it up (and I was a straight A student), so no more skipping school for me! Hmmm... well, there was... no.... maybe that time... nope, definitely not very exciting... gee, you know, I can't remember ever doing anything that rivals hanging out with witches on a non-Halloween evening or having a picnic on a Satanic altar! Darn!! Well, my school must have just been oddly -- what's a good word -- boring.
Gee, what's that I hear from the right? The silence is deafening! They're all thinking, "oh crap - here we find someone who looks, dresses, walks and talks like Sarah Palin, she wins the primary and this comes out?" Can you just imagine what they would say if this was the Democratic candidate we were talking about? Holy cow, they'd be shoving each other out of the way to get to the microphones like a bunch of first graders playing musical chairs!!
Now, the masturbation thing is just darn funny, I don't care who ya are... but saying that homosexuals are mentally ill really ticks me off, Christine!
BTW, there is a world of difference between Satanism and Wicca. Wiccans don't believe Satan exists, and worship nature. OK? Everybody straight now?
Now frankly I do think this was a long time ago and it kind of amounts to making a mountain out of a molehill, seriously, but I'm still going to call coward on Christine, who cancelled her planned Sunday talk show appearances. Get yer right-wing ass up there and talk to the people, Christine, and if you follow Sarah Palin's advice and only go on right-wing nut friendly Fox News, I'll call double coward on ya!
Anyway, I must get on to Newt Gingrich, who has gone from disgusting (need I recount the story of how and when he told his first wife he wanted a divorce? slimy!!) to downright whacked. Lately he's been saying some pretty coookooo things, like saying Obama has a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" view. So 1) he's trying to reinforce this ridiculous idea that our President was not born in the U.S., and 2) he says "anti-colonial" like it's a bad thing, but as Bill Maher pointed out on Larry King Live recently, our Founding Fathers thought being anti-colonial was pretty cool. You would think that Obama had hung on his father's every word since birth, but as we know Obama Sr. saw his son for maybe 12 minutes of his life, so I'm not sure where Newt is going with this... for someone who used to have the exalted post of Speaker of the House it's truly sad to see how low he's sunk.
A new right-wing crazy enters the fray! Joe Miller, Tea Party Senate candidate from Alaska, says that unemployment benefits are unconstitutional! Whoa, there, Joey... I seem to recall that Americans pay unemployment insurance out of their paychecks so they can get those benefits if they ever need them, and besides, if they didn't get unemployment checks they would get... welfare checks! Well, that's soooo much better. What a ninny.
On the other hand, I have to give a shout-out to Colin Powell, who seems to be the only grown-up in the Republican Party these days. He reiterated that the President is a Christian and that he was born in the U.S., despite crazy attempts on the right to say otherwise, calling the ridiculous attacks on Obama "nonsense." He's the only one in that party I've heard make any sense lately!
Ummm... since when did a person become a celebrity when their only claim to fame is having an unplanned teenage pregnancy while their mom was running an unsuccessful campaign for vice president, soon to be followed by said mother quitting the governorship of the state after a year and a few months? **Sigh**.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Reflections on 9/11
I watched a couple of specials on 9/11 yesterday. Although it's been 9 years now, I can vividly remember what it felt like that day... the disbelief, the sadness, the worry at what our future held.
On that day 2,752 people died at the World Trade Center, over 400 of whom were firefighters and police officers. 184 people were killed at the Pentagon. 44 people were killed on Flight 93. That's a total of almost 3,000 people who lost their lives that day because of radical terrorists.
But I was thinking as I was watching the television specials how many of our troops have now died in the war in Iraq now that the combat operations are over. Counts I found online vary a little bit, but here's the numbers I'm going with: 4,418 of our own forces have died, and another 318 troops from coalition forces have also died. This doesn't count the tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians -- men, women and children -- who lost their lives in this war, the true count of which will never be known. It also does not count the over 30,000 wounded who have returned, many of them with bodies, minds and lives changed forever.
For what? Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. As big a monster as Saddam Hussein was, and of all the horrific acts he has perpetrated, these attacks were not his doing. There were no weapons of mass destruction there (as the Bush administration had to know, considering officials sent there to look for them found no indication of any active WMD program). And yet Bush and Cheney sent over 4,000 of our troops to their deaths, more than the number of people who died in the attacks on 9/11. I think they did so for their own personal and political reasons. (Saddam did attempt, once upon a time, to assassinate Bush Sr., was the son seeking payback?) Bush was feeling pressure to do something to atone for the 9/11 attacks. Cheney flat made up the stories about WMD, Saddam and Osama bin Laden combining forces, secret meetings in Prague, etc. etc.... and yet they seem to have gotten off scot-free with the blame for the lives lost in an unnecessary and tragic war, the final toll of which was more than the number of people we lost on 9/11/2001.
So when you think about the 9/11 attacks and the tragedy on that day, don't forget to include the tragic loss of life in a war that should never have been. They are victims too.
On that day 2,752 people died at the World Trade Center, over 400 of whom were firefighters and police officers. 184 people were killed at the Pentagon. 44 people were killed on Flight 93. That's a total of almost 3,000 people who lost their lives that day because of radical terrorists.
But I was thinking as I was watching the television specials how many of our troops have now died in the war in Iraq now that the combat operations are over. Counts I found online vary a little bit, but here's the numbers I'm going with: 4,418 of our own forces have died, and another 318 troops from coalition forces have also died. This doesn't count the tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians -- men, women and children -- who lost their lives in this war, the true count of which will never be known. It also does not count the over 30,000 wounded who have returned, many of them with bodies, minds and lives changed forever.
For what? Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. As big a monster as Saddam Hussein was, and of all the horrific acts he has perpetrated, these attacks were not his doing. There were no weapons of mass destruction there (as the Bush administration had to know, considering officials sent there to look for them found no indication of any active WMD program). And yet Bush and Cheney sent over 4,000 of our troops to their deaths, more than the number of people who died in the attacks on 9/11. I think they did so for their own personal and political reasons. (Saddam did attempt, once upon a time, to assassinate Bush Sr., was the son seeking payback?) Bush was feeling pressure to do something to atone for the 9/11 attacks. Cheney flat made up the stories about WMD, Saddam and Osama bin Laden combining forces, secret meetings in Prague, etc. etc.... and yet they seem to have gotten off scot-free with the blame for the lives lost in an unnecessary and tragic war, the final toll of which was more than the number of people we lost on 9/11/2001.
So when you think about the 9/11 attacks and the tragedy on that day, don't forget to include the tragic loss of life in a war that should never have been. They are victims too.
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