Did The McCain Campaign Create The Birther Monster

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Is the McCain campaign responsible for the "birther" headache that has landed in the lap of many republicans in congress? You can see how reluctant they are to say flat out that President Obama is a U.S. citizen. Instead they hem and haw over the question so as not to freak out the far right conspiracy theorists in their party.

Did Sarah Plain and The Fox News Channel create this monster for the Republicans with their relentless claims of Obama being a Muslum, a radical, an socialists, attending a medrasa, palling around with a terrorists. Did Sean Hannity and the talking heads at Fox take it one "terrorist fist-jab" too far? - Survey says YES!

However, what was said and done during the 2008 presidential election will make their current rhetoric the equavalent of a bad hair day. I think that the likes of Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etal have failed to realize that the country has grown a brain and is no longer suseptable to such unsophistocated propaganda.

It's like an old safe-cracker getting out of prison after 40 years and thinking that he can just drop down through the ceiling at First National to crack a safe. Totally unaware that infa-red laser beams and motion sensors have taken the place of the bells, batteries, and wires that he was once a master of defeating. It's like watching my grandpa who built the two-story house that he lives in trying to navagate his way through the menu of an IPod.

I wonder if these well-paid antagonists are even aware that the monster they created has nothing to do with a birth certificate, but rather the inability of a biggoted few to accept the fact that a black man is really the President of The United States. You can click your heels until your blue in the face Dorothy, but you'll still be right where you are. In good old 2009 with one Barack Hussien Obama, a black man as the leader of the free world. To quote Bill O'Reilly when he was referring to George W. Bush:

"Weather you like it or not, he is the President of The United States and we all have an obligation to support him or shut up!"

I wish that Obama would sign an executive order suspending congressional health care until they can draft a bill worthy of his signature. These people certainly earn enough money to go out and purchase medical insurance like the rest of us. After all, it is the best "health care" in the world. The fact that they don't call it medical insurance speaks volumes because that's what it is and it has nothing to do with caring about anyones health. It's no different then auto insurance except instead of refering you to an auto mechanic or body shop, they refer you to a doctor or a specialists. Instead of meeting your deductable, they hit you with a Co-Pay everytime you see the doctor.

In the the past 7 years I have handed Kaiser-Permenente $31,752 in premiums and all that I have to show for it is 7 annual check-ups, repair of two broken fingers, and 18 stitches on my right ankle. I must be their definition of the optimun customer, but inspite of the payment to service ratio between us, I'm still baffled as to why my premiuns keep increasing. You don't think I'm getting ripped off, do you?

Fox News Panel Blind To All But Al Qaeda

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Fox News assembled an "All Star" panel for a Special Report on domestic terrorism yesterday. The topic was sparked by the arrests of 7 men in North Carolina for supposedly planning acts of terrorism on the behest of Al Qaeda. What seemed to surprise the Fox panel yesterday -- was how successful the suspects were at blending in as regular American neighbors. But not once does it ever seem to cross their minds that this, indeed, has long been a feature of right-wing domestic terrorism in this country.

There's no doubt that the addition of Al Qaeda as a player on the domestic terrorism scene is cause for special concern. America has been fortunate in that, for the most part, its many would-be domestic terrorists have not typically been very competent. Adding a highly competent organization like Al Qaeda to the mix ratchets up the potential danger on this front significantly.

Attorney General Eric Holder was fairly thoughtful in his interview with ABC in addressing this:

"I mean, that's one of the things that's particularly troubling: This whole notion of radicalization of Americans," Holder told ABC News during an interview in his SUV as his motorcade brought him from home to work.

"Leaving this country and going to different parts of the world and then coming back, all, again, in aim of doing harm to the American people, is a great concern."

... Holder said the ever-changing threat of terror and the pressure to keep up with it weighs heavily on his mind as he tries to ensure that the government has done all it can to anticipate the moves of an unpredictable enemy.

"But, you know, in the hierarchy of things, it's hard to figure out how to prioritize these things in some ways," he said. "The constant scream of threats, the kind of things you have to be aware about, the whole notion of radicalization is something that didn't loom as large a few months ago ... as it does now. And that's the shifting nature of threats that keeps you up at night."

Obviously, Holder is focused on these new cases involving international-terror entities. But the dynamic he's describing also fits what has been happening on an increasingly intense basis within the ranks of American right-wing extremist groups since the election of Obama: Not only are people being radicalized by right-wing rhetoric, an increasing number of them are joining organizations that preach the violent overthrow of American democracy -- our genuine enemies within.

People don't need to travel overseas to become violently radicalized in this country. Indeed, there are exponentially many more white Americans who have gone through "radicalization" from white-supremacist, nativist, and anti-abortion organizations than will ever be successfully recruited by Al Qaeda.

Now, there's plenty of evidence the Holder DOJ gets this. But the media -- particularly its right-wing component -- clearly doesn't.

Frequently mentioned on cable, for instance, the past few days has been the New York "terrorism" cell that was busted by the feds a couple of months ago ... except they turned out not to be so much of a "terrorist" cell after all.

Moreover, these cases have been relatively few and far between. We simply can't say that, however, of the regular drumbeat of domestic terrorism we get from the extremist American right -- both in recent months and indeed for many years running.

Now, we all remember how prescient the Homeland Security warning about far-right domestic terrorism proved to be. Yet Janet Napolitano was forced to apologize to the raving wingnuts for having issued it.
But then, right-wingers have been trying whitewash away the existence of these domestic terrorists for some years now.

For the most part, movement conservatives have trouble seeing white right-wing domestic terrorists as just that. The only terrorists who matter, it seems, are those from overseas or with dark skin. (It didn't help, of course, that the Bush DOJ practiced an ugly double standard on this score.)

Which is why, periodically, we continue to see "lone wolves" committing acts of horrific violence, themselves domestic terrorists radicalized not by foreign organizations, but by entities that reside right here in America.
And periodically, the media are surprised by all this. Because they all thought the problem was just Al Qaeda.

Fox News Sticks A Fork In A Well-Done Sarah Palin

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Seeing no further value in the vaudevillian career of Sarah Palin, The Fox News Channel has released a poll that is basically the proverbial fork stuck in the well-done former Governor of Alaska. The same Governor that Fox News pundits once proclaimed to be the new voice of the Republican Party.

When Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska over the weekend, she left pundits and politicos to speculate about her next career move, with the latest rumor focusing on Palin hosting a radio show. Earlier this week, Fox News released a poll revealing a plurality of Americans think Palin shouldn’t do radio — or be involved in politics for that matter.

About a third of Americans think the best job for Palin is homemaker (32 percent), while nearly one in five see her as a television talk show host (17 percent). Vice president of the United States comes in third (14 percent), followed closely by college professor (10 percent), with president coming last (6 percent).

Republicans think the best job for Palin is vice president (27 percent), followed by homemaker (18 percent), talk show host (14 percent), president (12 percent) and professor (7 percent).
According to the Fox poll, 51 percent of Americans have a negative view of Palin, compared to 38 percent who say they have a favorable opinion of her. I thinks that it is safe to say that if Fox News is done with Palin, then Palin is truly done.

House Committee: Stimulus creates more jobs in June

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According to a report released today by a House of Representatives committee, the number of jobs created or saved by infrastructure projects funded by the U.S. economic stimulus plan more than doubled in June from May.

At the end of June, 49,377 jobs had been "created or sustained" by water, highway and public transportation projects, compared to slightly more than 21,000 jobs at the end of May.
The Pacific Northwestern state of Washington accounted for the most jobs of any state or territory at 3,481, with the bulk of those concentrated in highway repairs.

According to the Transportation Department, Washington has also been obligated some $627.8 million out of the $22.7 billion the states have requested from the federal government under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

President Barack Obama pushed to dedicate $48 billion in the two-year, $787 billion recovery act to transportation projects, in the hopes of allaying painfully high unemployment levels in construction and related work.

A few states and territories, such as Georgia and Guam, have not reported any jobs created or saved by the increased infrastructure spending. Capital works projects have begun everywhere except the territories.

Only 142 capital works have been completed, however, the committee said.
The House committee regularly tracks how stimulus money is distributed to clean water revolving funds, highway infrastructure projects and transit capital assistance and will have a hearing on spending on Friday. Most states have used most of the stimulus money for highway repairs, according to the committee.

A total of 5,079 highway and transit projects have been put out to bid in all 50 states, four territories and the District of Columbia, totaling $16.7 billion, the committee said.
A job counts as created if it did not exist before a stimulus grant was given to a project. A sustained or saved job would have been eliminated if not for stimulus money. The committee does not distinguish between jobs created and saved in its report.

Lackawanna Mayor: Illegal behavior ecpected by Cheney

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Last week, the New York Times reported that, in 2002, Dick Cheney urged President Bush to illegally deploy American troops to the suburbs of Buffalo to apprehend a group of terrorist suspects (the “Lackawanna Six”). Bush rejected the advice.

Reacting to the news, Lackawanna’s Mayor told the Buffalo News that illegal behavior is exactly what he would expect from the Bush administration:



“I wouldn’t expect anything less of the Bush administration,” Lackawanna Mayor Norman L. Polanski Jr. said in reacting to Cheney’s proposal to send in the troops. “The federal agents did their job and the Lackawanna police did their job. We didn’t need the military coming in. The community reacted cautiously, and nobody got out of hand or made outrageous statements.” [...]

“If you bring in the military, you create a panic,” Lackawanna Police Captain Ronald Miller said.

Bobby Green, a lifelong Lackawanna resident, said Cheney’s idea was “kind of crazy.” Andrew Sullivan writes, “What Cheney was doing here was making a point: that he believes that the president can impose the equivalent of martial law inside the country at any moment he feels it’s necessary, even if it isn’t.” (HT: Raw Story)

Sarah Palins Facebook Poll Backfires

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In a recent Facebook, "Sarah Palin For President" Live Poll, the question was asked:

Would you vote for Sarah Palin for President in 2012?

YES

26.5%

83,925 votes

NO

70.0%

221,874 votes

UNSURE

3.6%

11,343 votes

Bush Admin Debates Using Military On U.S. Soil

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In early 2002, Bush administration officials debated testing the Constitution by deploying American troops into the Buffalo suburb of Lakawanna to arrest a group of six Yemini men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.

Some advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.

In early 2001, the six young men had traveled to Afghanistan and spent a few weeks training at an Al Qaeda training camp and studying Islamic Revolutionary Theory.





Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force and it was a good this that he did. The FBI had the home shared by the six young men under 24 hour surveillance for nearly a year, but there was never any suspicious activity.

When the government couldn't tie the group to any terrorist activity, they quietly dropped any charges of the men being an Al Qaeda sleeper cell. Instead, the men were charged for having gone to Afghanistan and purchasing uniforms at the Al Qaeda camp prior to there even being a global war on terror.

A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests has few precedents in American history, as both the Constitution and subsequent laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.

The Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity.

In the discussions, Dick Cheney and others cited an Oct. 23, 2001, memorandum from the Justice Department that, using a broad interpretation of presidential authority, argued that the domestic use of the military against Al Qaeda would be legal because it served a national security, rather than a law enforcement, purpose.

“The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States,” the memorandum said. The memorandum — written by the lawyers John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty — was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who had asked the department about a president’s authority to use the military to combat terrorist activities in the United States.

The memorandum was declassified in March. But the White House debate about the Lackawanna group is the first evidence that top American officials, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, actually considered using the document to justify deploying the military into an American town to make arrests.

Bush ended up ordering the F.B.I. to make the arrests in Lackawanna, near Buffalo, where the agency had been monitoring a group of Yemeni Americans with suspected Qaeda ties.

The five men arrested there in September 2002, and a sixth arrested nearly simultaneously in Bahrain, but when the Government couldn't tie the men to any terrorists activity, they quietly dropped all charges of the men being an Al Qaeda sleeper cell. The men pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges, which amounted to them purchasing uniforms at the camp during their visit prior to there even being a global war on terror.

Scott L. Silliman, a Duke University law professor specializing in national security law, said an American president had not deployed the active-duty military on domestic soil in a law enforcement capacity, without specific statutory authority, since the Civil War.

Senior military officials were never consulted, former officials said. Richard B. Myers, a retired general who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a recent interview that he was unaware of the discussion.

Former officials said the 2002 debate arose partly from Justice Department concerns that there might not be enough evidence to arrest and successfully prosecute the suspects in Lackawanna.

Dick Cheney, the officials said, had argued that the administration would need a lower threshold of evidence to declare them enemy combatants and keep them in military custody.

Earlier that summer, the administration designated Jose Padilla an enemy combatant and sent him to a military brig in South Carolina. Padilla was arrested by civilian agencies on suspicion of plotting an attack using a radioactive bomb.

Those who advocated using the military to arrest the Lackawanna group had legal ammunition: the memorandum by John Yoo and Mr. Delahunty. The lawyers, in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, wrote that the Constitution, the courts and Congress had recognized a president’s authority “to take military actions, domestic as well as foreign, if he determines such actions to be necessary to respond to the terrorist attacks upon the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, and before.”

The document added that the neither the Posse Comitatus Act nor the Fourth Amendment tied a president’s hands. Despite this guidance, some Bush aides bristled at the prospect of troops descending on an American suburb to arrest terrorism suspects.

“What would it look like to have the American military go into an American town and knock on people’s door?” said a second former official in the debate.

Chief James L. Michel of the Lackawanna police agreed. “If we had tanks rolling down the streets of our city,” Chief Michel said, “we would have had pandemonium down here.”

The Lackawanna case was the first after the Sept. 11 attacks in which American intelligence and law enforcement operatives believed they had dismantled a Qaeda cell in the United States.

However, none of the sleeper cell cases prosecuted by the Government ever panned out to anything close to the announcements from the White House regarding the disruption of yet another terrorists sleeper cell on American soil.

In the months before the arrests, George Bush was regularly briefed on the case by Mr. Mueller of the F.B.I. and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence. The C.I.A. had been tracking the overseas contacts of the Lackawanna group.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed article in March, Mr. Yoo defended his 2001 memorandum and its reasoning, saying that after Sept. 11 the Bush administration faced the real prospect of Qaeda cells undertaking attacks on American soil.

“The possibility of such attacks raised difficult, fundamental questions of constitutional law,” he wrote, “because they might require domestic military operations against an enemy for the first time since the Civil War.”

Rep. Virginia Foxx : BITCH! Are You Trippin' Again?

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It appears that Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) is at it again. A few months back you may remember that Foxx said on the floor of the House that gay college student, Matthew Sheppard's murder was a "hate crime hoax" and that it he was actually killed in a robbery gone wrong. I'm not sure how many people are driven out into the middle of the Wyoming countryside, tied to a fence, and beaten to death strictly for the purpose of robbery. However, in Rep. Foxx alternate universe, that's the M.O. for robbery.

I thought that this cross-eyed crazy bitch had set the bar pretty high with that comment, but suprisingly she has outdone herself once again. In an effort to bad mouth health care reform, Foxx announced that "

there are no Americans who don’t have healthcare":

She disputes President Obama’s claim that 47 million Americans lack healthcare. "There are no Americans who don’t have healthcare. Everybody in this country has access to healthcare," she says. "We do have about 7.5 million Americans who want to purchase health insurance who can not afford it," she says, urging Congress to adopt a new plan for healthcare reform that wouldn’t "destroy what is good about healthcare in this country" and "give the government control of our lives."

Listen here:

Unfortunately, Foxx is not the first

conservative to push this argument. In July 2007, then-President Bush claimed that "people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room." Does Rep. Fox mean that you just go to an emergency room like the woman in the video below. Take a look at the outstanding health care that was provided to this woman. It might have gotten even better had she not died right there on the floor of the waiting room.

Watch Here:

In 2002, the Institute of Medicine estimated that there were

18,000 unnecessary adult deaths because of a lack of insurance while the Urban Institute estimated in 2006 that 22,000 died for the same reason. Finally, studies have found that the uninsured "are 30 to 50 percent more likely to be hospitalized for an avoidable condition" and if they do seek care in an emergency room, "they are usually sicker than patients who have health insurance."

Will the good citizens of North Carolina please vote this crazy bitch out of office once and for all. Her usefullness in government has run it's course.

Dick Cheney's Quest For A Pardon For Scooter Libby

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney's disregard for the rule of law played out right up until the final monents of his term in office.

His relentless efforts to convince Bush to pardon Scooter Libby are certainly cause for speculation. Yet Cheney more than most should have known that the moment President Bush commuted Libby's sentance, there would be no pardon.

For President Bush to commute Libby's sentance upon conviction and then grant a last minute pardon on his final day in office would nullify the jury verdict leaving Libby fully restored from the crime and the punishment. Bush was not going to risk his already uncertain legacy by leaning that far into the strike zone for Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, or anyone else for that matter.


Under the Constitution, the President has the authority to grant a pardon for federal offenses, including those obtained in the United States District Courts, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, and military courts-martial.


Under the Department's rules governing petitions for executive clemency, there is a minimum waiting period of five years after completion of sentence before anyone convicted of a federal offense becomes eligible to apply for a presidential pardon. The waiting period begins on the date of the petitioner's release from confinement. Alternatively, if the conviction resulted in probation or a fine, but no term of imprisonment, the waiting period begins on the date of sentencing.


A waiver of any portion of the waiting period can be, but are rarely granted and then only in the most exceptional circumstances. The last time that such a broad presidential pardon had been granted was by Gerald Ford to protect Richard Nixon from even being charged with a crime in the Watergate scandal that lead to his sudden resignation.


Nevertheless, Cheney still mounted an effort with a level tenacity that would lead one to believe that Libby was protecting Cheney from crimes far greater then lying to the grand jury.


"Scooter Libby is an innocent man who was the victim of a severe miscarriage of justice," Cheney says.


Cheney says that Libby deserved a pardon and then has strong words for Richard Armitage, the man who actually leaked Valerie Plame's name to Bod Novak. Armitage, Cheney says, "leaked the name and hid that fact from the prisident."

Cheney adds: "Mr. Libby is an honorable man and a faithful public servant who served the President, the Vice President and the nation with distinction for many years. He deserved a presidential pardon."


President Bush spared former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby from a 30-month prison term in the CIA leak investigation, calling the sentence too harsh.


The president announced his decision hours after a federal appeals panel ruled that Libby could not delay his prison term, meaning Libby was likely to have to report to jail soon.

The president has broad discretion to exercise presidential power to pardon convicted felons. In this case, the president did not pardon Libby; rather, he waived his prison term.

Regardless of Dick Cheney's claim about Scooter Libby being an honorable man and a faithful public servant, that fact remains that Libby lied under oath to protect someone other than himself. The odds that being anyone other than Dick Cheney are astronomical at best. However, I also believe that it will not be too long before the lid is blown off the darkest days of the Bush Administration.

Fox News' Lt. Col Ralph Peters: Easier to kill those captured

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The Fox News Channels Military Analysts Lt. Col. Ralph Peters obtuse rant about a U.S. soldier captured by The Taliban seems to be an old time favorite. He made a similar comment when suggesting that it's easier for U.S, soldiers to kill captured terrorists and for terrorists to kill captured U.S. Soldiers. This on the Fox News Channel that prides itself on it's patriotism.

In God We Trust Weather You Like It Or Not?

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While I am a raging liberal democrat, I am an American first and foremost and in being such, I fully embrace our founding documents including the spirit in which they where written, and yes! – Including the many references to God. Weather you like it or not, our nation was founded by Christians and while the phrase In God We Trust adorns the wall in the House of Representatives, it is the one thing that should never be up for a vote or open to debate.

To restrict any words found in The Constitution or The Declaration of Independence is the same as rejecting the validity of those very documents. If these references to God violated the intent of separation of church and state, it stands to reason that the framers would not have included them in the very document where that provision exists. I believe the average 7th grader could determine that the intent of separation was to prohibit the government from imposing a particular religion or mandating its practice upon the people.

If it where the founders intent to shove Christianity down out throats, our founding documents wouldn’t refer to an ambiguous “Creator” or God” and instead of In God We Trust, they would have written In Jesus Christ our Lord We Trust. Even the most cursory review of our founding documents makes it clear how intelligent and forward looking our founding fathers where. I find it harmful that children no longer recite the pledge of allegiance in school as I did when I was a child. I distinctly recall it giving me a sense of pride in my country on a daily basis and I am fearful of what effect not having this experience will have on future generations.

While this is one aspect where I deviate from a large segment of my party, it is not the only issue. That being said, I take comfort in belonging to a party where I am not expected to march in lockstep and tow the party line.

Pelosi: "No Question" we have the votes to pass health care

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According to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) there is "no question" that she has the votes to pass healthcare reform legislation even as key Democrats retreated from their predictions of progress.But Democratic opponents of the bill said Pelosi’s vote count was somewhere between wildly optimistic and dead wrong.

"I don’t know who’s doing her vote counting, but she doesn’t have the votes," said Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), who has worked with the band of centrist Blue Dog Democrats blocking the bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee.

"They’re 100 votes away on a good day," said another Democratic member.Republicans mocked Pelosi’s assertion, sending out a list documenting 42 House Democrats who have said they oppose or have concerns about the bill. But the list includes some members who will almost certainly vote for the measure, such as House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.). Regardless, the stalled health bill is a major test of Pelosi’s leadership. And unless she gets it moving soon, Republicans will claim victory throughout August and into September.

Pelosi said if Democrats cannot reach agreement within their ranks by July 31, she thinks they should work into their planned August recess."I think 70 percent of the American people would want that," Pelosi said. "I want a bill."That stance contradicts House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who said Tuesday that he didn’t see any point in staying into August if Democrats haven’t reached consensus on a bill by then.

Leadership aides said that in their weekly Monday meeting, Pelosi and Hoyer never discussed what to do if they didn’t have the votes by the end of July.In an interview on Fox News on Wednesday, Hoyer said, "We’re very hopeful and we believe we’ll be able to pass a healthcare bill next week."With Senate Finance Committee leaders still ironing out their bill behind closed doors, the Senate will not be voting on healthcare reform before the August recess, as initially planned.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Wednesday told The Hill, "We’re going to take a little longer to get it right. Initially we had hoped for a full vote by [the recess], but I don’t think it’s going to be possible."Some Democrats are extremely frustrated that Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has not introduced a bill. Asked on Wednesday if he is feeling pressure from the White House, Baucus responded, "No, I’m not."With the GOP seizing political momentum, Obama administration officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, appeared on several cable news networks making the case for revamping the nation’s health system.

Meanwhile, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) on Wednesday announced that he and the Obama administration have agreed to create an independent commission to set reimbursement rates for healthcare providers in the government-run "public plan." The seven Blue Dogs who have been holding up consideration of the bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee have said they support the idea of a commission as a way to rein in healthcare costs.

But that concession has not won over the Blue Dogs and Waxman’s negotiations with the group are ongoing. Waxman’s committee was initially scheduled to have a final vote on healthcare reform on Wednesday. Waxman said he hopes to resume his committee markup on Thursday. "We have not resolved our issues. But we’re going to get back together and continue discussions," Waxman said.Waxman had angered the seven Blue Dogs earlier in the day by announcing a deal on the independent commission.

They felt the announcement was premature."They felt he was trying to box them in," said a Blue Dog member.Waxman’s press release subsequently disappeared from his panel’s website. A committee spokesperson did not comment by press time. Leadership aides say that even if Waxman can resolve the concerns of the Blue Dogs, there are plenty more troubles awaiting him in committee and on the floor, including a tax on the wealthy to help pay for the $1 trillion cost of the bill."There’s so many problems beyond the Blue Dogs," said a leadership aide. "There’s regional disparity. The pay-for is a train wreck. The committee might want to blame the Blue Dogs. But the Blue Dogs have wanted to engage and they haven’t."

In more signs of trouble, a diverse group of Democrats, including Blue Dogs and progressives, sent Waxman a letter urging that the measure be re-written to include legislation by Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) that would provide incentives for quality care rather than volume of care."The focus should be on how far we’ve come.

We’ve come a lot further than anyone would have expected," said a Democratic aide. "The important thing is that members and the groups stay on offense in August. August is generally a time that legislation ends up dying."Meanwhile, Democratic liberals are getting worried by constant negotiation with Blue Dogs and Pelosi’s statements that what the more conservative Senate Finance Committee does could influence the bill.

"We have to stay on our toes," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

"We know what we want and we don’t want to get rolled."Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who leads the charge for the Progressive Caucus on healthcare, said liberals have been reminding their Blue Dog colleagues that they might be the ones stopping a bill if a public option is watered down.

"A number of us have conveyed to the Blue Dogs that there are 82 people who are insisting on a ‘robust’ public option," Schakowsky said.

Is Lou Dobbs Screen Testing For The Fox News Channel?

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Lou Dobbs sudden departure from reality seems familiar to that of Glenn Beck in the weeks leading up to his leap from CNN's over to The Fox News Channel. Now Mr. Dobbs seems to have transitioned from riding the razor's edge of plausible lucidity to straight up bat-shit crazy. Dobbs actually first began giving the birthers a boost last week, when he had Alan Keyes, who ran against Obama in 2004 and 2008 and is now suing over the ligitamacy of the president's birth certificate.

However, Dobbs is sturring up the mix by screaming fire in a crowded theatre and then sticking around to be a witness. It allows him to play the unbiased advocate, the guy sticking up for the concerns of the average American no matter how obsurd the topic. It all plays out so well for him in contrast to the allegedly liberal reporters, who are, according to Dobbs, "more interested in currying succor with the White House than in doing their jobs."

On his radio show Tuesday, Dobbs was back at it, discussing the issue at length and responding to requests for comment from media outlets including Salon. (As of this post, a CNN spokeswoman had not yet been able to provide any comment.)

"We'll have some answers for the Los Angeles Times, Salon, a few others, Politico too. You know, and if you're in the left wing of the political spectrum, come on down, because we're going to have us a little talk about, oh, all of those crazy things that the American people just want to know," Dobbs said.

"Some of the news organizations in this country are acting as if they have their very identity attached to the issue of his birth certificate."

Later in the day, Dobbs brought the issue to CNN again. This time, it was part of a panel discussion at the end of his show with a decidedly unbalanced panel: Just three talk radio hosts, none of whom seemed to have any actual facts at hand -- not that they would have contradicted the anchor anyway.

One of the panelists, WPHT's Dom Giordano, noted that he's actually friends with Phil Berg, a Pennsylvania attorney who was one of the original leaders of the birther movement, and that his son once worked for Berg. (Giordano didn't mention that Berg has also

represented him in a lawsuit before.)

From the beginning of his coverage, Dobbs has been repeating a familiar trope of the birthers and their supporters: If Obama would just release his real birth certificate, the long form rather than the certification of live birth he made public last year, then all of this would be over.

"I believe Barack Obama is a citizen of the United States, folks, don't you? But I do have a couple of little questions, like you. Why not just provide a copy of the birth certificate? That's entirely within the president's power to do so. Then all of this nonsense goes away," Dobbs said on his radio show Tuesday.

"One would think the president would want to get rid of this nonsense. But he doesn't. And so none of us knows what the reality is."

But Dobbs knows that the crowd of conspiracy theorists he's now supporting won't be placated that easily. When he brought Keyes and Taitz on his show, he mentioned that he'd asked Taitz, off-air, whether the release of a long form birth certificate would satisfy her.

"She said no," Dobbs told his audience, and then directed the question to her again. "Both parents have to be citizens in order to satisfy the requirements of natural-born citizen," Taitz responded. In other words, for the de facto leader of the movement, her questions can never go away, because Obama's father was a British citizen at the time of his son's birth. (For the record, Taitz is wrong about the law here, as she very often is; in the 1898

Wong Kim Ark case, the Supreme Court said a child born in the U.S. is a natural-born citizen regardless of their parents' citizenship.)

Besides, Dobbs is completely wrong about the legal status of the certificate of live birth that Obama released. He said Tuesday that "there is no actual birth certificate. There is a document that says there is a birth certificate." But what Obama has made public thus far is the same form that anyone requesting their birth certificate from Hawaii would receive, and state officials have made very clear that it's authentic and shows he was born there.

Taitz and others say, wrongly, that there's a Hawaiian statute that applied to Obama that would have allowed his parents to register a foreign birth there, and somehow get state officials to say he was born in Honolulu. But as Janice Okubo, the director of communications for the Hawaii Department of Health, recently

explained to the Washington Independent's David Weigel, "If you were born in Bali, for example, you could get a certificate from the state of Hawaii saying you were born in Bali.

You could not get a certificate saying you were born in Honolulu. The state has to verify a fact like that for it to appear on the certificate. But it’s become very clear that it doesn’t matter what I say. The people who are questioning this bring up all these implausible scenarios."

That gets to the heart of the problem here. While Dobbs' colleagues at CNN, like

Rick Sanchez and even Kitty Pilgrim, his own guest host, have debunked the birthers' claims, Dobbs himself says he's learned a lot about birth certificates and the whole issue from Taitz and Keyes.

And that raises a question: With other CNN hosts having offered the actual facts on the air -- Pilgrim even attributed the debunking to the network itself -- why is Dobbs allowed to go on and make these false claims, without any hint of opposition? For now, CNN's not saying.

Bush Admin Covered Up The Danger Of Cell Phones

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Today I received the following email from Bruce Arnold over at Bruce on Bikers Rights and found it worth making a blog post as is. I apologize that the links didn't copy over, but there full of interesting information and worth the effort to copy and paste in your browser.

BUSH ADMINISTRATION COVERED UP THE DANGERS OF CELL PHONES
And we hate to say we told you so ... but we told you so!

Bruce on Bikers Rights (August 2009: Special Edition)

Anybody wonder why NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker and NTSB Board Member Kitty Higgins had nowhere to run this week except out the door? It's because WE--meaning Robert "RC" Conroy, myself and many other dedicated motorcyclists' rights activists who have been battling for years against the carnage caused by drivers immersed in cellphone calls--have made damned sure that when asked the question "WHAT DID YOU KNOW AND WHEN DID YOU KNOW IT?", their answers if honest will be damning:

We hate to say we told you so, folks, but WE TOLD YOU SO. Click the links below, and read dozens of accounts of righteous indignation written by "professional" journalists who have no excuse for their years of denial regarding this issue. Some of the links are long, and your email software may break them. If that happens, please don't reply to us claiming "the links don't work". Instead, copy and paste the broken segments into your browser address bar, then click Go or hit Enter. If you find that confusing, seek assistance from the nearest teenager. And be nice about it, as they may soon turn 18 and either (a) possibly go to war and give their life defending your right to be computer-illiterate in the Internet Age, or (b) certainly spend what's left of their life struggling to pay off the $53 trillion in debt and "unfunded obligations" which--like the untold motorcyclists' and other motorists' deaths attributable to this cover-up--are a lasting legacy of the George Bush Administration:

U.S. Withheld Data on Risks of Distracted Driving (may require registration to read)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/technology/21distracted.html

Documents: Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/nytint/docs/documents-from-the-u-s-department-of-transportation-s-national-highway-traffic-safety-administration/original.pdf

Report: Agency withheld distracted driver research
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gsKtAgd7nPCrDhq2AUGTK9fSdtiAD99IJGS00

Real cell-phone dangers exposed: Using wireless communication devices while driving
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/cars/2009/07/cell-phone-dangers-using-wireless-communication-devices-while-driving.html

Highway agency wanted total cell phone ban
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32035670/ns/technology_and_science-wireless/

Consumer Groups: Gov't Kept Secret The Dangers of Cell Phones
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Travel/story?id=8135393&page=1

Studies Showing Dangers of Cellphone Use while Driving Were Suppressed
http://www.ombwatch.org/node/10233

Government Withheld Important Safety Data Showing Drivers' Hands-Free Cell Phone Use Is Just as Hazardous as Handheld Use
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2927

Jay Bookman Research on cell-phone-use-while-driving quashed by feds
http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2009/07/21/research-on-cell-phone-use-while-driving-quashed-by-feds/?cxntfid=blogs_jay_bookman_blog

Report: Agency Hid Distracted Driver Stats
http://cbs4.com/consumer/Distracted.Driving.Drivers.2.1095052.html

Agency withheld data on dangers of talking and driving
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090721/cellphone_report_090721/20090721?hub=TopStories

U.S. agency hid cellphone driving risk data: N.Y. Times
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2009/07/21/cellphone-driving.html

US quashed report on dangers of phone use while driving
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gzXBemNwjmj2tu7wIyY0dWqpOnNA

Group Hid Study On Cellphone's Driving Distractions
http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1724351/group_hid_study_on_cellphones_driving_distractions/

http://support.ldrlongdistancerider.com

"The battle for bikers' rights is not about patches, parties or poker runs. We fight to protect the freedom and promote the interests of American motorcyclists ... to defend our right to choose our own modes of transportation, attire and lifestyle ... to deter and defy discrimination against us ... and to vanquish those who violate our rights or right-of-way. And in the end, it will not matter to us whether we won or lost. But it will matter to us greatly that we fought."--Bruce Arnold

***

TELL A FRIEND ABOUT BRUCE'S RIGHTS RIDERS LIST

Please forward this email to fellow riders on your contacts list, or use the TELL A FRIEND box here:

http://rightsriders.ldrlongdistancerider.com

***

THE LATEST BIKERS' RIGHTS NEWS

The latest headlines for motorcyclists' rights, motorcycle awareness, helmet laws, noise ordinances and motorists' failure to yield by category are now available 24/7. Here is the link to add to your web browser favorites or bookmarks:

http://bikernews.ldrlongdistancerider.com

CODE BLUE at C St: Religious Right On Damage Control

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CODE BLUE at 133 C St. SE: The Religious Right is on damage control over the shinanigans that have come to light at the secrative brick building on C Street. The fact that three out of six congressman that lived there were caught up in sex scandals speaks volumes. We now know that in the case of the 3 married congressmen, their affairs where known by other members of the C St. Fellowship.

It seems disingenuous that anyone would try to defend the C Street Fellowship at this point in the game. Perhaps they forgot that we reap what we sew and in the future, instead of assisting in the coverup of these sexual affairs, they’ll tell the offending member this type of behavior is unacceptable and suggest they move out immedaitely.

A post on POLITICO today said that the large townhouse is valued at more than $1.8 million, and that it’s run by Christian network of nonprofits and ministries known as “The Fellowship.” Headquartered in Arlington, Va., the group focuses on what Fellowship leaders call the “up and out,” or powerful politicians struggling to confront their personal demons. I guess it is safe to assume from this point forward that congressmen both Republican and Democrat connected to the C Street Rehab are in the process of confronting their personal demons.

By ministering to the most powerful, The Fellowship believes, it can bring Christian beliefs to the larger culture. Jeff Sharlet, who wrote a book about his time in The Fellowship's Virginia headquarters, said the group believes that lawmakers have been "chosen" to lead by Jesus Christ.

In February, Nevada Sen. John Ensign — who lives at the house — was confronted at C Street by colleagues who wanted him to end his affair with a staffer.

Earlier this month, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford — who lived at C Street when he served in the House — said C Street was where he’d been asked the “hard questions” that were “very, very important” in his decision to admit an affair with an Argentine woman.

And last week, the estranged wife of former Rep. Chip Pickering said he carried on a long-term extramarital affair while living at the “well-known C Street Complex.”

But Christian lawmakers say Washington prayer and Bible-study groups — and the secrecy that surrounds them — provide crucial counseling for their lives in the nation’s capital.

“One thing about having members meet with members is they kind of understand what each other goes through and the stresses and the pressures and those kinds of things,”

Congressional Prayer Caucus Chairman Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), who participates in a small Bible study group on Wednesday mornings. “And one member can tell another member, ‘I don’t think that’s the right thing for you to do.’”

In an interview with the evangelical World Magazine, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) described living at C Street as “one of the best parts” of life in Washington.

“We kind of make that commitment to each other to get together once a week,” he said.

“Sometimes it’s a Bible study; we always have a spiritual or scriptural thought. But sometimes we just talk about each others’ lives, try to get to know each other, remind each other that we are not important, that it’s just a title.”

Although titles may not be important, there are plenty of them at C Street. In addition to DeMint and Ensign, C Street residents include Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Reps. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.). Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) lived in the house before moving to his own condo, and he still attends events there. Former Reps. Steve Largent (R-Okla.), Jim Ryun (R-Kan.), and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have also studied at C Street.

Religious Right Fear Mongering Over Hate Crime Protection For Gays

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The religious right are ramping up their rhetoric over the expansion of federal hate-crimes law. While Democrats in Congress are moving towards including protection for gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual Americans, some conservative religious groups are making bogus claims intended to scare other faith communities.

Christian groups have been against expanding the federal hate crimes law since the mid-1990s, and with both houses of Congress in Democratic majorities, they are mounting a last-ditch effort to derail the expansion to include homosexuals by claiming that even referring to homosexuality as a sin, would become a hate crime.

These "Religious" people have yet to condem a few of their own like John Ensign and Mark Sanford, but they waist little time stepping up warning over how the bill threatens their religious liberty. Most important of all is their false claim that it will deny clergy of the freedom to condem homosexuality. They do this knowing that the First Amendment protects free speech.

"What you say from the pulpit could literally become illegal," the Family Research Council wrote in a recent letter to pastors. The conservative Alliance Defense Fund has received more calls and E-mails on what the hate crimes bill means for pastors than on any other issue in recent months.

"This is the first time you would have written into law a government disapproval of a religious belief held by the majority of Americans -- that homosexuality is sinful," says Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. "It's more of a slippery slope argument than about the law itself."

That's at least more intellectually honest than telling faith communities, "The government will penalize you if you're a pastor who criticizes gays from your pulpit." I find the slippery slope argument to be wildly unpersuasive -- a slippery slope towards what, exactly? -- but I'm glad to see at least some acknowledgement that the talking points warning of dire consequences are baseless.

The multiple factions of the Republican party that once tolerated each other so well, are now scrambling for their individuality. The religious radicals, the Reaganites, and the Neo-Cons seem content to tear apart the ruins of the Republican Party left behind by George W. Bush, and so-be-it. Maybe it's just God's way of thinning the heard.

Obama Addresses The Hype Over Health Care Reform

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This is the weekly address from President Obama at the White House, which was released early. In the video below, President Obama set out the parameters of the health care debate, explained what the opponents of health care reform were doing, and drew a line in the sand around the essential elements of health care reform. First, he explains the stories he's been hearing about why health care reform is so important to him:

Right now in Washington, our Senate and House of Representatives are both debating proposals for health insurance reform. Today, I want to speak with you about the stakes of this debate, for our people and for the future of our nation.
This is an issue that affects the health and financial well-being of every single American and the stability of our entire economy.

It’s about every family unable to keep up with soaring out of pocket costs and premiums rising three times faster than wages. Every worker afraid of losing health insurance if they lose their job, or change jobs. Everyone who’s worried that they may not be able to get insurance or change insurance if someone in their family has a pre-existing condition.

WATCH:

Stehpen Colbert Demands To Make Keith Olbermanns Worst Person List

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Keith Olbermann named the "Wall Street Journal," the "Washington Times," and Fox News the "Worser People In The World" on Tuesday for sending emails to Governor Mark Sanford when he was missing saying the media frenzy surrounding his disappearance was ridiculous and promising him "friendly ground" for interviews.

Olbermann refused to lump Stephen Colbert, whose pompus Colbert Report is modeled after Bill O'Reilly's pompus O'Reilly Factor even though Colbert wrote this email to Sanford:

As you may know, I declared myself Governor of South Carolina last night. I went power mad for abut 40 seconds before learning that Gov. Sanford was returning today.

If the governor is looking for a friendly place to make light of what I think is a small story that got blown out of scale I would be happy to have him on. In person here, on the phone, or in South Carolina.

Stay strong, Stephen

Of course, when he wrote this he had no idea the governor was not in fact on a hiking trip, but that has not stopped Stephen from demanding Olbermann name him the worst person in the world. He even upped the ante last night by hitting a baby with a puppy.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Stephen Wants to Be the Worst Person in the World
http://www.colbertnation.com/
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Jeff Goldblum

Rep. Chip Pickering & His Scorned Republican Wife:

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Do Republicans wives suffer from an inability to accept and or place blame squarely at where it belongs? In a new twist surrounding the well-known C Street Complex, apparently now suspected to be a Cat House, the wife of Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Miss.), has filed a lawsuit against his alleged mistress, claiming the adulterous relationship ruined their marriage and his political career.

While Leisha Pickering is suing Elizabeth Creekmore Byrd, her husband’s alleged mistress, for alienation of affection, it is more likely that the basis for her lawsuit is for the alienation of the money and lifstyle that comes when your husband has a lucrative career in Washington.

Leisha Pickering says in her lawsuit that Creekmore Byrd originally "met and had a romantic relationship with [Chip] Pickering which ended prior to their college graduation."
The Pickerings were married after that, but Leisha Pickering now says that, unknown to her, "Creekmore Byrd for a number of years met and rekindled her relationship with Pickering." Leisha Pickering charges that the adulterous relationship between her husband and Creekmore Byrd ended both their marriages. Yet she doesn't seem to place any blame at the feet of her falandering husband.

Leisha Pickering alleges that Creekmore Byrd’s "extramarital relationship" with Chip Pickering began again while he was "a United States congressman prior to and while living in the well-known C Street Complex in Washington, D.C."

Chip Pickering, like Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, has lived in a Christian fellowship home on C Street. Both Ensign and Sanford have been the subjects of adultery scandals in recent weeks. Ensign had an eight-month affair with a former campaign aide, Cindy Hampton, and he resigned his leadership post after admitting to the relationship. Sanford secretly left the United States to met his Argentine mistress, setting off a national furor over his disappearance.

Leisha Pickering also charges that Creekmore Byrd secretly rented a lodge near the Pickering family while they were on a ski vacation and that somehow her husband bares no responsibility for driving his happy ass over to the lodge to visit Mrs. Creekmore. It's as if Mrs.Pickering is saying that if Mrs. Byrd hadn't rented the lodge then Chip wouldn't have been tempted to go over there and dip his pen in her ink.

And she claims that Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour offered Chip Pickering the seat of former Sen. Trent Lott in 2007 but Creekmore Byrd "insisted that if Pickering accepted the position in the Senate that their relationship would not be able to continue." Barbour eventually named then-Rep. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) to Lott’s seat. Once again, her husbands choice to pass up a senate seat in order to maintain his relationship with his mistrees was her fault and therefore, she is responsible for the loss of income that she and her horny husband suffered.

It's sick! - It's just plain old sick a twisted the way that these women rationalize their own failures.

"I still believe it is in the best interest of our five boys if our differences are resolved privately and before the appropriate court and not in the media," Pickering said in a statement, according to The Associated Press. So she wants to do this "privately", but is giving quotes to the God Damn Associated Press! -

Pickering is now a lobbyist for Cellular South, a telecom company owned by Creekmore Byrd’s family. Perhaps Mrs. Pickering should simply come to terms with the fact that she picked the wrong man to be her husband and that if it hadn't been Mrs. Byrd, it would have eventually been someone else.

AMERICAN CULTURE: Difficult To Define

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American Culture: Difficult To Define

Perhaps it is time to define American Culture once and for all. If the French can be French and the Koreans Korean, or the Germans German and so on, Americans need to stop putting a national oragin of choice before the word American. The term Latin-American has slowly shifted to apply to Americans that just happen to have Latin ancestory and the same applies to Asian-Americans. Yet "Caucasian or White" Americans don't seem to be subjected to this labeling.

Ironically, they tend to do it themselves, but only when it suits a perticular purpose. We've all heard the expression "as American as apple pie" when in fact apple pie has origins that no one nation can claim absolutely. In the grand scheme of things, our 250 plus years as a nation is but a blink of the eye compared to nations that pre-date the fall of the Roman Empire.

I find it ironic, particularly among those seeking political office, claim to be the personification of American patriotism on their way to Washington, yet they're first to disect them selves into illogical percentages of their ansestors. One day they're red blooded, flag waving, apple pie eating, 4th of July celebrating Americans, but when the campaign season is over, they're suddenly half German, half Dutch or some other combination even if their ancestors immigrated to America several generations ago.

I, Chico Brisbane was born in Northern California in the late 1960's to a pair of teenage college students who came to America from Spain and Scotland. On my 13th birthday, becoming an official teenager took a back seat to my parents becoming American citizens with all of the rights and priviliges that their own son has had from the second that he took in his first breath of air on this earth and on this American soil. I've never seen my parents so humbled as they were the day that the held a small American flag in thier left hand while they raised their right hand to take an oath to pledge their allegance to this great nation.

Inspite of the birthplace of my parents, it has never been nor will it ever be that I am somehow 50% Spanish and 50% Scotish. When you are turely 100% American as I consider myself to be, it is mathmatically impossible to be anything else. To try to convince me otherwise, would be like trying to teach a cat to chase a dog up a tree.

If we can all embrace the fact for cultural purposes, that the Native Americans are the cornerstone for what has become The United States of America, it should be fairly simple to assemble an American culture. I once asked my friend Bobby Killsplenty, a Native American, if they celebrated Thanksgiving on the reservation and his response made me sorry that I asked.

"Well........just the first time I suppose, but things got really fucked up after that, you know?" He said through clinched teeth.

Bobby and I were only 11 when I asked that question and I should have known better because I was not oblivious to the difference in his living conditions on the reservation to mine in the San Diego suburbs just a few miles away. His family made a living crafting jewelry and leathergoods and selling it to "white men" at the roadside where the edge of the asphault and the dirt shoulder creates the dividing line between the Soverign Nation and The United States. Fast forward 35 years and it's amazing to contemplate the reversal of fortune between Bobby and myself.

I couldn't be more pleased and happy for my friend. Where tee-pee's once stood in Bobby's grandparents era, and roadside displays of handcrafted jewelry stood in Bobby's parents era, now stand multi-million dollar casinos, hotels, and luxery resorts where the "white men" hand over their money to Bobby and his band of American Indians hand over fist, 24 hours a day, and sometimes result in single gun shot wounds to the head in parks cars when some out of control "paleface" has lost his very last dollar to the "red man". - Payback is a bitch, I suppose.

It wasn't suprising to me when the movie star became California's Governor and went right after the Native Americans for a piece of their casino action. Being an immigrant - turned American citizen like my parents, Arnold seemed to posess a lack of American History that my parents studied hard, not just to understand, but to embrace. Nor did he seem to have a grasp of the terms and conditions that was forced upon the Indians when they were confined to thier reservations.

When they were trading goods over the century while America industrialized itself, Indians where out of sight and out of mind. However, in the 1980s and through the 1990's when quansit hut casinos trurned into glamerous locals that rivel those in Las Vegas, the white man returned once again to rape and pillage the land of the Indians. Sad, but true.

I don't care if the Indians assemble a fortune greater then America's GNP - They sould not have any tax liability whatsoever and that includes Americans who work on the reservation, but live elswhere. They'll pay taxes in plenty of other ways when they go to the grocery store, pay their cell phone bill, register their vehicles, not to mention California's outrageous property tax. But income tax both state and federal should be hands off since this money was earned in the Soverign Nation and not the United States regardless of the fact that the dividing line between to two is still nothing more then where the edge of the asphault meets the dirt at the side of the road.

I told Bobby recently that I am happy that his people wised up enough to see the true potential of thier land, but that I also hope that they never wise up enough to want the rest of it back. He smiled and said that I didn't need to worry about that.

"Consider it a gift paleface." He said as he drove away.

When the back driver side tire of his silver Mercedes kicked up a puff of dust when it crossed over from the dirt shoulder onto the asphault road, it brought back the significance of that dividing line that has been with me since we were kids. We had spent hour as boys jumping back and forth from the dirt to the asphault, when there was much less traffic of course. But we used to play this silly game that started off as "GET OFF MY LAND!" but then would always turn into something more peaceful along the lines of "Welcome to America" and "Welcome to The Soverign Nation." that resulted in ceremonial handshakes and the exchange of marbles, Cracker Jack toys and other trinkets. It is silly the games that boys will play, isn't it?

Chico Brisbane

GOP Ripe For Splitting Into A Third Party

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Recent polls from Gallop and CNN show that Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee are locked in a statistical dead heat for the 2012 nomination. It's way too early to determine who will be the actual GOP nominee. However, the fact that the top three are also failed contenders from the 2008 election says that the Republican mindset has not changed and they are looking to lose and lose big in 2012 if they have nothing to offer but a repeat performance.

With less then 20% of Americans identifying as Republican, the GOP could easily brake apart into a 3rd party for those Regan and Goldwater types that want no part of what Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, and the Bush Administration have made of what the GOP.

Mitt Romney probably has little chance of getting the hard core Christian vote, the same far right constinuency that is the currently the only united part of the GOP. In 2007 Bill Keller a prominent pastor based in Florida said "A vote for Romney is a vote for Satan". There are many like Keller and their opinion will not change by 2012. And let’s not forget he wanted to double the size of Guantanamo, flip flopped on abortion, gay rights, gun control and more.

Sarah Palin. What can we say about Sarah Palin that has not already been discussed all over the media. She caters to the lowest common denominator, is lacking in ability and intellect but is a good mom and hunter and sees herself as a "pit bull with lipstick". Hard to believe that there will be enough Republicans in 2012 that think she has the ability to be the leader of the free world. God help us.

Then we have Mike Huckabee. A nice guy. Former Governor of Arkansas and a baptist minister. He brought up his children so well that his son decided to hang a dog while he was a counselar at a Boys Scout Camp. During the Republican primary debates he was one of three potential nominees who stated that they did not believe in evolution. After Bush do we really need another "science is bullshit" in the White House?

The GOP has its work cut out for it. Let’s not forget the chairman of the RNC Michael Steele who dismissed Palin as "old school" and "not the generation of candidate I am trying to groom". A little full of himself. Yesterday he pitched the GOP to the NAACP stating that the "Republican Party wants to be a partner who works with you to put in place the tools necessary to sustain that growth and to bring out of poverty those so often left behind." What a joke. The rich white man’s party (except for Steele and a select few, very few) now wants to help the black community.

Jeff Sessions: We Gonna Do That Crack Cocain

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Jeff Sessions says "we gonna do that crack cocain thing the we talked about." WATCH:

GOP Not Pailing Around With Palin

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FROM THE JOSHUA BLOG: http://thejoshuablogs.blogspot.com/2009/07/conservadems-rotflol-thanks-but-no.html

Conservadems ROTFLOL: Thanks, but no thanks, Sarah.
Sarah Palin is a joke. Her own party doesn't want her campaigning for them (say nutter Gov. Rick Perry in TX). Rep. Heath Shuler, Rep. John Barrow, Sen. Mark Pryor & Sen. Ben Nelson - some of the most conservative Democrats there are don't want or need your help.

Rep. Heath Shuler via Politico:

“I don’t think so,” said Democratic Rep. Heath Shuler, who hails from the conservative far western reaches of North Carolina.

“You know, look,” Shuler continued, clearing his throat, “there may be things we agree on, but there’s a lot of things we disagree on. I’m satisfied by me campaigning for myself in my own district. I don’t need somebody else from, you know — to come into my district.”
So, no help from Alaska?

“I don’t think so,” Shuler said, smiling and glancing over at the friends he was showing around the Capitol.

Rep John Barrow via Politico:
Rep. John Barrow, who represents a number of rural counties around Augusta and Savannah, Ga., was already walking quickly out of a Democratic Caucus meeting when asked about a Palin visit.

“That’s a new one on me,” Barrow said. “I don’t think she wants to campaign for me.”
Happily getting into an elevator and away from the question, he added: “It’s really not for me to make suggestions to Ms. Palin; she’s got enough to worry about.”

Sen. Mark Pryor via Politico:
“I don’t know,” Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor said with a good-natured laugh. “I usually don’t ask people to come campaign for me. I hadn’t really thought about that possibility.”
And how would Palin play in Arkansas, a state the GOP ticket carried by 20 points last year?
“I think, like a lot of places, she has some people that really like her and, you know — but overall, I’m not sure how she’d do there,” Pryor said, before ducking into a Democratic Caucus luncheon.

Sen. Ben Nelson via Politico:
Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, perhaps the most conservative Democrat in the upper chamber, might as well have been asked if he wanted self-proclaimed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to bring a bit of Burlington to North Platte.

“I don’t have very many of my colleagues campaign for me,” Nelson responded quickly. “I generally have been out on my own doing it: two terms as governor, now two terms in the Senate.”

read more...

Rachel Maddow - Pat Buchanan Heated Exchange

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Rachel Maddow faced off with Patrick Buchannan today over Supreme Court nominee Sonya Sotomayor and particularly Buchanan's perception of affirmative action and the role that it plays in Sotomayor's qualifications to sit on the highest court. If you subscribe to Buchanan's point of view, admittance to a university via affirmative action is tainted and therefore so is the education learned regardless of where the student ranks among in his or her graduating class. Although Buchanan didn't say it directly, you can tell that he believes that affirmative action students are graded by a different standard.

The shocking part of the entire exchange was when Buchanan became outraged by the discrimination against "white folks" that results from affirmative action. Maddow suggested that the same conclusion could be drawn from the fact that 108 Supreme Court justices have been white men. Buchanan explaination was that the make up of the court is simply reflective of the fact that our nation was formed by white men, that white men signed the declaration of independence, that those who faught and died at Gettysberg where white men, and that even those who faught and died at Normandy where primarily white men. Buchanan even added that as late as the 1960s, America was a nation that was 90% white and 10% black, which was the group that was really discriminated against according to Buchanan as if it were the only group. What else could you conclude after a statement like that besides Buchanan having a wanton distain for Mexicans and those of Latin heritage.

It was clear that Maddow was taken aback by Buchanan's racist rant, but there seemed to be a hint of personal sadness and disappointment in a person she considers a collegue, if not a friend. She ended the segment by telling Buchanan that he was really dating himself by his assertions and that he was living back in the 50's.