The GOP plan to "Block the Vote"

If this effort succeeds in stealing the White House again, by disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters, there will be rioting in the streets.

In this light, you can see the ACORN flap for what it is: just one piece of a scheme to do anything and everything - ethics and constitutionality be damned - to keep Democrats from voting. Pathetic? Pathological.

McCain campaign incites terrorism

The DoD defines terrorism as:

The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.

The US code reads: 

the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents;

Either definition easily applies to what is going on right now, provoked at least in part by the scurrilous lies being bandied about by the right concerning ACORN:

An ACORN community organizer received a death threat and the liberal activist group's Boston and Seattle offices were vandalized Thursday, reflecting mounting tensions over its role in registering 1.3 million mostly poor and minority Americans to vote next month.

Attorneys for the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now were notifying the FBI and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division of the incidents, said Brian Kettenring, a Florida-based spokesman for the group.

Republicans, including presidential candidate John McCain, have verbally attacked the group repeatedly in recent days, alleging a widespread vote-fraud scheme, although they've provided little proof. It was disclosed Thursday that the FBI is examining whether thousands of fraudulent voter-registration applications submitted by some ACORN workers were part of a systematic effort or isolated incidents.

Kettenring said that a senior ACORN staffer in Cleveland, after appearing on television this week, got an e-mail that said she "is going to have her life ended."

A female staffer in Providence, R.I., got a threatening call from someone who said words to the effect of "We know you get off work at 9," then uttered racial epithets, he said.

When is the McCain campaign going to realize that the sick, irresponsible attacks they are making on Obama, ACORN, and their political opponents in general, are fomenting hatred and violence? There is a breakdown in the moral fiber of our country underway, and McCain and Palin have become the leading cheerleaders for it. It's time for Americans to say "enough is enough."

Quote of the week

"I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president."
- Sen. John McCain

Two Minutes Hate

Was George Orwell a prophet, or is this really footage from a McCain-Palin rally?

BushCo vs. the planet - same old same old

One of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite Texans goes like this:

There are three things you never want to see:

• Water coming out of your electrical sockets.
• Flames shooting out of your sock drawer.
• A press release coming out of the White House that begins: "The Bush administration today announced revised standards for..."

- Jim Hightower - Thieves In High Places

Jim is right, as usual. As proof, I offer this.

The stated purpose of the proposed rule "Amending the Formats of the Lists of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants" is to enhance the clarity of the lists of endangered and threatened species. However, the rule's title and its complicated legalese disguise the fact that it instead proposes regulatory changes would make significant changes in the way endangered species are listed and habitat is protected.

If in place at the time, this rule may have stopped the listing and protection of the bald eagle, Canada lynx, grizzly bear, brown pelican, the gray wolf and the jaguar. The proposed rule narrowly defines "the geographic area where the species is listed for purposes of the Act." This deceptively simple change could be interpreted to limit the area that endangered species will be protected only to their current range, which is usually drastically smaller than their historic range.

Of course it's hardly the first time Bush has quietly moved to undercut the law of the land by executive fiat. And between John McCain's silence on Bush's gutting of the ESA and his attempts to ridicule as wasteful a Montana Grizzly Bear study that is likely to save the government millions of dollars on the one hand, and Sarah Palin's attempts to block protection for Polar Bears on the other - not to mention their mutual obsession with promoting offshore drilling - there's ample evidence that under four more years of the Republican regime, things would be likely to continue going from bad to worse for the environment. Like McCain's ad says, Washington is broken and he knows it. He damned well ought to - he's participated in the breaking.

41 years later, King's words ring true

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

A Time To Break Silence

Martin Luther King, Jr.

April, 1967

Quote of the month

...or maybe of the year:

Now, when I heard George Bush was reading my emails, I probably had the same reaction you did: George Bush can read?! Yes, he can. And this administration has read your phone records, credit card statements, mail, Internet logs. I can't tell if they're fighting a war on terror or producing the next season of "Cheaters." I mail myself a copy of the Constitution every morning just on the hope they'll open it and see what it says.

- Bill Maher, "New Rules" (Real Time, 3/16/2007)

Damn Right We're Angry

This sums it up rather nicely.

Yes, we’re angry at George W. Bush. We’re not angry at him because of who he sleeps with, and we’re not angry at him because we think he represents some socio-cultural movement we didn’t like 40 years ago, or because he hung out with a different crowd than we did in high school. We’re angry at him because of what he’s done.

It’s true, we don’t like the fact that the most powerful human being on the planet is such a ridiculous buffoon that he can’t put two coherent sentences together without beginning to giggle and shimmy his shoulders. But we’re not angry because we think he’s stupid, we’re angry because he treats us as though we’re stupid. We’re angry that he lied to us, and lied to us and lied to us again. We’re angry that when he lies to us it isn’t because he’s caught up in scandal or got caught doing something he shouldn’t have, it’s part of a carefully constructed plan to fool the public.

Yes, we’re angry about Iraq, and we may be for the rest of our lives. We get angry every day when we open our newspapers and see the photo of another young soldier who died for this, another one maimed for life, another one with a tormented and broken soul. We’re angry about the couple of trillion dollars this war will cost. We’re angry about the thousands of young men around the world have been driven into the arms of al Qaeda, who have decided to devote their lives to killing Americans because of this war. We’re angry about the thousands upon thousands of Iraqis who have died in the orgy of bloodshed we unleashed, and the living too, those whom we said we were coming to “liberate,” but who now find themselves in a suffocating, endless miasma of fear and misery and death.

We’re angry that when we talk about ending this monstrous war, the soulless hypocrites who are glad to send more and more men and women to be scarred and maimed and killed in Iraq have the gall to accuse us of not “supporting the troops.” We’re angry that people whose actions exhibit nothing but contempt for freedom and liberty and justice, who wouldn’t know real patriotism if it came up and smacked them across the face, pin a little flag on their lapel and say that we’re the ones who hate America.

- Paul Waldman, tompaine.com

You tell 'em, Paul. A little righteous indignation now and again is nothing to be ashamed of. It's time more of us stood up and said "We're mad as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore."

Military Medicine's New Spokesbandage

Meet Ouchie, the Walter Reed Band-Aid!