It's time for truth, not "truthiness."


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Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Another scary story for Halloween...

If you're in California, and you can't bear to vote for any other person on the ballot, please, please vote for Debra. This is important. Watch this for a spine-tingling picture of why it's so important.

Loretta Sanchez detained by TSA

This is totally out of control...one more reason to throw the bastards out.

CNN: Critical congresswoman allegedly mistaken for terrorist.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Ms. Geek's recommendations for CA 2006

GOVERNOR Phil Angelides

LT. GOVERNOR John Garamendi

SECRETARY OF STATE Debra Bowen. This is vitally important for election protection. Deborah Bowen is STRONG on issues of voting rights. Do we want California to be spelled O-HI-O? No? Good. If you will be voting on any race, vote for Debra. PLEASE.

CONTROLLER John Chiang

TREASURER Bill Lockyer

ATTORNEY GENERAL Jerry Brown

INSURANCE COMMISSIONER Cruz M. Bustamante (hold your nose)

BOARD OF EQUALIZATION, 4th Dist. Judy Chu

U. S. SENATOR - Sit it out. Feinstein will win. But her bullshit votes over the past few years are enough to make me just not want to vote for her. Maybe I'll hold my nose and vote for her this time.

UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE

28th CD – Sit it out. Howard Berman is bought and paid for by the RIAA/MPAA. Byron DeLear is too radical for me.

STATE SENATOR 20th SD - Alex Padilla (God, I wish Cindy Montanez was the candidate. Alex really did a screw job on Cindy. Still, kicking him upstairs to State Senate might create an opening for Cindy Montanez on the LA City Council, where she can do some good.)

MEMBER OF THE ASSEMBLY

39th AD – Richard Alarcon (Hold your nose and vote.)

STATE MEASURES
CALIFORNIA PROPOSITIONS :

1A – Transportation Fund Protection. YES

1B – Highway Safety, Traffic Reduction, Air Quality and Port Security. YES. I am for limiting our bonded indebtedness until we get our financial house in order. However, port security is very important and Homeland Security doesn't consider it a priority. We should. This is actually a worthy investment.

1C – Housing and Emergency Shelter Trust Fund Act of 2006 NO. No more bonds except in dire emergency. No more borrow and binge Bush-shit. It's time to get our fiscal house in order and reform revenue-generating.

1D – Kindergarten-University Public Education Facilities NO. No more freaking bonds except in dire emergency. We've passed enough education bonds as it is.

1E – Disaster Preparedness and Flood Prevention OK, this is a dire emergency. The Sacramento Delta Levees are as endangered as the New Orleans Levees. YES.

83 – Sex Offenders, Sexually Violent Predators, Punishment, Residence Restrictions and Monitoring (Initiative Statute) Why don't we just freaking GET REAL and build colonies for violent sex offenders in the Mojave? This is going to cost a shipload of money and it will never be enough for the families of children victimized for sex offenders. Just get it over with and give LIFE IN PRISON TO CHILD MOLESTERS. One strike, you're out. If you can live with such a draconian law on the books, DO IT. PULL THE TRIGGER ON IT. No more half-measures. NO.

84 – Water Quality, Safety and Supply. Flood Control. Natural Resource Protection. Park Improvements. YES. Yeah, it's a bond. Yeah, it's a dire emergency. Fix the Sacramento Delta Levees, once and for all.

85 – Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of Minor’s Pregnancy. HELL NO. We voted this down last year. If we have to vote it down again and again every year we'll do it. California is a Pro-Choice State. Deal with it.

86 – Tax on Cigarettes. NO. Bad idea. We will have the highest excise taxes on cigarettes in the country. Currently New York State has the highest, and cigarette smuggling is a whole new category of crime Law Enforcement has to deal with. We need real comprehensive health care reform. We need to deal with our revenue crunch by making the tax code fairer and making the rich and big corporations pay their fair share.

Arnold vetoed "Health Care for California" which would have made Prop 86 redundant and given us a single-payer health care system which would have been the envy of the rest of the US. Arnold showed his true colors: bought and paid for by Big Pharma and Big Insurance.

Also...isn't anyone concerned that we are slouching towards prohibition of tobacco? We know what prohibition of alcohol, the "great experiment" did...it basically turned the Mafia into a growing concern and made the fortunes of people like Al Capone and the Five Families of New York. Yes, tobacco is a filthy habit. Yes, it endangers non-smokers too through second-hand smoke. But prohibition is never the answer.

87 – Alternative Energy. Research, Production, Incentives. Tax on California Oil Producers. The jury is out. We need to start looking to new alternatives for energy. I'm not sure this is the way forward, though. Give me a bit more time to consider.

88 – Education Funding. Real Property Parcel Tax. Not progressive enough. The tax would weigh heaviest on those poor folks and senior citizens who are fortunate enough to own a home. We need to start looking at revenue enhancement. But this is not the way. NO.

89 – Political Campaigns. Public Financing. Corporate Tax Increase. Campaign Contribution and Expenditure Limits. HELL YEAH. "Clean Elections" laws work in places like Arizona and Maine. We need to get people who aren't zillionaires back into public office. This horrible election cycle with its hideous expenditures should be ample proof we need public funding of elections. Financial Institutions and Corporations spend big sums of money on candidates they believe will advance their agenda. It would be poetic justice if they were required to spend big sums of money on candidates that advance the people's agenda. Again, HELL YEAH.

90 – Government Acquisition, Regulation of Private Property. HELL NO. This is a proposition only Tom McClintock could love. Dishonest, deceptive, just plain wrong. We need to do something about Eminent Domain overreach. This is not the way to do it.

CITY OF LOS ANGELES MEASURES :

H – Affordable Housing Bond. NO. LA City is suffering the same kind of bond trouble the State of CA is in. We need to look at increasing revenue, not saddling ourselves with bonded indebtedness.

J – Regional Fire Station Sites. YES, this fixes a problem with another measure that passed to build new fire stations. The measure is being held up because of the mistake in the wording of the measure. If we don't fix this mistake the City will have to deal with wielding the Eminent Domain axe and spending the money to compensate those who have to vacate properties. Modern communications technology and modern firefighting technology means that we can have small satellite stations and big regional fire stations.

R – Councilmember Term Limits of Three Terms; City Lobbying, Campaign Finance and Ethics Laws. HELL NO. We need to have campaign finance reform. We need to look scientifically and dispassionately on whether term limits make our Council less effective. But this was done in a very sneaky way and it has clauses that will make Neighborhood Councils even weaker than they already are. This is a power grab. Tell them NO.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Let's support the troops and seal the deal...

If you support the troops, VOTE DEMOCRATIC.

Here is a taste of what military families deal with on the home front.

Food insecurity.
Getting behind on the rent.
Winding up in a Payday Loan hole big enough to drive a hummer into. That was recently changed with a cap on what military families can be charged for loans...36%. THIRTY SIX PERCENT. A while back when we still had usury laws that was loan shark territory. Now we don't. Thanks Rethugs.

It still gets me pig-biting mad to see our own government which claims to honor the troops showing that they consider them cannon fodder only. Trillions for defense, and not a penny to the widows and orphans.

The best way you can support the troops is to go to the polls November 7th. Not Ocho de Noviembre as that damn GOP mailer sent to Spanish-surnamed people in the OC said, but NOVEMBER 7TH. Go there and VOTE. Do it for the people in uniform. Do it for their families. Do it for the little kids who have their "flat daddy" cutout to remind them what their real 3D daddy or mommy looks like...that is unless their daddy or mommy comes home in a 3D pine box in the dead of night, and gets delivered to the family in an unmarked van.

God this makes me mad.

I'm not alone, thankfully. Discussion on Kos.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

3,000 commas + 655,000 commas = ?


We're going to help the Iraqi people. Remember, 12 million of them voted in elections last December. That probably seems like a decade ago to you, but when the history is finally written, it will be just a comma.
-- George W. Bush


It might be "just a comma" to Dubya, but it's 3,000 brave servicemen and women dead. There's a comma in that figure because we write out figures that way. However, there are a hell of a lot more commas in Iraq when you take accepted scientific statistical practices and apply them to civilian deaths in Iraq since we walked in there and took over. The figure that the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the British medical journal The Lancet came up with comes from a survey of Iraqi families done by a group of brave doctors, and statistical extrapolations after that, the same kind that is used in almost any kind of statistical analysis. The figure they came up with of civilian deaths since 2003: 655,000 souls.

If we sum the two together, there have been 658,000 deaths in Iraq since "Shock and Awe." That's almost 2/3 of a MILLION people. This has ceased to be just a war in the third world and has become a genocide. Not quite yet in the ballpark of Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot, but closer to the Tutsi body count in Rwanda.

Do we really want all this on our consciences? Maybe we don't want it, but it's there in spite of our wishes. And we are continuing to add onto the body count with every day we stay in the country once thought of as the "cradle of civilization."

Think about it. This won't be a comma in the history books, it will be a big black blot.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601013_truthdiggers_lancet_study/

Sunday, October 08, 2006

IM-Gate: the first report of sex with Foley surfaces.

He claims he was 21 when the contact occurred, well after he served as a Congressional Page. But the first ex-page to claim he indeed had sexual relations with former Congressman Foley (R-FL) has come forward.

I suspect this won't be the last one to come forward, either.

It's not the sex, it's not the lies, it's the HYPOCRICY. The GOP: the party of Hypocricy. It's NOT OK if you're a Republican. Spread the meme.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

OMFG.

This is the scariest freaking article you are ever going to read. Why? Because it shows exactly how much Dubya and the Neocon brain trust played right into the Jihadis hands. And it shows exactly why even if we brought Osama bin'Laden and all his lieutenants into the dock at Den Haag we would never nip the Jihadi movement in the bud. It is out there, it is fiercer and more implacable than ANYONE has any idea of, and they can't be fought. Period.

We stirred up a big ass hornet's nest in the period just after WWI when the Victorious Powers carved up the Middle East like a turkey and dangled Palestine before the Zionist movement like a wishbone. The wheels of Jihad were set in motion before Osama bin'Laden was born into privilege in Saudi Arabia, and they will not stop until they get the entire historic Islamic Empire under a new Caliphate and proceed from there to refight the Crusades.

Folks...we are FUBAR. And for some reason, every move the crew that pull Dubya's strings has made since 9/11, and even BEFORE 9/11, has been exactly what the Jihadis want. What team are these mo-fos playing on, anyway?

Friday, October 06, 2006

Things that make you go hmmm...



Daily Kos. Chevron buying an ad for their astroturf website. Things that make you go hmmmm....

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Just when you thought Foley IM-Gate couldn't get weirder...

Bang! It gets weirder.


Fool me once, shame on you...


Fool me twice...


Ah me ah mah cain't get fooled again...or can you?

Get it right, Faux. He's a former REPUBLICAN. RE-PUB-LI-CAN. ENGLISH, do you speak it? Foley was a REPUBLICAN. And now he's in an undisclosed location and possibly facing charges for INDECENT SOLICITATION OF A MINOR. Do you grok INDECENT SOLICITATION?

Sometimes it just ain't worth it to get up in the morning, man.

Update: here's the video. (Well, once YouTube comes back up, if Faux News hasn't gotten 'em to pull it...)


Second update: Speaker of the GOP-dominated House Dennis Hastert...suddenly a Democrat? Bizarro world is in full effect.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Foley IM-gate drama-rama: enter the spectre of Xenu, stage right...

Maybe we shouldn't be upset about this year's "October Surprise" because we have the element of surprise this time. Disgraced House member Mark Foley (R - Florida 16th District) has become the weighty albatross around the GOP's neck that no amount of discussion of political malfeasance, fishy elections, lies in the days leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq has managed to become. Nothing like a good sex scandal to change things. After all, Dubya hasn't been impeached over his deception of the American public and the Congress of the United States, but Clinton was impeached over a blowjob between consenting adults. If it takes a sex scandal to flip the House and Senate, so be it.

Before I mention the latest turn of the screw with regard to Foley, let me just warn you that it does not come from an unimpeachable source yet. This information is off of Wonkette, hardly a reliable source. But if it pans out, it is quite interesting.

Apparently the "undisclosed rehab" that Foley has been sent to is run by the Church of Scientology.

This can mean two things.

Scenario one: Foley is getting Scientologist "reparative therapy" for not only alcohol and gambling, two foibles that Foley's people are copping to, but also his homosexuality, forced out of the closet by IM-Gate. From what I understand this is gnarly stuff, akin to the questionable "therapies" that led to the death of Lisa McPherson.

Scenario two: Foley is sufficiently famous enough to where he is safely in the arms of the Celebrity Center and laying low while this scandal blows over. That is, if it can blow over considering that the accusations Foley faces could rise to the level of criminal charges.

More pre-crisis Foley footsie with the Church of Scientology here:
Clearwatergate (C o S critic page)
C o S propaganda page: Clearwater Business Association hosts Foley

Foley coverup timeline here.