@Randem

Bill Moyer (pictured) wears a "bullshit protector" while present at President Bush’s latest Rah-Rah session.

Priceless!

Flying Spaghetti Monster

If you haven’t yet heard of pastafarianism, you should read this. When you’re done, follow the link to the contact information for the Kansas School Board and start calling, writing, and emailing.

And now, please ignore the following, which I am including for the purpose of Google page rank:

Intelligent Design is NOT science. Jesus is the son of the flying spaghetti monster. God is a pasta dish. His Noodly Appendage touches me. Oh, and those rednecks on the Kansas State Board of Education need to be removed from the gene pool.

Thanks for ignoring that. You may resume reading with interest.

Click for video

This story about a rave in Utah being raided has become huge news quickly, at least in the blogosphere. Most of what I’m reading seems to be from the side of those who think it’s wrong that the party was raided, going as far as calling it fascism and describing beatings, dog attacks, and other excessive uses of force. But let’s slow it down a bit and look at this objectively…

On the one hand, you have the eyewitness account. The raver asserts that the party was 100% legal and that all necessary permits were in place. He says that “they had a 2 million dollar insurance policy for the event” and that “they had liscenced [sic] security guards at the gates”. He also asserts that “the police did not have a warrant.”

On the other hand, you have the statement issued by the Utah County Sheriff. The statement claims that “no mass gathering permit had been obtained for this incident”, but confirms that “a health department permit had been obtained and EMS personnel were contracted to be on scene for first aide”. The statement also says that “at least 60 arrests were made for weapons offenses, DUI, illegal underage consumption of alcohol, possession of marijuana, possession of cocaine, possession of methamphetamine, possession of ecstasy, distribution of ecstasy, resisting arrest, assault on a police officer, and disorderly conduct.”

Okay, so there you have the two sides of the story. But then there’s this video, which is being heavily circulated online in connection with the story. In the video, I really can’t say that I see anyone being beaten. Most of the officers (or are they soldiers?) appear to be in relatively casual, non-combat stances and are not waving or even holding their weapons, though there are assault rifles on their shoulders. There appear to be two people on the ground, each surrounded by officers, presumably being arrested, but while there is certainly some commotion going on around at least one of them as the camera turns, I honestly can’t say that I see officers beating up ravers. I presume that the barking dogs - which can be easily heard but not seen - are for drug sniffing.

So far, I don’t see the fascism. I will grant that without being there I can’t possibly know what happened. However, from what I know about raves, it seems like they got off easy.

If 60 people (out of 1500) were arrested for drugs and weapons, I’m guessing there are about 600 people who went home that night and breathed a sigh of relief for not getting caught. That assumption is supported by this part of the Sheriff’s statement:

A safety sweep was conducted after the crowd was ordered to disburse and numerous narcotic items were located scattered on the ground which included: cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, mushrooms, alcohol and large amounts of drug paraphernalia.

The assertions by the eyewitness that licensed security and EMS were on scene are not disputed by the law enforcement. But having security and paramedics on hand is not the same thing as having a permit. It doesn’t matter how good your intentions are or how responsible you thought you were being, the law is the law and you have to follow it. In fact, I think anyone who was organized enough to gather up 1500 people at $20 each - and provide security and EMS services - should be kicking himself for not being smart enough to get the proper permit. Moreover, he should have spoken to the relevant law enforcement office to make it known that such an event would be happening. NEWS FLASH: You were responsible for the safety of 1500 people, and you failed them.

Helicopters, assault rifles, tear gas, camoflauge-wearing soldiers…. why? Was that really necessary?

Do I disagree with the use of SWAT teams and riot control gear? Absolutely not. When you’re dealing with 1500 (and they had planned for twice as many!) people, you’re outnumbered. That is a textbook situation where riot control gear is necessary. The officers didn’t come in brandishing their weapons - their rifles were shouldered. The weren’t looking for trouble, they were just breaking up a gathering without a permit.

One of the promoters friends (a very small female) was attacked by one of the police dogs. As she struggled to get away from it, the police tackled her.

Oh my goodness! (Note the sarcasm.) A girl at a rave was targetted by a police dog… I wonder why that could be… You don’t think it was, perhaps, a drug sniffing dog, do you? And she was trying to get away, you say? Wouldn’t that be EXACTLY the situation in which police are supposed to tackle somebody? Come on, man.

So what about the side that nobody is telling? You know, the one about a party of 1500 people - expected to be as many as 3000 - who all paid $20 each to attend? That’s $30,000 cash, with possibly another $30,000 to come before the night was over. The “promoter” stood to make $60,000 in ONE night. I wonder if he’ll be offering bail to any of those kids that got arrested for attending his party? I’ll bet this asshole throws these parties every month - maybe even more often - and banks $200,000 a year. He doesn’t care about the kids and he probably doesn’t even care about the fines he’ll have to pay. He’ll probably be doing this all again a few weeks from now in the next county over.

And at $20 a head, I can tell you I would damn well be expecting more than just some loud dance music. Why does a kid cough up $20 to go to a rave? Let’s be honest here. Everyone knows that kids go to raves to get drugs, and booze, and maybe some sex. And speaking of alcohol, I don’t remember the raver kid saying anything about a liquor license.

The bottom line is that some asshole decided he can get rich by giving kids a place to get drunk and do drugs while listening to crappy music, but this time the cops caught him. There was no military assault, and there was no facism. This is nothing more than some kids who are pissed off because their party got ruined. And now their parents know what they were doing and they’re pissed. Boo hoo.

As Americans continues to wake up from their slumber, support for military action in Iraq continues to slip while protest and dissent continue to grow. As more and more people continue to question our military presence in a country where we clearly do not belong, the President insists that we need to stay. As our country grows restless, our President stays the course on his 30-day vacation.

An American Research Group study finds the President’s job approval at just 36%. Even fewer - a mere 33% - approve of his handling of the economy, with only 29% saying the national economy is getting better. At this point as President, Reagan had a 60% approval, Clinton had a 59% approval, and Richard Nixon had a 39% approval even in the midst of Watergate! That’s bad news for Dubya.

I wonder if this has any relation to the fact that Bush’s vacation days in Crawford alone are totalling over 325 days. After all, this isn’t a hard number to understand. There are 365 days in a year, so that means that in his 5 years as President of the United States, George Bush has spent almost one year at the Crawford ranch. By way of comparison, I’m lucky if I get 2 weeks of vacation each year, so in the same 5 years I’ve had less than 70 — in reality, probably closer to 50 — days of vacation. I’m sure there are a LOT of Americans who haven’t been as lucky as me, and who probably get pretty pissed off when they think about the guy who says “not on my watch” taking so much time off from his post.

The rumors are true. Canon will release the EOS 5D in October, at an estimated street price of $3300. It will feature a 12.8 megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor powered by Canon’s DIGIC II processor.

The 5D will also feature a new high-speed, vertical travel, focal plane shutter rated for 100,000 shots. Shots will be viewed on a new 2.5" TFT LCD with a 170-degree viewing angle. Autofocus will use a new 9-point system with six "Supplemental AF points".

Visit Canon’s EOS 5D page.

Since Bush took office in 2000, the Republican party seems to have done nothing but commit crime after crime after crime all while doing little or nothing for the country they claim to serve.

In light of the latest conviction this week in Ohio, I thought it would be nice to start a running count of the crimes of the Republican party, to really give this fact the impact it needs:

• James Tobin, former RNC official
  Jim Tobin was Bush’s 2004 campaign chairman for New England, but he’s better known as the guy who orchestrated the jamming of Democratic and labor union phone banks on Election Day 2002. In spite of the RNC’s “zero tolerance” policy against vote tampering, they have paid over $700,000 for lawyers defending Tobin.
• Karl Rove, White House deputy chief of staff
  Karl Rove leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to the press in attempt to quiet criticism of the case for war in Iraq. When investigation into the leak began, Rove lied to federal investigators, and withheld information.
• John Ashcroft, former attorney general
  John Ashcroft - as attorney general - stalled the investigation of his long-time friend and business associate Karl Rove for leaking the CIA officer’s identity. After mounting pressure, Ashcroft finally recused himself from the case, and eventually retired from his position as attorney general. This week, the leak investigation drew his name back into the spotlight.
• Scooter Libby, chief of staff to the Vice-President
  I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is the second of two sources in the White House who breached national security by leaking the CIA agent’s identity to the press.
• Randall “Duke” Cunningham, California Representative
  Government lawyers filed a lawsuit last month seeking forfeiture of Cunningham’s Rancho Santa Fe house, a clear indication that prosecutors believe they have found proof of bribery violations by the congressman. Cunningham sold his house to a Pentagon contractor who sold it a few months later at a $700,000 loss, while the contractor’s company was getting millions of dollars in government contracts. Since then, he has been under investigation for: living rent-free aboard the contractor’s yacht, accepting thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the contractor, deals with a businessman convicted in a kickback scheme, and flying in a private jet leased by another contractor whose company has also gotten millions of dollars in Pentagon contracts.
• Tom DeLay, Texas Representative
  Tom DeLay has been under investigation for a few years now for ethics violations regarding ties to lobbyists, foreign trips, and use of campaign funds.
• Jack Abramoff, Republican lobbyist
  Jack Abramoff was indicted in Florida on August 11 on charges that he defrauded two lenders of $60 million to buy a casino cruise line. Abramoff is also under investigation over millions of dollars he was paid by an Indian tribe for lobbying efforts, and he is closely linked to Tom DeLay.
• Conrad Burns, Montana Senator
  Conrad Burns was the #1 recipient of campaign contributions from Jack Abramoff. He was also nice enough to hire Shawn Vasell, former top aide to Abramoff, as his Montana state director. Vasell was recently charged with four counts of poaching for illegally killing a dear.
• Tom Noe, former Republican county chair
  Tom Noe helped shuffle some voting laws before 2004 that certainly helped in Bush’s sham re-election. But better yet, Noe - a rare coin dealer - got authority to invest $50 million of Ohio’s funds into rare coins and baseball cards. When $300,000 worth of gold coins went missing, eyebrows got raised. Now his lawyer acknowledges that up to $12 million in assets can not be accounted for.
• Bob Taft, Ohio Governor
  Taft was the first Ohio governor ever charged with a crime. He was convicted of failing to disclose 52 gifts including dinners, golf outings and professional hockey tickets, all worth about $5,800 dollars.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger, Caw-le-fawn-ya Governator
  Schwarzenegger is fighting ethics charges regarding some lucrative magazine endorsements that were still paying him money while he ran California as its governor.

If I missed anybody, let me know!

UPDATE
Andrew Taylor at the Associated Press seems to see the same trend I do, though he also points out Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana, a Democrat whose home was raided this month in relation to a scandal of his own. Having a scandalous Democrat does take some of the fire out of the "crooked Republicans" argument, but nearly a dozen of them versus one of ours still makes a strong argument, I think.

I can’t believe this hypocrisy…

An employer at a local company forwards propaganda emails to his staff every morning. Before the 2004 election, those emails centered around lies smearing John Kerry, John Edwards, their wives, and their political histories. The staff of this company received emails straight from the CEO instructing them to vote for George Bush and painting Kerry as a traitor.

[Hypocrisy #1: Kerry was a decorated veteran who served in Vietnam, while Bush ditched his military service.]

After the election, the CEO’s (almost daily) emails took a less political and more racial tone. They painted a picture of all Arabs and Muslims as gun-waiving, terrorists. Sometimes they included anecdotes and jokes mocking “towel-heads” and cheering for their destruction at the hands of our military. Often, the message was “let’s just blow all of those Jesus-haters up and take all their oil so I don’t have to pay so much for gas.

[Hypocrisy #2: As a Jewish man, one would expect this CEO to be far more sensitive to racism and religious persecution.]

At times, some of the employees would forward similar emails to each other, with the implied understanding that by sending out political opinions by email the CEO must be endorsing such behavior. Most of these employees chose to forward stories from CNN, MSNBC, and other news sources, in the spirit of passing on information regarded as fact rather than imposing political opinions that could lead to an unfriendly atmosphere at work. After only about one week, the CEO put an end to that, sending out a company policy email that went something like this:

CAN WE STOP THE BUSH BASHING PLEASE.
I THINK WE HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO DEAL WITH.
HE IS ALSO YOUR PRESIDENT, DISAGREE WITH HIM OR NOT HE DESERVES OUR RESPECT.

[Hypocrisy #3: He can send his extreme political opinions based on little or no fact to the entire company (with the weight of the CEO’s name on the email, mind you) but a handful of people who forward news articles to each other are accused of “Bush bashing” and must be silenced.]

Almost two months after this CEO put an end to any sharing of facts which paint the Administration in a bad light, this CEO continues to forward conservative propaganda, Republican talking points, and stories encouraging racist, religious, and political discrimination to his employees. Emails containing derrogatory messages about Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Jesse Jackson, the French, Iraqis, and so on.

[Hypocrisy #4: This hypocrite tells his employees they should respect the President and then follows that by disrespecting President Bill Clinton.]

This week, the hypocrite gave a copy of Bernard Goldberg’s 100 People Who Are Ruining America to one of the employees who was accused of “Bush bashing”. Give me a break, man. This guy is clearly trying to use his authority over his employees to force his political belief onto them. This is morally reproachable, and it’s just another example of how the right-wing operates: as bullies.

Ken Sanders gives us all a challenge in his blog The Politics of Dissent.

It was Theodore Roosevelt, twenty-sixth President of the United States and a Republican, who famously said in 1918, "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

…

Those who, in the name of nationalism disguised as patriotism, would remain silent when faced with the Bush administration’s common plan to wage war and torture captives in violation of customary and treaty-based international law; those who would waive their rights while they wave their flags; those who would turn a blind eye to evidence that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to justify its preconceived war; they would do well to consider the oath of office taken by all members of the civil service or uniformed services. The oath is not to the President or any other person. Rather, those who take the oath swear to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

I added emphasis to those last two words, because that is what so many Americans seem to have forgotten. Enemies don’t just come from overseas. An enemy of the Constitution happens to live in the White House… a powerful enemy who uses his job title to appoint other enemies of the Constitution to other prominent positions in our government… an enemy against whom our country must be defended.

A personal, up close look into Camp Casey, kind of gives it all a bit more meaning.

Over at Capitol Hill Blue, Doug Thompson says the President is out of control:

Decreasing job approval ratings and increased criticism within his own party drives the President’s paranoia even higher. Bush, in a meeting with senior advisors, called Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist a “god-damned traitor” for opposing him on stem-cell research.

“There’s real concern in the West Wing that the President is losing it,” a high-level aide told me recently.

A year ago, this web site discovered the White House physician prescribed anti-depressants for Bush. The news came after revelations that the President’s wide mood swings led some administration staffers to doubt his sanity.

Although GOP loyalists dismissed the reports an anti-Bush propaganda, the reports were later confirmed by prominent George Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Dr. Frank diagnosed the President as a “paranoid meglomaniac” and “untreated alcoholic” whose “lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions and pumping his hand gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad” showcase Bush’s instabilities.