Everything for Youns

This is such a hilarious commentary from Bill Maher on HBO that I had to repeat it here:

Last week, one of the biggest evangelical leaders in America, the Reverend Ted Haggard, was outed for drugs and extramarital gay sex with a male prostitute. Or as Fox News reported it, “John Kerry hates our troops.”

Reverend Haggard’s plight led many to ask, “Is it genetic? I mean, can a man actually be born a hypocrite?” Because Ted Haggard was the leader of a mega-church. And mega-churches are presided over by the same skeevy, door-to-door Bible salesmen that we’ve always had, just in an age of better technology. But they’re selling the same thing: fear. Fear to keep you in line. And to get your money.

And it’s not a coincidence the Republican Party has, in recent years, operated in the same way. It’s also no coincidence that people of too much faith just don’t see reality.

New Rules -from Bill Maher - Read them here!

So much for “Republican Values” for these members of the House:

–AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl

–AZ-01: Rick Renzi

–AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth

–CA-04: John Doolittle

–CA-11: Richard Pombo

–CA-50: Brian Bilbray

–CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave

–CO-05: Doug Lamborn

–CO-07: Rick O’Donnell

–CT-04: Christopher Shays

–FL-13: Vernon Buchanan

–FL-16: Joe Negron

–FL-22: Clay Shaw

–ID-01: Bill Sali

–IL-06: Peter Roskam

–IL-10: Mark Kirk

–IL-14: Dennis Hastert

–IN-02: Chris Chocola

–IN-08: John Hostettler

–IA-01: Mike Whalen

–KS-02: Jim Ryun

–KY-03: Anne Northup

–KY-04: Geoff Davis

–MD-Sen: Michael Steele

–MN-01: Gil Gutknecht

–MN-06: Michele Bachmann

–MO-Sen: Jim Talent

–MT-Sen: Conrad Burns

–NV-03: Jon Porter

–NH-02: Charlie Bass

–NJ-07: Mike Ferguson

–NM-01: Heather Wilson

–NY-03: Peter King

–NY-20: John Sweeney

–NY-26: Tom Reynolds

–NY-29: Randy Kuhl

–NC-08: Robin Hayes

–NC-11: Charles Taylor

–OH-01: Steve Chabot

–OH-02: Jean Schmidt

–OH-15: Deborah Pryce

–OH-18: Joy Padgett

–PA-04: Melissa Hart

–PA-07: Curt Weldon

–PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick

–PA-10: Don Sherwood

–RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee

–TN-Sen: Bob Corker

–VA-Sen: George Allen

–VA-10: Frank Wolf

–WA-Sen: Mike McGavick

–WA-08: Dave Reichert

In case anyone hasn’t heard or seen about this - What happens to all those unused Embryos? The Religious Right makes you believe these are “little humans with a soul” and therefore fight against any stem cell research that could be beneficial to all mankind. The religious right’s key talking point throughout this battle has been focused on “defending embryos” — which they consider to be the same as a walking, talking 5 year old. So, what happens to all those unused embryous that cannot be used - watch this video for the answer ….

Here’s the Answer on What happens to all those unused Embryos.

I think they need to change their “Values” slogan to “Devalue”.

youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y22Y90RCF3Y”

I couldn’t have said it better then on KOS:

They are vehemently against abortion, they resist progressive woman’s rights. They view homosexuality as a crime against nature and God, some advocate the death penalty as an option for it. Separation of Church and State is despised by these folks; they insist the nation is founded on the principles of their religion, and they work hard to bring that de facto theocracy about. They deplore strong language, gay characters, and sexual content on TV and in the media. And they ignore the Geneva Convention when it suits their ideological purposes, including provisions against torture or due process. They’re anti-stem cell research, pro-creationism, and generally distrustful of science. These folks are easily whipped into a state of frenzy with ideological manipulation to the point where they will commit violence, or at least tacitly endorse that violence is acceptable, if it advances their Divine agenda. They then take great pains to justify that violence, including unprovoked attack of civilian areas, under certain conditions, with convoluted theological gymnastics. They are almost to the man pro-death penalty … Am I railing against the religious right again?

If you feel like you identify, then you have company, and you may be surprised ….

Read More here!

Seems like the U.S. is notorious for overthrowing governments that it doesn’t like or that major U.S. corporations could lose business relationships. A new book by Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq, details the past relationships we had with Iran that many people, especially neocons, do not know or do not want to acknowledge. Kinzer reminds us:

In 1953 the brutal, venal shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was pushed into exile by Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister.

“Modern Iran has produced few figures of Mossadegh’s stature,” Kinzer says.

Iranians loved Mossadegh. He made clear that his two ambitions were to set up a lasting democracy and to strengthen nationalism — by which he meant get rid of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., which had been robbing Iran for half a century. Indeed, the British company had been earning each year as much as all the royalties it paid Iran over 50 years. Mossadegh intended to recapture those riches to rebuild Iran.

In a scheme to get rid of Mossadegh, the British enlisted Secretary of State Dulles; he in turn enlisted his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, and what ensued was a truly masterful piece of skullduggery. First came a propaganda campaign to convince the West that Mossadegh was a communist, which in the U.S. of the 1950s put him on the level of a child molester. Actually, Mossadegh hated communists, but most of our press swallowed the lie. Time Magazine had previously called Mossadegh “the Iranian George Washington” and “the most world-renowned man his ancient race had produced for centuries.” Now it called him “one of the worst calamities to the anti-communist world since the Red conquest of China.”

The propaganda program on the outside was followed by a bogus “revolution” inside Iran, with a CIA agent-provocateur hiring such a huge army of thugs and terrorists to roam the streets of Tehran that the town fell into violent anarchy. The CIA plotters ousted Mossadegh and restored the shah to his Peacock Throne.

For Secretary of State Dulles and his old law clients — including Gulf Oil Corp., Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, Texaco Inc., and Mobil Corp., who were subsequently allowed to take 40 percent of Iran’s oil supply — the shah’s return was a happy and very lucrative event. But, Kinzer reminds us, “The shah did not tolerate dissent [to silence some, he simply killed them] and repressed opposition newspapers, political parties, trade unions, and civic groups. As a result, the only place Iranian dissidents could find a home was in mosques and religious schools, many of which were controlled by” radical fundamentalists. So when the revolution against the shah finally broke out in 1979, it was inevitable that these clerics led it.

Sound familiar to anyone today? We are still in the Inquisition and Crusades - it’s only a different time period now. Nothing has changed.

President Bush and the Republican Party find strong support among evangelical voters. But in his new book, Thy Kingdom Come, author Randall Balmer says that allegiance is misplaced.”I don’t find much that I recognize as Christian” in the religious right, says Balmer, a professor of religion at Barnard College, Columbia University and contributing editor to Christianity Today.

He says blind allegiance to the Republican Party has distorted the faith of politically active evangelicals, leading them to misguided positions on issues such as abortion and homosexuality.

“They have taken something that is lovely and redemptive and turned it into something that is ugly and retributive,” Balmer says.

He argues that modern evangelicals have abandoned the spirit of their movement, which was founded in 19th-century activism on issues that helped those on the fringes of society: abolition, women’s suffrage and universal education.

“I don’t find any correlation in the agenda of the religious right today,” Balmer says.

I've often wondered about those remaining 30% who blindly follow Bush.  Who are they?  What do they really think?  Do they really support their Party over Principle no matter who is in charge?  Do they not live in reality or read and see what is going on in this world and to their country or do they like to live in fantasy and blame everything on everyone else (especially anything remotely liberal)?

Well an article in The Progressive Daily Beacon answered alot for instance:

I believe that this blindness of the Bush faithful, this unwillingness or maybe inability to admit even a micro-fault in their President, is as dangerous to the nation, in a way, as any terrorist attack could be, for the desire and goal of such people is obviously not to enter into civil, reasoned discussions of Bush’s failed policies, but instead to silence the opposition completely in a country whose chief claim to fame, ironically, is precisely freedom of expression. And I have little doubt that the die-hards among the Bush worshippers, if they could, would gleefully resort to stronger methods than mere verbal slurs to ensure that silence.

And as the article points out, I also believe that we are much like pre-1930 Germany.  Do you actually believe everyone in that nation knew that what was about to happen was one of the worst nightmares ever to hit this world?  Those who dared speak out were unpatriotic and were finally silenced.  Their civil liberties were slowly eroded away and they stood for it all in the name of protecting their nation.  Their leader was a devote Christian, often quoting scripture in his speaches to his followers.  Sound familiar?

How can anyone defend the failed policies in Iraq?  A nation that HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11!  All the while Osama Bin Laden is running lose and the Taliban are slowly taking control of Afghanistan once again!  But Bush can keep the blinders on his faithful.  How can a true Christian follow someone who ignores the planet and it's warnings of Global Warming?  All he can do is smirk and shrug it off when faced with the questions pertaining to supporting the rest of the world in the Kyoto Accord as if Global Warming doesn't exist.

Not to mention the rampant cronyism, illegal wiretaps, secret prisons, leaks from his own office, bungling a natural disaster in our own nation which still is a mess, the list goes on and on!  The more failures and mismanagement from Bush, the more his faithful demonize his critics with an intensity that grows with each mishap.  Why create an idol when it is clear that this is what the "Christian" right is doing?

It must be true - the Blind are leading the Blind.  But what is pitiful is that the idolators choose to be blind!  A true American, Christian and Patriot will always questions it's leaders, point out mistakes, hold their elected representatives accountable all without fear of reprisals and assaults.  To silence the opposition is to remove the last vestage of democracy from our nation.  Is this what they want?  Another Nazi Germany or as in today, another Iran controlled by the Conservative Religious fringe?

Gotta Love this one … since it's time for elections and bringing on those big bad Gays as Voting Foder for the GOP.

Posted over at The Huffington Post and written by Paul Hipp

http://gay-gop.cf.huffingtonpost.com/

The song is a hoot and points to the hyprocisy of the GOP with all the problems this world is facing, they decide to waste the Senates time on trying to stop those big bad Gays from getting married and ruining all those Hetrosexual marriages. We all know how sacred their marriages are when we find their Divorce Software on sale at Office Max! And for all your Religous-Right freaks who fall for this - we know your heart is as cold and hardened as the Sadacees in Christ's time.

This is just another division and wedge issue from the "Compassionate Conservative" who is the divider (I mean decider). Even his own house is divided on this issue as pointed out by Insight News, this issue pitts Bush against his own wife!

We all know a House Divided Against Itself will Fall!! And I can't wait to hear that crashing sound!

So we are now told to just wait another 6 months to see what happens in Iraq before we decide what to do.  Well hasn't that time past already ….. 

"The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time."
(New York Times, 11/30/03)

"What I absolutely don't understand is just at the moment when we finally have a UN-approved Iraqi-caretaker government made up of—I know a lot of these guys—reasonably decent people and more than reasonably decent people, everyone wants to declare it's over. I don't get it. It might be over in a week, it might be over in a month, it might be over in six months, but what's the rush? Can we let this play out, please?"
(NPR's Fresh Air, 6/3/04)

"What we're gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war."
(CBS's Face the Nation, 10/3/04)

"I think we're in the end game now…. I think we're in a six-month window here where it's going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt I think the next congressional election—that's my own feeling— let alone the presidential one."
(NBC's Meet the Press, 9/25/05)

"We're at the beginning of I think the decisive I would say six months in Iraq, OK, because I feel like this election—you know, I felt from the beginning Iraq was going to be ultimately, Charlie, what Iraqis make of it."
(PBS's Charlie Rose Show, 12/20/05)

”I think we're in the end game there, in the next three to six months, Bob. We've got for the first time an Iraqi government elected on the basis of an Iraqi constitution. Either they're going to produce the kind of inclusive consensual government that we aspire to in the near term, in which case America will stick with it, or they're not, in which case I think the bottom's going to fall out."
(CBS, 1/31/06)

"Can Iraqis get this government together? If they do, I think the American public will continue to want to support the effort there to try to produce a decent, stable Iraq. But if they don't, then I think the bottom is going to fall out of public support here for the whole Iraq endeavor. So one way or another, I think we're in the end game in the sense it's going to be decided in the next weeks or months whether there's an Iraq there worth investing in. And that is something only Iraqis can tell us."
(CNN, 4/23/06)

"Well, I think that we're going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we're going to have to just let this play out."
(MSNBC's Hardball, 5/11/06)

My thoughts - just wait another 6 months (for the mid-term elections) and Yes things will be changing alright!

Well we're in another election year and it's just about time (only 6 months away from mid-term elections) to pull the "Gay" card again! The GOP constantly loves to play up to the Religious-Right by making those bad Gays a political ploy!  And only the ignorant, bigoted, and hate-filled fall for it.
With their president's poll numbers in the toilet and their own Congressional numbers even worse, they are anxious to hold on to their GOP Congressional majority by motivating their Religious-Right base to vote in November by making those Gays, who the Right loves to hate all in a Christian way mind you, a target.

The Republicans intend to trot out and force Congressional votes on the so-called "Marriage Protection Amendment", which in fact would 'protect' discrimination by writing it into the United States Consitution.

In an effort to force Senators to vote for their agenda and as a way to point them out and use it against them in November, groups like Focus on the Family have set a goal of sending 1 million postcards to Congress in the coming weeks. They are seeking the adoption of an amendment that, in addition to barring marriage equality, would interfere with state and local efforts to adopt civil union or domestic partnership policies. It would enshrine the Radical Right’s religious views in our founding document, thus upending religious liberty and imposing a single exclusionary ideology on all governmental entities throughout the country and people of differing faiths.

Senator Frist plans to force a Senate vote in early June. It is urgent that Senators hear from you that our American values support equality and oppose discrimination and that we want them to oppose this discriminatory amendment. Email your senators now.

In an ABC poll taken the last time this amendment was being pushed, only 20 percent of Americans support amending the Constitution to prohibit same sex marriage.

I strongly oppose the adoption of an amendment to the Constitution that would require discrimination against any specific group of Americans. The so-called "Marriage Protection Act" is a betrayal of the American principles of equality and fairness and would enshrine discrimination into our Constitution for the first time. Please oppose this misguided effort to amend our Constitution.

People like "Focus on Family" do not have any idea what the word 'family' means! Pandering to these Religious-Right Zealots is like catering to the Extremists in any nation, like Al-Queda. Their views are not the majority views, although they would like to see a Theocracy where their religion is The Religion.

As a Lutheran and a Christian, I am appaled that anyone who claims the name of Christ would try to perpetrate discrimination and hate and legitimize it within our Constitution!

Do Not Pander to these extremists as we all know Senator Frist is only in this for the Political Game and wants it on record before the November elections. Don't let him get away with it and don't let this even get near the floor!

It's time to stop using people for political gain and start supporting equality for all!  Email your Senators Now to oppose this hatred!