Robert's Virtual Soapbox

Fri, 16 May 2008 05:06:43 GMT

...and your little dog, too!

The wicked witch ain't dead yet

(No, this isn't a piece on how Billary Cunton, who is unimpeded by ethics or decency, won't fucking take no for an answer. Besides, politically she is dead.)

At my largely if not mostly gay and lesbian workplace in Sacramento today, my co-workers were jubilant: The (Repugnican-dominated) California Supreme Court correctly ruled today, 4-3, that it is unconstitutional for the state of California to deny same-sex couples the same marriage rights as heterosexual couples.

The case went to California's highest court after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom controversially allowed same-sex couples to marry in the city in 2004. The state Supreme Court put a halt to the marriages, and same-sex couples and human-rights organizations then sued for equal marriage rights.

California is now the second state to have legalized same-sex marriage -- Massachusetts was first, in 2004 -- but California is the nation's most populous state, so today's California Supreme Court ruling was momentous. Same-sex couples in California might be able to start legally wedding in about a month.

The wingnuts -- who can't be happy unless they're making others (usually members of historically already-oppressed minorities) miserable -- of course are trying to get an initiative on November's California ballot that, if voters pass it, would write bigotry and hatred into the California Constitution by prohibiting same-sex marriage in the state. That would trump the state Supreme Court's ruling of today -- the state Supreme Court can rule based only upon the contents of the state Constitution, and the current state Constitution does not prohibit same-sex marriage -- and potentially take the battle to the U.S. Supreme Court. And we still have the same 5-4 dynamic on the U.S. Supreme Court that installed Repugnican George W. Bush into the Oval Office despite the fact that the majority of American voters cast their ballots for Democrat Al Gore in November 2000.

So a victory for the haters in California in November would only delay the inevitable, which is full marriage rights for all American adults, regardless of their sexual orientation.

History shows that the wingnuts can hinder progress but that they can't halt it altogether. (They once fiercely protected slavery, for fuck's sake. OK, so now we have corporate slavery, but still...) And it's funny, isn't it, how the word "freedom" freely drips from the fangs of the wingnuts like the blood of Iraqi babies, yet their "freedom" is only for stupid white (presumably) straight "Christian" men?

Anyway, California voters last had their say on same-sex marriage in 2000, with the pro-hatred-and-bigotry Proposition 22, also called the "California Defense of Marriage Act," which amended the state code to make same-sex marriage illegal. (Prop 22 added these words to the state code: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.") Prop 22 -- which the California Supreme Court today ruled is unconstitutional (that is, violates the state Constitution) -- passed with 61 percent of the vote in 2000.

In March 2007, Field Poll reported that 43 percent of Californians approved of same-sex marriage and only about 50 percent disapproved. That's a significant change from the 61 percent who voted in favor of Prop 22 (and bigotry and hatred) in 2000. In March 2007, Field Poll noted:

Californians stand out from other Americans for both their level of support for same-sex marriage and the rate at which it is growing. In most of the country today, and in California in 1977, opponents of same-sex marriage outnumber supporters two to one. Yet, today Californians are more evenly split when asked about same-sex marriage, with about half disapproving and slightly fewer (43 percent) approving. When asked to choose between three options – allowing same-sex couples to legally marry, allowing them to form civil unions or domestic partnerships, or granting them no legal recognition – opinions in California split almost perfectly into thirds.

An analysis of statewide Field Poll surveys over the past twenty years by political scientists Gregory B. Lewis of Georgia State University and Charles W. Gossett of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona finds that Californians’ growing support for same-sex unions is due partly to individual attitude change, but mostly to generational replacement.

Age is one of the strongest predictors of opposition to same-sex marriage in California, but not because people are becoming more homophobic or sexually more conservative as they age. In every age group, people were at least four times as likely to say that they had become more accepting as that they had become more condemning of homosexual relations since they turned 18. Generational replacement is the key. Californians born in each decade tend to be more accepting of gay relationships and more willing to grant them legal recognition than those born the decade before.

[More here.]

My guess is that if the wingnuts manage to get their hateful, anti-American, anti-freedom initiative to write hatred and bigotry into the state Constitution on November's ballot, the initiative will fail. It might not fail by much, but my guess is that more than 50 percent of the voters will shoot it down. Then, at least, we will be able to say that the voters have spoken on the issue -- and that finally they have done the right thing.

Repugnican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger states that he respects the state Supreme Court's decision of today and that he opposes the effort of the wingnuts to write hatred and bigotry into the state Constitution. That's because Schwarzenegger, a Repugnican in a blue state, knows that he can side with the California Nazis only so much if he wants to politically survive in the state.

The gay pride march toward eventual fully recognized same-sex marriage is unstoppable. We'll have same-sex marriage one day in all 50 states. Slavery used to be acceptable in many of the states and interracial marriage once was much more socially unacceptable than it is today (on that topic, Wikipedia notes, mind-blowingly, that it was not until 1967 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the laws prohibiting interracial marriage that were still in effect in 16 states were unconstitutional).

Progress is inevitable. The only question is whether you are a progressive and help progress or whether you're a conservative -- a regressive -- and impede progress.

The regressives can slow us down, but they can't stop us.

So yes, let us munchkins celebrate today, because right now the wicked witch is down. But let's anticipate that, like Jason or Freddy, she'll be baaaaack for our ruby slippers -- and our little dogs, too! -- and let's be ready to fight tomorrow.

Some random thoughts of a Californian gay man on today's California Supreme Court ruling (in no certain order):

I wonder how many same-sex weddings I'm going to be invited to now. As I noted, many if not most of my co-workers are gay or lesbian. This could get expensive...
The U.S. (heterosexual, of course) divorce rate is pretty fucking high. Wikipedia quotes a source that says that "between 40 percent and 60 percent of new marriages will eventually end in divorce. The probability [of divorce] within ... the first five years [of marriage] is 20 percent, and the probability of its ending within the first 10 years is 33 percent...." So I am torn between thinking that we gay men and lesbians should be careful what we wish for where equal marriage rights are concerned and thinking that we gay men and lesbians should show the breeders how this thing called marriage is done and maintain a significantly lower divorce rate ourselves.
I never have felt that I needed societal or governmental approval of any coupling that I might have. I know what kind of a relationship I have with someone and don't need approval from without. And to me, any two people, heterosexual or homosexual, who are in a committed romantic/sexual relationship and who are living together are, in my mind, for all intents and purposes, married. I have long referred to my gay male friends and their live-in significant others as "husbands" -- fuck the law.
However, despite the fact that I don't need societal approval or recognition to feel that any relationship of mine is valid, it's infuckingarguable that it is unfuckingconstitutional to prohibit same-sex marriage just as it is unconstitutional to prohibit interracial marriage. Again: There. Is. Nothing. To. Fucking. Argue. About. Whether I decide to ever legally marry another man or not, any two men and any two women should have the right to legally marry each other should they wish -- regardless of how I might feel about marriage.
I anticipate that California's newly legalized same-sex marriage is here to stay, just as it is in Massachusetts. And I anticipate that over time, it will be less and less of a big deal for Californians -- even those who live in the red counties -- to see male couples and female couples acting as heterosexual couples do in public. I anticipate that California's progressiveness in legalizing same-sex marriage will result in an increase in same-sex couples' willingness to display their affection for each other in public and will result in a decrease in homophobia. An increase in gay men's and lesbians' courage to be themselves in public will lessen homophobia, and lessened homophobia will further increase gay men's and lesbian's courage to be themselves; the two will reinforce each other. The only reason that many people (even some homosexual people) have a hard time witnessing public acts of affection between same-sex couples is that they're just not used to seeing it. My advice to my fellow Californians is: Get used to it if you're not used to it yet. We're here, we're queer, and we're not going away.
Nauseatingly, both the Billary Cunton and the Barack Obama camps, unsurprisingly, have issued statements in the wake of today's momentous California Supreme Court decision that they support separate-but-unequal "civil unions" for same-sex couples and that it should be up to each state to decide whether to adopt legalized same-sex marriage. (The California Supreme Court rejected the ludicrous "separate but equal" philosophy of civil unions for same-sex couples, and there are some things -- such as slavery, voting rights, criminal law rights, abortion rights, interracial marriage rights and same-sex marriage rights -- that you just don't let every state decide for itself. "States' rights" sounds great, but oh, what some of the red states would do if only they could!) While I understand that a majority of Americans as a whole oppose legalized same-sex marriage, and therefore it would be politically risky, if not politically suicidal, for any 2008 presidential candidate to openly support legalized same-sex marriage, I still just can't swallow Obama's and Cunton's official line on same-sex marriage. I have always hated Billary and her perpetually wet index finger anyway, so there is no love lost there, but his pandering stance on same-sex marriage keeps me from wholeheartedly embracing Obama. While I think that it has been important, or at least worthwhile, to knock Cunton from the race so that a better Democrat is the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, I am undecided as to how much time, energy and money I'll spend on the Obama campaign after he finally wins the Democratic presidential nomination.
While I rarely use the term "breeders" to refer to heterosexuals (not all of them breed, after all), and while the term used to make me bristle (less now than it used to), the fact is that about the worst thing that anyone could do to the planet is to bring another human being into it. Six billion human beings on the planet is more than more than enough. We gay men and lesbians not only should be thanked, but should be monetarily rewarded, for the fact that we're not producing more consumers of the planet's limited resources. We just might end up saving the planet.

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:24:05 GMT

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:54:01 GMT

What do Repugnican John McCain and "Democrat" Billary Cunton have in common? Both of them want this guy's vote and will say anything to get it.

Barack Obama caves in

again to the cave people

(of whom Billary Cunton wants to be king)

Score another "victory" for the troglodytes.

First, Barack Obama felt it politically necessary to distance himself from the words of another person, his former pastor, even though most of his former pastor's "controversial" words were true.

Now, Obama is distancing himself from his own words.*

In radically dumbed-down America, Obama had the audacity to speak -- gasp! -- like a smart person!

Obama pointed out (I wildly paraphrase) the stupidity of economically suffering Americans to lash out at other groups that have nothing to do with their plight and to embrace guns (and guns' companions, violence and militarism) and Christofacism as "solutions" to their plight when the actual cause of their plight is the Repugnican Party that they so stupidly parodoxically embrace.

Obama committed the biggest sin that a politician possibly can commit in the United States of Amnesia: He told the unpleasant truth. He said something that a large red swath of the nation doesn't want to hear.

So huge is this cardinal sin that Obama found himself quasi-apologizing for having spoken the truth.

Billary Cunton, of course, being the cunt that she is, was quick to jump on the fabricated controversy.

Before I tell you what the cunt said, help me here: Billary Cunton is a Democrat, right? So while it's understandable that she would point out real or imagined differences between her and her Democratic rival Barack Obama, Cunton, being a Democrat -- right? -- isn't supposed to try to annihilate Obama, right? In case he gets the Democratic presidential nomination, right?

Really, I need your help here: Cunton does want the next president of the United States of Ancient Rome to be a Democrat, even if it is not she -- right?

Right?

I mean, John McCain, being a Bush-style Repugnican -- he's going to want to try to annihilate Obama, right? That's understandable. The Repugnicans are (supposed to be) the enemies of the Democrats.

So please please please please please tell me what the fuck is up with these words of Cunton: "Senator Obama's remarks were elitist and out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans." (Um, didn't the Repugnicans bash John Kerry as "elitist" and "out of touch"?)

Cunton went even further, using the I'm-just-like-one-of-you! lie that the Repugnicans use on the dumbfuck vote:

"I was raised with Midwestern values and an unshakable faith in America and its policies," she said. "Now, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it's a matter of constitutional right. Americans who believe in God believe it's a matter of personal faith. ...

"I grew up in a churchgoing family. ... [Cue the banjos...] The people of faith I know don't 'cling' to religion because they're bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich. ... I also disagree with Senator Obama's assertion that people in this country 'cling to guns' and have certain attitudes about immigration or trade simply out of frustration. ..."

Really, what's next for Billary Cunton? Will she wave a rifle over her head like Charlton Heston and declare that if anyone wants her rifle they'll have to pry it from her cold, dead fingers?

You know, it's pretty fucking clear that Obama was talking about the hate-mongers among us. He was talking about troglodytes like the self-anointed "minutemen," stupid white trash who stupidly blame their problems on Mexican "illegals" and who thus rush to the southern border with their rifles in their planet-killing trucks plastered with their "Support Our Stormtroopers" magnets in order to "protect" us from impoverished Mexicans who just want to work -- when the real enemy is the stupid rich evil white men who want us to focus our frustration and anger and rage on the weak and the powerless, like the impoverished Mexicans who just want to work, instead of on our real enemy: the stupid rich evil white men like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain (and Billary Cunton).

Obama wasn't talking about people who live in crime-ridden neighborhoods -- crime-ridden because of the Repugnican policy of social Darwinism, in which the lion's share of taxpayers' dollars are diverted from the things that the taxpayers need to the war profiteers (like Dick Cheney's Halliburton) via the shocking and awing of poor Middle Eastern nations -- who feel, perhaps correctly, that they need to possess a firearm in order to protect themselves.

He wasn't even talking about those who blow away Bambi's mother for sport.

Obama was, as far as I can tell, talking about the gun nuts: gun-toting, mouth-breathing violent ignoramuses who are terrified of everyone and everything and who thus think that they might have to blow someone away at any moment. And/or who must "protect" this Great White "Christian" Nation against someone whose skin is not white and/or who is not a fellow Christofascist.

Speaking of Christofascism, yes, there are two general brands of Christianity in the United States: The kind that pretty much understands the words of Jesus, and at least tries to follows the words of Jesus -- the so-called liberal Christians -- and the fundamentalist "Christians," the Christofascists, those who, paradoxically, are just as evil as the evil people that Jesus himself slams in the accounts of him in the New Testament. They see sin and evil everywhere except within themselves, where it is aplenty. Obviously, Obama was talking about the latter group, the hateful, hypocritical "Christian" camp, the camp that, unfortunately, we see and hear the most and that, very unfortunately, because of its visibility and its vocality, has become the ugly face of "Christianity" in the United States.

Fact is, the United States of America is quickly going the way of Ancient Rome.

A nation like ours can survive with a certain portion of its citizens being absolute dumbfucks.

But under the fat and lazy years of the Bill Clinton presidency and the fear-mongering and ignorance-worshipping years of the Bush II presidency, the United States of Amnesia has become critically stupid -- the dumbfucks have approached a critical mass, and if this dire situation is not corrected, don't expect the United States to last much longer.

If we follow Barack Obama, we have a chance at least, even in this eleventh hour, of saving our nation from ruin from the dumbfucks.

If we follow the likes of Billary Cunton -- who, just like the members of the Bush regime, doesn't give a flying fuck about the fate of the nation as long as she gets what she wants -- then we're doomed. If we follow the likes of Billary Cunton, we will get what we deserve, just as under George W. Bush we have gotten what we deserve.

"I don't think that it helps to divide our country into one America that is enlightened and one that is not," Cunton said in her continual piling upon of Barack Obama. (Um, has Billary Cunton been nearly as critical of John McCain as she has been of Obama? Really, whose fucking side is this cunt on?)

Well, unless you've lived in a fucking cave for the past several years -- and if you do live in a cave, Billary Cunton wants your vote! -- it will be obvious to you that it's a fucking fact that there are two Americas -- yes, the enlightened America and the unenlightened America, also known as the blue states and the red states, respectively, just as it was the case right before the Civil War, and if you look at a map of the slave states and the free states and the red states and the blue states, respectively, you will see a remarkable similarity:

Is it just a coincidence that Barack Obama, like Abraham Lincoln, cut his political teeth in the blue state of Illinois? And that Repugnican-ass-licking Billary Cunton sharpened her political fangs in the red state of Arkansas?

There still are two Americas, and I say, Let's fight this New (hopefully bloodless) Civil War!

Yes, let's make it One America -- one nation of enlightened people.

Billary Cunton says: Mass ignorance benefits me! Darkness rocks!

*At a fundraiser in San Francisco last weekend, Obama truthfully stated: "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years. ... And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 05:14:02 GMT

Cunton-Lieberman 2008?

'Democrat' Billary Cunton panders

to dumbfucks, Repugnican-style

When Repugnican-lovin' Connecticut Sen. Benedict Arn -- er, Joseph Lieberman -- lost the Democratic nomination to a real Democrat, he decided to run as an independent.

Gee, can we expect "Democrat" Billary Cunton to do the same when she loses the Democratic presidential nomination? Is her lust for personal political power at all costs not such that we could rule that out once she finally loses to real Democrat Barack Obama?*

Cunton's latest cuntiness is to attack frontrunner Obama for comments that he made last weekend in San Francisco -- and it is telling that Repugnican John McCain's campaign attacked Obama's comments, too. Ralph Nader had it right when he stated during the 2000 presidential campaign season that the Cunton "Democrats" and the Repugnicans are fucking indistinguishable.

According to Reuters, Obama said this at a fundraiser in San Francisco last weekend: "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Um, Obama was just telling the truth.

Rich Repugnican overlords and their wingnut propaganda machine, of which FOX Guarding the Henhouse "News" is the flagship, work hard and spend lots and lots of money to make sure that embittered, disenfranchised poor and working-class Americans don't identify the real cause of their misery: the rich overlords, most of whom, of course, are Repugnicans.

So the Repugnicans and their wingnut propaganda machine do everything they can to make undereducated, overworked, frustrated Americans angry at the wrong targets, such as Muslims ("Islamofascists"), feminists, gay men and lesbians, non-whites, liberals and other assorted bogeymen. The xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, racism and anti-intellectualism that the Repugnicans and their wingnut propaganda machine propagate are meant to keep the miserable masses from rising up and revolting against the rich.

With so many other "enemies" -- most of whom who are, ironically, relatively weak and powerless minority groups -- pointed out to them by the real enemy, the dumbfucks never go after the real cause of their problems: the stupid rich white men who control everything, most of whom are, of course, Repugnicans.

How did the McCain campaign respond to Obama's truth-telling at the fundraiser in San Francisco? Reports Reuters:

An aide to McCain called the fundraiser comments "remarkable and extremely revealing."

"It shows an elitism and condescension toward hard-working Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking," said Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to the Arizona senator. "It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans."

Oh, give me a fucking break. Like John McCain and his filthy rich Stepford wife Cindy really give a fuck about Joe Sixpack. Oh, yes, the Repugnicans -- who have put the nation into another Bush recession, who want the rich to have all of the tax breaks while working Americans shoulder the lion's share of the tax burden, and who have sent more than 4,000 of our young men and women off to slaughter in Iraq for the war profiteering of Dick Cheney's Halliburton and the other war-profiteering subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp (that's billions and billions of working Americans' tax dollars going to the war profiteers via Vietraq instead of to the things that Americans need, like education, health care, environmental protection and improvements in infrastructure) -- really give a flying fuck about poor and working-class Americans.

But the Repugnicans say that they care about these Americans, and these Americans, being dumbfucks, being undereducated and too overworked to educate themselves as to what's really going on -- not to mention being too distracted by such corporate-sponsored mind-numbing distractions and propagandafests as "American Idol" and FOX Guarding the Henhouse "News" -- buy it. They vote for Repugnicans like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders.

What Obama said about this segment of the American population -- what I call the dumbfuck vote -- was just the fucking truth.

I expect the McCain campaign to pounce on Obama, but what the fuck is the matter with Billary Cunton?

She said this in response to Obama's truth-telling: "Pennsylvania doesn't need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families."

(Notes Reuters: "Clinton ... once led Obama by double digits in polls in Pennsylvania, the next big battleground in their struggle for the right to face McCain in the November presidential election. That lead has dwindled to about 4 to 6 points in several recent polls in a state that has struggled from job losses and has a big population of blue-collar voters who have been Clinton's biggest backers.")

Like Billary Fucking Cunton cares any more about struggling Pennsylvanians any more than does John McCain. She says she cares about Pennsylvanians? She said that she came under sniper fire in Bosnia when the fact is that a little girl read her a poem in Bosnia. She fucking lies.

We've had enough anti-intellectualism and enough pandering to the dumbfuck vote during these awful, dark years under the unelected war criminal and traitor George W. Bush.

We need change. Big change. Desperately. Now.

What does Billary Cunton offer by way of "change"?

She mimics the Repugnicans in her attacks on Barack Obama.

She panders to the dumbfuck vote, just like the Repugnicans do.

Barack Obama is doing a bigger service to the dumbfuck bloc than Cunton is. Cunton wishes to keep them mired in their stupidity if she perceives that doing so will help her gain personal political power. Obama wishes to educate them, wishes to point out to them, correctly, that guns and violence and militarism, fundamentalist "Christianity" (Christofascism), xenophobia, homophobia and all of the other other-phobias don't solve their problems.

Billary Cunton, on the other hand, who stands only for gaining personal political power, will tell the voters anyfuckingthing that she thinks will get her votes -- even if that means attacking, Repugnican-style, Barack Obama, who is going to get the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Yup -- when she inevitably loses the Democratic presidential nomination, maybe Billary Cunton will run for president as an independent, with Joseph Lieberman as her running mate.

*Actually, I doubt that Billary could run as an independent after she loses the Democratic presidential nomination; I don't think that she'd have enough time. But I'd have to research that, which I don't really feel like doing.

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:10:07 GMT

Reuters photo

Repugnican Arizona Sen. John McCain had the gall to show up at the former Lorraine Motel, which is now part of the National Civil Rights Museum, in Memphis this past week. The motel is where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated four decades ago. McCain pretends to give a shit about civil rights even though he voted against establishing a national holiday for King and his Senate voting record on civil rights is dismal. Similarly, I saw McCain years ago at an Earth Day event in Sedona, Arizona, where he pretended to be an environmentalist. (The pro-environment group League of Conservation Voters gives McCain a zero on his Senate voting record for the environment.)

'Moderate' 'maverick,' my fat ass

Rarely do I regurgitate something from an e-mail (that I actually agree with, anyway...), but I think that it's important to get the word out about the truth about Repugnican presidential wannabe John McCain.

MoveOn.org's latest e-mail is titled "10 things to know about McCain," and those 10 things are:

1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Now he says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to oppose key civil rights laws.^1*

2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."²

3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded ["President"] Bush for vetoing that ban.³

4. McCain opposes a woman's right to choose. He said, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned."⁴

5. The Children's Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children's health care bill last year, then defended Bush's veto of the bill.⁵

6. He's one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a "second job" and skip their vacations.⁶

7. Many of McCain's fellow Republican senators say he's too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."⁷

8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.⁸

9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his "spiritual guide," Rod Parsley, believes America's founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a "false religion." McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church "the Antichrist" and a "false cult."⁹

10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0 -- yes, zero -- from the League of Conservation Voters last year.¹⁰

John McCain is not who the Washington press corps make him out to be. Please help get the word out... And if you want us to keep you posted on MoveOn's work to get the truth out about John McCain, sign up here:

http://pol.moveon.org/mccaintruth/?id=12407-1454062-tgvsfs&;t=232

No. 10 is especially poignant for me, becasue I was in McCain's presence years ago, in the 1980s, when he showed up at an Earth Day event in Sedona, Arizona, with his Barbie-doll wife, proclaiming to be so environmentally conscious. The people there bought it.

Perhaps because he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam -- a biographical fact that he never tires of repeating -- people feel sorry for McCain, whom, now that he's a doddering old man, people seem to think of as a well-meaning and essentially harmless if misguided grandpa figure.

So many are taken in by the McCain mystique and so few bother to check McCain's Senate voting record -- they go on his word and the corporately owned and controlled mainstream media's word that he's a "moderate" "maverick," when he is, in fact, neither.

*Sources are documented fully here.

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 18:16:07 GMT

Dear Friend,

When I turn on the TV all I hear is negative words. The news stations keep telling you that we're down and out. But that's plainly not true. I'm on the trail every day for Hillary and the crowds are bigger than ever before, and let me tell you - they are excited!

I wanted to show you a video from a recent event with Hillary in North Carolina - you can see for yourself Hillary's packed events and enthusiastic supporters.

Click here to watch the video.

Sincerely,

Terry McAuliffe
Chairman, Hillary Clinton for President

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The latest progressively desperate e-mail from the Cunton camp -- with the risible subject line of "The crowds" -- is above. (Be sure to click on the links!) Apparently Team Billary was able to get some people together, took video of it and is now using the video as "evidence" of Billary's incredible popularity. Reminds me of the faked video of the "crowd" of Iraqis at the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in 2003. Team Billary increasingly is resorting to the tried-and-true propagandistic tactics of the Bush regime.

'C' is (still) for cunt and

'D' is for fucking desperate

Can you see the vultures circling around Billary Cunton's dying campaign for the White House?

I can. They're hungry, and they're soon to land for a feast.

I'm on Billary's e-mail list -- I don't recall ever putting myself on Billary's e-mail list, but somehow I'm on it nonetheless -- and the Billary campaign e-mails are getting more and more desperate.

A recurring theme of the increasingly desperate e-mails is that We can't let Barack Obama win only because he is raising more money!

I mean, you have to give people a pretty good reason to shell out some of their hard-earned dough to a candidate whose campaign is tanking, right? So let's claim that if -- no, when -- Obama finally emerges as the victor, it was money alone that made him the victor.

This "argument" ignores the fact that people "vote" with their dollars. Clearly more people like Obama than they like Billary. Obama outraised Billary by two-to-one last month -- by $40 million to $20 million* -- and the lion's share of Obama's contributors are small contributors, individuals like you and me.

Obama is more viable than is Billary -- otherwise, he wouldn't have outraised her by two to one last month. Obama's fundraising prowess will be important for the November general election; Billary's lackluster fundraising indicates that she would be weaker than would Obama going into the November general election.

Billary has the Clinton trademark, yet she's losing Democrats to Obama. That's significant. For having the Clinton brand name and for having been the presumptive 2008 Democratic presidential nominee for so long, she should be doing much better than she is now. If she's struggling to win the support of the majority of her own party now, how will she beat Repugnican John McCain in November?

Billary should drop out -- especially if she loses the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. Pennsylvania should be her last stand.

I'll leave you with a couple of Billary 'toons. The cunt's quixotic quest for the White House is becoming so increasingly ridiculous that the political cartoonists increasingly are lampooning her.

*Reports the Associated Press:

Barack Obama raked in $40 million in March, leaving Hillary Rodham Clinton and her $20 million in the fundraising dust and stuffing his campaign treasury so he can outspend her in the crucial Pennsylvania primary.

His haul in new donations also buttressed his argument to Democratic superdelegates that he has built a vast network of donors and volunteers that they wouldn't want to lose by denying him the nomination.

Obama has attracted nearly 1.3 million donors, largely through the Internet.

He has raised $131 million in just the first three months of this year to $70 million for Clinton. Republican John McCain's campaign has not revealed his March fundraising, but he has been far behind the Democrats, raising less than $23 million in January and February combined.

Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, claimed a double benefit from the Illinois senator's fundraising. "Many of our contributors are volunteering for the campaign, making our campaign the largest grass-roots army in recent political history," he said. ...

Indeed, the numbers, even for the lagging Clinton, are remarkable. While both raised less than they did in February, the March contributions came during a lull in the presidential contest. There have not been any primaries or contests since March 11, and the most competitive showdowns were March 4 in Texas and Ohio.

Obama's money has given him a significant spending edge over Clinton in Pennsylvania, where the April 22 primary is the biggest delegate prize left on the Democratic calendar. He has purchased more than $2.7 million in television ads in the state, according to data compiled by TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political ads. Clinton has spent almost $900,000 on ads in the state. ...

Obama's money also provides a separate story line focused on his powerful network of donors. With neither candidate able to win the nomination on the basis of delegates selected by state primaries and caucuses, the burden falls on party officials and elected officials -- the so-called superdelegates -- who are weighing a variety of factors in making their selection.

"His ability to raise more money than Hillary Clinton is part of the handicapping that is going on by superdelegates," said Steve Murphy, a Democratic consultant who worked on Bill Richardson's presidential campaign but who is now unaligned.

Stephanie Cutter, a Democratic strategist who worked on John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, noted that while 1.3 million donors is only a fraction of the total number of people who have voted in the presidential contests so far, "it still represents a ground force unlike anything we've ever seen."

"It's hard to argue that he's not a representing a 'new kind of politics' with 1.3 million donors," she added. ...
Some unaligned Democrats remain wary of the entire situation, afraid that the quantities of money and continuing competition will hurt the eventual party nominee as McCain builds up his support with little opposition.
"Obama and Clinton's fundraising numbers are impressive," Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000, said in an e-mail exchange. "There's no question that voters remain excited about the two candidates, but if this money is used to tear the party apart or to destruct the other while McCain is out on a bio tour, it would be akin to pouring it down the drain."

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 16:58:43 GMT

Associated Press photos

Former National Rifle Association President Charlton Heston -- who was such an iconic stupid white man that as an actor he portrayed Moses, for fuck's sake -- has finally gone to hell. He is shown at left at a KKK -- er, a wingnut get-out-the-vote -- rally in 2002 and at right receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from "President" Bush in 2003. Why the medal? Heston was instrumental in preserving white people's freedom to shoot non-white savages (wait, that's redundant).

Finally, those cold, dead fingers

that Chucky liked to talk about

Ding dong, Charlton Heston is finally dead. He lived 84 years too long.

As a kid I loved the Chuckster as the oppressed human in "Planet of the Apes."

But that was just a movie; apparently that role didn't teach Heston anyfuckingthing about oppression.

As an adult I was mortified to see Heston, in the Best-Documentary-Oscar-winning "Bowling for Columbine," openly air his racist views.* Apparently we white people need guns in order to be able to protect ourselves from those savage non-whites, Heston indicated in his admittedly ambush interview with filmmaker Michael Moore. (And surely the non-white savages are just genetically, inherently savage due to their inferior race -- it would have nothing whatsofuckingever to do with centuries of oppression at the hands of whites.)

Even after his "Bowling for Columbine" embarrassment, Heston continued to wave a rifle in the air at all-white or almost-all-white NRA and other KKK-like rallies, proclaiming that we'll get his rifle when we pry it from his cold, dead fingers.

Yes, Heston was of a dying breed -- the old, stupid, rich, racist, misogynist, homophobic, xenophobic, pro-military white male -- and thank Goddess they're finally fucking dying.

Good riddance, Chuck. I say that we don't bother to pry your rifle from your cold, dead fingers. I say that we just bury your fucking rifle with you. You'll need it to fend off the demons in hell.

P.S. to any pussies who are offended: Just because you die, you don't suddenly become a saint. An asshole who dies is just a dead asshole. So fuck you.

*Notes The Associated Press:

... The actor assumed the role of leader offscreen as well. He served as president of the Screen Actors Guild and chairman of the American Film Institute and marched in the civil rights movement of the 1950s. With age, he grew more conservative and campaigned for conservative candidates.

In June 1998, Heston was elected president of the National Rifle Association, for which he had posed for ads holding a rifle. ...

Heston stepped down as NRA president in April 2003, telling members his five years in office were "quite a ride. ... I loved every minute of it."

Later that year, Heston was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. "The largeness of character that comes across the screen has also been seen throughout his life," President Bush said at the time. ...

In late years, Heston drew as much publicity for his crusades as for his performances. In addition to his NRA work, he campaigned for Republican presidential and congressional candidates and against affirmative action. ...

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 02:44:55 GMT

Reuters and Associated Press photos

Obama wins Texas;

Billary's cunt-a-thon cuntinues

Because Billary Cunton narrowly won the popular vote in Texas' Democratic presidential primary election last month, the mainstream media characteristically oversimplistically reported that Billary won Texas.

Not so fast. The awarding of Texas' delegates to the Democratic National Convention is a complicated, drawn-out process -- popularly referred to as "the Texas two-step" -- that includes not just the primary election but also the post-primary-election caucuses, and the winner of the highest number of delegates from the state of Texas is Barack Obama, not Billary Cunton.

When all was said and done, Obama got 99 delegates from Texas to Billary's 94.

Just as the Electoral College, not the popular vote, determines who sits in the White House (well, OK, so five Repugnican-appointed "justices" of the U.S. Supreme Court helped Gee Dubya an awful lot in December 2000 when he lost the popular vote but "won" the Electoral College), it's the number of delegates, not the popular vote, that determines who the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate will be.

And "Obama leads the overall race for the Democratic nomination with 1,631 delegates, including separately chosen party and elected officials known as superdelegates. Clinton has 1,501, according to the latest AP tally," notes The Associated Press today.

As calls for Billary to just pack it in already continue to mount, Billary today lied that it is Team Obama -- rather than an American people who are sick and tired already of a long and drawn out Democratic primary season -- that wants her to stop her futile quest for the White House.

Reports The Associated Press today:

... In a series of television interviews in states holding upcoming contests, Clinton vowed to press on with her campaign and suggested Obama and his supporters wanted to keep those states from playing a role in selecting the party's presidential nominee.

"My take on it is [that] a lot of Senator Obama's supporters want to end this race because they don't want people to keep voting," she told CBS affiliate KTVQ in Billings, Mont. "That's just the opposite of what I believe. We want people to vote. I want the people of Montana to vote, don't you?"

Montana holds its primary June 3. The New York senator made similar comments in interviews with stations in Indiana and North Carolina, which hold primaries May 6. ...

Responding to Clinton, Obama spokesman Bill Burton said: "That is completely laughable from a campaign that thought the race would be over on February 5. We have encouraged our supporters to do no such thing and Senator Obama was very clear he supports her carrying on in this race."

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy last week became the first leading Democrat to openly call on Clinton to step aside and cede the nomination to Obama. He said he worried the prolonged nominating battle was strengthening the chances of the Republican nominee in waiting, John McCain.

Since then, Obama and his supporters have said Clinton should stay in the race as long as she chooses, while indicating [that] a lengthy primary battle would not help the party's position in the general election.

Obama has been picking up superdelegates at a rapid clip while Clinton's success with that group has slowed considerably. ...

The drumbeat for Billary to drop out will only grow louder; that Team Billary feels that it has to address the drumbeat is evidence of the inevitable.

But rather than admit defeat, the flailing Team Billary is going to continue to make such outrageously specious claims as that Team Obama doesn't want people to vote.

The majority of the American people already have voted, and the majority of them have voted for Barack Obama. Notes the AP today: "Clinton almost certainly will end the primary season narrowly trailing Obama in the popular vote and among pledged delegates unless the nullified primaries in Florida and Michigan are counted -- an unlikely scenario at best."

Team Billary will only harm the Democratic Party's chances of taking back the White House in November as Team Billary, which appears to be in deep denial over the fact that the candidate whose coronation they thought would be a cakewalk is tanking, tries to eke out a win by twisting arms and seeking every conceivable loophole because the votes aren't favoring them.

Team Billary's tactics remind me of those of Team Bush, the members of which in late 2000 would do whatever it took to take the White House, whether their candidate had actually won the election or not.

A choice between McCain and Billary Cunton in November would be a choice between a Repugnican and a Repugnican Lite -- the difference between the two is so minimal that one might as well not vote at all.

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 05:42:08 GMT