Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Bush Protest in Chattanooga


Hamdems has the details on the protest planned for Bush's visit to Chattanooga tomorrow (Wednesday, 2/21/07).

Be sure to check back with the Chattanooga blog for updates. (via Alice)

More on the Bush visit: Bush to Sell Loser Healthcare Plan in Tennessee

Posted by egalia at

They're Both Called George


Always in the throes of delusions of adequacy, George W. Bush got carried away once again on President's Day and compared himself to George Washington.

“With the advantage of hindsight, it is easy to take George Washington’s successes for granted,” Mr. Bush said after enumerating Washington’s achievements as commander of the Continental Army and later as president. But “America’s path to freedom was long and it was hard,” he continued, “and the outcome was never really certain.”

Mr. Bush spoke of General Washington’s “many challenges,” noting that the Continental Army “stood on the brink of disaster many times.” And he spoke of Washington’s resolute determination: “His will was unbreakable.”

Photo: Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times

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Monday, February 19, 2007

Welcome Twisty's Readers

Welcome readers of the inestimable I Blame the Patriarchy.

Everybody wants to see the photo of Rep. Stacey Campfield - author of the death certificates for abortions bill - being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by four police officers. (NOT photoshopped!)

We told you Stacey X is a jokster of a legislator.

To everyone else, don't miss what Twisty has to say about Stacey Campfield and his looney bill:

Jerkbag legislation of the day

Posted by egalia at

Video: George Takei Responds to Tim Hardaway (heh)

Hilarious! Gay activist George Takei, Startrek's Mr. Sulu, responds to self-described homophobe Tim Hardaway:

Posted by egalia at

Amanda Marcotte on The Vulgar Bloggers

Blogging populism and the political establishment

And check out her comments, all at TPM Cafe.

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How Many Cops Does it Take to Handcuff Rep. Campfield?




Apparently it took all of four police officers to restrain and handcuff Rep. Stacey Campfield back in 2002, when he was harassing now Governor Bredesen at a gathering for grown-ups. (See the next photo.)



Stacey Campfield (R) "holds up a bumper sticker heckling then-gubernatorial candidate [now Governor] Phil Bredesen (D) as he greets guests arriving for the barbeque hosted by Republican U.S. Rep. Jimmy Duncan at the Civic Colliseum in 2002."

Campfield was subsequently thrown out of the event, or according to our reliable sources and the photo, Campfield was restrained (handcuffed) and detained by police officers until the event ended (but he was not booked).

Note: The first photo appeared in my inbox over the weekend. Apparently, some people are pissed about Campfield's ludicrous anti-choice bill that would mandate death certificates for abortions.

Who knows what I'll find in my inbox tomorrow.

Somehow I missed it, but Kleinheider published the photo of Campfield being cuffed last summer. But there was no explanation. The second photo has appeared on the TGW blog before, but to my knowledge this is the first time the two damning photos have been published together. If you know otherwise, tell me about it.

Update: Stacey Campfield once again makes it on to The Top Ten Conservative Idiots list (and so does Jeff Miller, again.)

Posted by egalia at

Ex-Moderate John McCain on Abortion


John McCain wants Jerry Falwell and James Dobson to know that those wild and crazy days of moderation are so over. The boring and depressing wannabe president is too an ultra social conservative.

Moderate is dead sez flip-flopper John McCain:

"I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned." -- John McCain, ex-moderate

Why doesn't James Dobson believe it?

From McCain's wild and crazy days of moderation:

"But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations." -- John McCain, 1999

Posted by egalia at

Wrong Is Right


Admit Errors
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Many people are perplexed by the uproar over Senator Hillary Clinton’s refusal to say, as former Senator John Edwards has, that she was wrong to vote for the Iraq war resolution. Why is it so important to admit past error? And yes, it was an error — she may not have intended to cast a vote for war, but the fact is the resolution did lead to war; she may not have believed that President Bush would abuse the power he was granted, but the fact is he did.

The answer can be summed up in two words: heckuva job. Or, if you want a longer version: Medals of Freedom to George Tenet, who said Saddam had W.M.D., Tommy Franks, who failed to secure Iraq, and Paul Bremer, who botched the occupation.

For the last six years we have been ruled by men who are pathologically incapable of owning up to mistakes. And this pathology has had real, disastrous consequences. The situation in Iraq might not be quite so dire — and we might even have succeeded in stabilizing Afghanistan — if Mr. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney had been willing to admit early on that things weren’t going well or that their handpicked appointees weren’t the right people for the job.

The experience of Bush-style governance, together with revulsion at the way Karl Rove turned refusal to admit error into a political principle, is the main reason those now-famous three words from Mr. Edwards — “I was wrong” — matter so much to the Democratic base.

The base is remarkably forgiving toward Democrats who supported the war. But the base and, I believe, the country want someone in the White House who doesn’t sound like another George Bush. That is, they want someone who doesn’t suffer from an infallibility complex, who can admit mistakes and learn from them.

And there’s another reason the admission by Mr. Edwards that he was wrong is important. If we want to avoid future quagmires, we need a president who is willing to fight the inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom on foreign policy, which still — in spite of all that has happened — equates hawkishness with seriousness about national security, and treats those who got Iraq right as somehow unsound. By admitting his own error, Mr. Edwards makes it more credible that he would listen to a wider range of views.

Read the full column

Posted by egalia at

Sunday, February 18, 2007

The Liberal Commie Agenda in Our Schools


"But you won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature. . . At least not for children." -- Dana Nilsson, teacher and librarian in Durango, Colo.

Ms. Nilsson is one of many "shocked" librarians who are so offended by the word "scrotum" that they are banning a Newberry Award winning book in school libraries across the country.

The author of the award-winning book says the character is, um, "learning about body parts."

Children are learning the names of body parts in our schools? My Gawd. What will those radical liberal commies try next?

New York Times:

Yet there it is on the first page of “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron, this year’s winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children’s literature. The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book continues. “It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”

The inclusion of the word has shocked some school librarians, who have pledged to ban the book from elementary schools, and reopened the debate over what constitutes acceptable content in children’s books. The controversy was first reported by Publishers Weekly, a trade magazine.

via

There's more about the liberal commie plot at the All Spin Zone and No More Mister Nice Blog.

Posted by egalia at

Video: Sunday Funnies

Letterman on Bush and more Sunday Funnies



Thanks to Al Rodgers!

Posted by egalia at

Oh What a Malleable War


By FRANK RICH

MAYBE the Bush White House can’t conduct a war, but no one has ever impugned its ability to lie about its conduct of a war. Now even that well-earned reputation for flawless fictionalizing is coming undone. Watching the administration try to get its story straight about Iran’s role in Iraq last week was like watching third graders try to sidestep blame for misbehaving while the substitute teacher was on a bathroom break. The team that once sold the country smoking guns in the shape of mushroom clouds has completely lost its mojo. . . .

Even if the White House still had its touch for spinning fiction, it’s hard to imagine how it could create new lies brilliant enough to top the sorry truth. When you have a president making a big show of berating Iran while simultaneously empowering it, you’ve got another remake of “The Manchurian Candidate,” this time played for keeps.

Read the full column at Welcome to Pottersville

Posted by egalia at

Saturday, February 17, 2007

First Public Space for Feminist Art


This country's very first public space dedicated to feminist art will become a reality on March 23, 2007.

There's progress for you.

Another 250 years or so, and who knows, the U.S. Constitution may actually acknowledge that there are, um, women in this country. Or maybe not.

The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art will be housed in the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York.

The centerpiece of the refuge for feminist art will be Judy Chicago's legendary The Dinner Party.

The Dinner Party honors the the lives and contributions of 1,038 foresisters who, like virtually all women, have been erased from mainstream historical accounts.

But hey, what's to be angry about?

Photograph by Donald Woodman, Judy Chicago (American, b. 1939). The Dinner Party, 1974–79. Mixed media: ceramic, porcelain, textile. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation, 2002.10.

Posted by egalia at

Bill Frist is for Minority Rights


Ooops, that would be Republican rights.

Democrats don't play fair, whines the cat killer.

Oliver Willis to whiny Republicans: Please, Shut Your Face.

Posted by egalia at

Bush to Sell Loser Healthcare Plan in Tennessee


Bush will be in Chattanooga on Wednesday, February 21 to talk about his ridiculously inadequate Katrina-esque plan to make healthcare 'affordable.' The Decider will be escorted by Tennessee Republicans Bob Corker and Zach Wamp.

For some mysterious reason, Dubya won't be talking about what he actually knows something about -- the no-expense spared healthcare plan for millionaires.

Stephen Colbert's summary of the Bush unhealthy care plan is cited in the New York Times:

"It's so simple. Most people who can't afford health insurance also are too poor to owe taxes. But if you give them a deduction from the taxes they don't owe, they can use the money they're not getting back from what they haven't given to buy the health care they can't afford."

The Times adds:

". . . Mr. Bush’s proposal will not shrink the ranks of the uninsured is not its most serious problem. Far more troubling is its embrace of a system under which we spend more than twice as much on health care, on average, as the 21 countries in which life expectancy exceeds ours. American costs are so high in part because the reliance on private insurance multiplies administrative expenses, currently about 31 percent of total outlays.

Most health economists agree that government-financed reimbursement is the only practical way to control these expenses, many of them stemming from insurers’ efforts to identify and avoid unhealthy people. Canada’s single-payer health system, which covers everyone, spends less than 17 percent on administrative expenses." [via]

Here's a piece I wrote a few years ago about my experience with a plan that actually works, the outstanding Canadian Universal Healthcare Plan.

In the meantime, if you're desperate for healthcare in Tennessee, this may help: from Sharon Cobb -- "If you lost your TennCare or are otherwise without insurance, read this story."

And if you know anything about plans for a Bush protest in Chattanooga, please tell us about it in the comments.

Posted by egalia at

A Giant Doom Magnet


Big Doom Magnet
By MAUREEN DOWD

So I was sitting around watching “Oprah” yesterday afternoon when I realized how I could stop W. and Crazy Dick from blowing up any more stuff.

All I needed to do was Unleash my Unfathomable Magnetic Power into the Universe!

Energy flows where intention goes. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

Anyhow, Oprah taught me how to stop abusing myself and learn The Secret. I finally get it: because the Law of Attraction dictates that like attracts like, my negativity toward the president and vice president is attracting their negativity and multiplying the negative vibrations in the cosmos, creating some sort of giant doom magnet.

I need to examine my unforgiving stance toward them and use my power of visualization to let them know that in my consciousness and awareness, they cannot determine my destiny. I am severing those emotional and vibratory tonalities that keep me tied to their toxic energy, causing me to repeat the same old pattern of bemoaning in the newspaper their same old pattern of blundering in the Middle East.

Read the full column

Posted by egalia at

Call the Republicans!


Old American Century via All Hat No Cattle

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Friday, February 16, 2007

Why Amanda Marcotte Quit the Edwards Campaign


Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon tells all over at Salon.

Sexism [gasp] was involved?

Amanda will also be at TPMCafe next week, discussing political culture clash.

Salon:

Why I had to quit the John Edwards campaign

One question that's hard to avoid is how much of the venom had to do with the fact that McEwan and I were young women entering into a field (Internet communications) that's viewed as almost monolithically masculine. From my vantage point, it appeared that sexism was one of the primary motivating energies behind the campaign. Even before Donohue stepped in, various right-wing bloggers were obsessed with my gender and sexuality. As I noted at the time of my resignation, the majority of the hate mail I was receiving was from men, and almost all the e-mails made note of my gender or suggested that I would be a more pleasant woman if I wasn't so "angry." Bluntly put, I find it hard to believe that many men would end up being denounced on TV for using words like "fuck" or "cunt" on their blog and expect to receive piles of e-mail offering an opportunity to suck the sender's dick.

via

Posted by egalia at

A License to Be a Brute


Bob Krumm doesn't like gay people. But the conservative blogger appears to like brutes, or he appears to be one. Bob Krumm is a Tennessee blogger who ran for the state senate and lost, we're pleased to say.

Krumm heard that there is a specialty license plate in the works for the Tennessee Equality Project Foundation, and he quickly got to work creating one and posted it on his blog. Krumm reminds us of why it is necessary to have an organization like TEP, which is about "advancing and protecting the civil rights of our state’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered citizens and their families."

Instead of imagining what a symbol for equality might look like and creating that, Krumm created the first thing that popped into his mind, and then he posted it on his blog with the commentary which follows:


"So now when all you pro-life people–which I am, btw–pull up behind one of these license plates, you can console yourselves with the fact that you have a 'Choose Life' plate covering your rear."

We’re sure it was quite a struggle for Krumm to resist the urge to put the words “God hates Fags” on his little plate, but it doesn't really matter because the sentiment comes through.

I imagine the Pro-Life folks are really really glad that Krumm wasn’t the designer of their plate. Can’t you just imagine what he might have come up with at the thought of one Pro-life man and one Pro-life woman fornicating?

Or does Krumm only become fixated on sex when he thinks about gays?

You can find out more about the good folks at the Tennessee Equality Project and volunteer to help fight the hate and discrimination over at their website.

And there's still time to sign up for TEP's 3rd Annual Advancing Equality Day On The Hill.

Fortunately, Bob Krumm won't be there.

Posted by egalia at

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Rep. Stacey Campfield (R) is a Joke


On Death Certificates for Abortions: Jokster Rep. Stacey Campfield (R) proposes wacko bill that will never pass and entire world sits up and takes notice

But it is freaking amazing how much world-wide attention one little wingnutty yahoo of a legislator can get. As far as I can tell, this jokster of a legislator has never ever gotten a single bill passed. Yet all Stacy X has to do is propose a looney bill, and the whole freakin’ world sits up and takes notice!

And people complain about the media giving wack jobs like Bill Donohue a forum.

Let me say it again. Rep. Stacey Campfield is a joke. Nothing he does or says should be taken seriously. Can you hear me, New York Times? International Herald Tribune, France? Guardian.UK?

Good freakin’ grief people!

The only thing Tennessee's attention-starved joke of a legislator is good at is getting massive amounts of bad press for this state.

Several days ago, I was mucking around the legislature's website and found Campfield's proposal to require death certificates for abortions. I posted the story as the joke that it is. The General thought it was a great joke. And much of the Tennessee blogosphere has since treated it as a joke. But it didn't take long before the national blogosphere and the msm picked up the story and treated it with some serious wide-eyed horror. And, yes, the story serves as yet more 'proof' that Tennessee is a backward state full of uneducated yahoos.

Why doesn’t the state of Tennessee just put Campfield on salary as the state’s Anti-PR man?

Let’s be clear: There is no way in hades that this absurdity of a bill stands a chance of becoming law.

Because:
It would cost the state lots of money.
It would be unconstitutional.
The Tennessee House is controlled by rational Democrats.
The Tennessee House is controlled by pro choice Democrats.
The Tennessee House is controlled by Democrats who view Stacey Campfield as a big joke.

In the view of House Judiciary Chairman Rob Briley (D), Campfield’s death certificate proposal is “'the most preposterous bill I’ve seen' in an eight-year legislative career. 'It is totally inconsistent with everything the law contemplates as it relates to anything close to that subject.'"

Stacey Campfield is a joke -- let’s count the ways:

1. Campfield is known for making stuff up; he can’t tell a fact from a right-wing fantasy

If Stacey Campfield is awake, he is probably spreading false information. He claims that the state already issues “death certificates” for miscarriages. In fact, the state issues "certificates" for late-term miscarriages, no personal data is collected, no one’s privacy is invaded. As many have noted, death certificates are what you get when you have an actual birth certificate! And death certificates are branded with identifying data such as social security numbers.

Campfield also falsely claims that his joke of a bill would result in the collection of needed data, i.e., the number of abortions performed in this state. It's no surprise that Stacey X doesn't know that this data is already collected, and the information is readily available from many sources.

2. Campfield can’t get a bill passed

Campfield is now in his second term, yet I can find no evidence that he has ever gotten a bill of his own passed. He has signed on as co-sponsor to bills which have passed, he has gotten resolutions passed, and that's it!

3. Campfield has the maturity of a 12 year old

Campfield was once kicked out of a political fundraising event for heckling and invading the personal space of the Democratic candidate for governor. That's Stace heckling Phil Bredesen in the photo above. That would be, uhm, Governor Phil Bredesen. (See explanatory note at end.)

4. Campfield is an uneducated yahoo

It’s not clear if Stacey X got his degree on the internet, or if he merely claims he got his degree on the internet. What is clear is that Stace has some embarrassing problems with the language. Stacey Campfield is known in these parts as the legislator who has a well-documented history of being unable to spell or formulate complete thoughts.

5. Campfield is an obnoxious jackass

The last time Campfield received this much media coverage was when the Tennessee Representative opined that the legislature's Democratic Black Caucus was more racist than the KKK because they wouldn't let Stacey’s white Republican ass join the Black Democratic Caucus. The story landed in the Washington Post, and was an especially big hit across the pond where everybody already 'knew' that Tennessee is the land of obnoxious uneducated yahoos.

It was Stacey’s desire to join the Black Caucus, or his desire to be black, that earned him the nickname of Stacey X.

Another one of Stace’s brilliant ideas that will also go nowhere is the proposal to replace the state’s regressive tax on food with a tax on pornography. We’re not sure which state employees would get the unpleasant job of reviewing the taxable pornography here in the Bible Belt, but maybe Stacey X dreams of volunteering.

And then there's Stacey X's blog, especially the archives.

Photo: Stacey Campfield, left, holds up a bumper sticker heckling then-gubernatorial candidate [now Governor] Phil Bredesen as he greets guests arriving for the barbeque hosted by Republican U.S. Rep. Jimmy Duncan at the Civic Colliseum in 2002. Campfield was later thrown out of the event.

Here you go folks, here's a tiny fraction of the blogswarm created by one crazy go-nowhere idea from an irresponsible attention-starved jackass who is actually getting paid for his antics:

Dkos: Tennessee Attacks Abortion – by Identifying Patients!
Mother Jones: Tennessee To Require Death Certificates For Aborted Fetuses
Jesus General: Remembering Our Embryo-American Heroes
Women's Bioethics: Tennessee Bill Proposes Fetus Death Certificate
Nashville Is Talking: Campfield's Stunt Leglislation: A Round-Up
Tiny Cat Pants: Stacey Campfield Wants In Your Medical Records
Mel's Diner: I'm all kinds of crazy, but I try not to show it
Lean Left: Making It Easier to Intimidate Women in Tennessee
Flamingo's Lake: Rep. Campfield - Here He Goes Again
Just Another Pretty Farce: Papers, Please
Feministing: Tennessee wants to require post-abortion death certificates
Thoughts of Average Woman: Death Certificates For Fetuses Would Identify Women
The Freedonian: Because Every Sperm Is Sacred, Rep. Campfield
Feministe: Tennessee Legislator Finds a Way Around That Inconvenient Medical-Privacy Thing That Gets In the Way of a Good Slut-Shaming
Media Girl: What next? Ejaculation certificates?

Posted by egalia at

Video: BBC Looks for Savages in the Southern USA

[Bump: See Update below] BBC's Top Gear crew films a ha-ha funny tv show about savages in the scary southern part of scary America . .

Youtube pulled the video, but you can see it here.

Well, at least the poor and uneducated part of these Dis-United States of America are providing entertainment to the rest of the world. I suppose that's some kind of relief from fear of America.

What they're saying about the USA:

"I honesty believe that in certain parts of America, people have started to mate with vegetables."

Top Gear:

Attacked by Rednecks while filming in the Deep South

"On land-of-the-free Top Gear, we spent the whole show in the good ole US of A, as we sent Jeremy, Richard and James across the pond on a massive interstate road-trip. . ."

"The next morning the presenters faced their final challenge: to drive their cars across Alabama without getting shot. This might sound relatively easy, but before they set off they were allowed to paint slogans on each other's cars. James ended up with 'Hilary for president' scrawled along the side of his Caddy, Jeremy's Camaro had the words 'Country and western is rubbish', and Richard's pick-up bore the legend 'Man love rules OK'. These sentiments didn't go down too well with some of the locals and, to cut a long story short, we were lucky to make it to New Orleans with our lives."

Posted by egalia at
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