Charlton Heston (October 4, 1923 (or 1924) – April 5, 2008

Ronald Reagan, Jerry Falwell, Bill Buckley, Chaz Heston, you'd think it's the death of conservatism."

Finally, a Republican i can back.

That's right, you heard me. A REPUBLICAN I'd vote for.

Ron Paul Endorsed By White Supremacists (Video)

Hey Paultards! Ever give a thought to who else might share your views? Aside from being anti war, and a fiscal libertarian, your boy is also anti-reproductive rights, and anti gay marriage, and who knows what other classic misogynistic and bigoted views. Don't be fooled by the anti-war rhetoric and the smaller government platform!

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These are just a few of the crazy ideas Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul has...

1.) Eliminating public institutions of higher learning by privatizing the entire system, and stubbornly voting against all measures to increase public funding of universities.
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2. Destroying free public education at all levels K-12 and beyond (i.e. abolish the dept. of education, arguing that that all education should be a privately-owned venture, advocating home-schooling, opposing all public spending initiatives, eroding funding by eliminating taxes on the wealthy). Ron Paul believes that education should be treated as any other commodity, like an iPhone, and purchased only if you have enough money to afford it. On his view, it is neither a social good nor a right that any fair or just society should try to ensure and nurture. Your parents don't earn enough to pay out of pocket for your schooling? Ron Paul says 'tough luck.'
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3. Staunchly opposing Universal Health Care and in favor of further privatizing an already corrupt corporate system that rakes in billions in profits for its ownership while close to 50 million Americans are uninsured and those that are insured get screwed, dropped or drowned in extremely costly co-pays and premiums.
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4. Worsening the student debt crisis by further gutting (I say 'further gutting' because Bush and his GOP congress made putative cuts in 2005) programs like Pell Grants and Stafford Loans (put in place by LBJ) and giving even more of the student loan system over to a (corrupt, as we've seen from recent revelations in NY) billion-dollar private racket. Students in France and the UK strike over tuition increases and fight for grants and the abolition of loans... Ron Paul thinks we should slash all of it and only have private lenders who generate profits from college students' inability to afford high-priced tuition.
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5. Destroying the environment: in the 109th Congress alone, he voted to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to shield oil companies from MTBE contamination lawsuits, against increasing gas mileage standards, to allow new offshore drilling, and to stop making oil companies pay royalties to the government for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
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6. Destroying the progressive income tax (reverting to the regressive system in place during the Gilded Age), letting the rich get out of paying their fair share and depleting funding for social goods. On Ron Paul’s view, it’s ‘communistic and against liberty’ for Bill Gates to be expected to pay higher taxes than working-class single mothers.
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7. Supporting right-wing anti-choice laws and stripping women of reproductive rights.

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8. Opposing Church-State Separation: From keeping "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance to co-sponsoring the school prayer amendment to keeping the Ten Commandments on a courthouse lawn, this "strict constitutionalist" isn't a big fan of the Constitutionally-mandated separation of church and state. Paul is in step with Pat Robertson on the issue of “Separation of Church and State, which Paul thinks is something that left-liberals simply made up from whole cloth.
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9. Supports the repeal of public programming like NPR, PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities.
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10. Supporting right-wing anti-immigration legislation. Opposes building a wall, but only because that would require ‘big government’, otherwise presumably erecting a wall would be a great idea for this xenophobic nativist.
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11. Opposing worker's rights and virulently against workers organizing themselves against exploitative employers (has consistently voted against Employee Free Choice Act.)
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12. Fervently opposes raising the minimum wage, in favor of abolishing the minimum wage altogether (a standard libertarian belief.) Let me repeat this one more time: Ron Paul argues that we should abolish the minimum wage altogether.
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13. Repealing Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and every other social program put in place since the New Deal.
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14. etc, etc, etc...

Yes, Ron Paul is against the Iraq War, and so are Pat Buchanan and David Duke. The fact that he is against the Iraq war alone isn’t enough to actually make the guy worth a second look. He's also not the only person running for president who is advocating withdrawal (Kucinich (D) and Gravel (D), both of whom also have no chance of receiving a nomination, both advocate immediate withdrawal.) His non-interventionist position on Iraq cannot be a compelling reason to suspend judgment about the lunacy of his other positions.

"But he's consistent throughout his whole career!" They will say. Yes, we agree, but since when is being consistently wrong about everything that matters a good thing?
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According to most major polls, Ron is pulling either " - " or "1-2%" among Republicans.

As a Congressman, Ron Paul (R-TX) has voted with his party nearly 80% of the time, which places him firmly within the bounds of a "rank-and-file-Republican"."

DO NOT BE FOOLED!

When Chinese toys are poison, give your kids a gift.

Oh look, it’s Folksy Fred Thompson doing a teevee interview and he’s got a little girl on his lap for some reason and OH JESUS CHRIST SHE’S EATING A DIAPHRAGM. Okay, you can stop the clip now — we have no idea what happens after it cuts away from the charming sight of a little girl chewing on her mother’s giant diaphragm. - Wonkette

The Death of Falwell and Liberal Guilt

When i found out that Jerry Falwell had died, I can't help but admit that I felt a tinge of joy. Being someone who actually does value life, not just Straight, Unborn, White, American Life, , i felt an immediate surge of guilt at my momentary glee. Surely this round, born-again turd, has redeeming values. His family will be sad, and that makes me sad. His followers will be dismayed, and I'm sure its a great loss to his school. But how else can we feel? As thinking, rational, individuals we MUST sigh a collective relief when such a voice of polarizing hatred is silenced. Had he been murdered, we could all exclaim in a unified manner "Horror!" or "Wrong!". What emotion best befits the passing of a man such as this? The same emotion that we all felt when we learned about Louis Farrakhan's Cancer, or The Demise of Ferdinand Marcos. Such men deserve the pity and sorrow of none but their followers, and an indifferent shrug from the rest of us.

Rev. Jerry Farewell

He died this week, at age 73. If any of you aren't sure why all the fuss, this is the guy who was screaming that the teletubbies are gay. It was his lawsuit against Larry Flynt (For a parody where he shags his mom in an outhouse) that insured for the rest
of us that public figures can be parodied and satirized. Other than his ultimately fraudulent lawsuit THIS is what he is known for:

Jerry Falwell's greatest hits:

# “AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals”

# "It appears that America's anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men's movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening."

# "If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being."

# After the September 11 attacks Falwell said, “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen."

# “Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions”

# “[Homosexuals are] brute beasts...part of a vile and satanic system [that] will be utterly annihilated, and there will be a celebration in heaven."



Charming.

Joe Scarborough is calling Bush to task.

What the hell? You know you're in trouble when Scarborough Country officially turns on you.
Here are two Items from Joe "True Conservative" Scarborough where he refers to Bush as an "Idiot" and "Worse than Satan".





Just to remind you all, Joe Scarborough is a former REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN, who was one of the more Gung Ho members of Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution.

It almost makes you feel bad for Bush...Almost.

SOTU Spoiler Alert!

Yeah, that's right i found an advance copy of the State of the Union. Make sure you watch the Democratic Response.

Republicans care about women's rights.

Not sure if any of you had caught wind of this, I read it on the NYT.

WASHINGTON, Jan 12 — A passing exchange during a Senate hearing on Thursday turned into a political flashpoint overnight as Senator Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused one another of insensitivity in comments about motherhood and the war in Iraq.

In an interview this afternoon with The New York Times, Ms. Rice suggested that the California Democrat had set back feminism by suggesting during the hearing that the childless Ms. Rice had paid no price in the Iraq war.

“I thought it was okay to be single,” Ms. Rice said. “I thought it was okay to not have children, and I thought you could still make good decisions on behalf of the country if you were single and didn’t have children.”


Naturally the best rebuttal comes from the Republican Icon himself.
Ladies and gents, the Late Ronald Reagan.

Just in Time for the Holidays

As a lad growing up on the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, I never Imagined that my hometown of Colorado Springs would feature so heavily in the worldwide crusade against science, progress, and fact. As I entered High-School, Ted Haggard and the New Life Church were just getting started and Focus on The Family had just begun construction on their complex. By the time I left High School, the grand evangelical Machine was in full swing, and the anti-gay and ultimately unconstitutional Amendment 2, had been passed, and groups like Young Life were infiltrating the schools. I was somewhat blind, really. I noticed more than my peers, and even then I had no idea of the deranged vastness of the Religious blindness that would eventually consume my beautiful town.

The warning signs were all there. The death of Carmine Tagliere at the hands of Vern Smalley should have been a huge warning sign. Carmine was a hotheaded 17 year old, and Vern Smalley was a gun packing retired Colonel - cum Vigilante. So when Carmine and Vern met on the side of the road during a traffic altercation, then Vern happily shot him in the chest. Carmine died, his sister was taken out of my French class in tears, and Vern Smalley was later acquitted by the courts. He later threatened a jogger, and is now making the rounds as a freakish conservative commentator on nearly every Blog that mentions his sorry name. It should come as no surpirse to those of you who have seen the transformation of Colorado Springs, that many elements in the community applauded the court's decision.

After that it was a quiet tumble downhill, and today Colorado Springs is a fortress of right-wing conservative ignorance. So far Right, and so blinded in its righteous rage that even mainstream creepy old Republicans like Joel Hefley are being marginalized and replaced by the "sleazy", far-right, nutjobs that have become all too commonplace in this day and age. If the people of Colorado Springs are too deaf to hear the pleas of their own former representatives, how far will they go?

I'm sure you are cracking a smile, and thinking "He's exaggerating."

I urge you to please take a look at ANY of the hundreds of documentaries that are attempting to expose the harm done by extreme religious groups, where Colorado Springs is featured prominently and constantly.

If you think that this has no effect on the quality of life of Colorado Springs, think again. The intolerance and group righteousness seep into the daily life of people in CS. Its amazing that I fear more for my personal safety in Colorado Springs than in my new home of Los Angeles, but the fact is that the town has become so uniform in its thinking, that the only reaction to progressive thought and individuals is reactionary. I leave you with an anecdote from my father, who was approached about a $2 rate hike by an angry man. My father responded, "I'm sorry but this place is still less expensive than most", the man frazzled, blurted out "But I'm a Republican!".

Funny, yes. My question is, why was the man bringing this to light? Does he have my dad pinned as a rate hiking liberal? Is my dad obviously dark skinned and therefore obviously not one of them? Creepy.


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My next post will be a pair of Science documentaries that would make your average Springs resident Pass out. In one, by Richard Dawkins, Ted Haggard and Colorados Springs are featured prominently.

Holiday Crafts

The house Ethics Committee has released all of the naughty IM sessions between Mark Foley and the young, impressionable Pages. My advice is to take a bookbinding class, and give all 140 pages to someone you love. Pages of PAPER! PAPER! IN THE REPORT, YOU PERVERT!



Check out the naughtyness, HERE