RockThrower

Lynch Mob Loses – For Now

But the Rope is Still Handy

Senator Arlen Specter, the new chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, can come out of his office, the lynch mob is gone – for now anyway.

But Specter probably shouldn’t get too comfortable.  While they may have lost the battle over the judicial chairman’s post, anti-abortion conservatives have left little doubt about what they expect from Republican members of Congress.   Specter and others will need to toe the line.

 

After battling for days to win the chairmanship, Specter seems to have prevailed.  But not until he kissed the ring and genuflected before the powerful new troika in town.

On Monday afternoon, Specter met with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC), longtime conservative activist Paul Weyrich, and Richard Land, a pro-life leader from the Southern Baptist Church. Gary Bauer, former president of the FRC and dark prince of the Christian conservative movement was also on hand to keep an eye on things.  Falwell and friends could not have been far away. Specter may have won, but not until they extracted their pound of flesh.

In an announcement commenting on the meeting with Specter, The Family Research Council issued a statement saying that Senator Specter said he would support all of President Bush's judicial picks, regardless of their position on abortion. He also indicated that he promised to hold prompt hearings and have committee votes within 30 days of a nomination.

"Specter has promised that he will 'not use a litmus test to deny confirmation to pro-life nominees,' and assured that he will give President Bush's nominees to the Supreme Court 'quick Committee hearings and early Committee votes.' We intend to hold him to these commitments."

Perkins said his group and others would “hold Specter's feet to the fire.”

That’s got to be pretty close to roasting in hell for the independent minded Senator.  But hey, that’s what you get when you make a deal with the devil.

And Specter is not the only one that will feel the heat from the fire the Christian conservatives are building

"This is just the beginning," said Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue. "We worked very hard to put Bush back in office... and now is not the time to derail the president's pro-life nominees."

The Pooch Principle

Why Not Barney, the Bush Family Dog?

Now that Condi Rice has been promoted over to the State Department, it’s time to look for her replacement as National Security Adviser.  And actually, with cabinet officers fleeing like rats off a sinking ship, there are also a few cabinet posts to be filled. And that got me thinking, why not Barney, the Bush family dog?

Now some might say that Barney, an amiable Terrier, might lack some of the qualifications needed to be national Security Advisor or maybe Secretary of Commerce.  But I would argue that Barney has exactly the right talents for success in the Bush Whitehouse: Blind obedience and unquestioning loyalty.

It surely can’t be competence the president is looking for, or heads surely would have rolled by now.  Just take a look at Condi’s record with help from the American Progress Action Fund.

How much worse could Barney be?

I think he is perfect.  He can sit, fetch, and roll-over.  He will probably even lick your hand, or whatever.

How do you think Condi got the job?

No Sex?

I guess banning gay marriage wasn’t enough.

Christian conservatives have a new target, Alfred Kinsey.

The new film, “Kinsey,” starring Liam Nelson as the famed sex researcher, has the faithful in lather.  Apparently, the sexual revolution, and all of the deviate sexual behavior of today (Gay people, they are talking about you again), is all Kinsey’s fault.

That moderate Christian organization, Focus on the Family, in a review of the film calls it “rank propaganda for the sexual revolution and homosexual agenda,” and goes on to say Kinsey’s legacy is that he played a role in unleashing epidemic levels of sexually transmitted diseases, rampant divorce, massive numbers of out-of-wedlock births, the breakdown of the family, abortion and the destruction of marriage.

The “moral values’ set plans to be out in force protesting and picketing the movie this weekend.

Jeez, Can’t we find something for these people to do?  Maybe they should all just get laid.

And by the way, in my little pagan world we don’t call trying to keep someone from reading a book or watching a movie a “moral value.”’ We call it censorship.

Global Meltdown

Do you think George Bush even knows what planet he is on?

Or is it that he just doesn’t care? It’s hard to tell given the Administration's continuing denial of scientific fact and relentless pursuit of environmental policies that favor oil and coal companies.

For those of you who were hoping that the Bush Administration might take a more reasonable approach to environmental policy during a second term, here is a little preview of what lies ahead.

On Tuesday, November 9, a highly respected international team of scientists released a new study showing the Artic is warming much more rapidly than previously known, at nearly twice the rate as the rest of the globe, and increasing greenhouse gases from human activities are projected to make it warmer still.  The report, the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), projects that at least half the summer sea ice in the Arctic is expected to melt by the end of this century, along with a significant portion of the Greenland Ice Sheet, as the region warms an additional 4-7° C (7 to 13° F) by 2100.  These changes will have major global impacts, such as contributing to global sea-level rise and intensifying global warming. Warming over Greenland is projected to lead to substantial melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, eventually raising sea level by about 7 meters or about 23 feet.

“The impacts of global warming are affecting people now in the Arctic,” says Robert Corell, chair of the ACIA. “The Arctic is experiencing some of the most rapid and severe climate change on earth. The impacts of climate change on the region and the globe are projected to increase substantially in the years to come.”

But back at the White House it was business as usual. On November 10^th, the day after the release of the study,James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times saying “President Bush would not reconsider regulating carbon dioxide emissions — despite scientific alarm over global warming — because such a policy would hurt the domestic coal industry and send jobs overseas.”

In other words, “fuck you.” (Is that phrase in the official Bush/Cheney Talking Points?)

No one should be surprised by this response.   According to Environment2004, an advocacy group seeking to promote policies reducing global warming, “the Bush administration has pursued a policy of denying the problem, suppressing science and avoiding action. Playing to his coal, oil and auto industry constituents, President Bush has rejected the scientific consensus articulated by the world's most distinguished scientific bodies, failed to control U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and isolated the United States internationally on the issue of global warming.” At least they are consistent.

During the first term, Not only did the president break his campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and withdraw from the Kyoto agreement, but the Administration opposed incentives for carbon-free renewable energy production and proposed deep cuts in the Department of Energy's renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development programs. Making matters worse, the administration went out of its way to debunk and politicize scientific evidence documenting global warming, altering reports, or simply deleting information from public records. For example, in a highly criticized move, the Bush administration ordered the EPA to delete information showing that global temperatures had risen sharply from the Agencies State of the Environment Report, and in 2002, the section on global warming pollution was deleted entirely from the EPA's annual report on air pollution trends.

Don’t expect anything different in the new Bush administration. According to the research website opensecrets.org, the oil and gas industry gave $2,313,440 in 2004 to the Bush Campaign. 

Swimming lessons anyone?

Makes Sense to Me

This is one in a series of weekly syndicated columns written by Governor Howard Dean appearing on the Democracy For America website. Rockthrowers, it's worth a read.

Democrats Cannot Give Up

By Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.

The Democrats took a beating last week, at least at the Federal level. But while the re-election of the President may be a setback on many levels, especially from the point of view of fiscal conservatives like me; the Democratic Party is not in the middle of a catastrophe.

First, at the local grassroots level, Democrats fared better than the Republicans. We picked up two state legislatures, and a number of other offices, we had some near misses in a states where candidates who had never run before did very well, thus helping to build a strong bench for 2006.

While President Bush's campaign did a flawless job getting out their vote, and preparing ahead of time by putting anti-gay marriage amendments on the ballot in key states, the Democrats also did very well, building a record turnout. The surge in young voters, who overwhelmingly voted for John Kerry, is a good sign for the future.

Having said all this, the Democratic Party needs an overhaul. We will never win by trying to be "Republican-lite".

The Republican Party consistently undermines the American middle class, makes it tougher to get health insurance, makes college education less affordable, and runs up large deficits, while giving enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars to the biggest corporations in the world.

Two weeks before the election, the Bush administration passed a bill that was supported by too many Democrats, giving $139 billion away. The argument was that we couldn't win if we didn't support this legislation, which had lots of goodies for everyone. Well, the bill passed, and we lost anyway.

If you want to win, you have to fight, and you have to stand for something. I disagree with President Bush on almost every direction he takes us in, but he is a disciplined campaigner with an easy to understand message.

I think Democrats have a better message. First, we are fiscally responsible, and deficits hurt America. There is nothing moral about passing on our debts to our children. You cannot trust Republicans with your money. This week another increase in the debt ceiling is to be voted on, the Democrats need to stand fast for fiscal responsibility.

The President successfully turned a discussion about moral values into a discussion about gay marriage and abortion. I think moral values are also about how you treat poor people, how you treat those who are different, how you respect the opinion of others, and what you leave to your children. On those moral values, I think the Republicans lose. We need to talk about these values too.

Finally, we should also continue to do what I think the Kerry/Edwards team did well. Every American needs a job, every American needs affordable health care, every American needs a decent public education system, and every American wants a foreign policy consistent with the vision of American moral leadership, so we can be the moral leader, not just the military leader of the world.

Playing for Keeps

EPA - Environmental Pollution Agency?

Anyone who has any doubts about intent of the Bush Administration and the disastrous implications for the world’s environment should be sure to read "Environmental Officials See Chance to Shape Regulations" by Elizabeth Shogren and Kenneth R. Weiss in the Los Angeles Times on

Wednesday November 10, 2004

Shogren and Weiss quote Environmental Protection Agency Adminstrator Mike Levitt as saying that four more years give administration officials an opportunity to mold the environmental agency's professional staffs to more closely reflect their (the Bush Administration’s) priorities. Leavitt said 35% of the EPA's staff would become eligible to retire in the next four years, giving him a chance to remake from the inside out the agency that takes the lead in enforcing air and water pollution and the cleanup of toxic dumps.

For starters, the administration says it will not reconsider regulating carbon dioxide emissions — despite scientific alarm over global warming — because such a policy would hurt the domestic coal industry and send jobs overseas.

I don’t know about you, but I can breathe better already.

Moving?

Better Hurry

Our sources tell us that since the U.S. election the New Zealand Office of Immigration has been overwhelmed by American’s seeking information on immigrating down under.  Check it out if your gonna go, but hurry, the line is getting long.

Better yet, let's all move to key swing states and beat the crap out of the Republicans in the 2006 Congressional elections.

Taos Anyone?

Done being Polite

One week down, about 215 weeks to go, give or take a day or two.

And if that’s not enough to scare you, I don’t know what will.

I had been thinking I’ve got to mellow out about this election.

But then I went for a walk with my wife and sons.  While we were out, we ran into an acquaintance, a guy who lives in our little town who voted for Bush.

You’ve met the type, a lawyer with a little money, never really practiced law, but seems to dabble in a little bit of everything. I’m sure he thinks of himself as a moderate.  A Republican, but cool.  Not a Bush ranger, but a wannabe.

But in the space of a five minute walk he referred to Asians as “nips,” compared the deaths of more than one thousand

U.S.

soldiers to the traffic deaths on L.A. Freeways and said that racist discrimination against “Persians” and other Arabs was O.K.  Just to be sure we thought he was cool he went out of his way to point out that he was “pro-choice”, but then admitted he wasn’t too worried about who Bush would appoint to the Bench.

When I got home I took a shower.

That’s who’s backing Bush.  And he is probably right, he is probably one of the moderate ones.

215 weeks to go.  And I am done being polite.

Florida Voter Suppression?

From a friend and fellow rockthrower

On The Front Lines in Florida

Spurred by the unwillingness of the broadcast media to report voting problems during the 2004 election race, we want to alert our friends, family and colleagues to the widespread voter suppression and disenfranchisement that occurred in Broward County, Florida. We staffed the emergency hotline for the Kerry Campaign Headquarters in Broward County from late October through the election. All of us were devastated by the margin of Bush's win in Florida, particularly since polls predicted the race would be extremely close.

Many of the calls to our hotline were from voters who had pressed the "Kerry" button on their electronic voting screen, only to have "Bush" light up as the candidate they had chosen. In some cases, this would happen repeatedly until about the 5th or 6th time the voter pressed "Kerry" and eventually his name would light up. In other cases, the voters pushed "Kerry" but were later asked to confirm their "Bush" vote.

We had calls about a road block, put up by the police at 7am on November 2, which blocked road access to two precinct locations in majority black districts. There was no justification for the road
block -- no accident or crime scene or construction.

Many of our calls dealt with voter suppression, or manipulation, of the Haitian population -- occurrences which seem too numerous, and their targets too indefensible as primarily poor first-time-voter Creole-speaking refugees, to be anything but systemic. In one example, a voter whose hands were bandaged could not press the touch-screen himself; he asked the nonpartisan election official to press "Kerry" for him, but the election official pressed "Bush" and sent his vote immediately into the machine. Many, many others were denied the right to vote and were not given provisional ballots, while others were refused assistance at the polls, even though provisional ballots and voter assistance are legal rights. Others were told they had already voted and were turned away, although they had never voted previously.This latter experience was a complaint not isolated to Haitians but also included other surprised voters with no recourse except their word against that of the Supervisor of Elections.

We spoke with hundreds of voters who were certain they had registered to vote in the past 6 months, well before the October 18 deadline, but were not on the rolls. And those were just the people who had the information to contact us.

The local paper, citing the Supervisor of Elections office as its source, told all people voting by absentee ballot that they could turn in ballots by hand to any of its seven offices by 5pm on Tuesday, November 2. Every single one of those offices except one was closed on Tuesday.

We had numerous calls from voters on November 2 whose precincts had closed, yet the Supervisor of Elections office had given voters no notification of the closure, and no notification of where to go to vote. Thousands of people were likely disenfranchised because of inexcusable mishaps such as this.

We had many calls from people who had been harassed by poll workers, who were turned away without being allowed the right to vote provisionally (another breech of voter rights). Other people were turned away because the address on their drivers license did not match the address on their voter registration card; again, this is in direct violation of election law.

All of these problems do not even take into account the 58,000 absentee ballots that had been "lost" by the Supervisor of Elections in perhaps the most Democratic county in the state, disenfranchising thousands of people who were disabled, out of the country, or elderly and unable get to the polls. These events, and many others, have been documented and also reported to lawyers, but we fear they will not get the attention they deserve. This is what we witnessed in just one county. We believe that these "voting irregularities" raise serious concerns about the legitimacy of the results in Florida, and more broadly, about the health of democracy in this country.

Please circulate this widely.

Libby Anker [email protected], Jill Greenlee [email protected]
Rachel Van Sickle-Ward [email protected], Ryan Centner [email protected], Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Sociology University of California, Berkeley

Submitted to: Citizens For Legitimate Government, November 7, 2004

Coverage anyone?

The 'F' Word

Election Fraud?

While the Internet is buzzing with rumors, and I certainly wouldn’t put it past them, I’m not ready to charge the Bush administration with election fraud in Ohio and Florida.

 I  don’t have any evidence, and unlike those in the Bush Administration, I don’t like to say things unless I am reasonably sure they are true.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t others who are raising the issue.  To find out more, check out What You Can Do About Election Fraud

What I am interested in knowing is how the Zogby Poll on election-day could have been so wrong.  (Reporters, that’s a tip for a good story.)