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2/27/2005

Now we find that Howard Dean’s primary campaign Pro Wrestling scream was a fraud.

I don’t know who I should be angrier with – mainstream media for perpetrating this campaign and democracy assassination, myself for falling for it, or Dean himself for not showing this piece of fraudulent film for what it was, when it happened.

I keep hearing from the AP’s that our mainstream media is so liberal that it has Christianity under attack, that the liberal media is biased toward liberal causes, yadda yadda, blah blah blah.

I am a liberal, and I cannot find a new channel on mainstream television that I can stand to watch for more than 10 minutes before I hear an Anti-P talking head prattling on about how wonderful, BushCo gave Putin a stearn talking to about democracy and free press. BushCo, with a handful of wealthy buddies who own ever single mainstream media outlet in this country and half of the rest of the world’s, who has paid journalists to push his propaganda, who makes fake videos to show during “legitimate” newscasts without informing viewers that they are about to view what amounts to an info-mercial from the White House, has the unutterable gall to lecture anyone, including the leader of Russia, on democracy and free press?

Last night, I was flipping through the channels. Showtime was airing Trekkies and Trekkies 2. I like Star Trek, so I decided to see what other people who like Star Trek do, as I’ve heard of the conventions, but never been to one. The people in the movie were a little strange, fake Spock ears, latex Klingon heads, the whole nine yards.

The Trekkies got a little strange and whoohoo out there for my taste, so I went flipping through the channels again. On PAX, I found a “news” show called “Faith Under Fire”, which promised to give opposing views on the ‘liberal media assault on Christianity.’ The show was just beginning, and I was promised opposing views on this liberal assault on Christianity. What I got was Anti-P’s prattling on about how Christianity and values are under attack from liberal media. No specifics, mind you, just the typical Anti-P sweeping proclamations of terrible abuses of persecuted Christians, with no evidence to support their claims. No opposing views, either.

After ten minutes of this, I turned back to Trekkies, who suddenly seemed like the pinnacle of reason and sanity.

The only liberal media, as we liberals are all painfully aware, is in the imaginations of the Anti-P’s and whatever nonsense they can cook up this week.

Let’s call a spade a spade – the mainstream media is so stranglehold owned by multi-conglomerates who just happen to be – you guessed it, Anti-P, that they lie to us on a regular basis – every broadcast, it seems.

For a group of people who claim to hold the moral high ground, they sure do an awful lot of lying.

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2/27/2005

In a recent blog I presented my version of the New Liberal Lexicon. Today, I want to touch on what is the difference between a Liberal and an Anti-Progress (conservative, or AP):

LIBERAL

Civil Rights - Liberal

Healthcare – Liberal

Social Security – Liberal

Public Schools – Liberal

National parks – Liberal

40 hour work week – Liberal

Child Labor Laws – Liberal

Minimum wage – Liberal

Equal Rights Act – Liberal

Social Services – Liberal

Women’s suffrage – Liberal

Black suffrage – Liberal

Abolishment of Jim Crow laws – Liberal

Human Rights, international & domestic – Liberal

Abolition of Slavery – Liberal

Separation of Church and State for the protection of religion from state – Liberal

U.S. Constitution – Liberal

AP (CONSERVATIVE)

Corporate welfare – AP

Teaching the test instead of Teaching the knowledge – AP

Budget Cuts in Public School Education funding – AP

School Vouchers to put the nail in the coffin of public education – AP

Private school vouchers to keep the elite educated and the poor ignorant – AP

Outsourcing of U.S. jobs – AP

Destruction of social safeguards (social security) for the elderly – AP

Torture as a viable method – AP

Wars based upon lies – AP

Walmartization of America – AP

Anti-mom&pop company legislation – AP

Tax increases for the poor – AP

Tax cuts for the wealthy – AP

Destruction of legal recourse based upon lies of ‘frivolous lawsuits’ – AP

Destruction of the justice system with legalized government eavesdropping – AP

Heart attacks from Vioxx due to packed government panels – AP

Mad Cow disease from Canada with an OK on meat imports – AP

Tainted flue vaccines from England – AP

Shortage of flu vaccines – AP

Destruction of the First Amendment – AP

Denial of civil rights based upon political whims against homosexuals – AP

Budget cuts to child welfare agencies – AP

Budget cuts to social services agencies – AP

Budget cuts to health and human services agencies – AP

Failed ‘war on drugs’ – AP

Failed ‘war on terror’ – AP

Forgetting about Osama – AP

See the differences? What does the AP have to say about their own record? Nothing. They simply turn the sentence around and try to blame liberals for AP failures and greed.

This is one liberal that’s tired of having the conversation turned on it’s head by the AP talking heads like Rush and Bill and Tucker an Sean and Joe. It’s time the AP’s start defending themselves for their own failures. Simply passing the buck won’t pass muster anymore.

Welcome to the Liberal Revolution. As you can see from the list of Liberal achievements above, I’m pretty proud of my bleeding-heartism. It’s time the AP’s start owning up to their utter moral bankruptcy, and it’s time we start making them.

“The revolution starts now” – Steve Earle

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2/26/2005

I was watching Real Time With Bill Maher last night on HBO, and I’m pretty sure I caught Tucker Carlson fibbing about euthanasia and studies performed about it.

The conversation turned to the movie Million Dollar Baby and the hot topics of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Tucker made a claim that legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide would lead to the slippery slope of forced ‘mercy killings’ of the old and inconvenient. He further claimed that a simple internet search would produce “millions” - his word, “millions”, of “studies” that show this to be true.

Well, after the show, I did a simple internet search, on Google, using the keywords ‘euthanasia studies effects of.” The first page consisted mainly of anti-choice groups and Religious Reich groups pronouncing the slippery slope with no material support to back up their claims. I wasn’t entirely surprised, as these are the same tactics they use to push ID and creation in public school boards.

What I did not find were ‘millions’ of peer-reviewed studies showing that the slippery slope is happening. Granted, I didn’t look through all 177,000 entries, but I did look through the first 5 pages of hits. The most I found were some rough analysis of studies done in the Netherlands after that country legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia, and the numbers don’t seem to support the slippery slope argument.

While numerous websites do indeed make pronouncements concerning the validity or lack thereof of the slippery slope argument, in 5 pages of search hits, roughly 98% of the hits were to biased sites – either anti-choice sites or right-to-die sites. Neither would qualify as ‘peer reviewed’, much less scientific.

Granted, Tucker Carlson didn’t say “peer reviewed studies”, he simply said “millions of studies” – however, he’s a smart guy, and I’m sure he understands the distinction between a legitimate “study” and a special-interest group’s take on a subject.

In short, I submit to you, the public, that Tucker Carlson presents himself as another example of lying to promote a personal belief.

I went to Tucker’s site this morning, and sent him an email addressing my concerns over his claim of ‘millions of studies.’ I don’t really expect a reply, but who knows, maybe he’ll bite. I will publish any further developments.

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2/24/2005

I’ve been reading in various left-leaning magazines and websites lately all kinds of explanations for why the democrats lost the election. Reasons and excuses run from “Kerry was weak” to “the democrats let the republicans dictate the public debate.”

I think that the latter is probably the better choice of reason why we lost. How do we argue against people who call themselves “pro-family”, “pro-life”, “pro-traditional marriage”, and pro after pro after pro? All those positives are hard to argue against. Unless we take on the job of dictating the debate for a change, and force the Right Wing-dings and the Religious Reich and BushCo to defend their stances, call a spade a spade and out them for what they really are.

So, we need a new liberal lexicon, and we need to be consistent in our usage of our descriptions of the ‘other side’. With that in mind, I’ve come up with a few examples that will, forever more, be the Apprentice’s lexicon in talking about ‘those others’:

1. Anti-Choice. For years the right has described itself as “pro-life”. However, as the right has a tendency to oppose abortion rights and in the same breath support the death penalty, they can’t have it both ways. They are now Anti-Choice, because they don’t oppose death. They oppose a woman’s right to choose.

2. Anti-Family. “Pro-family” was a big buzzword during the last presidential campaign. Since the religious reich has a higher percentage of divorce than other religious groups or among atheists or agnostics. That can hardly call that “pro-family”. They attack gay marriage and even civil unions as an attack on ‘traditional marriage’ and families in general. I would contend that allowing gays to marry and have the same legal rights as everyone else would strengthen the ‘family’, and ‘marriage’, too. Not to mention that it’s only fair. They pay taxes at the single rate, which anyone who is single can tell you is much higher and with fewer write-offs than paying taxes as a married couple. They’ve paid their economic dues, and now it’s time to let them into this society as the citizens they are and afford them with the same rights that heterosexuals are able to take advantage of.

3. Anti-Progress (this term comes courtesy of my dear husband). Again, for years, we’ve let them get away with calling themselves ‘conservatives’. Conservative, according to the Oxford Dictionary of American English, 2nd ed., is defined as “opposed to change and holding traditional values.” If they are opposed to change, then why all the tort reform, social security reform, changing rules of Congress to keep Delay out of jail reform? Since conservatives, by definition, are opposed to change, then they are anti-progress, or the Anti-Progress party, for a plural usage.

4. The Party of Un-American Values. Traditional values reared it’s ugly head in the last 4 years, also. We’ve seen, in the last couple of months, the nomination of Gonzalez to Attorney General – a man who condones and redefines torture based upon the whims of BushCo’s needs. Torture is not an American Value. We’ve seen how detainees at Guantanamo Bay have been held without trial, without being charged with crimes, without any contact with the outside world, with no justice. A lack of recourse to justice is not an American Value. We’ve gone to war based upon lies of WMD’s and distractions posed as pie-in-the-sky dreams of spreading democracy throughout the world. Bombing small countries into the stone age over lies is NOT an American Value. We have a non-president who wants to have passed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution specifically disenfranchising an entire segment of American society based upon something so arbitrary as sexual orientation. Disenfranchisement is NOT an American Value. We’ve read recently about government produced infomercials being inserted into legitimate news programs as if the segment were news. Propaganda is NOT an American Value to the point that it is illegal. We can be watched in our internet wanderings by the FBI. Spying on U.S. citizens is NOT an American Value. If all of the above can be called ‘traditional values’, then these are not traditional, they are Un-American.

5. The Religious Reich, instead of the religious right. Directionally false connotations aside, who says they're right? This is already a term of choice for moi.

Those are just a few of my own ideas. I welcome suggestions from all of you out there, as well.

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2/22/2005

Lynne Stewart, a civil rights lawyer called a radical by the right wing, was convicted by a federal court last Thursday of supporting terrorists, when in 2000 she gave a press release to Reuters News Service and “of being present when her co-defendents allegedly aided her client in writing a series of letters.”

Her client? “The Blind Sheik”, Omar Abdel Rahman, who is currently serving a life sentence for conspiracy to commit terrorist acts after the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Rahman, a citizen of Egypt, is supposedly the leader of the Islamic Group which has been linked to terrorism. Rahman is blind, and a diabetic.

The attorney? Lynne Stewart, who takes on unpopular clients.

Stewart claimed throughout her trial that her actions were undergone in order to zealously defend her client in an attempt to improve the confinement conditions of her client and to attempt to get him returned to Egypt.

The first prong of the government’s case alleged that Stewart gave a press release to Reuters News Service in 2000 in which Rahman allegedly withdrew his support from his follower’s cease-fire following a 1997 massacre of 58 largely European tourists in Luxor, Egypt. The government claimed that this action was restricted by the Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) enacted in 1996 to prevent federal prisoners from inciting violence from within prison. The government prosecutors claimed that the press release violated the SAMs and were a veiled attempt to get the Sheik’s followers to wage violent acts of terrorism. No violent acts actually occurred as a result of this press release.

The second prong of the government’s case against Stewart is that she was present when her co-defendents helped Rahman compose letters in Arabic. Stewart does not understand nor speak Arabic.

The problem with all of this? It’s constitutional. Attorney’s have a DUTY to defend their clients zealously and to the best of their ability. If they do not do so, they can be found negligent. In this case, doing so was also negligent, according to Ashcroft, who in October of 2001 “secretly amended the SAMs regulations – without notice to the public.” Those amendments allow the government, through the Bureau of Prisons, to eavesdrop on attorney-client communication.

Attorney-client privilege is a sacred as doctor-patient privilege, is constitutionally assured in the first and sixth amendments. It is under attack by our own government. With attorneys now facing possible jail time for zealously defending their clients, due to secret eavesdropping and what is now a precendent of allowing that eavesdropping to be admitted as evidence into a court of law, what are the consequences of this ruling? Unpopular cases, cases that the government doesn’t want to be defended properly, won’t be, because the lawyers now area not free to defend their clients without government interference and retribution.

How far do we let this go? How many more of our constitutional rights will be yanked out from under us?

Lynne Stewart believed that every accused has a right to a proper defense. Our constitution reinforced that belief by giving us all the right to a fair trial and competent defense when we are accused by the behemoth that is our government. Evidently, those days of the wine and roses of fair trials are over, and not just for blind sheiks from Egypt, but for all of us.

Is this the price of “security”? Is this what we wanted when we all shut our eyes after 9/11 to changes in statutes that allow the accused to be spied on by the government during what are supposed to be privileged communications with their attorneys?

Whether what Stewart did in releasing the press release was misguided, or naïve, or criminal or was legitimately in pursuit of a zealous defense of her client, is beside the point. Noone can be defended properly when the accuser is in the room with the accused and their defense during privileged communication and without even announcing their presence.

Where is the outcry against this ruling? The National Conference of Black Lawyers and the National Lawyers Guild have issued statements condemning this conviction and accuses the government of trying to intimidate lawyers who choose to represent unpopular clients, and of violating the 1st, 6th and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

When the head of New York’s Republican Party Stephen Minarik said that the Democratic party was, upon Dean’s nomination as DNC chairman, “the party of Barbara Boxer, Lynne Stewart and Howard Dean.” Dean certainly wouldn’t have taken offense at this statement for his own name being mentioned, and I doubt Barbara Boxer’s reference would upset him much either. So, it must be that the democrats have once again allowed the republicans to wage the debate (or lack thereof) and distract us from the real issue – not whether Lynne Stewart is the crackpot that the Republicans claim, but whether our constitutional rights took a serious hit last Thursday.

So much for Dean reforming the Party.

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2/21/2005

It’s funny how no matter how many secular prophets, such as Franz Kafka, warn us all of the dangers of state protected ‘secrets’, of unfair trials and of government out of control, we, in general, just do not seem to take these warnings seriously.

“Kafka is fiction”, one might say. Yes, but fiction grounded in the cold burial casket of reality.

One of the most fundamentally important rights we have lives in our theory of jurisprudence – the right to a fair trial. Every citizen of America has a right to a trial. Prosecutors in criminal trials must provide evidence to support their claim. The accused has the right to a defense, and the right to view evidence against him/her.

The Justice Department, however, charged with protection of the citizenry, would like to disregard these requirements of trial.

Secret evidence. Secret legal arguments.

Ahmed Abu Ali, a U.S. citizen, is being held in a Saudi jail at the request of our government. Our government won’t tell the accused, or even the judge, Judge John D Bates, who must determine if a U.S. court even has jurisdiction in this case to get him out of that jail, what he is accused of, why he, a U.S. citizen is being detained in a foreign jail, at the behest of our government, which won’t provide the Judge any evidence against this man to show why he is being held, yet have the audacity to ask that the suit designed to get this man out of jail be dismissed by Judge Bates. See the circular reasoning?

This man is a US CITIZEN. Think about that for a minute. A citizen. Just like you and me. Just like the neighbor next door, or the guy down the street who is just trying to make ends meet. Maybe this US citizen participated in illegal activities. Maybe not. The fact remains, he has been held for 20 months without being charged with any crime and without being presented with the evidence used to hold him. Judge Bates, who must decide whether the case to release this man can be brought to trial here in the US, can’t even get the information he needs to make a decision. The accused, who does not know what he has been accused of, as of right now, right this minute, has absolutely no recourse to justice.

Is this fair? Is this right? Is this AMERICAN? Is this the BushCo morality we’ve been hearing about? Or is this a government that we, the people, have allowed to become out of control? Is this how we want our system of justice to work? Where at any time, for any reason that we don’t even have to be told about, we can be arrested and held without trial, without recourse to justice, held in a nightmare of Kafkaesque proportions?

Is this what the other 51% voted for? And they have the utter gall to speak of liberals like we’re the totalitarianism minded?

All of you who voted for security – is this the type of security you envisioned? Security from terrorists? What about security from our own government?

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2/20/2005

The Virginia General Assembly with Bill # HJ537 has proposed an amendment to Virginia's constitution "to permit prayer and the recognition of 'religious beliefs, heritage, and traditions on public property, including public schools.'" At least they add the provision to this "prohibits the General Assembly from compelling persons to participate in religious activity."

However, the Apprentice asks: how do you go about permitting public prayer (and let's face it, in the land of Falwell and Liberty (cough) "university", they're talking about Christian prayer. Particularly, the Falwell evangelical variety of prayer) and not 'compelling' persons to participate in such activity?

The Oxford Dictionary of Current English, 3rd Ed., defines compel as "1. Force to do something. 2. Bring about by force or pressure.

Take Christian prayer, put it in a public school that may very well have many other religious beliefs, not to mention differing versions of the Christian faith, and you get a recipe for pressure for students to conform to the particular denominational flavor of the week.

Why do I call it the 'flavor of the week'? Evangelical Christians believe that prayer is their right - and it is. As evidenced by an Online Petition , addressed to "Government Officials, Washington D.C.", which implores said unnamed offials to reintstate prayer in public schools, sporting events and other "public forums." We can assume that this means that they would like for this "reinstatement" to be legislated at the federal level. Or, barring that, an amendment to a state constitution, and to go even further, how about an amendment to a state constitution that had a direct influence on the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution?

However, this view of public prayer is disputed in the Christian community. According to B.A. Robinson, who quotes Matthew 6:5-6 which has Jesus says "when thou prayest, enter into thy closet and when thou has shut they door, pray to thy Father which is in secret...." Robinson tells us that liberal Christians will tend to take this passage literally - meaning no public prayer. The author goes on to say that conservative Christians will "downplay Jesus' instruction...Conservatives interpret Matthew 6:5 as not condemning public prayer. Rather, it criticizes only that prayer in public that is motivated by a desire to show off."

Liberal Christians take the passage literally, conservative Christians will fiddle with the interpretation, in other words.

And the rest of us who are muslim, jewish, pagan, atheist, agnostic, deist, buddhist, and any other combination of -ist or -ism are supposed to just go along with Christian prayer in public schools and courthouses and city halls and school board meetings when the Christians can't even agree among themselves on how or when or where to pray?

The ACLU contends that “You only need to turn on the radio or television or listen to public officials give speeches to know that suppression of religious expression is not a problem in our society.” Fox News certainly would support that claim – you only have to turn on Fox News for 15 minutes to get a year’s worth of Jerry Falwell telling us all how we should be living our lives.

The ACLU goes on to say that not only is the proposed amendment unnecessary due to the already prolific public nature of religious expression, but that according to supporters of the bill, the purpose is to “counteract suppression of religious expression in public places, especially in public schools” and the supporters fall far short of providing evidence that religious expression is being suppressed.

In 1786, Virginia passed the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom drafted by Thomas Jefferson, provided the model for the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and effectively provided a model for the separation of church and state. To amend this statute to provide for prayer in public schools, plaques of the ten commandments in courtrooms, creation in the science classrooms of public schools and all other forms of state sponsored prayer would not only demean the Statute, but would help to destroy the true foundations of this country – that citizens have the right to worship as they choose, but that this is, governmentally, a secular state.

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2/9/2005

Between The Daily Kos, a well known blog site, Buzzflash and Editor & Publisher, Joe Gannon, a "reporter" with Talon News was found to be what I would consider a right wing 'plant' in the White House Press Corps. Gannon was credited with lobbing softballs at Bush for quite some time now.

Three Cheers to the Daily Kos and all the other bloggers out there who researched this guy and showed us all who he really is, and forced a resignation of a conservative plant.

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2/9/2005

The Religious Reich is on the warpath since BushCo's election. Their targets are the same issues that they placed in their sights before: The First Amendment since 1789, desegregation since emancipation, women's rights since the suffragists dared to speak out in the 19th century, Roe v. Wade for the last 30 years, and the list goes on and on. During the McCarthy era, the Religious Reich, with the aid of the later discredited McCarthy, set it's sights on communism. Suddenly, everyone who even hinted at having left-leaning ideologies, and some who didn't but who just weren't liked, were labeled communists. McCarthy's blacklists destroyed careers and lives.

Now, the Religious Reich with their 'mandate' as claimed by a president who they think will deliver the country from the evils of liberals, trashy women, blacks, immigrants, nudity, violence on television, dissenting voices, evolution, the ACLU, and just about any other group or left-leaning cause one can think of, have set their sights on university professors who dare to be liberal, and who dare to teach. The following three cases warrant the freethought community's full attention and vigilance:

1. In Agape Press (click the title of this blog for the full text), the young Reichster Daniel Underwood cried "anti-Christian bigotry on" the campus of North Carolina State University. On what does he base his claims of persecution? Daniel Underwood, pursuing an undergraduate degree in chemistry, "says all of his science classes teach atheistic assumptions about the origins of life and the universe, but nothing about a divine creator."

(Aside: To this, the Apprentice says: Son, you're not in seminary school. Science doesn't deal with the 'divine creator', and if you want a creation class, you need to head on over to Libery U., where you can fulminate about the 'divine' all day long with Falwell and friends. However, if you want to study for a science degree at a real school, you're going to have to suck it up and study real science.) Sorry, folks, I couldn't resist.

What else does Mr. Underwood have to say about his liberal professors? Underwood "recalls an incident last semester in which a professor asked a guest speaker not to mention the name of 'Jesus' while addressing his 'Social Deviance' class. Professor Robert Stone, the student says, made the request after ex-convict John Kinlaw told the class that his life had dramatically changed after he abandoned a life of crime to follow Jesus Christ." Underwood goes on to say that "In fact, (Underwood) believes if Kinlaw had said his life changed dramatically because he began praying to Allah, Stone would not have censored him." Really? How do you know, Mr. Underwood? Did you ask the professor? Asking the question can mean the difference between understanding someone's motive, and being ignorant of the motive.

Underwood tells his fellow students to "be on guard against this, and try to take notice when their teachers may be doing things similar to what [Professor Stone] did." In other words, he urges his fellow students to be thoughtpolice.

2. Which leads us into another avenue of Religious Reichism on university campuses. Ward Churchill, chairman of the ethnic studies department at the University of Colorado, was asked to quit after Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, cancelled Churchill's appearance at a panel discussion on the topic of "Limits of Dissent." However, Churchill had written an essay in which his thesis was that the September 11 attacks were a direct consequence of decades of US foreign policy - a thesis also presented by Noam Chomsky. With charges of Churchill calling the victims in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks "little Eichmann's", Churchill received death threats from all over the country. The other panelists received "violent" threats, and the panel discussion was then cancelled.

The RockyMountainNews.com claims that Churchill "told his students...that people making threats against him in the name of Sept. 11 victims and their families are proving his initial thesis; that people who feel they are being victimized and degraded will naturally respond with terrorism and violence." Bill O'Reilly called it "the radicalization of the nation's college faculties." Again, the age old dead-horse argument of radicals on university campuses is employed, harangues that have been with us since the first university was formed in Europe in the middle ages.

What does Mr. Churchill have to say about all this attention? Churchill says that the media coverage about his analysis of 9/11 was "grossly inaccurate" and has "resulted in defamation of my character and threats against my life." I suspect that he is right.

BushCo shenanigans such as the dismissal of the Geneva Convention rules of war as irrelevant to United States foreign policy and the nomination of Alberto Gonzalez, who condones torture, as Attorney General, seem to lend support to Churchill's thesis that the U.S. invited terrorist attacks through the breaking of international laws and policies of domination througout the middle east and southeast asia for decades. While I personally consider Churchill's use of the perjoratives of nazism to describe what he says were the "technocrats of empire" working in the WTD as an unfortunate choice of words, I have to respect his opinion that the U.S. needs to change its ways in its treatment of the world, or we will continue to face terrorist threat, and I have to respect him when he says of his choice of words "Ugly? Yes. Hurtful? Yes. And that's my point. It's no less ugly, painful or dehumanizing a description when applied to Iraqis, Palestinians, or anyone else."

3. And finally, here is a dangerous example of university thoughtpolice in action, with the awards being Apple computers and iPods: Evan Maloney, who has been described in the New York Sun as "America's most promising conservative documentary filmmaker...(who) hasn't completed a single film."

Evan Maloney, in cahoots with a couple of right-wingers who have money, is making a movie that the Reichsters think will be a cogent answer to Michael Moore. In fact, the Reichsters had a film festival, in which they showed two anti-Michael Moore movies that haven't even received distribution offers. Maloney's movie will showcase liberal professors whose students turned them in to Maloney for a prize. Yes, a prize. Like a contest -root out the liberals on campus! Win an iPod!.

Maloney's film, and evidently, since the New York Sun article, has been finished, will be screened in New York at Fordham Law School on 2/24/05. What was Maloney looking for from all those 'persecuted' students who had to sit through classes, being taught by persons far more educated, traveled and well read than they, spout liberalism? Students must keep track of how much class time a professor spends on 'liberal' dialogue that does not directly pertain to the current class subject, they must record the details of the encounter and give time, date, class, etc. and they must have another student willing to corroborate.

Now, a word to the Religious Reich: I think that one of the things you are missing here is that university study, in the classroom, is not always as structured as high school. You don't always have a set lecture to listen to - often, class discussion, which can get off on what I always found to be interesting tangents, are part of the higher learning process. It's called thinking for yourself and learning to express yourself cogently. Professors are not there to teach you how to think - they are there to present the materials - it is up to you to think for yourself. They can, and should, also present their own opinions - learning doesn't happen in a vacuum. They also tend to give us some of our country's best tradition of thought - of both the liberal and conservative and moderate variety If you disagree, fine. Disagree. Do the disagreeing in class - don't go running around crying persecution to anyone who will listen - stand up, be a man or woman, and make your case to the class. But don't be suprised when you start spouting off about creationism, or nationalism, or ultra-right wing uber-patriotism, that you are looked at like you are an idiot. That garbage may pass as wisdom among your fellow-not-yet-educated buddies, but it does not pass as wisdom in the wonderfully secular halls of higher education. The university officials, worried about the bottom line may put up with your nonsense, and I find that to be a nauseating shame. However, you cannot force everyone to kowtow to you, even when you misuse the 'policital correctness' that was designed to protect society from narrow, dogmatic, religious belief such as that espoused by the Religious Reich.

And finally, a word to the freethought community: We need to keep our eyes open. With the current administration in office fermenting the climate of religious domination and mandates of theocracy, we need to be ever vigilant of attacks on freethought in the name of nationlistic and religious dogmas. It's time we start countering the cries of 'communists', thinly veiled by the Reich as 'liberals', before we find ourselves in another McCarthy era. Think I'm being hysterical? Think "oh, the supreme court will protect us, they can't forgo the first amendment!"? Think again. The Right, while we've been making progress in the arenas of science, technology and human rights, has been organizing for a third awakening. These three recent cases above, when put together, point towards what is a very old, and very renewed and extremely vigorous attack on civil liberties. The struggle didn't end with segregation, the struggle didn't end with Roe v. Wade, and the real struggle didn't end with Madelyn Murray O'Hair getting prayer out of public school classrooms. In fact, the real struggle has only just begun - the struggle to keep those freedoms of and from religion that we hold dear.

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2/7/2005

The New York Times ran an article about BushCo's planned budget (cuts) for 2006. Here is a little sampling:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will lose 9% of their budget, bringing it down to $6.9 billion. The programs hit will be those that deal with "eipidemics, chronic diseases and obesity." In other words, the more we all die of TB & McD's fries, the happier BushCo will be.

The CDC also stands to have their public emergency health funds cut 12.6%, bringing it down to $1 billion, "which helps state and local agencies prepare for bioterror attacks", while requesting more money from Congress to stockpile vaccines and antibiotics to help the populace in the instance of a bioterror attack. In other words, we'll have vaccines for smallpox, anthrax and the flu, but there won't be money for distributing them to the states.

Here's a question for all the republicans out there who voted for "security" - Are we any safer yet?

The Department of Health and Human Services discretionary funds will be cut 2.4%, bringing it down to $68 billion - not including the costs of medicare and its new prescription drug benefits.

BushCo actually is increasing a couple of health services funds - The National Institute of Health will go up a whopping 0.7%, increasing it to $28.7 billion, "much less than what would be needed to keep pace with the costs of biomedical research, which are rising more than 3.5 percent a year." So does that mean they'll have to work without the inflatable suits when they enter a level 4 biohazard room to study Ebola?

BushCo will also increase the National Science Foundation's funds by 2.4%, bringing the budget up to $5.6 billion.

Guess who wins the BushCo lottery in 2006? If you said "Um, the Pentagon?" you would be correct. Their budget will increase 4.8% - $419.3 billion. That doesn't include the cost of the Iraq or Afghanistan war. I wonder where the increase will go - nuclear bunker busters? Why should Russia have all the fun with new nuclear weapons systems?

Will scaring the rest of the world into nuclear weapons programs really make us safer?

In BushCo's favor, and just to be fair, here is what the NY Times quoted a whitehouse administration official as saying about the budget cuts: "They said that the budget this year was exceptionally tight and that, in some cases, several programs served the same basic purpose."

I'll bet if they went hunting at the Pentagon, they would find several programs there that serve the same purpose, as well.

I sometimes wonder how BushCo makes their budget...maybe they blindfold Bush in the Oval Office, paste pictures representing different governmental agencies (because we all know he has a hard time spelling Pentagon and doesn't read very well, anyway) on the wall, blindfold him and let him "pin the tail on the donkey". The Pentagon is never on the wall, evidently, considering they get the windfall again in 2006.

I heard they used to let him throw darts, until Karl Rove took one in the double chin.

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