1. The Associated Press is peopled by real journalists.
2. Journalists are required, by the ethical canons of their profession, to protect the identities of sources who request confidentiality. This can be done in numerous ways, up to and including using false names ("Deep Throat," anyone?) to refer to their sources in print media. It is, in fact, almost as common as the "senior administration officials" choosing not to have their names published whilst leaking information to the press.
3. Real journalists are not required to turn over the names of their confidential sources to the raving wingnuts of Red State, Powerline, Little Green Fascists, or any other blogger, collective or otherwise, to splash all over the internet as they desire. This is not "stonewalling." This is called "protecting one's sources." Real journalists have, in fact, been known to go to jail for refusing to turn such information over at far more official requests than the spittle-flecked demands of bloviating lunatics searching for evidence of the vast left-wing media conspiracy determined to "lose" Iraq.
4. If you cannot believe that the clusterfuck currently underway in Iraq is, in fact, a clusterfuck because some "leftist 'news' organization spreading enemy propaganda" told you that it's a clusterfuck, you need to step away from your computer, go to the local recruiter's office, and sign up for a hitch to see if for yourself. Because, really, when every major news organization in the world that doesn't include "Fox" in its name agrees that a situation is a clusterfuck? Then it's a clusterfuck. And it's not "propaganda" to report that, only reality.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
This Is Why I Think Most Age of Consent Laws Are Arbitrary Puritanical Horseshit
From here: http://www.wilsonappeal.com/index.php
Click the link above. If you believe that this is a grotesque miscarriage of justice, sign the petition link there. Of course, there's no certainty that doing so will do this poor kid any good, but there's always the remote chance that reason might prevail, even in Georgia.
Could this happen to your child? Your brother? Your friend?
Genarlow Wilson sits in prison despite being a good son, a good athlete and high school student with a 3.2 GPA. He never had any criminal trouble. On the day he was to sit for the SAT, at seventeen years old, his life changed forever. He was arrested. In Douglas County he was accused of inappropriate sexual acts at a News Year’s Eve party. A jury acquitted him of the allegation of Rape but convicted him of Aggravated Child Molestation for a voluntary act of oral sex with another teenager. He was 17, and she was 15.
Along with the label “child molester” which will require him throughout his life to be on a sexual offender registry, Genarlow received a sentence of eleven years — a mandatory 10 years in prison and 1 year on probation.
On July 1st, the new Romeo and Juliet law went into effect in Georgia for any other teen that engages in consensual sexual acts. That change in the law means that no teen prosecuted for consensual oral sex could receive more than a 12 months sentence or be required to register as a sex offender.
Had this law been in effect when Genarlow Wilson was arrested, or had been done after the Marcus Dixon case, Genarlow would not now be in jail.
Genarlow and his mother are overjoyed that no one else in Georgia will have to know their pain. In the meantime, however, the legal fight goes on for Genarlow Wilson.
Genarlow has been incarcerated since February 25, 2005.
Click the link above. If you believe that this is a grotesque miscarriage of justice, sign the petition link there. Of course, there's no certainty that doing so will do this poor kid any good, but there's always the remote chance that reason might prevail, even in Georgia.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
My husband sent me this link...
And I thought it was cool enough to pass along. Here we have the car of the future, powered by the fuel cell of the future -- hydrogen derived from seawater, strong enough to not only power the vehicle but to power your whole house.
http://www.youtube.com/v/ry6w3mRm-FM
http://www.youtube.com/v/ry6w3mRm-FM
Crossblog Political Postage
Today is National Coming Out Day. Pam Spaulding over at Pandagon has a post up on the topic, including discussion on things everyone, gay or straight, can do to stand up for the sake of equal rights for all:
http://pandagon.net/2006/10/11/today-is-national-coming-out-day/#more-3949
http://pandagon.net/2006/10/11/today-is-national-coming-out-day/#more-3949
Friday, October 06, 2006
Okay, lemme get this straight...
Seven years ago, the Republican Party wanted us all to believe that Monicagate was the Worst Scandal In the History of Ever. Everyone of a Democratic or progressive/liberal persuasion was expected to fully, completely, and publically denounce Clinton as though he'd been caught diddling five year olds on the Washington Mall, not tapping a 22 year old woman who had, by her own admission, initiated the relationship. I seem to recall that the language got fairly hysterical before all was said and done, what with all the people standing up on the floor of Congress to describe completely consensual sex between two adults as the sort of disgusting perversion usually only indulged in somewhere far outside the Beltway.
Right now, TODAY, that same Republican Party, after six years of power-drunken malfeasance and general misbehavior, wants us to behave as though a Republican legislator serially sexually harrassing underage pages is no reason whatsoever for anyone in their Party to take responsibility for their complete failure to handle said situation appropriately in order to retain control of that legislator's seat. Many, many attempts have been made to suggest that said legislator's behavior isn't against the law, because the age of consent in Washington DC is 16 (completely ignoring the law that said legislator helped to write, in which propositioning a minor for sex over the internet is a felony offense, regardless of age of consent), or that said behavior is somehow excusable because the victims of that behavior and/or the whistleblower that broke the story about it are partisan operatives (the pages in question all worked for the Republican caucus in Congress, which makes them Republican Party partisans, as was the whistleblower), or that the victims are somehow to blame for their own victimization (and have even gone so far as to publically identify one of the victims in an effort to discredit him -- an effort which has, thus far, backfired spectacularly).
Others have commented on this situation much more eloquently than I (see Pandagon and Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory), but I have to say this: I seriously doubt former Representative Foley resigned his seat solely over some vaguely naughty emails and some somewhat explicit IMs. I actually suspect that former Representative Foley tapped himself some underaged page ass and is now in rehab somewhere praying to whatever merciful gods exist that this fact of his sex life does not break until AFTER the elections. Because if it breaks BEFORE the elections, the odds of the Republican Party retaining control of the House will, I think, shrink significantly. Those odds are somewhat tenuous as it is, with the fundie lunatic "base" lacking the voting booth storming enthusiasm they had in 2004 due to the general failure of the Republican Party to undo forty years of forward social progress in the blink of an eye, despite the almost total failure of opposition provided by the Democratic Party. That lack of fundie enthusiasm married to a general dissatisfaction with Congressional misbehavior suggests, from where I'm sitting in the land of Pennsylvania, watching a number of entrenched Republican incumbents getting ready to go down in defeat at both the state and national levels, that a certain change will be occuring this November. The Senate is harder to call, but I think we might be looking at a fifty-fifty split, even with explosive sex-scandal related revelations, just because the Senate is only tangentially connected to said scandal.
I simply wish that the change was coming about as a result of, oh, I dunno, our fucking retarded Congresscritters blithely voting to invest the office of the Presidency with the extra-Constitutional powers of the military dictators so beloved of the neoimperialist whackjobs or, maybe, voting to reverse two hundred years of dedication to the right of individuals to demand and receive protection under the law and swift, fairly applied justice and, to, y'know, not be fucking tortured to death by someone who will then never be punished as a war criminal.
Yes, I'm very, very bitter about all of this.
Right now, TODAY, that same Republican Party, after six years of power-drunken malfeasance and general misbehavior, wants us to behave as though a Republican legislator serially sexually harrassing underage pages is no reason whatsoever for anyone in their Party to take responsibility for their complete failure to handle said situation appropriately in order to retain control of that legislator's seat. Many, many attempts have been made to suggest that said legislator's behavior isn't against the law, because the age of consent in Washington DC is 16 (completely ignoring the law that said legislator helped to write, in which propositioning a minor for sex over the internet is a felony offense, regardless of age of consent), or that said behavior is somehow excusable because the victims of that behavior and/or the whistleblower that broke the story about it are partisan operatives (the pages in question all worked for the Republican caucus in Congress, which makes them Republican Party partisans, as was the whistleblower), or that the victims are somehow to blame for their own victimization (and have even gone so far as to publically identify one of the victims in an effort to discredit him -- an effort which has, thus far, backfired spectacularly).
Others have commented on this situation much more eloquently than I (see Pandagon and Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory), but I have to say this: I seriously doubt former Representative Foley resigned his seat solely over some vaguely naughty emails and some somewhat explicit IMs. I actually suspect that former Representative Foley tapped himself some underaged page ass and is now in rehab somewhere praying to whatever merciful gods exist that this fact of his sex life does not break until AFTER the elections. Because if it breaks BEFORE the elections, the odds of the Republican Party retaining control of the House will, I think, shrink significantly. Those odds are somewhat tenuous as it is, with the fundie lunatic "base" lacking the voting booth storming enthusiasm they had in 2004 due to the general failure of the Republican Party to undo forty years of forward social progress in the blink of an eye, despite the almost total failure of opposition provided by the Democratic Party. That lack of fundie enthusiasm married to a general dissatisfaction with Congressional misbehavior suggests, from where I'm sitting in the land of Pennsylvania, watching a number of entrenched Republican incumbents getting ready to go down in defeat at both the state and national levels, that a certain change will be occuring this November. The Senate is harder to call, but I think we might be looking at a fifty-fifty split, even with explosive sex-scandal related revelations, just because the Senate is only tangentially connected to said scandal.
I simply wish that the change was coming about as a result of, oh, I dunno, our fucking retarded Congresscritters blithely voting to invest the office of the Presidency with the extra-Constitutional powers of the military dictators so beloved of the neoimperialist whackjobs or, maybe, voting to reverse two hundred years of dedication to the right of individuals to demand and receive protection under the law and swift, fairly applied justice and, to, y'know, not be fucking tortured to death by someone who will then never be punished as a war criminal.
Yes, I'm very, very bitter about all of this.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Remember These Names:
| Alexander (R-TN) Allard (R-CO) Allen (R-VA) Bennett (R-UT) Bond (R-MO) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burns (R-MT) Burr (R-NC) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Coleman (R-MN) Collins (R-ME) Cornyn (R-TX) Craig (R-ID) Crapo (R-ID) | DeMint (R-SC) DeWine (R-OH) Dole (R-NC) Domenici (R-NM) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Frist (R-TN) Graham (R-SC) Grassley (R-IA) Gregg (R-NH) Hagel (R-NE) Hatch (R-UT) Hutchison (R-TX) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Kyl (R-AZ) Lott (R-MS) | Lugar (R-IN) Martinez (R-FL) McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Murkowski (R-AK) Nelson (D-NE) Roberts (R-KS) Santorum (R-PA) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Stevens (R-AK) Talent (R-MO) Thomas (R-WY) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Voinovich (R-OH) Warner (R-VA) |
These are the United States Senators who have disgraced themselves and everything this country stands for by standing up to be counted in favor of granting the most incompetent and corrupt Administration in our history the unrestrained power to detain and torture whomever they please through suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus.
Soon to be former Senator Santorum, this November CANNOT get here soon enough, you worthless sack of hyena excrement. You are the personal embarrassment of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the cradle of our nation's liberty, and soon we shall kick your ass to the curb.
Remember these names also:
| Akaka (D-HI) Baucus (D-MT) Bayh (D-IN) Biden (D-DE) Bingaman (D-NM) Boxer (D-CA) Byrd (D-WV) Cantwell (D-WA) Carper (D-DE) Chafee (R-RI) Clinton (D-NY) Conrad (D-ND) Dayton (D-MN) Dodd (D-CT) Dorgan (D-ND) Durbin (D-IL) | Feingold (D-WI) Feinstein (D-CA) Harkin (D-IA) Inouye (D-HI) Jeffords (I-VT) Johnson (D-SD) Kennedy (D-MA) Kerry (D-MA) Kohl (D-WI) Landrieu (D-LA) Lautenberg (D-NJ) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Lieberman (D-CT) Lincoln (D-AR) Menendez (D-NJ) | Mikulski (D-MD) Murray (D-WA) Nelson (D-FL) Obama (D-IL) Pryor (D-AR) Reed (D-RI) Reid (D-NV) Rockefeller (D-WV) Salazar (D-CO) Sarbanes (D-MD) Schumer (D-NY) Smith (R-OR) Specter (R-PA) Stabenow (D-MI) Sununu (R-NH) Wyden (D-OR) |
The names of the Senators who stood firm on the traditions of our country and voted, albeit in vain, to preserve the rule of law here and our enduring respect for basic human rights and dignity for all people.
Friday, September 15, 2006
You Drove Me To This, Left Blogsylvania. Damn You.
I swore to myself that I wasn't going to post anything of substance in this blog until after September 21st. That's because I decided, round about the beginning of May, that I was going to take the summer off from politics, after spending the autumn of last year and the winter of this in a state of spittle-flecked hatred of all humanity, driven there by a constant diet of aggregated news feeds and relentless blog reading. I could feel my blood pressure getting out of control, the little veins in my neck tightening up and pumping harder every time I clicked the links to my favorite blogs, or glanced at the news headlines on my webmail, or even watched the weather on the TV news. This was not good for me, physically or mentally, so I went cold turkey. I stopped reading blogs. I stopped watching the news. I was aided in my endeavors by the fact that, in addition to being a hopeless political information addict, I am a big damn anime/manga/video games/RPGs/movies geek, and so whenever I felt the twitching, sweating jones to surf over to Pandagon or Feministing or Shakespeare's Sister or Firedoglake or Hulaballoo, I instead redirected myself to Fanfiction.net or 4Chan or any number of other sites that assisted in taking the edge off my withdrawal.
As the summer progressed, I got better. Political stuff no longer caused a dangerous increase in my urge to kill level, and I started reading a blog or two a day and I decided that, since it was election season, that I'd do more with this blog once the summer was over. Completely over. Because I deserve to not die of a political fucktardity induced stroke, goddamn it -- I've got a two year old to take care of.
But no. Oh no, of course not.
I wish I could say that a Republican was at the root of this post, but no. It's entirely your fault, Left Blogsylvania. Enfuckingtirely.
Let me preface this by stating, frankly, that I am one of you, even if I've not got 65,000 cogent and insightful posts under my belt. I am one of you. I have been a registered Independent since my eighteenth birthday and I stand up and vote for every green, gay, left of center progressive principle there is, and donate time and money to numerous progressive causes and candidates. That being said, I must ask...
What the fuck is wrong with you people? And by people I mean the sort of people who waste time and mental energy and bandwidth on their oh so very very progressively correct lefty blog to slag other progressive/lefty/Democratic bloggers for having lunch with Bill Clinton.
Seriously. WHAT the FUCK is WRONG WITH YOU?
It was a luncheon. For lefty bloggers. There were pictures taken. And the Left Blogosphere response to this has ranged from withering disdain (because REAL progressives wouldn't lunch with the only Democrat president elected in many of their lifetimes or possibly chat with his Democrat Senator wife...because...I guess...Hillary Clinton is...uh...evil?) to outright accusations of racism (because being a white blogger invited to a luncheon not attended by a precisely calculated ratio of bloggers of color is exposing their own inherent racist bias in a manner similar to George Allen proudly pinning the Confederate flag to his lapel) to the suggestion that being female and standing in front of Bill Clinton in a publicity photo is somehow inherently antifeminist (because if you're a serious female blogger, the only proper way to appear in the presence of Bill Clinton is in a burqa and a chastity belt -- certainly not a casually cut tee-shirt -- and being pretty is most definitely a no-no). And I'm being polite in my discriptions of
some of this fucktardity.
Progressive sorts like to pride themselves on their independence and their refusal to walk in ideological lock-step, and express horror over the jackbooted Republican thugs who do. If, however, you're a progressive/liberal/Democrat blogger that does something as innocuous as eating lunch with a former president -- who is also a Democrat by the fucking way -- that other progressives disapprove of...? Then the fucking gloves come off, and the More Progressive Than Thou pissing matches commense immediately, that's for fucking sure, complete with racist calumnies and would-be slut-shaming.
Fucking disgusting. Dismaying. Fundamentally retarded at the most basic level.
As the summer progressed, I got better. Political stuff no longer caused a dangerous increase in my urge to kill level, and I started reading a blog or two a day and I decided that, since it was election season, that I'd do more with this blog once the summer was over. Completely over. Because I deserve to not die of a political fucktardity induced stroke, goddamn it -- I've got a two year old to take care of.
But no. Oh no, of course not.
I wish I could say that a Republican was at the root of this post, but no. It's entirely your fault, Left Blogsylvania. Enfuckingtirely.
Let me preface this by stating, frankly, that I am one of you, even if I've not got 65,000 cogent and insightful posts under my belt. I am one of you. I have been a registered Independent since my eighteenth birthday and I stand up and vote for every green, gay, left of center progressive principle there is, and donate time and money to numerous progressive causes and candidates. That being said, I must ask...
What the fuck is wrong with you people? And by people I mean the sort of people who waste time and mental energy and bandwidth on their oh so very very progressively correct lefty blog to slag other progressive/lefty/Democratic bloggers for having lunch with Bill Clinton.
Seriously. WHAT the FUCK is WRONG WITH YOU?
It was a luncheon. For lefty bloggers. There were pictures taken. And the Left Blogosphere response to this has ranged from withering disdain (because REAL progressives wouldn't lunch with the only Democrat president elected in many of their lifetimes or possibly chat with his Democrat Senator wife...because...I guess...Hillary Clinton is...uh...evil?) to outright accusations of racism (because being a white blogger invited to a luncheon not attended by a precisely calculated ratio of bloggers of color is exposing their own inherent racist bias in a manner similar to George Allen proudly pinning the Confederate flag to his lapel) to the suggestion that being female and standing in front of Bill Clinton in a publicity photo is somehow inherently antifeminist (because if you're a serious female blogger, the only proper way to appear in the presence of Bill Clinton is in a burqa and a chastity belt -- certainly not a casually cut tee-shirt -- and being pretty is most definitely a no-no). And I'm being polite in my discriptions of
some of this fucktardity.
Progressive sorts like to pride themselves on their independence and their refusal to walk in ideological lock-step, and express horror over the jackbooted Republican thugs who do. If, however, you're a progressive/liberal/Democrat blogger that does something as innocuous as eating lunch with a former president -- who is also a Democrat by the fucking way -- that other progressives disapprove of...? Then the fucking gloves come off, and the More Progressive Than Thou pissing matches commense immediately, that's for fucking sure, complete with racist calumnies and would-be slut-shaming.
Fucking disgusting. Dismaying. Fundamentally retarded at the most basic level.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Keep Repugnican Propaganda Off Our Airwaves
Note: I am not a Democrat. I am, however, a member of the reality-based community that finds this horseshit inherently offensive and destructive. Courtesy of my friend Janet Trautvetter.
The ABC television network -- a cog in the Walt Disney empire -- unleashed a promotional blitz in the last week for a new "docudrama" called "The Path to 9/11". ABC has thrown its corporate might behind the two-night production, and bills it as a public service: a TV event, to quote the ABC tagline, "based on the 9/11 Commission Report".
That's false. "The Path to 9/11" is actually a bald-faced attempt to slander Democrats and revise history right before Americans vote in a major election.
The miniseries, which was put together by right-wing conservative writers, relies on the old GOP playbook of using terrorism to scare Americans. "The Path to 9/11" mocks the truth and dishonors the memory of 9/11 victims to serve a cheap, callous political agenda. It irresponsibly misrepresents the facts and completely distorts the truth.
They won't even let members of the Clinton Administration SEE the show ahead of airing -- but have given hundreds of previews to conservative bloggers and opinionists like Rush Limbaugh.
Join me in telling Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger to keep this propaganda off the air. Somehow this strikes me as a lot more serious than a split-second glimpse of Janet Jackson's breast...
http://www.democrats.org/page/petition/pathto911/ftfosr
Thanks!
::drops the flag on Politics Season::
The ABC television network -- a cog in the Walt Disney empire -- unleashed a promotional blitz in the last week for a new "docudrama" called "The Path to 9/11". ABC has thrown its corporate might behind the two-night production, and bills it as a public service: a TV event, to quote the ABC tagline, "based on the 9/11 Commission Report".
That's false. "The Path to 9/11" is actually a bald-faced attempt to slander Democrats and revise history right before Americans vote in a major election.
The miniseries, which was put together by right-wing conservative writers, relies on the old GOP playbook of using terrorism to scare Americans. "The Path to 9/11" mocks the truth and dishonors the memory of 9/11 victims to serve a cheap, callous political agenda. It irresponsibly misrepresents the facts and completely distorts the truth.
They won't even let members of the Clinton Administration SEE the show ahead of airing -- but have given hundreds of previews to conservative bloggers and opinionists like Rush Limbaugh.
Join me in telling Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger to keep this propaganda off the air. Somehow this strikes me as a lot more serious than a split-second glimpse of Janet Jackson's breast...
http://www.democrats.org/page
Thanks!
::drops the flag on Politics Season::
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