7/31/2008:   For those that are living under a rock, Bush, prior to finally getting his stupid butt kicked out of the White House and desperate to do something noteworthy that doesn't involve getting our troops killed for oil profits, is attempting to have abortion legally defined as "termination [of a pregnancy] between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation."

In other words, if you're on the pill, you could potentially be having an abortion every month. And that means that doctors and aid workers, right off the bat, can plead religious persecution if forced to sell birth control pills, IUDs, and morning after pills. And following that, any attack against abortion rights becomes an equal attack against birth control that prevents implantation. In fact, if it doesn't just plain prevent conception, it stands to be outlawed.

This is all courtesy of that assholes at the Family Research Center, which wishes to force its religious beliefs on everyone in a country founded initially for religious freedom.

I wonder if the 30 million women that voted for Bush in 2004 are comfortable with their government telling them how they are allowed to prevent unwanted pregnancies? Hmmm... Well, consider this: Obama has immediately spoken out against it, and written a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services and asked that the initiative be dropped. McSame has declined to comment.

7/31/2008:   I watched a woman, a former Hillary supporter, explain why she was going to vote for McCain. She basically said the world was a scary place, and we need a leader that can stand up to the scary things.

Give me a freakin' break. She look 70, but she talked like she was 7. So you'll put a guy that will enable the further killing of our troops beyond what is necessary to simply allow the Iraqi government to take over, a man willing to put hundreds of thousands of our troops in harms way for "a thousand years," who admittedly knows little about the economy and has demonstrated a talent for votes that favor the rich and elite and step on the poor and middle class, into the role of continuing the Constitution-rending policies of the last 8 horrible years? Really? Geez louise...

And then you've got Savage, Limbaugh, Hannity and O'Reilly leading the racists that are just terrified at having a president that isn't old, white, and elite in the White House. It's revolting and saddening. I'm astonished that I live in a country that is so filled with backwards morons.

I would like to ask the 59 million morons that voted for Bush in 2004 to please either stay home or try to repair the damage they've done to their kids' future by voting for ANYONE except McSame.

7/30/2008:   Rep. Barney Frank announced a proposal to end federal penalties for Americans carrying fewer than 100 grams of marijuana. Citing statistics that show that marijuana arrests and programs to fight it have cost Americans billions of dollars and ruined lives and careers over a substance that is no worse than alcohol, he proposed that responsible medical marijuana users with prescriptions should be immune, at the federal level, from prosecution for possession and use of the substance.

Personally, I think it should be legalized, regulated, and taxed using the same system we use for alcohol. I suppose we could limit production to licensed growers and manufacturers, limit the strength, and limit sales to marijuana bars, but the point would be to stop an ineffective prohibition. Then we could leave it up to individual states to set their own laws and standards, but we would take the federal government out of the loop.

That's just my opinion. Not being a user, I have no personal involvement in the issue, but I just don't see the harm. I hear it's gotten substantially stronger through selective breeding, but it's still a plant that, when smoked, gets you stoned. And I can buy a bottle of Grey Goose and get obliterated legally right now. Marijuana, from what I understand, is less addictive by far that alcohol and is about as toxic as tobacco, albeit due to a different set of chemical components.

Given that that's the case, why don't I have the freedom to buy a pack of marijuana cigarettes -- filtered, even -- before heading to a party? With a designated driver, of course. I'm a programmer and I need every brain cell firing perfectly, so I can't actually see myself doing that, but I should have that freedom in my not-always-humble opinion.

7/30/2008:   I've had more time to read over the FISA bill wording and think it through, and I have to say, I'd have been far more impressed with Obama if he'd voted against it. Say what you want, at the end of the day he could have stood at a podium and claimed the moral high ground, the protection of our Constitution and our rights, by voting against it. It's what his supporters wanted, it's what his detractors would have grudgingly admired. I've heard the "crazy like a fox" rationale for his and other Dems' votes, but what they're really saying when they make that case is, "Trust me."

"Trust me that we'll do the right thing when the time comes. Trust me to punish those that have hurt you. Trust me to make sure this can't happen again. Trust me to wrap my arms of power around you and make it right." Trust me to not betray your trust like I did when I took impeachment off the table...

If you're getting the impression that I don't trust the Dems to do the right thing, you're right. I don't. Pelosi saw to that. Obama could have broken with the old guard and really stood for change. He has shaken my trust in him, and shown me that political expedience is as much a major component of his political arsenal as John McCain's.

I want Obama to stand up and right the wrongs. I want him to stand up and shore up the weaknesses in the Constitution that allow such wrongs. I want investigations, trials, and convictions; I want amendments and laws and restructuring. And I want it now, for the sake of my children and all my descendants.

I want my country back, and I'm counting, with some new trepidation, on Obama to deliver it.

7/30/2008:   Iraq was about oil. Anyone that thinks otherwise is a fool, and can be proven so with ease. I bring this up not to debate it but to set the tone.

Bush wants oil companies to be able to purchase rights to drill in currently protected areas. All protected areas. Protecting endangered or vital resources do not figure into his equations at all.

There are several reasons why we do not need to give up those resources:

So why do it? Who really benefits from drilling? Is it the public? The drivers? It's certainly not the climate. Rather than cutting carbon emissions, Bush wants to suck more oil out of the ground as fast as possible and burn it, accelerating a climate that's already changing rapidly. So who is this really going to help?

(Like I actually had to set this up...)

The oil companies, and by associating and investment, the Bush clan themselves.

Well, let's not put ALL the onus on Bush. There are a lot of GOP lawmakers and leaders that would see their wallets bulge significantly if oil stocks soared even higher. And that, my friend, is the bottom line.

7/30/2008:   I don't get it. Al Gore challenged the United States to achieve 100% freedom from oil by moving to solar, wind, and water generated power by 2018. It was reminiscent of John F. Kennedy's proposal to put men on the moon. And for some reason, the Al Gore haters have flung themselves at him in glee, calling his challenge impossible and silly.

Kennedy's moon program was the most ambitious, dangerous, and at the beginning, unreachable goal mankind has ever set out to achieve. Whole areas of technology that would be required were as yet undeveloped. He had asked a group of scientists, is it possible, and knowing this was a once in a life time opportunity, a history making moment, they had replied unequivocably, "Um, sure... why not?"

And eight years later, a man took a picture of his own footprint in the moon's talcum-soft dust.

What Al Gore is proposing is doable if we, as a nation, embrace it. It's not as sexy as rockets and space suits, but it is necessary and achievable. Our economy, our lifestyles, our environment, and perhaps even our very lives depend on us doing this anyway, and quickly. There is more riding on Gore's proposal to halt the damage to our planet's climate than on Kennedy's pissing contest with Russia, but the pundits make money and maintain their following by taking potshots, not by making sense.

The right path is obvious. I just hope our leaders decided to lead.

7/29/2008:   Back in March of 2006, I wrote about the death of Slobodan Milosevich, and mused that all that was missing was the arrest, trial, and execution of Radovan Karadzic. Last week, he was finally caught. And once again the media told the horrible stories and showed the gut-wrenching, judiciously edited clips of Karadzic's men abusing and killing people, of the death camps so starkly similar to Auschwitz, and of Karadzic giving orders and smiling at the camera. Karadzic, now old, long-bearded, and withered, will never again see freedom. It's sad that it took so long to hunt him down, but he was found, and justice will finally be served. And that will have to do.

7/25/2008:   Barack Obama gave a speech in Berlin that turned into a political rock concert. The same way his open air speeches vastly surpass attendance estimates in the U.S., the Berlin speech was given to a sea of young, excited, hopeful Germans looking to Obama to bring peace and progress to the stagnating, warmongering United States.

And he gave us a unique, precedent-setting preview of what it will be like to turn on your television and watch the news when he's president. Take what you want from the image, it was a beautiful sight, a positive and inspiring and hope-filled vision.

And it's got John McSame gnashing his teeth because he didn't think of it, and even if he had, the turn-out would have been a handful of old codgers and third string reporters. Sucks to be him.

So what do the NeoCon hacks jump on? That at the end of a trip in which Obama toured Afghanistan and Iraq and met with generals and troops, injured and well, he didn't make a side trip to the Army hospital in Berlin. He was in the presence of tens of thousaneds of soldiers during the course of the tour, but because he didn't hit the hospital in Berlin, he's got some horrible agenda or lack of empathy.

And that's the best Hannity and Savage and O'Reilly and McSame himself has. Obama's move was freakin' genius, and they are so pissed off about it. Whatever.

7/25/2008:   "I know how to win wars."

The interesting part being that he hasn't won one yet. We'll all have to chalk his knowledge up to his time at West Point and ignore his actual military and congressional experience on the topic.

7/25/2008:   At a time when the news media are being viewed with a jaundiced eye already, CBS News, an organization I've trusted all my life, has committed outright fraud to protect McCain from his own well-documented failing memory.

McCain was being questioned about his support of the Iraqi War "Surge", and his position was that he designed and endorsed it before Bush had been advised on it. The problem with his answer -- ignoring the fact that his solution was to throw more troops into the meat grinder -- was his timeline. The "Sunni Awakening" is a term used to describe the banding together of various Sunni tribes in the Anbar Province of Iraq, forming a militia to repel insurgents and create a secure zone. That movement spread across the country in under a year, with Sunnis acquiring U.S. funding along the way and making sweeping improvements in violence reduction whereever the militias formed. This all occurred before the surge, but McCain describes the the Sunni Awakening as being triggered by the surge. In fact, the Sunni Awakening started several month before the surge was even announced. Oddly enough, he made this statement as part of an assertion that Obama doesn't grasp the fundamentals of the Iraqi political and military situation. Obama had postulated that the surge was probably a waste of money and effort, since the Sunni Awakening was instrumental in quelling violence and restoring order, and that the surge only complemented what the Iraqis were already doing.

So what's the big deal? It's this: CBS realized McCain had flubbed the answer and edited the video to cover it up!. They spliced in an answer to a different question so that McCain would look like he gave a nonsequitur but vaguely related answer. The actual answer, to CBS shame, was carried by other media outlets.

What, did they actually think they could pull such a stupid stunt during such an historic election season? REALLY?!

I long for the days when Walter Cronkite led a news organization with integrity.

There were never any WMDs in Iraq.
No links to Al Qaeda.
No ties to 9/11.
Bush, Cheney, and Condie lied to you.
You ignored the facts.
You re-elected a liar and a murderer by proxy.
But now it's time to show your support for the troops.

7/18/2008:   Typically of GOP campaigns, McSame is twisting the truth to try to make Obama look bad. Congress' only leverage against an out-of-control President is to refuse to pay for his programs. This happened with the VietNam War, and it's happening with the Iraq War.

Obama voted against a measure to fund the Iraq War at a time when Congress was pressuring Bush to come up with a viable exit strategy, and now RatBastard McSame is pretending that Obama doesn't support the troops. It's a dastardly attack, and one that only the completely ignorant would buy.

7/16/2008:   Mike Meehan of St. Cloud, Florida, is an ass. He has been putting up billboards around his town that show the twin towers of the World Trade Center burning and says, "Please don't vote for a Democrat." Mr. Meehan, who says Bill Clinton should have done more to stop Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, is giving George Bush a pass on not doing a single thing about Bin Laden or Al Qaeda in the 9 months that held the office, even though he was briefed on the dangers of Al Qaeda by Bill Clinton and his staff, and urged in the months prior to 9/11 to stop ignoring the plans and programs created by the Clinton administration for dealing with Bin Laden.

See, Mr. Meehan wants to further the GOP NeoCon myth that Bill Clinton is somehow to blame for 9/11. He's counting on your ignorance. But George Bush had control of the country for 9 months. During that time, Al Qaeda was determined conclusively by our FBI and CIA as being responsible for the USS Cole bombing. He'd been left with plans drawn up by the Pentagon, at Bill Clinton's direction, for retaliating against Al Qaeda if the USS Cole investigation came to that conclusion. And he did ...

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing. And not just absolutely nothing, because in order to do absolutely nothing, he had to stop the military programs already in place for tracking Al Qaeda and Bin Laden's movements, he had to reorganize and strip groups constructed to focus on Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, and he had to hear and then actively ignore the pleas of administration staff that urged him to move quickly against the terrorists before they struck again.

So, Mr. Meehan, you jackass, I have a better suggestion for your billboard ad. It should show the truth and beg the people of your town, "Please don't vote for the GOP until they stop lying to their party members and betraying their country."

7/10/2008:   I'm supportive of Mr. Obama's decision to vote for the FISA bill only because I've heard reports that the bill has loopholes that allow for federal criminal prosecution of the telcos as well as George Monkey-Faced-Frat-Boy (MFFB) Bush and his cabal. If not for that, I'd probably still vote for Obama, but I'd drop my registration as a Democrat.

I'm already thoroughly disenchanted with the current Congress and Pelosi's traitorous command that impeachment was "off the table." If Obama doesn't start the process of investigating the MFFB, the telcos, Rove, Cheney, the head of the FBI and CIA, Alberto Gonzalez, Rumsfeld, and everyone else involved with this administration within the first year, I'm going to drop out of the Democratic Party. I'll give my time, money, and support to the party that most closely matches my views.

Y'know, George Washington, upon leaving office, cautioned his new nation, above all else, to a avoid political parties, that they would be the death of the government. I never understood what he meant until now.

7/9/2008:   I'm not going to go into a lot of detail now for fear of jinxing it, but apparently far smarter people that me have been looking over the FISA reform bill that I commented on on the 7th, and they have come to the conclusion that it's not that bad.

There seems to be something very important missing in it. If they're right, and they certainly seem to be, it does not prevent the eventual prosecution of the president for violations of the Constitution.

I still see it as only half of the equation, and I maintain that what immunity it provides is too much. The immunity it does not provide would still have to be seen as a tool for justice and used appropriately, and I have come to a point where I don't trust my government to do the right thing when it comes to reacting to a truly criminal president.

But for the record, I'm changing my position on the portion of the FISA bill that applies to the telecommunications companies. I don't like it, and I still think the immunity it provides is unconstitutional, but I'll give my representatives the benefit of the doubt.

7/7/2008:   Senator John Ensign hates poor people. He likes it when they're homeless, and he delights in knocking helping hands away.

Why do I make this terrible accusation, you ask? Because Mr. Ensign hamstrung a bill that would have helped people losing their homes due to the mortgage meltdown, resulting in thousands losing everything. The bill, which took Democrats a lot of fighting with the Republicans to get as far as the Senate floor, would have given backing to mortgages that mortgage companies renegotiated with borrowers risking impending foreclosure. In other words, the FDIC, or something like it, would have backed mortgage lenders' investments in home owners, making new loans safe and, for the borrower, easier to renogatiate. It was a saving grace wrought by the Democrats, pulled from the clutches of the Republicans, only to have John Ensign tack on a bunch of riders for renewable energy tax credits, the money for which going to companies in his district.

How renewable energy tax credits have anything to do with economic relief, I can't imagine. He's personally keeping the economy down. I'm sure he'd say it was for a good cause, but is it? I think his renewable tax credit is a sham. He will get credit for trying to support renewable energy, even though he knows that, attached to this bill, it will fail and take the bill with it. So the only real reason to do this is to ensure the federal mortgage insurance bill will fail.

Why? I'm going to guess that he benefits, either directly or indirectly, from the depressed housing market. He's effectively buying futures in the housing market. To do that profitably, he has to make sure a lot of homes go into foreclosure, further depressing housing prices. When it has bottomed out as much as possible, he can throw his money into investment instruments based on flipping homes. The bill finally goes through, people can buy houses again, prices rebound, BOOM! Our Senator Ensign is sitting pretty. It's just a theory, sure, but it holds a lot more water than the notion that Mr. Ensign gives a crap about renewable energy.

7/7/2008:   The July Fourth holiday is over, the Senate is back in session, and it's time to make sure your Senate knows you don't like the notion of giving a pass to corporations that rape your constitutional rights. Keep in mind that the FISA reform bill they want to pass contains the following:

Section 802(a) provides:

[A] civil action may not lie or be maintained in a Federal or State court against any person for providing assistance to an element of the intelligence community, and shall be properly dismissed, if the Attorney General certifies to the district court of the United States in which such action is pending that...

  (4) the assistance alleged to have been provided... was --
      (A) in connection with intelligence activity involving
          communications that was
          o  (i)  authorized by the President during the period
                  beginning on September 11, 2001, and ending on
                  January 17, 2007 and
             (ii) designed to prevent or detect a terrorist attack,
                  or activities in preparation of a terrorist attack,
                  against the United States" and

      (B) the subject of a written request or directive... indicating
          that the activity was
          o  (i)  authorized by the President; and
             (ii) determined to be lawful.

If the Senate passes this bill, I will add every politician that voted for it to my "Enemies Of The Constitution" list on the right hand side of this page. I'll be keeping that list on every revision of the OOTM forever. I will not let them get away with this. I will make it my personal hobby to remind them every single chance I get that they are all traitors.

The following people voted against the Constitution, against the Fourth Amendment, against your rights, freedoms, liberties, and protections. A version of the FISA reform bill that grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that broke the law at the president's behest and gives the president the ability to grant immunity without oversight or further authorization, has passed the United States House of Representatives on Friday, June 20th, 2008. These are the people that voted for that measure. Included among them are Democrats that have betrayed their constituencies, including my own Jerry McNerney. Let us not forget these traitors at election time.