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Hey it looks like the CIA agrees with what I stated months ago. 

 http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/15/cia-head-suggests-cheney-hoping-for-terrorist-attack/

Terrorist Taunting extreme right winger Cheney.  Not only can he be classified as a terroist taunter, but I think he is a terrorist!  This guy makes me ill when I think of all the harm he has caused the American people in the past.  I only hope and pray that he never causes any pain for our future.

I want to thank you one and all for the participation, dicusssion and debate. I have not completely decided what to do with the site - though I am pretty sure that unless someone wants to keep and maintain it - I am going to tear it down. Any takers? If I dont hear from anyone in the next week or so - expect its disappearance.

Something happened to Glen in the transition though, he went from just barmy to straight up batshit crazy.  Normally I dont write a blog post every time someone goes off the deep end, but I think that it is worth talking about since Glen has a show that presumably has an audience and presumably has some sway with that audience.  I am used to crazy from fringe hosts. Limbaugh is nutty, but I think he is careful and calculating in what he says and does. It's a ratings/money/power game with him, and it has paid off for him since he won leadership of the Republican party.  O'Reilly is just a sleezeball. He believe some of what he says but is mostly just playing to the blue-haired fear set that makes up his base. Whatever. The point is, there is a difference between being a nut job and being batshit crazy.

Beck, on the other hand, is that special sort of lunatic that ought not be let out in public, and Fox News gives him a show? I could explain details of how I think that Beck has really lost it, but I will let him do the talking:

Here, Beck talks about the recent murder spree in Alabama was really just the inevitable ending of conservative's "that feel disenfranchised right now" When Bill 'O has to talk you down, you know something has gone terribly wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvwv6iTSCOg

Here, Beck discusses the idea that the Obama administation are building concentration camps to be used in the establishment of a totalitarian regime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f03zZA___Ho

If you have ever looked a lunatic directly in the eyes, you know it. Its hard to explain the feeling, you just know it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er44vr33XIo

Not surprisingly, Big Business has come out against this act with attack ads full of misinformation. The big misconception that they are eager to promote is that EFCA would take away workers' right to a secret ballot election in authorizing a union. The truth is that it would give workers the choice whether to recognize majority sign-up through authorization cards, or to hold a secret ballot election. If anything, it gives workers the right, because as the law currently stands the employers -- not the workers -- are free to choose whichever method of union election best serves their interests. Workers cannot have the right if they do not have the choice.

The Employee Free Choice act is actually quite popular. It has bipartisan support in the House of Representatives, a clear majority in the Senate, and with Bush out of office, a President that is ready to sign it if it ever reaches his desk. The only problem is that Senate Republicans are playing partisan politics and are ready to line up as a bloc to filibuster the law. This means that even though it has enough votes to pass the Senate, the GOP is planning to use a procedural tactic to prevent it from reacing a vote and keep democracy from happening. In order to avoid a filibuster, it will take every single Democrat, plus two Republicans, to get behind it. And so far neither of Montana's Senators have co-sponsored it.  

With the Senate in recess, now is the time to act. Word on the street is that Senator Jon Tester would be willing to get behind EFCA if the public showed some support with which to counter Big Business' lobbying machine. The Missoula Central Labor Council has urged people to write letters to the Senators; I've read that they consider a handwritten letter from one person to be worth 10,000 votes. That may be an exaggeration but the truth is that a concise, thoughtful letter of support can have an impact.

I urge everyone to spend this week contacting your Senators. Here in Butte, the local Young Communist League club is hosting a Employee Free Choice Act letter-writing party. We're going to get together at 7:30pm on Wednesday (Apr. 15) and write letters, as well as have some snacks and mingle. If we get a good turnout, we're thinking of hand-delivering the letters to the Senators' offices. I would urge any pro-labor Montanans to attend this event, or plan something similar in your communities. (If you want to swing by, contact me for more info!)

Whatever you choose to do, now is the time to act. The Employee Free Choice Act would be a huge breakthrough for American workers and help us rebuild our economy. Let's get it passed now.

I just read this on CNN and had to comment.  I'm getting really disgusted by republicans crawling out from under the rocks in which they live to promote this crap!  Do they not realize that just by them saying this, it makes America more vulnerable to our enemies?  The more they spew this, then the more those that want to harm us believe that we are "less safe."  Are they actually trying to invite them to do us harm?

Do they not realize that during Bush's first 9 months on the job he was on vacation for 96 days (40%) of the time?  Do they not realize that they were given information about Moussaoui in August 2001?  Do they not realize that on August 3rd, 2001, they were briefed that "Bin Laden determined to attack within our borders?" 

So my question is??  If we are less safe now...how safe were we on September 10th?

Jump ahead to May 15, 2009 -- less than two years after that campaign speech.  Obama's EPA clears 42 of 48 mountaintop removal permits that have been under review claiming no significant environmental damage is foreseen by allowing these operations to continue.

The environmental policies of George W. Bush are apparently alive, well, and thriving.

The Iowa Supreme Court this morning upheld a Polk County judge’s 2007 ruling that marriage should not be limited to one man and one woman.

The ruling, viewed nationally and at home as a victory for the gay rights movement and a setback for social conservatives, means gay couples can legally marry in Iowa beginning March 24.

[snip]

Iowa’s gay marriage ban “is unconstitutional, because the county has been unable to identify a constitutionally adequate justification for excluding plaintiffs from the institution of civil marriage,” Cady wrote in the 69-page opinion that seemed to dismiss the concept of civil unions as an option for gay couples.

“A new distinction based on sexual orientation would be equally suspect and difficult to square with the fundamental principles of equal protection embodied in our constitution,” Cady wrote.

I have no doubts that there will be a big push to modify the constitution of Iowa to ban love, the same as we did here and in California, but there are some very interesting notes on religion's place in this debate in the court's decision:

he ruling, however, also addressed what it called the “religious undercurrent propelling the same-sex marriage debate,” and said judges must remain outside the fray.

Some Iowa religions are strongly opposed to same-sex marriages, the justices noted, while some support the notion.

“Our constitution does not permit any branch of government to resolve these types of religious debates and entrusts to courts the task of ensuring that government avoids them,” the opinion says.

The ruling explicitly does not affect “the freedom of a religious organization to define marriage it solemnizes as unions between a man and a woman,” the justices stressed.

Wow. This is why we let courts determine the constitutionality of laws, especially when those laws are inspired by religious intolerence. We all know how I have struggled with my desire for direct democracy and my understanding that representative democracy balanced by courts helps avoid the current tide of public opinion. This is clearly a case where the system has worked: law makers pander to their constituencies prejudices and fears and the courts remind us that we are bound to our constitution. Again, I believe that this will be reversed by intolerence and fear, but hey, the right thing happened here.