What about the death penalty?
Why does the Catholic Church forbid Catholic politicians from taking communion for their pro-choice views but doesn't do the same for pols who support the death penalty?

Is it a policy that is aimed specifically at Kerry? I know Bush isn't Catholic, but is it because he mentions God all the time that the death penalty isn't an issue?

This comes from a Catholic publication, concerning the church's stance on the death penalty:

"In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: 'If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.'"

Disney's non-political stance
So Disney doesn't want to distribute Michael Moore's film because of its political nature? OK.

Then why does Disney distribute Sean Hannity and a bunch of other right-wing nuts to hundreds of radio stations around the country?

Maybe it's just a certain kind of politics Disney doesn't like.

McCain doesn't support the troops! Or breast cancer research!
This was from the www.dailyhowler.com. Pretty good stuff and another indication that McCain is supporting Bush while holding his nose with one hand.

Does anyone play his viewers for fools quite the way Sean Hannity does? Last night, the knuckle-dragging nightly host repeated a Fake Standard Claim:

HANNITY: [Kerry] has voted against just about every major weapons system we now have.

How can Hannity make such a claim? Because in 3 of his 19 years in the Senate, Kerry voted against the annual defense appropriations bill... But if you vote against the omnibus bill, then technically you've voted against every weapon system it includes. And knuckle-draggers have been very "technical" when they make this claim against Kerry. Why, you might even say that they've been "Clintonesque." Except that is unfair to Bill Clinton.

But last night, a humorous element was involved in Hannity's fake, phony charge. John McCain was the cave man's guest. First, he said Kerry isn't "soft on defense." A bit later, he noted the obvious:

MCCAIN: I would be accused of voting against numerous weapon systems, because I voted against defense appropriations bills, because they're loaded down with pork. And they're obscene today with all of the pork-barrel spending and multi-trillion dollar deficits. I'll probably vote against the defense appropriations bill this year.

Oops! Just like Kerry, McCain "has voted against just about every major weapons system we now have."

Note to self! Sean will have to avoid this fake, phony charge when people like McCain are around.
Meanwhile, how fake, how phony is the Fox host? Drink in the amusing exchange which followed McCain's rejoinder:

MCCAIN: I would be accused of voting against numerous weapon systems, because I voted against defense appropriations bills because they're loaded down with pork. And they're obscene today with all of the pork-barrel spending and multi-trillion dollar deficits. I'll probably vote against the defense appropriations bill this year. I was accused of voting against breast cancer research because that was on a defense appropriations bill that I voted against, so--

HANNITY: But on defense issues, the most important issue of our time, that--your guy is George W. Bush, right?

MCCAIN: He is my guy. I'm campaigning for him. I'm supporting his re-election. I want him to be re-elected. I believe he has led this nation with moral clarity. But I was also subjected to allegations of being against things like breast cancer research, which was on a defense appropriations bill.

HANNITY: I remember. I understand.

Why did McCain keep bringing up that fake, phony claim--the claim that he voted against breast research? Perhaps because his beetle-browed host was one of the people who made the fake charge! The charge was first made--where else?--in a Bush 2000 campaign ad. And you know Sean! He pimped the fake charge on the March 6, 2000 Hannity & Colmes, just to cite one sad example.

He made the fake claim against McCain then. He makes the fake claim against Kerry now. Why does the press corps sit on its hands while fake charges are widely peddled?

Good idea
Word is getting out about the International Red Cross' estimates that 70-80 percent of the prisoners in the Iraqi prisoners were innocents who were picked up in widespread neighborhood swweps. Whoops! The following comes from www.bartcop.com.

"As others condemned the Iraqi abuse, James Inhofe (R-OK) expressed outrage at the outcry over the scandal and took aim at "humanitarian do-gooders" investigating American troops.

"I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are
by the treatment," said Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican and a vulgar Pigboy soundalike.

"These prisoners, you know they're not there for traffic violations," said Inhofe.

That last sentence is correct - they've been convicted of nothing - not even a traffic violations. They were designated guilty of occupying the towns in which they were born. Inhofe is the most embarrassing thing from Oklahoma. He's worse than Jesse Helms ever was for Carolina and get this - he's on the Intelligence Committee, ...swear to Koresh..

Hey Pissquik, I have an idea.
Let me come to your house, kick and slap the crap out of you, then I'll rip your clothes off and shove a broom handle up your ass, then let two German Shepherd dogs bite your legs and then I'll attach a dog collar and lead your naked, bleeding ass around the neighborhood for all your friends to see.

Would you have the same opinion after that?

When good countries go bad
I think most people are upset with the Iraqi prison photos because they reflect so poorly on the United States. For the most part, it's human nature to disregard news that makes us look bad.

For instance, we never hear anything about the tens of thousands of civilians dead in Iraq. Word is that a soccer field was bulldozed to bury all the bodies of Iraqi civilians killed by the United States.

So the latest mass graves in Iraq are ours. What people focus on is the intention. We didn't mean to kill all those people. And for most people, that's a good enough explanation.

Reap what you sow
One thing being overlooked in the Iraqi prison scandal is the atmosphere set by this administration towards prisoners of war. I rarely hear anyone mention Guantanamo Bay, where "enemy combatants" are held, maybe forever, with no regard for the Geneva Convention. There is little doubt that prisoners there have been tortured or moved to countries like Egypt where they have been tortured on our behalf.

So this is the tone that has been set. I'm curious if other countries are also allowed to declare Americans as enemy combatants if they so choose and then treat them as horribly as they want. Given the publicity given to the photos from the Iraqi prisons, the next Americans soldiers who are captured may face torture or even death. That must be of great comfort to them.

A point was made on one of the Sunday morning shows that in almost every major post-war Iraq decision, the civilian leadership --Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc. -- have been wrong. Think about it. Troop levels required after the invasion. The manner in which we would be greeted by the Iraquis post-liberation. The difficulties in setting up a true democracy. The way we would be viewed around the Middle East after we toppled Hussein. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

In many cases, the civilian leadership overruled the military leadership who were serving this country while Cheney was using his influence as a former Secretary of Defense to rake in billions for Halliburton. But of course, he knew better than the military professionals who had been in the trenches all those years.

And Bush, as always, has remained gleefully ignorant to everything.

This group promised to run America like a business when they came in. They didn't tell us the business was Enron. The results for the country are nothing short of catastrophic. The way longtime employees of Enron lost their stock when the company crashed, so too have the American people lost the stock that we had held around the world. Except in this case, our stock was the moral high ground.

Winning hearts and minds
The Bush Administration's campaign to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis and the Arab world in general is really taking flight, huh? I hoped the first wave of pictures from the Iraqi prisons was going to be it, but in a conflict this insane, I doubted that would be the case.

Like most decent people, I felt queasy looking at pictures of Iraqi prisoners being humiliated. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have taken another tact, saying that the soldiers were "just blowing off steam" or that what was transpiring was no worse than a fraternity prank.

Let's put a bunch of conservative commentators in a pile together and see how Sean Hannity likes Rush's ass in his face.

As usual, Jon Stewart had the best take on this. He said the torture camps were "really not shut down so much as under new management."

Sounds congenial to me...
This quote comes from the current GQ article about Colin Powell. It's National War College's Harlan Ullman commenting on Powell's relationship with Vice President Dick Cheney:

"I can tell you firsthand that there is a tremendous barrier between Cheney and Powell, and there has been for a long time...It's like McCain saying that his relations with the president are `congenial,' meaning McCain doesn't tell the president to go fuck himself every time."

Muhammad vs. McVeigh
Of all the ludicrous things coming out of President Bush's mouth recently, none may be more absurd than his allegation that some of his critics don't believe that people of color can govern themselves in a democracy.

Of course, he never indicates who has made such a claim. He just throws it out there.

It's especially ironic when you consider the Administration and the media's view that no one is worthy of being called a terrorist unless they have a certain skin color. I remember when this guy was arrested last year. If his first name was Muhammad, it would have been breaking news and the President, the Attorney General, and others would have been all over the place talking about a victory in the war on terror. But because he's just another Tim McVeigh in the making, I guess it wasn't really noteworthy.

I guess we don't want to let people think that the threat from inside the country might be as bad as the one from outside the country.

From the Houston Chronicle:

"An East Texas man who had accumulated a massive amount of cyanide was described as a white supremacist and a student of militia-led revolt.

William Krar is scheduled to be sentenced in a federal court Tuesday after acknowledging that he possessed enough sodium cyanide to fatally gas everyone in a 30,000-square-foot building, such as a civic center or high school basketball arena. But investigators say they still don't know what Krar intended to do with the deadly materials.

Krar's cache of weapons included nine machine guns, three silencers, 67 sticks of explosives, more than 100,000 rounds of ammunition, 800 grams of near-pure sodium cyanide and the acids to turn it into poisonous gas."

Dennis Miller vs. Bill Maher
Someone wrote in to say that Bill Maher, who I like, is as bad as Dennis Miller, who I don't. Sorry, but I find Miller to be a total tool of the right. He came right out and said he wouldn't criticize President Bush, no matter how bad things get. Can you name me one comedian who gave Clinton such leeway? Didn't think so.

At least Maher takes shots at both sides of the aisle (I'm still laughing at his suggestion for Kerry's campaign slogan: "Do not resuscitate."). And that's why I think Jon Stewart is easily the best thing on television today -- because he blasts everyone.

I still think Miller is a hack, who couldn't cut it on "Monday Night Football" and ain't cutting it on cable TV now. Sorry dude, you peaked more than a decade ago on "Saturday Night Live." Next stop, Branson, MO, where there's a nice gig waiting for you as the opening act for the Oak Ridge Boys.