Progressives waited way too long to fight the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court and then as Chief Justice. It is critical that people stop the nomination of Alito, another dangerous religious extremist. MoveOn has an online petition that people need to sign as quickly as possible.

http://www.moveonpac.org/stopalito/

For more information, the Alliance for Justice has an excellent report on Alito.

http://www.supremecourtwatch.org/AlitoPrelim1031.pdf

The October 29, 2005 New York Times article, “Extension Sought in Canada Lumber Fight,” details a dispute where the Canadian government is pushing for an end to U.S. tariffs on Canadian lumber, a dispute where the Bush Administration is delaying the inevitable end of the tariffs.

What is lost in this Business section coverage is the environmental impact. Thanks to NAFTA, prices for lumber will go down, resulting in more trees being cut down in Canada. In addition to generally being bad for the environment, the additional loss of trees will add to global warming.

The Democrats need to find some backbone and call for the repeal of NAFTA. Katrina and other hurricanes this year show that global warming is more important than sucking up to corporate interests.

There is a huge gay underground of guys who use pro-wrestling as gay porn. Dozens of Yahoo groups are dedicated sharing pictures and fantasies about pro-wrestling and wrestlers. Many bi men use pro-wrestling, and real wrestling, as their only outlet for their same sex desires.

That makes a fairly recent effort by militant, Christian fundamentalists to turn everything “Christian” a hoot. There is, or at least was, a little pro-Wrestling promotion called “Ultimate Christian Wrestling” where fans could watch half naked men dominating each other. (The site hasn’t been updated in a while, making me wonder if the thing is still going.)

http://www.ultimatechristianwrestling.com/

If only these fundies knew that some of their fans, including some of their Bible-thumping base, are getting erotically stimulated by what they are doing. The self-righteous Christian fundamentalists sometimes stumble, often with comic results.

Of course, there also should be some moral issues with putting on faked wrestling matches, but that distinction probably is lost on the people doing it too.

Not satisfied with damaging its reputation through its continued employment of faux journalist Judith Miller, the Times continues its relentless propagandizing for the Bush regime.

An article entitled “Foreign Fighters Captured in Iraq Come From 27, Mostly Arab, Lands,” must be terribly embarrassing to it’s author, Dexter Filkins. In it, he goes on about “foreign fighters” captured by the US military, diligently acting as stenographer for Bush regime.

One problem with his article which should be obvious. The author neglects to mention that the vast majority of foreign fighters in Iraq are US troops, forced to fight there due to the Bush regime. This twisted propaganda line is being used to perform the following functions:

1) To make it sound as if any country EXCEPT the US whose citizens are involved in Iraq is meddling with that country’s affairs.

2) To make it sound as if US troops have a legitimate reason to be in Iraq.

3) To lay the political groundwork for potential invasions of Iraq’s neighbors and other Middle Eastern countries.

This is so typical of how “journalists” at the New York Times and so many other corporate media outlets parrot Orwellian Bush regime propaganda rather than reporting in a balanced, reasonable fashion.

I used to listen to that show, but, as of today, I’m tuning out for good. She keeps going on these homophobic tirades where she attacks random Bush regime and other GOP officials for supposedly being gay. Using claims of homosexuality as a smear tactic is vintage Karl Rove behavior.

This goes to show how far the queer community hasn’t come in the Democratic Party and among some on the left. We still are targets for bigotry and derision. And, make no mistake, when someone like Randi Rhodes uses phony homosexuality as something bad to smear political opponents, she is attacking all of us who really are queer.

Of course, Ms. Rhodes isn’t the only partisan Democrat who sees claims about sexual orientation as tactics to try to undermine their political opponents. It is becoming more and more common on message posts by “liberals” and on “progressive talk radio.” It’s really pissing me off.

Now, there is an important distinction between outing homophobic queers to expose hypocrisy and to use homosexuality itself as something bad to demonize people one dislikes. The problems with homophobic closet cases are their disloyalty to other queers and their hypocrisy, not their homosexuality. However, you won’t hear these kind of distinctions during Rhodes’ homophobic tirades.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be outraged at Bush and his cronies. But, taking it out on the queer community is a bunch of Bushshit.

This shows why WBAI is so important. They support queers rather than going on homophobic rants.

It’s no secret that the Bush regime and their cronies want to keep our troops in Iraq forever. They want to control Iraq’s oil, to drive up oil prices (and therefore oil company stock prices), to abuse and kill Muslims, and to send billions to crony contractors such as Halliburton.

However, there is a blowback for corporate interests not feeding directly from the Bush trough. A recent AP story discussed how the war in Iraq is creating anti-Americanism throughout the world, which is costing high-profile American corporations sales and may have similar consequences for small businesses in the near future.

The Iraq trough just isn’t big enough to feed every company in this country. Eventually, corporations hurt by the war will have no choice but to pressure the Bush regime and the GOP to stop this nonsense.

The anti-war movement has laid the political groundwork for withdrawal of American troops from a war that Bush already has lost. When the money people realize that they are getting reduced returns on their investments, the war will be set aside for the cause of profit.