Here is an actual Google Adsense ad:

Beefcake muscle
Browse a huge selection now.
Find exactly what you want today.
www.eBay.com

If only life were this easy. Here is the URL of the page I found by searching for "musclebears" on Google Blog Search.

http://www.shopping-rite.com/gay-muscle-bears/2006/12/musclebears-org-gay-muscle-bears.php

The commercialization of the Web has led to some funny results.

The Christian Right has worked hard to paint Disney as a “liberal” company, despite the facts to the contrary. Disney was the last studio to grant same-sex partner benefits, and then only out of fear that they would lose queer employees they depended on to more enlightened studios. The Christian extremists condemn Disney for Gay Nights at Disneyland and Disney World even though Disney rudely refuses to recognize the unofficial and profitable events. Disney also broadcasted the propagandadrama, “The Path to 9/11” on its ABC television network, falsely claiming the show was based on the 9/11 Commission Report.

In a previous posting of mine, What if Disney Imposed Its Right-Wing Agenda on Its Cartoon Characters?, even a liberal commenter mistakenly opined that Disney was liberal.

If you want another example of Disney's rightist ideology, look at its talk radio stations. They are nutty right-wing. One of them, KSFO in San Francisco, has gone far enough to generate a major backlash. A show hosted by Melanie Rogers has been caught advocating (sometimes as quasi-jokes) individual murder, mass murder, and torture of people right-wingers dislike.

The blog which brought this to the attention of the public, Spocko's Brain, was shut down temporarily by Disney/ABC's legal threats for using audio clips as evidence of the statements being made on the show and for letting advertisers know what kind of radio programming surrounds their happy, happy commercials. The blog went back up, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent a letter reminding Disney/ABC about the blog's legal rights under fair use.

If Disney is such a “liberal” company, then why is it broadcasting so much rightist propaganda. The Christian Right is wrong as usual.

More on the Controversy from Media Matters

Kucinich was the only Democratic presidential candidate to speak at last weekend's massive peace rally in Washington, DC.

Which Democrat do you think is most likely to stop the war?

I figured this would be a good idea for a web poll.

Stopping the War

Which Democratic Candidate Would Be Most Likely to stop the Iraq War if elected?


Dennis Kucinich
Barack Obama
Joe Biden
Bill Richardson
Wesley Clark
Mike Gravel
Christopher Dodd
Hillary Rodham Clinton
John Edwards
Tom Vilsack




view results

With all of the terrible things religion is doing, a little comic relief is in order. A great place to go for that comic relief is www.churchsigngenerator.com.

You can make a faux church sign that says anything you want.

It is amazing how little has changed with the GOP. 43 Republicans betrayed the working poor in order to pander to business interests. They actually fillibustered a pitifully small minimum wage increase on the grounds that they wanted more tax breaks for business attached to it. Every independent and Democratic Senator voted for the minimum wage increase or did not vote.

After years and years of Republicans showering our nation's treasury on big money donors, you would think that the GOP would be satisfied. Yet, they never stop trying to pander to the corrupt people who fund their campaigns. We desperately need public financing of elections.

Here is the latest GOP Hall of Shame.

Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
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)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Thomas (R-WY)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)

It takes a lot to shock me, but some of Deborah Lipstadt's commentary in the 1/20/07 edition of the Washington Post, “Jimmy Carter's Jewish Problem” left me stunned and outraged.

Now, no one should be surprised that a right-wing extremist would try to say that anyone who criticizes the policies of Israeli governments is “anti-Semitic” or has a “Jewish Problem.” This is standard Karl Rove-style spin meant to demonize people whose points of views do not follow the far-right line.

What really stunned me was that she actually tried to exploit the Holocaust in order to justify Israel's mistreatment of the Palestinians. The Holocaust is completely irrelevant to this. The Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust. The heinous nature of the Holocaust in no way excuses any other injustice.

More importantly, cynically exploiting the Holocaust in a misleading fashion insults the memories of the people killed. Misusing a horrific genocide as a cheezy political ploy is reprehensible.

Many of the people killed in the Holocaust were killed because they were queer. As a queer man, mocking the Holocaust in the way that Lipstadt did in her commentary is a horribly, homophobic, personal insult. It is just as insulting to all people in communities targeted by the Holocaust who actually care about what happened.

I also am offended by the Washington Post's decision to print this outrage. They should have at least strong enough editorial standards not to publish commentaries that mock the deaths of people killed in the Holocaust. I know that the Post is a very rightist, Republican paper, but just how low are they willing to sink?

This is hardly the first example of outrageous homohatred by the corporate media, and I bet it won't be the last.

Hillary Clinton has been public enemy number one of the Christian Right and other Republican partisans. She is a female Democratic Senator representing New York. It might be easy to assume that she is a liberal.

But, the facts are different. She is a pro-war Democrat that is actively involved in the Democratic Liquidation Council, an organization that Bill Clinton and other conservative Democrats started in order to move that party to the right. There is another fact that people who think Ms. Clinton is a liberal should consider.

Hillary Clinton was on Wal-Mart's Board of Directors from 1986-1992.

She has never apologized for being so deeply involved with one of the most heinous corporations. Ms. Clinton has not even expressed any regrets or misgivings.

It is time that people started looking realistically at who Hillary Clinton really is, outside of the paranoia of the right-wing and the Clinton-worship so common among many partisan Democrats.

A vocal minority of opponents of Israel's occupation of Palestine and the US-Iraq war are under the impression that AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, and the rest of the “pro-Israeli” lobby are dictating the Bush Administration's foreign policy in the Middle East. AIPAC is thought of as a nearly omnipotent lobbying group in Washington, DC.

Some of this impression is undoubtedly based on the self-promotional materials on AIPAC's web site. An example follows:

For these reasons, The New York Times has called AIPAC “the most important organization affecting America's relationship with Israel,” while Fortune magazine has consistently ranked AIPAC among America's most powerful interest groups.

Through more than 2,000 meetings with members of Congress—at home and in Washington—AIPAC activists help pass more than 100 pro-Israel legislative initiatives a year.

AIPAC makes itself sound quite impressive. At the same time, there is an understanding that Bush's and Congress' Mideast policies are not in the public interest of the United States. Where people can go wrong is merely tying these two threads together without considering other interests in US politics.

Arab and Muslim countries control much of the world's remaining oil. Oil companies have an obvious interest in keeping control over the resource that determines their profit margins. Control of the flow of oil also provides leverage over other countries who depend on it, including the newest big oil junkies on the petroblock, China and India. Considering how much money the US public and private sectors owe Chinese interests, it is hardly surprising that policy makers would want some source of power over China.

Also, wars in the Middle East, or anywhere else for that matter, provide opportunities for contracts for the Bush regime's corporate cronies. Some of those contracts even are absent of those oh-so-distasteful bidding processes. Then, there are plenty of arms contractors who love to sell more weapons.

Wars also are good for ratings. Corporate media help their bottom lines and the bottom lines of many of their advertisers by stirring up war fever.

Then, there is the Christian Right. They get sick pleasure out of the subjugation, torture, and murder of Muslims. More importantly, they are getting increasingly impatient with a Rapture that never comes and are trying to stir up a Mideast War that they think is prophesied to bring the End Times.

When you see the constellation of extremely powerful interests supporting the Israeli government's policies for their own reasons, it is easy to see why AIPAC is so darned convenient. AIPAC's lobbyists are pushing for things that corporate interests and Christian fundamentalists want. No wonder AIPAC feels so effective when they lobby in Washington.

AIPAC isn't an almighty power.

AIPAC is a pawn.

One should also dispute the claim that the policies AIPAC supports put Israel's interests ahead of those of the United States. The policies of the Israeli government are no more in the interests of Israel than the policies of the Bush regime are in the interests of the United States.

The US-Iraq war has severely weakened Israel's most powerful ally, while strengthening the Islamic extremists who pose the greatest threat to Israel. The pro-settlement policies of Israeli governments have kept that country in a perpetual state of war and have isolated it internationally, outside of the US. Expansionist policies in Lebanon have weakened Israel militarily while creating and empowering Hezbollah.

The more you think about it, AIPAC is more pathetic than anything else.

Let's face it. There are no legitimate reasons for an honest person to continue supporting the war and occupation in Iraq. It was obvious even in 2004 that the Bush regime had already lost the war from a military standpoint. Everyone now knows that the Bush regime defrauded Congress and the American people in order to get into the war. Many of us knew this before the war even started. Even the Bush regime has admitted, in its National Intelligence Estimate, that this war is helping al Qaeda's terrorist recruitment and training. The presence of a foreign, occupying troops is increasing the violence while doing nothing to even slow down the civil war. Invading and occupying a foreign country which posed no threat to America in order to make some CEO's and wealthy investors even richer goes against every value this nation was founded on.

The real reason that any politicians continue to support the war is simple: blatant political corruption. War-supporting elected officials are in the campaign-contribution pockets of Big Oil, Halliburton, Blackwater, and other war profiteers. If we had public financing of elections, this war never would have happened in the first place.

Clearly, integrity is meaningless to politicians that continue to support the war. The only thing that will change their behavior is the realization that they will lose their offices if they continue to vote for this illegal, senseless, and genocidal war. It is past time to cut off all money and votes to any politician who sells his or her political office to the highest bidders rather than taking the honorable and patriotic course of voting to cut off all money for Bush's evil war in Iraq.