Corporate media hacks are repeatedly hammering us with Big Oil's talking point that we need offshore drilling for the foreseeable future. I can't say I'm shocked. The corporate media are owned by extreme right Republicans, many of whom own oil stocks. Big Oil is a major source of advertising revenue. So, we get bombarded with claims about the supposed necessity of offshore drilling hoping will forget one thing.

It's all a bunch of preposterous lies.

A comprehensive green energy policy could easily ween us of our need to put the equivalent of ticking time bombs along our coastlines. It would also dramatically reduce global warming The reckless and negligent practice of offshore oil drilling could be made completely unnecessary with the following policies.

1) Increase fuel efficiency standards for all vehicles, passenger and commercial, including airplanes, beyond what is on the books. (This would have the added benefit of forcing the US automakers to produce cars that people actually want to buy.)

2) Massively expand public transportation, subway, commuter, and high speed rail. (This also would provide desperately needed jobs.)

3) Require all automakers who sell vehicles in the US to produce minimum percentages of hybrids and electric cars.

4) Mandate electric charging stations at all gas stations.

5) Enact telecommuting laws with minimum requirements for employers where job functions don't need to be performed outside the home.

6) Enact minimum US content requirements so less fuel is wasted shipping products over the oceans into the US.

7) Expand wind and solar power to provide the energy to fuel electric cars, hybrids, and trains.

8) Mandate smart growth policies that would reduce driving

9) Create bigger carpooling incentives and make it illegal for people to buy their way into carpool lanes.

10) Mandate minimum recycled content in plastics made from petroleum.

Big Oil and its flunkies in the corporate media know we don't really need to continue offshore drilling. So, they use every dirty trick in the book to keep us hooked on petroheroin. Alternatives such as the ones I mention above seldom get mentioned in corporate "news" outlets. And, when they are mentioned, there is a common rhetorical ploy designed to mislead people.

They will single out one part of a broader green transportation strategy. They then say that the single part is insufficient to solve the problem. They act like that is the entire alternative to offshore drilling. Then, they try to manipulate people into thinking that this flawed logic must lead us to the faulty conclusion that there is no realistic alternative to offshore oil spilling.

We cannot let ourselves be deceived into buying this. There are alternatives.

 

Often, actions to stop oil spills also prevent global warming. One example is 350.org's Action Alert calling for a ban for all offshore oil drilling.

President Obama: This is Your Crude Awakening

Ban Offshore Drilling -- Permanently!

The oil spreading across the Gulf is a test, pure and simple. Will we respond in ways deep enough to matter, or will we continue on a path of destruction, danger, and dirty energy? For too long, oil companies have dictated our energy policy--and now we need to change course and begin a rapid shift to a clean energy economy.

The Obama administration says they are halting new offshore drilling until a safety investigation has been conducted. But that's not enough: we demand a PERMANENT BAN on offshore drilling.

Please sign the petition to President Obama and the US Congress: 350.org representatives will help deliver it to leaders in Washington before the planned hearings on the BP spill.

We urge you to permanently abandon plans for offshore drilling and stop letting oil companies determine energy policy. Instead, invest in a clean and safe energy future that protects the world from the worst effects of climate change.

Please Take Action!

350.org is a global organization fighting global warming, and there certainly are indirect connections between oil spills and global warming. The dependency on fossil fuels is one of the biggest causes of climate change, as well as oil spills and coal sludge spills like the horrific one that happened in Tennessee. One direct connection from British Petroleum's toxic deluge to global warming is that an enormous amount of methane is bubbling up from the ocean and into the atmosphere. Methane, like Carbon Dioxide, is a greenhouse gas.


Photo: Muffett

Speaking of not letting Big Oil dictate energy policy, Friends of the Earth has exposed the biggest recipients of British Petroleum's dirty money. They are asking that those heinous contributions be donated to Gulf Coast cleanup efforts instead.

The "BP Ten" are wanted for taking more campaign contributions from BP than any of their peers in the last two campaign cycles. The BP Ten are:

Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK): BP - $8,550, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX): BP - $10,200, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD): BP - $6,000, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA): BP - $16,200, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ): BP - $36,649, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY): BP - $8,500, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK): BP - $8,500, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX): BP - $7,300, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY): BP - $6,500, Rep. Don Young (R-AK): BP - $5,500. (Source: OpenSecrets.org)

This money has corrupted the political process and perpetuated our dependence on oil, making spills more likely. They should get rid of this money by donating it to the Gulf Coast Fund.

Instead of writing "(D-LA)" or "(R-TX)" maybe they should just put something like "(R-British Petroleum)." This is yet another example of the one area in DC where bipartisanship is strongest: politicians allowing themselves to be bought and paid for by corporate interests.

 

Update: After a storm of user protest, Facebook has restored the Boycott BP page, at least for now. This isn't the first example of political censorship by Facebook, and it won't be the last. People have to be ready to fight back whenever Facebook pulls this crap.

---

Facebook gets more and more fascist every day. (From Citizen Vox 6/29/10)

A few hours ago, Facebook censors removed the Boycott BP fan page, which had almost 800,000 members. It’s unclear why Facebook took the boycott page down. The page’s creator Lee Perkins, who goes by the moniker “Bayou Lee,” immediately created a new page, calling it Boycott bp/Arco. Bayou Lee wrote:

I can’t believe they shut us down with no explanation. I could not even say goodbye to my friends. We must have been doing something right.

Bayou Lee’s page was the largest of many Facebook campaigns aimed against BP for its role in causing the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The question many people were asking Monday night was whether this was a deliberate effort by Facebook to silence BP’s biggest critic.

Facebook is refusing to acknowledge their actions, much less defend them.

This should be taken as a challenge to fight even harder against British Petroleum. Facebook may decide to do the bidding of that incredibly evil oil corporation, but we don't have to. Public Citizen has it's own Boycott BP petition which is not on Facebook.

There's another lesson here. Facebook has become too big and powerful. They are becoming another Microsoft. Their monopoly on full featured social networking is a direct violation of antitrust laws.

Antitrust laws were meant to protect the public from the excesses of corporate power run amok. Repeated privacy violations by Facebook are another example of how corporate power corrupts.

It's time to break up Facebook into a group of compatible and separate social networking companies.

 

Most stories about Linda McMahon are funny. This one isn't. The WWE has done lots of rotten things, and this is one of the worst. The McMahons are incredibly evil people. Making money off a wrestler who died during a reckless stunt they set up is pathetic.



Also, Ms. McMahon has recently dismissed British Petroleum's heinous deluge as "an accident" and then went on to support more offshore oil drilling. Spill, baby, spill!



 

It was never a big secret that offshore oil drilling is an incredibly reckless and dangerous activity. We have known all along that every offshore oil well is a ticking time bomb. Yet, look at British Petroleum's lack of preparation for the inevitable.

The oil started gushing from their well on April 20. That's right, it's over two months since this catastrophe began, and enormous amounts of oil are still flooding from there. We now know that problems at the well started at least as early as February, and British Petroleum kept it quiet as long as they could.

Yet, the earliest that British Petroleum might, might stop the oil flood is August, when they are going to drill more holes in order to try to stop the oil (and keep pumping it). If that corporation's priority was to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, they would have stopped it already. The main problem is that they insist on being able to produce from the well, so it's Spill, Baby, Spill while the Rand Pauls and Linda McMahons of the world Shill, Baby, Shill.

Even with the insistence on maintaining production, British Petroleum could have stopped the catastrophe much sooner if they had planned for it. All the materials and people that they are taking time to assemble should already have been on standby before the disaster happened. That should be a standard precaution for any corporation that engages in offshore drilling. Besides, British Petroleum had at least two months before the explosion to prepare, yet they didn't even try.

Even worse, British Petroleum's executives act like people are being unreasonable with them because they don't accept all of the delays in solving the problem. They not only act in a completely childish and arrogant way, but they actually have the nerve to act as if this completely predictable event (that was predicted by environmentalists for decades) was a surprise.

GDAEman is absolutely correct. British Petroleum's corporate charter should be revoked. That is one corporation that needs to be put to death. Then, the assets should be used to clean the Gulf, compensate the victims, and compensate the retirees.

British Petroleum is a far greater threat to civilization than Al Qaeda. It needs to go!

 

This sounds like obstruction of justice to me. (CBC News 6/26/10)

The Vatican has stepped up its criticism of raids carried out by Belgian police investigating alleged sex abuse by priests, with the No. 2 official saying Saturday that the raids would be unprecedented even under communism.

The raids this week targeted the home and office of a retired archbishop and also the graves of two prelates.

"It is an unheard-of and very grave fact," Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, said Saturday. Speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Rome, Bertone lamented that bishops were held for nine hours without food or drink.

"There are no precedents, not even in communist regimes," Bertone said, according to Italian news agencies.

The communists should have done a lot more to stop the rampant child molestation by the Roman Catholic clergy. All governments with Roman Catholic churches should have.

When standard police procedure is demonized because it targets child rape in a clergy, you would think that there would be universal outrage. But, Ratzi's stooges keep throwing fits over this. They don't care how horrified decent human beings are by their behavior.

Ratzi's horrifying response to these raids in Belgium is getting a lot of well deserved criticism on the blogs. Here are some examples:

Catholic Child Molesters Scold Belgium Cops (News Pirates)

Vatican Hissy Fits Continue After Belgium Police Raids (Michael in Norfolk)

The Vatican - Still Doesn't Get It (Skeptico)

One thing that stunned me while researching this posting was seeing blog posts by pro child molestation advocates actually attacking the Belgian police raid. Anyone who is genuinely opposed to the rape of children supports similar raids throughout the world.

 

WKRG.com News

That would explain why the media are being kept away from the cleanup crews, and the crews are forbidden to talk to the media.

From WKRG 6/24/10:

GULF SHORES, Alabama - Former oil clean-up worker Candi Warren says she signed up to make a difference, but soon found out the work of cleaning the beaches was all cosmetic. That's what she was told, she says.

Warren says she knew that when crews worked during the day, the tide and surf buried oil overnight. But they were forbidden to dig it up. She quit in disgust three weeks ago despite the $18 per hour pay.

She said she was told to only clean the surface of the sand, that this is all cosmetic. She was on a crew at Gulf State Park where tourists go. She says it has priority so as to make it look like the beaches are clean.

One thing we definitely do know is that British Petroleum lied about its oil skimming capabilities in its 2009 exploration plan. (Energy Tribune 5/20/10)

In associated documents filed with the U.S. Minerals Management Service, the company says that it would be able to skim 17.6 million gallons of oil a day from the Gulf in the event of a spill.

As of Tuesday, BP reported recovering 6 million gallons of oily water since the ongoing spill began four weeks ago. BP spokesman Tom Mueller said that only about 10 percent of the skimmed liquid was oil, which would amount to about 600,000 gallons of oil collected thus far.

British Petroleum lied before the disaster, when the disaster started at the beginning of this year, when the disaster became known to the public, and it continues to lie today. I just wonder what whoppers those scumbags are going to come up with next.

I am so sick of corporate media pundits, British Petroleum PR spammers, and rightist politicians defending British Petroleum. The company is disgraceful.

President Obama and Congress have gone way too easy on this evil corporation. Big Oil has way too much power in the country. Only making campaign financing public will stop this corrupt pandering to the most evil corporation in the history of the Earth.

 

Deep inside a Death Star orbiting the Mormon spiritual home star Kolob, Capt. Harry Reid prepares for all out war.

Capt. Reid: Mr. Spock! What is our battle status?

Spock: Logic dictates that my presence here may be the result of plagiarism.

Starbuck: Like that's any different than the rest of Mormonism!

Capt. Reid: Logan, will there be any hot babes for me to marry on The Channel after we win the battle?

Logan: Well, if you like them under thirty....

The Robot: Danger Will Robinson! Intelligence reports confirm that the Scientologists are preparing to mount an attack!

Capt. Reid: Don't worry! Our magic underpants will save us!

On her Flying Teabag Fortress, Admiral Sharron Angle of the Scientologists is plotting strategy.

Ad. Angle: Are our intelligence reports accurate? Are the Mormon forces going back in time to get Xenu?

Flunkie 1: (adjusting tinfoil hat) Reid is too spineless to try it.

Flunkie 2: But, we have determined that President Obama is a liberal, communist, fascist, atheist Muslim from the Maui province of Kenya.

Ad. Angle: We'll have to worry about that later! Has everyone been cleared so we can take off?

Flunkie 2: 32 crew members are still being cleared by crack Elronoid professionals.

Ad. Angle: Dammit! We are in a hurry! I knew I should have paid more to the Church!

Flunkie 1: We have pamphlets we could pass out to people while we wait.

Flunkie 2: I also can contact Sarah Palin so she can send a twit of encouragement to our teabag squadrons.

Ad. Angle: It would be expensive to pay her off, but it would be worth it!

Flunkie 1: (holding a tin can with a string connected to nothing) I have an urgent message. The teabag pilots are refusing to fly their missions until they see your birth certificate!

Ad. Angle: (fuming) I showed it to them last week. Where's Tom Cruise when I need him? He would know how to handle this situation!

 

British Petroleum certainly isn't Beyond Profiteering.

We have seen how British Petroleum's irresponsible and greedy behavior already has devastated a major portion of the Gulf of Mexico. Well, British Petroleum's evil behavior is global. Iraq is a country where this heinous oil corporation has made an enormous amount of blood money and is likely to continue to do so. (From the Telegraph 6/30/09):

A BP-led consortium on Tuesday won a deal to develop Iraq's largest oilfield – the only successful foreign bid in a historic televised auction.

International oil companies were put off by the Iraqi oil ministry's demands that they cut the fee they collect on every barrel extracted over 20-year contracts.

The BP-Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) deal was only secured when the consortium agreed to cut its fee per barrel from £3.99 to $2.

That's right. Those poor babies will spend very little of their own money to extract the oil (and none to find the oil), and they are guaranteed hefty profits, but not as hefty as they thought they would get.

Of course, this isn't the only way that British Petroleum has made money off of an illegal and genocidal war in Iraq and the endless quagmire in Afghanistan. (Asia Times 6/19/10)

The Pentagon's foreign wars have left it particularly heavily dependent on oil services, energy and petroleum companies. An analysis published at Foreign Policy in Focus found that, in 2005, 145 such companies had contracts with the Pentagon. That year, the DoD paid out more than $1.5 billion to BP alone and a total of $8 billion taxpayer dollars, in total, to energy-related firms on what is a far-from-complete list of companies.

That's right. British Petroleum has been making over $1 billion in fuels sales, the vast majority of which would be completely unnecessary if not for those two wars.

British Petroleum doesn't just have oil on its hands. They also have blood on their hands. The pressured both the British and US governments, along with other Big Oil corporations, to get us into the Iraq War in the first place. Now, you can see why.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's involvement has been particularly interesting. For the especially gullible, he claimed that his decision to get involved in the war on Iraq was based on fears of WMDs, knowing full well that Iraq didn't have WMDs. He let other people think that he was Bush's poodle, going to extremes to preserve the "special relationship" between the US and Britain that almost always benefits the elites at the expense of the general populations of both countries.

Knowledge and perspective is often clearer with time and larger bodies of information. Now, we know that Tony Blair was a poodle, but the owner of that groveling dog was British Petroleum.

 

Tell Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid: No Giveaways to Big Oil

One of the reasons why British Petroleum has been so lax on safety and why they have been so apathetic about stopping the oil deluge and cleaning the mess is that they have the expectation that they have that they won't have to pay for more than a small fraction of the damage they have done. $20 billion isn't going to be even close.

Making Big Oil pay for the damage they create will have two beneficial effects. It will pressure them to follow safety guidelines, which will reduce the number of spills. However, there is no such thing as safe offshore oil drilling. Keeping evil oil companies from British Petroleum from dumping their financial risks on the tourism and fishing industries will create a financial disincentive for engaging in the unethical practice of offshore oil drilling, especially in the cases of wells with marginal profitability or higher risk.

CODEPINK then takes things a logical step further, calling for a ban on offshore oil drilling. This is critical. Spills like British Petroleum's or even bigger ones are inevitable if we don't stop this heinous practice. Alternative energy, public transportation, increasing mileage standards, and pro telecommuting policies could easily replace all the oil we get from offshore wells.

CODEPINK calls for an end to subsidies for fossil fuels. The Iraq War funding is definitely one of those subsidies.

CODEPINK is fighting back and asking you to join them in doing it. Please contact Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and demand that Big Oil has to accept its financial responsibilities. Here is the sample text from CODEPINK's action alert (which you should replace with your own).

Dear Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi,

Our communities in the Gulf of Mexico are suffering from the recent oil spill, and will be for decades. It's obvious that we cannot continue doing business as usual.

As leaders in the House and Senate, I ask you to take the following steps:

Polluter pays, no exceptions. BP and future polluters must be held accountable for all costs associated with clean-up and remediation. Let Congress vote on the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Liability Act.

No drilling, no spilling. President Obama has placed a 6-month moratorium on off-shore drilling, but Congress must take action to make this ban permanent. With your support, the No New Drilling Act of 2010 should be brought to the floor for a vote.

No giveaways to Big Oil. All direct and indirect fossil fuel subsidies should be halted immediately and indefinitely. Public investments should be directed to clean, renewable energy sources and energy efficiency technologies that create 21st Century jobs and reduce pollution

Separate Oil and Politics. Urge all elected officials to reject all campaign contributions from fossil fuel companies as a way to show their independence and their determination to safeguard the public good.

I urge you to work with Congressional members on both sides of the aisle to lift the liability cap, ban off-shore drilling and ensure passage of strong comprehensive climate and energy legislation this year. Our future demands no less.

Please Take Action Now!

 

Texas isn't my favorite place in the world, and the GOP is really awful. So, I'm not exactly shocked that Republicans in Texas are truly reprehensible. Their 2010 Platform is filled with highly irrational hate. Actual Text from Platform (JayJays.com 6/20/10):

Family Values – We affirm that this section is a response to the attacks on traditional family values. These include well funded, vigorous political and judicial attempts by powerful organizations and branches of the government to force acceptance, affirmation and normalization of homosexual behavior upon school children, parents, educational institutions, businesses, employees, government bodies and religious institutions and charities. These aggressive, intolerant efforts marginalize as bigots anyone who dissents.

Here, the Texas GOP borrows a rhetorical ploy that originates with the Ku Klux Klan, was copied by the Christian Right, and now is popular with the Mormon hate church. They are actually saying that it is intolerant to speak out against intolerance. Orwellian text is quite common among bigots, and Texas Republicans are no exception.

The Texas Goppers then oppose every LGBT civil rights issue in the most strident and deceptive fashion, even supporting imprisonment for queers (sodomy laws). More from JayJays.com:

Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable “alternative” lifestyle in our public education and policy, nor should “family” be redefined to include homosexual “couples.” We are opposed to any granting of special legal entitlements, refuse to recognize, or grant special privileges including, but not limited to: marriage between persons of the same sex (regardless of state of origin), custody of children by homosexuals, homosexual partner insurance or retirement benefits. We oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values.

They then “demand” that Congress withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy – in other words, because the federal courts said people can’t go to prison for oral sex, Texas Republicans are pissed. They want people who have oral sex to go to prison.

I suspect they would be just fine with limiting sodomy laws and their enforcement to sex between people of the same gender.

These drooling knucklewalkers deliberately lied about what LGBT civil rights laws do. (I know you are shocked, just shocked, about Republicans lying.) Those laws don't have civil and criminal remedies against points of view. Those laws target actions that discriminate or are violent. Bigots can keep on hating as much as they like.

Anyway, this kind of behavior is why so many people said "go already" when Texas governor Rick Perry threatened to succeed from the union. The GOP is by far the biggest political party in that state, and this platform represents everything disgusting and anti American about that state.

British Petroleum's PR spammers on blogs and newspaper websites have been trying to exploit retirees who depend on that corporation's stock in order to protect the most reprehensible corporation in world history. Of course, if British Petroleum's assets were seized, some of them could go to compensate retirees.

This tactic by a corporation's desperate propagandists brings up a big picture issue. Why did anyone speculate in British Petroleum in the first place? I can understand how individual investors could have been fooled by corporate fraud, but fund managers? That's a real scandal.

British Petroleum's execrable safety record was on the public record. The average person like you or I doesn't have the time to research every area of risk by every corporation. But, it is the job of fund managers to be aware of the risks of all the equities they put money into.

And, the risk from the specific corporation's lack of concern for safety is added onto the general risk involved in any corporation that is involved in the negligent and highly irresponsible practice of offshore drilling. The stock of any corporation that has a major involvement in it carries as much risk as junk bonds. While it certainly is true that there are traders who make money speculating in junk bonds, such speculation by pension fund managers is grossly irresponsible and negligent. Speculation in Big Oil corporations that drill offshore is equally irresponsible and negligent.

When you add the total risk of speculating in British Petroleum, it isn't difficult to see that no responsible retirement fund manager would do it. The ticking time bomb has gone off and retirement funds have taken losses from equity positions that couldn't be rationally justified in the first place. Those fund managers should be fired ASAP.

And, please don't parrot the Big Oil propaganda that no one saw this coming. Environmentalists were warning about this kind of thing for years.

Photo: SanFranAnnie

 

Hat Tip for Video to Stupid Evil Bastard



It should be noted that "Under God" was added to the pledge in the 1950s as part of the McCarthyism and to specifically act out on prejudice against atheists.

The teabaggers don't know this, but the original version of the Pledge was created by a Christian socialist.

 

A shrimper from the Gulf has interrupted British Petroleum's head honcho during his lies at this week's congressional hearings. She demanded that he be "charged with a crime." All the British Petroleum executives should be charged with lots of crimes, including charges for the deaths of the employees on the oil rig that were easily preventable by not engaging in the negligent and greedy practice of offshore drilling.



Just when you thought things were bad enough, the reprehensible nature of British Petroleum's context is even worse than we previously thought.

From Bloomberg 6/17/10: (Hat Tip: Citizens for Legitimate Government)

BP Plc was struggling to seal cracks in its Macondo well as far back as February, more than two months before an explosion killed 11 and spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

It took 10 days to plug the first cracks, according to reports BP filed with the Minerals Management Service that were later delivered to congressional investigators. Cracks in the surrounding rock continued to complicate the drilling operation during the ensuing weeks. Left unsealed, they can allow explosive natural gas to rush up the shaft.

“Once they realized they had oil down there, all the decisions they made were designed to get that oil at the lowest cost,” said Peter Galvin of the Center for Biological Diversity, which has been working with congressional investigators probing the disaster. “It’s been a doomed voyage from the beginning.”

Just think how much farther ahead both the cleanup and containment efforts would have been if this was released to the public at the time. This kind of corporate secrecy should be punished very severely.

But, it gets worse... (same article)

While gas surges are common in oil drilling, companies have abandoned wells if they determine the risk is too high. When a Gulf well known as Blackbeard threatened to blow out in 2006, Exxon Mobil Corp. shut the project down.

That's right. British Petroleum was even more reckless and negligent than the infamous Excon Mobil. (It should also be noted that British Petroleum played a major role in the infamous "containment effort" for that oil spill too.)

That makes it even more sickening when corrupt Republicans suck up to British Petroleum. There really isn't any low to which a Republican wouldn't sink to go after big money campaign contributions.

 

Hat Tip: Letters from the Sanitarium

Eventually, toxic crap from the petroleum will diffuse into all the oceans. It will evaporate with water to form rain that will poison people and other life forms all over the planet. The air we breathe will remain poisoned as well.

Greenpeace has a Flickr photo set that shows what is really being done to the environment.

So much of the coverage on the cable "news" channels is about the politicians and the pundits, while the consequences of this horrific crime get short shrift.

 

Attacking women and queers is an old tactic of the Roman Catholic Church when they want to divert attention from the rampant child molestation in their clergy. They just won't let go of it. (From Edge 6/16/10)

The bishop of Essen, Germany--an epicenter of the clerical sexual abuse scandal now rocking Europe--has targeted gays with a declaration that homosexuals are headed to Hell.

Blog The Eponymous Flower posted a German news item on June 15 about the words of Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck. The original June 10 article appeared at German Catholic news site Kreuz.net ("Cross.net") reported the Overbeck had appeared on a televised talk program in April, where he declared, "Homosexuality is a sin. We know this very clearly and unambiguously, and that’s that. It contradicts nature." Added the bishop, "Human nature is fulfilled in the conjoining of man and woman."

The Eponymous Flower elaborated on the bishop’s anti-gay message. "Whoever dies as an unrepentant homosexual, goes to Hell," the posting’s framing comments read. "The Bishop of Essen can not abolish the 10 Commandments: homosexual perversion is a mortal sin."

Instead of sentencing queers to a nonexistent hell, why not turn in some of the child raping priests you are protecting so they can go to very real prisons? Being used as scapegoats by a clergy that sees sex as sinful unless it is among married heterosexuals or involves adults molesting children is getting really old.

Can't they come up with something knew to distract the gullible? How about threats involving people who shave their beards or eat shellfish? Is it any wonder so much of the Roman Catholic flock is finally leaving that bigoted, greedy, and child molesting church?

Last Monday, there was a rally for homeless queer youth organized by the Ali Forney Center and other queer organizations, that was partly in response to a hate crime in Queens. Here's the promo Queers United ran:

A rally to protect and advocate on behalf of homeless LGBT youth will occur tonight in Manhattan. This rally is in response to the recent hate crime against the Ali Forney LGBT homeless youth shelter. There are too many issues LGBT youth who are homeless go through to be ignored and while the the NYC Commission on LGBTQ Runaway and Homeless Youth came out with a report of suggestions, action needs to follow for implementation of change.

Monday June 14th, 6:30PM, Union Square
(Special guest-speakers Sandra Bernhard and Lt. Dan Choi)

Our execrable Mayor Bloomberg created the commission while at the same time planning to cut $6 million of city funding for homeless youth. He loves to pretend to be pro lgbt while stabbing us in the back when it counts. Some of us are not fooled by his bullshit.

The hate crime that triggered this particular rally was described by Kicked Out Anthology:

I am shocked and angered by the vandalism that occurred at the Ali Forney Center’s NYC shelter in Queens. Yesterday morning youth living at the shelter woke up to find the words “”We don’t want gay people here” scrawled on the walls, and “gay shelter” on the door of a place that is intended to provide them safety and security. Take a moment and think about what that must have felt like “we don’t want gay people here” the majority of homeless LGBTQ youth have left home because of their parents and guardian’s reaction to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity, how bitingly cruel to wake to find those same words on the door of a place offering them sanctuary.

Sandra Bernhard was good, but Lt. Dan Choi was amazing. He is the most passionate and moving queer speaker since Harvey Milk. Like Milk, he sees queer issues in a broader social justice context. If Choi ever starts working on coalition building like Milk did, Choi could be the kind of queer leader our movement desperately needs.

However, the most important speakers were the queer youth themselves. Putting human faces on a social ill, homelessness, that our society prefers to ignore is terribly important.

The speaker from Fierce made some excellent points about how youth homelessness disproportionately effects the queer community. She said that over 40% of homeless youth in NYC acknowledge being LGBT. Many more are understandably reluctant to say who and what they are to strangers trying to gather statistics.

Some queer youth run away from homophobic parents, but most of the queer youth who are homeless are kicked out by their parents. There are far fewer beds here in NYC than there are queer youth who need them. However, things are better here than in most of the country. Most places have zero beds for LGBT youth.

Some of the things speakers at the rally called for include:

- A queer nondiscrimination policy for all federally funded youth shelters.

- An end to Mayor Bloomberg's efforts to cut funding for homeless youth.

- Making youth issues a priority for the LGBT community.

- The creation of a queer youth center at the pier in the West Village.

Some elected officials showed for the event, including City Controller John Liu. Conspicuous by her absence was openly lesbian City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. I guess she has been too busy with her hateful crusade to "honor" Mother Teresa, the homophobic bigot who denied visits from same sex lovers in AIDS hospices, avoided providing pain medication to all patients, used highly questionable medical practices, and lavished praise on Savings and Loan crook Charles Keating even after he got caught. Considering how much Quinn panders to our viciously homophobic and horribly corrupt Mayor Bloomberg, serious questions about Quinn's loyalty to the queer community need to be raised.

 

Image: ssoosay

The corporate media have so much power to frame the nation's political debate that most people often aren't even aware of what has been done. An excellent example of this is how the corporate media have gone along with British Petroleum's sleazy marketing ploy to call itself "BP." This marketing scam was created for two purposes.

1) British Petroleum didn't want the portion of the US populace that doesn't follow the news to know that a foreign corporation had bought major US oil companies.

2) Using "BP" allowed them to run these fraudulent "Beyond Petroleum" commercials where British Petroleum had the nerve to actually present itself as an alternative fuels company, a presentation even more offensive given the fact that British Petroleum joined with other Big Oil corporations to lobby against alternative fuels and public transportation while pushing for wars for oil here and in Britain.

Yet, the corporate media have completely gone along with the "BP" fiction. This wasn't just based on the general far right bias of corporations owned by rich Republicans. British Petroleum is a major advertiser on corporate media outlets. That ad money buys a lot of bullshit, and the bullshit isn't just being shoveled at us during the commercials.

Notice to the British Petroleum PR Person Posting Anonymously:
Trying to cynically exploit what happened in Bhopal in order to promote the interests of a truly monstrous corporation like British Petroleum is absolutely reprehensible. It's obvious that you couldn't care less about people in India or the US.

 

From the A.N.S.W.E.R. website:

On Saturday, July 10, thousands will protest against anti-immigrant racism at the National Governors Association annual meeting in Boston.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s racist law, SB 1070, has ignited a firestorm of protests around the country at the very time when immigrants and their supporters are standing up for reform. In addition to SB 1070, which legalizes racial profiling and is aimed at all people of color in Arizona, the state has passed a bill, HB 2281, which bans ethnic studies from public classrooms. Other states are reportedly considering similar moves.

In Massachusetts, a series of anti-immigrant amendments were passed into the State Senate's version of the budget, restricting access to basic social services like healthcare, education and housing. Also included is the creation of an anonymous tip line for the public to report on undocumented people and mandating the state to investigate all reports made.

These attacks come at a time when all people are suffering from the wave of budget cuts and mass unemployment that makes racism and anti-immigrant xenophobia so dangerous.

It’s time for Brewer and the rest of the state governors to be met with the outrage felt by millions of immigrants and their supporters.

Immigration must be on the agenda of the annual meeting of the National Governor’s Association—and our voices must be heard!

The protest has broad support among anti racist activists. Supporting organizations include:

ANSWER Coalition
Vamos Unidos USA
Boston Mayday Committee
Mass Global Action
Unidad Latina en Acción
Hermandad Mexicana Nacional
Muslim American Society Freedom
La Iglesia San Romero de Las Americas-UCC
Rev. Graylan Hagler, National President of Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice
Barrio Unido para Amnistía Incondicional
Ugnayan ng mga Anak ng Bayan (Linking the Children of the Motherland)
Damayan Migrant Workers Association
Partnership for Civil Justice Fund
March Forward!
Alliance for Global Justice

If you are in the Boston area at the time, you are encouraged to go.

It's encouraging to see people oppose the racist scapegoating by corrupt bigots like Klan Brewer. The efforts by corporate media to deflect legitimate anger resulting from suffering caused by corrupt behavior by wealthy and corporate interests are reprehensible. Illegal immigration has little or no impact on our lives. Obscene tax breaks for the rich, the Iraq War, predatory lending, outsourcing, wasteful military spending, financial speculation, derivatives trading, and corporate controlled trade agreements like NAFTA are causing far more pain for middle class and poor Americans. Yet, those issues are deflected or spun by corrupt media and corrupt politicians like Klan Brewer who are completely bought and paid for by the interests that are devastating the overwhelming majority of people in this country.

I've decided to start my first weekly feature here in the land of the Godless Liberal Homo: Action Against Oil Spills Tuesdays. This will be running at least for the next few weeks in order to turn anger into action against more catastrophes like the British Petroleum oil volcano in the Gulf. If we continue offshore drilling, more incidents like this are inevitable.

The first action will be to work to reduce the dependency on automobiles which creates the market for much of the filthy muck in the Gulf. The American Public Transportation Association has an Action Alert for people to contact the folks who are supposed to be representing us in DC asking them to push for more money for public transportation during the next appropriations process. Here is the sample text: (You should replace all or most of it with your own words.)

Public transportation benefits all Americans. Please support further investment in public transportation because public transportation:

-CREATES JOBS AND STIMULATES THE ECONOMY
For every $1 invested in public transit, $6 is generated in economic returns. And every $1 billion invested in public transportation supports 30,000 jobs in urban and rural areas.

-REDUCES OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL
Public transportation allows us to save 900,000 automobile fill-ups each day. That's 4.2 billion gallons of gasoline annually that we're not buying overseas.

-PROTECTS OUR ENVIRONMENT
Public transportation saves 37 million metric tons of CO2 annually. That's the equivalent of the electricity used by nearly 5 million homes.

-ENHANCES OUR QUALITY OF LIFE
Each year, public transit saves auto drivers and truckers more than $10.2 billion in congestion costs, which in turn, reduces stress. What's more, public transportation connects us to work, school and health services.

Only a small percentage of the population in this country uses public transit, and that much CO2 is being kept out of the atmosphere. Think how much more CO2 would be kept out if we massively expanded public transit.

Please Take Action to Prevent More Oil Spills!

 

They were legitimately angry at that corporation dumping waste into Lake Michigan.



 

Photo: Muffett

GOP gubernatorial bidder Meg Whitman bid over $70 million of her own money to win the Republican nomination on GOPBay. The losing bidder, Steve Piozner, only bid $25 million of his enormous fortune.

According to one source, the highest bid on EBay, where Ms. Whitman used to be CEO, was for $21 million, making GOPBay a more high end auction site than Ms. Whitman's former employer.

Other items that may be up for auction in the future:

- The Grand Canyon

- The Papacy

- The Moon

Making the rich pay their fair share in taxes is not part of Ms. Whitman's platform.

 

Photo: dmax3270

I already knew that my Phonycrat Sen. Chuck "Loves Torture" Schumer was racist, but I didn't know that he was this sickening of a bigot. (From Think Progress - Hat Tip: Unbrainwashed)

SCHUMER: The Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution. More do than before, but a majority still do not. Their fundamental view is, the Europeans treated the Jews badly and gave them our land — this is Palestinian thinking [...] They don’t believe in the Torah, in David [...] You have to force them to say Israel is here to stay. The boycott of Gaza to me has another purpose — obviously the first purpose is to prevent Hamas from getting weapons by which they will use to hurt Israel — but the second is actually to show the Palestinians that when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement. When there’s total war against Israel, which Hamas wages, they’re going to get nowhere. And to me, since the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, while certainly there should be humanitarian aid and people not starving to death, to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go, makes sense.

The military siege of Gaza is a racist crime against humanity. It's perpetrators are subject to criminal prosecution in any country in the world. Unbrainwashed also discusses Schumer's theocratic bigotry against people who don't believe the Jewish religion.

But Schumer is worse than that. He believes that Palestinians deserve it because "they don't believe in the Torah." Hey, I don't believe in the Torah, does that make it okay for someone to economically strangle me until I do? All this proves is that Israel is not a democracy, but an apartheid theocracy, albeit a racist one, where those people not of the state religion are not entitled to the same rights as those of the correct religion.

I don't believe in the Torah, David, or any other religious claptrap. I'm sick of people like Chuck Schumer, Pat Robertson, and Osama bin Laden acting like it is OK to murder people merely for not sharing in a superstitious religious faith.

Also, Schumer attacks the Palestinians for acknowledging a fact that nobody can honestly dispute, "the Europeans treated the Jews badly and gave them our land." Attacking this reflects Schumer's racist attitude that brown skinned peoples' sole purpose of existence is to be punished for crimes committed by white people.

Chuck Schumer is a truly heinous bigot. There is no way I could ever vote for him for any public office again after this.

 

One of the excuses made by defenders of British Petroleum is that fighting back against that terrorist corporation will hurt efforts to compensate victims. That isn't true. British Petroleum has no intention of fairly compensating victims. From Facing South:

BP hires company to handle oil spill claims whose goal is "reducing payouts" for clients

Publicly, BP has said it intends to be generous in compensating those affected by the Gulf oil spill: CEO Tony Hayward has pledged to pay all "legitimate" claims resulting from the disaster, even offering to waive the $75 million cap on liability for economic damages.

But to handle claims from the spill, BP has hired a risk-management company who advertises that a main benefit of its services is "reducing our clients' loss dollar pay-outs" -- a goal Gulf advocates say is in direct contradiction to Washington and BP's promises to fully compensate coastal residents.

ESIS Inc. -- part of the Swiss-based global insurance giant the ACE Group -- is a risk-management firm whose mission is to "impact our clients' business and reduce their total cost."

One of ESIS's many services for corporate clients is handling claims made against companies, which Darryl Willis, VP for Resources at BP America said in recent Congressional testimony [pdf] is the role they're playing for BP in the wake of the spill:

Even before this event, BP had a relationship with a company called ESIS - they are trained to respond quickly and professionally to significant events. Organized in 1953, ESIS is part of the ACE Group, headed by ACE Limited. The ESIS Claims team assisting BP was developed in 1995 and has extensive experience. ESIS has handled over 200 incidents, both small and large. The company is well known as a leader in its field. Speaking personally, I have been impressed by the professionalism and dedication of our ESIS colleagues in providing the backbone of our claims process.

How does ESIS deliver on its promise to clients to "reduce their total cost?" Part of the savings come from ESIS's ability to bring expertise and systems for handling claims that BP doesn't have already.

But another way ESIS can "reduce cost" is by cutting the number and dollar value of claims that are paid. As ESIS advertises in a fact sheet on another part of the business, [pdf] a key goal of their operations is "reducing our clients' loss-dollar payouts."

As the New Orleans-based Advocates for Environmental Human Rights argued in a letter this week [pdf] to Admiral Thad Allen who is leading the federal spill response, ESIS's goals of reducing claims costs may not only contradict BP's pledge to honor claims, but also raises larger questions about Washington's role in overseeing the claims process:

As the National Incident Commander, you have the responsibility to ensure that the people of the Gulf Region harmed by the BP oil disaster are fully compensated by BP for all of their losses, This responsibility entails investigating and preventing any efforts by BP and ESIS that provide or attempt to provide insufficient compensation to any claimant.

Gulf Coast residents are already reporting frustrations with ESIS's handling of the claims process and finding ways to limit payouts. Here's a story from a Louisiana fishing guide:

Brian Sherman of Buras filed his claim after losing business as a fishing guide who helped people keep up their boats and condominiums and ran boats out of the Venice Marina before the oil spill. Last year Sherman made about $3916 per month. BP provided him with a check for only $2500, however, because ESIS, the firm hired by BP to handle claims, classified him as a deckhand, a lower paying position.

All of British Petroleum's talk about fairly compensating victims is a pack of lies. British Petroleum must be destroyed, its executives imprisoned, and its assets seized immediately.

 

British Petroleum is keeping cleanup workers from talking to the press. I wonder what they are covering up.



 

Here's what rightist politicians in the UK are defending:



Update: I've replaced the spill cam with a oil spill ticker for now because British Petroleum currently is blocking streaming of the spilling oil by news organizations.


Photo:USFWS/Southeast


Photo: Mindful Walker

How do far right British politicians thank America for saving their country from the Nazis? They defend a heinous and murderous act of terrorism against our country by an incredibly evil corporation, British Petroleum.

Boris Johnson, London's fascist Tory mayor, has made the news with anti American comments defending the unconscionable conduct of British Petroleum. He then went further, fraudulently accusing opponents of British Petroleum of somehow being "Anti-British" because we want a criminal corporation and its criminal leaders brought to justice.

David Cameron, the bubbleheaded empty suit who now occupies 10 Downing Street, is engaging in the morally offensive behavior of defending British Petroleum, although in a less overtly anti-American fashion. That isn't good enough. It's time for Britain's extreme right Prime Minister to set aside the corrupting influences of wealthy and corporate campaign contributions and stop attacking America by defending British Petroleum.

Other corrupt British politicians are even exploiting British pensioners whose funds engaged in highly risky speculation on British Petroleum stock. This is sickening.

If Cameron, Johnson, and their fascist cohorts had any human decency or integrity, they would be leading a campaign to work with the US government to seize British Petroleum's assets and use them to pay for the cleanup of the act of terrorism in the Gulf, compensate the victims, and to compensate the pensioners who were ripped off by British Petroleum. Unfortunately, they are such bought politicians that they would rather defend a terrorist organization like British Petroleum.

So far, there has been a tremendous level of outrage at British Petroleum. That outrage is completely justified, and no one can honestly argue otherwise. However, there has been very little anti British sentiment in this country. But, if pieces of walking garbage like Cameron and Johnson keep spewing anti American filth, that can and will change.

Many people are already boycotting British Petroleum and companies it bought like Arco and Castrol. Even in exurbia, many of the gas stations selling British Petroleum's morally depraved gasoline are almost deserted, even during rush hour. It would take very little effort to come up with a list of other British companies to boycott if this wave of anti American, pro terrorism extremism takes hold among the UK's elected officials. When I can afford to travel to Europe, I don't have to ever travel to Britain again. I don't have to fly British Airways or Virgin Atlantic. I don't have to have flights with Heathrow layovers. No American does.

It would be trivial to create of "Boycott Britain" Facebook Group. In fact, by the time I got around to doing it, somebody else would have already created it, and all I would have to do is publicize it.

I don't want to have to boycott Britain, by I will not tolerate this abusive, bigoted, and harassing behavior by British government officials. Cameron and his merry band of fascist pigs better learn to shut the fuck up!

 

I wonder if those pieces of walking garbage will give me even one day's worth of time when I don't have yet another reason to despise them. From the Seize BP Campaign:

BP buys Google ads for “Seize BP” searches
How outrageous is this? Google “Seize BP” and the first thing you’ll see is a BP ad about its “efforts” to address the Gulf of Mexico crisis. BP is squandering millions of dollars in deceitful self-promotion ads when working families across the Gulf Cost are desperately awaiting compensation and relief.

Interestingly enough, at the time of this writing, the top search result below BP’s ad is a video about the Seize BP Week of Action in 50 cities across the country. Our movement didn’t pay a dime to get that video in the top spot of a Google search. It is there because our grassroots movement is drawing attention and garnering support from coast to coast around a simple and just demand: Seize BP’s assets to provide comprehensive compensation and relief for all affected people and for cleaning up the environment.

I checked, and it's still there. The thing that really pisses me off is that the link for the ad itself says "Seize BP." This is incredibly deceptive. People are trying to find the website of the group that is trying to get British Petroleum's assets seized, and the first link is propaganda from British Petroleum. The Internet never should have been allowed to be put under such overt corporate control.

The Federal Trade Commission should look into this misleading advertising ploy.

British Petroleum has been lying to the public about the spill from the beginning, and they are using every dishonest tactic to try to get away with what they have done. Obviously, I refuse to go to a BP or Arco station, just like I refuse to go to Excon and Mobile stations for a variety of reasons.

My Citgo buycott looks better and better every day.

 

Photo: Damian Kettlewell for Vancouver-False Creek

Corrupt, far right "Democrat" Blanche Lincoln faces a Green Party challenger in her Senate race. (Independent Political Report 6/9/10)

Democrat Blanche Lincoln and Republican John Boozman, winners of their parties’ primaries for this year’s US Senate race in Arkansas, will face Green Party candidate John Gray, retired engineer and current Mayor of Greenland, AR. Lincoln, a leading beneficiary of retail giant Wal-Mart who was supported in a close primary race by President Barack Obama, has drawn the ire of progressives for her opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act and her efforts to weaken health care reform.

John Gray, the Arkansas Green Party candidate, is running on a platform that includes: enacting a Medicare For All single payer health care system, ending corporate personhood, fixing trade to make America self-sufficient and eliminate the trade deficit, breaking up “too big to fail” corporations, and ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

You can learn more at John Gray's campaign website. I particularly like his proposal to bring back the tariff system.

If liberals limit our options to the Democrats, they will be able to take us for granted just like Blanche Lincoln and the Clintons have been doing for years. We have to make Democrats earn our votes.

 

Hat Tip: The Gaytheist Agenda



Christian Right bigots don't just lie about queers.

 

Bill Clinton always has been an incredibly corrupt, racist, and homophobic far right Republican posing as a Democrat. Yet, his ability to con people into believing almost anything has gotten far too many Democrats to act like he is some kind of legitimate Democratic Party leader.

Clinton again showed how what a wingnut he was when he participated in ads in Arkansas for ultra corrupt Senator Blanche Lincoln, the same Lincoln who has a well deserved reputation of being completely bought and paid for by the same corporate and wealthy interests that the Clintons have been bought and paid for. (CNN 6/4/10)

Incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln is pulling out the big guns in her bid to defeat a hard charging challenger in the Arkansas Democratic Senate run-off.

Now just four days away from her showdown with Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, Lincoln's newest campaign ad features former President Bill Clinton – the favorite son of Arkansan Democrats.

When will Democratis learn? Never, ever trust a Clinton!

Blanche Lincoln, like the Clintons, hates lebsian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans and wants us all dead. They all are fanatical racists. They all are corrupt war mongers who despise middle class and poor Americans. None of them have met a corporate campaign donor they didn't like. All of them should tattoo the words "For Sale" on their foreheads.

Some Democrats are calling for voting for a Green candidate. A Green Party candidate is infinitely better than an extremist Bush/Cheney/Limbaugh/Beck/Palin Republican like Blanche Lincoln.

 

Elton John's new bff:

Illustration: Rex Lameray

Elton John has sunk pretty low in the past. His constant pandering to a vicious and notorious bigot like the untalented Eminem was a sad example of throwing middle class and poor queers under the bus in order to pander to the homophobes who run the recording companies.

However, Elton John really took things to a bizarre extreme this time. (MSNBC 6/7/10)

Singer Elton John received a $1 million fee to perform in front of 400 guests celebrating radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh's fourth wedding Saturday night, People Magazine reports.

Limbaugh has been one of the most strident heterosexist bigots in this country for decades. John's latest betrayal makes me laugh at anyone who thinks that he is an activist for the lgbt community. He has made it clear that the only queer he really cares about is Elton John.

I never thought much of the idea of celebrities as role models. The only meaningful role models are those people can know and interact with in person. However, John certainly sends a disturbing message to queers who are growing up in the US and the UK. He's basically saying that our purpose for existence is to amuse people who hate us and want us dead.

What's next? Will Elton John treat us all to a public display of licking Fred Phelps' boots?

I could boycott the sellout, but it would be an empty gesture. I never buy Elton John's crappy music anyway. He's on the same level as Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake in the tedious and schmaltzy department.

 

This is part of the lyrics from the fabulously snarky and thought provoking song, "The Fishing Is Free," by disability rights activist Jane Field. Here's some more.

The fishing is free with your disability
You don't need a licence like the rest.
Movies are half the price, well isn't that nice?
And the parking spots are nothing but the best.

Well, don't you wish that you were disabled?
Disabled is the better way to be.
With crutches, canes and braces, wheelchairs to run races
Don't you wish that you were just like me?

View Full Lyrics

I strongly suggest you read the whole thing. It's well worth it. I would have posted video, but I can't find it on YouTube.

 

When President Obama took office, many Americans believed we would see real change. Nope.


President Obama's decision to meet with horribly bigoted Arizona Gov. Klan Brewer is a nauseating betrayal. Reprehensible bigots like her should be treated like pariahs, not pandered to.

Barack Bush strikes again!

In 2006, partisan Democrats kept marketing Jim Webb of Virginia to liberals and queers like crazy. But, the fact that he used to be a Reagan administration official made me nervous. Keep in mind that the Reagan administration was the most heterosexist in US history, and it was horrendously corrupt.

Those suspicions have been proven quite reasonable by Webb's behavior as a Senator. This latest exchange with former Lou Dobb's henchperson Candy "Creepy" Crowley on her CNN show last Sunday is a rather blatant example.

“I was really disappointed in - in the way that this process was accelerated. I was the only Democrat that voted against this in committee markup,” Webb said in an interview aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

Webb, himself a Vietnam veteran and a former Secretary of the Navy, sits on the Senate Armed Forces Committee and is the Chairman of the Armed Forces Personnel Subcommittee.

“I believe we had a process in place. And to preempt it in some ways, showed a disrespect for the people in the military,” Webb told CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley.

“They should not have done this,” Webb added.

I actually watched the damned interview when I was resting in my hotel room from IML. Webb was basically accusing the women and men in our armed services of being cowards. Can you imagine people who risk their lives for this country being so chickenshit they can't handle serving with queers?

Of course, Crowley never once challenged Webb on his indirect insult to the people in the military, because that would have screwed up the heterosexist narrative she developed for that episode of the show. Her behavior was just as bigoted and unprofessional last weekend as it was when she was licking Lou Dobbs' boots on his show.

I know, I know, I shouldn't bother to even watch the corporate media. But, I was too tired to read at that point and hotels make sure to have nothing on teewee so you will pay for their in demand, ultra expensive, offerings.

Back to Webb, he seems determined to go along with the wave of bigoted hysteria in Virginia. That state's new Governor is so nutty racist that he endorsed treason by declaring a Confederate History Month. The Virginia Attorney General has made highly questionable legal threats against state universities that have lgbt nondiscrimination policies. Webb is keeping up with the Joneses by going all crazy bigoted against queers. Well, there's another state to cross off my potential vacation list.

In any case, there's a really important lesson here. Anyone sleazy, bigoted, and corrupt to have worked in a Republican administration simply cannot be trusted...ever.

 

That's the kind of headline you should be seeing in every major newspaper in this country. No one can honestly dispute it on a factual level. However, racism and the influence of corporate interests such as arms merchants and Big Oil keep the corporate media spinning Israel's latest heinous act of terrorism, just as they spin every terrorist act by Israel. Here's the lead paragraph from Alternet (5/31/10), an independent news source, that takes facts and journalistic integrity seriously.

Days of tension between Israel’s hawkish government and the organizers of the Freedom Flotilla carrying 700 peace activists and 10,000 tons of desperately needed supplies to Gaza culminated in grisly carnage after a deadly pre-dawn attack by Israeli commandos. The operation left between nine and 19 international activists dead and dozens more injured and bleeding on the decks of the civilian vessels.

Hillary Clinton and other war hawks here in the US go on about how Iran supposedly sponsors terrorism in efforts to try to incite an attack and eventual invasion of that country, but they refuse to acknowledge the fact that Israel commits more acts of terrorism than Iran is accused of sponsoring. Iran must not have a nuclear weapon, according to this narrative, but it is perfectly OK for the terrorist state of Israel to have nuclear weapons, despite the fact that they got their nuclear capabilities by launching a terrorist attack against a US naval ship. There is no excuse for our government to provide foreign aid to the terrorist regime in Israel.

Enough!

 

As I return from my fabulous weekend trip, I have been thinking about how thankful I am to the troops, fallen, and veterans who have resisted these crazy wars. These troops, fallen, and vets have been horribly underappreciated for what they have done for our country.