The corporate media keeps going on about “record stock markets,” but that pro-GOP spin is misleading. Stock markets generally go up in the long run. Record stock markets should be a fairly common occurrence.

But, that is hardly the biggest economic concern facing middle-class and poor families in our country. The job market still is weak. Salaries are stagnant. People still are having their jobs outsourced and losing jobs in corporate mergers that violate anti-trust laws. Americans are mounting up record debt just to try to keep up with their previous standard of living.

Most middle-class people in this country have counted on one cushion, rising housing prices. Now, real estate prices are falling, endangering far too many people financially.

While this is happening, the rich are getting richer. The overall economic indicators show mild economic growth, but the benefits are going to a small minority of people at the top. The tax and spending policies of the Bush regime are turning a mediocre economy overall to a trauma for the middle class and a desperate situation for the poor.

The corporate media avoid this subject whenever possible. Yet, this will play a major role in the midterm elections. This is a major source of discontent among independent and even some GOP voters.

Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with their patients.

- George W. Bush

David Kuo has stirred up a bit of controversy with his book, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction. Kuo was the deputy director of the Bush regime's hate-based initiatives office, which was responsible for diverting government grants from inclusive non-profits to ones that discriminate on the basis of religion.

Kuo had too complaints, according to the Time magazine article. First, he was greedy, never being satisfied with the amount of money diverted to his office. In this, Bush was on his side, and Rove his nemesis.

Kuo's other complaint is getting more attention. Senior Bush regime officials routinely referred to the Christian Taliban and its followers derogatory names. The online report from 60 Minutes was quite entertaining.

Specifically, Kuo says people in the White House political affairs office referred to Pat Robertson as "insane," Jerry Falwell as "ridiculous," and that James Dobson "had to be controlled."

All of these criticisms are quite valid, but they are offending militant, Christian fundamentalists. This is creating quite a stir, but the media are missing out on the most interesting aspect of the story. George W. Bush is a Christian extremist, just like Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, and Kuo.

When White House political officials mock the Christian Right, they are expressing contempt for George W. Bush's religious beliefs. When Bush was Governor of Texas, the corporate media covered his religious fundamentalism in an unvarnished fashion. When Bush was selected by the GOP establishment for the party's presidential nomination, he was lionized by the corporate press for being part of both the big money and Christian Right wings of the party.

However, once the 2000 campaign was in swing, the media acted as if Bush and the Christian Taliban were separate from each other. This obligatory forgetfulness served the GOP's agenda, but it gave people the mistaken perception that Bush is faking his religious fervor.

Bush's inability to string together coherent sentences without a teleprompter is enough for anyone to look down on him. However, his own staff members apparently also think that people like Bush are religious wackos. If so, they are correct.

Another Republican has been fired in a corruption scandal.

Karl Rove aide Susan Ralston is out. The House Government Reform Committee has accused Rove aide Susan Ralston inside info from the Bush Regime to GOP activist and confessed criminal Jack Abramoff. She partied on Abramoff's generosity, receiving tickets to sports and entertainment events while being oh-so-helpful.

Karl Rove, who was involved in revealing the identity of an under cover CIA agent working on WMDs, still has a job. Bush said he would fire anyone involved with this. Bush lied, which hardly is surprising.

Remember how Hastert protected the reputation of an old Turkish regime that committed genocide against Armenians? There were bribery allegations involved. Yet, the pro-GOP corporate media leave out this important context for Hastert's latest cover-up scandal.

Of course, the corporate media are still ignoring the Downing Street Memo, which proves that the Bush regime faked intelligence on WMDs in Iraq. This may be an older scandal than the Page Turner, but it still is relevant. Our troops are dying, and so are the Iraqis. Yet, the corporate media are still helping to cover up how they got put there.

There are two ways that the media need to connect the dots in the Republican Page Scandal. The first is obvious. Foley is hardly the only predator of children in the GOP. Pedophilia is rampant among Republican politicians, activists, and prominent Christian Right supporters. Reporters should do the real reporting on GOP pedophilia, rather than inaccurately treating the latest scandal as in isolated incident.

But, there are somewhat less obvious ways that the media should connect the dots on the GOP. The failures in this scandal are directly related to broader failings in the Republican Party. Here are some of these connections.

A party that did not respond appropriately to Hurricane Katrina refused to respond accordingly to its own prominent sexual predators.

A party that has repeatedly lied to us about Iraq had no problem lying about a pedophilia investigation.

A party that legislated torture had no moral problem with torturing little kids sexually.

A party that illegally suspended Habeas Corpus had no problem committing obstruction of justice.

A party that often commits massive election fraud had no problem protecting a pedophile to save a House seat and get money from a PAC.

A party that condones illegal spying on Americans and then legislates it has no problem with other extreme violations of peoples' rights.

The Republican Party has tried to scapegoat queers for pedophilia for years. It turns out to be a classic case of projection.

Learn more about rampant GOP pedophilia.

Here are some other explanations for the acronym “GOP” floating around the Internet:

GANG OF PEDOPHILES
GOD'S OWN PEDOPHILES
GREEDY OPPRESSIVE PEDOPHILES
GROTESQUE OLD PERVERTS

Doug Ireland has done an excellent job of reporting human rights abuses by the Muslim Right government in Iran and efforts by queer activists in the US and abroad to try to prevent the torture and killings that occur based on peoples' sexual orientations.

A listing of his Iran-related Articles from Google

As strange as it sounds, an organization that has led a smear campaign against the queer activists is the so-called “Human Rights Watch” (HRW). Scott Long, director of their alleged “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program,” has led the efforts to deny what the Iranian government is doing, dismissing what Iranian gay activists are saying and smearing anyone who protests these outrages. The supposed “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Human Rights” page on their web site barely mentions the human rights violations made on the basis of Iranians' sexual orientations. It completely neglects to condemn the infamous murder of two young Iranians because they were gay by the Iranian government.

The efforts by HRW have had serious consequences for lgbt Iranians seeking asylum in Sweden. Islamophobes in that country's government have re-started denying refuge status to Iranian queers. When so-called human rights organizations deny the fact that the Iranian government routinely tortures and kills people for being queer, it makes it so much easier for Western Islamophobes to deny refuge status to queers trying to save their lives. Legitimate human rights organizations publicly speak out against these crimes, rather than engaging in misleading revisionism.

The hateful and bigotted people at HRW should be ashamed of themselves. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender people should find genuine human rights organizations to support.

Think Progress has pointed out that Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert may have known about Mark Foley's sexual harassment of a minor page as early as this spring. AmericaBlog traces it back at least a year.

Paul Rosenberg in a MyLeftWing diary has called on Hastert to resign. LGBT World Daily News is demanding Hastert's resignation as well. Crooks and Liars is asking if Hastert will be investigated.

Did Hastert protect a House Republican engaged in this kind of behavior? This would hardly be surprising. A political party that thinks it is perfectly OK to torture and rape Muslims picked up at random in Iraq would have no qualms about protecting a Republican who was sexually harassing underage employees.

If there is no immediate House Ethics Committee investigation into Hastert and other senior House Republicans, it will be a sure sign that the GOP does not take ethics even the slightest bit seriously.

One wonders how those fundamentalist “values voters” will feel about all of this.

It also should be noted that this is not the only Hastert scandal out there. There are credible allegations that Hastert took brides from Turkish nationalists to help them cover up the genocide of Armenians in Turkey.

The Bush regime is far from alone in its spying controversies. Like the GOP's leader occupying the White House, Jeanine Pirro's New York Attorney General Campaign has been hurt by revelations that she discussed with former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik wiretapping her husband's conversations.

Pirro is trying to deflect attention from the real issues by demanding an investigation of the whistleblower.

Pirro even had the nerve to demand a Special Prosecutor investigate the whistleblowing, instead of where a Special Prosecutor should be investigating: who in this highly partisan, Republican US Justice Department may have committed obstruction of justice by covering up the evidence of the Pirro-Kerik meeting. Pirro's behavior is disturbingly similar to that of Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, who has threatened to prosecute newspapers that publish information about crimes committed by the Bush regime.

Ms. Pirro herself should be the subject of an immediate criminal investigation to determine if she followed through on wiretapping her spouse's conversations. Her denials are not sufficient to eliminate the need for such a probe. The inquiry must also determine whether or not her meeting with Kerik violated any laws.

Jeanine Pirro should not be treated as above the law merely because she is a Republican. This GOP obsession with wiretapping has to stop.

Information from the National Intelligence Estimate has confirmed what has been known for some time now: the Bush Regime's war in Iraq has aided and abetted Al Qaida's terrorist recruitment and training efforts.

A previous posting on this blog mentioned some of the correct liberal predictions about an Iraq war. The realization that this war was bound to create more terrorism is yet another correct aspect of liberal views on Iraq, another one that was ridiculed by the corporate media and by other conservatives.

It was not a difficult prediction to make. Invading and colonizing a country that was governed by a mortal enemy of Al Qaida in the name of 911 was bound to create a sense that the US was on an insane crusade against Muslims.

Bush himself is a militant, Christian fundamentalist, as are many in his administration and his political base. Their anti-Islamic bloodlust certainly played a role in getting us into this nutty war. However, political corruption involving corporate cronies such as Halliburton, Big Oil, Blackwater, and Bechtel played at least as great of a role as religious fanaticism.

Despite being proven correct repeatedly, liberals still have not received any apology from the rightists who attacked anyone who thought rationally and critically about the war.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi has sunk to a new low, launching an irrational attack on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whose only “offense” was to mockingly criticize George W. Bush. It was bad enough that she pandered to the Bush regime, but she even resorted to a racial slur, calling Chavez a “thug.”

Pelosi's race-baiting is disgusting enough, but it becomes even more reprehensible when it is done in the context of pandering to a brutal autocrat like George W. Bush. Pelosi would rather grovel to an unelected politician like Bush, rather than support, or merely leave alone, a democratically elected and widely popular leader like Hugo Chavez. While Chavez respects human rights, Bush has people arrested without charge and tortured, both at home and abroad. While Chavez has respected press freedom in Venezuela, Bush has bombed Al Jazeera and his administration has threatened to prosecute US journalists who reported on illegal NSA spying on Americans.

Democrats continually promise us that so much will change if we throw the Republicans out in the Congressional elections. But, in so many cases (e.g., Terri Schiavo, the Alito filibuster, the Roberts nomination, Bush's illegal and unAmerican war in Iraq), far too many Democrats offered the Bush regime critical support to carry out its hateful and unAmerican agenda.

The Green Party looks better and better with each passing day. It is not enough for the Democrats to be somewhat different than the Republicans. Democrats need to provide vigorous and fearless opposition to what is being done to America and the rest of the world.

Here are some entertaining video clips at the expense of Resident Bush.

I hate bush!

Stupid Bush (This one includes my favorite Bushim.)

We fuck the world

Hurcubush

Stand Up Comic Impersonates Bush

Is Bush and Idiot? (From Scarborough Country of all places. Once the talking heads start going, it gets boring.)

Letterman Top Ten List of Favorite Bush Moments

George W. Bush "Fundamentalist Prick"

Bush Drinking Game Standup Comedy Travis Simmons

Bush Threatens America in Verbal miscue