Republicans are always babbling on about how they supposedly support our troops. In defending herself after being criticized for her unpatriotic comments on the House floor, Jean Schmidt claimed that she supports our troops, though no one who genuinely supports our servicemembers wants them to die for corrupt Bush Regime cronies like Halliburton, Big Oil, and the Religious Right.

Schmidt's supposed support for the military already was on shaky ground. Now, we have learned that she lied about what one Marine said in order to make a false accusation against another Marine that is serving in Congress. This person just is not fit to hold public office. Tell Schmidt to resign in disgrace and stop betraying our troops and our country.

Jean Schmidt’s Contact Information

Washington, D.C. Office
(202) 225-3164

Cincinnati Office
(513)791-0381
Fax: 513-791-1696

Portsmouth Office
(740)354-1440

Campaign Office
Phone: (513) 575-0840
Fax: (513) 575-1201
Joe Braun, Campaign Manager (Joe@JeanSchmidt.com)

The Los Angeles Times seems determined to join the rest of the corporate media as a right-wing activist endeavor. They have pretty much dropped doing investigative reporting on the GOP, despite how massively corrupt Bush, the Republican Congress, and Schwarzenegger are.

Now, the paper has canned Bob Scheer, the most talented columnist the LA Times has ever produced. Scheer's work appeared in the paper for 30 years, starting as a reporter. Publisher Jeff Johnson is widely known to be angry about Scheer's columns criticizing the quagmire in Iraq and calling for withdrawal of US troops. It's a shame that the Times has fired its best columnist merely because he is patriotic enough to oppose Bush's unAmerican and illegal war in Iraq.

The paper even tried to enhance its GOP credentials through the required mendacity, in this case by lying about the number of readers who protested Scheer's firing. I remember when the LA Times was a great paper. It has devolved into a propaganda rag for the GOP without any integrity or journalistic standards whatsoever. In other words, it has joined almost all of the corporate media here in the U.S.

Contact the Los Angeles Times and demand that Scheer be reinstated and that the Times reinstitute journalistic standards rather than acting as a mouthpiece for the GOP.

In a previous post, I mentioned a Christian wrestling federation as well as the pornographic nature of pro-Wrestling for so many bisexual and gay men.

It turns out there is another Talibanist-Christian wrestling federation: “Freedom Championship Wrestling.” Based in the Staten Island, their shows are held in a fundie church.

You can learn more about this bit of fundie weirdness at:
http://www.1wrestling.com/columns/chatterbox/default.asp?articleid=11041&page=7
http://www.mediaman.com.au/articles/the_flight.html

There are a few bad photographs of their recent show at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ringsidehighlights/fcw/show1/fcw-102503-017.htm

Their web site is only a placeholder for now, but it might be worth a few laughs if you check it out in a few months.

I don't know how long this will federation will be around, they share their name with a web site that shows animated matches of wrestling action figures.

The Bush Regime has just announced a settlement with the Archdiocese of Boston that supposedly includes stricter controls on priests but has no criminal penalties for Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston or any of his subordinates.

This is an obvious political payback for support the Roman Catholic Church gave Bush in the 2004 campaign, support that violated that church's tax exempt status. Militant Christian fundamentalists have long used pedophilia to bludgeon the lgbt community, yet Bush, a militant, Christian fundamentalist, is letting pedophiles and their protectors off easy. Why aren't Talibanists like Falwell and Robertson screaming in outrage over this?

The Republicans who supported the "nuclear option" compromise promised to support the judicial filibuster when it is used for extraordinary circumstances.

The nomination of a dangerous, anti-constitution extremist like Alito to the US Supreme Court is an extraordinary circumstance, and the GOP knows this. Yet, two GOP Senators, Mike DeWine and Lindsey Graham, have announced that they will support abolishing the judicial filibuster in the so-called “nuclear option” if Alito is filibustered.

The Democrats who trusted these Republicans were betrayed by cold, calculating, liars.

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.