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.

The Washington Post showed how desperate it can be to shill for the Bush Administration and the GOP in it’s Editorial, “The Right Vote.”

Despite Roberts the blatant contempt Roberts has demonstrated for the Constitution and women’s rights throughout his career, the Post acted as if he has some sort of inalienable right to a Supreme Court seat. Even worse is the Post’s lack of concern about Roberts’ blatantly unethical behavior.

As long as women, people of color, and queers will face the brunt of Roberts’ contempt for the Constitution, the Post thinks it is somehow out-of-bounds to oppose it. The Editorial ironically claimed that the actions of the three Democrats who cast cowardly and cynical votes for Roberts actions’ “took guts.” Talk about unintentional comedy.

Even worse, the Post  lied about liberals opposing Roberts, saying:

The liberal groups have made clear that they will oppose any nominee from this administration, regardless of qualifications, temperament or testimony.

This is truly bizarre. Throughout his career, Roberts has behaved as a dangerous fanatic, bent on destroying Constitutional Rights. Roberts has refused to recuse himself on a recent case where the defendants were interviewing him for the very Supreme Court appointment in question. Anyone concerned with women’s rights, constitutional rights, and ethics in government would have no choice but to oppose Roberts.

If the Post were honest, they would acknowledge the fact that the Bush regime wants to pack the courts with dangerous, anti-Constitutional extremists. Sadly, corporate interests and ideology have trumped honest discourse at that paper. It is typical of the corporate media, but it is particularly frustrating when there is so much at stake.

There is a tendancy among some people to think that New York Republicans are somehow better than Republicans elsewhere, but that certainly isn’t the case when it comes to blatant political corruption.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority runs the New York Subway, the Metro North Railway, the Staten Island Railroad, and the Long Island Railroad. The board is appointed by the Governor and the Mayor, both Republicans.

The MTA is getting famous for corrupt bidding processes. When they recently offered property in Manhattan for sale, they chose the bid of the New York Jets, even though there were two higher bidders.

Now, it has been announced that the MTA has chosen to sell its Brooklyn railyard property to Brooklyn arch-enemy Bruce Ratner at less than half of the appraised market value, and the appraisal was done by the MTA. The land will be part of a massive arena/real estate project that will destroy much of the Prospect Heights neighborhood and will get an additional taxpayer subsidy thanks to Mayor Bloomberg, who never met a corporate welfare project he didn’t like.

It gets worse. An arbitrator ruled that the MTA must stop with its extremely dangerous conductorless trains on the L line because the dangerous trains violate the MTA’s contract with the transit union. What does the MTA do? They are simply ingoring the ruling. The MTA is desperate to cut jobs so they can give away more money to GOP corporate cronies. Safety just doesn’t matter to them.

The corruption at the MTA, whose board is appointed entirely by a Republican governor and a Republican mayor is typical of the corruption that permeates the GOP. Whether it is Dick Cheney and Halliburton, Tom DeLay’s campaign dealings, Duke Cunnhingham’s ethics problems, or the Diebold ballot “discrepancies,” the GOP’s lack of ethics is utterly amazing. For a party that moralizes at queers, women, and non-Christians with glee, the Republican Party needs to learn some real moral values.

Questions about Roberts’ integrity have been downplayed by the corporate media, which is determined to promote a partisan, GOP agenda whenever possible. However, those concerns need to be addressed.

- Roberts lied about his membership in the Federalist Society, a rightist hate-group dedicated to overthrowing the constitution and representative government in the United States. It turns out Roberts was an officer in the DC chapter.

- Roberts has refused to turn over his tax records, unlike previous appointees.

- The Bush regime still refuses to turn over critical documents from when Roberts worked for Ken Starr in the Solicitor General’s office, claiming attorney-client privilege, despite the fact that the American people are the clients of the Solicitor General’s office.

- The fact that Roberts ever worked for someone as dishonest and unprofessional as Starr should raise serious questions about whether Roberts has any concept of legal ethics at all.

- Roberts refused to recuse himself on a recent case involving Alberto Gonzales’ torture memo, immediately after being interviewed by Gonzales and Bush about filling a potential Supreme Court vacancy.

Taken separately, these are disturbing enough. Together, they prove that Roberts is unfit to serve in any capacity on the Supreme Court, much less as Chief Justice.

When FEMA put up its initial list of charities, all but one were overtly religious. Originally listed was Pat Robertson’s highly controversial “charity.”

Many freethinkers would prefer to give to organizations without religious affiliation to ensure that the funds are not diverted to religious bureaucracies. Even worse is the thought that funds might be misused Halliburton-style by unscrupulous religious charities. Here are some secular alternatives.

American Humanist Association

Americares

Federation of Southern Cooperatives

Team Rescue

Food Not Bombs

New Orleans Network

Bill O'Reilly's dishonest smear campaign against Sheehan removes any credibility that he might have had before. O'Reilly is free to disagree with what Sheehan is doing, but lying about her to try to intimidate her is unforgivable. She lost her son in the war, and Bill O'Reilly is mocking her loss. In the process, he is mocking the loss of every war mother.

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