John Kerry appears to have grown a pair - two years too late.

Kerry, as you may of heard, made the comment recently that..."You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Of course, he was talking about the President of the United States, who is a complete jackass, eeked his way through college with the help of his family name, got to the White House through a series of underhanded maneuvers and slick packaging, and made a complete disaster in the Middle Eastern state.

The President, however, has chosen to isolate the comment and repackage it as if it meant that John Kerry was talking about the troops. Which is absolutely absurd - no politician in his right mind would say anything like that, even if he did believe it. And since John Kerry, unlike Bush, is an actual combat veteran who did serve as an actual soldier in an actual war, he probably doesn't. And since Kerry had basically spent the whole of his speech talking about what a stupid asshole the President is, it was obvious to everyone what the comment meant.

And it's obvious to the Republicans, too. They know exactly what he was saying, but that isn't going to stop them from pushing this bullshit on America, anyway, because they believe in their power over the Dumb People. They will ignore the fact that Kerry is himself a formenr soldier, and believe that he holds soldiers in contempt, when in fact, the only people who hold the soldiers in contempt are those who send them off to die, do not allow their coffins to be photographed, do not attend their funerals, do not provide a legitimate exit strategy to get them out of whatever mess they got them into in the first place, and do not do everything, including funding them for adaquate body armor and sending in an adaquate number of troops, to make the job as safe as possible because they want to win a war on the cheap. That is disrespect.

Kerry said, in response to Bush's attacks, "I'm sick and tired of a bunch of despicable Republicans who will not debate real policy, who won't take responsibility for their own mistakes, standing up and trying to make other people the butt of those mistakes. It disgusts me that a bunch of these Republican hacks who've never worn the uniform of our country are willing to lie about those who did."

Nice line, Kerry. Would have worked great in '04.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15499174/?GT1=8618

The wing nuts have been at it again, spouting off that the reason so many Bad Things are happening to the Republican Party, right now, is that there is a massive conspiracy among terrorists, insurgents, the North Koreans, and Congressional Democrats to try and guarantee a Democratic victory in the upcoming midterms. This theory couldn't be any stupider, although the Dumb People are out there in droves, so we'll see if this shit doesn't stick.

The fact of the matter is, of course, that bad things are happening to the Republicans, but not at a rate any higher than they usually happen. Rep. Foley had a major scandal break out just before the election - well, the Republicans, expecially in the House, have been facing scandal after scandal pretty much since they've been in office (do the names Tom Delay, Jack Abramhoff, and Bob Ney ring a bell? To name only a very few...). This is the most corrupt bunch of motherfuckers in the history of the legislature. The fact that a scandal has broken out right now, just before the election, has nothing to do with anything. That's like me seeing Albert Pujols hitting a home run in the World Series and saying, "well, obviously he corked his bat for that at-bat."

On the foreign policy front, North Korea, Iraq, and Iran have all been most uncooperative lately, and if you listen to right-wing blowhards - and not only the worthless toolbags like Rush and O'Reilly, but also people inside the Administration - this is all because these people are trying to influence our elections. That's right, our midterm elections. We're supposed to believe that Kim Jong Il wants Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker of the House so badly that he halted the testing of his country's nuclear weapons until just now. I guess the theory is, Kim Jong Il has a crush on Nancy Pelosi, and wants to see more of her on CSPAN. Now, I can see how someone his age might fall in love with Pelosi, who is fairly attractive and intelligent, but I think his nuclear weapons program would take precedence. As for Iraq - one of the liberal blogs, I think it was DK, had a post about the phrases, "period of escalated violence", "recent surge in violence" and "Iraq"; basically they googled those and what they came up with was that some reporter or news agency had used one or both of those phrases to describe virtually every single day since the Iraq war started. In other words, there are no "periods" of escalation - the violence has been escalating, constantly, ever since the damn war started. So the fact that things have gotten worse is no indication that the terrorists, or the insurgents, or the rebels, or whatever you want to call them also have a crush on Nancy Pelosi (they wouldn't like her - far too uppity a woman for their taste), but rather it is just an indication that the violence in Iraq is escalating EVERY DAY (random musing: why aren't escalators that go down called "de-escalators"? I'm gonna get that started).

The fact that Republicans are echoing this shit all over the place only confirms how much deep shit they are in. They know that a world-class beating is in store for them, and they're pulling out all stops.

Well, best of luck, guys!

Well, don't this beat all.

NBC is now refusing to air the trailer for the Dixie Chicks documentary because the trailers are "disparaging to President Bush". It seems to me that advertisements are aired every election cycle that are disparaging to some politician or another. You see, that's what is so great about living in America - we can (in theory) say what we want to say about whosoever we want.

On my first rant on this blog, I wrote that the liberals couldn't lose because you can not halt time. But the fact of the matter is, once you put a halt to the free expression of ideas, you can slow down time to a crawl. Something has to be done about the scardy-cat routine the American media is still pulling with regards to this administration, even though fewer and fewer Americans support the Administration every day.

We need our media outlets not to be afraid to air things which "disparage" any politician, so long as libel isn't involved. The media has to be able to step up and challenge whoever is in office, be they Democrat or Republican, because you can not allow any entity to become too powerful. And right now, this administration is toeing that line.

Thanks to ThinkProgress for pointing this story out, via DK.

BTW - the trailer is here.

I was looking around on the internets yesterday when I found this article:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15408508/

Now, normally an article like this would send me into a towering rage and a huge rant which would probably include all kinds of horrible things I would like to see happen to everyone's favorite oxycotin junkie, but a thought hit me last night that is going to make my life so much easier.

Who the fuck is Rush Limbaugh?

I don't mean that, literally, of course. Rush Limbaugh is the leading figure of the right wing radio talk circuit and probably the second most recognizable figure in talk radio behind Howard Stern. No, I know who Rush Limbaugh is. What I mean is, why the fuck should anyone care what he has to say, least of all me.

Rush, after all is nobody. Unlike G. Gordon Liddy and Ben Stein, who had jobs in the Reagan Administration, Rush never had a job inside politics. And the thing is, there are like a dozen other "conservative commentators" who are similarly unqualified. Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingrahm, Sean Hannity, Robert Novak, Tucker Carlson, the list goes on and on and on. Who are these people that we should listen to them? All they do is make intolerant, hateful statements, like the one in the article, and rake in obscene ssums of money because the Dumb People (read my latest entry in Dear Blog... for a rant on them) eat that shit up.

Well, not me. I can assure you, unless one of these toolbags decides to do something with their life and run for office, you will not see any of those names listed above mentioned on this blog for anything they say or write ever again.

Now, if anymore of them send their nannies out to illegally obtain prescription painkillers, or sexually harrass a subordinate over the phone, that's a different story.

Believe it or not, there is nothing I love more than good news. And the NY Times had an article last Friday that made me joyous. In case you've been living under a rock lately, the Republicans have been having a rough go of it these last few months right before the elections, including a sexual harrasment scandal involving a Representative and a 16-year old Congressional page, not to mention the unpopular bungle in Iraq, the failures of the administration to effectively deal with Iran and North Korea, the unpopularity of the Bush administration as a whole, etc., etc., etc. Anyway, all signs point to an overwhelming defeat for the Repubs in next months midterm elections at the hands of the Democrats, and, from the looks of the article, the Repubs are wasting no time holding themselves accountable. And by "themselves", I mean, "anyone in the party who is not themselves specifically."

The Republican Party has about a half-dozen factions that it has to keep happy. You've got your Jesus Freaks, of course (who, apparently, former Majority Leader Dick Armey called a "gang of thugs" in a recent interview), as well as the classic economic conservatives (read: old, rich men who don't want to pay their taxes), the neocons (ex-liberals gone insane who are primarily responsible for the bungle in Iraq), the Libertarians (who are leaving the Repubs in increasing numbers because of the increasingly authoritarian nature of this administration, as well as its increasingly uncomfortable ties to the Religious Right), and a slew of single issue voters, including gun nuts, out and out racists, etc. And now, in the face of electoral disaster, they are turning the blame on each other. The Repubs are in out-and-out Civil War mode and, get this, the elections haven't even happened yet. I almost hate to say it, but it appears as though the Democrats' "give them enough rope and they'll hang themselves" strategy appears to be working, because on the surface it looks as though the Repubs have been doing all of this damage to themselves. But there has been a quiet movement across the country ever since Howard Dean took over as chair of the DNC to get strong candidates across the country in races that pundits thought the Dems had no chance at winning, and the success stories, so far, have been inspiring. We'll see who the most successful were after the elections, but I believe that, in the end, the Good Doctor will have had as much influence in the Democrats taking the House AND the Senate as the Republicans have had.

Well, all, this is my first entry into my political/current events blog. I feel I should start with some sort of introductory essay, so I'll go with an old standby of mine: what it means to be a conservative, and why they never win.

Now, you'll probably be saying, "what do you mean, they never win? They have Congress AND the White House, AND the majority of governorships in the country. If anything, the liberals never win." My question to you is, what has all of that legislative muscle gotten them? Abortion? Still legal. Flag protection ammendment? Never passed. Affirmitive action? Still there. Prayer in public schools? Not even up for discussion. Private social security accounts? Hahaha! Private school vouchers? You're joking, right? These were all things the Repubs told their constituents they would "fix" immediately, and yet, 4 years after they assumed control over the Presidency and both houses of Congress, not a single one has been addressed to the satisfaction of those on the right. Gay marriage was never even an issue during the Clinton administration, now it's legal in some parts of the country and gaining traction in others. It is only a matter of time before homosexual marriage becomes as legal and accepted as interracial marriage has become. And if you don't believe me, take a course in 20th Century American History and study how the people in the 1950s felt about interracial relationships. Homosexual couples today have a walk in the park compared to black/white couples only a few generations ago.

Why is this? Because of the very nature of what conservativism is. And that is, a fight against the passage of time. Nothing more, nothing less. Conservatives see the world as it is - or increasingly, was - as some kind of golden age, and they fight to hold onto it, despite the overwhelming evidence that life gets better as time goes on, not worse. And as the human race advances further and further into the future, the conservatives just get more and more upset, because ulitmately you can win elections, and you can pass legislation (sometimes), but you can't halt on progress, you can only tap on the brakes. And that is why liberals, as upset as we may be about the political inadaquacies of the party which represents us, are generally happier people than conservatives. Because we know the course of time will prove us right, as it always has, and that we'll eventually get our way.

DU's Top Ten list is out. Brilliant as usual.