Who is Still a Republican?

Larry Johnson, a former CIA agent, wonders out loud, Just what does it mean to be a Republican nowadays? And questions those that still, with a straight face, claim to be part of the GOP. Larry Johnson writes:

I once considered myself a Republican. In light of the record of the Bush Administration and the Republican controlled congress, I can no longer claim to be a Republican. Now we have George “AWOL” Bush and his sidekick, Dick “Five-Deferment” Cheney calling Democrats who question their failed Iraq strategy, “cut and runners”.

[...]

If you start a war in Iraq while lying to the American people that Saddam was tied to Osama Bin Laden, you might be a Republican.

If you failed to complete your own National Guard service and your Vice President received five deferments to avoid service in Vietnam, but accuse political opponents who challenge your failed foreign policy in Iraq of being cowards, you might be a Republican.

If you call dark skinned people Macacas and Niggers, you might be a Republican.

If you ignore intelligence community warnings that Bin Laden is determined to strike inside the United   States, you might be a Republican.

If you follow policies that squander a budget surplus and create an $8.5 trillion dollar budget deficit, you might be a Republican.

If you expose the identity of an undercover CIA officer in charge of tracking down Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, you might be a Republican.

If you believe the President should be entitled to jail, without recourse to Habeus Corpus, anyone he decides is a threat, you might be a Republican.

Oh, and given recent reports that Republican representative Mark Foley has stepped down from his congressional seat, after revelations of repeated attempts to seduce teenage boys, Larry Jonhson wonders:

If you enjoy soliciting teenagers and children for sex over the internet, you might be a Republican:

Congressman Mark Foley. Republican Rep. Mark Foley resigned yesterday after the exposure of several sexually suggestive messages he sent to underage boys.  Mr. Foley, a Florida Republican and chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus, led efforts to overhaul sex-offender laws, apologized in a brief statement that did not mention the electronic correspondence with the former congressional pages.

(http://washingtontimes.com/national/
20060930-010821-5764r.htm) 

Randall Casseday.  Metropolitan Police today charged the director of human resources at The Washington Times with one count of attempting to entice a minor on the Internet.  Randall Casseday, 53, was arrested at 9:45 p.m. yesterday in the 1300 block of  Brentwood Road NE, where police said he had arranged to meet who he thought was a 13-year-old girl. He had actually exchanged Internet messages and photographs with a male police officer posing as a girl.

(http://washingtontimes.com/metro/
20060927-054303-9103r.htm) 

Brian J. Doyle.  The deputy press secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was arrested Tuesday for using the Internet to seduce what he thought was a teenage girl, authorities said. Brian J. Doyle, 55, was arrested in Maryland where he lives on charges of use of a computer to seduce a child and transmission of harmful material to a minor. The charges were issued out of Polk County Fla.

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/04/05/
department-of-homeland-se_n_18517.html)

So, who are those people that still call themselves Republicans without shame?

Immigration, Xenophobes and Conservative Reactionaries

This is what I love about America, that we’ve always been a nation in flux. One wave after another has come in to disrupt and unnerve the entrenched locals; thus, in each passing making us better, stronger, more diverse and the envy of the world. And this, this fact, that we’ve always been in flux, is often forgotten by the xenophobes and reactionaries of every generation that raise up in the way of progress. Just as the xenophobes of the past did, today’s xenophobic/conservative reactionaries are alarmed and shocked at how today’s immigrants are asserting their presence in our country.

Of course, these xenophobes and conservative reactionaries conveniently forget that its always been thus: a new wave of immigrants asserts their presence and petition for greater integration, the xenophobes get all flustered and demand that the "invaders" be turned back and that walls be erected. Many generations later, current xenophobes and conservative reactionaries marvel and praise the contribution of the immigrants of yesteryear, and can often be found savoring the fruits of earlier waves of immigrants. These same reactionaries take the influence of immigrants from years past for granted, not even questioning how Little Italy or China Town in New York City ended being part of the fabric of that great American city. And let’s not forget the influence of the Irish in Boston; the Scandinavians in the upper mid-west or the French in Louisiana.

As it has occurred many times in the past, a simple post on Billmon.org brilliantly put the above in clear relief in my mind:

Immigrants and their supporters were gathering in cities across the country today for demonstrations and an economic boycott intended to show the impact the workers have on the nation’s economy . . .The demonstrations took many forms and included people from a disparate number of countries, many of them in Latin America, but also from Asia and other parts of the world."
New York Times
Nationwide Immigrant Rallies Are Under Way
May 1, 2006

 

It was a wonderful strike, the most significant strike, the greatest strike that has ever been carried on in this country or any other country. And the most significant part of that strike was that it was a democracy. The strikers had a committee of 56, representing 27 different languages.
Big Bill Haywood
Description of the 1912
Lawrence millworkers strike

Bush: America’s Worst President

Don’t take my word for it, read it for yourself.

George W. Bush’s presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

[...]

And these figures were gathered before the debacles over Hurricane Katrina, Bush’s role in the Valerie Plame leak affair and the deterioration of the situation in Iraq.

[...]

Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties — Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush — have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off.

[...]

More than half the country now considers Bush dishonest and untrustworthy, and a decisive plurality consider him less trustworthy than his predecessor, Bill Clinton — a figure still attacked by conservative zealots as "Slick Willie."

[...]

On September 10th, 2001, [Bush] held among the lowest ratings of any modern president for that point in a first term. (Only Gerald Ford, his popularity reeling after his pardon of Nixon, had comparable numbers.) The attacks the following day transformed Bush’s presidency, giving him an extraordinary opportunity to achieve greatness. Some of the early signs were encouraging. Bush’s simple, unflinching eloquence and his quick toppling of the Taliban government in Afghanistan rallied the nation. Yet even then, Bush wasted his chance by quickly choosing partisanship over leadership.

[...]

The heart of Bush’s domestic policy has turned out to be nothing more than a series of massively regressive tax cuts — a return, with a vengeance, to the discredited Reagan-era supply-side faith that Bush’s father once ridiculed as "voodoo economics." Bush crowed in triumph in February 2004, "We cut taxes, which basically meant people had more money in their pocket." The claim is bogus for the majority of Americans, as are claims that tax cuts have led to impressive new private investment and job growth. While wiping out the solid Clinton-era federal surplus and raising federal deficits to staggering record levels, Bush’s tax policies have necessitated hikes in federal fees, state and local taxes, and co-payment charges to needy veterans and families who rely on Medicaid, along with cuts in loan programs to small businesses and college students, and in a wide range of state services. The lion’s share of benefits from the tax cuts has gone to the very richest Americans, while new business investment has increased at a historically sluggish rate since the peak of the last business cycle five years ago. Private-sector job growth since 2001 has been anemic compared to the Bush administration’s original forecasts and is chiefly attributable not to the tax cuts but to increased federal spending, especially on defense. Real wages for middle-income Americans have been dropping since the end of 2003: Last year, on average, nominal wages grew by only 2.4 percent, a meager gain that was completely erased by an average inflation rate of 3.4 percent.

[...]

[T]he Bush administration — in seeking to restore what Cheney, a Nixon administration veteran, has called "the legitimate authority of the presidency" — threatens to overturn the Framers’ healthy tension in favor of presidential absolutism. Armed with legal findings by his attorney general (and personal lawyer) Alberto Gonzales, the Bush White House has declared that the president’s powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless. No previous wartime president has come close to making so grandiose a claim. More specifically, this administration has asserted that the president is perfectly free to violate federal laws on such matters as domestic surveillance and the torture of detainees. When Congress has passed legislation to limit those assertions, Bush has resorted to issuing constitutionally dubious "signing statements," which declare, by fiat, how he will interpret and execute the law in question, even when that interpretation flagrantly violates the will of Congress.

[...]

Another president once explained that the judgments of history cannot be defied or dismissed, even by a president. "Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history," said Abraham Lincoln. "We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation."

Blog Round Up

What some in the establishment media and the conservative cesspool, including talk radio, FauxNews and the blogsphere, said about Jill Carroll since she was released by her kidnappers after an 82 day captivity is simply hateful, reprehensible and nothing less than detestable — here’s just one example of what their reaction has been like.

Over the past couple of days some in the progressive blogsphere have wade in astonishment as the Right goes on about defaming Jill Carroll, the survivor of what must’ve been a traumatic experience:

First I’d like to call out a big fuck you to all the bloggers and wingut radio blowhards who assumed that since Jill Carroll isn’t a screeching, GOP operative harpy like Laura Ingraham that she is sympathetic to terrorists. She had the guts to get out there and try to report from the belly of the beast and got kidnapped and terrorized while doing it. And these pathetic little chickenhawks had the unmitigated gall to attack her — apparently because she managed to survive and because she was a journalist for the Christian Science Monitor. — Hullabaloo.

On the same topic, Joe at The Moderate Voice is being way too moderate in calling the Jill Carroll affair a black eye to blogging. No, Joe, this is a black eye to the crazy, racist, right wing, hating blogosphere. Don’t lump all of us in together on that one. Yes, we’re partisan, yes we’re on occasion shrill. We’re not liars. We’re not racist. And we won’t be dragged down into the mud pit occupied by the likes of Little Green Footballs and Free Republic just because we occupy the same cyberspace. — mcjoan, DailyKos.com.

Look, I know I don’t have to go into a lengthy sermon about the bravery of the journalists – men and women – who risk their necks to try to get us a true picture of what’s going on in Iraq, or any other war zone for that matter. It goes without saying that Jill Carroll and everyone else over there is extremely courageous and should be commended for what they’re doing. I’m also not going to try to psychoanalyze what would drive someone to want to go over there and do it in the first place.

I’ll just say that I don’t have the balls to do anything remotely that dangerous – and neither does Howard Kurtz. For journalists to not give this woman some room to breathe while she gets her bearings after spending 82 days as a hostage is simply unconscionable.

[...]

Here’s the bottom-line: Whatever you think of Jill Carroll, Howard Kurtz owes the woman a big time public apology. And the Post really ought to stop the guy before he opines again. — Eric J. Weiner, HuffingtonPost.com.

Imus and His Soft Belly Bitches

No wonder I loathe — yes, loathe! — these asses… all conservative and reactionary pansies that mistake their bravado for actual courage.

Here you have these middle aged, soft bellied men in the comfort of their air conditioned radio studio in some American metropolis — thousands of miles away from any danger — casting the first stone against journalist Jill Carroll, after she was released from her 82 day captivity by terrorists in Iraq. Here you have a young woman that spent the last 82 days believing that every day would be her last, fully aware of the fate that many other kidnap victims met — from a quick bullet to the head, to decapitation. However, according to these three poor examples of manhood and Americanism, she was not traumatized enough nor did she damn her kidnappers enough to meet their satisfaction. So, of course, as conservatives do, they resorted to destroying her character and questioning her patriotism, and allegiance. These bastards never took even one second to empathize with Jill, a woman that saw her companion and translator be murdered at the start of her ordeal and, too, a woman that must have wondered whether she would live to see her family again. Am truly pissed that these motherfuckers even think that it’s okay to say all that they said about a person that’s just spent 82 days being held by murderers and thugs:

There was a shocking segment earlier today on the popular radio/television show “Imus In The Morning.” Watch this exchange between Executive Producer Bernard McGuirk and Don Imus’ sidekick Charles McCord.

[...]

Some lowlights:

MCGUIRK: She strikes me as the kind of woman who would wear one of those suicide vests. You know, walk into the — try and sneak into the Green Zone.

IMUS: Oh, no. No, no, no, no.

MCCORD: Just because she always appears in traditional Arab garb and wearing a burka.

MCGUIRK: Yeah, what’s with the head gear? Take it off. Let’s see.

…

MCCORD: Exactly. She cooked with them, lived with them.

IMUS: This is not helping.

MCGUIRK: She may be carrying Habib’s baby at this point.

…

IMUS: She could. It’s not like she was representing the insurgents or the terrorists or those people.

MCCORD: Well, there’s no evidence directly of that –

IMUS: Oh, gosh, you better shut up!

…

MCGUIRK: She’s like the Taliban Johnny or something.

[...]

Some lowlights:

MCGUIRK: She strikes me as the kind of woman who would wear one of those suicide vests. You know, walk into the — try and sneak into the Green Zone.

IMUS: Oh, no. No, no, no, no.

MCCORD: Just because she always appears in traditional Arab garb and wearing a burka.

MCGUIRK: Yeah, what’s with the head gear? Take it off. Let’s see.

…

MCCORD: Exactly. She cooked with them, lived with them.

IMUS: This is not helping.

MCGUIRK: She may be carrying Habib’s baby at this point.

…

IMUS: She could. It’s not like she was representing the insurgents or the terrorists or those people.

MCCORD: Well, there’s no evidence directly of that –

IMUS: Oh, gosh, you better shut up!

…

MCGUIRK: She’s like the Taliban Johnny or something.

Thanks to ThinkProgress.org for bringing these asses to our attention — you can read the full transcripts and view the video clips from ThinkProgress.org here and here.

Now, a day after obtaining her freedom, Jill has released a personal statement that more accurately describes her experience — now, will these asses have big enough balls to apologize… will these poor excuses for men be, in fact, men and own up to their mistakes, or will they cower like the pampered soft bellied limp dicks that they are?

Here’s Jill in her own voice:

I’m so happy to be free and am looking forward to spending a lot of time with my family. I want to express my deep appreciation to all the people who worked so long and hard for my release. I am humbled by the sympathy and support expressed by so many people during my kidnapping.

In the past few days, the U.S. military and officials have been extremely generous, and I am grateful for their help. Throughout this ordeal, many U.S. agencies have committed themselves to bringing me safely home.

[...]

So many people around the world spoke out on my behalf.
Thank you, all of you.

During my last night of captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video. They told me I would be released if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and I wanted to go home alive. So I agreed.

Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not. The people who kidnapped me and murdered Alan Enwiya are criminals, at best. They robbed Alan of his life and devastated his family. They put me, my family and my friends – all those around the world – who have prayed so fervently for my release through a horrific experience. I was, and remain, deeply angry with the people who did this.

I also gave a TV interview to the Iraqi Islamic Party shortly after my release. The party had promised me the interview would never be broadcast or aired on television, and they broke their word. At any rate, fearing retribution from my captors, I did not speak freely. Out of fear I said I wasn’t threatened. In fact, I was threatened many times.

Also, at least two false statements about me have been widely aired: One, that I refused to travel and cooperate with the U.S. military and two, that I refused to discuss my captivity with U.S. officials. Again, neither statement is true.

I want to be judged as a journalist, not as a hostage. I remain as committed as ever to fairness and accuracy – to discovering the truth – and so I will not engage in polemics. But let me be clear: I abhor all who kidnap and murder civilians, and my captors are clearly guilty of both crimes.

Now, I ask for the time to heal. This has been a taxing 12 weeks for me and for my family. Please allow us some quiet time alone, together.

To Imus and his locker room bitches (I include Imus in this condemnation because he did not speak up when he could have), first, apologize to Jill and to your listeners for distorting the record; and, then, when you have the balls to go to Iraq and bring your radio program from outside the green zone, get kidnapped and are later released 82 days after being adducted, only then will you all deserve and have the legitimacy to stand in the same room as Jill Carroll.