Mike's Blog Roundup

post from Crooks and Liars on 09 February 2009 11:00:00 AM. © Crooks and Liars

Bob Cesca: A very serious question

First Draft: Republicanism Explained

ginandtacos: Is this a joke? NYT loses its mind

The Big Picture: The huge job losses recorded by BLS are not evenly distributed. This recession has hit the retailers particularly hard.

alicublog: The New Michael Moore

The Heretik: Good Old Days

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http://crooksandliars.com/mike-finnigan/mikes-blog-roundup-115

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Has Ted Haggard's Right Wing New Life Church Been
A Front For Molesting Young Boys By GOP Operatives And Fake Pastors

post from DownWithTyranny! on 09 February 2009 11:00:00 AM. © DownWithTyranny!

Posterboys for GOP morality: Ted Haggard & David Vitter
As the Republican Party sought to merge its political operations with bigoted, money-hungry evangelical churches, there was a general feeling of elation in the Bush White House where Karl Rove felt he had found the keys to political paradise: an obedient, unquestioning voter base that would march to whatever beat he set and do so in lockstep-- and in big numbers. The marriage between the GOP and the religionist right has started to fray. In Colorado it is fraying very badly.

Last week we talked about a lone wolf in the GOP-- a McCain campaign official in Pueblo-- who was molesting young boys in his official capacity, even seducing them at McCain rallies. This seemed like hypocritical GOP Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) all over again. But there was something far more insidious going on at the nexus of Republican Party ops and religious right mania-- insidious and systemic.

Michael Signorile is reporting an extremely disturbing ring of predators in one of the GOP's most influential mega-churches, Ted Haggard's New Life Church in Colorado Springs, a hotbed of ignorance-based radical right politics and whacky, some say "blasphemous" religion. There has been a massive coverup of Ted Haggard's sexual exploitation of the young sons of parishioners-- and apparently Haggard wasn't the only "pastor" participating!

I want to make it clear that perverts and child molesters like Evans and Haggard aren't lying when they say they're not gay. They aren't. These are very sick and demented people with severe mental illness that causes them to molest young children of whatever gender. While Haggard and Evens and that lot hide in their closets and fantasize about raping children, real gay people are marking the tenth annual National Freedom To Marry Day (this Thursday). I suspect Republican perverts like Haggard, Craig, McHenry and Vitter won't be celebrating this one.

Last week when Haggard-- who was paid handsomely to perform on a series of talk shows to promote a movie about his miserable life-- Larry King asked him, in the light of another young man coming forward and testifying that Haggard had seduced him (which Haggard now admits), if there were other young men Haggard had had affairs with. His answer was incredibly squirrely. He said he had discussed it with his family and his psychiatrist but wouldn't talk about it on TV. According to Signorile's very credible source, there have been at least ten parishioners, some underage, who Haggard and at least one other pastor (Stephen Evans), have seduced at the Colorado Springs cult he was running. The other pastor "was convicted of sexual assault against a child under the age of 15 and got off easy with help from the church, only to later have his probation revoked. The convicted pastor then illegally left the country, he said, and he speculates that New Life Church may have helped him do so."
Evans has also admitted to having had sex with his 14 year old son and 15-year old daughter and that "with the help and backing of New Life Church, Evans served no jail time at all, cutting a plea deal in which he'd agree to a 'restoration' at the church-- yes, just like the one that Ted Haggard went through to supposedly make him straight!-- while serving five years on probation. It is likely that Ted Haggard, as senior pastor at the time, oversaw Evans' restoration."

Meanwhile, Max Blumenthal has tracked down one of David Diaper Vitter's opponents in the Louisiana Republican primary next year, the lovely porn star we introduced you to last week, Stormy Daniels. Watch Max talk to Stormy about why should would be a better-- and more honest-- representative for Louisiana Republicans than the hypocritical serial adulterer Vitter. We'll ask Max if he can interview Stephen Evans next.

video details and more

Read The Full Article:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/02/has-ted-haggards-right-wing-new-life.
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THE MYTH OF BIPARTISANSHIP.

post from Ezra Klein on 09 February 2009 10:58:00 AM. © Ezra Klein

My latest column at TAP takes on the absence of the elusive beast called "bipartisanship" and the culmination of the long effort to finally do away with the filibuster. An excerpt:The most troubling aspect of the Republican performance on the stimulus[...]

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http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=02&year=2009&base_name
=the_myth_of_bipartisanship

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Nonviolently taking back our country part III -
your arms too short to put the sun in a box

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 09 February 2009 10:57:45 AM. © Docudharma - Front Page

For those of you who are capable of gleaning something from it, here's the last part of my series of essays which discuss how lawless groups and cabals under the wing of the military/industrial complex (which naturally includes more than a few people who[...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Docudharma/~3/536557853/showDiary.do

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Amsterdam Graffiti

post from Texas Liberal on 09 February 2009 10:51:24 AM. © Texas Liberal

Above is a picture of some graffiti in Amsterdam that was taken by my friend Lisa Marangi. She lives in Amsterdam.My on-the-record view of graffiti is that I am opposed to it. My off-the-record view is that I like it if it has some creativity. If anyone has any good shots of graffiti in Houston, please e-mail me [...]

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http://texasliberal.wordpress.com/2009/02/09/amsterdam-graffiti/

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Stimulus-Package Battle Continues in Congress:
Bank Bailout Plan Set to Debut This Week

post from Jutia Group on 09 February 2009 10:51:23 AM. © Jutia Group

As the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression continues to worsen, decades of deregulation and the growing independence at the state level are being reversed as a deteriorating national economy forces the federal government to increasingly take on responsibilities…

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jutiagroup/~3/535827731/

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Al Gore's mantle gets a little more crowded with
his brand new Grammy

post from BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash on 09 February 2009 10:48:59 AM. © BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Chad Rubel

Winning all 4 major entertainment awards -- Oscar, Tony, Emmy, and Grammy -- is an extremely rare feat: only nine people has done so in its purest form. Coming close to winning all four awards is still amazing, especially if you aren't an actor.

Al Gore has won three of the famed four awards, not too bad for a politician. Gore picked up a Grammy last night for Best Spoken Word Album for the audio book of "An Inconvenient Truth." Gore beat out Stephen Colbert among others for the honor.

Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Academy Award, and he personally won a Primetime Emmy Award for Current TV in 2007.

Gore does have an award that those entertainers don't have -- a Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, there is a Wikipedia page devoted solely to all the awards he has won.

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Al Gore's mantel gets a little more crowded with
his brand new Grammy

post from BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash on 09 February 2009 10:48:59 AM. © BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Chad Rubel

Winning all 4 major entertainment awards -- Oscar, Tony, Emmy, and Grammy -- is an extremely rare feat: only nine people has done so in its purest form. Coming close to winning all four awards is still amazing, especially if you aren't an actor.

Al Gore has won three of the famed four awards, not too bad for a politician. Gore picked up a Grammy last night for Best Spoken Word Album for the audio book of "An Inconvenient Truth." Gore beat out Stephen Colbert among others for the honor.

Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Academy Award, and he personally won a Primetime Emmy Award for Current TV in 2007.

Gore does have an award that those entertainers don't have -- a Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, there is a Wikipedia page devoted solely to all the awards he has won.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

buzzflash |

delicious | digg

digg |

yahoo |

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Technorati Tags: Alerts Chad Rubel Al Gore Grammy Emmy Oscar Tony awards

Pete Sessions (R-TX) Learns from the Taliban

Pete Sessions is a a Representative from Texas. Waco. Maybe that explains it. He’s also Chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee. The other day he likened the House resistance to the stimulus plan to Taliban insurgency. I’m thinking there are no lessons one wants to learn from the Taliban, but Sessions went there, really he did. From Hotline:

Frustrated by a lack of bipartisan outreach from House Democratic leaders, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said House Republicans — who voted unanimously last week against the economic plan pushed by President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — will pitch a “positive, loyal opposition” to the proposal. The group, he added, should also “understand insurgency” in implementing efforts to offer alternatives.
“Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban,” Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors. “And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person’s entire processes. And these Taliban — I’m not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that’s not what we’re saying. I’m saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with.”

What this is is a pouty Republican whine gone wrong. No, I don’t think Sessions means that the Republican Party is just like the Taliban, but it is clear he has learned the lessons of the Taliban, lessons the Bush Administration did not learn, thus failing to wipe them out. Maybe Sessions sees himself as a glorious freedom fighter who when he takes charge will force women into bhurkas. Heck, I don’t know. The guy really pulled a stupid one here.

But this really is just a whine. His poor party was not invited to control the legislation. Barack Obama invited all sorts of Republican leaders to the White House, travelled to and made unprecedented trips to the House and Senate to consult with Republicans, and Sessions is whining that he and his fellow insurgents couldn’t control the election. Hey, maybe if they hadn’t supported Bush as he trashed the constitution, ran up record budget deficits, ruined the economy (I could go on), then Sessions and his cohorts wouldn’t have lost so many seats in the House and Senate. After all, that’s the real reason they aren’t controlling the legislative agenda. That’s how it works in our democracy, after all, the ones who got the votes run things. Hey, Pete — tough!

But let’s be clear. Sessions’ statements about running his Party as if it were the Afghanistan-based Taliban insurgency is in fact the new core value of the Republican Party. Obstruction is the word of the day, and has become the core ethic for the GOP. As Eric Cantor describes it, it is the political strategy of “Just say NO!” Here it is from the Washington Post:

Three months after their Election Day drubbing, Republican leaders see glimmers of rebirth in the party’s liberation from an unpopular president, its selection of its first African American chairman and, most of all, its stand against a stimulus package that they are increasingly confident will provide little economic jolt but will pay off politically for those who oppose it.
After giving the package zero votes in the House, and 0with their counterparts in the Senate likely to provide in a crucial procedural vote today only the handful of votes needed to avoid a filibuster, Republicans are relishing the opportunity to make a big statement. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) suggested last week that the party is learning from the disruptive tactics of the Taliban, and the GOP these days does have the bravado of an insurgent band that has pulled together after a big defeat to carry off a quick, if not particularly damaging, raid on the powers that be.
“We’re so far ahead of where we thought we’d be at this time,” said Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), one of several younger congressmen seeking to lead the party’s renewal. “It’s not a sign that we’re back to where we need to be, but it’s a sign that we’re beginning to find our voice. We’re standing on our core principles, and the core principle that suffered the most in recent years was fiscal conservatism and economic liberty. That was the tallest pole in our tent, and we took an ax to it, but now we’re building it back.”
The second-ranking House Republican, Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), put it more bluntly. “What transpired . . . and will give us a shot in the arm going forward is that we are standing up on principle and just saying no,” he said.

We succeeded in the last several years in attaching the phrase “culture of corruption” to the GOP brand. Now it is time to find a new phrase. The “Architects of Obstruction?” There’s a good one. But I’m thinking you all can do better. Think of it as thinking up a band name for a punk rock group. It has to be offensive and descriptive at the same time. “The American Talibanskis” might be a good name. But I’m never any good at this. You all feel free to come up with some suggestions, willya?

Read The Full Article:
http://allspinzone.com/wp/2009/02/09/pete-sessions-r-tx-learns-from-the-taliban/

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