Why Can't the Left Face the Stolen Elections of 2004 & 2008?

If some of its key publications are any indicator, much of the American left seems unable to face the reality that the election of 2004 was stolen. So in all likelihood, unless something radical is done, 2008 will be too.

Misguided and misinformed articles in both TomPaine.com and Mother Jones Magazine indicate a dangerous inability to face the reality that these stolen elections mean nothing less than the death of what's left of American democracy, and the permanent enthronement of the Rovian GOP.

Bill Gates Dumps Dollar for Euro

Bill Gates, whose net worth of $46.6 billion makes him the world’s richest person, is betting against the U.S. dollar.

“I’m short the dollar,” Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp., told Charlie Rose in an interview late yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “The ol’ dollar, it’s gonna go down.”

She dishonored your family?

...simply kill the bitch.

Liberal Talker Schultz Pulled From Armed Forces Radio Before He Starts

Schultz says his program was pulled to punish him for airing audio embarrassing to President Bush. At issue is an audio tape that Schultz aired of assistant Secretary of Defense Allison Barber allegedly helping troops in Iraq rehearse for their broadcast video teleconference with the President..

"INNOCENT" vs. "NOT GUILTY"

Compare the above article, which uses the legal term, "Not Guilty", to this article:

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/10/19/D8DB6JD80.html

which used the term, "Innocent." While preparing for work this morning at home, every cable newscast that I saw claimed that Saddam (still don't know why we call him by his first name) pleaded, "Innocent." I wondered if the Iraqis had established some sort of retarded legal system that required defendants to prove their "innocence." I am relieved now to learn that the Iraqi legal system sensibly employs the term, "Not Guilty," and that it is only reporters who are retarded. (They probably all have "journalism" degrees.) I suppose that since we can't get reporters to discern between the correct verdict/plea "Not Guilty" and the nonsense term, "Innocent," there's no way to get them to stop using other nonsense terms such as:

1) "The fact of the matter is... prices have increased." What's wrong with simply saying, "Prices have incraeased"?
2) "You are basing your policy on THE FACT THAT Hurricane Katrina only harmed blacks, but actually it harmed even more whites." Why would you refer to a claim that you dispute as a "fact"? Oh, I forgot: you have a journalism degree. Correct: "You are basing your policy on the ASSUMPTION that..."
3) "Senator Biden will join Sara and **MYSELF** after this commercial." How about using the break to brushup on your grammar?

Nigeriens Kept Poor by Government

"Commerce is the foundation of civilization, the font of prosperity, and the key to peace. Niger's government -- either because of foolishness or evilness (take your pick) -- squashes commerce in that country. No amount of aid, mosquito nets, op-eds..., or serenading of Bono and Paul McCartney will do Nigeriens any good until commerce is allowed to florish there."

A Tale of Two Cities: From DC to Toledo

The well heeled politicians and elite who spoke at us for twelve hours on Saturday in Washington D.C., would do well to heed the anger, resentment, and rage that boiled over in Toledo-or they quickly run the risk of irrelevance to those whose lives are being destroyed by the forces the Million More Movement was said to have been organized against.

World is a safer place despite people's fears.

Really?

The Law of Unintended Consequences

"Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department aims without exception to expel all those who enter the United States illegally." Works For Me

The Season Of Our Discontent

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson101705PF.html

EXERPT: True, Republican-endorsed tax cuts have led to more net federal revenue in 2005 than in 2001. Yet — even with the unanticipated costs of the 9/11 attack, the ongoing war and Hurricane Katrina — if the Bush administration had kept entitlement spending to Bill Clinton's levels (with small increases for inflation), we would today have a balanced budget and a small surplus.

Iraqi Vote - Worst Possible Outcome

"The absolute worst-case scenario is if the Sunnis come close to defeating the constitution, but fail. There will be accusations of vote-rigging and any political momentum the Sunnis felt was moving their way will be spent. The Shi’ites will have consolidated their power and those Sunnis on the fence might be moved into active opposition. The insurgency might even worsen, if such things are possible, or a close vote might be the trigger for open civil war."

America's Ministry of Propaganda Exposed

Colonel Sam Gardiner (USAF, Ret.) has identified 50 false news stories created and leaked by a secretive White House propaganda apparatus in a covert campaign to "market" the military invasion of Iraq. According to Gardiner, "It was not bad intelligence" that lead to the quagmire in Iraq, "It was an orchestrated effort [that] began before the war" that was designed to mislead the public and the world. Gardiner's research lead him to conclude that the US and Britain had conspired at the highest levels to plant "stories of strategic influence" that were known to be false.

Political Timing of the Terror Threats?

Keith Olbermann: Last Thursday on Countdown, I referred to the latest terror threat - the reported bomb plot against the New York City subway system - in terms of its timing. President Bush’s speech about the war on terror had come earlier the same day, as had the breaking news of the possible indictment of Karl Rove in the CIA leak investigation. I suggested that in the last three years there had been about 13 similar coincidences - a political downturn for the administration, followed by a “terror event” - a change in alert status, an arrest, a warning.

The Lonliness of the “Black Conservative”

"...black American leaders are practicing a politics that draws the group into a victim-focused racial identity that, in turn, stifles black advancement more than racism itself.."

Million (Straw) Man March (& Platitudes & Postures & Gibberish) Redux

Oh, brother. Embarrassing, counter-productive, rediculous, illogical... and all a buildup for a praising of the Right Reverned Honorable Brother Minister Louis Farrakan. Where to begin? How I wish for a transcript of Erica Baddou's interminal "brief" introduction of Farrakan (which succeeded 75 other introductions of Farrakan, and proceeded about 10 more; were all the non-Farrakan speaches introductions for his?). There's Farrakan's analogy between the federal gov't's 5 days Katrina response time to that of the mother who leaves her baby in a hot car: negligent homicide. I see. The black poor black people of New Orleans (the only people in NO that he cares about) are helpless, hapless children, and the federal government is their parent, responsible for their safety. Then there's his surmization that "if those people on the roofs had been blond and white, the response would have been sooner"...

Bush's Feds Massively Misuse Katrina Funds

With Republicans like this, who needs Democrats? Looks like Bush again has let down and embarrassed those of us who voted for him because we thought that he would spend more frugally, and operate more efficiently, than the democrats. (At least his supporters who opposed gay marriages are happy.) I don't blame him for the Katrina disaster, but once it became obvious that the responsible parties had failed, this is the response he provided? Sending hundreds of thousands of dollars of ice to the wrong cities (a thousand miles away!), and grossly wasted money? If Kerry or Gore or Clinton were president, Republican voters like me would castigate them for this output, and assuredly proclaim that a Repo president would have shown the klunky Demos how to run a relief and rebuild response. Apparently we would have been wrong...

Nazis behave civilly, Protesters behav Nazi-ly

People who demand to stop Nazis, KKKers, and Talibaners from speaking have adopted one of the fundimental and unifying tennets of Naziism, KKKism, and Talibanism; they have also rejected one of the fundimental and distinguishing tennets of advanced modern civilization (liberal constitutional democracy). People who advance this anti-free speach effort by use of violence have adopted another essential charactoristic of tyrany, while abandoning democracy altogether.

“The constitution is a sign of civilization”...

...Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said after casting his ballot. “This constitution has come after heavy sacrifices. It is a new birth.” Indeed...

The Saudi King

Do we believe him?

Resurrection of 1918 "Spanish'' flu virus

We're All Doomed

Their Palestinian State

Handling that new-found statehood really well, aren't they?

Hopeful, Cautious Signs in Iraqi Democratic Movement

An Arab-Muslim commentator here says that some of the insurgent factions have turned on each other, and some are coming to embrace the democratic ideal. I share his assessment of this as good news for those want the world to have more freedom, toleration, prosperity, and and self-government. I also share his view that in times of war, it is absolutely essential that the sides that consider themselves to have been wronged must be willing to trade violence for forgiveness. This includes the US govt being willing to forgive, and provide complete forebearance to, most of the people and groups who have committed what they consider to be great attrocities, in exchange for their acceptance of democracy. I do not advocate forbearance for all Nazis, just most of them. The quest for what Thomas Sowell calls, "cosmic justice," will result in the Nazis fighting until the absolute end, which will often mean endless war. Meanwhile the achievement of democracy means that (1) an end to oppression, and (2) equal opportunity and rights for previously oppressed people. An insistance on cosmic justice will mean that oppressed people never move on and overcome their oppression, as they become mired in a quest for absute justice, which nobody has ever achieved. The US govt insists on this attitude for the people that it has previously oppressed (including blacks), and must apply this same standard to itself, as it confronts those who have waged a war on the US.

George Will: Bush, Delay, Repos Betray Conservative Ideals

George Will here explains how the Bush's Repos have made fools of us proponents of small government. This include interjecting into the Terry Shivo case, the highway pork act, farm subsidies, lobbyist molly-coddling, and other actions where liberals/leftists would agree.

The Troops Don’t Support the Constitution

Every U.S. soldier takes an express and solemn oath to “support and defend the Constitution.” That oath, however, is a sham because the troops do not support or defend the Constitution. Instead, when it comes to war the troops follow another oath they take — to obey the orders of the president, and they do this without regard to whether such orders violate the Constitution.

A textbook example involves President Bush’s war on Iraq.

More Bush Insults

Everybody is good at something, and George Bush is good at insulting our intelligence.

By picking Harriet Miers, his former personal attorney, he is telling the American people she is the most qualified person in the country to join the Supreme Court. Oh really?

Bush insists that Miers is a good constitutionalist. But consider the source. This is the same man who gave us No Child Left Behind, who signed McCain-Feingold, and who claims the power to imprison American citizens indefinitely without charge just by branding them, without appeal, enemy combatants.

How Black Conservatives Hurt Their Cause

By James Thindwa

I have often wondered why the black conservative view has such poor resonance in African American communities. One of the most popular explanations, offered by black conservatives themselves, is that the “liberal media” caters to traditional black leadership at the expense of alternative voices. While there may be a grain of truth to this view, I would like to suggest that the answer is a bit more complex.

Delphi's bankruptcy leads to predictable devastation

Stephen Roach, the Morgan-Stanley analyst who warned of an Economic Armageddon this winter, is weighing in on Delphi. He has found the correct issue. More than $600 billion in pension funds may be at stake and it’s not likely that these dominoes can be stopped. There’s another $1.5 trillion of state and local pensions that are at risk. This is not just the pensions of Delphi and GM workers we’re talking about. It’s the pension of billions of schoolteachers, police officers and government workers whose pension funds are deep in GM and Delphi stock through mutual funds.

http://bluestalkin.blogspot.com/2005/10/delphis-bankruptcy-leads-to.html

Founders Quote Daily

The Federalist Patriot
Founders' Quote Daily

"Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could
have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it
murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my
property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in
it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute will,
am I to suffer it?"

-- Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, No. 1, 19 December 1776)

Reference: Paine, Collected Writings, Library of America, p. 97

Free the Housing & Auto Markets

Auto Dealers and Real Estate Agents use political influence to prevent consumers from buying their goods via the internet. This keeps these goods from benefitting from the lower prices that the internet has bestowed on many other products.

By John Stossel, Co-anchor, 20/20
PS: John Stossel is a Reformed Leftist

NBA Player Electrifies Anti-War Washington

"The Speech Everyone Is Talking About"
NBA power forward Etan Thomas delivers powerful speach about ghetto poverty at anti-war rally in DC.

Dems The Party Of Free Speech?

Dems want to fire Tom Delay without waiting for trial outcome, and want Bill Bennet fired or suspended from his radio show. A leftist Washington Post pundit speaks out.

Beautiful Maidens

Anti-terror TV show, "Beautiful Maidens", angers some Arabs for depicting the terrorists negatively. It takes its name from the promise of 72 "Beautiful Maidens" that await suicide bombers in heaven.

Police Brutality

Here's the info on that guy in New Orleans who got beaten severly by New Orleans police.

Those of us who are serious about eliminating police brutality must either remove the charge of "racism" from it, or produce statistics demonstrating that police brutality is largely confined to white cops beating black citizens. I predict that such statistics do not exist: white cops and black cops both beat the crap out of people who don't cooperate with them. This includes totally innocent, or relatively innoccent citizens who express outrage when an overly zealous cop starts acting like a puffed-up Barney Fife. But of course it also include criminals like Rodney King who flee from cops on dangerous high-speed escape attempts. I am 100% certain that there are white criminals who would also have ran the same way that King did, and that a white criminal who got caught after such a chase would have been just as likely to get beaten, weather the cops were black or white.

However, I suspect that only white-on-black cases get any publicity. To get serious about eliminating police brutality, we must get serious about accurately portraying the problem. By segmenting the problem, we only get a fraction of the support for our cause.

Racist whites approve interracial dating

Excuse me for using the terms, "racist whites," which of course is redundant. But white folks keep screwing up and undermining their own widespread racism, with statistics like these.

Why do conservatives hate the Democrats, again?

I honestly never understood the bilious, visceral, jihad-like hatred conservatives harbored for Bill Clinton. Which part of the agenda did he not push--and more shrewdly than GW Bush? Sure, he wasn't zealous on abortion or teaching creationsism in school. But still. That's a topic for later. Let's focus on things happening now.

Here is an article by Alexander Cockburn showing that the mainline of the Democratic Party is actually more serious about the Iraq War than GW Bush himself. Warning to reformed leftists: to get to that part, you'll have to sit through a diatribe showing that the various torture scandals have been successfully covered up (as much by the Democrats as the Republicans).

Here, for our purposes, is the money quote:

Insofar as there is an official position on the war from congressional Democrats it's presumably the "US Army Relief Act" put forward by Senators Joseph Lieberman, Hillary Clinton, Bill Nelson and Jack Reed and Reps Ellen Tauscher and Mark Udall. Reed, Tauscher and Udall are among the most liberal Democrats on the Hill. The resolution calls for the increase in US military troop strength by 80,000 over the next four years.

This is not a position that is finding much favor among American voters. The recent CNN poll registered just 8 per cent of respondents, both Democrats and Republicans, as supporting an increase in US troop strength in Iraq.

Now, what is it, presicely, that you reformed leftists find so objectionable about these people?

Gentleman, start your SUVs

Here's an article from Sunday's Times on Canada's famed oil sands--often cited as the source of a burst of new supply that will pierce what the WSJ editorial page calls the oil bubble. That can only happen if the costs described in the article can be successfully externalized--that is, shuffled off of the balance sheets of the extracting companies.
Be sure and click on the multimedia tab.

Oil sands development was once considered a crazy dream, too expensive and polluting to be profitable.

In a neighboring and politically stable country, the oil sands are destined to become an increasingly important source of energy for the United States market for decades. The industry and government say the northern Alberta sands hold proven reserves of 175 billion barrels, a claim some experts dispute. But if it is true, only Saudi Arabia may have more oil...

Let's Go, Flat Tax!

Here's a link presented by my favorite gay Reformed Leftist, Andrew Sullivan:

Oil Price Bubble (Soon to be Paul's favorite article)

HOT TOPIC The Oil Bubble Seventy dollars a barrel? Relax, it'll come down. Saturday, October 8, 2005 12:01 a.m. We keep hearing the word "bubble" to describe industries with rapid and unsustainable rising prices. Hence, the Internet bubble, the telecom bubble, stock market bubble, and now, some analysts believe, a housing bubble. Yet for some mysterious reason no one speaks of the oil bubble--though prices have tripled in two years to as high as $70 a barrel. Reviewing the history of oil-market boom and bust confirms that we are in the midst of a classic oil bubble and that prices will eventually fall, perhaps dramatically. Despite apocalyptic warnings, the world is not running out of oil and the pumps are not going to run dry in our lifetimes--or ever...

http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/hottopic/?id=110007377

President Bush's Major Speech: Doing the 9/11 Time Warp Again

<>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/07/opinion/07fri1.html?hp

Yesterday, the same day New Yorkers were warned there was a "specific threat" of a bombing on their subways, President Bush delivered what the White House promoted as a major address on terrorism. It seemed, on the surface, like a perfect topic for the moment. But his talk was not about the nation's current challenges. He delivered a reprise of his Sept. 11 rhetoric that suggested an avoidance of today's reality that seemed downright frightening...

RE: Student Brutalized by Cops, Right-Wing Students, for Protesting Recruiters At George Mason University

Agreed Paul. Nothing new though, except that in this particular case conservatives were the perpetrators. Where was Nadir’s outrage over the following I wonder?:

1) http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=15779
Intifada Against College Republicans


2) http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=15855
Jihad at San Francisco State

exerpt:
The previous Monday, the day before the election, the CR’s were physically attacked while handing out Bush/Cheney materials in the University’s Malcolm X Plaza. On that day, Victor Traycey, one of the members of the conservative club, was slapped by Nala Gardizi, an Arab woman student who was part of an entourage led by four Palestinian women who accused the conservative students of being responsible for the “murder of Palestinian babies” due to their support for President Bush. In addition, food was thrown at the Republican college students and drinks poured over the campaign materials on their table. Gardizi harangued Victor Traycey that day and even called him “a Nazi,” according to eye-witness reports.

Lee Wolf, another College Republicans member, described one of the women on Monday as shouting, “The only way we can defeat you is to kill as many as possible! I’d rather die a suicide bomber’s death than to call myself an American!” He continued, “In my opinion, these were terrorist threats.”

3) http://www.academia.org/campus_reports/2001/dec_2001_5.html
Tufts 'Non-Violence' Activists Attack Patriotic Student
Masked Group Attacked Student and Defaced Patriotic Symbol; Tufts Drops Assault Charges

Outraged anyone? Nadir?

Pete vs. Pete vs. Nadir Band Battles.

Which Pete plays in which band, and which Pete has which userid?

Name | userid | Band
Pete Peltier | sixstringslinger | Stewart Francke
? | ? | Funkilinium
Nadir | Nadir | Distorted Soul

Ending Torture by US Troops

Good news for those of us who want US military and intelligence personel to stop torturing people: the senate just passed a law superceding all presedential orders in this matter. Here's a commentary on the blog of Andrew Sullivan, a reformed leftist and unreformed queer:

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/

Student Brutalized by Cops, Right-Wing Students, for Protesting Recruiters At George Mason University

A Pakistani-American who served four years in the United States Air Force as munitions personnel was beaten and brutalized by right-wing students and campus police last Thursday at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

Link: http://lefthook.org/Ground/Alam100505.html

Music Industry vs. i-Tunes

Any thoughts on this?

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/ptech/10/04/music.copy.reut/index.html

Musicians tell how to beat system
Web sites instruct fans on how to beat copy-protected CDs
Major labels Sony BMG and EMI are releasing more and more new CDs that block fans from dragging their tunes to iPods.

White college student turns muslim, blows himself up at football game

Why are the FBI, the authorities and the university downplaying this? Why have we not heard more about this from the MSM?

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46640

"Price-Gouging" Is Good; this blogsite sucks

I just added some new commentary to the original "Price Gouging" info. But this blog site is so HORRIBLE that the old Price Gouging post remains hidden away forever in the September 2005 archive. I don't think it's even worth using these blogs anymore, since the site is so dreadful. Now nobody reads anybodies commentaries. If the point of this excersize was to kill communication, it has succeeded!

http://reformedleftist.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_reformedleftist_archive.html

Islamist way or no way

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,16801982,00.html

IT'S not just the environmentalists who think globally and act locally. The jihadi who murdered Newcastle woman Jennifer Williamson, Perth teenager Brendan Fitzgerald and a couple of dozen more Australians, Indonesians, Japanese and others had certain things in common with the July 7 London Tube killers... That's why they blew up Bali in 2002, and last weekend, and why they'll keep blowing it up. It's not about Bush or Blair or Iraq or Palestine. It's about a world where everything other than Islamism lies inruins.

Bush Curruption

I hope that prosecuters hit these guys hard, and carefully scrutinize Haliburton. The Clintons had plenty of curruption, and got away with most of it. Those of us who voted for Bush should all want a higher standard for him and his allies. Those of us who advocate free markets and small governments require examples of exemplary service; anything else provides ammunition for those devoted to socialization, and weaken interest from those who would otherwise wish to give free markets and small government a try.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46622

Supreme Disappointment

First my man Bush disappointed me by appointing a honkey boy to replace Renquist. But I held out that at least he would replayce O'Conner with a non-honkey. Now not only does he go totally boring with a honkey chick, he picks one that has no judicial training, or any reason at all for the rest of us to believe that she would make a good supreme court justice. Imagine if he would have done the following:

1. Move Clarence Thomas over to Chief.
2. Add Alberto Gonzolez, the first Hisp-indian (or another Hisp-indian).
3. Add Judith Rogers Brown, the first black chick.

This would have been awesome, and would have helped prove that we don't need Affirmative Action in order for qualified non-honkies to make it up the ladder. I am extremely disappointed.

A Mother's Denial, a Daughter's Death

"What If Everything You Thought You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong?"
Does HIV Cause AIDS?

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-me-eliza24sep24,1,1546664.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

[This article describes the death of a baby born to an "HIV-positive" mother who believes that "AIDS" is not an infectious disease, and that "HIV" does not cause it.]