Holiday Memories

At least partial memories ... I'm not sure who that woman is

A Holiday Memory Olive Branch

Rush & Christmas - For Alex and untold others

Oh Well

I never thought we'd succeed in Wood County

Latta Holds GOP Seat in OH-5

According to an Associated Press call, Bob Latta (R) has been elected in a special election to fill the OH-5 vacant congressional seat in northwest Ohio beating Robin Weirauch (D).

Though the district is heavily Republican, there were late indications in the campaign that Democrats might possibly possibly take the seat. Both parties spent heavily on ads in the last week.

Holiday Melodies

The Greatest Christmas Song of All Time.

Holiday Memories

As I recall, this did not go well.

Not An Onion Headline

Congress to say Christmas is important.

Sun and Moon declared good too

This is one straight from the headlines of the Onion. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) has introduced a resolution (H.Res. 847) saying, and I am not making this up, that Christmas and Christians are important. The House is scheduled to vote on this groundbreaking resolution on Tuesday.

ArkansasTransparency

Like HRC, Mickey-Huck wants to run on his background but not on the documents of that background:

Mother Jones has “contacted the Huckabee campaign and asked if it would help make his previous sermons available, the campaign replied in a one-sentence email that it had received multiple requests for such material and was ‘not able to accommodate’ them.”

You Know It's True If They're Telling Matt Lauer

Think Progress Reports :

Former CIA Interrogator: We Carried Out Torture Because The White House Told Us To

In an interview last night with ABC News, John Kiriakou — the CIA official who headed the team that interrogated al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah — said that Zubaydah was waterboarded, but defended those actions as having prevented “maybe dozens” of planned attacks and “probably saved lives.”

But despite his vigorous defense of his past conduct, Kiriakou says he now views what he did as torture and says that he would not recommend those tactics going forward. “We don’t need enhanced techniques to get that nugget of information,” he said in an interview with Matt Lauer this morning on The Today Show.

Lauer asked Kiriakou where the permission was given to carry out torture. “Was the White House involved in that decision?” Lauer asked. “Absolutely,” Kiriakou said, adding:

This isn’t something done willy nilly. It’s not something that an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he’s going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner. This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department.

Lauer then referenced an earlier interview he did with President Bush, in which Bush said he was assured by the Justice Department “we were not torturing.”

“I disagree,” Kiriakou said.

Report: Nation's Wealthy Cruelly Deprived Of True Meaning Of Christmas

We Torture ... And We Tape!

A Catch-up on the destruction of videotapes documenting waterboarding and other torture techiniques employed by ... well, us.

Follow the bouncing tapes

In the Bush administration's first attempt to explain the destruction of videotapes showing the interrogations of suspected al-Qaida members, CIA director Michael Hayden said the decision to destroy the tapes was made "within the CIA."

That version of the story quickly gave way when as-yet unidentified administration officials revealed that former White House counsel Harriet Miers knew about the tapes and had told the CIA that she didn't think they should be destroyed.

Now, as Hayden prepares for a closed-door session today with the Senate Intelligence Committee, there's a third version of the story to consider. An unidentified former intelligence official says that lawyers -- plural -- within the White House and the Justice Department advised the CIA not to destroy the tapes in 2003, but that the CIA continued to push for permission to do so, and the White House never quite got around to saying no.

"They never told us, 'Hell, no,'" the former intelligence official tells the New York Times. "If somebody had said, 'You cannot destroy them,' we would not have destroyed them."

The CIA declined to respond to questions from the Times, and the White House, citing ongoing investigations and the advice of counsel, won't say anything further about the matter at all. In an uncharacteristic bit of understatement Monday, White House press secretary Dana Perino said that she could "see where" the "cynicism that usually drifts" up from the White House press briefing room might "come up in this regard."

My Best Friend Is All Over This

Steve, my dearest bestest friend since 1964 is in this camp. He'll be visiting this weekend and GT12 will do it's best to attack this thinking.

A small detail from the NYT/CBS poll:

Nearly as many of Mrs. Clinton's backers say they are supporting her because of her husband as say they are supporting her because of her own experience.

Hucka-Round Up

a Collection of snippets by and about The Apotheosis Of Christianist Candidacy: Mike Huckabee

"It doesn't embarrass me one bit to let you know that I believe Adam and Eve were real people," - Mike Huckabee, 1990.

"I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ."-- Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R), quoted by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette on June 8, 1998, on "why he left pastoring for politics."

...

"Mike Huckabee promises us a foreign policy that will make sure that America repeatedly bursts into flame for all of eternity," - Daniel Larison.

...

I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk," Mike Huckabee in a questionnaire for The Associated Press in 1992

"If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague.... It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents." - AP 1992 questionaire

"In a quick check of Republican reaction after the AP story broke, some conservatives said they viewed Huckabee’s answers as a blunt statement of views held by many in his Southern Baptist flock, and an antidote to the waffling that pervades politics.
So it may turn out that his more damaging answer was not the one about his view of homosexuality but rather his foray into federal policy – quarantining AIDS patients and cutting funding for research. - Politico.com coverage of the above comments.

...

From Newsweek: Republican state Rep. Jeremy Hutchinson says Huckabee has an explosive temper. He recalls one heated conversation with Huckabee about a health bill Hutchinson didn't want to support. Huckabee began screaming at him, and banged his fists on his desk so hard that "trinkets started falling off." ...

Jim Hendren, the state's Senate minority whip, says he gave up trying to debate issues with Huckabee. "It was like you became the enemy," he says. "There wasn't ever a negotiation. It was, 'It's going to be my way or else'."

....

"A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ." - text of a Southern Baptist Convention full-page ad in USA Today in 1998 that Mike Huckabee signed

...

On the Drummond case:

Huckabee supported the release of Dumond from prison, backed by fervent anti-Clinton activists. According to several parole board members, he even lobbied the board on Dumond's behalf. The frighteningly prescient warnings of Dumond's victims were seemingly left ignored.

....For nearly a decade, conservative activists in Arkansas had painted Dumond as a tragic victim of Bill Clinton's power-hungry machinations. Ashley Stevens, Dumond's rape victim, was Clinton's distant cousin. Within Republican circles, the logic was that if they were to regain political power, it would be through lashing out against rulings like Dumond's.

O Power

The polls are all over the place, but I want people to see that the time can be NOW and not later for Barry O

Obama Leads by Six in South Carolina

A new Insider Advantage poll in South Carolina finds Sen. Barack Obama leading the Democratic presidential race with 28% support, followed by Sen. Hillary Clinton at 22%, John Edwards at 14% and Sen. Joe Biden at 10%.

Said pollster Matt Towery: “Obama’s support among African-Americans rose a bit over the weekend, while Clinton’s dropped. This follows our poll of late last week in which there was a major shift in black voters towards Obama. ... Clearly the Oprah Winfrey visit to the state moved African-American voters."

We're Watching ...

our old county ....

Surprise for Democrats in OH-5?

There's a special election today in Ohio's 5th congressional district and the Cleveland Plain Dealer notes "deep pockets are emptying with last-minute contributions in the race" to determine the successor to the late Rep. Paul Gillmor (R-OH) "and will signal whether this traditional GOP stronghold has gone Democratic."

CQ rates the district Safe Republican, but according to The Politico, an internal poll conducted for Bob Latta’s (R) campaign last week showed him trailing Amy Weirauch (D) by four points.

The Hammer Of The Gods Flies Again

How Can You Not Feel Good About This?

Interesting ... Jimmy looks more better now than in the '90's when I saw both the tours with Robert. There is hope for those of us of the whiter shades of hair.

Eternal Hippie David Fricke writes in Rolling Stone

Zeppelin did not walk or waltz through any of tonight’s sixteen songs. You could hear the care, the weeks of practice that started back in June, in the live debut of “For Your Life” from the 1976 album Presence, a song which, according to Plant in our recent cover story, the band tried in the first rehearsals but dropped after two days. Obviously, there was no staying away from its eccentric oceanic chop. There was no getting away from the warhorses either. “No Quarter” came with the obligatory dry ice. “There are certain things we had to do — this is one of them,” Plant said, almost in apology, introducing “Dazed and Confused.” Page was soon back in ancient ritual — pulling long wah-wah groans from his Gibson Les Paul with a violin bow under a rotating steeple of green-laser beams.

More impressive, though, was the fresh tension in the song’s slow-drag sections as Page, Jones and Bonham pulled at the tempo, heightening the expectation between Page’s bent-note growls and Bonham’s thundercrack rolls with extra delay. “Stairway to Heaven” was also not quite its overfamiliar self, and refreshing for it, Page fingerpicking the opening motif and hitting the ringing twelve-string chords with a relaxed, folk-rock grace, echoing Plant’s thousand-yard stare as he sang “And it makes me wonder . . .” The inevitable “Whole Lotta Love,” the first encore, was almost identical to the second-album script except for a short, tantalizing passage of raw-blues argument after the whooping-theremin blowout — no drums, no bass, just Plant and Page’s guitar snapping at each other like junkyard dogs.

J.M.U.S.

Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom – Mitt Romney

Absolute Rubbish.

What Do God the Father, Allah, Shiva, The Holy Spirit and the Virgin Birth of Jesus all have in common with Santa, Harry Potter and Republican Logic?

They are all JUST MADE UP SHIT.

I am sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick and, finally, sick to fucking death of Religion.

I'm not going to complain here of the countless depravities committed in the name of Religion. I'll blame humans for that. And I'll attack it regularly elsewhere.

No, I just want to vent that I am tired of being told about the importance of believing in fairy tales.

Look, I understand that we all miss our imaginary friends from our child hood and that holding onto the ridiculous and unsupportable belief in god allows us to not have to grieve that loss completely but my tolerance has (illiberally?) expired.

I am now committed to telling believers that they have to wise-the-fuck-up and face the music (Led Zeppelin?). There is no god. At first it will hurt to accept this. It will lead to a period of adjustment while you realize that your morality, honor, reason for living etc. are all the result of the love and guidance of your family and friends. It will be weird to realize that all those nice feelings you experience in church are just simply your unfettered unifying with your neighbors and not the result of a magic man in the skies pouring down warm fuzzies to you (see Emile Durkheim).

Soon you will discover the relief that comes from not worrying that some work of Literature or Science will NOT endanger you kids morals. You will no longer waste time arguing about how many angels fit on the head of the pin. The word Darwin will no longer immediately and Pavlovianly bring up jabs of fear and threat. Christmas will be even more fun because you won't ever have to sing Silent Night again. You'll get to watch all the Sunday morning pundits without guilt.

So, just stop the madness, stop the denial, stop being just plain stoooooooopid.

Happy Fucking Holidays.

But At Least Our Republican Candidates Know God

Snowday!

Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me

Barry O is running hard on the position that his judgement is superior to HRC (Her Royal Clintoness) AND therefore more important than her experience (of failed judgement and failed effort).

Lest you doubt that he's right, let's look at The Washington Post from January 20, 2007 (Two years prior to the day one of them will take the Oath Of Office):

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) accused the Bush administration of playing down the threat of a nuclear Iran and called for swift action at the United Nations to impose sanctions on the Iranian government.

The senator's statements, in which she said the administration should make it clear that all options remain on the table for dealing with the Iranians, came during a speech about the Middle East on Wednesday night at Princeton University. She criticized the White House for turning the problem over to European nations and said Iran must never be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons.

I believe we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations," Clinton said. "I don't believe you face threats like Iran or North Korea by outsourcing it to others and standing on the sidelines."

Clinton, who began running for the Presidency 'the day [s]he entered the Senate' has calculatedly tried to position herself just to the right of Cheney to show us that she's got, uh, balls. She bet that the Iraq adventure would be a success and wanted to be on the winning side and so voted to give the NeoconPuppetIn Chief whatever he wanted. Still on a testosterone drip, she voted to create the same scenario for Iran.

Now, do you want that vowing to protect our constitution?

God Save (us from) The Queen - Updated

She shows all the signs of a spoiled child to whom no one has ever said 'NO'. This is why she must not be the nominee.

F Her.

"They really, really hate Obama," one Democratic operative unaffiliated with any campaign, tells me. "They can't stand him. They talk about him as if he's worse than Bush." What do they hate about him? After all, there aren't a lot of deep policy differences between the two, and he hasn't gone for the jugular during the campaign. "It's his presumptuousness," this operative says. "That he thinks he can deny her the nomination. Who is he to try to do that?" You mean, he's, uh, uppity? "Yes." A senior House Democratic aide notes, "The Clinton people are going nuts in how much they hate him. But the problem is their narrative has gone beyond the plausible."