Daily Archives: April 2, 2008

Welcome to Potterville

The sex ed story below is like so many that kind of wash over us these days. Torture, death, misery, looming financial collapse, untold billions of public money looted and streamlined into the pockets of the already wealthy, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton driving the Democratic primary into the racial gutter, on and on. Same old same old. Just another day at the office.

It makes me wonder, how we got here? How did we allow mighty rivers of inhumanity and greed to carve the heart out of the world’s high plateau – a once great and peace loving nation – and turn it into such a dark canyon?

To any thinking person, Bush/Castle America must bring to mind the dystopia portrayed in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” We now all live in a dangerous and dirty Potterville where alcoholism seems like a rational response to the grim realities of life.

I know I tend to romanticize pre-Bush America, but news days like today make me despair of ever returning it to the Bedford Falls I remember.

Q: What Do John McCain and Dave Burris Have in Common?

A: They both love lobbyists.

And yet another lobbyist joins Team McCain. And this one is the head of a lobbyist firm, no lower-level lobbyists for Mr. Fake Integrity.

Davenport’s new position is certain to precipitate complaints from rivals that McCain is packing his campaign with the lobbyists whose conduct he has denounced. McCain’s advisers have said that McCain’s credentials as a reformer are solid and can overcome any optics problem that comes along with hiring lobbyists.

They say that he is unfairly held to a higher standard than Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.
“I don’t remember McCain ever saying that making an honest living was wrong,” a senior campaign adviser said last night. “He has inveighed against politicians who value relationships with lobbyists and donations more than the public interest.”

(h/t kos & God Bless Duncan Black)

God Bless Sex Ed & God Bless Duncan Black

This would have been shocking news back in the days befor Bush (and Mike Castle) fucked every little thing up.

Nobody Could Have Predicted…

And on and on…

ORLANDO, Fla. — A recent survey that found some Florida teens believe drinking a cap of bleach will prevent HIV and a shot of Mountain Dew will stop pregnancy has prompted lawmakers to push for an overhaul of sex education in the state.

The survey showed that Florida teens also believe that smoking marijuana will prevent a person from getting pregnant.

State lawmakers said the myths are spreading because of Florida’s abstinence-only sex education, Local 6 reported.

“WE DON’T TORTURE. PERIOD”

While reading this, please keep in mind that Mike Castle has supported the President 100% on this subject.  Also, don’t forget that I believe Carper signed off on eliminating Habeaus Corpus too which ties directly into this. 

Couric asked Mr. Bush if this is a tacit acknowledgement that the way these detainees were handled was wrong.

“No. Not at all. It’s a tacit acknowledgement that we’re doing smart things to get information to protect the American people,” the President said. “I’ve said to the people that we don’t torture, and we don’t.”

Now to make you even more disgusted with your Government comes this lovely bit of news all because of this little prick:

John C. Yoo, now a law professor in Berkeley, Calif., defended his memo, saying,

The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president’s ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes

The document also appears to defend the use of mind-altering drugs that do not produce “an extreme effect” calculated to “cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality.”

“If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network,” Yoo wrote. “In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch’s constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.”

Comment Rescue:

In response to this post at Calculated Risk (that I found via Atrios), Pay Raise For Congress!! writes:

Taken together, most experts say that what the Fed has done in the last several months is unparalleled in modern times. Indeed, the Bear Stearns deal relied on a provision of the Federal Reserve Act not used since the 1930s. As a result, investment experts, many Americans and most members of Congress are bursting with questions.

Mr. Bernanke has yet to explain, for example, exactly how he negotiated the Bear Stearns deal, how he decided to accept the $30 billion in dubious collateral, who set the share price for Bear Stearns and what role was played by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., a former Goldman Sachs executive.

On Wednesday the Fed chief begins two days of testimony, his first opportunity to answer some of these questions. They are certain to focus not only on Bear Stearns but also on why the Fed and others let things deteriorate to the point of crisis, and whether their actions should serve as a precedent or guideline for the future of regulation of the financial sector.

“There’s a lot of concern that this was done ad hoc,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, which is to hold the hearings on Wednesday, referring to Bear Stearns. “The irony is that very few people are saying, ‘You shouldn’t have done it.’ A lot of people have questions about the before and after.”

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has also signaled that at his panel’s hearing on Thursday he will ask Mr. Bernanke about Bear Stearns and why the financial sector’s problems were allowed to fester.

The nation’s trust in the Fed and the administration, Mr. Dodd said this week, “has been shattered — not because regulators did too much, but because they did too little.”

My reaction: Too bad Delaware is not represented in Congress. Those states and districts that have actual representatives in Congress must feel very lucky.