Bad Deeds for 6-4-2008

U. S. Military Demonstrates Ray Gun Against Mock Peace Demonstrators – The Pentagon has been developing a raygun which can harmlessly repel enemies by causing a burning sensation in the top layer of the skin. The Air Force demonstrated the weapon against a handful of military volunteers, dressed as civilian protesters, who carried signs saying “peace not war” and threw objects at a small group of soldiers. A series of raygun blasts from half a mile away disrupted their chants and finally sent them running. In 2006, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne was quoted as saying that the device should be used first on Americans, because “if we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation.” (And everyone knows the number one threat to America is peace demonstrators (or is it bears?) – JLV) 60 Minutes: Pentagon’s raygun demonstrated on mock protesters

 

Rush Limbaugh Says Lots of Bad Stuff – On the June 2 broadcast of his radio program, Rush Limbaugh said:

“The growth of government started like crazy when women got the right to vote. Which just proves: Size does matter to ’em.”

The Democratic party is going “with a veritable rookie whose only chance of winning is that he’s black.”

“Somebody’s running Obama. Somebody’s behind Obama. … We know that George Soros is involved with Obama, but there’s somebody that’s putting the words in his mouth.”

A caller to that June 2 show said that he’s a teacher at a private school and as such, “I’m doing my best to indoctrinate the next generation here. So — and you’re helping me out there. I often bring my little radio to have them listen to your opening monologue.” (Now we know another reason why conservatives want to get rid of public schools. – JLV)

Also, Limbaugh said on his May 21 broadcast that “Barack Obama is an affirmative action candidate” and asserted during his May 14 broadcast that “[i]f Barack Obama were Caucasian, they would have taken this guy out on the basis of pure ignorance long ago.”

 

McCain Economic Advisor Involved in All Sorts of Schemes – Former Texas Senator Phil Gramm is McCain’s longtime friend and one of his five campaign co-chairs. (A sixth, former congressman Tom Loeffler, quit recently after NEWSWEEK reported on his lobbying work for Saudi Arabia.) The co-chair position affords Gramm broad input into the structure, financing and conduct of the McCain campaign.

Gramm’s day job is vice chairman of a U.S. division of Zurich-based financial giant UBS. UBS has recently written off huge losses in subprime-mortgage-based securities, and Gramm was a registered UBS lobbyist on mortgage-securities issues until at least December 2007.

UBS is also currently the focus of congressional and Justice Department investigations into schemes that allegedly enabled wealthy Americans to evade income taxes by stashing their money in overseas havens, according to several law-enforcement and banking officials in both the United States and Europe.

One of Gramm’s former congressional aides, John Savercool, is still registered to lobby legislators for UBS on numerous issues, including [against] a bill cosponsored by Sen. Barack Obama that would crack down on foreign tax havens.

Gramm is involved in attempts to sell financial products known as “death bonds,” which BusinessWeek described last summer as one of “the most macabre investment scheme[s] ever devised by Wall Street.”

Gramm “made it easier for bin Laden. … In the Senate, he blocked legislation that would have enabled the Bush administration to force foreign banks into cooperating on anti-terror measures before and after 9/11.”

 

Texas State Board of Education Tries to Disguise Anti-Evolution Policies – Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.

The “strengths and weaknesses” language was slipped into the curriculum standards in Texas to appease creationists when the State Board of Education first mandated the teaching of evolution in the late 1980s. It has had little effect because evolution skeptics have not had enough power on the education board to win the argument that textbooks do not adequately cover the weaknesses of evolution. However, the creationists want to describe anything not fully understood about evolution as a “weaknesses.” “When you consider evolution, there are certainly questions that have yet to be answered,” said Mr. Fisher, science coordinator for the Lewisville Independent School District in North Texas. But, he added, “a question that has yet to be answered is certainly different from an alleged weakness.”

Yet even as courts steadily prohibited the outright teaching of creationism and intelligent design, creationists on the Texas board grew to a near majority. Seven of 15 members subscribe to the notion of intelligent design, and they have the blessings of Gov. Rick Perry.

What happens in Texas does not stay in Texas: the state is one of the country’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are loath to produce different versions of the same material. The ideas that work their way into education here will surface in classrooms throughout the country. In Texas, evolution foes do not have to win over the entire Legislature, only a majority of the education board; they are one vote away.

Dr. McLeroy, the board chairman, sees the debate as being between “two systems of science.” Dr. McLeroy believes that Earth’s appearance is a recent geologic event — thousands of years old, not 4.5 billion. Views like these not only make biology teachers nervous, they also alarm those who have a stake in the state’s reputation for scientific exploration. “Serious students will not come to study in our universities if Texas is labeled scientifically backward,” said Dr. Dan Foster, former chairman of the department of medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

Here’s someone who understands education: Laura Ewing

 

Bush Said He Doesn’t Care if the Invasion of Iraq Created More Enemies – NBC News’ Richard Engel has written a new book about the years he spent reporting in Iraq. The book is titled War Journal: My Five Years In Iraq, and it contains an interview with President Bush. Among the excerpts of the interview captured in Engel’s new book:

This is the great war of our times. It is going to take forty years.

I know people are saying we should have left things the way they were, but I changed after 9/11. I had to act. I don’t care if it created more enemies. I had to act.

 

Fox News Slips and Acknowledges That Karl Rove is a McCain Advisor – Rove first appeared on Fox as an “FNC political contributor” on Super Tuesday (February 5), and it took the network 118 days to acknowledge his affiliation with McCain. The mention slipped out during an interview with Rove on Hannity & Colmes.

 

John McCain and the Republican Party Are Out of Touch with the Majority of Americans – A new Gallup poll finds that a large majority of Americans support meeting with leaders of foreign countries who are considered our enemies. Republicans would rather shoot first, talk later.

 

 

 

McCain Says He Would Secretly Spy on Americans
If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president’s wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.

 

As Neocons Try to Tell us That McCain Disagreed With Bush About Iraq, Look at Mc Cain’s Long Record of Being Wrong About Iraq

On the Run-Up to War
“I cannot believe that there is an Iraqi soldier who is going to be willing to die for Saddam Hussein.”
“I think we could go in with much smaller numbers than we had to do in the past.”
“I don’t believe it’s going to be nearly the size and scope that it was in 1991.”
“He’s [referring to Ahmed Chalabi] a patriot who has the best interests of his country at heart.”
On Being Greeted as Liberators
“Absolutely. Absolutely.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that we will prevail and there’s no doubt in my mind, once these people are gone, that we will be welcomed as liberators.”

On a Rapid Victory and Mission Accomplished
“I think the victory will be rapid, within about three weeks.”
It’s clear that the end is very much in sight…It won’t be long. It, it’ll be a fairly short period of time.”
When asked that “many argue the conflict isn’t over, “Well, then why was there a banner that said mission accomplished on the aircraft carrier?”

“I’m confident we’re on the right course.”
We’re either going to lose this thing or win this thing within the next several months.”
On the Safe Streets of Baghdad
“[There] there “are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today.”
“There’s problems in America with safe neighborhoods as we well know.”

 

How “Clean Coal” Cooks Your Brain – “Clean coal” is not an actual invention, a physical thing – it is an advertising slogan. Like “fat-free donuts” or “interest-free loans,” “clean coal” is a phrase that embodies the Bush-era faith that there is an easy answer for every hard question in America today. We can have a war in Iraq without sacrifice. We can borrow more than we can afford without worrying about how we’ll pay it back. We can end our dependency on oil by powering our SUVs with ethanol made from corn. And we can keep the lights on without superheating the climate through the magic of “clean coal.”

Here’s another: mining and burning coal remains one of the most destructive things human beings do on this earth. It destroys mountains, poisons water, pollutes the air, and warms the atmosphere. True, if you look at it strictly from the point of view smog-producing chemicals like sulfur dioxide, new coal plants are cleaner than the old coal burners of yore. But going from four bottles of whiskey a week down to three does not make you clean and sober.

From Big Coal’s point of view, this is a brilliant way to frame the question. If the choice is, coal or anarchy, they win. This framing also disarms environmental arguments – yes, it’s too bad that mountaintop removal mining has destroyed or polluted 1200 miles of streams in Appalachia and that the Environmental Protection Agency projects a loss of more than 1.4 million acres – an area the size of Delaware – by the end of the decade.

But hey, if it’s a choice between losing flattening West Virginia and keeping our lights on, good-bye West Virginia!

 

McCain Gets a Zero From the League of Conservation Voters – John McCain has managed to garner a zero rating from the League of Conservation Voters on his environmental record, including missing every vote where he might have voted against “petroleum companies and other special interests” so as to provide resources for those “green technologies” he claims to so strongly favor. Yes, McCain’s Green Straight Talk Express is actually his Dirty Energy Non-Action Machine.

John Cornyn Also Gets a Zero From the League of Conservation Voters ;

Kay Bailey Hutchison Gets a 7% Rating

 

Fox News Analyst Says the Lack of Obama Being Radical Shows He’s Been Hiding That He’s a Radical and He’s Going to Convert Us to a Stalinist Form of Government – On the 6/2/08 Hannity & Colmes on Fox News, conservative Dick Morris said, “[Obama] served in the Illinois State Senate for eight years and the United States Senate for four. I guess he was hiding his radical views all this time just so that he could hoodwink the American public into voting for him and then next January convert us to a Stalinist form of government.” (Just how crazy do you think the right-wing will get in the coming months? – JLV)

Regards,

Jim