Dancing For Dollars On A Woman’s Grave
So the crazy loons at Right March are on the warpath again, I really do love being on their mailing list, and this time they are using the name of Terri Schiavo to raise money for Republican candidates. They even tell me in an email alert, “If we believe Terri should not have been killed by starvation, then we have a duty before God to do something now in her name. Please, help the RightMarch.com PAC—help support the legislators on “Terri’s List” that tried so hard to save her life.” Well, if God says I have to give money to Republican political campaigns, then I guess I’ve got no choice. Jesus these people are sick.
Too bad for the Dems that God is a Republican because he’s a damn good fundraiser. All the star power in Hollywood can’t compete with the big guy upstairs when it comes to bringing in the dough, have you seen those Mega Churches? It is beyond cynical to use God in order to raise political funds and it is beyond comprehension why it will work so effectively. These people are Karl Rove’s wet dream and in addition to extorting their money, he will make sure the Party locals put some red meat on the ballot for them as well. Anyone who believes that God would prefer that they send donations to Rick Santorum and Tom DeLay rather than their local food bank, might want to reconsider their faith.
Christians who think this kind of pandering and manipulation of faith is disgusting, better start speaking up. The delusional fundies who will fall for this shit won’t listen to us heathens, so it’s up to those on the inside to show them the light. Maybe point out that if they spent more time actually reading their Bible and less time listening to preachers and politicians interpret it for them, our county wouldn’t be in such trouble, engaging as we are in unprovoked wars of choice and waging a war on drugs instead of a war on poverty.
posted by The (liberal)Girl Next Door @ 3:05 PM
27 Comments:
It sure seems like they're praying to Jesus and Satan is answering, doesn't it?
Amen and hallelujah ... too much of that old time religion around ... designed to enable the dictators, emperors, despots, to keep the masses poor, subservient, scared, and ready to fight to defend those who profit off their backs ... and too much angry, violent religion ... and too much religion that doesn't seem to give a shit about making life as happy and comfortable as possible in the here and now ... while thinking about doing the same for the here's and nows of those who will dwell on this spinning rock in the near future, geological-timewise ...
Kurt Vonnegut's new book tells it like it is:
The Beatitudes, "Sermon on the Mount," is Jesus.
Ten Commandments ~ Moses.
These freaks don't know their religion anymore than the freaks who are in power know the constitution.
The best reference to the Schiavo case, relative to Sen. Bill Frist and his
stunning hypocrisy, was the comment describing Frist as: "Bill...follow the balloon Terri can see but my trust is blind....Frist"!
I try to imagine him attending the AMA or Cardiac Surgeons conventions and being asked about his 'video diagnostician' expertise!
Yes it does Neil!
And Rory, your mention of emperors reminded me of this great cartoon I saw recently at www.piratesandemperors.com. If you haven't seen it, check it out, it's great. I may have to put up a link on my front page.
Roberta--right on target as always. Freaks for sure.
Dale--I love the imagery of a bunch of docs poking fun at old Bill
One more thought on this ~ it wasn't that long ago that these people would have been immediately rushed to an institution and instantly placed on serious meds. Strict medical supervision would be administered for the psychologically, emotionally and mentally ill ~ before Reagan dissolved the health care programs for the affected.
Watch Bram Stoker's Dracula and see Tom Waites as the lunatic Renfield. We can get a great insight to George W. Bush, the Renfield of America.
Thanks MM, you're the best!
I love Tom Waites and I haven't seen that movie since BB (before bush) so I'll have to pull it out and watch it again.
Roberta,
I see your Renfield/Bush comparison and raise you:
I saw Phyllis Schlafy as a video guest on Bill Maher's show
a few months ago. She resembled Gary Oldman's Dracula in the same movie.
Mollie,
Google up a pic of Phyliss before viewing Gary Oldman's
'version' of her!
Four words......
Coretta Scott King Funeral
oh and five more words...
Paul Wellstone Memorial and Rally
Yes Anonymous, two wonderful events that celebrated the life's work and spirit of two amazing tireless fighters for social justice.
Hey 'Anonymous', do you also deplore the 'crocodile tears' like condemnation of
the speakers at the funeral
mostly from the members of the party that gave us the 'Southern Strategy'.
A strategy totaly antithetical to everything the Kings stood for and a stragegy acknowleged in the apology for it from the chairman of the GOP, Rick Mehlman.
No. They are THE definition of "dancing for dollars on a man/woman's grave"
Pick up a mirror once in a while would ya?
Sheesh.
Hey Dale, spin it any way you want. But the "dancing for dollars" was seen by american voters, and I'm sure the results will be much the same as after the Wellstone display at the polls come this November.
I swear you guys will never get it.
Anonymous, You can spin it any way you want it but there was nothing apolitical about either Paul Wellstone or Coretta Scott King. Any funeral or memorial service in their honor that ignored the issues that they cared so deeply about would be offensive to their memory. Who are you and Kate O'Beirne to decide what is "appropriate" at a funeral? The people who knew and loved both Paul and Coretta most weren't offended, in fact they cheered, so why do you think it your responsibility to be offended on their behalf?
Oh I'm not offended, personally. I'm actually delighted when you guys pull this stuff because it works in my party's favor at voting time.
A donkey does what a donkey does. It's all part and parcel of what you've become.
It's just entertaining in light of the title of the post. You guys so nakedly politic at funerals, but seem completely oblivious to it.
Anonymous said...
Simon, I have no brain
Anonymous said...
Simon, I have no heart
Anonymous said...
Simon, I have no soul
Anonymous said...
Simon, I have no breath
Simon said...
Anonymous, vote for Bush and he can be your life so you don't have to live it. How wonderful for you to be one of the mass idiots.
That's ALL you got Roberta? Dang! I am SORELY disappointed.
Anonymous ~ "Me thinks the lady doth protest too much."
You prove you're a liar in your inability to NOT respond. But you go ahead and be in the denial, you, a legend in your own mind. However, every time you write, everyone knows EXACTLY how you truly think and feel.
So, please "A" write some more because you're fun to psychoanalyze and as a matter of fact, at least with you we can get a little satisfaction with knowing you can’t stand for your false idol to be exposed and you squirm so nicely when you give your best attempt to appear “Anonymous”.
tee hee, thanks for the cosmic giggle and now it's your turn . . .
Hey Anonymous, perhaps the following will not disappoint you!
First of all, being accused of 'spin' by someone from the 'Right' is like
being accused of spin by a dreidal!
You could Google up the 'Southern Strategy' and confirm not only the
accuracy of my remarks RE the Republican Party but the
appropriateness of citing many of the critics of the funeral remarks
for squeezing out crocodile tears.
There are reasons why the the % of support from African Americans for
the Republican Party are hovering around zero-point-shit!
For your enlightenment and amusement please find a copy and paste RE
Fox's Morton Kondacke and his dim bulb observation on the edited
version of the reaction to Rev lowrey's WMD remarks.
I also enjoyed FAUX News using the clip from 'Independence Day' to
hype the failed plot on the 'Liberty' Tower. I'm hoping for news of
a failed plot from extra terrestrials accompanied by a clip from 'Mars Attacks'!
I know there's that NeoCon remark about how they 'create their own reality'
but sheesh!
DH
After Fox edited out applause following Lowery's remarks at King funeral, Kondracke expressed surprise at audience's muted reaction
Summary: Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume showed an edited video clip of Rev. Joseph Lowery's remarks at Coretta Scott King's funeral, during which he mentioned the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Lowery's remarks were greeted with 23 seconds of applause and a standing ovation, but the clip Fox News aired presented nine seconds of applause and little hint of the standing ovation without noting that the clip had been doctored. After seeing the clip, Roll Call's Morton Kondracke concluded that the audience "wasn't exactly uproarious in its response" to Lowery.
The February 8 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume featured an edited video clip of civil rights leader Rev. Joseph Lowery's address at the February 7 funeral of civil rights activist Coretta Scott King, during which Lowery mentioned the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. While Lowery's remarks were greeted with 23 seconds of applause and a standing ovation, the clip Fox News aired presented nine seconds of applause and little hint of the standing ovation -- and no indication that the clip had been doctored. The clip was aired during a segment in which guest host Chris Wallace asked his "Fox All-Star" panel to comment on Lowery's remarks. Fox's editing of the clip apparently had some effect on Wallace's own guest, Roll Call executive editor Morton M. Kondracke, who while apparently having formed one impression based on what he had heard about the crowd's response to the remarks, concluded from the curtailed video that "it wasn't exactly uproarious in its response."
After the clip aired, Kondracke stated:
KONDRACKE: What was interesting to me was, when I saw it -- and on this tape, the crowd did not go as wild as you -- as it sounded as though it did at the time and as various people have represented. I mean, I thought that the crowd basically treated President Bush very respectfully, and it wasn't exactly uproarious in its response to either Lowery or to President Carter. So I thought it -- on the whole -- it was a -- it was quite a dramatic and sensitive tribute to Mrs. King.
Media Matters for America previously noted that CNN similarly spliced out the majority of the applause following Lowery's "weapons of mass destruction" comment, also with no indication that it had done so.
Dale, sugar, your issue is with FoxNews, clearly, and not me. I stopped watching FoxNews many, many moons ago. Well, completely after Katrina hit.
I heard Lowery via the radio so I was completely aware of the applause that followed his and Carter et al.'s remarks.
But if you find it entertaining, by all means, watch it to your heart's content.
Roberta, ......hmmm....well as my Mother used to say,"You aren't worth the powder it would take to blow you up."
SAHMmy (my usual moniker on the nets)
Did a little too much truth accidently get through on Fox during Katrina? Like Sheppard Smith telling viewers that not only were people dehydrated, starving and dying in the streets, but that those who tried to get out were barred from doing so by armed guards keeping them in?
No. I discovered during Katrina that Fox was just like the rest of the MSM. Meaning that Fox is just as full of crap as all the other media outlets.
You must not read much, but the facts that have been uncovered since Katrina prove that NOBODY reported accurately during the Katrina disaster. There was very little truth reported at all.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/
nation/la-na-rumors27sep27,0,5492806,full
.story?coll=la-home-headlines
"The National Guard spokesman's accounts about rescue efforts, water supplies and first aid all but disappeared amid the roar of a 24-hour rumor mill at New Orleans' main evacuation shelter. Then a frenzied media recycled and amplified many of the unverified reports."
" "It just morphed into this mythical place where the most unthinkable deeds were being done," Bush said Monday of the Superdome.
His assessment is one of several in recent days to conclude that newspapers and television exaggerated criminal behavior in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, particularly at the overcrowded Superdome and Convention Center.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday described inflated body counts, unverified "rapes," and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of "scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials."
Indeed, Mayor C. Ray Nagin told a national television audience on "Oprah" three weeks ago of people "in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."
But the biggest lie reported by the media was that the victims were primarily blacks. Again and again "So poor, and so black" “(We) in the media are ignoring that fact that almost all the victims in New Orleans are black and poor.”
WRONG.
"Did New Orleans blacks die at a higher rate than whites in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? On the evidence so far, the answer is no. Of the 1,100 bodies recovered in Louisiana after Katrina, 836 were found in New Orleans, and the state has released data on 568 of those that were judged to be storm-related. As of last week, blacks, which were 67.2 percent of the pre-storm population of New Orleans, account for 50.9 percent of the city victims so far identified by race. It was New Orleans Caucasians who died way out of proportion to their numbers-28 percent of the population, 45.6 percent of the city’s known Katrina deaths by race."
If I want to watch misreporting, if I want to hear distortions of news, I can tune into any of the networks, I don't need FOX for that.
So no, I saw no responsible, measured, or accurate reporting on FOX so I turned it off and haven't turned it back on.
I get my news from other sources, exclusively, like a huge variety of websites including your cute little blog here.
:)
SAHMmy
Anonymous,
IF I were female, I'd almost certainly take offense at the 'sugar' moniker. But, since I'm not, I'll just chalk it up to poor judgment on your part.
I only learn of Faux News
transgressions from blogs or if I tary for a moment while channel surfing.
You've yet to address my central argument about the GOP, it's 'Southern Strategy' and the consequent insincerity of their outrage at the funeral speakers.
Give it a shot, if you can.
Just finished reading your Katrina diatribe. Notwithstanding the misreporting, the fact is that the crony led FEMA that performed so ably when it was a stand alone agency during the Clinton years, failed miserably. Nothing inherently wrong with cronyism, as long as you appoint competent cronys!
DH
Anonymous,
P.S. RE your remarks to Roberta, if brains were snot you wouldn't have enough to blow your nose!
DH
Dale,
"IF I were female, I'd almost certainly take offense at the 'sugar' moniker. But, since I'm not, I'll just chalk it up to poor judgment on your part."
That's because you've been well and neutered. You're clearly a gender-sensitive guy.
I'll get back to you on the GOP and this Southern Strategy, fear not.
Since when is the presentation of facts espousing a view different than the echo chamber I'm currently visiting a "diatribe"? Gosh, liberals and their open-mindedness.
And when, before Katrina, has FEMA ever been given the role of First Responder?
Hugs.
SAHMmy
"You said: Roberta,.....hmmm....well as my Mother used to say,"You aren't worth the powder it would take to blow you up." SAHMmy (my usual moniker on the nets)
SAHMmy ~ Wow! In the event I was to entertain superstition, you'd stand a chance of frightening me.
Instead I pity you.
Let's see, think thoughts of violence and the energy is like thunder and write thoughts of violence, words can easily be sword and on it goes, toxic shame.
The game of those ~ whose wound of the soul, "I'm not worthy," devours its host from the inside out.
And, it becomes obvious in their lust for the fantasy of physical violence from mind to verbal statement and the angry little child doesn't recognize the boogy man isn't real so the twisted mind conjures up their very own diseased literary prostitute to use as a sick weapon.
SAHMmy/Anonymous ~ You're not dumb and that's the lucky part. Now that you have this free analyses of your mental illness, you can figure out where to go from here.
Anonymous:
You call it 'gender sensitive' I call it an aversion to being patronized. By the way, I enlisted in the USMCR when I was 19. PLEASE confirm for me that like virtually EVERY single Republican chickenhawk I've ever confronted, (is there any other kind?) you never served. This is such a slam dunk it's not even fair!
The 'Southern Strategy' shouldn't require much mental 'heavy lifting'. Google it with Mehlman's name to cut to the chase RE my point.
While you're Googling, Google up the info of how many Iraqi war vets are running for Congress as Dems VS those running as Republicans. It was running around 35-2 last time I checked! My point is that you and your fellow Repugs talk tough and support policies that send other people's kids to fight....but you just don't show up yourselves.
Here's the skinny on FEMA, read it and weep!
By Frank James and Andrew Martin
Washington Bureau
Published September 3, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Government disaster officials had an action plan if a major hurricane hit New Orleans. They simply didn't execute it when Hurricane Katrina struck.
Thirteen months before Katrina hit New Orleans, local, state and federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill that Ronald Castleman, then the regional director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, called "a very good exercise."
More than a million residents were "evacuated" in the table-top scenario as 120 m.p.h. winds and 20 inches of rain caused widespread flooding that supposedly trapped 300,000 people in the city.
"It was very much an eye-opener," said Castleman, a Republican appointee of President Bush who left FEMA in December for the private sector. "A number of things were identified that we had to deal with, not all of them were solved."
Still, Castleman found it hard to square the lessons he and others learned from the exercise with the frustratingly slow response to the disaster that has unfolded in the wake of Katrina. From the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans to the Mississippi and Alabama communities along the Gulf Coast, hurricane survivors have decried the lack of water, food and security and the slowness of the federal relief efforts.
"It's hard for everyone to understand why buttons weren't pushed earlier on," Castleman said of the federal response.
As the first National Guard truck caravans of water and food arrived in New Orleans on Friday, former FEMA officials and other disaster experts were at a loss to explain why the federal government's lead agency for responding to major emergencies had failed to meet the urgent needs of hundreds of thousands of Americans in the most dire of circumstances in a more timely fashion.
But many suspected that FEMA's apparent problems in getting life-sustaining supplies to survivors and buses to evacuate them from New Orleans--delays even Bush called "not acceptable"--stemmed partly from changes at the agency during the Bush years. Experts have long warned that the moves would weaken the agency's ability to effectively respond to natural disasters.
Less clout, experience
FEMA's chief has been demoted from a near-Cabinet-level position; political appointees with little, if any, emergency-management experience have been placed in senior FEMA positions; and the small, 2,500-person agency was dropped into the midst of the 180,000-employee Homeland Security Department, which is more oriented to combating terrorism than natural disasters. All that has led to a brain drain as experienced but demoralized employees have left the agency, former and current FEMA staff members say.
The result is that an agency that got high marks during much of the 1990s for its effectiveness is being harshly criticized for seemingly mismanaging the response to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The growing anger and frustration at FEMA's efforts sparked the Republican-controlled Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to announce Friday that it has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday to try to uncover what went wrong.
Meanwhile, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) called on Bush to immediately appoint a Cabinet-level official to direct the national response.
"There was a time when FEMA understood that the correct approach to a crisis was to deploy to the affected area as many resources as possible as fast as possible," Landrieu said. "Unfortunately, that no longer seems to be their approach."
John Copenhaver, a former FEMA regional director during the Clinton administration who led the response to Hurricane Floyd in 1999, said he was bewildered by the agency's slow response this time.
It had been standard practice for FEMA to position supplies ahead of time, and the agency did preposition drinking water and tarps to cover damaged roofs near where they would be needed. In addition, FEMA has coordinated its plans with state and local officials and let the Defense Department know beforehand what type of military assistance would be needed.
"I'm a little confused as to why it took so long to get the military presence running convoys into downtown New Orleans," Copenhaver said.
And there isn't an experienced disaster-response expert at the top of the agency as there was when James Lee Witt ran it during the 1990s. Before Michael Brown, the current head, joined the agency as its legal counsel, he was with the International Arabian Horse Association.
That loss of experienced personnel might explain in part why FEMA was not able to secure buses sooner for the evacuation of New Orleans, a step anticipated by the hurricane disaster simulation last year.
Peter Pantuso, president of the American Bus Association, said, "I have a hard time believing there is any game plan in place when it comes to coordinating or pulling together this volume of business," referring to FEMA's effort to obtain hundreds of buses to move tens of thousands of evacuees from New Orleans. "And what happens in two or three weeks down the road when all of these people are moved again?"
When FEMA became part of the Homeland Security Department, it was stripped of some functions, such as some of its ability to make preparedness grants to states, former officials said. Those functions were placed elsewhere in the larger agency.
FEMA capability `marginalized'
"After Sept. 11 they got so focused on terrorism they effectively marginalized the capability of FEMA," said George Haddow, a former FEMA official during the Clinton administration. "It's no surprise that they're not capable of managing the federal government's response to this kind of disaster."
Pleasant Mann, former head of the union for FEMA employees who has been with the agency since 1988, said a change made by agency higher-ups last year added a bureaucratic layer that likely delayed FEMA's response to Katrina.
Before the change, a FEMA employee at the site of a disaster could request that an experienced employee he knew had the right skills be dispatched to help him. But now that requested worker is first made to travel to a location hundreds of miles from the disaster site to be "processed," placed in a pool from which he is dispatched, sometimes to a place different from where he thought he was headed.
Pleasant said he knew of a case in which a worker from Washington state was made to travel first to Orlando before he could go to Louisiana, losing at least a day. What's more, that worker was told he might be sent to Alabama, not Louisiana, after all
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