Yes, I will gloat in the Democrat victory

I have not hidden the fact, even though I am politically independent, I dislike the GOP so much that I will not vote for a Republican. However, I did vote for one on Tuesday and that was Joe Testa who is Franklin County Auditor.

I am pleased as punch that the GOP lost BIG Tuesday. They lost most of the offices here in Ohio including Governor. They lost the majority in the US House and are on the brink of gaining control of the US Senate.

The national victory for the Democrats is a HUGE rebuke to President Bush, the GOP, and their neo-con cronies. They were the ones who squandered the budget surplus, got us into a protracted war in Iraq on fabricated evidence, and ruined our reputation in the world community.

The wingnuts can try and spin it anyway that will help them feel better but the GOP LOST and they lost big.

The Democratic victory was also a rebuke to the cable TV and radio talking flacks who had no clue what was going on, so much so that until today kept attacking Democrats on behalf of their GOP masters.

You can stick it up your asses Karl Rove and Fox News…..

After 2004, I really thought my fellow citizens were mentally challenged but after tonight they are just slow on the uptake. It took them 6 years but they finally arrived at my conclusions and turned the bums out.

The other small satisfaction I got is in two different races related to my fight to keep church and state separate.

Deborah Owens Fink, the state school board member who was leader of the movement to force Intelligent Design into Ohio public schools, lost her election to another term. She had only 28% of the vote as of 11 PM

In Indiana, Rep. James Hostettler (R-IN) who introduced the “Public Expression of Religion Act” that was passed as the “Veterans’ Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, and Other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2006”, lost his House seat tonight.

See also:
A Voter Rebuke For Bush, the War And the Right

President Clinton hands Fox News its ass

The buzz in the political pundit arena today is the interview former President Bill Clinton had with Fox News’ Chris Wallace.

It was suppose to be about Clinton’s work on his Global Initiative project which includes the support from Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch. Wallace instead tried to ambush Clinton about the current myth spinning in conservative pundit land – that Clinton didn’t do enough to kill Osma Bin Laden during his presidency. Republican pundits – with help from the conservative media like Fox News – have used the myth in an effort to deflect criticism of President Bush and his failure to capture or kill Bin Laden.

Instead Wallace had the tables turned on him and Fox News. It was lovely to watch. The website Media Matters has the full run down of the interview including video but here are some highlights:

CLINTON: Let’s look at what Richard Clarke said. Do you think Richard Clarke has a vigorous attitude about bin Laden?

WALLACE: Yes, I do.

CLINTON: You do, don’t you?

WALLACE: I think he has a variety of opinions and loyalties —

CLINTON: That’s right.

WALLACE: — but yes, he has a vigorous opinion.

CLINTON: He has a variety of opinions and loyalties now, but let’s look at the facts. He worked for Ronald Reagan. He was loyal to him. He worked for George H. W. Bush. He was loyal to him. He worked for me and he was loyal to me. He worked for President Bush; he was loyal to him. They downgraded him and the terrorist operation. Now, look what he said. Read his book and read his factual assertions — not opinions — assertions. He said we took “vigorous action” after the African embassies. We probably nearly got bin Laden.

WALLACE: Well, wait —

CLINTON: I authorized — now, wait a minute —

WALLACE: You launched a few — you threw a few cruise missiles.

CLINTON: No, no. I authorized — I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill him. The CIA was run by George Tenet that President Bush gave the Medal of Freedom to. He said he did a good job, setting up all these counterterrorism things. The country never had a comprehensive anti-terror operation until I came there.

Now if you want to criticize me for one thing, you can criticize me for this: after the Cole, I had battle plans drawn to go into Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban, and launch a full scale attack/search for bin Laden. But, we needed basing rights in Uzbekistan, which we got after 9-11. The CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible while I was there. They refused to certify. So, that meant I would have had to send a few hundred Special Forces in, in helicopters and refuel at night. Even the 9-11 Commission didn’t do that. Now, the 9-11 Commission was a political document, too. All I’m asking is: If anybody wants to say I didn’t do enough, you read Richard Clarke’s book.

WALLACE: Do you think you did enough, sir?

CLINTON: No, because I didn’t get him.

WALLACE: Right.

CLINTON: But at least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried. So, I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted.

So, you did Fox’s bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit-job on me, but what I want to know —

WALLACE: Now, wait a minute, sir, I asked a question. You don’t think that’s a legitimate question?

CLINTON: It was a perfectly legitimate question. But I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you’ve asked this question of. I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, “Why didn’t you do anything about the Cole?” I want to know how many people you asked, “Why did you fire Dick Clarke?” I want to know how many people you asked about this.

WALLACE: We asked — we asked. Have you ever watched Fox News Sunday, sir?

CLINTON: I don’t believe you asked them that.

WALLACE: We ask plenty of questions of —

CLINTON: You didn’t ask that, did you? Tell the truth, Chris.

WALLACE: About the USS Cole?

CLINTON: Tell the truth, Chris

WALLACE: With Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s plenty of stuff to ask.

CLINTON: Did you ever ask that? You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch is supporting my work on climate change. And you came here under false pretenses and said that you’d spend half the time talking about — you said you’d spend half the time talking about what we did out there to raise $7 billion-plus in three days from 215 different commitments. And you don’t care. But,

WALLACE: — and all I can say is, I’m asking you in good faith because it’s on people’s minds, sir. And I wasn’t —

CLINTON: Well, there’s a reason it’s on people’s minds. That’s the point I’m trying to make. There’s a reason it’s on people’s minds because they’ve done a serious disinformation campaign to create that impression. This country only has one person who’s worked against terror, from the terrorist incidents under Reagan to the terrorist incidents on 9-11. Only one: Richard Clarke.

And all I can say — anybody is — you want to know what we did wrong or right, or anybody else did? Read his book. The people on my political right, who say I didn’t do enough, spent the whole time I was president saying, “Why is he so obsessed with bin Laden? That was ‘Wag the Dog’ when he tried to kill him.” My Republican Secretary of Defense — and I think I’m the only president since World War II to have a Secretary of Defense from the opposite party — Richard Clarke, and all the intelligence people said that I ordered a vigorous attempt to get bin Laden and came closer apparently than anybody has since.

Wallace falsehood: said in Clinton interview that he asked Bush admin officials “plenty of questions” about failure to catch bin Laden

Clinton is right. The same right winger’s taking him to task for not doing enough to get Bin Laden back in 1998 and 1999 were the same ones who claimed he had launched the cruise missile attacks back then to distract from his sex scandal. President Bush did nothing about Bin Laden for the first 8 months of his administration even after the FBI and CIA reported in early 2001 that the Cole bombing was the work of Bin Laden and his group.

As Media Matters reports, Wallace asked about the lack of focus on Bin Laden to someone from the Bush administration only once – back in 2004 to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. No one in the Bush White House was asked about it before or after that.

9/11 still powerful after 5 years

The media has begun their observances of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This weekend I watched some of the documentaries on some of the channels like PBS and CBS and the images and feelings are still very powerful.

I still vividly remember what I was doing that morning in 2001 when the first reports came in, I was noodling on the computer. I had just come home from my night job and I had the “Today” show on in the background while I decompressed before going to bed. After seeing the 2nd plane hit the tower I didn’t go to bed until around Midnight the next day.

I wrote my thoughts into an essay posted on my iHumanism website.

September 11: A Humanist Response

I read on some website that non-theists didn’t speak up when the event happened, giving the impression that they didn’t care about the tragic event. That is just a myth. We just don’t put out press releases about how we feel. Even if we did we couldn’t afford to have it published.

The only real thing that I am still upset about is our present government officials are fear mongers. President Bush took the opportunity to give a speech the other day about “our” fight against terrorism. In one speech he claimed we were “safer” but faced increased threat of terrorism and that the war on terrorism includes Iraq (even though before we invaded in 2003 Iraq was not part of 9/11 or the war on terrorism).

The Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows and claimed the administration was doing “a hell of job” on security.

“I think we’ve done a pretty good job of securing the nation against terrorists. You know, we’re here on the fifth anniversary (of the 9/11 attacks). And there has not been another attack on the United States. And that’s not an accident, because we’ve done a hell of a job here at home,” Cheney said in the broadcast interview. “I don’t know how much better you can do than no, no attacks for the past five years.”

Cheney Defends Hardline White House Role

But he and the administration have not been questioned as to why the leader of the group that attacked the World Trade Center is still at large 5 years later. Or why a military solution has not defeated al-Qaida either abroad or closer to home.

Besides we’ve heard it before. Remember, Brownie was doing a great job as head of FEMA after Katrina and we know how that turned out.

Are we done with President Bush, yet?

How many illegal things must President Bush do before he is removed from office. I don’t know if this country can wait until January 20, 2009 when a new administration is sworn in.

The GOP came within a Senate vote of removing President Clinton because he lied about a blow job and President Bush gets free ride after free ride for violating the Constitution.

The latest is the disclosure in USA Today that all the major phone companies but one gave the NSA phone records the NSA requested.

Bush defenders said that the collection of phone records was necessary.

“This is nuts,” Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said of the furor over the latest disclosure. “We are in a war, and we’ve got to collect intelligence on the enemy, and you can’t tell the enemy in advance how you are going to do it. And discussing all of this stuff in public leads to that.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said his colleagues’ reaction was hard to understand. “Let’s talk about this in a rational way. We are in a war with terrorism. There are people out there who want to kill us, and I don’t think this action is nearly as troublesome as is being made out here.”

“Because they are not tapping our phones and getting our conversations. They are merely maintaining these numbers from which they have some system, apparently, to utilize those to match up with international phone calls connected to al Qaeda,” Sessions said.

But Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa slammed the database program.

“Why are the telephone companies not protecting their customers?” Grassley said. “I think they have a social responsibility to people who do business with them to protect our privacy as long there isn’t some suspicion that we’re a terrorist or a criminal or something.”

U.S. phone-call database ignites privacy uproar

And this:

While Capitol Hill debated the issue Friday, many lawyers voiced surprise that three major phone companies had agreed to make available to the National Security Agency the phone records of tens of millions of Americans.

That’s because Congress made it illegal 20 years ago for telephone companies and computer service providers to turn over to the government records showing who their customers had dialed or e-mailed.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 was passed when cell phones and the Internet were emerging as new forms of communication. Section 2702 of the law says these providers of “electronic communications . . . shall not knowingly divulge a record or other information pertaining to a subscriber or customer . . . to any government entity.”

Companies that violate the law are subjected to being sued and paying damages of at least $1,000 per violation per customer.

“It is simply illegal for a telephone company to turn over caller records without some form of legal process, such as a court order or a subpoena,” said James X. Dempsey, a lawyer for the Center for Democracy and Technology in San Francisco.

Transfer of phone logs may have been illegal

First of all we are not “at war”. The Bush nazis may think it is a war and they say it is to justify their illegal violations of the 4th amendment. Since it is not a declared war the Bill of Rights still apply and the government has to have a warrant or subpoena to get records of US citizens and to get a warrant the government must provide specific probable cause and the gathering has to be specific – they can’t troll for information.

I don’t know what is worse, a President subverting our rights or citizens who allow it. An ABC/Washington Post poll the day after the USA Today story broke showed that more than 60% of respondents said the gathering of the records by the NSA was ok with them.

According to the poll, 65 percent of those interviewed said it was more important to investigate potential terrorist threats “even if it intrudes on privacy.” Three in 10–31 percent–said it was more important for the federal government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats.

Poll: Most Americans Support NSA’s Efforts

This lack of concern reminds me of a famous quote:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. – Ben Franklin

I’m the Decider

I know this probably old – Internet time wise – but it still funny to me.

I’M THE DECIDER (Koo-Koo-Ka-Choo)

I am me and Rummy’s he, Iraq is free and we are all together
See the world run when Dick shoots his gun, see how I lie
I’m Lying…

Sitting on my own brain, waiting for the end of days
Corporation profits, Bloody oil money
I’m above the law and I’ll decide what’s right or wrong

I am the egg head, I’m the Commander, I’m the Decider
Koo-Koo-Kachoo

The page loads an mp3 of the song but if it doesn’t play when you visit use the following the link instead