THE BOGUS FLAG STORY.... It seems Fox News and some far-right blogs are excited about the latest in a series of lies from the McCain campaign -- the notion that thousands of American flags from the Democratic convention were going to be thrown away.
Like far too many of the stories pushed by the McCain campaign, and embraced by Fox News and far-right blogs, it's not true...
[But there is a better reason for not being a Republican today: the Republican Party stands on the brink of becoming the Fascist American party. Republicans seem ready and willing to trample everything my son stood up for when he put on the uniform of United States.
he Fascist side of the Republican Party is summed up in her historicline: "He's worried that someone won't read them their rights." Thissnide off-the-cuff remark embodies everything that has gone wrong withAmerica since George W. Bush became president.
In this one little aside is the American equivalent of another"little" phrase: "the final solution." Palin's is an attitude thatplaces ideology and rabid nationalism above the law. For her, wartrumps ethics. This attitude has turned America into a country thattortures prisoners, has put us on the wrong side of our Constitution,has taken the country that liberated Auschwitz and made it a place thatnow uses torture, intimidation and the desecration of human freedom asa means of war.
Palin and the Republican Fascists believe that we are so right, sogreat and so powerful that we no longer need to obey our own laws oreven -- in the case of global warming -- the laws of nature. We canstart wars for no reason and then claim "victory". We can torture inthe name of Jesus.
Sarah Palin is a member of a theologically extreme church, one thatviews history as in its "final dispensation" wherein Jesus is about toreturn and wherein America can help this event along by spurring theapocalypse by goading Israel into a war eternal with its Arabneighbors.
So, our new Republican Fascism is actually Fascism with a twist ofnutty Evangelical theology, much like German Fascism evolved with anutty twist of bizarre superstition and stargazing on the part ofHitler and many leading Nazis who were as enamored by the occult as bypolitics.
We have seen the next Mussolini and she's wearing a skirt. Don't letPalin's "hockey mom" image fool you. Sarah Palin is the face of apost-democracy America, post-constitutional and post-freedom America.She is the home town "little Austrian" vice presidential candidate to acancer-riddled old man who, chances are high, won't see the end of hisfirst term in office if he becomes president due to illness and oldage. The woman who said that we don't need to read people their rightsmay well be the next president.
The Fascist tactic that destroyed the democracies of old Europe wassimple: mock and belittle your opponents, nibble at the edges of therule of law, promote violence, and grasp at a weird religion of"destiny" (their version of American exceptionalism) with an "us"against "them" mentality, blame others, including the intellectualclasses and the media, pit the working people against the perceivedelite (Jews in Europe and today's university-educated Democratic Partyleaders in America), take power based on grievance and fear and thenset aside the constitution altogether based on claimed threats byoutsiders.
This is the path that America is on with Palin and McCain. Theelection of 2008 is a choice between United States Constitution andLipstick Fascism.]
Police Deliver Baby Jesus At NorCal Gas Station
Category: News and Politics
Killing ourselves with hate LGBT teens are considering suicide at an alarming rate, attempting it more often than their heterosexual peers and are succeeding in those attempts more and more often...
POTTSVILLE, Pa. (AP) - The mother of a Shenandoah teenager charged with killing a Mexican man has sued the teen's school district, saying it has offered him too little daily instruction while he awaits trial...
Jeromie Cancel, the killer of gay NYC student Kevin Pravia in his Chelsea apartment over the weekend has shown no remorse over the killing following his confession: "Cancel, 22, brutalized 19-year-old Kevin Pravia, sat near the honor student's corpse to watch the horror movie 'Saw' and then bragged about the murder to his father, the sources said. Asked why he did it as he was marched out of the 10th Precinct stationhouse Tuesday night, Cancel shouted, 'Because I wanted to. You got a problem with that?' Cancel's father, Jesus Soto, said his son had turned up to boast after ...
A gay man is in critical condition a week after being stabbed seven times by a gang of youths in east London. Police are treating it as a homophobic crime: "Detectives are treating the street attack as attempted murder. The 20-year-old, known as Olly, was stabbed seven times behind Shoreditch Church on his way to a 'gay friendly' pub. Both Bethnal Green & Bow MP George Galloway and the leader of his Respect group on Tower Hamlets council have appealed for calm following last Thursday's stabbing...
Just One Decision You didn't see John McCain on Larry King last night because he pulled out over this humiliating interview between CNN's Campbell Brown and McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds on Sarah Palin. Bounds claims Palin has more national security experience than Obama yet can't name a single decision she made with regard to his flimsy argument about the Alaska National Guard or that experience. Palin's been canceling all her appearances as well.
HE KISSED him briefly in the stands and gave him his Olympic bouquet. Later, outside the glowing blue Water Cube, Matthew Mitcham and his partner, Lachlan Fletcher, firmly embraced, both shedding tears. Next it was his mother Vivien's turn to hold her golden boy, and more tears fell....
Sarah Palin gave a riveting and devastating nomination speech on Wednesday night. She shared her inspiring story and brave family, while savaging and ridiculing the celebrated life story of Barack Obama, a fellow barrier-breaking candidate, with whithering attacks on his work as a community organizer, senator, and author. She misrepresented his record and simply lied about her own, claiming to oppose earmarks that she supported, and dissembling on her $1.5 billion tax hike and record of raising sales taxes by 25 percent in Wasilla. Reviewing the McCain Campaign's bullying, "unprofessional" onslaught against anyone who notes Palin's extreme positions and dishonest claims, Time's Joe Klein urged reporters to face facts...
This is in addition the stuff we talked about Friday... Troopergate, hiring a known sexual harasser to replace the guy she fired, scrubbing her webpage, running up $20 million dollars in debt for her town when she was mayor, etc.* Palin claims to be a fiscal conservative, but she hired a lobbyist to bring earmark money to Wasilla, and was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it. Even McCain previously criticized her earmarks in his "pork lists."* An illegal mailer was sent on her behalf by a group that got money from Jack ...
Want even more reason to scoff at the notion that Sarah Palin is in any way "pro-gay." Well consider the following, which was just sent our way by the Human Rights Campaign: WASHINGTON – During her 2006 run for Governor, Sarah Palin filled out an Alaska Eagle Forum questionnaire that reveals even more about her stance and view on equality for LGBT equality. One of the questions the conservative group asked her on the questionnaire was her views on expanding hate crimes laws. The question reads, "Will you support an effort to expand hate crimes laws?" Palin ...
A 63-page research document assembled by her 2006 gubernatorial opponent Tony Knowles and published today by Politico details Sarah Palin's socially conservative positions and includes these points on gay rights: Palin Opposed Supreme Court Ruling Giving Same-Sex Couples Benefits: Asked if she would support the Alaska Supreme Court's ruling that spousal benefits for state employees should be given to same-sex couples, Palin responded, "No, I believe spousal benefits are reserved for married citizens as defined in our constitution." [Eagle Forum questionnaire] Palin Opposed Expanding Hate Crimes Laws: Asked if she would support an effort to expand hate crime laws, Palin ...
Rudy Giuliani answered that question Wednesday with a despicable performance in front of the Republican National Convention. The former U.S. attorney said he learned as a lawyer "if you don't have the facts, you gotta change 'em." Clearly, it's a lesson he absorbed, filling his vindictive speech with distortions and cheap shots...
Goodman has been charged with "obstruction" and released. Her producers, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, have also been released with pending felony riot charges...
The sister of a man who was killed in a Jacksonville, NC motel room in May, 1992 is finally talking talking to the media about an aspect of her brother's life that their family hid from police at the time of his death. Her brother, Walter R. Wallace, was gay, Jeanette Howe told Jacksonville Daily News last week. That might have been a significant factor in his death, but their parents and other members of his family did everything they could at the time of his death to hide that fact from police...
Earlier I noted Andrea Mitchell's reference to reports that the McCain camp had just sent a team of GOP lawyers up to Alaska to do what I guess you'd call a post-vetting of Sarah Palin. Now George Stephanopoulos appears to have more. George says the McCainers are sending a "rapid response team of about ten operatives that includes lawyers" to do the aforementioned deeper vet. A lot of attention is being given to Gov. Palin's daughter's situation. The much bigger deal is the expanding trooper-gate investigation, the fact that Palin lied in her Friday speech about her purported opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere, her apparent former membership in the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, and more...
[We learned last week that John McCain is not who he is -- not, at least, who he claims to be. The steady, straight-talking, country-first statesman his campaign has been selling is a fictional character. The real McCain is either alarmingly cynical or dangerously reckless.]
[Again, it's important to remember that Quayle became VP and that Thomas still sits on the Bench. Jon Stewart got it in 2000 when he said that the "black vote elected Bush", and then showed a picture of Justice Thomas. When will we "get it"? Mockery doesn't work. Seeing McCain as desperate or Palin as a non-entity also doesn't work, even if both are true. Simply put, Obama and Biden better not be dismissive or complacent; they need to keep their eyes on the prize.]
"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise." - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
A former Democratic National Committee chairman has apologized for suggesting that Hurricane Gustav's arrival as Republicans prepared to open their national convention was a sign that God favors Democrats.
[Among other less attention-grabbing news of the day: it was learned that Ms. Palin now has a private lawyer in a legislative ethics investigation in Alaska into whether she abused her power in dismissing the state's public safety commissioner; that she was a member for two years in the 1990s of the Alaska Independence Party, which has at times sought a vote on whether the state should secede; and that Mr. Palin was arrested 22 years ago on a drunken-driving charge.]
Members of "Fringe" Alaskan Independence Party Say Palin Was a Member in 90s
September 01, 2008 6:52 PM
The campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., likes to herald the independence of its new running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Officials of the Alaskan Independence Party say that Palin was once so independent, she was once a member of their party, which since the 1970s has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United States.
And while McCain's motto -- as seen in a new TV ad -- is "Country First," the AIP's motto is the exact opposite -- "Alaska First -- Alaska Always."
Lynette Clark, the chairman of the AIP, tells ABC News that Palin and her husband Todd were members in 1994, even attending the 1994 statewide convention in Wasilla. Clark was AIP secretary at the time.
"We are a state's rights party," Clark -- a self-employed goldminer -- tells ABC News. The AIP has "a plank that challenges the legality of the Alaskan statehood vote as illegal and in violation of United Nations charter and international law."
She says it's not accurate to describe the party as secessionist -- they just want a vote, she says.
Clark says the members of the AIP hold different opinions on what Alaska should be.
"My own separate opinion as an individual is that we should be an independent nation," Clark says. Others in the AIP "believe that being a commonwealth would be a good avenue to follow." Some advocate statehood -- but a fuller statehood than exists now.
Our political reporting has obviously proven to be more detail-oriented than the McCain campaign's vetting process. 
