Good Friday Grief and Gravy

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What's on your weekend menu? How about some sweet and sour blog fare! Right-wing rabbits are on the run, and their timing is no longer an asset. This week, there are as many questions Republicans need to answer as there will be eggs in most baskets: who took Tobin's White House calls? Who are the real big spenders in government? Who's the next Ann Coulter? And why has Bill Frist gone all Brokeback on his donors?

Love Thy Neighbor (Unless He's Gay)

With the help of news whores, elected Republicans, hate groups, and various other right-wing agenda-driven entities, Jesus' admonition to "love thy neighbor as thyself" has morphed into "love thy neighbor, but only if he's just like you." Brandoland has the story of Ruth Malhotra, the young woman who wants the Georgia Institute of Technology to return to the days of intolerance against gays. Brandoland writes: "In other words, the far-righties haveta take a stand for the right to be mean and dumb."

A simple Google search later... meet Club 100's conservative columnist, Ruth Malhotra:


And then, there's this:

Ruth Malhotra

gtg540h

Hey! My name is Ruth and I'm a 3rd year International Affairs, also double-minoring in Pre-Law and Spanish. I am from Atlanta, Georgia and have lived here all my life! Like most Tech students, classes take up the majority of my time, but I have lots of extra-curricular interests! On campus, I am involved with College Republicans, Alpha Delta Chi Sorority, and the Ivan Allen College Student Advisory Board. I also love traveling all over, hanging out with friends, and doing random things (like shopping!) I love to talk about almost anything (especially politics, religion, and baseball), so I would love to hear from you!

When not suing her liberal professors or promoting her gay-hating agenda, Ruth likes hanging out with her friends Jessica and Cardboard Cowboy George. Hmm. Ruth and Jessica look like they're having a lot of fun together, don't they, Mary?

Mortaljive has a question about Ms. Malhotra: "Isn't her bigotry based upon writings in the Old Testament? Doesn't the Old Testament have some things to say about a woman's role in the scheme of things?" Quintessential Jesus expert, JC Christian, penned a letter to Ruth which ended with: "P.S. I think you've finally found your ticket to conservative stardom. The academic persecution angle wasn't quite cutting it."

My favorite Ruth M. quote: "Ever since I came to college, I've noticed a bias either in the way the professor conducts the class (or) the skewed selection of textbooks."

In other Jesus news, Catholic Bishops have taken a stand against those who would draft legislation denying medical care and common decency toward illegal immigrants. Holy Fool writes:

They (Catholic bishops) say that we need to treat our neighbors with the respect their dignity as people entitles them to. They say that it's immoral to felonize people that come to the US illegally, as well as the people that help them. They oppose draconian enforcement measures that don't necessarily respond to the problems they're intended to correct.

(snip)

Are we sure we want to gainsay them? Then what say we? And does it honor CST (Catholic Social Teaching)?

Good questions, Holy Fool. Fortunately, Republican'ts have since backed away from both the felony status and Good Samaritan prohibition parts of their immigration bill: Jesus - 2; Republicans - 0.

More Questions

Who in the White House took Phone-Jammin' James Tobin's calls? Tobin called one number in the White House Office Of Political Affairs dozens of times during his illegal operation. The AP has asked, but stonewalling has commenced. TPM Muckraker has a theory.

Who's the biggest spender? From Bartcop.com (Weekend-Monday April 8-10, 2006, Volume 1742 - Mr. Pitiful):


Now, if we could only convince the Sixpack family that our national debt is a bad thing. Oh, well.

Elizabeth De La Vega (via TomDispatch) asks this week's prize-worthy question:

Is a President, on the eve of his reelection campaign, legally entitled to ward off political embarrassment and conceal past failures in the exercise of his office by unilaterally and informally declassifying selected -- as well as false and misleading -- portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate that he has previously refused to declassify, in order to cause such information to be secretly disclosed under false pretenses in the name of a "former Hill staffer" to a single reporter, intending that reporter to publish such false and misleading information in a prominent national newspaper?

Naturally, BushCo is demanding that the name Plame isn't included in this leak debate. Heavy sigh. For the updated Wilson/Plame timeline and how the latest revelations fit into it, check out Larry Johnson's verbal vivisection of Christoper Hitchens at TPM Cafe.

Timing Is Everything

Has Bill Frist gone all Brokeback? Al Kamen (at The Huffington Post) describes the Fristian VOLPAC invitation he received from the video diagnostician/ US senator. Let's just say that now is probably not the best time for the bible-thumping presidential wannabe to require cowboy belt buckle and zipper action in order to view the invitation particulars.


Ride 'em, Frist Boy!

Sometimes you just have to laugh, but this is not one of those times. Stop laughing. This is serious, y'all. Senator John McCain's Straight Talk Express has just crashed smack dab into the pseudo-religious insanity that is Jerry Falwell. The Unknown Candidate has the details and the Daily Show video link (Crooks And Liars). Bad timing, McCain. Bad. Terrible. I'm trying not to laugh.

And then there's interestingly timed "revelation" from the Italian government that the Nigerian consul and his trusty personal assistant forged the infamous Niger yellowcake documents. Josh Marshall debunked this theory ages ago, and now he does it again.

It's a simple chain of custody issue. Read up on the story and you'll find that the US didn't get the documents from the British or from the French. They got them from ... right, SISMI. The Italians sent details of the documents and then text transcriptions of them to Washington in late 2001 and early 2002. And everyone else got them, either directly or indirectly, from the Italians as well.

So... if the British got the forgeries from the Italians, and Bush claims that "British intelligence has learned...," does that let Georgie off the hook? Hell, no.

They Plant News Stories, Don't They?

Shortly after the Claude Rains Shocker that news outlets had been caught airing canned news (trans. propaganda) again - and this time on a grand scale - a mild-mannered dissenter confronted the president at one of his little speechifying events. Consider this: no Bush goons appeared to "escort" Mr. Harry Taylor to the door, and no pissed off freepers in the crowd took him down, either. If you missed the polite exchange, American Progress.org has the video, From The Desk Of Patrick J. Fitzgerald has part of the transcript (go there for this post, but look around; it's a cool blog), and Crooks And Liars has the full transcript.

Curious. Bruce Burch at Head On Radio was there, and he thinks he knows why Mr. Taylor was not only allowed to speak his mind but encouraged by Bush to continue uninterrupted. We can thank Burch's knowledge of American art for this photo of Harry Taylor and his Norman Rockwell doppelganger:


Propaganda is, by any other name, propaganda. By the way, you know it had to happen. BushSpeaks.com has photoshopped Harry Taylor and Rockwell's "Freedom of Speech" guy:


Cue Rod Serling. There's a sign post up ahead. Up ahead? We passed that sign years ago.

Funny Freeper Logic

My favorite freeper (freerepublic.com) response to Libby's outing of Bush and Cheney:

Obviously Libby is lying to save his own butt... President Bush said himself he isn't involved, and I believe him.

White House Press Briefing
September 29, 2003

McCLELLAN: ...that suggests White House involvement. There are anonymous reports all the time in the media. The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.

Um, Freeper? That was Scott McClellan, not George W. Bush. George W. Bush could eat a baby on live TV and this freeper would swear it was necessary for reasons of national security. By the way, neither Bush nor Cheney has denied Libby's statement.

DeLay's Departure Delay Causes Bodily Harm

Juanita at The World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon writes:

Tom DeLay's campaign and a member of the State Republican Executive Committee called for volunteers to meet on the first floor of the parking garage and "wreck" Lampson's press conference. One elderly Democratic woman was slightly injured when she was assaulted by a DeLay protester. The DeLay supporter first hit her in the face with a sign and then grabbed her hat and tried to pull it down over her eyes. Think about this: your Congressman asked his supporters to go out and assault old women. Okay, "wreck" them. But that's all right. It's all right. They're just helping prove what a stone-cold hypocrite DeLay and his supporters are. One day DeLay laments the "polarization" in the district and how horrible it is. The next day, he calls a hit.

Here's the Republican call to action:

We would meet tomorrow morning at 9:45 am on the first floor of the parking garage attached to the Marriott. Please get folks to call our campaign office 281.343.1333 and let us know they can do it – or e-mail Leonard Cash (in the cc field above) so that we can get some head count. Let’s give Lampson a parting shot that wrecks his press conference.

Juanita has art, and Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy has the video. Speaking of planted news stories...

Funky Punking

Disclaimer: I have to admit that I was snookered by a recent FOX News story until I got to the paragraph on Hip Hop discrimination. Only then did I look at the URL. Hmm. Guerilla Funk really had me going there for a while. Of course, I should've known that FOX would never admit that the media is skewed and slanted away from the truth. Check out the ?CLICK">screen capture.

Chain Link Of Command

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby claims that Bush knew about and approved the leak of secretly declassified national security information. How did Bush Know? According to Libby, Cheney got Bush's approval before he ordered Libby to leak said secretly declassified information. The DSCC Blog has the Bush leak quote chronology, which begins with his Sgt. Schultz impersonation ("I know nothing") and ends with Libby's most recent blab. What was the first image that entered your mind when you heard Libby's claim that Bush and Cheney were directly involved? Here's mine:


Good job, Scooter! Good for the soul and all that jazz.

Rudy G's First Campaign Photo Op?

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Guiliani took the stand during last Friday's Moussaoui sentencing hearing. Corporate crickets chirped, but 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser wrote a few choice words at The Huffington Post for Rudy:

Forgive me, but Giuliani is the person responsible for deciding to locate NYC's emergency command center in the World Trade Center along with a diesel fuel tank (against the advice of certain FDNY officials) before 9/11.

(snip)

How is a man who is responsible for such horrific and deadly judgments invited to give a victim's impact statement as to how 9/11 impacted him?

By these standards, should I expect Condoleezza Rice (Ms. "Nobody knew planes could be used as missiles"), George Tenet (Mr. "I failed to tell the FBI for 18 months that two known al Qaeda killers were living in San Diego and planning the 9/11 attacks"), and perhaps, George Bush (Mr. "I was reading a story about a pet goat while thousands of people perished and burned alive in the World Trade Center because I didn't want to alarm the school children") to provide victim's impact statements, as well?

Leave it to Rudy to turn a solemn courtroom event into a personal media moment of his own 9/11 triumph and tribulation. Get down off the cross, Rudy. Somebody needs the wood.

To round out your Easter weekend blog passion, bookmark Carnival Of The Liberals #10 at Pharyngula (the top ten blog posts out of 45 submissions - wow!), Office of the Independent Blogger's "Brokeback Washington" (best line: "... the President told the bottle, 'I wish I knew how to quit you.'"), and Ufa Blog (for a Russian point of view).

Enjoy your weekend, praise whomever or whatever you deify, and remember that Cadbury eggs are only available a short while longer. Share the gravy and celebrate the promise of hope in your personal grief. Peace.

-- Delilah Boyd