defeat the republicans

Heh, here’s a little sip of justice, with a slight bitter aftertaste. two election workers were convicted for rigging the recount of votes “to avoid a more thorough review” of Cuyahoga County in Ohio.

Yet another peculiar aspect of the 2004 election, one of many in that state (and others) that may have flipped the results and helped give us ::sigh:: 4 more years of these crooks and liars and warmongerers. I will be interested to hear about the investigations into Triad and Diebold voting machines also.

More hacking, this time of the 2006 elections.

Next up: a decent opposition party. Wouldn’t that be nice? argh.

With popular right-wing radical clerics (oops) Christian tele-evangelists like Pat Robertson calling jihad encouraging the assassinationthe end to the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, and

having what appears to be a religious crusadewar against Muslims (and for oil),

bizarre, culturally insulting, and inhumane methods of torturerendering of Muslim prisoners, and

serious attempts to destroychallenges to the constitutional separation between church and state with the control of both houses and now the Supreme court with the placing of John Roberts, and

whose party members in the houses consistently vote with the agenda of the Christian Coalitian.

More on (Conservative) American Christian doctrine, and an interesting essay about lack of compassion

In conversation, from now on, instead of “the Christian Right”, say “Extremist Republican Theocrats”

From Perrspectives last year:

Now thanks to the Bush administration, a Republican Congress and the conservative ascendancy, Americans need not travel to Kandahar to learn about the perils of theocratic rule. Right here in the United States, a network of politicians, religious leaders, “faith-based” organizations and (literally) their amen corner are working overtime to make a particularly onerous concept of Christianity the de facto law of the land. Armed with the Bible in one hand and the Patriot Act in the other, George W. Bush and his GOP jihadists threaten to fundamentally change the role of government in monitoring Americans’ lives, liberties and even bodies.

“So we just have to examine the Bush administration’s policies and actions. We don’t have to wield secret documents or massive conspiracy theories. We have to look at the fact that they built enduring military bases and didn’t rebuild the country.”

- Naomi Klein, ZNet, May 9th 2005 (reprinted from In These Times)

I would love to talk with any military personnel or many of the private contractors that have been working in Iraq, to back up or refute the claims in the article. You could try to convince me that the war was justified and lawful, just for a laugh. I am willing to suspend my disbelief if you can make a compelling case.

If anyone out there hasn’t heard about Luntz, here is some background. He coins the terms that we all know and love. He wraps the poison in the silken hankerchief.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/interviews/luntz.html

George Lakoff talks about him lots
http://www.alternet.org/election04/19511/

Luntz-speak examples:

“global warming” is now “climate change”

there, you don’t feel so angry now, do you? Climate change isn’t so bad, is it? It might even be a good thing! Yay for climate change! Especially, when you have environmental “experts” (an ECONOMIST) such as Myron Ebell of the CEI wading in.

the “initiative” to allow GOP cronies to destroy the last few remaining national parks is now “Healthy Forests Initiative”
healthy forests? why, that sounds marvelous! That’s a good thing, isn’t it? yes! we all want healthy forests! yes!

“make stuff up to justify the war in Iraq because there’s a lot of money to be made for me and my friends” is “the war on terror”

Even though no links between Saddam Hussein and Al Quaeda were found, no WMD’s, and the country has been crippled for years by sanctions, people still believe that the war in Iraq is somehow justified, because we are having a war on terror! (Psst… we are making terrorists, not defending our freedom)

It all falls apart when you start noticing the “context” (Luntz word) or “frame” (Lakoff word).

Spread the word…