Tough truth by Bill Maher

Any intro I could come up with would not be as good as his oration, so I'll just get out of the way...

New right-wing scapegoat - disease victims

Michael J. Fox suffers from Parkinson's disease. It's sad but true, except in the mind of right-wing pundits, pushing the talking points they're given.

Since Fox has a horrible disease that currently has no cure, he's highly motivated to want a cure to be found. Stem cell research is one possible avenue of scientific research that could lead to such a cure. Therefore, it seems quite logical that Fox has done some commercials promoting political candidates, including Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, who support finding cures for such diseases. This is especially poignant when those candidates' opponents are staunch opponents of such research. Yes, it is bizarre that anyone would oppose curing the sick, but many politicians are just given their agenda by their masters and just blindly follow it.

Well, because Fox had the audacity to support pro-cure politicians who also happen to be Democrats, the neocon talking points were crafted, and are being spewed out by the right-wing media outlets. Attack Fox, and don't question why. Just attack.

Funny, when Fox ran commercials two years ago supporting Arlen Specter, a Republican candidate who was in favor of scientific stem cell research, the right-wing media outlets didn't attack either Fox nor Specter.

Lastly, for those who like to think "oh, that's just Rush", he's not the only one. Fox "News" is pushing this talking point as well. The so-called "fair and balanced" Hannity show is also stating, as factual news, that Fox was faking his Parkinson's symptoms for the ads. How pathetic is that?

Ongoing cost of dubya's war

Except for the neocon pre-war propaganda before the war against Iraq, everybody knew it was going to be a huge expense. Little did most folk realize just how blatantly dubya's war (not to be confused with the war on terror - that's in Afghanistan and the US has all but given that up) was going to line the pockets of his friends.

We've all heard about the fleecing of the government by all the Halliburtons over there (remember, they were caught red-handed charging YOU millions for services never performed, and the Bush administration paid the fraudulent bill and then gave them more money). But just how bad is it? $1,200,000,000 was taken from US taxpayers and earmarked for buying the Iraqis new weaponry. While it seems like a bad idea to me to throw over a billion dollars of weaponry into the middle of a civil war, it gets even worse. $400,000,000 of that money was used to purchase outdated equipment, most of which could not be used. The rest of the US taxpayer money, $800,000,000, simply disappeared. That's right, somewhere between the Republicans holding the pursestrings, the US defense contractors that were supposed to supply new weapons to Iraq, and the US installed and backed Iraqi government, is simply went missing.

Thanks to the reckless spending of the Bush administration, the bonanza of wealth given to their friends, and the tax burden shift from the wealthy to the non-wealthy, US citizens are facing perhaps multiple generations of debt. This $1.2B fraud is just one of dubya's economic facets.

Continued corruption in Ohio

Remember back in 2004, when the electronic voting machines by Diebold where shown beyond any doubt to fraudulently place votes for Bush? Remember how Ohio decided the outcome of the presidential election? Remember how the president of Diebold was caught promising to "deliver Ohio to Bush"? Well, who was in charge of Ohio elections to make sure that illegal activity didn't take place? That would be Ken Blackwell. He's not an impartial bureaucrats, he's a Republican operative that has launched his own campaign for Governor of Ohio.

Much like Kathleen Harris, Bush's campaign manager for Florida, Blackwell was a neocon taking party orders, and was placed in a position to decide the outcome of the election. Now like Harris, he wants his payback. In Ken's case, it's the governor's mansion. Besides being endowed with the GOP money and political machine, he's just simply trying to get his opponent disqualified. What basis does he have for doing this? Why, because the Republican party has put him in charge of deciding who can run for office in Ohio.

The unofficial arm of the Blackwell campaign is claiming there's something wrong with Ted Strickland's (the Democratic nominee) voter registration, which Blackwell is in charge of maintaining, and he should therefore be disqualified from running for office. Of course, not only has Blackwell been placed in charge of voter registrations, this dispute has been given to Blackwell to decide. That's right, he gets to be the police, judge and jury of whether or not anyone is allowed to oppose him in the Ohio governor's race. How's that for an outstanding display of the new Republicans' version of democracy.

Oh, and of course, just in case this ridiculous plan isn't allowed to go through, the GOP is also mounting a swiftboat campaign against Strickland, spreading false rumors about homosexuality and child molestation. The rumors are completely baseless and of course Blackwell officially denies knowledge of his party spreading these rumors. Apparently, the GOP figures if they got caught covering up the Foley crimes, perhaps people will just assume it's true of all politicians. Sad, but these are the preferred tactics of what the Republican Party has devolved into.

More watcher watching - simply stop oversight

Republican Representative Jerry Lewis is one of the many GOP members of congress involved in the lobbyist bribery scandals. In Jerry's case, he's associated with Randy "Duke" Cunningham, and is the subject of a federal investigation. In fine neocon form, Rep. Lewis is responding to this corruption by abusing his position on the House Appropriations Committee. He has used his position to abruptly dismissed 60 investigators to prevent his questionable activities and kickbacks from being investigated. One of the investigators, a former FBI agent, says Lewis' decision "has in fact stalled all of the investigations on the staff" and "eviscerates the investigatory function." "There is little if any ability to do any oversight now," he said.

Anybody still think it's a good idea for a single political party to have absolute power over all 3 branches of government, with no oversight and a central theme of the party being more important than the people, the government, or ethics?

Latest propaganda

So, yesterday dubya signed the bill that officially allows torture of anyone that could be considered by his administration, foreign or domestic, that they deem a threat. It also retroactively declares legal previous torture by the Bush administration that was illegal when it was performed. Yes, that's bad, but wait till you hear some of the propaganda coming from the RNC on it, directly from the mouth of Ken Mehlman:

"Yesterday morning marked a significant victory in the War on Terror. President Bush signed vital legislation ensuring that America can continue interrogating dangerous terrorists like 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Under this new law, the brutal terrorists who planned the attack on our country can be brought to justice.

There is nothing more important than protecting the American people and ensuring that we have the intelligence we need to stop attacks on our homeland. The vast majority of Democrats in Congress did not agree. Shockingly, 84% of the Democrats in the House voted against interrogating terrorists, as did 73% of the Democrats in the Senate."


So, according to the neocon talking points:
Until we retroactively made it OK for dubya to have broken the law, we were not allowed to question terrorists, nor could we bring them to justice.
Democrats do not believe in protecting America and gathering intelligence to stop attacks.
Democrats do not want terrorists to face any questions of any kind.


Um, yea.
I know, just another typical day of lying for those guys, but it's still sad to see how blatantly and without conscience they do so time and time again.
Sad they just can't have the guts to say they like torturing people, rather than (or in addition to) using effective interrogation.

For those of you keeping score at home, even the CIA states that torturing a person until they say what you want them to say is not an effective means of gathering information. They have effective means, and use them. When the Bush administration orders torture, it's for sport and entertainment, not protection of the US.

Who watches the watchers

When news first broke about Florida Representative Mark Foley's attempted sexual seduction of his underage male staffers, the GOP leadership was quick to spring into action, denying everything and branding this news as a baseless attack and partisan lying.

Next, GOP leadership began falling all over itself, each trying louder than the other to express complete shock and outrage about learning of their party-mate Foley's actions.

To top it all off, in 2003 Foley held a press conference to denounce Democratic activists for engaging in a "repulsive" campaign to tag him with the "slur" of being gay.

Enter the truth. Now that the Florida Republican's sick exchanges turned out to be true after all, he has resigned in shame. What's more, it turns out that his fellow Republican partymates had warned him to stop this behavior last year. That means they not only knew about it for some time, but were completely aware of his behavior while allowing him to be co-chair of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus.

Once again, the facts clang loudly when impacting Republican neocon rhetoric.