From The Guardian (emphasis mine):
George Bush was safely installed behind the high walls of Buckingham Palace last night at the start of a controversial state visit that will devote just 150 minutes to direct talks with Tony Blair on Iraq and other thorny problems.
Mr Bush, his wife, Laura, and a 700-strong entourage worthy of a travelling medieval monarch, flew into Heathrow airport slightly late, at about 7.30pm.
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A man at an Ann Coulter appearance in Boulder does this:
“I stood up to the mic… kind of shaky, wasn’t sure if I was going to use it, or go after her intellectual bankruptcy, and I finally just decided… Then I thanked her for coming to Boulder, and then I said, “Ann, since you’re a self-proclaimed extreme right-winger, when are you going to take your own advice and get pregnant, march into the kitchen barefoot and make me a god damn sandwich?!”
Then, “the crowd roundly applauded me…” – “and I heard a good amount of boos, but it was mostly laughter.”
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Anyway, “She stood there kind of aghast for a couple seconds, gathered herself, and went into a 30 second response about how LIBERALS were actually the ones who wanted their women to be barefoot and in the kitchen pregnant.”
[via TBOGG]
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We all knew the 30-hour Senate debate was just show biz, but we hadn’t realized quite how much.
Via The Hill:
The 30-hour debate on President Bush’s judicial nominees began on a testy note Wednesday night.
After Republicans walked into the Senate chamber together to begin the extraordinary session, Democrats argued that their move was not a show of unity but rather a television stunt orchestrated for Fox News. They pointed to a memo from Manuel Miranda, a staffer for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), which said:
“It is important to double efforts to get your boss to S-230 on time … Fox News Channel is really excited about this marathon and Brit Hume at 6 would love to open with all our 51 senators walking onto the floor — the producer wants to know will we walk in exactly at 6:02 when the show starts so they get it live to open Brit Hume’s show? Or if not, can we give them an exact time for the walk-in start?”
Democrats had unsuccessfully attempted to delay the debate until 8 p.m. to allow the Senate to first complete its work on the VA/HUD appropriations bill.
Democrats have confirmed 168 of the president’s judicial nominees since 2001 and have only blocked four. Republicans blocked 63 of former Democratic President Bill Clinton’s nominees, denying many of them even a confirmation hearing while in the majority.
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How can the GOP have a convention in NYC without mixing with New Yorkers? By having many of the politicians stay on a cruise ship. We all know they think New Yorkers are scum, and this way they don’t have to defile themselves by interacting with the ones that work in hotels and restaurants, which I thought was supposed to be the only good thing about having the convention here.
Republicans, including Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Rep. Vito Fossella, are considering docking a luxury cruise ship in New York Harbor where members of Congress and lobbyists could stay and play during the GOP convention next summer.
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“As far as the host committee is concerned, we have 22,000 hotel rooms reserved in New York City in close proximity to the [Madison Square] Garden, said mayoral spokeswoman Jennifer Falk. “Manhattan alone has an additional 44,000 hotel rooms. We are confident we are going to be able to provide a hotel room for every single delegate who needs one.”
The cruise ship, with accommodations for 2,200 guests and 14 bars and 10 restaurants, would mirror other hospitality suites DeLay (R-Texas) has championed for members of Congress at past conventions. At the 2000 Republican convention in Philadelphia, DeLay secured private railroad cars, where members could meet and mingle with invited guests such as lobbyists – no media allowed. He also provided members of Congress with cars and drivers. The amenities were funded by corporate contributions to a political action committee.
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Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn) criticized Republicans for eschewing city soil. “There’s something fishy about having hotel rooms on the water when so many are available on the island,” he said.
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If I’m going to live in a third world banana republic, things should be cheaper, the cities should be more colorful, the food should be better and more spicy, and my fellow citizens should be more attractive.
From today’s Washington Post we learn:
The Bush White House, irritated by pesky questions from congressional Democrats about how the administration is using taxpayer money, has developed an efficient solution: It will not entertain any more questions from opposition lawmakers.
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The director of the White House Office of Administration, Timothy A. Campen, sent an e-mail titled “congressional questions” to majority and minority staff on the House and Senate Appropriations panels. Expressing “the need to add a bit of structure to the Q&A process,” he wrote: “Given the increase in the number and types of requests we are beginning to receive from the House and Senate, and in deference to the various committee chairmen and our desire to better coordinate these requests, I am asking that all requests for information and materials be coordinated through the committee chairmen and be put in writing from the committee.”
He said this would limit “duplicate requests” and help answer questions “in a timely fashion.”
It would also do another thing: prevent Democrats from getting questions answered without the blessing of the GOP committee chairmen.
“It’s saying we’re not going to allow the opposition party to ask questions about the way we use tax money,” said R. Scott Lilly, Democratic staff director for the House committee. “As far as I know, this is without modern precedent.”
Norman Ornstein, a congressional specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, agreed. “I have not heard of anything like that happening before,” he said. “This is obviously an excuse to avoid providing information about some of the things the Democrats are asking for.”
A Democratic Senator cannot ask questions unless a Republican Senator approves the question.
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OK. Who thinks we’re going to have a real election in 2004 if major networks aren’t allowed to do a mini-series about Reagan unless it is hagiographic?
We don’t have a real media at this point except for out of the mainstream magazines like The Nation that cannot compete with the big networks and newspapers. If they didn’t bother to question Bush during the first election about anything — his Viet Nam record, his corrupt business practices, etc. — do you think his Democratic opponent will have a chance when the GOP will argue that questioning the President during a war is unpatriotic?
As I heard Mark Crispin-Miller say last night, if Ralph Nader had never been born George W. Bush would still be our President. The kicked thousands of people off the voter rolls illegally in Florida (see Greg Palast), and the Supreme Court had his father’s appointees make sure the election went to the person with fewer popular votes.
The idea that people are offended when Reagan is portrayed as indifferent to people with AIDS is laughable. The first time he said the word was 1987, and by that point at least 25,000 Americans had died of AIDS.
In a portion of the script published in The New York Times last month, Reagan was depicted as uncaring and judgmental toward people with AIDS. “They that live in sin shall die in sin,” Reagan’s character tells his wife as she begs him to help AIDS victims.
Here is a quote via 365Gay.com
In “Dutch,” Reagan’s authorized biography, the author, Edmund Morris, writes that Reagan once said of AIDS, “Maybe the Lord brought down this plague,” because “illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments.”
Reagan, you will remember, divorced his first wife to marry Nancy. Illicit sex, indeed.
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Please see Mr. Ashcroft for permission to exercise your First Amendment rights.
Anticipating this, groups are meeting every day to plan the great demonstration against Bush and the war at the Republican convention next summer.
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Back here in the city, he works on plans for what he and everybody thinks will be the biggest of political demonstrations.
“People hate this war,” he says. “I don’t know how Bloomberg got in there with them, but now he is going to get driven out, too.”
Dobbs was involved in the peace demonstration last February when the police and a federal court judge, Barbara Jones, who committed a thoroughly suspicious act, collaborated on treating nearly a million New Yorkers as potential criminals. That day, Bloomberg tried to act as if he didn’t even know a march was on.
This time it is totally different. Dobbs reports that the police told him that applications should be made to the Secret Service. That puts Ashcroft in charge of thwarting the demonstration. The same Ashcroft who will be inside Madison Square Garden being welcomed by the Mayor of the City of New York, Mike Bloomberg. That is more than enough to blow Bloomberg and all his color pamphlets out of the job.
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The religious right, including the president and his brother in Florida, believe that gay adoptions are a threat to the sanctity of good Christian American families. I think these nice church-going people are doing enough damage without any help from us homos. These people were getting money from their church, which they drove 30 miles each way to attend to help pay their rent.
Come Alive New Testament Church
The Jackson family. Bruce, middle row, second from right; Keith, bottom left; Michael, bottom center; Tyronne, behind Keith.
Bruce Jackson was found rooting through his neighbors’ garbage, so weak from starvation that he could not open the Tastykake that the shocked couple had given him out of pity.
Two weeks later, investigators and neighbors are still trying to make sense of two sharply contrasting realities: four adopted youngsters starving in plain sight and a family that was widely seen as loving and deeply religious.
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The Jacksons are in jail in Camden County, charged with starving and neglecting the 4-foot, 19-year-old Bruce and three other boys adopted from the New Jersey foster care system — Michael, 9, Tyronne, 10, and Keith, 14 — so seriously that none of them weighed more than 50 pounds when they were found by the police.
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Bruce, who was adopted eight years ago, when he was 11, was taken from his biological family because they were also starving him, according to case files at the Division of Youth and Family Services. At the time, he suffered from medical ailments caused by the lack of food.
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Still, though the children were homeschooled, they were not hidden away. The parents drove the 30 miles from their home here to the Come Alive New Testament Church in Medford every Sunday.
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To Pastor Thomas and the congregation, the abuse allegations are impossible to fit with the image of the struggling family that always had a small donation for the collection plate when it came around but needed help from the church to pay for its electricity and rent.
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“I have told many people that I have never seen that many kids together be so good. I never saw them fighting, and I never saw them arguing, and I said, ‘Wow, every family should be like that.’ “
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Ed Cotton, the director of the Division of Youth and Family Services, met with Bruce Jackson on Sunday at the hospital where he is being treated and was given a very different picture of his life than the pastor did.
Mr. Cotton said that it did not appear that Bruce Jackson had any friends. “I asked him whether he went to church or not. He said that he was not allowed to go because he was bad — because he liked TV earlier in life, one of his big punishments was that he was made to sit in front of the TV for hours with it off. Stuff that doesn’t make sense.”
Mr. Cotton said the children may not have understood that they were being mistreated.
“I think these kids were convinced by the foster parents that they had eating disorders,” he said.
Mr. Cotton continued, “These are bright kids, they read well, they’re smart, they’re polite, and I think they’re realizing what happened was not anywhere near the norm.”
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Chief Thomas J. Garrity Jr. of the Collingswood Police Department said Monday that Bruce emptied a box of cereal after he arrived at the station.
He was photographed holding the empty box, and clutching a stuffed tiger that is kept on hand to comfort young abused children.
Bruce, the one mentioned at the end of the article, is 19.
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UPDATED: Here is a good article on the GOP’s plans to use gay marriage as a major issue in the 2004 elections.
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Outrage Radio, described as “Liberal Talk Radio with Attitude”, will debut next month. I’m not a talk radio person (I don’t even like Leonard Lopate or Brian Lehrer on WNYC), but maybe this will foment a bit of unrest.
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That seems to be the reaction of the Catholics to the Nobel Peace Prize going to Iranian activist Shirin Ebadi rather than the Pope. Via James we read the Vatican had this to say:
Many researchers say that the pope’s opposition to birth control, pre-marital sex, homosexuality and female priests seemed intolerant to many Norwegians, especially women, despite a 25-year-reign devoted to peace and religious reconciliation [on his own terms].
Three of the five Nobel committee members are women. One Vatican official sniffed: “I thought this was a peace prize and not a prize in sexual ethics.”
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