Regular readers know that I write on another blog, Bring It On! I post there several times a week, usually on more topical issues or on events that don’t lend themselves to a longer posts.
In addition to my posts, there are several other talented, regular contributor’s who post with regularity and a number of diarists who share their thoughts. It is truly a group blog, and even though it has a decided progressive/liberal slant, many commenters and diarists are of a conservative bend. I encourage you to pay a visit. For now, here are a few of my recent posts from Bring It On!

Lying Republicans And Their Lying Lies

The debate is over in the House. The resolution opposing the president’s ‘New & Improved Surge Plan’ has passed, with several Republican lawmakers crossing the aisle to join with Democrats in voicing the opinion of their constituents, a majority of whom oppose the Iraq War and the Bush Surge Plan.

In practical terms, this changes very little. It was a non-binding resolution. But it did force each member of congress to state their position vis-a-vis the surge and the war in general. I listened to Republican after Republican take the floor and proclaim that passage of the resolution would send a message of defeat to our enemies and a show of no confidence to our troops. Both of those statements are false, but they are opinions and as such can’t be classified as lies. (Call them delusions, sure, but lies requires a little more proof.)

But one statement repeated in various forms by various congress critters, clearly exposes a lie that republicans have been pushing on the American public since this war began, namely, that if American soldiers leave Iraq, the enemy will follow us home.

Really? They will? And just how in the hell can they do that, since the Republican President, his Republican administration, and 6 years of a Republican controlled congress have done everything possible to make America safe from repeated attacks? We’re told time and again by the president that keeping the homeland safe is job number one, that he’s doing everything possible to protect us at home. If that is true, there really is no threat from terrorists who would “follow us home.”

So the claims coming from the congress idiots are lies. Or the statements from the president et. al. have been lies. Either way, the republicans are lying. But they can’t have it both ways.
If the terrorists can simply pack up and ‘follow us home’ then the president’s (and the Republican party’s) efforts to ‘keep America safe’ over the last 6 years have either been non-existant (port security), just for show (airport shoe screening) or completely incompetant (border security). But if all those things are actually in place and effectively working, then the terrorists simply can’t get into the country.

So which is it republicans? Have you done your job and tightened up our home security or have you just practiced your rhetorical fearmongering skills these last few years?

Racist Rove Reveals Republican Reality

From The National Review, a decidedly conservative magazine:

According to a congressman’s wife who attended a Republican women’s luncheon yesterday, Karl Rove explained the rationale behind the president’s amnesty/open-borders proposal this way: “I don’t want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas.” (emphasis added)

Gee Karl, that’s real good of you to finally expose the truth behind compassionate conservatism.It seems like the party of Lincoln has really devolved quite a bit. I doubt that if Lincoln were running for office today he would even get past the vetting teams, because by golly, he actually had to work as a youth.

Excuse me for being offended, but I thought that in America we were an egalitarian society, where all honest work was similarly valued, if not in monetary compensation then at least in principal. I thought that the ‘new conservative agenda’ valued hard work and character building. I thought they stood for ‘the common man.” Guess what Herr Karl? The common man’s kids do make beds, and wash dishes, and clean up after others. Yet somehow, all that isn’t good enough for your kid? Guess we better get some more brown people to clean up after your lily-white ass, eh Karl?

When I was a teenager, getting a part time job in a restaurant or on a farm or in a grocery store or a hotel or mowing lawns was looked upon as good experience, character building experience, as a valuable part of moving towards adulthood. My family wasn’t rich by any means, but even my friends who were fairly well off had part time jobs of the kind that the Bush Administration now claims “American’s aren’t willing to do.”

But now we hear from the asses mouth himself the driving force behind the Bush Administration’s desire for more and less regulated immigration.

Again, from the article:
“This is why the president’s “willing worker/willing employer” immigration extravaganza is morally wrong — it’s not just that it will cost taxpayers untold billions, or that it will beggar our own blue-collar workers, or that it will compromise security, or that it will further dissolve our sovereignty. It would do all that, of course, but most importantly it would change the very nature of our society for the worse, creating whole occupations deemed to be unfit for respectable Americans, for which little brown people have to be imported from abroad. In other words, mass immigration, even now, is moving us toward an unequal, master-servant society.”

I don’t think I could have said it any better myself. If this country really needs immigrant labor, then fine. Develop and stick to laws to make it happen. But if the whole push for more immigration is so that Karl’s kid (and presumably the kids of all the neo-conservative/conservative/Republican jackholes) doesn’t have to wait a table or pick a strawberry, then it’s time to shut the borders up until we have 100% employment of Americans, including (especially) the young people who will one day lead this country. As we have tragically seen, kids who never have to work don’t really make good leaders. And they make incredibly poor presidents and presidential advisors.

More Republican Racism

In the second time in as many weeks, a major Republican policy maker has exposed the racist underpinnings of the Bush Administration regarding immigrants who come to America.
On Feb. 8th, Karl Rove addressed a group of Republican women at a luncheon wherein he described the rationale behind the president’s open-borders proposal by saying, “I don’t want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas.”

Follow that with a statement made by Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff speaking to reporters while visiting in Mexico last Friday where he tries to explain the goals of US immigration policy:
“Every time a Border Patrol officer is transporting a load of future housekeepers and landscapers to someplace to be returned, he’s not looking
for drug dealers or drug loads,” Chertoff said.

So, according to Rove and now Chertoff, and by extension presumably the president, vice-president, their republican allies in Congress and their supporters across the nation, immigrants, and especially those whose skin is brown, are needed to create a servile caste of new citizens. Apparently, according to the Republican party, immigrants, and especially non-white immigrants, are only capable of menial labor oriented tasks like picking crops, washing dishes, changing diapers and cleaning rooms. And further, those who are not coming for low skill labor jobs are either drug dealers or drug lords.

Another classic example of ‘compassionate conservatism’ at work here folks. What year is it again?

Welcome To Tal-Abama!

A law that seems to have come straight from the Taliban is one step closer to becoming a reality in Alabama, this time thanks to a Democrat.

A federal Court of Appeals recently upheld a 1998 Alabama law that was the underpinning of an anti-obscenity law pushed on the people by state Senator Tom Butler, a Democrat. Butler’s law would ban the sale of any device whose main purpose is to stimulate human genitalia- in other words, Butler wants to ban dildos, vibrators, or any other mechanical sexual aid. (the law also includes provisions banning nude dancing and regulation of where adult businesses can operate.)

Since when did personal pleasure seeking become ‘a legitimate state interest’? Is there a state of vibrator injuries in Alabama that are bankrupting the public health system? Are dildo-brandishing burglar’s unleashing havoc in the streats? Or does this guy just have some serious control issues to contend with? Did mommy not treat him right? Does his wife get more stimulation from her battery operated boyfriend than he can provide?

By the way…the anti-obscenity law does exempt condom sales and virility drugs and other sexual devices that have a ‘legitimate medical, scientific, or educational value.’

I bet Alabama doctors are going to be writing a lot of vibrator prescriptions if this law is acted upon.

Thanks for stopping by.