I've finally come across the full, unedited interview with Sen. Santorum. Wow, is this just plain offensive, as it well should be. What this man says should be offensive to any American who respects and enjoys the laws that our forefathers gave to us in the Bill of Rights. Basically, what Sen. Santorum says is that the laws guaranteeing Americans the right to privacy because they are damaging to the family.

The vibe I get from the Senator is he believes that any laws which are damaging to the family degrade society, and those laws should be knocked down. Sen. Santorum has already taken this "logic" too far, showing how much of a prejudiced man he is in the process, but I propose that we take the logic a little farther. What other things could our government outlaw because Republicans think they are damaging to families, thus damaging to society:

- Porn! Who hasn't been harmed by a little harmless porn, eh?
- Feminists! These women aren't having kids, so what use are they? They advocate single-mother homes and lesbian relationships, too, as well as equality between genders. As anyone who has been subjected to religion knows, males are the dominate gender. The man in the head of the house, everyone else is his bitch.
- Democrats! They don't support the Republican Party (well, theoretically), so obviously they are damaging society. Off with their heads!
- Negros! As every good, Trent Lott-loving Republican knows, the model (50's) family is white white white. Why keep society segregated when you can just throw these anti-family bastards in jail?
- Sex! Yup, that's right. There is no sex for you. Sex is now illegal, it's verboten! All children well be conceived through immaculate conception.
- Music! Except gospel and country music. That doesn't mean those godless heathens the Dixie Chicks are allowed back into society, because..
- Anyone who criticizes the president! If you criticize our president, you are obviously anti-family and should be thrown in the can.

How far do you want to take the list? I could go on, and on, and on.. I think I have made my point, though. I hope i have shown just how ridiculous Sen. Santorum's beliefs are.

Some of you reading this might say, "Adam, why are you blaming Republicans for this? These are just the comments of one man, and they are not reflective of the Republican Party as a whole." Bullshit. As I pointed out yesterday, Dubya has thrown his support behind Sen. Santroum. Salon has an article this weekend naming names, showing you what other Republicans support Santorum. And let's not forget who is third in line on the Republican Senate leadership chain - Santorum. A scant six months ago, the top of the Republican Senate leadership chain was Trent Lott, a racist. Now that the leadership has been rearranged, we find another bigot near the top. You can't move this far up the ranks in the party if nobody agrees with you. The fact that men like Lott and Santorum are high in the ranks of Republican Senate leadership is enough evidence to prove that the majority of the Republican Party stands behind their beliefs, even if these people will not mention it in public once a Republican is outed for being a racist, sexist, bigoted asshole.

Sen. Santorum should resign. If he doesn't, then he should be removed from office. Both things probably will not happen, which will hopefully lead to a third result: this incident, among others, will blow up in Bush's face during the 2004 election.

In the meantime, if Sen. Santorum believes that Americans should give up their right to privacy because what they do in them own homes could somehow damage families, then I say the good Senator should put his money where his mouth is: I want Sen. Santorum to produce detailed accounts of his complete sexual history, including, if possible, video/audio tapes, times, dates, and logs of when he has had sex; what positions (we have to make sure that there's no sodomy), how many partners (as a whole and/or at one time), locations of where these sexual acts took place, and whether or not he used condoms. If Sen. Santorum is not willing to part with this information, then he is a hypocrite.

Amusing thing I found in an article off ESPN, ranking the top baseball brawls of all time:

5. Durham Bulls vs. Winston-Salem Warthogs (May 22, 1995)
The occasion: "Strike Out Domestic Violence" night at Durham Bulls Athletic Park. The catalyst: Warthogs pitcher Jason Kummerfeldt, who hit three Bulls batters before the third inning ended. The charger: Bulls batter John Knott, who was sure Kummerfeldt was doing it on purpose. The end result: fisticuffs and one kick to the face of Winston-Salem pitcher Glen Cullop, who ended up hospitalized with a broken jaw and lost five teeth. A splendid show for the anti-domestic-violence fans who cheered on their Bulls when the punches started flying. Ten players were ejected, and within a few days Carolina League president John Hopkins meted out $6,000 in fines and 124 days of suspensions, penalizing every player on both clubs except the next night's starting pitchers, who were both in the stands charting pitches.

Bush defends the homophobic scumbag Sen. Santorum. Thank you, Mr. Bush, for letting us know what the Republican Party really believes. Will you ever do an about face and invite some of "dem faggots", or however you probably refer to homosexuals when nobody's listening, over to the White House?

Just to show the full scope of the Republicans stance on homosexuality and how it translates into big government, I wish I could post Sen. Santorum's comments before he made his well quoted inflammatory comments, but the only time I heard them was in Wednesday's Daily Show, a program that is supposed to be satire but often comes out with better reporting then anything else on television. Santorum, before he equated homosexuality with adultery, polygamy, etc., was talking about how we need regulation IN THE BEDROOM. Excuse me, Sen. Fucktardo, I'm not gay but if I want to fuck a man in the ass in the confines of my own home, then I have the goddamn right to. This action is not infringing upon the freedoms of others. In fact Senator, maybe you could use a good assfucking, it might loosen you up a little bit. You might be able to work out a summit with a willing Log Cabin Republican, it would be highly publicized and hell, Trojan could sponsor it! What do ya say? I know it'll be tough to remove whatever's already up your ass, but why don't you give it a try? You seem a little.. Repressed.

On a lighter note, I'm actually in a good mood today, although ths certainly hasn't been reflected in the blog entries.

The AP reports that Bush, in his interview with Tom Brokaw, said that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) could have been destroyed before or during the war. Well, gee, doesn't this defeat this purpose of having WMD since the weapons are kinda meant to, uhhh, KILL people? Especially foreign invading armies?!

"Where's the mooo-ney, Lebowski? Want vant the mooo-ney, Lebowski!"

Oh no: Fox plans 90210 reunion show

There might not be any updates today, it's already one of "those" days at work. Sorry..

Hmmm.. Now it seems to be slowing down here, and I'm able to do some browsing and reading. Hopefully I can update the blog later today.

Fuck it, it's busy again, and I'm too frustrated to do anything that might involve using my brain. I plan on being a simple minded feeb for the rest of the day. Please don't hate me.

Source: rall.com

Warblogging reports that there is breaking news on CNN that North Korea has admitted to having nuclear weapons. I checked on cnn.com and they say that details are coming. By chance, I found a link on Fark to a breaking news story on MSNBC that confirms that North Korea has admitted to having nuclear weapons, and the US/NK/China talks are headed about to collapse, the parties might not meet tomorrow.

Today should be an interesting day...

Newsblast!
The Dixie Chicks have received death threats and feel the need to use metal detectors at their concerts now. All of this has happened since they dared to practice the rights guaranteed to them in the Bill of Rights and criticize the President. Gotta love how tolerant we are in America.

Dick Gephardt thinks we should use the money from Bush's tax cut plan to fund a fund a universal health care program. Hopefully this becomes an issue in 2004.

Hmm.. Today is the first day in a while that I haven't seen 20 zillion articles about Iraq within my first 10 minutes of morning news combing. In fact, I haven't seen a one.

Some Republicans are now asking Sen. Rick Santorum to apologize to gays about his recent comments. The current Republican leadership, whoever, have done nothing besides defend the man who proved that he has no problem letting the country know that he's a bigoted asshole who hates gay people. I got to watch the Daily Show last night, and they played a clip of Santorum's comments BEFORE the comments that made the news. If you ask me, these need to be included in the whole of what Santorum his said, because he was talking about REGULATING sexual acts IN THE HOME before blurting out his oft-quoted homophobic diatribe. In short, he wishes to put the government in your bedroom and throw you in jail if you are having sex with anybody besides who you are married too. If you're married, if you're not married, then you should not have sex at all. What a fucking asshole this guy is. All the groups asking him to step down from office receive my full support.

North Korea says that if the nuclear crisis talks between them and the US are to be successful, the US has to change it's "hostile policy" towards North Korea.

So, we STILL haven't found all those weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration claimed Saddam was stockpiling? Where are they? Hell, I would have at least expected the government to plant some weapons and fabricate a story by now. The Bush administration, though, seems like it's too incompetent to even do that.

Daily Kos has some good commentary today on this topic. The comments from his readers on this topic are even better.

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the government because they refuses to even acknowledge the existence of, or admit that they created, "no fly" lists for airports to use. These "no fly" lists have been used to detain peace activists, and even Catholic nuns, at airports when they attempt to board a plane. People who are on the lists were never informed that they were on such a list by the government, and nobody knows if there is a way to get off the list.

A national strike has begun in Zimbabwe because the government of Zimbabwe tripled the price of gasoline. The government, headed up but a President/Dictator Mugabe who has deeply divided the nation with his policies and rigged the last election to make sure he stayed in power, claims that they need to increase the price of gasoline to pay for the oil imports. Labor says that the cost of gasoline workers need to commute is now greater than the amount of money they make a day, and they will not return to work until the prices are brought down again. Meanwhile, 8 million in the country face a food shortage. Government blames that on the drought, but others say that it's his land policy reform which consisted of taking productive farms away from their owners usually because they were white.

Sen. Rick Santorum, a (shockola!) Republican, slanders gays and ignores their reaction, with them asking him to resign from Senate leadership. While discussing a Supreme Court case that will challenge a Texas sodomy law, Santorum said:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."

So, I suppose the lesson from the Republican Party here is that it's OK and not biased at all to compare gay people to those who commit incest, they're all just bad people who deserve it. All you need to do to keep your job is play down the statements from gay groups, and wonder why they are calling for your head after you said they were just as bad as somebody who has practiced incest.

A news in brief headline from The Onion: "Tortured Ugandan Political Prisoner Wishes Uganda Had Oil"

Heh.

I would have posted more items today, but work really happened to suck and I never got the time to. Sorry.

This cartoon says it all.

From Working for Change

The US Sugar Association, whose membership includes Coke and Pepsi, have threatned to withdraw funding from the World Health Organization (WHO). Why? Because WHO wants to put out a report saying that sugars should make up no more than 10% of a person's diet. The US Sugar Association says that sugar can be 25% of a person's diet, and they also go on to claim that there is recent "scientific evidence" proving that sugar is not a cause of "obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hyperactivity and tooth decay." In other news, corporations lie and America continues to get fatter.

What products could constitute 10% of your daily sugar intake? The "Nutrition Facts" label on the 20 fluid ounce Mountain Dew bottle on my desk says that one server of Mountain Dew has 31 grams of carbohydrates, all of them come from sugars, and that 31 grams is 10% of what your average human on an average 2000 calorie a day diet needs. But 20 ounces of Mountain Dew equals 2.5 servings, equaling 77.5 grams of sugar, which is a bit over 10%. If somebody has two bottles a day, that's 155 grams of sugar alone, not taking sugars obtained from the rest of somebody's diet.

I have started a new diet, and this is my thrid day without having a soda. I'm perfectly happy with that right now.

No time to post news this morning, unfortunately. I have to use my morning to to register my car and hope I'm not late for work

Who's your daddy?
There is a new documentary, "Wesley Willis: The Daddy Of Rock 'n' Roll", out on DVD. Get it from Alternative Tentacles Records.

The US wants to put four permanent miltary bases in Iraq. That should make bin Laden and the rest of the Arab world happy.

The New York Times has a great article today on the budget crisis facing many states. If you are one of the few delusional people in America who still believes that we are not in a recession, or that Bush's tax cuts are somehow making the economy better, this article should snap you back into reality with quotes like this: "We worked hard; we paid our taxes. If there is enough money for wars, shouldn't there be enough to help seniors?"

Bush told the National Governors Association that states cannot look to the federal government for aid, "It's because we went through a recession and we're at war." What a bald-faced fucking lie. After this asshole gives billions in tax cuts to his rich buddies and brings us into a war that never needed to be fought, he tells the rest of America to screw. Teachers being laid off or working without pay? Who cares! Are some residents in your state about to lose medical benefits, which some people need to live? Dubya mine as well tell them to drop dead. The audacity of this two-faced sack of shit that the partisan Supreme Court forced upon us as President, called for large federal tax cuts for his rich buddies and going cowboy in Iraq when our states are having trouble affording the most basic of services to US citizens. How dare he tell us that the federal government cannot afford to help the states when he damn well knows that it can. You don't cut taxes if the nation can't afford it, Mr. Bush. Simple fucking economics.

For more of that fantastic Republican attitude, here's a few paragraphs near the end of the article:

In Washington State, after legislators said they would have to renege on a promise to raise the salary of home health care workers to $8.70 an hour from $7.86, the Senate majority leader, James West, a Republican, complained that the health care workers were 'perpetual pathetics' who were always whining.

In response, the workers union produced a woman, Sherry Beebe, who had cared for Mr. West's ailing mother.

'I was one of the workers who took care of your mom,' said Ms. Beebe in a letter to Senator West. 'Stop being so selfish and think about where you would be if you had to care for your mom for almost no pay or benefits.'

If there was any justice in this nation, politicians would be shot dead for calling health care workers who make less than your average Burger King employee "perpetual pathetics".

I've updated the errata section. New random stuph.

Showing how much us our military, headed up by an unelected despot, care about democracy, they have banned an American activist group, Voices in the Wilderness (VitW), from meeting with U.S. Civil Military Operations Center (CMOC), or international journalists, working out of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. This action was prompted by a press release put out by VitW after they met with the CMOC. The press release is a look into the current state of Baghdad that the media seems to have ignored.

Here is the entire press release:

BAGHDAD (16 April, 2003) - Voices in the Wilderness representatives met today with the U.S. Military's Civil Military Operations Center (CMOC) in their headquarters at the Palestine Hotel to discuss the emergency, humanitarian crisis facing Baghdad. Trash removal has not occurred for a month. Electricity, Sanitation and Communications were all seriously damaged during the U.S. war, and have yet to be restored in Baghdad. Cholera outbreaks have been reported in Basra, and rumored to have been found in the central Iraqi city of Hilla. Some of the local clinics are up and running, but medications for conditions such as hypertension and diabetes are no longer available. Quality control equipment and systems are also unavailable, and the lack of quality control could lead to serious problems in treatment, as well as creating the potential for epidemics due to contaminated blood products.

The previous distribution system set up under the "Oil-for-Food" program is in total collapse, and - unless essential services are immediately restored - Iraq faces a humanitarian catastrophe.

Prior to the war, the Pentagon set up Humanitarian Operations Coordination Centers (the HOC in Qatar and Kuwait, and the HAC in Jordan), as well as disaster assistance response teams (DART), to coordinate relief efforts between the U.S. military and United Nations and non-governmental organizations. Not only are HOC, HAC, and DART personnel not in Baghdad yet, CMOC was not even aware of the existence of these other military-humanitarian coordinating bodies.

CMOC reported that they did not yet have a plan for how to restore essential services in Baghdad, but are working on creating such a plan today. However, that information will not be publicly available for review, and will only be shared with organizations that agree to work with the U.S. Military in Baghdad - cutting out any humanitarian agency that insists on maintaining neutrality.

CMOC also reported that they spent several days locating hospitals, power plants, and water & sanitation plants in order to do needs assessments. Apparently no one in the U.S. Military thought to ask the United Nations, or other international organizations working in Iraq, for any of this information prior to, or even after, the fall of Baghdad. The World Health Organization and the Red Cross have been working in Iraq for years. The United Nations Development program has been working to assist Iraq in restoring electricity since 1996. Locations and assessments of civilian infrastructures are not secret information - except in the Pentagon's world. Why didn't anyone ask for this information? Why wasn't a plan for rehabilitation developed prior to the war?

When told that of rumors of a cholera outbreak in Hilla, CMOC even asked Voices in the Wilderness where that neighborhood was located in Baghdad - unaware that Hilla is a major Iraqi city located approximately 1 hour south of Baghdad!

The biggest problem CMOC reported is the lack of local workers needed to get civilian systems up and running. However, CMOC seemed unaware that the mostly unmanned roadblocks put up throughout the city are making it difficult for anyone to get to work, as is the lack of a coordinating body responsible for organizing these efforts.

PROBLEMS THAT NEED TO BE IMMEDIATELY ADDRESSED:

A coordinating body, not associated with any military organization, needs to be created to direct humanitarian assessment and relief efforts by all of the agencies working, or seeking to work, in Iraq. Previously, this was the corrupt, but functional, Iraqi Red Crescent Society.

Senior-level administrators at hospitals and other civilian centers fled with the collapse of the previous regime. This has led to chaotic conditions where lower-level staff are unsure who, if anyone, has the authority to make urgent decisions. This "power vacuum" must be immediately filled by creating new, decision-making-structures, not corrupted by the previous regime.

The U.S. Military has demonstrated that it is neither prepared, nor interested in becoming prepared, to deal with the humanitarian crisis caused by their war. The international community must exert itself, and return UN control to dealing with this crisis, until Iraqis can form a government of their own to deal with the problems created by 12 years of sanctions and war.

Time is short.

An update to the India/Pakistan peace talks (I'm apprehensive about calling them "peace talks" since the talking hasn't actually begun yet), here's an editorial from the Daily Times in Pakistan. The writer equates India with Israel, saying that the 600,000 Indian troops in Kashmir have murdered 80,000 muslims since 1989. I don't know if this is true or not, but the editoral never mentions the terrorist groups that base themselves in Pakistan and the atrocities they have committed.

Meanwhile, today the Pakistani government said that they are ready for talks to start as soon as possible.

Hmmmm.. NPR just had a story about a town in California that has too much traffic. Something tells me that it could be a slow news day today.

India offers to open talks with Pakistan so the two countries can settle their differences in a peaceful manner. Since both nations have nukes pointed at the others cities and they almost went to war again in 2001, this is a good thing. Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said, "If Pakistan says tomorrow that it will close down the terrorist camps in Pakistan, if it says this today, I will send a top Foreign Ministry official to Islamabad tomorrow to draw up a schedule for the talks," so whether these talks happen rests in the decision of Pakistani leadership. Seeing that Pakistan just rejected US criticism that it hasn't done enough to control terrorists going over the Kashmiri line of control to attack the Indian army, whether or not these talks happen is questionable.

Chalabi Watch
Ahmad Chalabi pisses me off. Ditto with the media, who are not doing their jobs. It's obvious that the Bush administration and Pentagon fully support Chalabi, or else they would not have brought the man into the country after US forces rolled their tanks into Baghdad. The Project for a New American Century wrote papers praising Chalabi while Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz were members, too. So there's really no question about who the White House would like to run Iraq.

Something that is mentioned frequently, but I still think is underreported, is the fact that Chalabi is a convicted criminal in Jordan. He ran Petra Bank, which was Jordan's third largest bank at the time. Then, "He [Chalabi] was indicted and convicted in absentia, found guilty of siphoning millions of dollars from depositors into his own offshore accounts, a scandal that caused his bank to collapse and convulsed Jordan's financial system." (Source: Toronto Star). Chalabi says that Saddam is to blame for this, and that it's a non-issue.

Bullshit. If Saddam was to blame for this (a claim to which Chalabi has not provided any proof, I guess it's no surprise that the media has not asked him for proof), then how come Jordan still has a warrant for the mans arrest? If this was Saddam's fault, then Saddam should be a moot point now, he's out of power. Chalabi should goto Jordan and clear his name. But he probably won't, because he knows that he's guilty as sin. Hell, Chalabi couldn't face the charges at the time they were leveled against him, he had to flee to Syria! I guess the US supports criminals fleeing to Syria, as long as they are criminals that they like.

So, I have a couple questions to ask that I feel are obvious: why hasn't the media grilled Chalabi for embezzling money?, and why hasn't the media asked the Bush administration if they are afraid of giving billions of dollars in foreign aid to a man who is a likely candidate to steal it and keep it for himself?

Believe it or not, it gets worse. Ahmad Chalabi's two brothers have also been convicted in banking scandals involving another bank and an investment firm, both in Switzerland. Maybe the Chalabi's would like to tell the world that this is also the fault of Saddam.

Is there really any doubt that the man the Pentagon has hand picked to run Iraq is a criminal? Is there any question that if we place this man in a position of power that involves managing billions of dollars that we will send him in foreign aid that he will embezzle some of it? Ahmad Chalabi should be in prison, which is exactly where he would be if the US cared about Iraq.

I'm back
First off, at the risk of sounding insensitive, I don't give a crap about who was murdered in California, and I honestly do not know why it is big news given the fact that we just murdered a bunch of innocent civilians in Iraq. Just goes to show you that the average American mindset thinks that American lives are somehow above the lives of non-Americans. They aren't, and I refuse to mention the story out in California because of it. Loaded Mouth deals with real news, not fluff.

My column, "electronic jihad", will miss its deadline this work, and I am holding out until next week to write a column. I don't think that many people will care, I see the stats and the columns section has not generated much in the way of traffic. I am thinking about changing the format of it into a debate/argument section and pit opposing viewpoints against each other, and throw the forum in there so anybody can join the debate. Or I could just scrap the section entirely. If you have any thoughts on this, let me know.

I don't know if anybody has noticed this, but the links to blog entries are broken. Blogger is at fault for this, and I should have Movable Type running in a couple of weeks, which will give me better archiving capabilities and a comments section for each blog entry, like all the big boys have.

I shut up and find news stories now.