Category: Politics.

Congress passed a recent law that stated it was important that whomever gets put into the job administering FEMA had better know what the hell he was doing. To wit:

(Courtesy of ThinkProgress)
Sounds great, right? Nope, says Bush. I disagree, so I’m going to ignore you. From the signing statement :

Section 503(c)(2) vests in the President authority to appoint the Administrator, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, but purports to limit the qualifications of the pool of persons from whom the President may select the appointee in a manner that rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office. The executive branch shall construe section 503(c)(2) in a manner consistent with the Appointments Clause of the Constitution.

Bush has said, flat out, that laws made by Congress need never be adhered to, need never be followed by the executive branch. In essence, Congress has lost control of the president. This man has to be removed from office. There’s simply no two ways about it. If even the Congress cannot make laws to oversee and limit bad decisions by the commander in chief, then the basics tenets of our government structure have already been destroyed.
The office of the president has only one tool it can use to moderate laws passed by Congress. He can pass them in full, or he can veto them. That is how our constitution is written. He cannot choose to ‘pass them into law’ but choose not to obey them.
Per Article 1 of the Constitution:

Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it.

I am at a loss how to accomplish this removal. Moreover, I am at a loss to understand why any member of our government still supports this man and his actions.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget what it’s like having someone in power that can actually make an intelligent, reasoned argument. Someone who makes informed, intelligent decisions, and thinks before acting, as opposed to acting, then justifying.
Chris Wallace interviewed Bill Clinton on Fox News recently, and tried, as Fox will do, to spin the conversation into simple little “groupthink” boxes – “Democrats are weak on terrorism”, “Clinton should have gotten Bin Laden when he could have” etc etc.
Clinton completely smacks Wallace down with details, facts, and truth. The video is fantastic, but the transcript needs to be printed and mailed to household that thinks GW Bush and the neocons are doing the right things for the future of the US and the world.
Update: Fixed some broken HTML. Sorry.

Think the US is in better shape than it was 5 years ago? Think that the 9/11 commission actually answered any questions or was an impartial inquiry? Really think that President “It’s a criminal act. NOWAIT! It’s a WAR! YEAH! Get the tanks out!” Bush has done ANYTHING to help the US in the last 5 years?
Think again.
My disgust with the state of US political scene continues apace. And people still think Bush is good for the country.

Not sure where I first found this link, but:

“Hey, listen. I’m a veteran. This is a V.A. facility. I’m sitting here not talking to anybody, having a cup of coffee. I’m not protesting and you can’t kick me out.”
“You’ll either go or we’ll arrest you,” Adkins threatened.

Smacks of the whole “Free Speech Zone” BS.
Full story on OnlineJournal.

Caught sight of this particular bit of lovely political expression on the way to the supermarket this evening. It’s somewhat hard to read, but the bumper sticker says “Marriage: One Man, One Woman” with a url to StopLiberalJudges.com. A charming site, really. Probably the most amusing bit of all of the drivel on it is any occurance of ‘liberal” can easily be replaced by “conservative” and it would reflect how I personally see the current judicial makeup. Perspective is a wonderful thing, ain’t it? 🙂

Just a note – the tagline on that site proclaims:

StopLiberalJudges.com is a ministry of the American Family Association, a leading conservative, pro-family organization
committed to motivating and equipping citizens to change the culture to reflect Biblical truth in today’s culture war.

There’s no secret I’m one of those pinko lefty anti-bushies. No question there. I see Bush and his cronies as a wave of darkness engulfing the US political system, tainting not only our own lives, but affecting the world with their ideological ultra-conservative mores.

So I’ve been following Al Gores An Inconvenient truth with interest. It’s gotten a lot of attention and support, with not just a little haranguing from the right. A lot of the chatter has been “Why didn’t we see this Gore in the election?”, but there’s also been support for the ideas he’s presenting in the movie. Is global warming a real threat, and are CO2 levels from carbon emissions precipitating a global temperature change? Surely it must be right. Environmentalists agree, the Bushies disagree and cast doubt on it, so it must be true, right?

Right?

Maybe not. An article on Canada Free Press states that there’s a ton of misleading and flat out wrong information in Gore’s film.

I went into reading this article with a typical skeptical attitude. “This must be just a few anti-ecologists. The few ‘scientists’ drummed up by the right to counter Gore’s arguments, to cast doubt on the whole thing.” But, reading it, no, this isn’t. These are the people who really do make the climate predictions, and they’re saying… Gore is completely off the mark. Read the article all the way through, and you’ll see what I mean.

So, who to believe? I don’t know now. I don’t believe Gore’s ‘imminent death of the world’ scenario. I believe our activities on the planet are having an impact, but we’re not about to turn stretches of the US into desert, nor are we looking at a 30ft change in ocean levels. But, I do believe what we do changes the environment around us, and we need to make sure our ecological footprint is as small as possible.

What’s your ecological footprint?

Here’s how I fared:

	CATEGORY 	ACRES
FOOD 		4.7
MOBILITY 	1
SHELTER 	5.2
GOODS/SERVICES 	5.7
TOTAL FOOTPRINT 	17
IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER
PERSON.  WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.
IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 3.7 PLANETS. 

Thanks to Slashdot for the initial link.

Update 13:30pm – Kai has pointed out that the Canadian Free Press hardly an objective, balanced journal. Their front page articles are filled with judgemental and biased commentary. While the article linked is well written, the rest of the content of the site seriously calls into question any of the ‘facts’ stated. Regardless, the ecological footprint information IS valid and interesting.

… there’s no reason to hold back now.

I’ve avoided political discussion for a while, mostly because the world pretty much knows how awful Bush is, and commenting on it just makes me angrier. But this article from the Boston Globe has to be read by anyone who thinks that Bush is still acting in any way fairly, legally, or morally in the right…

WASHINGTON — President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

How can anyone possibly defend the actions of this man, who has taken on the role of sole arbiter of what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’, no matter what the Constitution or the laws say? The Signing Statements have never been abused to this level before in the history of United States. No wonder Bush has never vetoed a bill. Had he followed the law and vetoed something he disagreed with, the Congress could have overruled him. These notes have no oversight. He can choose what laws he wants to obey that CONGRESS HAS PASSED, and which ones he doesn’t feel like enforcing.

This is not the way the US Government should act, folks. Congress makes the laws, the President approves them or vetoes them, he doesn’t get to pick and choose which ones he likes or dislikes. That’s called a Line Item Veto, and the Supreme court in the 90’s rules that that was unconstitutional, even WITH congressional oversight.

Why is this man still trusted with the keys to the White House?

As announced via the Washington Post :

Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), a primary architect of the House Republican majority who became one of the most powerful and feared leaders in Washington, told House allies last night he will step down from the House rather than face a reelection fight that appears increasingly unwinnable.

Okay, everyone together now. “Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!”

Just have to share this one.
According to the Washington Post, A tape has surfaced documenting FEMA officials warning Bush directly that this storm could very well be “the big one”. The one to break the levees, destroy the superdome, wreck the city. Bush’s response? “We are fully prepared”.

Without a doubt, the tape provides evidence that the White House received ample warning of the catastrophe. Yet within days of that videoconference, Mr. Bush would excuse the federal government’s extraordinarily poor performance by telling an interviewer that “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.” Moreover, at the time of the conference the White House had no idea whether federal emergency services were truly prepared. On the tape, the president doesn’t ask any questions about preparedness, and there is no evidence in documents since released that he was any more engaged before or after the conference. Had anyone called the Defense Department? Was the National Guard en route? Were local Army bases prepared to help? Were emergency food and water supplies in place? The president, like everyone around him, appears to have assumed that everything would run like clockwork, just as it was supposed to on paper.

Why is it no surprise that no one trusts anything this man says anymore?

There is an outstanding roundup and summary of the details and issues surrounding the backlash against Denmark following the publication of some cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed in an unflattering light. As should come as a surprise to no one, the situation is filled with inaccuracies, lies, and misinformation on all fronts, but primarily in the details about what was actually published. Unfortunately, there’s very little a sane world can do to stem the tide of hatred and violence that seems to be following this situation, even though the theoretical ‘reasons’ for this not only should not warrant such reactions, but are based on false information spread by those who are theoretically educated and knowledgeable.
It’s a sad sad story on the state of freedom of expression and extremism in the world.

Barb pointed me to this image available on T-shirts from Prickwear.com. This site appears to be even more directly and unabashedly offensive than Tshirthell.com, which I have to admit has some pretty funny stuff on it.
Anyway, this is available on a tshirt I wonder if I could get Cafepress to make a bumpersticker, something that will assure me of being beaten in Kansas.

OkCupid hosts another good ‘where are you on the political / social spectrum’ quiz here. I took it, and came out, unsurprisingly:

• You are a SOCIAL LIBERAL (76% permissive)
• You are an Economic Liberal (21% permissive)
• You are best described as a: Socialist

Shocking. The entire results (With splufty display graphs showing how I show up on the grid), is available here.

Apparently the extremely liberal and well spoken host of Prairie Home Companion is suing a blogger for making a parody t-shirt.
The blogger tried to make simple amends with the lawyer, saying this is a ridiculous lawsuit, but Mr Keillor apparently wants to pursue legal action against this guy.
Does this make ANY sense?

Here is a great exchange between an online comic artist and someone who disliked that he was using his comic for lefty commentary. The resulting email exchange is fascinating.
Mad pr0pz to Fraterrisus for this link.