Following NRA lead, Republicans now ban gun-toting action stars from party

Republican House Speaker John Boehner at press
conference ousting gun-toting action stars 

Republican House speaker John Boehner announced at a press conference today that the Republican Party would no longer accept campaign donations, acknowledge endorsements from,  promote as candidates, use as spokesmodels, or invite as guests on Fox News any celebrities who make movies or TV shows that glorify gun violence.

This followed quickly on the heels on NRA President Wayne LaPierre's press conference that said in response to the Sandy Hook shooting, "Guns don't kill people, TV shows and movies kill people."

"The evidence that media violence  on TV and in movies leads to violence in real life is overwhelming," Boehner said.  "Every single mass shooter that I know of has watched TV or been to a movie."

This represents a major policy shift for Republicans who have long touted the support of action stars like Clint Eastwood, Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson, and the late Charlton Heston, all of whom have high on screen body counts.  The GOP even successfully ran action star Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor of California, who won in spite of his inability to pronounce the name of the state.

"We can no longer even indirectly endorse their glorification of violence," Boehner said. "Nor will we accept the support of directors or producers of shows  and movies that glorify violence or accurately portray wars like the War on Terror and tactics within that war that our party voted for."

Boehner said the shunning will also extend to candidates and donors  who profit from the sale and distribution of violent movies like Mitt Romney, whose Marriot Hotel investments profited from cable and pay per view movies featuring violence and other objectionable content.

Boehner was quick to point out that the ban does not extend to all celebrities.

"There is still plenty of room in our party for David Spade, Drew Carey, Britney Spears, Jeff Foxworthy, that ball buster chick from Law & Order, and that funny gay guy who is still in the closet. He just brings me to tears.  And he makes me laugh too."

Boehner said the excommunicated action stars would be welcomed back into the GOP if they promised to make only non-violent movies in the future.

"There are several other kinds of movies besides shoot 'em ups," he said. "Chick flicks, coming of age movies, disease movies, movies about freaks, retards, and well-behaved minorities, comedies and romantic comedies."

"You know even Arnold Schwarzenegger has made comedies like Twins, Kindergarten Cop, Junior, and the Austrian version of The Birdcage.  I for one would love to see him star in a remake of The Notebook before another Terminator movie, or a remake of that wonderful movie about his home country, The Sound of Music."

Boehner was asked about the status of Republican celebrities who make violent movies that do not use guns as weapons like Sarah Michelle Gellar, who as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, drove stakes in the hearts of innumerable vampires.

"Staking, stabbing, strangling, bludgeoning, garroting, drowning, smothering, those are all acceptable family entertainment," Boehner responded. "But the minute someone picks up a gun for anything other than hunting, shooting a burglar, or a person of color who makes you feel uneasy, a moral line has been crossed.  So, yes, Buffy is perfectly acceptable."

Boehner was asked how the Republican Party decided this was the correct response to the tragedy in Connecticut.

"We did a lot of soul searching," he said, "and a little bit of math.  We get a lot more money from the NRA than celebrities."

NOTE: Within hours of the press conference, the Television Manufacturers association released a statement saying to their knowledge, no one has been killed by the new flat panel TV's but only by the older, heavier tube sets that crushed some people. They added that those who still have tube TV's can get an excellent price on a flat panel model this holiday season.

It's not just Republicans that need to repudiate Rush

I got this email from the DSCC about browbeating GOP senators to repudiate Rush Limbaugh, and on one level, it's gratifying to see Democrats finally learning one of the correct lessons from the GOP: hit your opponent's strength. Do to Rush what the right did to the word "liberal" in the 80's, so that Republicans will be embarrassed to say anything that sounds remotely like any of his talking points.

I've already noticed a version of this in my college classes. Whenever a student says something about global warming being a hoax or making batteries for electric cars makes more pollution than an internal combustion engine spits out in its lifetime, I ask them, ''Where'd you hear that--on Rush Limbaugh?"

The tone is not accusatory, but for some reason, they never say yes.

There is just one problem of this shaming of Republicans: I would like to know which of the GOP's ideas so-called ''moderate'' Democrats are going to repudiate as well.

Will they forsake:

• Only taxing the rich as much as they wish to be taxed and looking the other way when they hide money in off-shore accounts or use other book-keeping scams
  
  
• Trade deals like NAFTA that screw American workers
  
  
• H-1B visas that allow high tech companies to import engineers & IT workers and leave American college grads sitting on the bench
  
  
• Privatizing government functions, including education, even though the private versions are consistently more costly and of questionable effectiveness
  
  
• Letting corporations dictate the policies and regulations that effect them as Wall Street and banks still seem to be doing with the team of Geithner, Summers, Rubin, and Bernanke writing checks for trillions with no strings attached
  
  
• Sending a black kid who robbed a 7-11 of $50 to be raped in prison and sending a white trust fund baby who broke our economy a check for billions to party with his friends, and after seeing the party, sending another check.
  
  
• In the same vein, letting health insurance and drug companies have a seat at the table crafting health care reform when they should be roasted slowly on a spit to feed the people at the table
  
  
• Letting politicians leave office and go to work for corporations they did favors for while in office
  
  
• Using fear of terrorism and nuclear weapons as an excuse to intimidate and invade nations that don't do business on terms American oil companies and banks like as is the case with Iraq, Iran, and Venezuela (the Bushies went as far as to claim al Qaeda was in Venezuela)
  
  
• Almost blasphemously, claiming we are teaching other countries democracy when we invade them and kill their people, then questioning how ''mature'' their culture is when they dare to fight back
  
  
• Never dealing honestly with why we didn't punish the two countries that sponsored al Qaeda, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. In the case of the latter, they sent an agent to pick up two of the 9/11 hijacker at the airport who set them up in an apartment and funneled checks to them from the Saudi ambassador's wife.
  
  
• Claiming other countries getting a handful of nukes is somehow a threat to us without adding that no country would be foolish enough to launch one at us or give them to terrorists to detonate here since everyone knows we have THOUSANDS and would not hesitate to burn their entire country off the map before one mushroom cloud cleared here. With the Soviets, there was MAD--mutually assured destruction. Today the would be OSHOSE--our side hurt, other side exterminated.
  
  
• Intentionally blurring military defense and empire and wars of aggression. China and Russia have a tenth the military spending we do, and no one is lining up to invade them. Similarly, if a medium-sized Iraq can give us, the world's sole superpower, a bad day trying to occupy them, it is unlikely anyone would get very far with trying to occupy us or even consider it. Most of our Defense apart from the troops themselves is welfare for defense contractors.

Moderate, blue dog, DLC, or whatever you want to call them have voted with the GOP on most or all of these issues.

I would look forward to Democrats clearly separating themselves from the GOP on these points, and not just being better graded on a curve.

From: info@dscc.org
Subject: What Rush doesn't know
Date: March 7, 2009 9:03:47 AM PST

Rush Limbaugh doesn't know what he's started. Tens of thousands of you have already signed onto the DSCC's urgent call for Republican Senate leaders to denounce his shameful rhetoric - and that's just the beginning.

The Republican response has been predictable: blame the media, blame the Democrats, and rally their base. They'll do anything except tell Rush Limbaugh he's wrong.

They're hoping this will all blow over and they can go back to pretending like Rush doesn't speak for them. It's not too late for you to add your voice so we can keep the pressure on. If you sign today, we'll send your comments right to the Republican Senate leadership.

Click here to demand that Senate Republicans reject Rush Limbaugh's hateful rhetoric - We'll send them your comments. When you're finished, please forward this message to your friends and family.

The response so far has been tremendous, but we all have to do our part to fight back against ultra-conservative extremism. Join us today.

- J.B.

Remind public of GOP racist track record if they mention Wright

Both Obama and Hillary missed an opportunity when they went on Fox News only to be questioned about Rev. Wright. They could have turned it around to a discussion of Republican politician's, right wing talk radio, and even Fox News own far more extensive and virulent history of racist remarks and actions.

If the GOP tries to use Rev. Wright against Obama in fall, we should have their racist resume ready.

Which shouldn't be too hard to do.

Start with the Southern Strategy of covert appeals to Southern racists that began after LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act in 1964 & 1965. LBJ said he lost the South for the Democrats for a generation. He was wrong. He lost it pretty much up until today.

Racist white voters started voting Republican at the presidential level immediately, and down-ticket as racist Dixiecrats politicians migrated from the Democrats to the GOP.

In a 1970 New York Times interview, Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips was blunt about this:

The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."

Reagan launched his campaign talking about "states rights" a segregationist buzzword in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where the three civil rights workers were killed in the 60s.

Starting with Reagan they began a sustained assault on affirmative action, particularly in college admissions, without bothering with even a fig-leaf of going after other forms of non-merit admissions like legacies with room temperature IQs getting in because their family members went to the school and more importantly, gave money to their endowment.

Using blacks as boogey men in campaign commercials has been a staple of the Republican politicians at all levels. Jesse Helms used his "white hands" commercial to play on white resentment of affirmative action, Papa Bush had Willie Horton to play on fear of black criminals raping white women, and the recent campaign against Harold Ford had only to imply that a white woman might want the only slightly tinted Ford to call her.

Until recently, there was the obligatory stop of GOP candidates at racist Bob Jones University, where inter-racial dating was not allowed until 2000--AFTER George W. Bush made a campaign stop.

There are also the various statements of Rush Limbaugh including his brief tenure as a sportscaster saying Donovan McNabb was only a quarterback because of affirmative action, and Bill O'Reilly being shocked that black people behaved in a nice restaurant and weren't screaming obscenities. Last Fall, Media Matters put together some of the greatest hits of Fox News racism, including Bill O'Reilly saying during Katrina that "Many, many, many" hurricane victims who failed to evacuate New Orleans are "drug-addicted ... thugs"

Besides Bush's inaction during Hurricane Katrina, you have Fox News calling black residents looters and whites "searching for supplies," and a GOP congressman saying the destruction of low income housing was god doing what they couldn't.

As recently as this primary season, Republicans were still debating whether the Confederate flag, a symbol of slavery and oppression to African Americans and most other Americans, should still fly on public property.

Mitt Romney said he would never have a Muslim in his cabinet.

In some of these cases of racism directed at blacks, the righties involved have been demoted or forced to apologize. I don't think they ever have apologized about their Muslim-baiting, particularly their talk radio shills.

Ann Coulter said Muslims should be killed or forcibly converted, Rush Limbaugh said a Muslim prisoner was covered in feces because they don't know how to wipe themselves, and Michael Savage Weiner said we should kill at least 100 million Muslims and that there was no difference the Muslims who attacked us on 9/11 and ALL the other Muslims in the world.

I have left out their Latin American immigrant-bashing, English only campaigns because they are mad someone's Vietnamese grandmother isn't learning English fast enough, fear of brown people breeding faster than whites, fear of gays recruiting our kids (so far they have only been successful with GOP politicians and preachers), and fear of anyone else they can think of that will drive people to the polls without demanding action on actual economic issues.

These are hardly the people to be lecturing the rest of us about racism.

I'm sure I've left lots of examples out, so feel free to add them.

You might also ask Media Matters to put together a "greatest hits" of GOP and/or right wing talker racism, and Outfoxed producer Robert Greenwald to expand and re-promote FOX ATTACKS BLACK AMERICA.

Contact Media Matters.

Contact Greenwald: info@bravenewfilms.org

Blackwater mercenary logo contest: my entries

Blackwater, the Republican mercenary company, recently changed their logo, removing crosshairs to make it look less violent.

This inspired Wired to run a contest to design a better logo. Here's my efforts followed by my favorites of other people's:


MINE:






OTHER PEOPLE'S EFFORTS:

This is a reference to a SOUTH PARK reference to COOL HAND LUKE. Cartman is saying, "Respect mah authoritay!!!!"

Order early for this holiday season:

click to see full-sized album cover

More entries in the wired contest

Katrina, New Orleans, & the GOP: Deep Thoughts

Hurricane Katrina gave Americans a rare chance to see first hand the kind of care and attention Baby Bush and the GOP normally reserve for Iraqis.

Click to see full-sized.

hurricane katrina new orleans louisiana iraq war black superdome fema michael brown president george w bush brownie african american cartooneditorial cartoon dead flood republican GOP conservative compassionate conservatism grover norquist terri schiavo political humor err on the side of life professor smartass iraq fascism ethnic cleansing political opinion smartass comments resistance censored news rebel photo

GOP: Masters of the Obvious

Americans should speak English.

Marriage is between a man and a woman.

Flag burning is bad.

Did you ever know someone who had an annoying habit of pointing out the obvious? Like saying, "That looks heavy!" instead of helping you carry it or telling you to do something you were about to do anyway? By grade school, this is usually met with "DUH!" "DOI!" or "No shit, Sherlock." In college, a slightly more diplomatic friend used to say "Thanks, MOTO (master of the obvious)."

Not that I agree with GOP on these things, but when was the last time you felt the need for a law to let you know which language would be most useful to speak? Did you ever get up and wonder if today was a Portuguese day or maybe Hindi?

Were you ever uncertain about which gender to marry or date and wish there was a federal law or even constitutional amendment to clear it up for you?

Were you ever uncertain whether burning the American flag is a sign of respect or disrespect?

Most of us feel pretty competent to figure this stuff out for ourselves. Apparently, a lot of Republicans don't.

In fairness, they will be quick to tell you that they PERSONALLY wouldn't marry someone of the same sex just because it was legal, but someone else might be weaker than them, and their children's sexual orientation is apparently as abitrary as their taste in music or clothes, subject not only to fads but the fad of a distinct minority.

That makes sense though since these are the same people that think their children will forsake their religious beliefs if they don't hear about God during the six hours of the public school day. The parents themselves might become stone atheists if "In God we trust" wasn't on our money so they could pull it out and read it when they start to doubt his existence.

Their thought processes are a closed loop: I have a prejudice, I want society to make it a law, so I can point to the law to show that my prejudice is valid.

They never ask a question that requires evidence or that they haven't already decided what the answer is. If most of us were concerned about whether Terri Schiavo's husband was ending her life while she still had a chance for recovery, we would then want to hear about the tests of her brain activity, see CAT scans, and things like that before we were certain he was doing something wrong. If most of us were vaguely uncomfortable with gays and wonder if gay marriage influenced kids to be gay, we would want to see research by psychologists, sociologists, neurologists and other scientists before we decided it was a legitimate concern,, and we might actually change our minds. Not the MOTOs. They have a prejudice, Pastor Buford and President Bush confirm it, and that's the end of the discussion.

We all have our moments when we are the Sherlock of "No shit, Sherlock," but when someone does nothing but point out the obvious or make rules about things most people were going to do anyway, you begin to wonder if they aren't a little retarded, and rather than argue or agree with them, you try to steer clear of them and put important things on shelves they can't reach.

I don't think republican politicians are retarded. They are just profoundly cynical like an ice cream man who whispers in kids' ears that he'll sell them boogey man protection if they give him their lunch money or let him touch their little brother in the back of the truck.

We aren't doing the GOPs constituents any favors by treating their hot button issues as legitimate concerns any more than we would be helping the retarded kid by asking him if his boogey man insurance is all paid up to date.


gay marriage child molester flag burning english as official language terrorism oil president george w bush family values terri schiavo republican GOP conservative corruption political humor professor smartass lies propaganda corporationfascism political opinion agent provocateur george w bush public opinion religious right master of the obvious no shit sherlock worst president ever failure war criminal idiot retard closet gay moral majority karl rove humor comedy funny child children nazi smartass comments resistance censored news rebel

GOP Memo calls religious right "wackos"

This is why abortion won't be overturned: the GOP is using it to drive people to the polls. Unfortunately, Democrats often play this game with left wing cultural window dressing while screwing us on economic issues too.

KEY EXCERPTS:

Abramoff-Scanlon School of Sleaze

By Michael Scherer

....one memo highlighted in a Capitol Hill hearing Wednesday that Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, sent the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana to describe his strategy for protecting the tribe's gambling business. In plain terms, Scanlon confessed the source code of recent Republican electoral victories: target religious conservatives, distract everyone else, and then railroad through complex initiatives.

"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them." The brilliance of this strategy was twofold: Not only would most voters not know about an initiative to protect Coushatta gambling revenues, but religious "wackos" could be tricked into supporting gambling at the Coushatta casino even as they thought they were opposing it.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/11/03/abramoff/

It's time to get our head out of our asses. School prayer, the flag, the Ten Commandments, aren't going to put food on the table, or get your kid medical care when he's sick. When we decide who to put on the Supreme Court and in elected office, we should be spending more time looking at how they are going to deal with corporate America than those other issues that are used primarily to get our panties in knot.


iraq war lobbyist jack abramoff religious right tom delay president george w bush osama bin laden salon.com christian right religious wackos Michael Scanlon Abramoff-Scanlon School of Sleaze republican GOPconservative corruption Native American casino halliburton bechtel old boys clud good old boy network professor smartass iraq fascist lies hypocrisy propaganda corporation fascism democracy political opinion closet gay george w bush, left behind, born again, evangelical, opinion, james dobson, abortion, prayer in school ten commandments red states northwoods karl rove dick cheney, worst president ever failure don rumsfeld

Is America a Family or Plantation?

One of our political parties has claimed to have family values that the other party lacks, and pundits on the left and right have embraced the similar idea that the right is a “stern father” and the left a “nurturing mother.” The real struggle in America though is between visions of America as family or a plantation, which is clear when you look at how each institution deals with various issues.

For example, the purpose of a family is to look after the welfare of all its members, however imperfectly it does that in reality. The purpose of a plantation is to use most of its members to support the welfare of the very few up in the big house.

Though the family does have a hierarchy of rank from child to parent to elder, it is assumed that as the child matures, he will share in the family decision-making process. On the plantation, though the older slave may become a field boss or even overseer, all real power stays with the plantation owner. Period.

The family wants to see its children grow in independence and autonomy. The plantation wants to see its children grow in blind obedience and respect for authority.

The family sees religion as a way for children to grow and understand the world around them. The plantation only allows and encourages religion to the degree that it teaches obedience and hierarchy.

It is the same with education. In a family, education is meant to build independence of thought and self-reliance. The plantation only wants you to know what makes you an effective worker, and all other knowledge is cut off and feared.

The family sees it’s members as individuals. If the parents harbor dreams of their children becoming doctors or lawyers but they instead decide to become mimes or fashion designers, well the parents get used to it because having the relationship with the child is the most important thing. If a child of the plantation doesn’t want to pick cotton and the master doesn’t see how his alternative occupation immediately profits him, that child will be beaten senseless until he sees the wisdom of picking cotton.

If someone falls sick in a family, the family does whatever it takes to make them well, staying home from work to make chicken noodle soup, driving the patient to the doctor, and re-arranging finances to pay the medical bills. If someone on a plantation falls ill, a cost benefit analysis is done. If the future work of the slave is worth more than the cost of treating him, he lives. If the master can’t profit by restoring him to health though, he will be left to die. If it is a sharecropper plantation instead of a slave one, the sharecropper would be over-charged for some medical attention that his family will still be paying for well after his death.

This would be the same if someone became a thief, addict, or worse. The family would fret and try various combinations of tough love and treatment, all aimed at preventing the person from harming themself or others. The plantation owner sees this in purely economic terms. If it profitable to repair the slave, he will do so. If the addiction improves his work output and prevents rebellion and resentment, it is not a problem. If there is money to be made off of feeding the addiction of his slave and those on neighboring plantations, say by selling drugs or building prisons for addicted slaves, he will do so. If there is no way to profit from this defect, the slave will be killed.

Ironically, the plantation spends more time talking about being a family, especially when the slaves are getting disgruntled, and need to be reminded how lucky they are to get their half cup of gruel a day as they serve the master. A real family doesn’t have to say how great the family is—its members see it in action and feel it everyday.

In a family, people have intrinsic value in and of themselves, no matter what they do. On a plantation, people have value as things, a money making piece of equipment in the account books. When they no longer make money, they are removed from the books, and never thought of again.

The saddest thing about this analogy is that for the most vocal advocates of the plantation model, it isn’t an analogy at all. They worked their fields with people they bought and sold for hundreds of years, and for another hundred years they charged the field workers for the privilege of being treated little better. This is the model of human society not just in the American South but throughout the world for most of human history—most work for the good of the few, and the middle class lifestyle many of us enjoyed in America has been a brief, happy exception. Now all of America is being sold down the river to the plantation, and like the sharecropper, we can never quite come out ahead as our debts mount but the master always has money to build another wing on the big house and spends the day drinking mint juleps on the porch while he tells us how lucky we are to have a master who tolerates our lazy and shiftless ways.

And just as that master in the South didn’t willingly let the slave have a place at the table as an equal, we cannot today expect the same corporations that send our jobs overseas, make education harder to get by demanding tax cuts then avoiding paying them anyway, charge us 30% on credit card debt, deny us health benefits, and try to deny us healthcare even when we pay for our policies, will voluntarily start treating us like members of the family. We need to act as we would if our brother or child has been kidnapped and forced to work on a plantation, and no one in authority will lift a finger to rescue them. Because our family, our country, has been kidnapped, and those we elected because we thought they saw us as family are quietly sitting on the porch, drinking mint juleps with the master.

GOP BULLY LOGIC

The GOP still seems to be enamored of their trope of the Democrats as the “nanny” party that tries to protect you from foolishly smoking, driving an SUV or eating mad cow tainted beef instead of letting you figure out these dangers for yourself. Whatever merits this image has, an even more accurate one for the GOP is the schoolyard bully.

As most of us can remember from grade school, the bully takes what he wants from the weak, (your lunch or homework) and gives nothing in return, destroys what he doesn’t understand (the book you were reading or model you brought for show and tell). This translates into cutting funding for schools, healthcare, and veterans to give tax cuts to the rich and defense contracts to their friends.

The bully focuses on the weak. In school, it is the small, shy goofy-looking kids. At home, the GOP used to do this by picking on blacks, which still works to some degree, and Latinos, which works in the Southwest, but as both groups are more accepted, they have moved on to smaller minorities, seemingly less able to fight back, gays and Muslims. They never directly attack someone who could kick their ass like the broad middle class. Instead, they throw spitballs at the back of the middle class’s head, and when they angrily turn to look, the bully points to one of their scapegoats: blacks, Latinos, gays, or those crazy Muslims.

In foreign policy, their victims is countries too small or weak to protect their natural resources, like Iraq, or their people, like Haiti or Central America.

The bully’s friends are other bullies like corporations who want to profit as much as possible by paying as little as possible to workers and countries they take raw materials from and religious leaders who produce nothing but fool the stupid into making them millionaires, berate their followers for sins like divorce that they have committed themselves, and convince them that poverty is the result of sin, contrary to the teachings of Jesus.

Some who are poor and weak worship the bully, not because he helps them in any way, but because they hope to become bullies themselves one day.

When the bully bothers to explain something, it doesn’t make much sense. It doesn’t have to. The words are not what’s important, it’s the pounding you’ll get if you don’t do what the bully tells you. We have to privatize Social Security because it’s about to go broke. Does it matter that privatizing Social Security will accelerate drawing down the trust fund? You are some kind of communist or terrorist for even thinking that.

The bully has one set of rules for his friends and another for his victims. If a friend steals billions with shell corporations, he should be fined and forgiven. If a victim steals a slice of pizza, he should go to prison for life. A friend can have “youthful indiscretions” like drug use and adultery until 40 or so, and these should be covered up and smoothed over to prevent any discomfort. If a victim uses drugs, he should have his house and car taken away and be sent to prison to be raped every day until he is 40 or so. A friend can get tired of national guard service and decide to stop showing up. A victim will be hunted down and sent to prison or to patrol in a Humvee in Baghdad.

The one thing a bully fears is the other kids banding together and kicking his ass. He will do anything to stop this. On the playground, he will remind you that your new ally is a gimp, a nigger, or a fag. Actually, that’s exactly what the GOP will do too. But they will also attack the groups most likely to fight effectively like unions, journalists who ask tough questions, and politicians and parties who don’t admire or befriend the bully. In other countries, the corporate bully will go as far as to ban these groups and kill their members and even elected leaders, which seems a bit extreme when someone is just asking for fair wages for picking bananas, or a fair price for their country’s oil.

There is a difference between the schoolyard and the political schoolyard. In the adult world, there is no teacher watching the schoolyard to appeal to. There is just the bullies and the rest of us. Without that adult looming in the background, what would that bully have done to you? That is exactly what is happening to us now, and to the rest of the world because we haven’t put our bully in his place.



bully bullying iraq war black latino muslim gay president george w bush scapegoat republican GOP conservative corruption occupation halliburton political humor colonialism white mans burden professor smartass propaganda corporationfascism war on terror public relations foreign policy al qaeda false flag cointelpro northwoods terrorist worst president ever failure war criminal idiot retard closet gay illegal immigration karl rove puppet fascist chimp humor comedy funny abu ghraib torture nazi smartass comments resistance censored news rebel

Who slept with the GOP Man Ho?

It's not a sin if it isn't in the press...



What the GOP thinks of college students

Karl Rove, chief political strategist for U.S. president George W. Bush, said:

As people do better, they start voting like Republicans --- unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.

If you know any college students who are thinking about voting for Bush or not voting at all, pass this information on to them.

The GOP has consistently tried to make it harder for you to go to college by shifting financial aids from grants to loans, then trying to move the loans to private lenders who can charge higher (and variable) interest when you graduate. Tax cuts for their rich friends are more important to them than your education. It's that simple.

When I went to college in the 80's, I probably got less than $1,000 a year from my family, but I only had to work in the summer because financial aid covered the rest. There's no reason we couldn't go back to that, or better, IF STUDENTS VOTE.

Why do you think politicians of both parties trip over themselves trying to give money to old people? THEY VOTE. It's the same reason big business people make political contributions: it's the best return they will get on their investment.


Taking the time to register and vote could mean you can quit your second job sometime before the end of your college career. Click on this link to register in your state:

https://www.workingforchange.com/vote/index.cfm?ms=OVR002

If you think you won't have time to go to the polls election day, you can ask for an absentee ballot when you register, and mail it in before the election.

Bush backs cutting college PELL grants $270 million and 84,000 students

The Bush administration’s Department of Education approved changes in the formula families use to determine if their college-bound students are eligible for financial assistance under the Federal Pell Grant Program. The changes, announced May 30, will rob 84,000 of aid and reduce financial help to hundreds of thousands of other students beginning in the 2004–2005 academic year, according to a memo from the Congressional Research Service. Education experts predict the impact of the changes will ripple into many state and university administered aid programs that base their eligibility formulas on the federal model, denying educational opportunity to even more students.

New York Times article with details:
http://corzine.senate.gov/clippings/collegeaid.nytimes.7.18.03.pdf

Republican Bill Pending in Congress Could
Eliminate Savings for Students

Wednesday, June 2, 2004

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- While welcoming last week’s news of another drop in interest rates on student loans for college, Representatives George Miller (D-CA) and Dale E. Kildee (D-MI) also warned that the main higher education legislation pending in Congress could eliminate altogether the benefit that enables students to consolidate their loans at a low fixed interest rate and save thousands of dollars over the life of their loan.

http://edworkforce.house.gov/democrats/releases/rel6204b.html