MOMocrats™

Dear GOP, I Remember. And I Vote Democratic.

I remember.

I remember every single anti-woman crack that came from your party during the debate on health care reform. I remember Republicans shouting down and talking over their female colleagues in Congress. And I remember every single NO vote for SCHIP, breast cancer prevention programs, inclusion of maternity care in health insurance reform, and how you cut funding to domestic violence shelters to balance the budget.

I remember how you said HUNGER IN CHILDREN IS A POSITIVE MOTIVATOR.

I remember every act of violent intimidation against women who dare to speak up for what they believe in to get what they need, whether it's a political protest where they get stomped or shoved, or if they're simply trying to visit Planned Parenthood for any reason. I remember how you changed your mind and kept the donation from the campaign worker who stomped the woman.

I remember every single ugly sign people in your corporate-funded subsidiary the Tea Party waved, the images and words revealing more about your misshapen souls than anything about our president or our fellow Americans.

I remember every loud silence when "moderate" Republicans were too timid to denounce the bullies in their party.

I remember when you APOLOGIZED to the British corporation that had just befouled our Gulf waters with an oil spill that is perhaps the worst ecological disaster in recent memory. I remember how you said you still believe in "Drill, baby, drill."

I remember how you were economic advisor to the presidential candidate who lost because he said, "The fundamentals of the economy are strong."

I remember how you said your housekeeper was "like family" and then the moment she became a political liability you acted as if you barely knew her and now you say that you would deport her.

I remember that you were shameless after you said and did all this.

I remember.

I remember who's been working hard to move us all forward. And I vote.

Cynematic blogs at P i l l o w b o o k.

Democrats, Independents, and Moderate Republicans: The Hard Right Wants You to Run for the Hills. Run to the Polling Booths Instead.

November 2010 is a referendum on Republican obstruction extremism.

Keep repeating this phrase when dangerous nonsense happens, like...

This weekend, when rodeo-clown Glenn Beck and his Neo-Westboro Baptist Church, sure to be given wall-to-wall coverage by the cable tv Nonstop Carnival of Evil/Stupid, arrive in Washington, DC. Last August, it was nonsensical "death panels" pushed by a cheeto-stained Facebooker that managed to get everyone into a stir. It's amazing the damage one mean person in her pajamas can do from the basement of her home in the outer reaches of Wasilla.

Let's face it, while August may be the "silly season," ever since about March, 2009, the hard right has done nothing but drag the GOP in a more conservative direction. Like bad cosmetic surgery that pulls too tight, any further right and the GOP's ears will meet behind its head like a clasp on a cheap purse--any further right, and Pol Pot will be wondering why he didn't think to burn some Qu'rans first.

Operation Iraqi Freedom is Over, or, What Makes The Right Mad is That We're Winning

August 18, 2010: combat troop withdrawal from Iraq began ahead of schedule. There are now 50,000 soldiers left behind in Iraq to oversee general security. By winning, I don't mean we won this war. I mean it's a victory for those who opposed the war that we elected a new president who did what he promised.

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I'm still dazed that the cause that burned so fiercely in me for the past seven years--fury that inspired me to become a political blogger, rage that pushed me out into the streets along with hundreds of thousands of other people despite news organs slavishly devoted to pushing Bush's message, a white hot resolve that kept me fired up to elect a president who would respect rule of law and reject the Bush doctrine--now has suddenly come to an anti-climactic end.

Millions mobilized around the world to protest this unjust war.

Now it ends not with a bang, but a whimper.

Three Federal Court Rulings You Need to Know About

In the past week, three very important, highly topical rulings related to civil liberties were issued in federal courts. Each of them may affect your life directly, and, depending on whether they stand up to appeal, each may influence the direction of our society for decades to come.

In case you missed the news on these rulings in between the mainstream media's wall-to-wall coverage of Tiger Woods's return to golf and lively discussions of the theoretical proper usage of the word Topeka as a verb meaning "to search for something on the internet," here are the court decisions that I personally wish TV machine were paying a bit more attention to:

Women Can End the War in Afghanistan: We Know the Cost of War

If it was Bush-Cheney who led us into misbegotten wars in oil country, it's my deepest wish that women will lead us out. I'd like to mark International Women's Day, Women's History Month, and recent debate in the House of Representatives regarding HR 248 (A Resolution to End the War in Afghanistan) by highlighting the ways we women know the cost of war, in intimate and everyday ways. And I am convinced that we can end these wars, and not only that, we have the growing political will, the know-how, and the collective might to bring about peace.

Sarah Palin: Going Rogue All the Way to the White House?

Sarah Palin in 2012? Some are chuckling, but they might want to rethink their take on the first woman on a GOP presidential ticket.

Conservative pundit David Brooks laughed out loud at the suggestion, calling her a "joke". Her former running mate John McCain called her "irrelevant."  Others point to 2008 wannabes Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee as more qualified and doing better in polls than Palin when people talk about GOP Presidential hopefuls. Of course, most thought that quitting her day job as Alaska Governor was the death knell for her political career, but I think this is just the beginning of Palin's national political career. After all, she was just on Oprah!

Seriously, as I have to remind some who've accused me of being a closet Republican, I'm no political fan of Palin. But when people dismiss her out of hand, I keep thinking one thing -- remember the last politician we scoffed at as not even close to being competent enough for the White House?

Right wingnuttery: Impeach Obama because Republicans don't like him?

I  just got off the phone with far-right wingnut Floyd Brown and FOX Radio host Alan Colmes about Brown's newest campaign: impeachment of President Obama. Ordinarily I wouldn't give this guy any attention at all, but since he was on Alan Colmes' Fox Radio show, I figured it was my duty to put a bit of counterspin on the insanity this man spews all over the networks and Internet.

Who is Floyd Brown?  Simply put, Floyd Brown rests in the heart and bowels of the Republican party as the engine formulating the poison that is farted all over Fox News, astroturf sites, and so-called right-wing news sites. Wherever he goes, noxious fumes follow.

Go Read It: Frank Rich on the Bush Administration, Torture, and Justifications for the Iraq War

Bush, but especially Cheney, would have the nation believe that information culled from torturing Abu Ghraib detainees "helped prevent another 9/11" and "kept us safe."

But that claim is worse than wishful thinking; it's untrue. Instead, Bush-Cheney authorized torture for a far worse purpose--so argues Frank Rich in an editorial in the NYT today.

Increasingly, evidence shows that torture was authorized by the Bush White House to extract information from detainees to manufacture information supporting an otherwise non-existent link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, in order to bolster rationalizations for the United States' "pre-emptive strike" on Iraq. Not only is torture wrong, in this case the moral blight was a tool to mitigate the original moral blight: dragging the nation into war under false pretexts, when the Bush White House knew no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein existed.

Now that the truth is emerging, the question is: what do we the people do with it? I'm talking to all people of voting age in this country, no matter who you voted for in the past election. Do we even care? At the very least, don't we owe the families of 4,278 Iraq war dead a reckoning from the commander-in-chief who asked the ultimate sacrifice of them in bad faith?

Calls to Action on Justice Department Torture Memos

In a victory for government transparency, over the objections of Senate Republicans and several intelligence officials, including former CIA Director Michael Hayden, President Obama authorized the release yesterday of four Bush Administration era Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memos that explicitly authorized the use of techniques internationally recognized as torture during interrogations of prisoners in U.S. custody.

The memos had been the subject of an ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit originally filed during the Bush Administation; Attorney General Eric Holder has been arguing for several weeks that the documents should be declassified. According to anonmous government sources quoted in The Daily Beast, several Senate Republicans threatened to "go nuclear" and block the pending confirmation of President Obama's nominee for Justice Deparment Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn Johnsen.

Teabag, Douchebag...It's All Starting to Blur

It's not tea they're brewing, it's big bottomless batches of aimless haterade.

See David Shuster's fact-filled story on why no one can put a finger on what people are protesting or whether the GOP players behind this astroturfed movement (Dick Armey, Newt Gingrinch) will join the "unwashed masses" to protest Reagan and Bush tax policies today. (My bet: the muckety-mucks of the GOP will be a no-show.)

Cynematic blogs at P i l l o w b o o k.