Looking Forward to the Weekend

The Rally to Restore Sanity is in two days. Can't wait. Will be wonderful to see thousands of wonderful people in town. Welcome to DC!

My Only Word

On the nutcase with the porn mustache who has had the time of his life holding the press hostage to his every move.

Welcome Beck & Tea Partiers to my Home

Although it seems that many of them won't be actually visiting much of the city today. Thanks to the warning they've received from one of their own about areas of DC to avoid. (Thanks to DC blogger Laura Olin for creating this map based on the Tea Party's warnings.

Teabaggers are warned that Dupont Circle is the gay area (true enough, but hey, wouldn't anyone who's into teabagging actually WANT to visit the gay area?) And be careful when you speak to a cab driver or waiter because they are "immigrants, frequently from east Africa or Arab countries." And you wouldn't want to make any errors in speaking with them because ... well they are different you know. And apparently easily insulted.

The warning that is causing the most giggles among DC residents is "do not use the Green line or the Yellow line" on the metro. So the Pentagon are among the places that will not be visited by teabaggers this weekend, since it is apparently too dangerous to visit the Pentagon by metro. And Eastern Market is out of the safe range, so I guess all those kids who are having breakfast with their parents and shopping or playing are risking their lives!!!!

So my fellow DCers - if you happen upon a tea partier today, please move slowly and keep your voice low. They seem to scare very easily.

Find Me a Rainbow, PLEASE!

Have you ever had one of those weeks (okay couple of weeks) where it just seems like there is no such thing as good news on the planet?

Let's see - we've got the gulf taking another beating, this time from oil.
A whole lot of Americans think that it's a great thing to be one, but that right to religious freedom isn't so much a right when Christ isn't involved.
Taliban justice just stoned a young man & woman to death for adultery.
Iran is still considering stoning a woman for the same crime.
A mother may have driven a car with her babies into a pond to kill them.
A huge section of Pakistan is destroyed and thousands killed in flooding. (How many of these "natural "disasters" will it take before the slow-learning crowd starts to get how climate change works?)
And oh yeah, day after day a major US news channel has been working its tail off to encourage our slow-learners to equate a duly-elected President of the US with a totalitarian dictator (pick one, they've almost all been used).

Where's the good news?

Cry Me a River Congressional Republicans

What do the following pieces of legislation have in common?

Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1980
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981
Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1982
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1983
Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993
Balanced Budget Act of 1995 (vetoed)
Personal Responsibility and Budget Reconciliation Act of 1996
Balanced Budget Act of 1997
Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997
Taxpayer Refund and Relief Act of 1999 (vetoed)
Marriage Tax Relief Act of 2000 (vetoed)
Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001
Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003
The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005
Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005

Give up yet?

They were all passed thanks to "Reconciliation" Look at the dates. Notice anything interesting about them? Yup, Republicans have more than a passing acquaintance with the use of reconciliation to get legislation out off the hill and onto a president's desk. In fact, Republican-controlled Senates have used it 17 times to Democratic-controlled Senate's 5.

Well, you say, perhaps the Republicans who are screaming their heads of on CNN aren't aware of this history. But wait, Senators Bond & Gregg were critical advocates of using reconciliation to get Republican legislation out.

So I guess it must be another Senator Gregg who said, "Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), who said any use of budget reconciliation by President Obama would be “regarded as an act of violence” against Republicans, and likened it to “running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them in the Chicago River.”

Wishing Happy Holidays & Merry Christmas to All

Yes, it's true that neither Bucky nor I are posting much anymore. Combination of blogger burn out and just so much going on in lives on this side of the computer.

But want to wish everyone the best for their holiday season. Take care and be well!

The Psycho Right Does it Again

The crazies in the right wing of the Republican Party are making yet another move to purge those silly moderates from the party. This time it is a 10-point purity pledge.

1 - Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill
2 -Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care
3 -Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation
4 -Workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check
5 -Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants
6 - Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges
7 - Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat
8 -Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act
9 -Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion
10 - The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership

Where to begin, where to begin. Could it be the innate contradiction of points 9 & 10 (we care about your life only while in the womb, outside of it, run or duck & cover, 'cause we've got a right to those guns). Mabe it's point #1, by which standard the darling of the right, Ronny Raygun, would have been rejected. Maybe it's the thought that in today's world they are wasting one of their 10 pledge points on "defending marriage" instead of, oh, I don't know, addressing a national or international security or issue. Or looking at quality of life (poverty, hunger, etc.)

Call it the Palinization of the party if you like, but whatever it is, it's just sad.

Funny, True, and Sad - all at the same time

Joe Wilson's War

Well, apparently even though it's acceptable to bring guns to meetings where Congressfolk and / or the President are speaking, it's still socially unacceptable to shout "liar" at the President during a speech in the Capital building. As SC representative Joe Wilson found out last night, and again today. His website is still down, But I'm sure once it's back up and running he'll enjoy hearing from you about the appropriateness of his actions.

I do feel for the people of SC. I mean, sure, ok, some of them elected this guy, and all of them elected the governor, but the state really is taking a one/two punch from their politicians these days. Then again, after all those years of Strom Thurmond in the Senate, they should be used to the lowest possible denominator of representations.

I Had No Idea We Had That Option!

Pastor Steven Anderson of Phoenix gave a sermon recently titled "Why I Hate Barack Obama," followed by asking his parishioners to join him in praying "that God strikes Barack Obama with brain cancer."

My personal disgust with the Bush administration led me to start up this blog some years ago. And in that time I made any number of pleas for Bush / Cheney / Rumsfeld and crew to do the right thing. I called for impeachment hearings and investigations.

But not once, not a single time have I on this blog or in my personal life wished death on any of them. But the idea of what that idiot pastor calls "spiritual warfare" is beyond comprehension or belief. The tenor of these repugnant creatures - bringing guns to town hall meetings, praying for a US president's death (and not even having the decency to call him Mr. President or President Obama, but then once you're praying for a man's death, I suppose all pretense to decency has pretty much flown out the window), the whole insane, "we're all Rush L playthings now" ideology just baffles me.

How on earth are these creatures formed? Where does this come from?

Laughter(and ridicule), the best medicine

On the subject of what Popessa calls the "town hall psychos" and their rhetoric, especially the alleged administration "death panels" in the works to "kill off granny," I stole this meditation from James Fallows of the Atlantic. If the psychos REALLY think they're destined for the DEATH PANELS, then why don't we announce immediate availability of same, with the following options:

PUBLIC OPTION:
Firing squad manned by NRA members
Being dressed like a dog and thrown into the locker room of Michael Vick
Being left in the median strip of a major interstate highway


PRIVATE OPTION:
Going hunting with Dick Cheney
Being left on an Alaskan glacier to await Sarah Palin's gunning you down from a helicopter
Being forced to ingest the medications that Rush Limbaugh is on

As Fallows concludes, laughter and Barney Frank-style contempt just might be the cure for this idiocy.

OMG! We Have GOT to Start Spending More Money on Education!

Ok, so I've avoided the "town hall" nonsense out of sheer stubbornness. But I've just listened to a few snippets and am convinced that the number one problem in America is that we've become very very stupid.

A 20-something girl who bemoans that all of this is because the nation is "becoming like Russia" or those that FEAR we are becoming socialists. Or have convinced themselves that the President of the United States wants to kill the elderly.

I can't figure out what astounds me more about these idiots. That they're letting themselves be led by the nose by those who love the status quo that is screwing them over at the moment, or that they seem to actually believe the nonsense they spout. They must, how else do you get such full throated screaming unless you think you're being personally attacked.

Well done Fox news and the health care industry. You certainly have done a great job of convincing many people to do your work and thank you for it. PT Barnum would be proud.

Personally, I'm going to agitate as hard as I can for more money for education.

Thinking about bias...

Watching the Sotomayor hearings play out, I am puzzled by the insistent questioning about her "biases" that she would presumably bring to bear unfairly on her rulings. Does this mean that white men appointed to the court bring no bias whatsoever and therefore are the only reliable arbiters of this society's legal tangles? Were the people pursuing this line of questioning really serious?

Just sayin,' that's strictly a rhetorical question. I watch in wonder...

Better late than never...

I've been away from Make It Stop for awhile, partly because nothing moved me sufficiently to offer a comment-- why should you inflict perspective-free drivel on people--and because I spent about ten days in France, utterly removed from the News. I had no computer, no smart phone, no television, even. I did keep my eyes and ears open, though, and something DID get my attention.

As we know, France's state motto is "Liberte, egalite, fraternite"--liberty, equality, brotherhood. Since the time of the French Revolution, French people have steadfastly insisted that everyone in France is a Frenchman, period. In theory, you have no social class, no ethnicity, no religion in the eyes of the state--you are a Frenchman. Unfortunately, in recent years, this insistence that "we are all French" rang hollow in the case of those French citizens who came from France's former overseas colonies, particularly Algeria and Tunisia. They are Frenchmen, all right, but they are disproportionately represented in low-income housing, the ranks of the unemployed and poor, and manifestly underrepresented, even absent, in high-profile or prestige occupations. The word on the street is that if you are of African descent, you are a lot less French than some other French people when it comes to opportunities for advancement in society. French authorities have repeated "we are all Frenchmen" like a mantra even in the face of destructive riots and protests in the last few years.

So imagine my surprise when my friend and I drove to Verdun to inspect the memorial complex there last month. Verdun is Verdun, a monument to some of the bloodthirstiest military leaders ever. This time, though, I immediately noticed a new, white, mosque-like structure with a small obelisk within on the road to Fort Douamont. It turned out to be a monument--to my knowledge, the first-ever monument--to the French Muslim(read:colonial) troops who played a key role in saving Verdun from German conquest. Then-President Jacques Chirac dedicated it two years ago this month. We wondered what brought this on, since previously all soldiers on the allied side were "French," period. Apparently it came in response to some flagrant grave desecrations elsewhere, especially in Arras on the Somme, vandals . But this is not a one-off...at every memorial area, museum and bookstore, we noted new exhibits and volumes specifically dedicated to the French colonial soldier's experience in the Great War. At last, it seems that the French government acknowledges that there ARE differences among Frenchmen, and that maybe it is a wise gesture to recognize some of those "different" groups. That isn't going to integrate politics or business overnight, but it's a constructive step that COULD make some people feel valued and/or welcomed. France is a multicultural nation...might as well learn to like and live with that!

Plus c'est la meme chose, plus ca change...

Iran Protests Continue

There has been a spark of life among demonstrators today after the past week's violent repression. Among those wandering out to stand with demonstrators was Mehdi Karroubi in this video. Karroubi came in 3rd in the election before this. While he hasn't made much news in our cable news, he has a following in Iran and may be making his move now.