corrente

Obama or McCain or... who would you rather argue with begining in February 2009?

1)- McCain, because, my friends, I will always be right and he [McCain] will always be wrong, and I will win every time! (Meanwhile: Joe Lieberman will be appointed first Viceroy of the glorious post-surge Neo-Iraqian liberation colony.)

2)- Obama, because at least I will stand a chance that he will change his mind and see it my way (By Unitary Executive decree: exile George W. Bush to the care of a short tempered rutting muskox on the island of Ellesmere in the the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and attach Dick Cheney to a giant taser that delivers it's payload every time someone, somewhere, anywhere in the world, steps on a bloated tick) and then he will smile a big hopey dopey smile at me and look into my eyes and make me feel very special.

3)- Hillary, because then The Big Creep will come over to my house and throw empty Crown Royal bottles at me. And a kitchen sink too. And I would like to have a new kitchen sink because the one I have isn't all that great and I figger the Clinton's probably have a purty fancy kitchen sink or two left laying around the old place in Westchester or Georgetown or Lake Winola or wherever it is they have the kitchen sinks stockpiled. And if they want to throw one my way I'll gladly take it.

NOTE: I'd like one of those swanky CorStone Chepachet Self-Rim Double Bowl outfits with the Mineral Graphite finish if that ain't to much to ask; just sayin'. (and please get your fat ass off my lawn after you are done delivering the sink). But I would still trade in that new kitchen sink for the chance to see Dick Cheney electrocuted by eels.

4)- Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader, because after we pretty much run out of things to argue about we can go down in my organically earth cooled basement and listen to Machine Gun in the Clown's Hand on my homemade hemp loom powered hi-fi.

5)- Bob Barr, because I would like to have a beer with his wife Roseanne.

6)- other.

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George W. Bush:

'Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter'
By Robert Winnett, Deputy Political Editor and Urmee Khan
Last Updated: 7:52AM BST 10/07/2008

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

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The Four Lethal Cynicisms (Booman Tribune)

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Dept. of Reg-u-lar White Workin' Class Wimmen:

Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild - “the flashiest hostess in London.” - and the things ya see when "frankly" (apparently) ya don't own a mirror...

Lady Lynn banishes Obama to the e-list..

frankly, I don’t like him. I feel like he is an elitist.

Jeepers. Pass around that there jug of homebrew Chateau Lafitte why dontcha.

Maybe Lady Lynn will pay off Hillary's campaign debt? That would be really flashy swell of her (and maybe even earn her some frequent flyer miles aboard the Fuck Jet!).

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Hot off the Assholiated Press!:

Senate bows to Bush, approves surveillance bill
By PAMELA HESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — Bowing to President Bush's demands, the Senate sent the White House a bill Wednesday overhauling bitterly disputed rules on secret government eavesdropping and shielding telecommunications companies from lawsuits complaining they helped the U.S. spy on Americans.

The relatively one-sided vote, 69-28, came only after a lengthy and heated debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks. It ended almost a year of wrangling over surveillance rules and the president's warrantless wiretapping program that was initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The House passed the same bill last month, and Bush said he would sign it soon.

This message has been approved by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Steny Hoyer, Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.

The 9% Club "Bowing" to Mr. 28%


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The authority of the Leader is total and all embracing: within it all resources available to the body politic emerge; it covers every facet of the life of the people; it embraces all members of the German community pledged to loyalty and obedience to the Leader. The Leader's authority is subject to no checks or controls; it is circumscribed by no private preserve of jealously guarded individual rights; it is free and idependent, overriding and unfettered." ~ (Ernst Rudolf Huber, Nazi Party constitutional lawyer, 1939.)

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9%

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ON JULY 4th, AMERICA CELEBRATED THE RULE OF LAW. ON JULY 9th, THE SENATE WILL VOTE TO BURY IT.

Text (excerpt):

"This week's FISA 'revisions' will cement this two-tiered system of justice. The nation's largest telecoms broke our spying laws for years, but Congress awash in telecom money and influence, is about to give them retroactive lawbreaking license.

Why? Because although a crime is a crime when common Americans commit it, the Washington Establishment justifies crimes that are committed by their own as benign "policy disputes" - or crimes committed "for our own Good."

Worse, the Washington Establishment sells this two-tiered justice system by disseminating rank falsehoods and deceiving the public about what they're really doing: Image with text / Washington Post ad

Glenn Greenwald (Salon.com): Aug. 8, 1974 vs. July 9, 2008 (Tuesday July 8, 2008)

AccountabilityNow PAC


- - - THE DUAL STATE - - -

N [Carl Schmitt]

...articulated a theory based entirely upon the will of the sovereign and articulated a new basis for authoritarian democracy that paved the way for and justified the National Socialist assertion that the will of the Fuehrer represented the will of the Volk and thus that his pronouncements, formally promulgated, became thereby "law."

~ Peter C. Caldwell and William E. Scheuerman, eds. From Liberal Democracy to Fascism: Legal and Political Thought in the Weimar Republic. Studies in Central European Histories Series. Boston and Leiden: Humanities Press

N

Ernst Fraenkel was the first to analyze the multi-dimensionality of the National Socialist political order and to characterize it with the terms normative state and prerogative state. Fraenkel’s analysis of the Dual State - conceptualized as a permanent state of emergency, aimed not only at destroying the civil legal order, but civil society as well...

~ Michael Wildt, The political order of the Volksgemeinschaft: Ernst Fraenkel’s Dual State revisited

N [ Fraenkel, Ernst. The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship.Translated From the German by E.A. Shils, in Collaboration with Edith Lowenstein and Klaus Knorr. New York: Oxford University Press, 1941 ]:

This classic study is one of the standard works on constitutional law, jurisprudence and judicial administration in Nazi Germany. Also considered one of the finest analyses of totalitarianism, it was written in Germany in the late 1930s and completed in the United States in 1940, where Fraenkel [1898-1975] lived after fleeing the Nazis in 1938. The title derives from Fraenkel's thesis that National Socialism divided the law into two co-existing areas. The first of these, The Normative State, protects the legal order as expressed in statutes, decisions of courts and the activities of administrative agencies. Its counterpart is the Prerogative State, which is governed by the party. It exercised "unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees". "As a detailed record of what has happened to the Rechtstaat under totalitarian auspices, this book is without rival."

~ Fritz Morstein Marx, Harvard Law Review

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"There is no contradiction between support for faith-based initiatives and upholding our constitutional principles," ~ Hillary Clinton, January 2005.


Salon.com

Hillary Clinton and "moral values"
Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2005 14:36 EST

There's a lot of reason to doubt that "moral values" were the Election Day trigger that the press has made them out to be, but those doubts aren't stopping Democrats from moving to the middle -- or beyond -- on social issues that religious conservatives hold dear.

First Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi encouraged an anti-abortion red-stater, former Indiana Rep. Tim Roemer, to run for the DNC chairmanship. Now Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton seems to be stepping at least a little to the right. Last week in Boston, on the night before George W. Bush's second inauguration, Clinton delivered a speech in which she lauded the role of religious faith in public life and seemed to offer at least some kind of support for Bush's faith-based initiatives. Arguing that there is a "false division" between faith-based programs and the religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, Clinton said, "There is no contradiction between support for faith-based initiatives and upholding our constitutional principles."

On Monday in Albany, in a speech tied to the 32nd anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, Clinton called on activists on both sides of the abortion debate to seek "common ground" and work together to reduce unwanted pregnancies. While Clinton didn't signal any change in her views about the legality of abortion, she called the practice a "sad, even tragic choice for many, many women." In arguing that the number of abortions should be reduced, Clinton advocated sex education -- including abstinence education, a favorite of the Christian right -- and said that "research shows that that the primary reason teenage girls abstain from early sexual activity is because of their religious and moral values." (Clinton didn't mention other research showing that teens who take abstinence pledges are less likely than other teens to use contraception when they do have sex.)

Clinton's middle-ground approach on abortion and family planning appears to have satisfied no one except the Democratic Leadership Council, which said her comments put her in line with most Americans' "yes, but" or "no, but" views about abortion. [...]

― Tim Grieve

"The Clintons, on faith-based solutions, have always been way ahead of the curve," - Rev. Eugene F. Rivers 3rd

Boston Clobe

Sen. Clinton urges use of faith-based initiatives
By Michael Jonas, Globe Correspondent | January 20, 2005

On the eve of the presidential inauguration, US Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton last night embraced an issue some pundits say helped seal a second term for George W. Bush: acceptance of the role of faith in addressing social ills.

In a speech at a fund-raising dinner for a Boston-based organization that promotes faith-based solutions to social problems, Clinton said there has been a "false division" between faith-based approaches to social problems and respect for the separation of church of state.

"There is no contradiction between support for faith-based initiatives and upholding our constitutional principles," said Clinton, a New York Democrat who often is mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2008.

Addressing a crowd of more than 500, including many religious leaders, at Boston's Fairmont Copley Plaza, Clinton invoked God more than half a dozen times, at one point declaring, "I've always been a praying person."

She said there must be room for religious people to "live out their faith in the public square."

[...]

The dinner was a fund-raiser for the National TenPoint Leadership Foundation and the Dorchester-based Ella J. Baker House. Both youth outreach programs are directed by the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers 3d, a leader of the clergy-based efforts to stem youth violence in Boston in the 1990s that has become a national model for community-police partnerships.

[...]

"The Clintons, on faith-based solutions, have always been way ahead of the curve," said Rivers, citing President Clinton's support of a 1996 law banning the federal government from discriminating against religious organizations seeking funding available to groups delivering social services.

In her speech, Clinton praised the efforts of Rivers and others working to curb youth violence, saying those of faith are often most willing to walk the streets of the country's most dangerous neighborhoods to try to reach young people. Where others "see trouble," she said, Rivers and faith-based soldiers "see God's work right in front of them."

Although the senator has insisted that she is focused only on her work in the Senate and constituents in New York (she faces reelection in 2006), talk of another Clinton seeking the White House seems to be a topic of speculation wherever she goes. [...]

2008:

College Democrats of America - Friday, May 16, 2008

Faith, Family and Values / Hillary Clinton’s Vision for Faith Based Organizations: Active, Growing and Living Out Their God-Given Callings

Faith Based Initiatives - Hillary Clinton supports the funding of faith-based programs that promote the common good – feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, bringing hope to those who hurt. Our tax dollars come from a great and diverse nation and we have a sacred trust to use those funds to help the least fortunate in our society in the best and most cost-effective way possible.

Senator Clinton believes that we cannot and should not use tax dollars to promote one religion over another and that our government should work with faith-based organizations in ways that are consistent with our Constitution.

An example of how we can do this well is Hillary Clinton’s Kinship Caregiver Support Act, which included support for faith-based partnerships that assist the growing number of grandparents and other relatives raising children.

Introduced: July 21, 2004:
S. 2706 [108th]: Kinship Caregiver Support Act (full text of bill)

March 12, 2007:

The Kinship Caregiver Support Act

Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) have introduced this legislation in the last two Congresses. Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) was also an original co-sponsor. In the 109th Congress, the following Members were also co-sponsors: Senators Coleman, Jeffords, Johnson, Kerry, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Obama and Schumer.

Introduced May 07, 2007:
H.R. 2188: Kinship Caregiver Support Act 110th Congress (full text)

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WARNING: Signs and Wonders / Mark of the Beast Alert!

McCain -- See: Cain: First son of Adam, his works being evil, his offerings will be rejected by the faithful.

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