Extended List of Corrupt Republican Leaders
Mitch has created a great extended list of Republican corruption and criminal behavior at Basket of Puppies.
Again… note the themes.
Thanks for commenting and letting me know about your list, Mitch!
Misplaced Priorities and the Return of the Repressed
Republican Culture of Corruption: 2007 So Far is a pretty good list – see any themes?
On this Larry Craig scandal in particular, I’m struck again by how destructive it is when people cannot accept themselves for who they are. There is a strange doubling of the personality. People talk about hypocrisy, but it’s worse than that. It’s worse because it’s a deeper problem than just “not walking the talk.”
People who share the traits that you find irritating in yourself are the most irritating of all, aren’t they? I have a nervous giggle sometimes. I used to have to meditate on Scully from X-Files before giving lectures so that I could be professional about it. If I was around someone else who also giggled when they were nervous, it would be an almost unbearable experience. Even now, when the laughter is a softer thing (it morphed away from the Woody Woodpecker/Horshack sound of my childhood) it is still incredibly irritating to me from time to time – and probably to other people, too. I’ve tried to come to terms with this part of me that I personally find so unattractive. I’m still working on accepting it – and I’ve found the more I accept it, the less intrusive and harsh it becomes – and the less it bothers me when others do the same thing. The more I hated it, the worse it became.
I’ve never understood why sexuality seems to be the most important hot-button issue to so many Americans. We’re a schizophrenic culture in that way – Puritan, and yet… the guests on Jerry Springer. When we have a more realistic and healthier view of sexuality, things are better all around. If you track the relationships between power, religion and sexuality…. more on that another time.
Suffice to say, when you deeply reject part of yourself, the part of you that is rejected becomes more and more important – and darker and more looming. I’m familiar with this dynamic in another way too – it’s a really big problem among Jehovah’s Witnesses. More people are disfellowshipped because of sexual behavior than for any other reason, and at the same time domestic abuse and pedophilia are in some ways hidden and protected. It says a lot about the dynamics of belief-systems and their effects on real people.
It’s interesting that so many high-profile “virtuous” people split out to a seamy side. Jungian therapy would be a good thing… get creative about self-integration.
It’s really no big surprise to me that some of the people who are most focused on being anti-gay are actually repressed homosexuals. And it’s no surprise that some of the big “family values” people are so fond of prostitutes. The more stake you have in appearing to be something you can’t really ever be, the more that the parts of you that you can’t accept come back to haunt you – and it’s always in a darker and darker guise. The return of the repressed.
Larry Craig insists he’s not gay. It’s implausible, I think, but it’s also a measure of how deeply he rejects himself that he takes such an unwise strategy. On the other hand, it really bothers me that he’s being railroaded not because of criminal behavior, but because of sexual behavior. I find it disturbing that homosexual behavior becomes an automatic witch hunt, and all the joking I see is in very poor taste. Is this really what elections should be about anyway? Look at all of the other issues in the list I linked at the beginning.
It really bothered me at the time that Mark Foley could be claimed to have lost the election for the Republicans – not the war? economic policy? any of the other important issues?
Moms mobilize because their children are exposed to lead paint on their Chinese import toys. Good – great – we need mobilized moms! How about holding this government responsible for cutting the funding for the inspectors? What about the issue of child labor in China? Only American kids matter, then?
People in Atlanta have gotten really, really worked up about Michael Vick’s actions. Yeah, he’s a thug. I wish more American athletes were less like pond scum. Yeah, it’s terrible how the dogs were mistreated. But do we see this reaction to American torture policies? Should we put dogs in the cells so that Americans will care?
Americans are exhibiting more and more hysteria and mob behaviors.
We will only get what we deserve if we can’t stop and think and get our priorities straight.
Rove’s Fake Democrat Robocalls
Rove has set up fake-Democrat robocalls, according to Democrats.com. It seems to have been going on for at least two weeks. Report this if it happens to to you!
More details and ongoing coverage at:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com
http://dailykos.com (mostly November 5th)
Karl Rove has been bragging for weeks about his “72-hour program” to swing the elections, which predict a Democratic takeover of Congress.
Now we know what it is: a dirty trick campaign using robocalls.
The calls are made to Democrats and swing voters at all times of day or night to make them angry. And they pretend to be from the Democrat (“Hello, I’m calling with information about Lois Murphy”). If you hang up, they call back 7-8 times, and each time you hear the Democrat’s name, to get you angry at him or her. If you stay on, you get to hear a scathing attack on the Democrat.
I’m getting robocalls from everyone, but I haven’t gotten a repeat call. My hubby got a push-poll today from a live person. But so far everything ends at 8-9 PM.
Josh Marshall at Talking Points memo:
Both parties deliver millions of robocalls during election season. You’ve probably gotten the calls from both parties and many outside groups. It happens every cycle.
Only one party has a nationwide campaign to deliver millions of intentionally-harassing calls disguised to appear that they’re from the opposite party. That party is the Republican party. And the calls are funded by the NRCC — the House GOP election committee.
It’s the party of election subversion. Deal with it.
Saxby Chambliss Says He Wants Me
Saxby and I correspond quite often, so I feel comfortable thinking of him by his first-name rather than by the whole ducal title “Republican Senator of Georgia, Saxby Chambliss.” I’ve never known anyone named Saxby before.
His job is to work for me and to protect my interests, as a citizen of Georgia and the United States. I don’t feel as though I really have that many people working for me, so I take the responsibility very seriously. I write to him often, expressing concerns, laying out arguments, proposing solutions and – most importantly – asking him to consider (at least on occasion) using his vote for the common good.
That man! Sometimes I think he really forgets that he’s supposed to represent all our interests, not just those of some of us. Sometimes he ignores my correspondence. Sometimes he sends a form letter. On nearly every issue, he votes in just the opposite way from what I had requested (bless his heart).
Men. What can you do? I was really starting to become despondent about our relationship, but then I received a wonderful email from Saxby today – just after noon.
I won’t quote the whole letter, because … well, it’s full of the usual, and let’s just leave it at that.
Amazingly, he has proclaimed his desire for me! He offers himself to me – forever, and without hesitation!
Thank you for contacting me with your concerns for S. 2253, a bill to require the Secretary of the Interior to offer the 181 Area of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas leasing. I appreciate hearing from you and want you.
Natural gas prices have been rising … Blah, blah, blah….
Thank you again for taking the time to contact me. If you would like to receive timely email alerts regarding the latest congressional actions and my weekly e-newsletter, please sign up via my web site at: www.chambliss.senate.gov. Please do not hesitate to be in touch if I may ever be of assistance to you.
Sincerely,
Saxby Chambliss
United States Senate
For all that Senator Chambliss says he “wants me,” and offers to be there for me (anytime and for ever), it seems he doesn’t take my requests for assistance very seriously. Our relationship is still very rocky.
But we don’t really have a relationship, do we? Who really gets the benefit of the votes he casts?
Follow the money, girls. Follow the money.
The thing that really hurts my feelings? I’m already on his newsletter list, and he didn’t even notice.
Bush Monument Committee
Dear Friends and Relatives:
I have the distinguished honor of being on the committee to raise $5,000,000 for a monument to George W. Bush.
We originally wanted to put him on Mt. Rushmore until we discovered there was not enough room for two more faces.We then decided to erect a statue of George in the Washington, DC Hall Of Fame. We were in a quandary as to
where the statue should be placed. It was not proper to place it beside the statue of George Washington, who never told a lie, or beside Richard Nixon, who never told the truth, since George could never tell the difference.We finally decided to place it beside Christopher Columbus, the greatest Republican of them all. He left not knowing where he was going, and when he got there he did not know where he was. He returned not knowing where he had been, destroyed the well-being of the majority of the population while he was there, and did
it all on someone else’s money.Thank you.
George W. Bush Monument CommitteeP.S. We have raised $1.35 so far.
(thanks to Aunt Elaine’s email friends)
Faith, Power, Pluralism
Jesus Is Not a Republican By RANDALL BALMER
Volume 52, Issue 42, Page B6
Nicely thought-out piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education – worth your time to read. A sampling to whet your appetite:
Equally striking is the rhetoric that leaders of the religious right use to motivate their followers. In the course of traveling around the country, I have been impressed anew by the pervasiveness of the language of militarism among leaders of the religious right. Patrick Henry College, according to its founding president, Michael Farris, “is training an army of young people who will lead the nation and shape the culture with biblical values.” Rod Parsley, pastor of World Harvest Church, in Ohio, issues swords to those who join his organization, the Center for Moral Clarity, and calls on his followers to “lock and load” for a “Holy Ghost invasion.” The Traditional Values Coalition advertises its “Battle Plan” to take over the federal judiciary. “I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare,” Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition, famously declared about his political tactics in 1997. I wonder how that sounds in the ears of the Prince of Peace.
…
America has been kind to religion, but not because the government has imposed religious faith or practice on its citizens. Quite the opposite. Religion has flourished because religious belief and expression have been voluntary, not compulsory. We are a religious people precisely because we have recognized the rights of our citizens to be religious in a different way from us, or even not to be religious at all. We are simultaneously a people of faith and citizens of a pluralistic society, one in which Americans believe that it is inappropriate, even oppressive, to impose the religious views of a minority — or even of a majority — on all of society. That is the genius of America, and it is also the reason that religion thrives here as nowhere else.
…
Evangelicals need once again to learn to be a counterculture, much as they were before the rise of the religious right, before succumbing to the seductions of power. The early followers of Jesus were a counterculture because they stood apart from the prevailing order. A counterculture can provide a critique of the powerful because it is utterly disinterested — it has no investment in the power structure itself.