Come see President Barack Obama and John Kitzhaber speak at the Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE Martin Luther King Blvd., Portland Oregon on October 20, 2010 at 4:00 PM. Use this form to RSVP for the event. There will be limited space available, so sign up today and show up early.
The event is free and open to the public, but space is limited — registration is required.
Carpooling and use of public transportation is encouraged. For security reasons, please avoid bringing bags to the rally if at all possible — you should expect airport-like security. No signs, banners, or laptops are permitted.
Not only will you get to see the President, but Kitz needs all the help he can get holding off Dudley Do Wrong and all that crooked corporate money backing him up.
Yesterday I tried to make it to the group where I volunteer, but before I could make it to the bus stop, I had two severe COPD attacks, so I turned around and returned home. I replied to comments and should be able to do so again today. We’ll see about returning visits. I’ll be here all day waiting for an oxygen concentrator to be delivered.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today it took me 5:38 (Have at me Jerry! ;-)). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From CNN: O’Donnell was tripped up by the same question that caused problems for then-VP candidate Sarah Palin in her interview with Katie Couric about Supreme Court decisions.
Asked if she could name a recent Supreme Court case she disagreed with, O’Donnell said "can you give me a specific one?"
So much for O’Dingbat and the Constitution.
From Law Week: The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal brought by two people who say their rights were violated when they were kicked out of a 2005 speech by then-President George W. Bush because of a “No More Blood For Oil” bumper sticker.
SCOTUS subverts justice not only by unconstitutional decisions, but also, by refusing valid cases a fair hearing.
From SPLC: An embattled South Florida police chief — already serving a 30-day unpaid suspension for using city computers to share racist, tasteless Internet jokes with his command staff, including one E-mail suggesting President Obama should have been shot by his own honor guard — resigned late Tuesday.
A city investigation determined that Wilton Manors Police Chief Richard E. Perez distributed 86 messages with “inappropriate content” using the city’s E-mail system during a four-month period this spring and summer.
On September 10, I covered Judge Phillips’ ruling that DADT is unconstitutional. Yesterday the judge refused to delay implementation pending appeal and issued a court order banning further investigation and discharge of lesbian and gay service members, pursuant to DADT. It is a welcome victory, long awaited and well deserved by the LGBT community. Lets look at what happened and where to go from here.
A federal judge ordered an immediate halt Tuesday to discharges of openly gay and lesbian soldiers under the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy, rejecting the Obama administration’s request to wait until Congress acts on the issue.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips of Riverside ruled the 1993 law unconstitutional Sept. 9, saying it intrudes on service members’ personal lives and freedom of expression and reduces military effectiveness by needlessly excluding qualified personnel.
Her injunction Tuesday requires the government "immediately to suspend and discontinue any investigation, or discharge" of service members based on their sexual orientation.
Judges commonly delay enforcement of such orders for a brief time to allow the government time to appeal. Rather than requesting a temporary stay during an appeal, however, the Obama administration asked Phillips to wait for an unspecified period while Congress decides whether to repeal the policy and the Pentagon studies the effect on its troops.
The judge refused, saying she had rejected three government requests to delay or suspend the trial and saw no evidence that would justify an indefinite stay. As of Tuesday, her order applies to all U.S. military forces worldwide… [emphasis added]
At least temporarily, DADT is dead. Keith Olbermann covered the issue in two segments. In the first, Keith interviewed plaintiff and Log Cabin Republican, Alexander Nicholson.
Frankly, I take issue with Nicholson’s apportionment of blame. First, the DOJ is supposed to function in an apolitical fashion, defending the law of the land, whatever that land may be, regardless of the position of the administration. We became used to DOJ functioning as a partisan entity during the Bush Regime, but for Democrats to follow suit would be just as wrong. As long as DADT is law, DOJ is obligated to defend it. Second, while Obama could have simply stopped enforcement as C-in-C, what would the result have been? It would have taken the pressure off Congress to repeal the law. While the expulsions would have stopped, DADT would still be on the books and available for future administrations to implement. In my view, getting DADT permanently repealed is best in the long term, even if it frustrates the “I want it all now” crowd. Repealing DADT remains critical, because SCOTUS is likely to overturn Phillips’ decision. Let’s put responsibility for this where it belongs. A Democratic President slowed down DADT. A Democratic House passed repeal. Democrats in the Senate voted for repeal, but Republicans filibustered and voted unanimously to block it. If they think they will ever get any support from the Republican Party, the Log Cabin Republicans have built their cabin on quick sand. Don’t blame Democrats. Move the damn cabin!
In the second segment, Keith interviews Barney Frank.
I agree with him. The best way forward is to do nothing, pending repeal in the lame duck session.
Glen Beck has become a financial liability to Fox News. Outcries from customers to his advertisers have prompted most of them to withdraw their advertising support. I’m proud to be one of the people who have called his advertisers to tell them that I will not consider doing business with them, as long as they support Beck with their advertising dollars. Hopefully Murdoch will tire of losing money on him and take him off the air. We could not have stripped his advertisers from him, if we did not know who they are. But as November 2 approaches, the flood of anonymous corporate money continues to fund attack ads against Democrats. Outside spending for Republicans outstrips that for Democrats $28.5 million to $5.6 million, so far. Democrats are finally fighting back.
Today Vice President Biden joined President Obama in blasting outside interest groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, for their “shady sources” of fundraising which has resulted in the massive amounts of money they are spending for the midterm elections.
At a fundraiser for Rep. Chris Carney in his boyhood hometown of Scranton, PA, Biden railed against special interest groups for raising tens of millions of dollars from “shady sources – shady in the sense that we don’t know where the money is coming from.”
“For the first time in modern American history, they don’t have to tell us,” he said, according to the pool report, referring to the Supreme Court decision that allows outside interest groups to solicit unlimited corporate money without having to publicly declare its donors.
Biden pinned the blame on the US Chamber of Commerce and “Karl Rove and his friends,” and said that the Republican strategist has a “stable of billionaires, literally, and millionaires,” pouring money into congressional campaigns.
The vice president challenged Rove and the Chamber to “tell us how much of the money they’re investing is from foreign sources.”
"I challenge them, if I’m wrong I will stand corrected,” he said. “But show me, show me. Folks
they’re trying to buy this election to go back to exactly what they did before.”
Biden said that big corporations, from the insurance and oil industries, are “feeling threatened by what we’re doing.”
“Does it surprise you where this money is coming from?” he asked… [emphasis added]
Keith Olbermann interviews Sen. Claire McCaskill, co-sponsor of the DISCLOSE act.
I keep hearing the argument that there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats. Well here is one key difference. With the exception of a few blue dogs with GOP fleas, Democrats want you to know who is funding their campaigns. Republicans want to hide who is financing theirs, because they are afraid of how Americans will vote, if they find out. That in itself is a powerful reason to vote for the Democrats.
Yesterday I replied to comments, but did not feel up to visiting. Today, I’ll probably do neither, because it’s my volunteer day with the therapy group. To be honest, I’ll be pushing myself just to make it to that.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today it took me 3:11. To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From LA Times: The first of 33 gold and copper miners entombed half a mile below ground for more than two months were hauled into the frigid Chilean desert air early Wednesday morning, emerging from a cramped, life-saving haven and into the embrace of family members once forced to confront the likelihood of their deaths.
I’m thankful that they’re going to be OK and proud of the key contributions to the effort by US volunteers.
From Houston Chronicle: The Obama administration on Tuesday lifted the deep-water drilling ban that has idled dozens of rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, but the end of the moratorium is only the beginning for the long process of restarting offshore exploration.
Everyone is mad at Obama over this. Environmentalists don’t want the ban lifted, but Republicans and Oilycrats say the new regulations will stifle it. I’ll reserve judgment for now, but am skeptical that the new regulations will be enough.
From News Hounds: Michele Bachmann visited the Glenn Beck show yesterday (10/12/10) where she and guest host Judge Andrew Napolitano wondered about the effects that winning Tea Party candidates will have on Washington, D.C. and vice versa. Bachmann said she plans to do her part to keep Tea Party legislators from being “so susceptible to melting” by conducting weekly classes on the Constitution for Congressional freshman. But no sooner had she invited Napolitano to be one of the guest experts, than he asked her whether the Tea Party would advocate for restoring civil liberties abolished under the Bush administration. Suddenly, Constitution-champion Bachmann began waffling and fumbling.
Batshit Bachmann is no constitutional expert, but she was an expert in practicing insanity, before she became an expert in practicing InsaniTEA.
I don’t believe in painting a whole group with the foibles of a just a few of it’s members. Most families have a cousin that is not discussed around the family dinner table. But when every day brings more fresh examples of antisocial behavior coming from a wide variety of different individuals within a group, and when the leadership defends those individuals instead of repudiating them, I have to include that the antisocial behavior is group policy, not isolated incidents. So it is with the Republican Party, especially the Theocon and InsaniTEA wings, because of their continuing flood of bigotry, homophobia, racism, and religious intolerance.
Here’s an example:
Despite an uproar over his remarks about gays, Carl P. Paladino appeared on national television on Monday and expressed revulsion at gay pride parades.
Mr. Paladino restated his criticism of Andrew M. Cuomo, his Democratic opponent for governor of New York, for having taken his young daughters to a gay pride parade, saying that such events were inappropriate for children.
“Is that normal? Would you do it? Would you take your children to a gay pride parade?” Mr. Paladino asked the host Matt Lauer on the “Today” show, speaking of Mr. Cuomo.
“I don’t think it’s proper for them to go there and watch a couple of grown men grind against each other. I don’t think that’s proper. I think it’s disgusting.”
“No, I don’t regret the remarks,” he added.
On Sunday, Mr. Paladino, speaking to a group of Orthodox Jewish leaders in Brooklyn, said children should not be “brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option — it isn’t.”… [emphasis added]
Paladino claims that he has no problem with gays and does not want to hurt them. That’s a lie. What could be more hurtful than having a man, who thinks horse-woman sex is valid enough for forward videos of it to his pals in email, say that the orientation someone has from birth is not valid?
Here’s another example:
An election year already notable for its menagerie of extreme and unusual candidates can add another one: Rich Iott [Republican Nazi delinked], the Republican nominee for Congress from Ohio’s 9th District, and a Tea Party favorite, who for years donned a German Waffen SS uniform and participated in Nazi re-enactments.
Iott, whose district lies in Northwest Ohio, was involved with a group that calls itself Wiking [Republican Nazis delinked], whose members are devoted to re-enacting the exploits of an actual Nazi division, the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, which fought mainly on the Eastern Front during World War II. Iott’s participation in the Wiking group is not mentioned on his campaign’s website [Republican Nazis delinked], and his name and photographs were removed from the Wiking website.
When contacted by The Atlantic, Iott confirmed his involvement with the group over a number of years, but said his interest in Nazi Germany was historical and he does not subscribe to the tenets of Nazism. "No, absolutely not," he said. "In fact, there’s a disclaimer on the [Wiking] website. And you’ll find that on almost any reenactment website. It’s purely historical interest in World War II."… [emphasis added]
This SS division is infamous for ear crimes, namely helping to exterminate Ukrainian Jews. But Nazi ties is nothing new for Republicans. Prescott Bush, father of GHW and grandfather of GW, kept doing business with the Third Reich even after the US was at war with them.
Rachel Maddow offers several more examples of how such behavior has become Republican policy.
Now, I know that there are millions of Republicans who are decent human beings, kind and accepting people who are not like this at all. I am not talking about them. I’m talking about the Republican leadership that has chosen hate and fear as vehicles to ride into power. If you are a Republican and still decent, I say this: Come out from among them! They do not represent you anymore. Do not vote for them unless you want bigotry, homophobia, racism, and religious intolerance to become law.
Congrats to Lisa G for posting the 11,000th comment here at Politics Plus. If you open almost any thread here, you will find one or more comments from Lisa. Now she has said she does not win this award enough, but this is her third, and she now has two in a row. If she makes that three in a row, we’ll have to make her the official Politics Plus Princess. 😀
A federal judge ordered an immediate halt Tuesday to discharges of openly gay and lesbian soldiers under the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy, rejecting the Obama administration’s request to wait until Congress acts on the issue.
Today Vice President Biden joined 
Despite an uproar over his remarks about gays, Carl P. Paladino appeared on national television on Monday and expressed revulsion at gay pride parades. 
An election year already notable for its menagerie of extreme and unusual candidates can add another one: Rich Iott [Republican Nazi delinked], the Republican nominee for Congress from Ohio’s 9th District, and a Tea Party favorite, who for years donned a German Waffen SS uniform and participated in Nazi re-enactments. 