Ask-Steve.com

No wonder the GOP is falling apart

Referring to South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint:

The conservative senator, speaking to a group of GOP officials gathered in Myrtle Beach at a conference on the future of the Republican Party, described how the party had strayed from its own "brand," which, according to DeMint, should represent freedom, religious-based values and limited government.

First of all, those brand values are mutually exclusive. Unless the limited government is granting people the freedom to live within the government-enforced, religious-based values.

I'm sure the tens of thousands of recently married couples in California would love for the government to take a more limited role in their personal lives, rather than foisting their religious-based values on them to take away their freedom.

If the GOP wants to return to true conservatism, they should jettison the religious radicals who have hijacked the party and get back to limited government and fiscal conservatism. Their hypocritical holy wars are only going to run the party out of office and into the ground.

GOP senator: McCain betrayed Republican principles  |  CNN Politics

Palin's reverse snobbery and the myth of small-town superiority

Small town life isn't all it's cracked up to be. In fact, much of the common wisdom around the wholesome nature of life in rural America is just plain wrong.

“Americans disdain snobbery in all its forms except the most popular one: reverse snobbery,” said Steve Chapman [in the Chicago Tribune]. That’s why Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin repeatedly gets away with implying that small-town and rural Americans are more honest, more hard-working, and generally better than those lazy, lying scoundrels who live in big, bad cities.

My single favorite publication, The Week magazine, has an excerpt from Steve Chapman's article in the Chicago Tribune entitled Palin's small-town snobbery is faulty.

After citing some of Palin's statements indicating that country folk in America are holier than their urban counterparts, Chapman goes on to debunk much of Palin's insulting rhetoric.

Most Americans, it seems, can tolerate hearing of the superiority of the small town, as long as they don't have to live in one. You wouldn't know it from listening to country music stations, or to the governor of Alaska, but four out of every five Americans choose not to reside in rural areas.

Maybe if they ventured beyond the city limits more often, those people would not be so inclined to believe everything they hear about the merits of rustic hamlets, which harbor a full complement of social ills.

Not everyone in rural America gets high on fresh air and the smell of new-mown hay. Illicit drugs are nearly as common out there as they are in cities and suburbs.

Chapman doesn't mention recent findings that urban living tends to be far better for the environment than living in the country, but he does cite some interesting facts:

• country kids were 26 percent more likely to experiment with drugs than middle-schoolers elsewhere
• overall methamphetamine consumption among adults and teens is more than 50 percent higher in the country
• relative to their urban counterparts, rural youth ages 12 to 17 are significantly more likely to report consuming alcohol
• excessive boozing among adults appears to be no less widespread in Mayberry than in Metropolis
• the highest rates of births to unwed mothers are in Mississippi and New Mexico, both of which have high rural populations
• the most urban states, New Jersey and California, do better than the average in out-of-wedlock births

Chapman concludes:

One of these days, the 80 percent of Americans who live in more populated areas may tire of being obliquely insulted. Most urbanites and suburbanites don't think they're any better than their country cousins. But Palin might want to think twice before telling them they're worse.

Of course, we don't need statistics to tell us this at all. Sarah Palin loves to say that (despite being sandwiched between two foreign countries, giving her great international affairs experience) Alaska is a microcosm of the United States. Well, I think hers is a microcosm of the small-town family. And it doesn't take a very close inspection to quickly discover that it's far from perfect.

The myth of small-town superiority | The Week

Palin's small-town snobbery is faulty | Chicago Tribune

Is it just me...

...or is this a less than flattering angle for Huck?

Click for a larger view—if you dare! Moo-AH-hah-hah!

Photo courtesy NPR.com

Compassionate Conservative: Your daughter's a slut

Ah, good old compassionate conservatism. I just don't understand why the Republican party is going through an all out civil war right now. Why their ranks are so completely demoralized and confused. Why no one gives any credence to their claim to patriarchal family values and hate faith-based initiatives.

This great find by Little Thom over at LTB helps shed some light:

The Modern Republican Party in all its glory:

COLORADO SPRINGS — “In my parents’ day and age, (unmarried teen parents) were sent away, they were shunned, they were called what they are,” Colorado Springs Republican Rep. Larry Liston said during a GOP legislative caucus meeting in Denver. “There was at least a sense of shame. “There’s no sense of shame today," Liston continued, according to the The Gazette of Colorado Springs. "Society condones it. ... I think it’s wrong. They’re sluts. And I don’t mean just the women. I mean the men, too.”

"There was at least a sense of shame."
Yup, we sure knew how to be ashamed and to vomit that shame into our children in the old days. It's really a shame that we lost that. It's a shame that we don't "send them away" and "shun" them anymore. What the hell happened to us?

I must say, there is that gaping crack in his conservative armour there. Did you catch that? He actually threw in that liberal bit: "...I don’t mean just the women. I mean the men, too." He's done for in the Republican party. What kind of Women's Lib, feminist tripe is he putting out there?

Link: LTB (a Long Tough Blog): Your Daughter's a Slut

Fred Phelps is the Wicked Witch

I guess that's a pretty mean thing to say about the Wicked Witch.

********************

Richard Crowson Cartoons  at The Wichita Eagle

(Thanks, Darci!)

More info on telephone directory waste

Lelo in Nopo posted another great comment on my blog, this time on my January 6th entry entitled, Qwest DEX telephone directories: 2,162 pages of waste.

Hey, I just came across this information and thought you'd be interested. It sounds like there's some good effort towards stopping this incredible waste.

Check out the work of the Product Stewardship Institute and the project with King County in Washington:
Product Stewardship Institute > Phone Books

First of all, I have to say that I'm glad my home turf of King County (home to Seattle) is getting some good press. Federal Way, a giant strip mall of a town with a what-were-they-thinking name, situated between Seattle and Tacoma, garnered some rare national attention when a nut-case parent by the name of Frosty Hardison, a father of seven, successfully lobbied the school district to ban the film An Inconvenient Truth. Of course, he had a very sound argument:

"No you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child, blaming our nation -- the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet -- for global warming," Hardison wrote in an e-mail to the Federal Way School Board. The 43-year-old computer consultant is an evangelical Christian who says he believes that a warming planet is "one of the signs" of Jesus Christ's imminent return for Judgment Day.

(Uh oh, did I digress? Psychopath, delusional fathers of extremely unfortunate (and no doubt equally embarrassed) children will get me going every time... ANYWAY...)

Lelo pointed me to an organization that's doing more than just whine (like yours truly)—they're working "to develop a national solution to the problem of unwanted phone books."

Led by King County (Washington) and the National Waste Prevention Coalition, PSI successfully leveraged funding from over 10 federal, state, and local government agencies and began work on this issue in July 2006... This project is focused primarily on source reduction, and only secondarily on increasing the recycling infrastructure.

The Product Stewardship Institute page on the Phone Book Project has a few links to press coverage—including a video clip about phone book waste from the Far Out Extremist (FOX) right-wing propaganda machine.

Gore Film Sparks Parents' Anger | The Washington Post

Technorati Tags: birth control, evangelical, Federal Way, global warming, media, neoconservatism, overpopulation, politics, religion, science, recycling

Five choppers down in Iraq in just over two weeks; 28 dead. Why?

Another helicopter was shot down in Iraq today, this time a CH-46 Sea Knight transport helicopter, killing all seven American troops on board. A BBC News article asks:

First, are there any indications that the insurgents in Iraq have decided to step up attacks on US aircraft?

Second, have they developed new techniques or acquired new equipment to make any attacks more successful? Both questions are hard to answer definitively.

It seems to me that these have to be largely rhetorical questions. Either that or—and I'm not making light of the situation here—the U.S. is having one hell of a streak of bad luck. According to the article, Al-Qaeda in Iraq claims to have brought it down, though the US military has indicated it may have been mechanical failure. I suppose either could be true. Just as the insurgents have been adapting quickly with better and more effectively placed IED's, they're no doubt getting better at targeting our aircraft, as well. As an article in TIME Magazine points out:

It's a sad fact of military aviation that helicopters flying in combat are accidents waiting to happen. Unlike their fixed-wing brethren, helicopters tend to be slow, which on the battlefield is another word for vulnerable. Beyond that, they tend to fly low, hugging the contours of the terrain in what pilots called nap-of-the-earth flight (that's what upsets unpracticed bellies). The tactic certainly reduces the helicopter's exposure to enemy fire from below, but it doesn't eliminate it. Helicopter pilots speak warily of "golden BBs" that can bring down their bird. There are a fair number of bulls-eyes on those spindly mechanical beasts — rotor blades, fuel systems, driveshafts, hydraulic lines — that, if hit, can doom a helicopter. Many of them don't exist on fixed-wing aircraft, or are better protected on the faster machines.

"To my knowledge, each of those was shot down by small arms, not by missiles," Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told a Senate panel Tuesday before the latest loss. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of AK-47s in greater Baghdad. Other Pentagon officials wonder if the insurgents have gotten hold of a fresh batch of SA-7 Grail shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. While a primitive heat-seeker, its range of more than three miles is bound to find its target occasionally. Pace didn't have a quick solution.

Of course, given the strain that the Bush-regime's ill-planned war mongering has put on the military, mechanical failure is never out of the question. From a January 14 opinion piece in the Pensacola News Journal:

Top military officials are also concerned that the extended conflict is doing serious, long-term damage to the Army and Marines. They can't train properly, the troops are exhausted, equipment needs repair and replacement, and the entire military budget is strained.

The enemy in Iraq seems to be increasingly seasoned in battle and well armed.

Between a White House bent on world domination at any cost, a legislature too busy covering their political asses to intervene, and a populace too frightened of their government or too cozy in their lounge chairs to motivate, who is looking out for our troops?

BBC, Bush, casualties, Iraq, Politics, helicopter, war

Iraq: There are faces behind those numbers!

Photo courtesy grow-a-brain

I know that Bush and his fellow playground bullies go to visit injured soldiers. (So long as there are press cameras nearby to capture it.) But do these people really see the humanity behind these ever-increasing numbers of dead, wounded and maimed (both physically and mentally) children, siblings, parents, friends, neighbors? Our own and those of our allies? Do they really understand that these people are as real as their own family members? That they have lives, familes, careers, friends, communities, ambitions and so forth? Or are they simply troops? Game pieces? Pawns? A justifiable means to an oil-rich end?

Can Bush really know about people like Oregon's Dean Robert Bright (be sure to read the comments!) and still want to send 21,500 more young people just like him, many against their will? And put them in far more dangerous circumstances where the numbers of deaths and injuries are guaranteed to be much higher?

Bush's complete ignorance and ineptitude have cost us enough of our loved ones—along with our national pride, international reputation, humanity and so much more.

Bush and his cronies are playing what they seem to feel is a big board game or a gambling spree. Let's put a stop to this war. Let's not allow them to sacrifice any more of our loved ones as game pieces in their terribly perverse game of "War on Terror."

Bush, Iraq, Oregon, casualties, war

OPB: Stop contributing to the trashing of America's image abroad

OPB is now airing a BBC show from 10:00 to 11:00 AM on weekdays called World Have Your Say. I was thrilled to learn they were going to replace the poorly placed Performance Today classical music program with a BBC news show. Until I listened to World Have Your Say.

OPB, please bring back Performance Today—or anything at all except World Have Your Say. (The new 9:00am show is great.)

Here is my letter today to the folks at the BBC's World Have Your Say:

I was very happy to learn that my local National Public Radio station in Portland, Oregon was going to carry a BBC program. I enjoy an international perspective and have always felt BBC to be an organization committed to quality programming. I couldn't have been more wrong.

I just tuned in to your segment asking whether Americans should be concerned with our image abroad—a topic that I thought would make for a very interesting discussion. Imagine my shock and shame when you brought "the American" on the show and it was a horrendously ignorant and offensive bigot in the form of this woman named "Debbie"—whose website name is a very tacky play on the title of a porn film. Debbie represents a tiny fraction of the American population and everything that is wrong with America. Not only that, you have clearly selected her not to represent America, but to be as bombastic and offensive as possible in order to generate buzz at any cost.

This regular guest on the show is brought in to go head to head with folks around the world. She rivals Ann Coulter in her neocon, bigoted vitriol, but doesn't begin to approach her in intelligence or eloquence. And that's saying something, because Coulter is lacking in both. Riding her sinister, dark-side charisma to the niche success she's enjoying now, Coulter—and Debbie in her black hole of a shadow—are nothing more than opportunistic parasites sucking what blood they can out of anyone trying to move America in the right direction. I refuse to give Debbie's full name or URL because I'm not going to send her any more traffic than what the BBC and NPR already are.

Let me conclude this by making it clear that I'm a huge fan and daily listener of NPR and a paying member of OPB. I think that NPR, and OPB in particular, offer the finest radio and television the country has to offer and some of the best in the world. My comments here are specifically about this one program.

Americans turned on by breast feeding

You've probably heard by now about the brouhaha around the cover of—are you ready for this?—Babytalk magazine. That's right. Perverts masquerading as pious, puritanical types have gone into frenzied attack mode over the shockingly lewd and scandalous cover image of—a mother feeding her child.

What kind of sicko can sexualize the act of a mother feeding her baby? How did hating and being so completely terrified of the human body become one of the Wrong Wing fundaMentalist's "American values?"

From Stumptown Girl:

It would seem that people are more offended by the sight of someone breastfeeding in public than they are with seeing someone’s thong sticking up out of their jeans or other form of nakedness or outright sexuality judging the response to the cover of Babytalk's August issue. It “boldly” depicts a photo of a child nursing. The magazine has already received over 5,000 letters from “outraged” and offended readers and observers.

There's a great comment on that post:

guffie says:
I agree with you. People, what do you think breasts are for? Yeah, they make milk for babies. Duh! Why we have to run around screaming obscenity for a natural action like this, I will never understand.

I wonder if it speaks to how women are more valued as sex objects than as mothers. I live in Europe and there are boobs on tv commercials, bare breasts on beaches, whatever. No one seems particularly offended, or all that interested, to be honest. I don’t know why Americans can’t settle down a little bit. Women have breasts. All Mammals have breasts. They are there for a vital reason.

What’s next, outlawing breatfeeding? I am sure big Pharma would loooooove to get every baby in the US on formula from day one.

View the rest of this post to read some jaw-dropping excerpts from some of the nut jobs that complained to Babytalk magazine.