Shocking

Color me shocked that NFL teams are openly violating their own lockout by illegally contacting undrafted free agents. I mean, the NFL has been so principled throughout this whole process!

Asshat of the Day

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. And if he thinks Zelaya is America's "enemy," then he was clearly outraged back in 2006. It was in that article with......oh, wait, he never complained about Bush's meeting. Nevermind.

Rick Perry, Hypocrite

Rick Perry, avowed secessionist governor of Texas, has asked the CDC for help in fighting swine flu, which has spread to one town here. 

What? I thought Texas could be its own independent country! Texas doesn't need those big government disease control programs. The unregulated market will totally handle swine flu. 

Shorter Rick Warren: "I'ze Skared of Self-Pollution!"

Supposed America's pastor Rick Warren tells Hugh Hewitt how he avoids sleeping with other women when he's on the road or committing the heinous sin of onanism:

Actually, I have what, Hugh, I’ve had it for almost 40 years. I call it a warnings file. And every time I watch somebody, and Satan has no temptations that are new. It’s either money, sex or power. It’s lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the pride of life, and you have to know the antidotes, and you have to set up the parameters that keep you from even being tempted in those areas, which means for instance, I’m never alone, ever, ever alone with a woman, or even my myself when I’m traveling.

Sure thing Rick. Preachers are such hypocrites on these issues. Does anyone actually believe the man does not masturbate? But of course, with megachurch ministers and other conservatives, your personal behavior doesn't matter; it's what you espouse that counts. Ask Rush "I'm Glad Kurt Cobain Killed Himself Because He Was a Drug Addict" Limbaugh or Diaper Dave "Bill Clinton Should Resign Because He's Embarrassed the Country Through His Sexual Exploits" Vitter. Or George W. "I Was Defending Texas Air Space from the Viet Cong" Bush.

It'd be great to go back and see these kinds of statements from Ted Haggard before he got busted for gay sex and meth purchases.

But hey, Warren is warning us against the evils of masturbation and thanks so much for that useful guidance. I'm glad I won't give myself cancer or blindness now.

H/T Lindsay

The Post I Didn't Want to Write

I was going to title this post, "The Hypocrisy of Outrage," but my hatred of Alex Rodriguez and my concomitant need to defend him made me change my mind.

Let's go back to 2000. Everyone knew that McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, and these other sluggers were on the roids. Their arms were as big as my leg. No one really thought they were doing it through working out and eating well. Maybe people fooled themselves into thinking they were just taking the right supplements. But rumors abounded about steroids.

No one cared. No one investigated this. The owners didn't bat an eyelash. Players were hitting lots of home runs. People came to the ballpark and watched the game on TV. Everyone made a ton of money.

But now we find out that these guys were doing it unfairly. And we are outraged by this! How dare they blaspheme the sanctity of the game!!!

Give me a break. You knew A-Rod and everyone else was juicing. I knew it. Everyone knew it. We all chose to look the other way. To say that Clemens, Bonds, and Rodriguez shouldn't go to the Hall of Fame is a joke. First, who are we going to be voting for in say 2015? Anyone? Second, these guys are all three clear Hall of Fame players even without the drugs. I can see not voting for McGwire. He was finished before the drugs. He was Richie Sexson before he became Babe Ruth. Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro may be somewhat more marginal cases. But Clemens, Bonds, and Rodriguez are three of the best players to ever play the game. They were before the drugs and they still are. Anyone who doesn't vote for these guys is crazy.

I really loathe A-Rod on so many levels. Probably unreasonably so. But give the guy a break. While he created this problem, he's no different than hundreds of other guys. If we are going to crucify him, shouldn't we also know the names of the other 103 players who tested positive. That's the equivalent of over 4 teams.

There, now I've written a post defending Alex Rodriguez. I have to shower the filth off.

More on McCain's...

Erik said most everything. I had to rant elsewhere about it, and so I dug up some fun info on the votes McCain has missed and how little he cared about, say, the first economic bailout bill. Or the Webb GI Bill.

I wrote more here.

You know it's bad when I compare him unfavorably to Bush and Reagan.

Also? Letterman: (h/t Susie Bright, among others)



(Anyone find it funny that CBS, the "communist broadcast service" from last election, is now the softball network of choice for the Republican candidates?)

And the Hypocrite Award of the Day Goes To.....

Rudy Giuliani!!!! Yes, that's right, the failing ex-mayor of New York. Why does Rudy win? He wins the big prize because he has come out in favor of immigrants being forced to learn English....while running ads in Spanish!!!

Awesome. What does the man win? Well, we'll just call it the Abner Louima treatment. Rudy knows plenty about how awesome that is.

Infuriating Hypocrisy from the Bush Administration

OK, Michael Chertoff. If you want to defend a border fence between the U.S. and Mexico on the Orwellian grounds of security, fine. If you want to rely on two-faced appeals of defense for the national economy (even as jobs continue to be outsourced) as a means to justify said fence, do so. Hell, if you want to come out and just say, "you know, we're just racists here in this administration, and the brown, Mexican threat scares us SO!", I'd be fine with that. But you have no room to complain about the "environmental degradation" border-crossers cause when you work for the administration that has one of the worst environmental records ever.

Zing

While I'm skeptical of the quality of Ang Lee's new film "Lust, Caution," Manohla Dargis' review makes fun of its NC-17 rating with a nice shot to the ribs of the MPAA.


"The Motion Picture Association of America, that tireless, cheerless band of Comstocks who regulate all things sexual and few things violent on behalf of the major studios, has saddled the film with an NC-17 rating — no one 17 and under admitted, even with an adult — because of “some explicit sexuality.” The horrors of female nudity (unshaven armpits!) and the vigorous pantomime of coitus apparently offended the sensibilities of the M.P.A.A., which routinely bestows R ratings to movies in which characters are tortured to death for kicks.."

Yep, that pretty much says it.

The Bible Speaks Directly To Giuliani

Rudolph Giuliani wants people to back off his personal life. Like any good faux-Christian politician, Giuliani bases this in the Bible.

"I'm guided very, very often about, `Don't judge others, lest you be judged,"' Giuliani told CBN interviewer David Brody. "I'm guided a lot by the story of the woman that was going to be stoned, and Jesus put the stones down and said, 'He that hasn't sinned, cast the first stone,' and everybody disappeared. It seems like nowadays in America, we have people that think they could've passed that test," he said. "And I don't think anybody could've passed that test but Jesus."

He then goes on to tell the Christian Broadcasting Network

"I think there are some people that are very judgmental."

Now that Giuliani has accepted Jesus into his life, does this mean that he will stop being so judgmental to blacks? To Muslims? To Democrats?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Israel and Genocide

Gershom Gorenberg's article at TAPPED, "The Israeli Government's Genocide Politics" accurately sums up the hypocrisy of Israel's policy toward Darfur refugees and the Armenian genocide. While Gorenberg's ignores Israel's own policies toward the Palestinians, he turns a white hot lamp on the failure of Israel to embrace Darfur's refugees and to go along with Turkey's continued denial of their 1915 massacre of Armenians.

Is it too much to ask of Israel to have them stand in as a leader of world human rights given the conditions leading to the founding of the country? I would say no, but perhaps I am asking too much of a vulnerable nation surrounded by enemies. However, as Gorenberg points out, "The underlying issue is that, pragmatically, Israel can claim it must protect its interests, even if that means indulging an ally ashamed of its history. It can argue that refugees pose a security threat. It can reject refugees in order to maintain its ethnic balance. But if it does those things, it has no grounds to speak about Western countries who turned away Jews in 1938."

Absolutely. What Israel can't do is have it both ways. They can't act as cold-hearted as the rest of the world to suffering while forcing everyone else to remember what happened to the Jewish people in the 1930s and 1940s. That is rank hypocrisy. Personally, I think we do need to remember the Jewish Holocaust all the time. But we also need to remember the Armenians, the Native Americans, Darfur, Australian aborigines, and other peoples who the world has failed.

Only Jews Can Suffer Genocide

In a related story to Israel deporting refugees from Darfur, the Anti Defamation League fired its New England regional director. Why? He insisted that the ADL recognize that Turkey committed genocide against the Armenians in 1915. This is an obvious fact, yet the ADL does not want to admit it because it could hurt Israeli-Turkish relations.

This is sad on so many levels. It's insane that a Jewish human rights organization in the United States would take stands based upon what they perceive to be Israel's policy interests. It's depressing that so many wonderful Jewish people, both in Israel and the US, have their voices suppressed when they publicize the obvious connections between the Jewish experience and that of other oppressed minorities. And it's unconscionable that the ADL would deny that Turkey committed genocide. It's really hard to respect the ADL at this point.

Really terrible stuff. But not surprising in the least.

Via Rob

Those Compassionate Israelis

Israel has again shown that it doesn't give one whit for social justice if Jews aren't the oppressed party.

Last night, Israel sent a group of migrants back to Egypt. Included were about 50 refugees from Darfur.

You would think that Israel would be particularly sensitive to human rights given the experience of Jews in World War II. This of course has not been the case. Not only does Israel oppress the Palestinians with glee, but they show no interest in hosting refugees from other conflicts.

While there are lots of wonderful Israelis who do make the connections between their own past and human rights today, as a whole I don't think there is a democratic country with such consistently disgusting policies. Even our own.

Republicans Again Show That They Don´t Care About American Workers

Republicans block key labor legislation in the Senate.

This legislation would have given workers at least some chance to form labor unions. It would create a union when workers collected signatures from at least 50% of workers in a given place. Of course, Republicans are going to oppose this. What makes me really sick is that they place their opposition under the guise of democracy. They claim that such a process would undermine a secret ballot. They would have a point if corporations didn´t undermine the secret ballot at every opportunity, looking to allow supervisors to vote, limiting access to workers´voting, using propaganda at every turn to scare workers, intimidating workers on the job so that they are afraid to be part of a union. This is really just disgusting.

I suppose we should´t be surprised to hear such rhetoric from the same people who undermined American democracy to throw the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000. But it´s sad that working-class Americans must again suffer at the hands of corporations and their political lapdogs.

Historical Image of the Day

Rumsfeld and Saddam. 1980s.