Some of you may be aware that I torture myself daily with a regular diet of right wing radio, just to hear what they’re saying, to know thy enemy as it were. As I recently received the gift of Sirius Satellite Radio, my daily ingestion generally contains FOX and Sirius “Patriot:” some Mike Church, Andrew Wilkow, and Sean Hannity with some smatterings of the local AM dial with Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage. If evenings find me in front of my nook, it often leads to Mark Levin, John Gibson, and even Michael Reagan. I know.

And until recently, I could deal with it (although I still can’t listen to 3 hours of Rush’s caustic, lying egomania) and when I couldn’t, I’d traverse over to Sirius Left and take a breather.

But last week the Hannity virus caught: All Reverend Wright All the Time. And it caught everywhere. There has been little spoken on any political station since Monday about anything else, and the left is as bad as the right - hell, NPR was all over it today: it’s ranting and repetition and call-ins as either critics with the occasional supporter or supporters with the occasional critic. All the time.

Open comment to all political talk radio: Reverend Wright is not running for president. Focus on the issues that matter to Americans and how the candidates address those issues. I can guarantee you that Rev. Wright is on no one’s Top 10 list. And if he is, then that person has forgotten the meaning of priority.

Until then, however, Sirius Chill (35) is doing wonders for my stress levels.

From Think Progress:

Yesterday, two former employees of embattled contract company KBR told a congressional panel that some of their coworkers frequently stole money and artwork from Iraq. One said that “some of her American colleagues doing construction work in Iraqi palaces and municipal buildings took woodcarvings, tapestries and crystal ‘and even melted down gold to make spurs for cowboy boots.’” Another said that “a KBR foreman tried to take military equipment, including two rocket launchers, detonators and ammunition.” Two weeks ago, the firm was awarded a $150 million, 10-year contract for work with the U.S. Army.

This makes me ill in so many different ways. And John McCain’s nothing if not friendly to defense contractors.

That seems to sum up presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s position on the health care crisis in this country when he spoke at an event yesterday where he was introduced by - what else? - a leading health insurance industry lobbyist and went on to say you could just save your money for health care and pay for it yourself.

Right.

I’m waiting to hear his announcement that we can cut a whole $20 out of the more than half of every American tax dollar that goes to the Pentagon by having combat soldiers take part-time second jobs so they can pay for their own bullets. And I wish I were simply joking.

WOW! Just in the last seven primaries, no less than a million people have joined the Democratic Party, increasing a margin the bluies have had by a stranglehold since the real start of the 2008 nomination campaigns.

What is heartening, at least to me, is that many of the new Democrats are not new voters but from the Republican/GOP camp or former third party/independent status. And I think their decision to go blue can be accounted for in a number of ways:

* excitement with the Dem candidates
* Bush - GOP scandals backlash
* that up to 80% of Americans feel the Bushies killed the economy and feel the country in all respects is headed 110 MPH in the wrong direction
* a desire to belong to the only party where they can even dream someone will listen to them
* absolute terror (and not of rogue bombers)
* fear for their children in Bush’s economy and Bush’s wars, given how John McCain praises his efforts

While Hillary Clinton has joined a number of other voices in Washington in supporting a bill that would temporarily suspend the federal gas tax surcharge (Barack Obama does not support it, as of now), don’t think you’re going to see a difference at the pumps. Well, any difference but ever upward prices, however.

First, most states impose a gas tax (often tied to the price per gallon so that even if you cut the percentage, the states still would get money but you’d pay a little less). Unless you can suspend that too… well..

But the second point is more important: historically, and with the way the bill now reads, the only people with more cash in their pockets AFTER we suspend the fed gas surcharge are the same oil companies the Bushies insist - despite these folks earning lifetime record profits now - require our $18 billion in federal welfare to support. It’s unlikely to cut the cost you pay at the pump even by pennies (and with experts now predicting the impending birth of $200/barrel crude, help!).

Third, Bush has started his threats with Iran yet again. So watch the prices JUMP further. If you charted the prices depending on what Bush says about Iran and elsewhere, you’d notice a very interesting pattern (as in, prices soar with each new/refreshed threat).

So I’d tell your elected reps to forget this bleeping bill and do something useful (for a change).

God forbid the American people, rather than politically connected special people, decided an election. And before Dems started hating the concept of superdelegates, we hated the Electoral College more. That Douglas is a Bushie (yes, Vermont has (too) many rightwingers) makes his bid all the more transparent since Boy King George never won the popular vote in America, despite his two terms.

Gov. James Douglas is “not enthusiastic” about a proposal to have Vermont join a coalition of states calling for the election of the president by popular vote as opposed to the electoral college system now in place, his spokesperson said Monday.

A bill that would have Vermont join Maryland, New Jersey and Illinois in a compact to use the “one person, one vote” system instead of electoral votes to elect a person to the country’s highest political office has passed both the Vermont House and Senate.

The bill is expected to land on Douglas’ desk soon, but his spokesperson Jason Gibbs said the governor has serious philosophical and practical concerns over that proposal, opening up the possibility that he could veto the legislation.

“The governor is very concerned that this bill would put small states like Vermont at a disadvantage and decrease our influence in the election process,” Gibbs said Monday afternoon. “Fundamental changes such as altering the way we elect the process ought to be accomplished by amending the Constitution.”

Remember Reverend Hagee? That guy who’s endorsing McCain? Who McCain says he’s happy to have that endorsement? That guy who said we need to bomb Iran to usher in Armageddon, the End of Days? The guy who said Katrina was God’s retribution for all the homosexual sinnery going on there, a modern day Sodom, justifiably smote by the Big Guy with the White Beard? Yeah, that guy.

Well this past Friday, perhaps because of only a handful of Republicans who give a crap that Hagee hates fags, Hagee stated the following:

As a believing Christian, I see the hand of God in everything that happens here on earth, both the blessings and the curses. But ultimately neither I nor any other person can know the mind of God concerning Hurricane Katrina. I should not have suggested otherwise. No matter what the cause of the storm, my heart goes out to all who suffered in this terrible tragedy. There but for the grace of God go any one of us.

“That’s quite a different opinion” the LAT writer states, but is horribly mistaken.

Hagee’s previous opinion: “I know that God destroyed New Orleans because God hates gays.”

Hagee’s new opinion: “I can’t know for sure that God destroyed New Orleans because God hates gays.”

Either way, Hagee still thinks that he and God share an opinion about homosexuals as well as how to effect change of the order of the Book of Revelation. And this man might have an in to the White House if McCain is elected. Terrifying.

Last week, I posted that Hillary Clinton had completely lost me when she said that if Iran did anything Israel didn’t like, she would have no trouble annihilating a country of tens of millions of people. Before that, I’ve been hopelessly deadlocked between both remaining challengers: Barack Obama and Mrs. Clinton.

Well, I still utterly despise what she said. I’d like her to eat it, actually.

But as much as I wrestle with the decision - and I believe I am very right in thinking that to blow away another country is NOT any adequate foreign policy outside the Bush Administration - I still feel torn.

As Vermont’s junior Senator, Bernie Sanders (I-Socialist - no, really, he is), stated on The Colbert Report last Monday night, no matter which Democrat wins the party’s nomination, we simply MUST be far better off than if ANY of the Republicans won, and especially since it would be John McCain.

I can live with Hillary if she’s the candidate though I’ll ride her rump if she pulls any Bush tricks in office, the same as I would if Obama wins. But if the general election were tomorrow and I could only vote between Obama and Clinton, I just don’t know how I’d vote (and eeny-meeny-miney-mo and rock-paper-scissors just seem a bad way to choose).

Anyone else, like me, caught between Iraq… er… a rock and a hard place? Let me hear from you and what issues for you are causing the big divisions.

Rip roaring mode on:

[It’s Monday: don’t ask me where I think tighty righties should stick their American flag lapel pins because I can think of a few dozen anatomically uncomfortable possibilities.

Anybody can wear a damned flag; it takes a real patriot, however, to defend the ideals and constitution of which this flag stands as merely a symbol. Lots of scum have sported flag pins in this country but none of them would understand the Bill of Rights.]

The NY Times’ Frank Rich tells the story I heard from no mainstream news outlets last week during April 22’s Pennsylvania Primary and the rush to figure out whether a not-quite-double-digit win for Hillary Clinton means a bigger loss for Barack Obama: namely, that John McCain as the only Republican presidential candidate still in the race, did NOT fare well with PA GOPers who often voted for anybody BUT McCain including Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, gone from the campaign trail for a few months.

Does this mean Republicans as a whole in this country would be willing to elect a dead man over McCain, so long as that dead man is a death penalty fan while supporting the right to make women’s wombs public property all while wearing an American flag pin in their lapel?

Despite the numerous problems citizens have experienced with voting machines and the lack of paper trails in the last two elections, Republicans in the House of Representatives have voted against a new method that would help the problem a bit. The new proposal would send help from the federal government whenever a local government has an issue with electronic voting.

From Politico:

Under the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act, the federal government would help localities switch to paper ballots or attach printers to their electronic voting machines in time for the November elections. To overcome states’ rights objections, [Representative Rush] Holt crafted the bill as an opt-in: Nobody would be required to switch technologies or conduct audits, but federal funding would be available to offset costs for those who did.

Without the passage of this proposal, local governments will have to pay for everything they want. However, many smaller local governments rarely have the means to conduct such measures.

It’s not wonder that voting rates aren’t as high as they could be. When people don’t think their vote counts, they won’t vote. Sketchy electronic voting machines are too unsettling to not have something done about them.

Take a break from the political struggle and have a little fun!

Street Fight Obama and Hillary fight it out in hand-to-hand combat.

Play this free game now!!

Dancing Hillary Check out Hillary’s moves!

Play this free game now!!

Jamison Foser of Media Matters reports on the lengths mainstream media will go to in order to support media darling John McCain:

When Bob Dole wrapped up the Republican nomination in 1996, he bumped up against the limits on campaign spending by which candidates who take public financing agree to abide. Dole’s situation was the subject of significant media attention, meaning that even if he was inclined to simply ignore the limits and hope to escape significant legal penalties, it would have been politically difficult to do so — he would have been plagued by news reports that he was breaking the law. So Dole turned to the Republican National Committee to carry him to the Republican convention, when he received his general election funding.

Dole’s predicament has a contemporary analogue — to an extent. Like Dole, John McCain has wrapped up the GOP presidential nomination well in advance of the party’s convention. Like Dole, McCain has reached the primary spending caps and may be breaking the law with each additional dollar he spends. (McCain’s campaign asserts that he is not breaking the law because he opted out of the public finance system after first opting in. Federal Election Commission chairman David Mason disagrees.)

But that’s where the similarities end. Things are a little easier if your name is John McCain — after all, who needs the RNC when you have MSNBC?

As Media Matters has repeatedly documented, the media have largely given McCain a pass on his possible law-breaking — and even continue to tout him as a paragon of campaign finance virtue. Needless to say, when McCain travels to Selma for a photo-op, the media don’t point out that he is likely breaking campaign finance law by doing so. McCain is thus free to continue campaigning full steam ahead in a way Dole was not.

But even if McCain were to slow his spending, he would hardly need the RNC to carry him — not when the media are carrying his water.

Read the full story…

I’m watching the NBA playoffs on ESPN, Mavericks v.s Hornets at halftime, and during a discussion between two commentators one says, “If numbers meant anything, Al Gore would be president”, and the other replies, “I’m with you on that”.

I giggled at the thought of rethugs fuming over that comment while trying to enjoy the game. 

“Wait, wait, you wanna find who? O-who? Osama-lama-ding dong? Ha ha, you…you. Are you messin’ with me? Really? He’s really around here somewhere? Oh, man, game over man! Game over! Heh heh, just kidding. Hey, relax, that’s just from Aliens. Bill Paxton n shit. You gonna pass that?”

I guess if you’re warring and you don’t want to war and you’ve got a steady supply of weed, that would provide an adequate form of escapism. Unfortunately, it would also - because of subtle differences in how it affects people - lead to everything from freakouts to complete apathy, all while bullets and bombs rained down. Now imagine you’re the British bloke in charge of these asshats.

Could this, perhaps, be one of the reasons we don’t know where Osama bin Laden is?

At least Morgan Spurlock is doing something about it.