The McMaverick with Fries
John McCain, from the Crooks and Liars archives
Psuedo-Faith GOP Base doesn’t want Johnny-Cakes McCain.
Check out the John McCain link in this Huggy Bear Post
What’s wrong with sucking up to everybody? ( Hat tip to PBD)
political, cartoons, political cartoons, comic strips, Comics, webcomics, webcomic, Humor, Satire, Art, drawing, sketch, PEN, comic-strips
John McCain
Friday Funnies at The Undeniable Liberal’s place.
Yank in London is wondering about Alberto Gonzales.
The Hmong didn’t hijack our country.
Subliminal Radio is Jammin’ on The One.
Member of Republican Inner Circle is funding terrorists?
Depleted Uranium isn’t going away.
The Newshog looks at the latest on Iraq plans
political, cartoons, political cartoons, comic strips, Comics, webcomics, webcomic, Humor, Satire, Art, drawing, sketch, PEN, comic-strips
Blogger Gets 4 Years In Prison For "Insulting" Mubarak & Islam
Recently, I ran a post on the arrest and scheduled trial of Egyptian Blogger Abdel Karim Nabil. He was charged with writing posts “insulting” to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Islam. As I noted then, this case is not an isolated incident in Mubarek’s Egypt but reflects a common tactic being employed by Mubarek to stifle moderate, pro-democracy voices.
By accident, I discovered what has become of Nabil. Buried in this piece by CBS news, a piece on allegations of torture made by the Egyptian cleric purportedly kidnapped from Italy by CIA officials who then rendered him to Egypt, is this blurb:
The blogger was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison by an Egyptian court. Abdel Kareem Nabil received three years in prison for insulting Islam and one year for insulting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
From the Bush Administrtion, we can expect a pro forma tut-tut from the State Department … and then, nothing more.
Body of Christ
Bush’s War will haunt us all for years to come.
Exporting Democracy with Lemon Chicken, rice pilaf and 2 kinds of fruit.
Beating up homeless in Tampa
Independent Bloggers’ Alliance by way of Skippy
political, cartoons, political cartoons, comic strips, Comics, webcomics, webcomic, Humor, Satire, Art, drawing, sketch, PEN, comic-strips
Here’s Some Black History For Ya
The story of Tyrone Brown, sentenced to life in prison in 1990 for violating his probation by smoking a joint, is gaining steam. Sixteen years after his initial incarceration at the age of 17, Brown is one Texas Governor away from freedom.
In one of the most painfully ironic illustrations of the unequal treatment of black’s in America, Brown’s case may never have gone beyond a local story had Brooks Egerton of the Dallas Morning News not caught the story on The November Coalition’s website. His groundbreaking piece entitled Unequal Justice ran with the following by-line; Two very different men commit two very different crimes. When both violate probation, there are wildly different results: The robber gets life; the killer remains free.
According to WFAA in Dallas/Fort Worth…
the case seemed hopeless until the Dallas Morning News compared her son’s sentence to Alex Wood’s.Wood killed a gay prostitute by shooting him in the back. He pleaded guilty to murder and received ten years probation. But when he violated his probation because he was arrested with cocaine, Judge Dean never sent him to jail.
“That makes you really look at the law in Texas, and it’s just like, ‘Lord, Jesus!’” Mrs. Brown said.
Any visibility we in the progressive blogosphere can shed on this case can only help pressure Texas Governor Rick Perry to move quickly so please, link liberally and track-back accordingly.
Hat Tip to Things That People Will Do.
Time For the Nuclear Option?
All we heard from the Republican controlled 109th Congress were threats that if the minority Democrats attempted a filibuster they would use the “nuclear option” in order to force a vote. With the Republican’s now in the minority they have actually used the filibuster twice to block debate on the no confidence escalation vote.
Senate Republicans for a second time blocked a symbolic attempt by Democrats to reject President Bush’s troop increase yesterday, but GOP defections were higher than before, suggesting Republican cracks as the Iraq war dominates Congress’s agenda.With the 56 to 34 vote, Democrats fell shy of the 60 votes required to kick off debate on a nonbinding resolution passed by the House last week that expresses support for the troops but criticizes Bush’s decision to expand combat ranks by more than 20,000 troops. Senate Democrats picked up five new Republican allies in their effort to advance the resolution, bringing the GOP total to seven.
So the question begs to be asked, is it time for the Democrats to invoke the nuclear option (or constitutional option as the pseudo-patriots liked to call it) to get these cowards to vote?
Let’s Pick up the Penguins Arena Dialogue
I am completely amazed at the lack of coverage of the Pittsburgh Penguin arena deal. The Post Gazette and the Trib are averaging a story about every other week, ESPN.com with the remainder of the dialoge coming from disparate discussion groups and blogs. With the deadline rapidly approaching let’s see if we can uncover where the conversations are happening.
Personally, I am dropping as much news as I can into the Save the Pittsburgh Penguins group on Facebook. Where else is discussion taking place? Leave any links you are aware of in the comment section and I will pull all of them together in a new post by the end of the weekend.
Al Franken’s U.S. Senate Announcement
Grill Rats and Bill Donohue
The Culture of Torture courtesy of Fox TV’s show 24.
Same Old Song and Dance in Iraq.
Finding Consensus with Right Wing Freaks
On Church, State, Freedom, and Hate
Bush Plans to cut funding for Veterans Benefits. Support The Troops?
Shakespeare’s Sister, Melissa, resigned her post working for the Edwards campaign. The deluge of death threats and rape threats from alleged “Christians” was too much for her and her family. So, here’s a 2 minute sketch of Bill “Donuthole” Donohue for your Lagniappe
political, cartoons, political cartoons, comic strips, Comics, webcomics, webcomic, Humor, Satire, Art, drawing, sketch, PEN, comic-strips
Sometimes Hard Work Does Pay Off
If you are an avid blog reader you can not deny that the blogosphere is chock full of mediocrity. So, when a real gem gains the recognition he/she deserves it is well worth noting.
Glenn Greenwald, author of How Would a Patriot Act and by far my favorite blogger has finally hit the big time. As of Monday his blog, Unclaimed Territory, has moved to Salon.com.
Here is a taste of what Glenn is serving up today.
Whenever you think that Bush followers cannot get any more depraved in what they advocate, they always prove you wrong. This is what University of Tennessee Law Professor and right-wing blogger Glenn Reynolds said today about claims by the administration that Iran is supplying weapons to Iraqi insurgents (claims which, needless to say, he blindly believes):This has been obvious for a long time anyway, and I don’t understand why the Bush Administration has been so slow to respond. Nor do I think that high-profile diplomacy is an appropriate response. We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and iranian atomic scientists, supporting the simmering insurgencies within Iran, putting the mullahs’ expat business interests out of business, etc.
Basically, stepping on the Iranians’ toes hard enough to make them reconsider their not-so-covert war against us in Iraq. And we should have been doing this since the summer 2003. But as far as I can tell, we’ve done nothing along these lines.
Just think about how extremist and deranged that is. We are not even at war with Iran. Congress has not declared war or authorized military force against that country. Yet Reynolds thinks that the Bush administration, unilaterally, should send people to murder Iranian scientists and religious leaders — just pick out whichever ones we don’t like and slaughter them. No charges. No trial. No accountability. Just roving death squads deployed and commanded by our Leader, slaughtering whomever he wants dead.
North Korea: Return of the Agreed Framework?
One of the things Bush did early on in office was to gut the “agreed framework” with North Korea — a deal which allowed for the presence of nuclear monitors in North Korea in exchange for heating fuel and help in creating other energy sources including nuclear energy. The right hated it - as it does all things Clinton. It was derided as “appeasement” and “extortion.”
Yet, it was very effective in halting a North Korean nuclear weapons program. Since its been gone, there can be little doubt but that NK’s nuclear weapons technology - especially with regard to plutonium - has grown.
Facing that growing danger, the Bush administration has apparently reached some form of tentative deal with North Korea. And while all the deatails of the “tentative” deal are yet to be released, it does appear to once again have us providing them with energy resources.
So can anyone really argue that maintaining the agreed framework - even while negotiating the uranium issues - would not have left us in a better place, i.e. keeping North Korea from engaging in 5 or 6 years of growth in knowledge re plutonium based weapons and experiments with long range missiles?
More Pasalubong…
More pasalubong from my internet travels…The Otis Taylor band will be playing in Iowa the next couple of nights in support for his new album, Definition of a Circle
Iraqi Individual Replacement Training
The Heretik’s Quote of the Day
Dennis Kucinich replaces entire campaign staff with bloggers
Manx Media releases “Lucky Man” by Ben Tanzer
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Filipino Friday
Pasalubong, Pasalubong, I traveled around the internet, and this link is my pasalubong to you
But wait, there’s more pasalubong from my internet travels! Check it Out!. No pasalubong for the Malkinvellian Princess, though.
political, cartoons, political cartoons, comic strips, Comics, webcomics, webcomic, Humor, Satire, Art, drawing, sketch, PEN, comic-strips
Rendell shafts the young
Okay, so the Post-Gazette is reporting that Governor Rendell is looking to bump up the state sales tax on the current range of taxable goods by 1% point, to 6%. Allegheny County and Philadelphia County will see their sales taxes move to 8% as each county has an independent 1% tax on the same list of taxable goods. So what are the policy and political implications?
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette gives us some details on what Governor Rendell wants to do with the additional revenue:
Increasing the sales tax to 7 percent statewide — and 8 percent in Allegheny and Philadelphia counties — would generate $1.4 billion in new funds.
Mr. Rendell says he would use $900 million of the additional revenue over the next two years to lower property taxes for homeowners. That would be in addition to property tax relief of up to $1 billion expected in about two years, when all 14 casinos are open.
If I am reading these paragraphs correctly, $450 million per year out of the $1.4 billion per year in additional sales tax revenue will be used to reduce property taxes. This will marginally harm me, but I think that the shifting composition of taxes will be a fundamental wash for me, plus or minus fifty dollars for the year. However when we apply basic median voter analysis, this move makes a lot more sense.
The typical homeowner is a little bit older, and a little more likely to vote than the general population. Most groups of homeowners will see a small net negative — a little more in sales tax, and and slightly less on the property taxes. However there is one group that has a signifcantly different asset-income-consumption pattern that this plan is targetting and they dominate the vote.
The retired homeowner will receive the most benefits from this plan. Most retired homeowners are on a reduced income compared to the income streams they received while they were working. However home prices, and therefore property values and taxes have increased [assume reasonable assessment practices here... I know, a big assumption]. So under this system, a larger and larger proportion of their income is going to property taxes. However retired individuals have a higher proportion of their income already going to sales tax free services and goods such as medical care. So an increase in the sales tax will have a smaller net effect on them then the general population.
This policy provides some positive benefits for the median voter while continuing the wealth and policy transfer of power from the young to the old.
Time for Ravenstahl to Show What He is Worth
There is a big-time Democratic mayoral primary coming up in May and the current occupant of the office needs to prove to the city of Pittsburgh that he is more than just the accidental mayor. One opportunity to prove his medal is heating up as I type. The Pittsburgh Penguins could easily become the Kansas City Penguins if Ravenstahl (as well as Onorato and Rendell) don’t come up with an arena deal quick.
The Penguins may accelerate talks with officials in Kansas City sometime next week if they aren’t able to soon conclude negotiations in Pittsburgh on a new arena deal, a source close to the team said today.However, even if the team stepped up those efforts, it does not mean it would end negotiations with state and local politicians on a deal here, the source stressed. Talks would proceed simultaneously on both fronts.
The Penguins are facing a soft 30-day deadline, one that expires this weekend, in providing an answer to Kansas City officials. Representatives in that city are offering the team free use of the $276 million Sprint Center next season, no construction costs, and half of the building revenues.
I know I have come out against a new arena in the past but I will play flip-flopper this time around. While this city is certainly more than any outsider would ever give it credit for, it is also teetering on the brink of disaster and the only thing that is going to fix it is a mayor with a serious pair of balls. The Penguins belong in Pittsburgh, period. If the leaders of the state of Pennsylvania and the city of Pittsburgh fail to keep them here then they deserve to find themselves new jobs and no amount of fund raising is going to keep the Democrats of Pittsburgh from nominating Bill Peduto as their choice for mayor come May.
I Was Gambling in Havanna…
political, cartoons, political cartoons, comic strips, Comics, webcomics, webcomic, Humor, Satire, Art, drawing, sketch, PEN, comic-strips
Scientists offered $10,000 to dispute climate study
Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world’s largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).