Rangel and the draft

[Lawrence O'Donnell on The Huffington Post: Rangel is Right]

This is an excellent article written in support of Rangel’s recent comments about how the draft should be reinstated.  Even if you don’t agree with Rangel’s viewpoint, the article is worth reading and it will make you think.

Genius

[FOX News: Pentagon Sees 3 Options for Iraq]

…A secret review commissioned by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace outlines three alternatives for Iraq: sending in more troops for a short-term blitz, shrinking the force on the ground but staying longer or ditching Iraq and pulling out.

Wow!  All that time and energy put into an Iraq Study Group, and that’s what they come up with?  What a bunch of clowns.  I could have told them that; where’s my thousands of dollars in taxpayer money?

CNN is dead to me.

Conservative pundit asshole Glenn Beck decided, as a concerned citizen and on behalf of all Americans, to ask newly-elected Representative Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota and the first-ever Muslim in Congress…well, I won’t say anything.  See for yourself.

What the hell is wrong with this guy?  And while we’re at it, there’s something I’ve been wondering since the day I first saw him on television…who the hell is he?!  Who decides which conservative assholes get their own shows and which ones don’t?  Which brilliant CNN executive thought it would be a good idea to give this self-proclaimed “rodeo clown” a forum in which to spew his hateful, rambling rhetoric?

There’s a lot I could say about this clip, but I think Jon Stewart covered it all quite nicely on The Daily Show.

He said it a lot better than I would’ve, but the gist is the same.

The fact that Glenn Beck still has his job is enough to make me stop watching CNN.  I’m thinking about writing them a nasty letter, too, but I doubt it would do anything except make me feel better.

Finally!

It’s about time.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has opened a criminal investigation of former Republican Rep. Mark Foley.

[CNN: Foley focus of Florida criminal probe]

Sekula-Schmekula

Texas Republican Shelley Sekula-Gibbs was recently elected to the House of Representatives to finish out the remaining seven weeks of Tom Delay’s term.  She will be succeeded by Democrat Nick Lampson.

Not only is she ambitiously planning on reforming immigration policies and cutting taxes, she’s also going to find out why seven aides quit after deleting files from office computers.  David James, one of the staffers who quit, said: “Never has any member of Congress treated us with as much disrespect and unprofessionalism as we witnessed during those five days.”  Apparently, Sekula-Gibbs doesn’t get why treating people like crap would make them want to leave.

On a side note…is it just me, or does her smile make her look like a sex-crazed pedophile?

At least it’s not a disease anymore.

More than thirty years after homosexuality was officially declassified as a mental disorder by healthcare professionals, the Pentagon finally woke up and decided to remove it from their list of mental disorders.  It’s now listed as a “condition”, along with “stammering or stuttering, dyslexia, sleepwalking, motion sickness, obesity, [and] insect venom allergies.”  “Bed-wetting” and “fear of flying” also reside on that list.

Phew, I’m glad someone caught that little error!

Tsk, tsk.

A principal in Dallas is found to have been segregating his school.  According to a lawsuit brought against the Dallas Independet School District by a group of parents:

Hispanic children who were proficient in English and didn’t need bilingual education or ESL classes were shuffled to ESL classes at Preston Hollow. Meanwhile, white children with the same language skills were placed in general education classes. Classrooms with mostly minority students were located along separate hallways from those with mostly white students.

Unbelievable.  For every step forward this country seems to take, it manages to then take a few giant steps back.

He don’t get it.

Apparently, even after three disastrous years, Bush still doesn’t understand the need for a change in Iraq.

It makes for a funny scene in my head.  Bush, sitting at a table while around him people are yelling, trying to knock some sense into his thick little skull.  And he just sits there, occasionally throwing up his hands and repeating, “But I just don’t get it!  We’re doin’ fine!” over and over again.

Maybe it’s a little more sad than it is funny.

How convenient

It’s disgusting that whenever a shred of evidence surfaces that could possibly reveal the horrible things the Bush administration has done, they claim they can’t release it because “national security would be jeopardized.”  I wonder how much longer they’re going to be able to hide behind that thinly-veiled excuse.

“Duh.”

[Washington Post: Think Tank Will Promote Thinking]

The sentence I find particularly amusing reads:

…A group of prominent scientists and advocates of strict church-state separation yesterday announced formation of a Washington think tank designed to promote “rationalism” as the basis of public policy.

As if “rationalism” is such a foreign concept.  Actually, it seems like lately in America, it is.