Let’s see… I spent my first 21 years in a state where there is a recall movement going (that is an utter waste of time and money) and the candidates to replace Gray Davis include:

(The more mundane candidates: **Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamente, Rep. Darryl Issa, and **Dick Riordan [ex-mayor of L.A.]. The starred candidates are the ones I’d actually vote for.)

Then… I move to Ohio where the possible senatorial candidate for the Democrats is Jerry Springer. (I’d love to see discussions on the floor of the Capitol if he had decided to run and was elected.)

Our next state move is probably going to be Minnesota… where the ex-governor was Jess “The Body” Ventura.

I think I definitely have strange politics karma.

I thought I should put my $0.02 in on the recall:

IT IS A COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY FOR A STATE THAT IS ALREADY IN FINANCIAL PROBLEMS BECAUSE OF STUPID GOVERNORS FOR THE 30 YEARS BEFORE DAVIS WAS ELECTED.

OK… let’s look at the situation: a disgruntled politician who lost his bid for Senate is funding the recall and is running himself. Yo! Issa wants to be king — like he’s going to settle for anyone else having the governorship? California had problems LOOOOOONG before Davis was elected. It’s a state of 32 million people speaking 200 different languages which really has two separate cultures (north and south) and grows most of the nation’s food even though it’s really just a well-irrigated desert. In other words, it’s a tough state to govern and believe me, the previous years of Republican tyranny before Davis were just as bad. I remember having a 5 period day in middle school with science alternating with PE so that my school could have its performing arts program. That was 1992-1994… BEFORE Davis.

Oh yes… the economy is crappy everywhere and Silicon Valley is one of the worst places hit because there was an overexpansion in productive capacity known as the Dot.Gone bust. Yes… power bills are high — y’all are the ones who voted for deregulation in 1996. Don’t say that PG&E didn’t warn us — I remember the TV ads. You made your beds — now lie in them! Do you really want a schmuck like Bill Simon, Darryl Issa, or Larry Flint governing y’all? I mean.. Davis isn’t perfect, but at least he isn’t a smut peddler, someone who alienated himself from his own party, or a disgruntled person with weapons violations.

If you’ve been following various secular and Christian media outlets, you’ve probably seen the news that Pat Robertson is launching Operation Supreme Court Freedom, which is a 21-day prayer offensive to make 3 justices of the Supreme Court retire so that conservative ones can be appointed in their place. Ummm… isn’t this just a little presumptious? I mean… he’s presuming that he is a.) correct in all of this and b.) that the Lord Almighty didn’t place these judges in power. I mean… they were put on the bench legally. That’s more than we can say for our President. (Sorry… I really couldn’t resist that. Really. I couldn’t.)

Let’s look at Pat’s little manifesto. And for those who want to accuse me of prooftexting it and quoting out of context, you can go to the linked portions and read them yourself. Oh yes… and send any and all hatemail here. (Remove the NOSPAM from the address.) For those who want to fisk me thoroughly, do so in your own journals and leave the link in my comments. Having covered all the hate mail and comment procedures, let’s start…

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote:

How wise Jefferson was. Yet even Jefferson could not have foreseen what the Supreme Court has done to the Constitution of the United States since 1962. Just think what five unelected judges have done to our nations moral framework.

Yes Pat, let’s quote a deist president who insisted on including the 1st Amendment to the Bill of Rights so that people could have the freedom to worship as they please. Even better, let’s quote someone whose choice of Bible version was one that edited out all the stuff about Jesus. Yeah Pat… you’re real credible there.

So let’s look at the supposed mayhem wreaked by the Supreme Court:

-In 1962, they ruled prayer out of the public schools.

Actually, prayer still exists in school — it just cannot be compulsory. When I was going to school in California (which most in this country view as a state of tofu and avocado eating hippie freaks who worship trees), we were never told not to pray before tests. I had teachers who even gave us a moment of silence before we began to use for prayer or to focus. We were never told we couldn’t pray over lunch — I did all through high school and Christian clubs were allowed in every public school — as long as membership wasn’t compulsory.

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My mommy sent this to me…

The following is a hypothetical situation:

You are part of an organization of businesses. Your business is the most successful and you host the meetings of this group at your lavish company headquarters. One business in your organization is treating its workers badly and is employing slave labor. There are also allegations of fraud within that business. You want to take over that business and liberate the workers from the tyranny of the business owner. Other businesses stop you and say, “Let’s try to do this through discussion and see if we can’t get the offending business to sell to us.” You’re not enthusiastic about that suggestion and damage the reputation of the businesses that suggested it. Against the wishes of the leaders of this organization (who exist to ensure fair practices), you engage in a hostile takeover and liberate the workers. The owner of the offending business is forced to sell and you acquire the shares of the company and claim that you will help the workers to rebuild the company rightly. You then lead a charge to disband the organization that you are part of because you didn’t like its criticism of your (possibly illegal) actions.

OK boys and girls, raise your hands if you think this is a ludicrous and completely selfish move for the most successful business to take. *multitude of people raise their hands* Wonderful. You all get gold stars. Now… how many of you understand why I’m putting this hypothetical situation forward.

*sees raised hand*

Yes Johnny?

Ms. K-M, could it be because there are seriously deluded people who never paid attention in their History classes who think that the U.S. was right to launch a smear campaign against France and suggest that the U.N. be disbanded because they don’t agree with us and criticized us for going into Iraq on charges of WMD that are yet unproven?

Very good Johnny. You get a cookie.

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This is the foolishness to which I am referring:

OK… it looks like this person slept through U.S History because they have obviously missed the ball on this. Evidence? Well… they didn’t know that the U.S. *does* have allies — the group is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (a.k.a. NATO). Membership *is* a privilege as many former Warsaw Pact countries are having problems gaining admission. It was started to combat communism and the former Soviet-bloc nations formed the Warsaw Pact.

Another thing: since when are we automatically “right” because we happen to be the wealthiest nation? I have many issues with this as our culture has replaced elements of other cultures and much of our pop culture is damaging to the cultural mores of other nations. We have 5% of the world’s population yet control over 50% of its wealth and consume 60% of its energy. Does this really sound like the kind of nation you want running the show? I seriously think NOT!

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**WARNING** Jen will be ranting about Bush and his fiscally irresponsible tax cut. If you unwaveringly support Bush, this tax cut, trickle-down economics, or plan to call me a liberal hippie b*tch (in which case your post WILL be deleted and you will be IP banned from my site), please skip this entry and read something else — like an economics book. 🙂 Jen needs to work her nerves and doesn’t need to hear that she’s un-American and should move to Canada. (Jon and I are already planning that once our student loans are paid off.) I didn’t tell you to move to Canada when you whined about Clinton. The same applies now. 🙂 That is all

Senate OKs tax package: Voinovich on board after temporary repeal of new tax breaks on dividends

Attention Senator George Voinovich:
You are an embarassment to your contituents. I was proud of you when you stood up to President Bush and rejected his tax cut (albeit for a smaller one) because it was fiscally irresponsible. Yes… it probably made you unpopular with the President but you took a stand for your beliefs. However… you have proven that you are a true politician and only care about being re-elected by letting the lobbyists get to you. How many of your constituents are wealthy enough to benefit from said tax cut? Yep… less than 10%. You sold out at least 90% of your constituents in hopes of being re-elected. Shame on you! There’s also the fact that you went on board once there was the promise of tax breaks on dividends. It’s great that you can actually benefit from this… because most of your constituents aren’t weathy enough to own the amount of stocks they’d need to benefit from this.

I’m praying that I’ll be in another state soon where I’ll have senators that *care* about their constituents. You and Senator DeWine (who is a fascist pig to begin with) really don’t and I pray that this move costs you your Senate position in the next election.

OK… onto the President:

Dubya,
You obviously didn’t learn this at Yale (maybe because you were farting around instead of studying which is why you had that C+ average) but… OUR. TAXES. FUND. THE. GOVERNMENT. This means that if you want to go fight your wars against leaders you hate, you need to not cut taxes and make that money go away. When you make that money go away, you deny your citizens basic services. It’s nice that you have $1.2 million in investments and that your tax cut means that you can keep more of that money. Most Americans don’t. In fact, I think your salary alone is more than the combined salaries of half of my church.

I heard that you just filed for re-election. I am praying harder than you can imagine that people will wake up and take the blinders off and see what a mess you’ve made of our economy and that they support the Democratic candidate. I’m praying that said candidate is an actual veteran and not a wannabe warmonger like you proved yourself to be in that little publicity stunt on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. (Yes… it boosted the morale of troops. However… I know quite a few vets who are ashamed to have voted for you because of what you did. To them, it cheapens their experiences in Korea and Vietnam.) I’m pretty pissed that you can travel the nation for your campaign on my tax dollars because you should be paying that yourself and not making me pay for it when my money should be going to the social programs that got decimated to make your tax cut possible.

OK… now if only the Democratic candidates would stop sniping at each other and start working together to find the best person among them. I might even vote for a Republican in the primaries if it would weaken Bush’s chances of getting re-elected.

(Oh yes… for the record, this is not a far left journal and I am *NOT* a “yellow dog Democrat”. If there’s a Republican candidate that is better than the Democratic one, I’ll vote for them. I’ve done this plenty of times. Heck… I think I voted Green on almost everything but the presidential candidates in 2000. However, Bush is *NOT* better than any of the nine candidates that are currently vying for the Democratic nomination and I will not waste my vote on him.)

Given the fact that I have been called a far left site and the author of that comment twisted my words to make it sound like I supported his argument (and hadn’t just spent the entire post calling him a moron in more polite terms), I thought that there might be the need to get a few things straight:

Are clear on this?

**Addendum**