Bush Continues to be RRR Cult's TOADY...Appoints Another Anti-Choice LOSER.

From NARAL -- October 17, 2007

Bush Puts Another Anti-Birth-Control Activist in Charge of Family Planning
Washington, D.C. –

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, called reports that President Bush has named Susan Orr, a right-wing activist with ties to anti-birth-control groups, as acting director of the federal office that oversees the nation's family-planning programs yet another example of Bush putting political ideology before women's health.

Orr's temporary appointment comes months after another anti-contraception leader, Eric Keroack, resigned as director of the Office of Population Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services amid allegations of fraud.

"This president continues to go off the deep end in attacking basic birth control," Keenan said. "Americans are tired of this administration using government resources to reward individuals who are hostile to family planning and improving women's health. Even though Ms. Orr's appointment is not permanent at this time, it represents another missed opportunity by this president to put women's health before pleasing his far-right political base."

In addition to this temporary appointment, Orr continues to serve as associate commissioner in the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Administration for Children and Families, at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Prior to joining the Bush administration, she was senior director for marriage and family care at the Family Research Council—a group notorious for its attacks on contraception.

While at the Family Research Council, Orr made this comment after Bush proposed cancelling federal employees’ contraceptive coverage: "We're quite pleased because fertility is not a disease. It's not a medical necessity that you have it" (Washington Post, 4/12). [As reported by American Political Network, American Health Line, Volume 6 No. 9, April 12, 2001]

Contact: Ted Miller (202) 973-3032

"It's not the votes that count. It's who counts the votes." --Soviet Dictator, Joseph Stalin

As background for this article, I present you with this review of "The Conyers Report," written for Amazon.com by Edwin C. Pauzer, of New York City. (With thanks to Amazon. Clicking on the link will take you to this review, and provide you with access to purchasing the book. Emphasis within the review, below, is mine. --Ed.):

In his book "Armed Madhouse..." author Greg Palast quotes Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. "It's not the votes that count. It's who counts the votes." After you read the dry but factual 116 pages of this book, you will come to the inescapable conclusion that the election was stolen from presidential candidate John Kerry and given to Mr. Bush. The book is divided into facts (what happened) and analysis (the motive and how it could have happened). It starts with Ohio's secretary of state, a republican, Kenneth Blackwell who promised to "fill in the blanks" regarding voting anomalies but has kept silent in the finest tradition of "political omerta." He has refused to initiate any investigations, and has tried his best to have the ballots destroyed. Here's some of what Conyers uncovers: Republican challengers were at every precinct causing massive voting delays. This is called caging, and it is illegal. Republican challengers targeted 97% of new voters in black areas. They only challenged 14% of new voters in white areas. There were voting machine lockdowns preventing observation of ballot counts. This too is illegal. There were flipped votes. Voters reported that they had voted for Kerry and watched their vote register for George Bush. These "glitches" were called "calibration problems." The number of votes vs. voters. In many places the number of voter turn-out exceeded 100%. (?) In one case nearly 19,000 votes were added after all precincts reported. There were repairs being made by the electronic voting machine company while the ballots were being recounted. This too is illegal. In Ohio. The exit polls which asked the people how they voted, showed that Kerry had won. Men and women voters gave a majority to Kerry. These polls are usually very accurate. So, how did exit polls that put Kerry ahead 52% to 48% turn around after the ballots were counted? After reading this book, you can only arrive at one conclusion: There's something rotten in the state of Ohio. Update: Blackwell ran for governor in Ohio this past November and was defeated. Those ballots he could not manage to hide.

If you can possibly read the above review, and the book itself, and not realize that nothing less than American democracy is at stake, then you are most assuredly part of the problem. And if you do recognize this threat, but do nothing to help counter it -- BEFORE the General Election in November, 2008 -- then you are very assuredly no part of a very desperately-needed solution!

This article could turn long and tedious, if I filled it with more documentation. And then fewer people would read and act upon it, which would defeat its purpose. So I suggest that you please do this:

Do a Google search of these words, exactly as presented, and you'll have an abundance of information: "diebold" "voting" "fraud".

You'll have all the proof that you need! (And, should you run across anyone who poo-poos this, or claims it's "conspiracy theory," ask yourself these questions: "With which party does he affiliate himself?" And, "WHY is he so anxious to keep you from learning the facts?")

The SOLUTION

It seems almost too easy, but if enough of us do it, it cannot help but work!

Contact both of your U.S. Senators, and your Representative in Congress, and tell them that this must be done no later than during the springtime of 2008, so as to allow all of the relevant states enough time to prepare and adjust for it:

All states using electronic voting devices must ensure that those machines generate a paper vote simultaneously with the electronic one, and that the voter must be able to see and verify the printed vote before leaving the polling place.

All electronically talllied votes must be regarded as preliminary -- just to give the country an idea of how things seem to be developing, on Election Night. And then ALL of the paper ballots must be tallied under strict supervision from representatives of all parties on the ballot. ONLY after ALL of those paper ballots have been properly and honestly tallied, can victories be declared. And the tallied PAPER ballots, and their tally, are the only OFFICIAL results. No matter how lopsided the election may appear to be.

(Please enclose a copy of the above book review, and ask that the legislation be written to explicity and enforcably PROHIBIT all of the abuses that are cited within it.)

If this Congress -- which currently has a Democratic majority in both houses, and therefore may be our very last hope for heading off permanent disaster, passes this legislation... but then President Bush were to veto it -- that should set off a firestorm from the electorate! Since the only possible reason to do that would be to wreck the democratic process!

Finally -- Use the Internet to promote the above measure. Post to blogs. Use text messaging. Phone in relentlessly to radio talk shows.

If democracy in the USA is to survive into 2009 -- it is up to us -- WE, the PEOPLE -- to get the job done! Please don't make the mistake of thinking this can be put off. Because it almost certainly is now or never! Do or die!

The Internet address of this article (URL) is spelled out below. Please e-mail it as far and wide as you possibly can! Thanks -- and good luck to us all!

http://apifar.blogspot.com/2007/11/its-not-votes-that-count-its-who-counts_25.html

Someone asked how the Presidential candidates stand on Same-Sex Marriage.

This was my response --

Fortunately for America (since our next President will probably be a Democrat, barring vote-count fraud), none of the Democratic candidates are bigots with respect to same-sex marriage SSM). They mostly are amenable to legalization of "civil unions," rather than actually calling it marriage. (Pandering, of course, to voters who get whiney about using the word, marriage... as ignorant as such voters are.) But otherwise having all of the benefits of marriage.

Once the unconstitutional blocks to SSM (since nothing in the Constitution restricts the gender makeup of married couples) have fallen, and SSM is fully legal nationwide, I think that the semantic "civil union" challenge to that terminology will vanish. Because it almost certainly suddenly will dawn on people that all opposite-sex marriages that are now being performed in the USA by JPs, Mayors, Ship Captains, Vegas-style Wedding Chapels, etc., are not religious ceremonies. (So much for "sanctity" of marriage, since if any marriages are to be considered sacred at all, it would only be the religiously-performed ones.) And therefore all of those are civil unions. And with there being no difference in benefits accruing from "marriage" vis-a-vis "civil unions," that will likely spell the the end of this silly battle over semantics waged by religious extremists. All couples legally joined, either by civil or religious ceremonies, will be married, plain and simple. Whether opposite-sex or same-sex.

As the race for the Presidency heats up -- no matter what the candidates may say -- don't trust any Republican to be an egalitarian, when push comes to shove, after taking office, if America should be so unfortunate as for one of them to be elected. (Or if the Republicans should manage to steal yet another election, with help from the Diebold electronic voting machines.) Not even Giuliani. He talks like an egalitarian now, but don't expect him to walk the walk. I don't think he'll go to the mat for the assurance of equal rights for all. And we must strive to the utmost to elect the Democratic nominee, so that this won't have to be put to the test.

Finally, you probably noticed the links, above, having to do with vote fraud via electronic machines. If anyone reading this thinks that the Republican Party, heavily steeped in dishonesty since and including Watergate, wouldn't pull out all possible stops to steal the 2008 election, please contact me about a nice bridge in New York that I can sell you.

For more on this most insideous threat to democracy, Google: "diebold" "voting" "corrupt". And -- get yourself a copy of "The Conyers Report" from Amazon.com, or elsewhere.

S.J. Haye (his real name) of Ridgecrest, California made a chilling prediction for the 2008 election -- back on October 20, 2005, in writing a review of "The Conyers Report" for Amazon.com. Reading it, it's hard to believe that more than two years have passed since he wrote it... since nothing has changed to correct this situation. Indeed, the party in power -- the Republicans -- have had two more years since then to fine-tune the mechanisms for destroying democracy in their favor. Here is what this reviewer wrote:

Rep. John Conyers, (D - Michigan, the ranking minority chair of the House Judiciary Committee, led eleven Democratic Congressman (Republicans boycotted this investigation) and their staffers into the swamp that was the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio. Conyers had come to answer an essential question -- What Went Wrong in Ohio? The investigation was conducted despite the difficulties caused by Bush (whose selection in 2000 led to an apology from Justice John Paul Stevens for the behavior of the 5-4 majority of the Court in the matter of Bush vs. Gore) and of the Republican majority in Congress. In the introduction, Gore Videl says that when asked who would win in `04, he said that Bush would lose again, but he was confident that in the four years between 2000 and 2004, creative propaganda and the fixing of elections might very well be perfected so as to ensure an official victory for Bush. As this report shows in great detail with very thorough documentation of sources, Ohio was carefully set up to deliver an apparent victory for Bush even though Kerry appears to be not only the popular winner but the Electoral College winner. This report states categorically, "With regards to our factual findings, in brief, we find that there were massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio." These were caused by officials, chiefly Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell who was co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio, and included deliberate misallocation of voting machines so that thousands or even hundreds of thousands of predominately minority and Democratic voters had to wait in long lines, or couldn't even vote, "cheat sheets" supplied to numerous counties to guide those counting the ballots so that Bush would have the proper number of votes to beat Kerry, denial of the right to observe the counting of ballots by impartial observers, illegally removing voters from the voting rolls, and other acts designed to ensure a Bush "win". The outlook for 2008? To date, nothing has been done, either by Congress or the States, to clean up this mess. After all, those benefiting by the corruption are in charge. So, as things stand, expect a Republican "win" in 2008, regardless of who happens to be running. [Emphasis is mine, above. -- ed.]

Stem Cell Research -- Good News on TWO Fronts!

On November 20, 2007, it was announced that a major breakthrough had occurred almost simultaneously on two continents, with respect to stem-cell research. It looks as though, in years to come, thousands of labs will have the capability to reprogram skin cells to function in much the same way as embryonic stem cells.

Two research groups have found different genetic recipes to give ordinary skin cells the power to turn into virtually any kind of human tissue, just as embryonic stem cells do.

"If the recipes live up to their promise, they could someday end the [pseudo-]ethical debate over embryonic stem cell research — and usher in an era when a person's own cells could be manipulated to mend a broken spinal cord, heal a damaged heart or regenerate other failing tissues.

"But in their current state, the recipes are too risky for disease treatment, and even the scientists behind the latest studies cautioned that therapies are still years away. In announcing their discoveries, they emphasized that much more research still needs to be done on stem cells that have been derived from human embryos."

"'It's not the time to say human embryonic stem cell research is dead,' James Thomson, a biologist at the Univerity of Wisconsin at Madison, who is behind a study appearing in the journal Science, told msnbc.com.

"Kyoto University's Shinya Yamanaka, the principal author of a study published by the journal Cell, echoed that view, saying it would be "premature" to conclude that the cells created in his lab could replace embryonic stem cells.

"Like embryonic stem cells, these reprogrammed cells become 'pluripotent' — that is, they're capable of turning themselves into virtually any tissue type in the human body, including neurons and heart tissue. They also exhibit many of the other biochemical properties of embryonic stem cells, although they're not genetically identical to stem cells. [Emphasis mine, wherever colored type, italics, or boldfacing appear, within quoted statements in this article. No verbiage was changed in those.]"

"That bright future depends on a series of big ifs.

"First of all, the function of the reprogrammed cells will have to be compared closely with the function of actual embryonic stem cells. "I'd be surprised if these cells do all the same tricks as stem cells derived from embryos," Advanced Cell Technology's chief scientific officer, Robert Lanza told msnbc.com.

"Also, in both experiments, the four-gene recipe was added to the skin cells using a virus as the delivery package. "The FDA [Food and Drug Administration] would never allow us to use these virus-modified cells in patients," Lanza said."

A back door to human cloning? Yamanaka also said the reprogramming technique could allow for the creation of egg cells as well as sperm cells from the same person, male or female.

This Breakthrough is NOT a Substitute for ongoing Ebryonic Stem-Cell Research

On one network newscast, today, it was noted that this breakthrough would take decades to refine and make available to humans, and that it was something our kids might see happen in their lifetimes, rather than us.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa has pushed for federal funding of embryonic stem cell research and said he will continue to do so.

"Our top researchers recognize that this new development does not mean that we should discontinue studying embryonic stem cells," he said in a written statement. "Scientists may yet find that embryonic stem cells are more powerful. We need to continue to pursue all alternatives as we search for treatments for diabetes, Parkinson's and spinal cord injuries."

"He added that Tuesday's announcement 'reiterates the need for federal support for medical research and again points out the president's misplaced priorities in vetoing the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill which included a substantial increase for the National Institutes of Health.'"

Senator Harkin has been an important advocate of valuable medical progress, very consistently. Not just in the case of embryonic stem-cell research, but also with respect to human cloning, which could become a huge benefit to humanity in the not-too-distant future, once all the whinings of its generally-ignorant opponents have been summarily rejected by the developed world's societies.

On March 12, 1997, Harkin very enthusiatically endorsed all forms of medical technologies, including human cloning, when he said this after the successful cloning of Dolly, the sheep:

"This has enormous potential for good. There should be no limits on human knowledge, none whatever. To those like President Clinton who say we can't play God, I say OK, fine, you can take your side alongside Pope Paul V who in 1616 tried to stop Galileo, they accused Galileo of trying to play God too. [ ... ] I don't think cloning is demeaning to human nature. To attempt to limit human knowledge is demeaning. It's not legitimate to try to stop cloning. What nonsense, what utter, utter nonsense to think we can hold up our hand and just say 'stop.' Cloning will continue, the human mind will continue to inquire into it. Human cloning will take place and it will take place in my lifetime, and I don't fear it at all. I want to be on the side of the Galileos and those who say the human mind has no limits, rather than trying to stop something that's going to happen anyway."

Back to MSNBC's story, "A lead author of one of the landmark studies, James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, urged that reprogrammed cells not wholly supplant embryonic stem cells in research. 'I don't like the idea of pulling the plug,' he told reporters in a conference call.

"He added that Tuesday's advances in reprogramming cells would not have been possible without the advancements in embryonic stem cell research over the past decade.

"Thomson and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin were the first researchers to isolate human embryonic stem cells, in 1998."

Interestingly, another cause for concern was raised in both the NBC Nightly News and on NBC's Today Show -- the possibility that the stem cells derived from this breakthrough may be flawed, in that they may have the potential to become cancerous.

My Own Conclusion

Senator Tom Harkin (whom, I am proud and happy to say, is my senator, as an Iowan) said it all in the comments I highlighted above. In America, today's equivalent of the sort of mindless opposition that Galileo faced, is the loathsome and ignorant RRR Cult -- the "Religious" Radical Right.

Early in this article, where it said "ethical debate," I inserted "[pseudo-]" before "ethical" because the opposition to embryonic stem cell research has about as little to do with an actual debate as fighting a duel with cream puffs at 60 years would if the opponent had a howitzer. There is nothing ethical about the RRR, which is comprised almost entirely of people having the sort of mentality and mindsets that we saw in Southern segregationists, 50 years ago. To most sensible and intelligent people, they are a joke. But UNTIL their loathsome and hateful agendas against progress, and individual liberties/human rights are relegated to the same permanent extinction that befell those of the segregationists, they are America's own home-grown version of the Taliban. And for as long as that UN-Christian cult continues to function, and have any influence in our society, we must continue to regard it the USA's greatest internal threat, and deal with it accordingly. Which means vigorously opposing it and properly & honestly de-legitimizing it, 24/7, 365-1/4 days a year. Because ---

The RRR Cult : U.S. Society :: 5% Arsenic solution : glass of drinking water.

Its ludicrous and antisocial agendas are toxic to American society, and the rights of tens of millions of people. And we cannot accept those, any more than we could accept equally mindless and sociopathic racial discrimination and segregation.

And fortunately for medical science, embryonic stem cell research will continue to be pursued, unabated, alongside other avenues of research involving stem cells. No matter how much the doltish RRR Cult whines about it! And that is why I entitled this article, "...Good News on TWO Fronts."

TOUGH LUCK, President Bush! We’re Very Happily Blowing the Lid Right OFF of Your Tight-lipped Secrecy!

Plain and simple, Bush clearly was afraid to acknowledge that Iran’s President Ahmadinejad LIED! And thus possibly provoke him! Read on! ---

Over these last seven very dismal years, most Americans have gotten wise to "President" Bush’s doltish stubbornness and terribly grievous mistakes. Such as his lying to the whole world about nonexistent WMD, his subsequent invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq and slaughter of, to date, more than 100,000 of its innocent citizens – making him the worst mass-murderer the world has seen since Pol Pot, and probably staining the world’s perception of America forevermore. And his idiotic and thoughtless veto of the expansion of embryonic stem-cell research. And on and on, ad nauseum.

And then he refused to say anything about the incursion by Israel (with U.S. assistance and collusion) into Syria on September 6, 2007. At a press conference later, I’ve never heard Bush utter so many instances of "No comment" in so short a time. And now, it’s late November, and he still won’t say a word about it.

Well – tough, Bush. We have the FACTS now, and we are more than happy to tell everyone what happened, despite your moronic secrecy.

Readers – here’s the story! From The Philadelphia Trumpet, based in Edmond, Oklahoma. Below, we quote salient excerpts from the article, entitled "Close to Armageddon," in its November-December 2007 issue.

Most journalists agree that Israeli F-151 jets made a surgical strike on a military installation inside Syria. The date was September 6.

The Syrians are not talking because they have been humiliated. Other top government officials who know about the attack are not talking either. In fact, they have never been so abnormally secretive about anything. Israel has had almost total censorship, which is nearly unheard of. Why are they so secretive?

The Spectator quoted "a very senior British ministerial source" as saying this: "If people had known that day how close we came to World War III that day, there’s have been mass panic." ... [Prime Minister Gordon] Brown really would have been dealing with the bloody book of Revelation and Armageddon" (October 3). ...

This seems to be about the worst description he could give us.

Another statement from the Spectator: "According to American sources, Israeli intelligence tracked a North Korean vessel carrying a cargo of nuclear material labeled "cement" as it travelled halfway around the world. On September 3, the ship docked at the Syrian port of Tartus, and the Israelis continued following the cargo as it was transported to the small town of Dayr az Zawr ... in northeastern Syria. ...

"Three days after the North Korean consignment arrived, the final phase of Operation Orchard was launched. With prior approval from Washington, Israeli F-151 jets were scrambled and, minutes later, the installation and its newly-arrived contents were destroyed.

"So secret were the operational details of the mission that even the pilots who were assigned to provide air cover for the strike had not been briefed on it until they were airborne." (ibid.)

The world knows that Israel has nuclear bombs and submarines with nuclear cruise missiles.

Syria already has one of the world’s deadliest stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. It wanted the nuclear material to complete its weapons of mass destruction program. ... Syria is second only to Iran in state-sponsored terrorism. It isn’t hard to imagine Damascus giving nuclear devices to terrorists.

SIDE NOTE: One of the Bible’s most intriguing and as-yet-unfulfilled prophecies is found in Isaiah 17:1 (NIV) – An oracle concerning Damascus: "See, Damascus will no longer be a city but will become a heap of ruins." And all of the Bible’s prophecies whose time have already come, came to pass flawlessly!

One of the Trumpet’s contacts in Israel said he wondered why Israel was calling up its national guard before the September 6 attack. After he learned some sketchy details of what happened, he knew why. Israel was preparing for war – possibly a war involving WMDs. And we can’t rule out the use of nuclear weapons, even from the Arab side.

There seems to be clear evidence that the Russians had some nuclear weapons stolen. Who got them? Syria? Iran? Many journalists think it was Iran.

This problem goes much deeper than Syria and Israel. Syria is a surrogate of Iran. The king of the Muslim world is Iran.

Charles Krauthammer wrote this in his September 21 Washington Post column: "Iran’s assets in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq are poised and ready. [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad’s message is this: If anyone dares attack our nuclear facilities, we will fully activate our proxies, unleashing unrestrained destruction on Israel, moderate Arabs, Iraq and U.S. interests – in addition to the usual, such as mining the Strait of Hormuz and causing an acute oil crisis and worldwide recession. ...

"The new president of France has declared a nuclear Iran ‘unacceptable.’ The French foreign minister warned that ‘it is necessary to prepare for the worst’ – and the worst, it’s war, sir."

France is a member of the European Union. You can see that the EU is being drawn into the Middle East vortex.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that Israel must be "wiped from the map." That statement indicates that he plans to use nuclear weapons to achieve that goal.

President George W. Bush said on October 18: "I’ve told people that, if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [the Iranians] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." ...

The Middle East is rapidly becoming more volatile, and everybody knows it. We are frighteningly close to World War III.

Okay. From what we see above, the reason Bush wouldn’t comment on the strike on Syria’s nuclear facility almost surely stems from the fact that Syria IS a surrogate of Iran, and thus, an attack on Syria’s nuclear facilities would perfectly serve to trigger Ahmadinejad’s promised HUGE retaliation, as presented in red, above.

Ahmadinejad LIED!! The retaliation he promised was not carried out – even though we assisted Israel to attack a nuclear facility in one of his surrogate nations. And to this day, Bush obviously is afraid to make that known, and splash some very well-deserved OMELET on Ahmadinejad’s face.

The truth is out, GW Bush. Your "no comments" have come to naught – and I am very happy to have joined The Philadelphia Trumpet and its sources in spectacularly blowing the lid off of your cover-up!

Be an Active Egalitarian! Keep up to date on the Issues: Same-Sex Marriage

Is there anything in the world that is more harmless than same-sex marriage? After all, it doesn't even remotely threaten any thing or any one. No matter how much the anti-gay-rights bigots whiningly LIE otherwise. People are born with their sexual orientations, so straights will just keep right on marrying their opposite-sex partners, no matter how many gays happen to marry their same-sex ones.

Valuable information for both Gays and their millions of Straight Allies can be found in this very active group in Yahoo -- Same Sex Unions.

It’s a discussion forum that advocates marriage equality for couples of same sex.

Egalitarians, unlike their doltish and bigotry-brainwashed RRR Cult counterparts, are fully aware that same-sex marriage is totally harmless, could have no adverse effect on any opposite-sex couples’ marriages, and that all of the RRR-instigated (and so-called) “Defense of Marriage” legislation is nothing but an immensely-viscious, lying, and hateful sham. The pseudo-Religious Radical Right is America’s very own version of the Taliban, and until its loathsome agendas have all been relegated to extinction (where they will join their first cousin in mindless bigotry, segregation), it will continue to pose a grave threat to the personal liberties and individual freedoms of hundreds of millions of Americans.

A reminder of just how dangerous they are can be seen in the way that they succeeded in reversing the polarity of the U.S. Supreme Court. For longer than any American has been alive, that Court was the greatest defender and advocate of liberty on the face of the earth. But now, thanks to the RRR’s toady, President GW Bush, it has been horribly poisoned for decades to come... against many very important personal liberties. Bush is a real piece of work! He invaded a sovereign nation under lying false pretenses, thus proving to the world that America, tragically, is no longer a benign and friendly good neighbor that can be trusted. Which earned us the enmity of billions of people, worldwide. And he then proceeded to become the worst mass-murderer the world has seen since Pol Pot. Bush has made Iraq – which had nothing to do with 9/11 – his own personal Killing Fields. At least 100,000 innocent Iraqis have been slaughtered at his commands, and no end is in sight. Even the Democratic candidates for President have proven themselves a pack of cowards by backing away from doing the right thing, and getting us the hell OUT of there, once one of them has been elected. Meanwhile we, the SHEEPLE, sit back and do nothing! Therefore, we have blood is on OUR hands, too. Every American who isn’t actively opposing this war, and demanding Congress that they present a united front to immediately end this bloodbath – is an accomplice to it! And is just as guilty as Bush, by being an accomplice.

We can’t expect any help from the U.S. Supreme Court in this, or any other matter. It has been destroyed for decades to come, as just mentioned. Thanks to Bush, and the U.S. Senate who confirmed his repressive appointees, it is very possible that no American alive today may ever again see the benevolent sort of Court that emancipated American women, via Roe vs. Wade, from being forced to gestate UNwanted pregnancies to term, against their will. Or which ended the hateful discrimination against interracial marriage in its Loving vs. Virginia decision. Or which made the ultimate demise and subsequent extinction of segregation inevitable in its key Brown vs. Board of Education decision, back in 1954. We will be very lucky if we can go another 20 years without seeing the fulfillment of George Orwell’s ghastly societal vision, in his novel, 1984 – merely a few decades later than he’d prophesied.

The issue of same-sex marriage (SSM) is one that the U.S. Supreme Court (as it existed before Bush and the Senate ruined it) could easily have settled in favor of fairness, just as it did in the case of Loving vs. Virginia, in 1967. But now, thanks to this unthinkable disaster for liberty, we (the gays and their straight allies) will have to fight tooth and nail for it – state-by-state. What a sad commentary on what America has already become, thanks to the RRR Cult, and its founder (may he suffer eternal torment for that!), the late Jerry Falwell.

Back to the Same-Sex Unions group. Its stated mission “is to secure the freedom and the right of same-sex couples to enter into legally-recognized civil marriage, having all the federal and state benefits (in all 50 States!) and responsibilities which that entails.”

Whether you are GLBT, or a Straight egalitarian ally of the gay community, I encourage you to subscribe to it, and participate in it. Let’s all unite and fight the RRR Cult and its loathsome agendas, 24/7, 365-1/4 days a year -- all the way to its well-deserved extinction!

Vital WARNING Unseen & Unheeded -- Now America is TRULY in for it!

I wrote the article below in October, 2004, and posted it in several relevant Usenet newsgroups. And thus, of course, it was seen by FAR too small an audience. Even if all who read it had heeded its warning, it would have been a drop in the bucket. Too little, and 'way too late. What really was needed, back then, was a means by which tens of millions of Americans could have seen it, read it, and then acted upon it. But now it's 2007, and I still have no idea of how such widespread dissemination of it could have been accomplished. (Feel free to add a comment, below, if you can suggest a solution!)

I really wish I could have the answer to that -- because in the 2008 general election, we MAY have one final chance to reverse the horror that GW Bush has almost surely made inevitable for America, possibly for all time to come. One last, and very frail, chance. If only people can learn about what has been happening, and the utter gravity of the situation, in time to act! Any concerned American could have sounded an alarm like this one, while there was still time -- and I only wish that thousands of them had done so! The terrible danger should have been obvious to millions. Why weren't enough people thinking?!? And why are so many millions of people still unaware of this process?

Flashback to October, 2004... and the warning that I issued. Which few ever were able to read in time, and which thus went unheeded ---

If we want to continue living in a FREE America, then we absolutely must elect John Kerry on Tuesday. Read on, and you'll see for yourself that that is absolutely true.

The above is not in the least an exaggeration. If Bush wins, then tyranny such as America hasn't experienced in its worst nightmares is likely inevitable, and inexorably right around the corner. And from Nov. 3rd on, unpreventable and irrevocable.

Quite literally, this country's best chance to remain free is for the huge block of tens of millions of voters between 18 and 35 to make sure that they get out and vote overwhelmingly for Kerry today. This article explains in detail precisely why that is the case.

PLEASE do yourself the biggest favor of your whole life, and spend the five minutes that it takes to read and digest the full contents of this article.

[[[ The following is my own analysis. I'm affiliated with no groups nor PACs, and my writing, and the concerns expressed herein, are entirely my own. And just for the record, I'm a registered Republican... but only because I'm doing all I can from within that party to help to wrest it free of the RRR ("agendas, regardless of their party. ]]]

If the mistake of electing (not re-electing) Bush is made, then there will be no way that the horrific consequences detailed below can be averted. An irrevocable & unstoppable process will have been set in motion, and our lives would never be the same again.

Just as many historical geologists think that the last ice age may have been sudden -- as evidenced by frozen mammoths having been found in the Arctic with vegetation still in their mouths -- the end of the American system we have always treasured and assumed to be indestructable could be upon us almost without warning. We can be caught just as surely -- and almost as suddenly -- as the residents of Pompeii were cooked and buried without warning by a pyroclastic flow from Vesuvius.

The society that results won't make the one described in George Orwell's "1984" look good. But it may very well look like a close parallel to the American system that would result from that horrendous mistake. And that would be incomprehensible.

For those for whom the Bible has meaning -- THIS could easily be HOW the long-prophesied Tribulation Period described in Revelation can begin.

If you read this post fairly and without prejudice, you will see for yourself that the situation is EXACTLY as I just described. Maybe you've seen an earlier vesion of the pargraphs below before, and maybe you haven't. But either way, now is the time for you to take what it says very seriously!

If you care about America -- and your personal liberties, then it is imperative that GW Bush NOT be elected to a second term.

This is why ---

It's October 19, 2004, and Hal Lindsey (author of "The Late, Great Planet Earth") has just pointed out on TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network) that it's almost a certainty that whomever is President between 2005 and 2009, he will get to appoint "two, and possibly as many as four, Justices to the U.S. Supreme Court."

A favorite refrain from the RRR Cult's leaders, and its lemmings who parrot them, is that "unelected, activist judges legislate from the bench." So let's take a look at the ramifications of those proclamations about our Judicial Branch of government, by the "Religious" Radical Right.

FIRST of all, consider that the only "legislating" from the bench that ever is done is 100% legitimate. It's called "Judicial Law," and when it's a majority decision that's an interpretation of the U.S. Constitution by the U.S. Supreme Court, it supercedes ALL statutory law, and can be contravened only by a later reversal by that court, or by a Constitutional Amendment. So this obvious absence of a basic knowledge of American civics on their part of the cult's lemmings (and the depth to which its leaders will reach in order to spread its lying propaganda) is duly noted. As well as the lemmings' typical -- and unquestioning -- obvious gullibility that's proven by their consistently falling for the cult's lies and propaganda, hook, line and sinker!

It's called the Balance of Powers, and checks-and-balances. That's in the Constitution. It's what keeps the three branches of government (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial) from overreaching their power, in each case. (Think "rock, scissors, paper.")

Congress has the power to enact statutory law, and to initiate Constitutional Amendments. In the case of statutory law, those can be nullified -- totally legally -- by the U.S. Supreme Court. But if the Supreme Court appears to go too far, then the Constitution can be amended to override its decision.

All Supreme Court Justices are "activists" or they wouldn't be there. Including the socially-conservative ones. The only reason that the RRR cult whines about that is because their activists happen to be in the minority.

Oh. And their "activist" judges (whom they refer to as "constructionists" -- thus, a dishonest attempt to make a distinction with regard to "activism") also happen to be "unelected." No surprise, since that's what the Constitution specifies: that Supreme Court Justices will be presidentially appointed, subject to confirmation by Congress. (And thus, not elected by the people.)

What hypocrisy, and what stupidity, on the part of the "Religious" Radical Right. Americans can thank God, their lucky stars, or whatever else anyone may happen to believe in, that the Supreme Court's majority still is comprised of social liberals who stand up for the personal liberties and rights of the people.

If Bush wins this election, American society very likely will quickly and inexorably begin to devolve into one that could make the former Soviet Union look tame. There IS a "slippery slope," but it doesn't lead toward expanded liberties, as hyperconservatives seem to fear. It leads precisely in the opposite direction, once the catalyst has been triggered. That is not an overstatement. Our personal liberties and rights have been defended for all of our lives by a Supreme Court having an egalitarian majority. And that's hanging by a very fragile thread right now, since many of its recent decisions have supported liberty by only a 5-4 majority. As Hal Lindsey pointed out, it is almost certain that at least two, and possibly as many as four, of the Court's Justices will not be able to hang on for another 4 years if Bush is elected. The Court has at this point gone longer without any turnover than it has at anytime in the nation's history.

Suppose that the majority had voted the OTHER way, just in these decisions, over the last 50 years:

1954 -- The beginning of the end of segregation would not have been initiated by the Court's "Brown vs. Board of Education" decision.

1967 -- Many states' hateful bans on interracial marriage would have survived, and might still be in force today. The Court's "Loving vs. Virginia" decision ended that discrimination.

1973 -- Tens of millions of women who were enabled by a beneficent Supreme Court to put their lives back on track by having access to safe and legal abortion would instead have been forced to gestate unwanted reproductive-process entities to term against their will, or seek dangerous or exorbitant illegal abortions, or travel to a free state for one. The latter would exclude millions of lower-economic-level women, and it would impose unconscionable second-class-citizen status upon all American women. We know even today, [35] years later, that many states would still choose to repress or prohibit this vital human right, if they could. The Court's "Roe vs. Wade" decision emancipated ALL of America's girls and women!

1997 -- Without our sensible and benevolent Court, on June 26th, the repressive, so-called "Communication Decency Act" (CDA) which would have severely impacted freedom of speech, and imposed censorship upon the internet, would have survived.

2003 -- The government would not have so very sensibly been kicked out of the bedrooms of American citizens. ("Lawrence vs. Texas")

And those are just some of the key cases. A repressive Court obviously would have disregarded our rights just as consistently in many lesser cases, as well.

If that weren't bad enough, consider this: The liberty-defending courts (U.S. Supreme Court included, but don't forget such ones on the state level as Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court, which sensibly recognized that there is no valid or Constitutional reason to deny marriage to same-sex couples), can directly stand up for our rights and nullify attempts to repress them. But -- there's far more to this than that. There's the psychological impact upon legislators as they write their proposed laws, who currently (and sensibly) keep a gimlet eye on the courts that could (and usually still would, in today's America) strike them down in a heartbeat if they didn't work hard to ensure that their legislation doesn't trample on any of our liberties.

The passage of the ban on the SECOND-trimester ID&E abortion procedure (lyingly called "partial-birth" by its dishonest proponents) was an exception to that. The Republican majority in both houses of Congress were under intense pressure by the neocon (RRR Cult) constituents that they perceive as being their base, to pass the measure -- again without the exception for the health of the woman that the Supreme Court has indicated would have made the act viable. So it's already been invalidated by three federal judges, and when it gets to the Supreme Court, it almost surely will be struck down, just as Nebraska's similar law was -- for the same reason.

But most of the time, state legislatures and Congress don't swim so obviously against the current -- because thay already know ahead of time that an egalitarian-majority Supreme Court stands in the wings, ready and able to scour the Constitution with a fine-tooth comb with the clear intention of doing whatever they legitimately can to defend our personal liberties whenever possible.

WHAT IF -- the Supreme Court no longer were of that mind?

THEN what would the state legislatures and Congress -- so many of which now are controlled by neocon Republicans who harbor open and blatant disdain for so many of our rights -- DO?

THINK about that!

And then -- all who are reading these words -- PLEASE vote for Kerry (and please not for Ralph Nader, which would be the equivalent of handing your vote to Bush) -- and help save America from such an awful and unthinkable cataclysm. Remember -- Supreme Court appointments are for life! And if that Court becomes repressive, very few (if any) Americans alive today will ever again know a Supreme Court that consistently and fairly defends their rights. If there EVER were a time not to take freedom for granted, THIS is that time. More so by far than at any other time in any of our lifetimes. Exponentially more so.

This IS the most critically-important election in our lifetimes.

Kerry has promised to appoint egalitarians to the Supreme Court. And Bush has pledged not to, almost in as many words.

If we want to remain a free country -- it's entirely up to US. And the time already is here! It's already possible to vote, either in real-time, or by absentee ballot, in most states, as you read this, and millions already have. (If at all possible, try to get a PAPER ballot, rather than voting electronically. Electronic voting machines are vulnerable to tampering. Particularly the Diebold ones!) WE, the registered voters of America, are the only ones who can prevent the horrendous scenario above from playing out.

Remember, too, that we are the world's only military superpower, and thus, we still (at the time of this writing) are the STRONGEST bastian of liberty on the planet. If the USA loses its freedom, there will be NO place for *any* of us to run!

We have only this ONE shot at remaining a free nation. Please consider that with the utmost gravity. If we fail to ensure the continuance of that on Tuesday; if we fail to elect Kerry -- there'll be no second chances.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Well -- Now that it's 2007, DO we still have ANY chance to avert this disaster, now that Bush has already damaged the Supreme Court so grievously? Probably ONLY if Bush is unable to further poison the Court with a third anti-liberty appointee. And then ONLY if we elect a Democrat President in 2008. (On the Republican side, there's no chance at all; the only potential social liberal, Rudy Giuliani, has already promised that he will appoint only "conservatives" to the Court, if given the opportunity.)

Dumb Cluck MITT ROMNEY doesn't even know that Hillary is a Democrat!

If you live in Iowa, you've gotta love this, because it's running on TV ad nauseum! A campaign ad in which Mitt Romney starts out by referring to "Hillary Clinton and the Democrats."

Now, it would have been fine if he'd said, "Hillary Clinton and the other Democrats." But he didn't. Dumber than that, it doesn't get!

(I invite you to click on the links within this article, as you go along. They will hugely enhance the information pertaining to the points being made herein. For your convenience, each of those will open in its own window. Thus, you can observe the content of each, and then close that window, and continue easily in this article.)

That ranks right up their with his purchase of votes, in order to artificially (and unscrupulously) "win" the Republicans' Iowa Straw Poll, back in August. He bussed people in from all over the state, free-of-charge, paid the admission fees for all of them, and lavished free eats upon them when they got there. All in return for their non-binding straw poll "vote" of support. To con Iowans and the country into thinking his candidacy was running strong. (Giuliani is FAR ahead of him, nationwide, and has been for months. But Romney is banking on his millions being able to buy the Iowa Caucus, as well as the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries. Which, he figures, will have enough psychological impact on the campaign to position himself favorably for beating Giuliani on Tsunami Tuesday, and thereby lock up the Republican nomination. He's trying to buy the Presidency with an infusion of millions of his own dollars -- and if Americans don't get wise to this, and reject that tactic at the primary-election polling places, he could get that nomination!)

And then there's his being moronic enough to have flip-flopped on abortion in order to curry favor, quite transparently, with the hateful bigots of the RRR Cult... the pseudo-Religious Radical Right. Most people know that he used to be sensibly and honorably Pro-Choice. And Pro-Choicers (i.e., egalitarians) simply do not suddenly turn overnight into sociopaths who support a loathsome agenda that seeks to force girls and women to gestate-to-term against their will... a very real, 9-month-long form of rape. Not without having something pathologically wrong with their brains. So he obviously is faking it in a desperate attempt to glean support from that tiny minority of bigots that the Republicans seem to regard as their "base." (Out of 300,000,000 Americans, only a mere 5% are RRR cultists. That's only 15 million people. And not all of them vote.)

And he further is stupid enough to think that same-sex marriage (SSM) could actually do some sort of harm to the marriages of opposite-sex couples. And therefore, to "protect" opposite-sex marriage (OSM), it's necessary for people to pass so-called "Defense of Marriage Acts" all over the place. And he even supports the passage of a Constitutional Amendment to that effect. (Which, of course, in order to succeed, would require that the vast majority of Americans would have to be hateful, mindless, or both.)

Personally, I have yet to hear of even so much as one single way that any opposite-sex couple's marriage could be adversely affected by any same-sex couple's having gotten legally married in Massachusetts, Canada, or Europe -- or if SSM were to become fully legalized throughout the USA. Have you? So the enactment of such an amendment would hatefully and ignorantly exclude from marriage hundreds of thousands of people who don't deserve to be excluded any more than interracial couples once were.

By the way -- SSM technically is legal in all of the USA, for the same reason that Massachusetts' Supreme Court recognized that it was legal, there. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that would exclude same-sex couples from marrying. Once that becomes fully realized, as happened for interracial couples, that will be that. (And by a few weeks later, just as we saw in 1967, hardly anyone will whine about it anymore.)

So as for Romney, the last thing America needs is to have another bigot as its President. Eight years of that (under GW Bush) is far more than enough!

So what we have in Mitt Romney is an inconsistent and dishonest dolt who thinks his millions of dollars and his lies can leverage him into the White House. Well -- the really scary part of that is that this formula worked perfectly for the Warmonger-in-Thief who currently and dishonestly occupies that residence.

Suppose Mitt Romney were running for dogcatcher, instead. That wouldn't be good, either.

Then we'd have to have real concern for the well-being of dogs.

Beware of Desperate Republicans! Dirty Tricks are their stock-in-trade!

It's about the only way they can win important elections, and retain power. By conning enough ignorant people to go to the polls for them, lest the common-sense Americans win the day.

I love this commentary which was posted in the Internet, by a gay person, in anonymity (unfortunately... I wish I could give him or her proper credit for it!), to exemplify those tactics:

"To be successful Republicans need some one or something to hate. In the 1950s and ‘60s it was the Communist threat and Communist dupes in the government. In addition, there were "outside agitators" demonstrating for Civil Rights. In the 1980s it was big government and deficit spending, and in the 1990s it was the feminist threat to make everyone use unisex toilets, and birth control by abortion; now it's our turn! We threaten Christianity and the "traditional" family with complete and utter destruction. Look at the bright side. We are now the most powerful group in society! I keep wondering with all of this power how come same-sex marriage is not a fact of life in all the states and territories of the U.S.?

"People complain about negative political advertising. Yet it works to sway voters and win elections. And, [in a rare case of hateful tactics by Democrats], it worked in 1964 when the Johnson campaign used the "Daisy Commercial" to strike fear into the hearts of all human beings that if Goldwater got elected he would unleash an atomic war that would wipe out humanity. Then there was the Willie Horton ad [aired by Republicans] in the 1988 campaign that used race to invoke the same kind of fear. Now it's our turn to become the hated group du jour. There isn't a thing any one can do about it because these kind of attacks are useful to win elections. They always have been and they always will be."

In addition to the points he/she made, above, I also remind everyone of Watergate, the Thanksgiving Day, 2000 intimidation of vote-counters in Palm Beach County by bussed-in THUGS, on the part of Bush's operatives... and the Republicans' "Swift-Boating" of John Kerry in 2004.

The Republican Party, purveyor of the vast majority of such dishonest acts of desperation, is NOT a party for the intellegent and the sensible. As fair-minded and honest progressives, egalitarians need to repudiate, nullify and neutralize these hateful and dishonest tactics AS they surface. Without delay! Before the ignorant can fall for such lies.