PBS is doing one of those instant online polls to ask America" if they think Sarah Palin is fit to be Vice President.
The GOP has launched a successful all out blitz to get Republicans to go on the site and click "Yes". As a result right now it looks like 62% of "America" thinks Palin is qualified. The Republicans are going to be milking this for all its worth in their press efforts.
We need to drive more Democrats and those opposed to Palin to the site to click "NO". Let's not give the GOP another easy weapon to put in their PR arsenal!
Here's the link:
http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.
You don't have to enter your email address or anything, just click "NO" and forward to family and friends!
NO Way, NO How, NO McCain, NO Palin!
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
carmenwatson and urge anyone reading it to post it in their own journals.
green_goblin70 just got told to fuck off for his liberal views by a Right Wing Nutsack who chose to remain anonymous. How funny is this, considering Bush's infringement on Americans' right to privacy? Talk about the height of hypocrisy. Go polish your jackboots, asshat, and leave the thinking to those who CAN. 
I KNOW YOU'RE WATCHING BUT GUESS WHAT? WE'RE WATCHING YOU TOO. Rome fell, Hitler failed, and SO WILL YOU. The Christ you claim to be at your side said himself that the MEEK shall inherit the Earth. That leaves your stinking, oil-slicked arses out of the equation. Enjoy your reign of terror while you can, FUCKERHEADS. It will NOT be tolerated for very much longer. In the meantime, enjoy reading my journal from your office in the Pentagon or the White House or whatever underground bunker wherein you're hiding along with all the other roaches. My opinions, my journaling, and my voice will NOT be changed by the knowledge that you're present. You can all go fuck yourselves with oil pipelines for all I care.
Contempt For Americans
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Attorney General John Ashcroft, the senior managers of the Bush Administration make no secret of their contempt for the rules of democratic procedure (inefficient, wrong-headed, and slow), their distrust of the American people indolent, immoral and corrupted by a debased popular culture, undeserving of the truth), and their disdain for the United Nations and the principle of international law (sophomoric idealisms popular with weak nations too poor to pay for a serious Air Force). I don't for a moment doubt the eager commitment for "regime change", but on the evidence of the last eighteen months they've been doing their most effective work in the United States, not in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia or Iraq. Better understood as radical nationalists than as principled conservatives, they deploy the logic endorsed by the military commanders in Vietnam ( who found it necessary to destroy a village in order to save it), and they offer the American people a choice similar to the one presented by the officers of the Spanish Inquisition to independent-minded heretics -- give up your liberty, and we will set you free.
- Louis H Lapham, February 2003 issue of Harper's.
President seems unable to bear the sight or sound of dissent
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 13, 2002
President Bush seems to think bullying is the only way to deal with dissent. Bush has so much trouble articulating a defense for his own policies, so little capacity to formulate a reasoned response, that he resorts to shibboleths, name-calling or worse, using authorities to shut down his critics.
Classic Bush was his attack on Senate Democrats who refused to go along with his plan to strip workers at the new Department of Homeland Security of civil service rights. He quipped that senators were "not interested in the security of the American people."
Of course, U.S. senators can take care of themselves. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle made quick work of Bush's scurrilous claims, pointing out to the former Texas National Guardsman that a number of Senate Democrats were actually injured fighting for the security of our country.
But there are plenty of regular Joes out there who don't have access to the halls of power or C-Span, whose criticism of the administration has been sidelined by law enforcement.
In town after town where Bush has come to raise money or make a speech, his venue and the route leading up to it have been purged of protesters. This is accomplished through the combined efforts of local policing agencies and the secret service, which scour the crowd for any hint of opposition. Anyone with an anti-Bush sign is relegated into what is euphemistically called a Free Speech or Demonstration Zone -- a swath of land usually off the main thoroughfare and chained off so as to make it virtually impossible for the targets of the protest to read the signs or hear the chants. Those with pro-Bush signs are often treated very differently. They are free to cheerlead the president as he rides toward his engagement, which typically is further sanitized by being invitation-only.
This kind of censorship is indicative of a leader who lacks confidence in his own powers of persuasion and the legitimacy of his course. Why else would Bush be so interested in hiding evidence of dissent within the American populace?
The Secret Service claims that security concerns justify the use of segregated zones for protesters. That's a lot of bunk. As long as demonstrators do not impede the flow of traffic they have a right to be anywhere the general public is invited. Think about the freedom we would be giving up if police could cage anyone who wants to exercise his or her First Amendment rights.
As Bill Neel of Butler, Penn., says, "(Under the Constitution,) the whole country is a free speech zone." Neel, 65, a retired steelworker, was arrested on Labor Day for stepping outside the fence where he and a small group of protesters were cordoned off as the president made his way by motorcade for a speech to union carpenters. His sign read: "The Bushes must truly love the poor -- they've made so many of us." Bush supporters waving signs and flags were allowed to freely line the route.
Neel was charged with disorderly conduct and has a hearing on Oct. 31 at which he intends to fight the charge with the help of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. His story is part of a disturbing national pattern.
Peter Buckley, a 45-year-old Democratic candidate for Congress in Oregon, expressed his frustration with the Free Speech Zones in a commentary for the Oregonian. In August, Buckley was part of a group of people who had turned out to protest Bush's economic policies among other things. They were herded into a dirt compound surrounded by a six-foot cyclone fence, 200 yards from the arena where Bush spoke to 5,000 invited guests.
"We were not allowed anywhere near any kind of position where the president, or the media which follows him, would see or hear us," Buckley wrote. "What is happening everywhere Mr. Bush goes is wrong. The effort being made to hide political opposition in this country is more than cowardly. It's un-American."
In Tampa, three people, including two grandmothers, were arrested last year at a Bush rally when they held up opposition signs outside the far-flung demonstration zone. Once again, people with supportive signs went unmolested. The charges against the three were later dropped as baseless, and a civil rights suit is expected to be filed within weeks against the Tampa Police Department.
In the past, courts have ruled protest pens invalid. Americans have a right to address grievances to their president when he appears in public, even if that ruins a particular "photo op."
My advice to Bush is to thicken his skin and work on the sagacity of his arguments.
© Copyright 2001 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved
303/421-2800
FAX 303/421-2918
"Promise Keepers (PK) is a Christ-centered ministry
dedicated to uniting men through vital relationships to
become godly influences in their world.... Promise Keepers
believe God wants us to be a spark in His hand to ignite a
nationwide movement calling men to reconciliation,
discipleship, and godliness." The organization develops
material to be learned and discussed in small Bible-study
groups, then brings those groups together in national
gatherings, regional convocations, and "leadership
conferences." One of the most rapidly growing movements on
the religious right, Promise Keepers was founded in 1990 by
Bill McCartney, head football coach at the University of
Colorado, after he came under fire for homophobic diatribes.
The 1990 inaugural gathering, held in Boulder, attracted 72
men. Last year's PK rallies drew over 230,000. In 1996,
this overwhelmingly white organization hopes to bring a
million men together in Washington, DC. PK tapes and
literature, such as Seven Promises of a Promise
Keeper by Tony Evans, condemn homosexuality, stress
male primacy in the home, blame most of the ills of society
on "the feminization of men," and offer strategies for
silencing the opposition. Gatherings attract a broad range
of reactionary Christian fundamentalists, including some
extremists. Information booths at PK events are
smorgasbords of Christian-right propaganda, and tend to
include hate literature from defrocked "psychologist" Paul
Cameron and radical
Christian Reconstructionist sources.
From April through October 1995, a series of two-day Promise
Keeper "Wake Up Calls" filled sports arenas across the
country. Ask to be placed on the PK mailing list.
916/265-9306
David Horowitz, a lapsed leftist and former speechwriter for
Senator Bob Dole (R.-Kansas), and his Cochair Peter Collier
head two interrelated liberal-bashing organizations, the
Committee on Media Integrity (COMINT), and the Center for
the Study of Popular Culture. COMINT spearheaded recent
attacks against the Corporation for Public Broadcasting;
CSPC focuses on "political correctness" and publishes a
newsletter, Heterodoxy, full of mean-spirited rant
about blacks, feminists, and homosexuals. Subscriptions to
Heterodoxy or COMINT's Journal cost $25.
408/253-8852
FAX 408/253-8825
Jay Grimstead, a Christian counselor educated at Fuller
Theological Seminary, founded the Coalition on Revival (COR)
in 1984 as a non-profit front for fundamentalist political
activism. The stated mission of COR is "To affect with the
Biblical message of reality, and justice, and truth, law,
government, economics, education, obedience, science, the
arts, and general culture." COR Steering Committee members
must take an oath promising to work toward a Christian
America and to live by Biblical precepts until death. The
COR magazine, Crosswinds, is published twice a
year; a subscription costs $25. The significance of this
organization is that it brings the more mainstream elements
of the Christian right in contact with the lunatic fringe.
However, the influence of Christian Reconstructionist
extremists is prevalent enough to have caused such former
Steering Committee members as
Donald Wildmon and Tim and
Beverly
LaHaye to disassociate themselves from COR. The
Institute for First Amendment studies notes that "Gary
DeMar, a leading Christian Reconstructionist author and
lecturer, is a member of COR's Steering Committee and the
executive committee of Crosswinds magazine.
Reconstructionists advocate, among other things, the death
penalty for abortionists and practicing homosexuals. While
they believe and teach this, they often try to obscure this
when speaking to general audiences. When questioned about
this, Gary DeMar said, `The Bible doesn't say that
homosexuals should be executed. What it says is this: If
two men lie together like a man and woman lie together, they
are to be put to death.'"
202/371-0303
The American Freedom Coalition began in 1987 with a merger
of Robert Grant's fundamentalist organization Christian
Voice and the American Constitution Committee of Reverend
Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, with the Moon
conglomerate providing the initial funding. Its first
activity, orchestrated by direct-mail expert Richard
Viguerie, was a massive fundraising effort for the
Nicaraguan contras and
Oliver North. The AFC has
set up field offices around the country and regularly
comments on US foreign and domestic policy. During the Gulf
War, the AFC organized patriotic pro-war rallies nationwide.
Local cells of the AFC have become increasingly shrill in
their campaigns against abortion, gay rights, and "weird
art." A minimal donation of $15 provides a 6-month
membership, including a subscription to the American
Freedom Journal.
Phone and FAX 703/440-9419
Church FAX: 703/425-0205
Though Family Friendly Libraries (FFL) publicly portrays its mission as broadly altruistic and concerned with all aspects of children's education and development, its motivating force and unifying obsession is the fear that public libraries are a vehicle for homosexual indoctrination. Now in its infancy as a national organization, FFL grew out of battles in Fairfax County, Virginia over free distribution of the Washington Blade, a D.C. gay weekly, and the presence of "pro-homosexual" literature in local libraries. During this struggle, which began in about 1992, Karen Jo Gounaud rose quickly to prominence as a fierce and tenacious opponent of the so-called gay agenda. The wife of a retired Air Force officer and mother of two grown children, Gounaud is an evangelical Christian who holds a degree in education from the University of Nebraska. It was she who mobilized Christian parents of Fairfax county in an effort to end the availability of the Blade in the lobbies of branch libraries; led a drive to drop or sequester books she considers harmful to children; and pressured the Fairfax library system into spending a chunk of its budget on obscure and in some cases self-published books with titles like Steps Out of Homosexuality and You Don't Have to Be Gay. Her influence, long felt throughout northern Virginia, is beginning to have national impact. Her statements on the evils of spending taxpayers' money on "the type of books people don't want" bear depressing similarities to pronouncements that have badly eroded public support for the National Endowment for the Arts. Her campaign to demonize the American Library Association is beginning to see results, with some local library systems rewriting the Library Bill of Rights to eliminate all provisions that condemn censorship and uphold freedom of expression. While much of Gounaud's dogma can be traced to Focus on the Family and the rabidly homophobic Family Research Council, she has received major tactical and (we think) financial support from the Christian Coalition. The event that launched Family Friendly Libraries as a national entity was a conference held in Cincinnati on October 21, 1995 at the invitation of Phil Burress, founder of the militantly anti-gay, pro-censorship Citizens for Community Values (CCV), the Christian Coalition's Cincinnati affiliate. A newsletter is promised; write for literature.
202/546-4400
According to National Review editor William A.
Rusher, "If any conservative organization deserves pride of
place, surely it is the Heritage Foundation. Launched in
1973 by
Paul Weyrich, Joseph Coors, and Edwin Feulner, it
set out to provide the conservative movement with an
aggressive and competent think tank that would provide the
sort of policy guidance... that such organizations as the
Brookings Institution had long furnished for liberals." The
thinking that occurs at the Heritage Foundation involves
finding a saleable rationale for preconceived right-wing
positions. Its resources helped engineer the success of
Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America. The Heritage
Foundation issues "backgrounder" reports that give a stamp
of credibility to misinformation and errors of fact;
Backgrounder No. 803, its January 1991 report on
the NEA, was especially influential. Send $18 for a
subscription to Policy Review, the Heritage
Foundation quarterly, or ask to be placed on the mailing
list.
804/534-8502
"I just can't stay on the sidelines any longer!" Falwell,
host of the "Old Time Gospel Hour" and founder of Liberty
University, emerged from temporary retirement in 1991,
announcing that he might reactivate the Moral Majority, the
now-defunct organization that first brought him fame outside
the Bible Belt. While this threat has failed to
materialize, he has put together a relatively small-scale
operation called Liberty Alliance. Falwell remains a
visible presence, continuing to crank out inspirational
books, anti-gay hate videos, and other fundraising
paraphernalia. His greatest recent hit is the video
Clinton Chronicles, which accuses President Clinton
of skullduggery of preternatural proportions. At $44.95,
which includes membership in Liberty Alliance, the Clinton
video is no bargain. Ask to be placed on the Liberty
Alliance mailing list.
212/371-3191
A right-wing group denounced by many mainstream Catholics,
the militantly homophobic, anti-choice, pro-censorship
Catholic League has links to organizations ranging from the
Heritage Foundation to
Operation Rescue. In 1985, the
League spearheaded efforts to ban Jean-Luc Godard's film
Hail Mary nationwide. Three years later, they
joined
Donald Wildmon and others in attacking Martin
Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ. In 1990, the
Massachusetts chapter (then led by Heritage Foundation
alumnus and former Pilot editor Philip Lawler)
tried to have the work of Robert Mapplethorpe and other
artists banned in Boston. In 1995, the League began waging
a campaign against the Disney organization after Miramax, a
Disney subsidiary, acquired distribution rights to the
acclaimed British film Priest. William A. Donohue,
an NYU-educated sociologist formerly attached to the
Heritage foundation, succeeded John Puthenveetil as head of
the organization in 1992. Membership is $25 and includes a
subscription to the national newsletter, produced in
Milwaukee.
719/531-3400
Focus on the Family (FOF) is called "perhaps the largest and
most dangerous censorship group today" in Dave Marsh's book
50 Ways to Fight Censorship. Dobson is a Christian
fundamentalist family counselor who promotes "traditional
values." In his best-known book, Dare to
Discipline, Dobson advocates beating children with
switches, beginning at the age of 18 months. In 1985-86 he
served on the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography
(the Meese Commission). He claims to have extracted a
confession from mass murderer Ted Bundy saying that porn
made him do it. Dobson actively opposes blasphemy, the
teaching of evolution, and the "homosexual agenda." In
1991, FOF relocated its 700-employee national headquarters
from Pomona, California to Colorado Springs, in time to
promote and help pass Colorado's anti-gay Amendment 2. The
organization is active throughout the country, operating
through such loose affiliates as the Massachusetts Family
Institute, and disseminating propaganda through its
syndicated radio shows and more than a dozen periodicals.
Ask for a complimentary copy of the slick monthly Focus on
the Family magazine.
703/827-9200
The indomitable Pat Buchanan, right-wing columnist and
television commentator, scourge of the 1992 Republican
convention, announced the formation of American Cause in the
spring of 1994. The organization evolved out of the 1992
Buchanan for President apparatus and is clearly meant to be
a support system for the next Buchanan for President
campaign. The kickoff event for American Cause, held in
Washington in April 1994, was a two-day conference called
"Winning the Culture War," which Buchanan proclaimed "the
Boston Tea party of the cultural revolution." Whatever else
it may have been, the event was a bigoted revel designed to
enhance Buchanan's stature in the eyes of his fans and
allies. Speakers included professional homophobes Lon Mabon
of the Oregon Citizens Alliance and Will Perkins of Colorado
for Family Values; "traditional values" advocate Michael
Medved; Dan Quayle's vice presidential chief of staff
William Kristol; home schooling proponent Mary Kay Clark,
who described the National Education Association as "the
training camp of the enemy of the family;" and Ezola Foster,
representing Black Americans for Family Values, who referred
to public schools as "socialist training camps." The
emphasis was on curbing freedom of expression in the name of
"taking back the culture" for the reactionary right. As the
1996 Presidential campaign heats up, American Cause will
become more visible. Write for information.
703/683-9733
Brent Bozell, a zealot of impeccable right-wing pedigree, is
the nephew of columnist William F. Buckley and the son of L.
Brent Bozell, Jr., who assisted Barry Goldwater with the
writing of Conscience of a Conservative. A close
associate of the late Terry Dolan, the closeted gay founder
of the National Conservative Political Action Committee,
Bozell served for several years as the Dolan organization's
finance chairman and president. In 1991, he helped
orchestrate a smear campaign directed at the opposition to
Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court; in 1992,
he was the chief fund-raiser behind
Pat Buchanan's
unsuccessful bid for the Republican Presidential nomination.
The Media Research Center provides Bozell with a platform
from which to bash the arts and popular culture. Recently
Bozell has been part of the drive to eradicate PBS.
TV, etc., "the Media Research Center's review of
the politics of the entertainment industry," is a monthly
newsletter that is oddly enamored of celebrity for a
publication whose relentless theme is the abject rottenness
of Hollywood. (Some celebrities, like Robert Redford, are
ridiculed for their liberalism; others, like Tom Selleck,
are congratulated for their conservatism or, as in the case
of Mel Gibson, their homophobia.) The garish inaccuracies
of TV, etc., like the claim that the film version
of Last Temptation of Christ shows Jesus "engaging in sex
acts and committing adultery," are sometimes entertaining,
but the accretion of drivel it contains can be wearing. A
subscription can be yours for $35 a year.
202/452-8200
FAX 202/833-0388
From its mission statement: "Empower America is a unique
combination of public policy institute and grassroots
political organization whose mission is to promote
progressive conservative public policies at both the state
and national level based on the principles of economic
growth, international leadership, and cultural empowerment."
While Empower America bills itself as a "nonpartisan,
nonprofit organization," its board of directors is a blue-ribbon panel of right-wing pro-corporate Republicans, and
the organization itself is a kind of stepchild of the
Heritage Foundation. Amazingly for a nonprofit entity,
Empower America proudly declares political candidates to be
among its "products." Its popular training sessions for
reactionary candidates have enhanced the success of the pro-business theocratic right in recent years. Its four co-directors are former HUD Secretary Jack Kemp, Reagan's UN
Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Minnesota Congressman
Vin Weber, and -- most visibly and actively -- Heritage
Foundation Fellow William Bennett, former Secretary of
Education and Chairman of the National Endowment for the
Humanities under Reagan, drug czar under Bush, senior editor
at the National Review, professional pompous
bluenose, and prolific author of such Pecksniffian titles as
The Book of Virtues. In recent years Bennett has
achieved considerable notoriety as a self-appointed, self-congratulatory guardian of "traditional values," zestfully
demonizing art forms, individuals, and real or imagined
trends in American culture. Some of his efforts have placed
him in unlikely partnerships with such purported liberals as
C. Delores Tucker of the National Political Caucus of Black
Women, with whom he conducted a joint campaign against rap
music in 1995. Write or call for Empower America's terms of
membership. Members receive a quarterly publication called
Highlights.
214/907-2280
Operation Rescue (OR), the notorious anti-abortion group
begun in 1988 by evangelical ex-used car salesman Rev.
Randall Terry, specializes in blocking access to targeted
clinics and subjecting patients, physicians and staff to
intimidation and harassment. A queasy mixture of far-right
fundamentalist Protestants and reactionary Catholics, the
membership includes many who would criminalize all forms of
contraception and suppress all family planning information
other than exhortations to abstinence. During the 1992
election, Randall Terry warned his followers that "to vote
for Bill Clinton is to sin against God." With Clinton in
office, Operation Rescue has shifted its focus to include
opposition to civil rights for gays and lesbians. OR has
also been known to launch attacks on the arts. In 1990
Boston-area members tried to block access to Serrano's "Piss
Christ" at the Klein Gallery, and threatened to blockade
Boston University's Photographic Resource Center. In
February 1994, Rev. Flip Benham of the Free Methodist
Church took over the directorship of the organization from
Keith Tucci, who left to found a separate ministry, the Life
Coalition, in Melbourne, Florida. Call or write for a copy
of OR's National Rescue Update.
800/462-4700
Ty Beeson, pastor of the Pentecostal Springs of Life
Ministry, joined his wife Jeannette in establishing The
Report as a production center and clearinghouse for
propaganda intended to stop gay rights legislation in
California. Their most famous product, a 17-minute hate
video called The Gay Agenda, has been compared to
Nazi anti-Semitic films like The Eternal Jew. The
video was originally created for use by the Oregon Citizens
Alliance, the Oregon chapter of the Christian Coalition,
which had obtained a grant from its parent organization to
develop educational materials. The educational content of
The Gay Agenda consists mainly of militant
homophobe
Paul Cameron's bizarre, discredited statistics on
the sexual habits of gay men, as portentously interpreted by
John Birch Society/Christian Coalition activist Stanley
Monteith. Other segments offer atrocity footage from Gay
Pride marches, as well as testimony from "ex-gays" who claim
to have been cured by a Pentecostal program called Love in
Action. The video was an instant success, selling tens of
thousands of copies at $13.95. It has also received
widespread free distribution in states and cities facing
anti-gay ballot initiatives. Scores of copies were sent to
Pentagon officials and members of Congress during the 1993
debate over lesbian and gay military personnel. The
Beesons' other videos include The Gay Agenda in Public
Education, Inside the March on Washington, and
Sexual Orientation or Sexual Deviation, You Decide.
They also market jeremiads about AIDS by such "experts" as
Stanley Monteith. Recently they have paid special attention
to keeping homosexual materials out of schools, fighting sex
education, and stamping out AIDS awareness programs. During
1993, the Beesons permitted Peter LaBarbera, former editor
of Concerned Women for America's Family Voice, to
publish his anti-gay monthly, The Lambda Report,
under their aegis. They have since parted company with
LaBarbera and offer their own homophobic monthly journal,
The Beeson Report, for $30 a year.
202/393-2100
Gary Bauer, director of the Office of Policy Development in
the Reagan White House, now heads this Washington-based
lobbying arm of James Dobson's Focus on the Family
(see below). When in 1992 the overtly political activities of
the Family Research Council (FRC) threatened the nonprofit
status of Dobson's operation, the two organizations became
legally separate. Though often treated as a mainstream
social research organization by the media, the FRC, by
Bauer's own admission, conducts no research. Strenuously
"pro-life" and homophobic, the FRC opposes both public
television and government subsidy of the arts. Bauer claims
the National Endowment for the Arts is run by "a small cadre
of cultural revolutionaries, militant homosexuals, and anti-religious bigots who are intent on attacking the average
American's most deeply held beliefs while sending them the
bill." Ask for a complimentary copy of the FRC's monthly
newsletter, Washington Watch.
