Update on the Rainbow Flag

First off, the owners of the B&B decided to send their son to his grandparents in California because of the threats. They were also determined to fly the flag as a salute to their son. However, one of their scummy neighbors ripped the flag down. They are currently working on getting a replacement.

In the meantime, they've been getting tons of supportive e-mails, and many folks (who are better off than me) have been buying rooms/dinners/whatever they can from the hotel to support them while the scummy neighbors continue to boycott them. Among the groups who have been supportive are motorcycle enthusiasts, who held a rally at the hotel.

True Christians, At Last!

This is true Christianity. Thanks to Mark Evanier for pointing out this article.

Rainbow Flag

Rainbow Flag Creates Controversy. I'm particularly irritated by the so-called "reporter" who ran the article without even bothering to contact the bed-and-breakfast owner, and the "reporter"'s so-called "editor" who didn't bother to fact-check either. Both of them are an insult to the profession, and that's saying something with how low journalism has gotten in the past few years.

Via FilkerTom. And, yeah, if I ever end up in Kansas, I'm gonna try to stay at that B&B.

Also, see Towleroad, and the discussion in the comments which includes a request to send e-mails of suppoer, and this response from one of the B&B owners:

JR and I really appreciate all the support we have received from everybody. You are all awesome! :) Business has been really tough, your thoughts, words and selfless acts of giving are truly helping to ease the situation. Sitting down to a PILE of supportive emails at the end of a long hot day and actually being thanked for what we are doing and standing up for makes it all worth while.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.

Robin, JR and Anthony Knight

Posted by: Robin Knight | Jul 28, 2006 4:57:59 PM

Cantwell's Opponent has Sponsors...

Mike McGavick, who is battling Maria Cantwell for a seat in Congress, has a few Corporate Sponsors that I'm sure he doesn't want the average folks to know about.

For instance, he's a big supporter of drilling for oil in the wildlife refuge, so some of his sponsors are ExxonMobil (which just set records for profits, AGAIN, by raising the price of the gas YOU buy to the maximum amounts possible), BP, Conoco Phillips, and Halliburton.

Other folks he supports and gets money from: The people who want to destroy (privatize) Social Security), the Insurance Industry, drug manufacturers, and good old Ted Stevens (who wants oil tankers in Puget Sound).

I'm voting for Maria Cantwell, despite her flaws.

Shrubya is Anti-Life

Jonathan Alter explains very clearly why Bush's first Veto is all about making people die.

The NeoCons War on Science Continues

In the FDA. Perhaps they are just trying to kill us all off?

Music video for Kaylee in Firefly

While looking for the real video for this song, I also stumbled across this great Firefly version of Sara Evans' "Born to Fly," dedicated to our favorite engineer. Enjoy!

Scottish pipers told to pipe doon!

I just saw this link on News of the Weird and felt like sharing: Scottish military pipers told to pipe down.

It's Hot Out

Funny, that.

Lt Watada

Read this story about how Lt. Watada came to the (in my opinion) absolutely correct conclusion that the Iraq war is an illegal war. Note that Watada volunteered for service in Afghanistan instead of Iraq. He was turned down.

While I cannot fault any soldier that goes to Iraq, I have to applaud Watada's willingness to take a stance that he knows is moral to fight a corrupt administration.

The Triumph of Common Sense

The Stranger has a lovely article about the behind-the-scenes work our Gov Gregoire did in making sure the stupid pharmacists rule wouldn't pass in its original form. I'm very satisfied with the current form as reported by The Stranger, though I still believe that if you are a pharmacist and you have a problem with dispensing drugs, you are in the wrong profession.

Washington State Delays Stupid Pharmacists Rule

According to the Seattle Times, the state Board of Pharmacy has decided to delay putting in place rules that would allow Pharmacists to force their religious beliefs on customers.

I've stated my opinion on this subject many times. If a pharmacist has a problem doing the job, they should find another career. Their job is not simple, but it's clear: they take the prescriptions of the customer, make sure such prescriptions won't conflict with other medications, and then fill those prescriptions.

We don't allow firefighters to refuse to respond to calls at houses or churches they don't like. We don't allow police to refuse to patrol neighborhoods with people of certain religions they don't like. Why should we allow women to be put at the mercy of some "pharmacist" who thinks that contraception is immoral? Will I be allowed the birth control pills that keep me from getting ovarian cancer? Or will some person who isn't my doctor be able to dictate how I die?

Salon on Shrubya's Immoral Veto

Full Link, excerpt:

Here is why Bush's position is a joke: Thousands and thousands of embryos are destroyed every year in fertility clinics. They are created in petri dishes as part of fertility treatments like IVF; then they are discarded.

If Bush and his administration truly believe that destroying an embryo is a kind of murder, they shouldn't be wasting their time arguing about research funding: They should immediately shut down every fertility clinic in the country, arrest the doctors and staff who operate them, and charge all the wannabe parents who have been wantonly slaughtering legions of the unborn.

Shrubya Plans On Vetoing Possible Lifesaving Research

Full story here:

[Embryonic Stem Cell] lines come from material stored at fertility clinics which is already slated for destruction. Preventing these blastocysts from being used for research won't 'save' them. It simply means they'll be disposed of in a medical waste facility instead of being used to find cures for disease. The only reason to restrict federal approval of new lines is to appeal to a minority of extremist social conservatives and it comes at the cost of possibly delaying or denying treatment--and in some cases life itself--to millions of people.

The bill has already passed overwhelmingly in the Senate, but not quite enough to override a veto.

The president argues that taking stem cells from an embryo that is likely to be discarded anyway constitutes murder. There is, of course, no law that would punish someone for murder for discarding an embryo, but The Decider has never been a stickler for the law.

Listen To Murtha

The Full List is here. Go read it. Highlights:

We are spending $8 billion a month in Iraq. That equates to $2 billion a week, or $267 million a day, or $11 million an hour.

The following are some comparisons between what we are spending in Iraq as we "stay the course" indefinitely and what those funds could be used for instead.

I've been fighting for our military to get out of Iraq because I'm concerned about the loss of our troops and the future of our military, and also because I believe they have accomplished their mission there and the Iraqis must resolve their internal conflict themselves. However, I also wanted to demonstrate what these expenses mean to domestic policy in the United States and give you an idea of just some of the things that we could accomplish with this amount of money.

...

$10 billion (1-time)=(5 weeks in Iraq) - Equipping commercial airliners with defenses against shoulder-fired missiles.

$5.2 billion (1-time)=(3 weeks in Iraq) - Estimated need for capital improvements to secure public transportation system (trains, subways, buses)

$1.5 billion/year=(5 days in Iraq) - Radiation detectors needed at all US ports (rejected due to cost)

$1.4 billion/ year=(5 days in Iraq) - Double the COPS (community police grants) program

$800 million/year=(72 hours in Iraq) - Public transportation personnel training and technical support

$700 million/year=(2 days in Iraq) - 100% screening of all air cargo - rejected because of cost (1/4 of domestic shipping and 1/2 of international shipping is done on passenger planes)

$350 million (1-time)=(1.2 days in Iraq) - Make emergency radio systems interoperable (5 years after 9/11, this hasn't happened yet)

$500 million/year=(2 days in Iraq) - Double the firefighters’ grant program

$94 million/year=(8-1/2 hours in Iraq) - Restore cuts to cities hit on 9/11 in Homeland Security budget

Tell me again how the neocons and Shrubya are making America safer by attacking a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. If you believe that, I have some ocean front property to sell you up in the Cascades.

Maybe This Explains Shrubya?

Dave links to Rapture-Ready "Christians". I suspect they'll be very surprised when they end up in the other place.

Happy Anniversary, Eric!

We are in Asilomar, California, celebrating our 12th Anniversary with a bit of Oz thrown in.

What the..?

This is surely a sign of insanity. Dave links to a report on a veteran arrested for wearing vets for peace t-shirt at VA medical center. The vet in question was not protesting. He was drinking coffee, which last I heard was legal for vets to do at a VA facility. Apparently, only vets who agree with Nix- er, Shrubya, are allowed at VA facilities.

If Thomas Jefferson Had a Blog

Annotated Declaration of Independence.

American Facism in Action

This story is enough to make any red-blooded American (who believes in the Constitution) want to pull their hair out and start another revolution.

A large Delaware school district promoted Christianity so aggressively that a Jewish family felt it necessary to move to Wilmington, two hours away, because they feared retaliation for filing a lawsuit. [...]

[At a school board meeting on the subject, a] state representative spoke in support of prayer and warned board members that "the people" would replace them if they faltered on the issue. Other representatives spoke against separating "god and state."

A former board member suggested that Mona Dobrich might "disappear" like Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the atheist whose Supreme Court case resulted in ending organized school prayer. She disappeared in 1995 and her dismembered body was found six years later.

The crowd booed an ACLU speaker and told her to "go back up north."

In the days after the meeting the community poured venom on the Dobriches. Callers to the local radio station said the family they should convert or leave the area. Someone called them and said the Ku Klux Klan was nearby.

Quite frankly, I believe all the "Christians" involved in tormenting these families are probably going straight to Hell when they die. But in the meantime, here on earth, we need to take care of scumbags like them and make sure they don't hurt people anymore. All the leadership, the school board and the state representatives, should be sued to the poverty line. If any of the people making threats can be identified, they should go to jail for hate crimes.

Events like this were why the founding fathers INSISTED upon separation of Church and State. God doesn't need to be formally introduced into schools. He's in the heart of every student when they are about to take a test anyway. And forcing one flavor of religion on students is a betrayal of everything America stands for. It's un-American at its most un-American. If you want a Theocracy, go join the Taliban. The United States of America is about freedom, including Freedom of Religion.

Daily Kos has some good coverage of the story.

Bush Forgets 9/11

Apparently, capturing the man responsible for 9/11 is no longer even on Bush's list: C.I.A. Closes Unit Focused on Capture of bin Laden.

While Shrubya is busy enriching Haliburton and his other oil buddies by illegally invading a country that wasn't at all involved in 9/11, the true terrorists are wandering free, and no doubt laughing happily that they are in no danger of being caught by the Republican-led America.

The Declaration of Independence

Rough Draft. If you've ever seen 1776, you have an idea of how difficult it was to go from that to this.

If you haven't seen 1776, then you need to go see it as soon as possible.

We The People

From The Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

More of Diebold's Election Fraud

Crytome has the documents.

Every single Diebold machine should be pulled from election service immediately, and all affected jurisdictions should sue Diebold for providing faulty machines. Any election in the past that was decided by Diebold machines should be re-examined and considered tainted.

And Diebold should be held responsible for promising to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush" then cheating in the election to make sure it happened. As long as these machines, which were DESIGNED to provide ways to cheat, are in service no election using them is legitimate.

Again, Tell Me Why...

...we aren't allowed to call right-wing scumbags as described in this article as "Nazi-like"? Hunting down the children of reporters? Threatening the families of the editors?

Do these people even understand that a free press is ESSENTIAL for a free society? Or do they simply not care?

Frankly, if you are right-wing and don't denounce these scumbags, you are a PART OF THE PROBLEM. But then, right-wing isn't about democracy or freedom anymore. It's about holding on to power and trying to terrorize the populace into believing that giving up their rights is the only way to protect them from the boogeyman.

Tell me Again...

...why we aren't allowed to call the supporters of the current regime "Nazi-like":

A conservative television and radio personality suggested that the government establish an Office of Censorship to screen the news. Another said, "I would have no problem with [New York Times editor Bill Keller] being sent to the gas chamber."