No Muslims Need Apply

"Based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration."

Thus spake Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts and the only Mormon running for president.

This is boneheaded, not to mention just plain bigoted, on so many levels. Muslims are made to feel (yet again) that America sees them as "less than" and is out to get them. A potential Romney Administration would be deprived of a source of expertise and moderation. Finally, suggesting that government should be staffed based not on qualifications but on religion proportionate to the general population would exclude Jews (1.4% of Americans), Muslims (0.6%) and pretty much everyone else except Protestants or Catholics.

Even Mormons, who comprise 1.4% of the population.

Someone should remind old Mitt of Article VI of the Constitution of the United States, the part that says, "No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

Looks like he just flunked that part of the test.

Time to Check His Meds

"He hasn't crossed the line. As a matter of fact, I don't think that he will cross any lines. I think he truly is somebody who believes in democracy."

President Bush explaining that although Pakistani military strongman Pervez Musharraf declared martial law, suspended the Constitution, and put political opponents under house arrest, he's still a nice guy

Cheap Bastards

Imagine you're a soldier in the US military. You joined the Army to see the world, to get money for college, to get out of a dead-end town, whatever. You are sent to Iraq to prop up a sham government against a broad-based popular insurgency while at the same time trying not to get killed in the crossfire of a civil war. You watch politically-connected mercenary armies like Blackwater parade around armed to the teeth and raking in big bucks while you have to make do with substandard equipment and your family struggles to make ends meet back home. Despite your best efforts you are shot or blown up, after which you are discharged from the military, shipped back to the United States and cast adrift in the underfunded bureaucratic nightmare that is the VA health system.

And then you get a letter from the Pentagon ordering you to return part of your signing bonus because you didn't finish out your commitment. Doesn't matter that you were wounded in the line of duty, pay up.

It is, to put it mildly, inhuman. What sort of bloodless leech could possibly think up such a scheme? Can the Pentagon not afford its latest gold-plated weapons system? Are they really passing the hat so Halliburton can get a few more billions in bonuses?

HR 3793 has been introduced in the House to put a stop to this ghoulish practice, and it already has 219 co-sponsors. This one really is a no-brainer.

Vote For Me or This Guy Will Kick Your Butt

Out of the many endorsements gathered in this election cycle, one of the strangest certainly must be the one Mike Huckabee garnered from Chuck Norris. You know, the guy who kicked butt for eight years on TV in Walker: Texas Ranger.

That Chuck Norris.

Anyway, Huckabee and Norris have teamed up to present what must surely be one of the worst campaign ads of all time. Not "worst" as in blatantly dishonest, racist or xenophobic - we've got plenty of those, from George Bush the Elder's infamous Willie Horton ad to Tom Tancredo's vote-for-me-or-brown-people-will-kill-you ad - but "worst" as in laughably bad.

The script is pretty funny:

• "My plan to secure the border? Two words: Chuck Norris."
• "When Chuck Norris does a push-up, he isn't lifting himself up, he's pushing the Earth down."
• "There's no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard, only another fist."

And so on.

So let me get this straight - Huckabee actually thinks the world is an action movie? Does he really think all he has to do is shoot up a room full of people and we win, with no one getting hurt except for the bad guys, with all the helpless civilians magically unscathed? Cue the end credits? Has he mistaken the real world for a late-night showing of Norris' 1985 flick Invasion USA, where he single-handedly defends America from Commies who - I swear I'm not making this up - blow up a county fair in Florida?

Thanks for lightening the mood, Mike. Too bad you actually seem to believe this nonsense.

Barbaric

The government of Saudi Arabia can charitably be called medieval. There is no freedom of speech, press, or religion. Women are forbidden from driving. (They can fly airplanes, but have to be driven to the airport. Go figure.) Anyone with an Israeli stamp in their passport is barred from entering the country.

But this latest story is just sickening.

Last year, a 19-year-old woman was sitting in a car with an ex-boyfriend when she was abducted and gang-raped by seven men. The rapists were sent to prison, which is something, but the court wasn't finished.

For being in a car with a unrelated male, her punishment was ninety lashes with a whip. The woman's lawyer naturally considered this unjust to say the least and appealed.

The result? Her sentence was increased to two hundred lashes and six months in jail. And her lawyer was disbarred.

That'll show her.

This is sadly not unusual in Saudi Arabia. The country can be called "intolerant" like the Sun can be called "warm." The religious police known as the mutaween patrol the country meting out punishment for anything deemed insufficiently Islamic. On-the-spot beatings or even killings for listening to Western music, drinking alcohol or dressing "immodestly" are not uncommon.

These are the same delightful people who back in 2002 allowed fifteen girls to burn to death in a fire at a Mecca school because they were not dressed properly for escaping the flames. The mutaween not only prevented rescue crews from entering the burning building, they even beat the girls who did get out and forced them back inside for not wearing head scarves and black robes.

Don't expect anything from Washington other than a gentle tsk-tsk for this latest outrage. The Saudis supply too much of our oil and the royal family's business interests are too intertwined with those of the Bush family for anything more.

The Gift of Health, For a Fee

Can't figure out what to get that special someone for the holidays? Well, if he or she is one of the 47 million Americans without health insurance, a company called Highmark has the perfect idea: a health care Visa gift card. The website proudly calls it "The Easiest Way to Say 'I Care.'"

Really.

This is just (pardon the expression) sick on so many levels. The United States is the only industrialized country in the world without some form of national health coverage, and it shows; millions have to go to the emergency room for even basic health care, and far too many others are forced into bankruptcy by soaring medical costs. It is truly obscene that some marketing vulture seized on this national disgrace as the opportunity to make a buck.

Remember that LifeAlert commercial from the early 1990s, the one that preyed on our emotions by showing a old lady wailing, "I've fallen and I can't get up!" while sprawled helplessly on the floor? That one was hawking an emergency communicator, but this gift card is even more insidious.

You see, while you can put up to $5000 on the card, you don't actually get $5000 worth of health coverage. No, you first pay $5 to get the card itself and then pay $1.50 a month after nine months. Doesn't matter if you use the card or not, it still costs. It is entirely possible that you try to use the card when you really need to, only to find out that it's worthless.

By what is truly an incredible coincidence, Highmark is a health-insurance company which runs Blue Cross/Blue Shield programs in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Last year, they were sued by the AARP for denying senior citizens health coverage by withholding needed information and settled out of court.

And now they have come up with another way of making money. It's a win-win for the company - take customers' premiums, deny them the care they paid for, and then make money off them again by selling them these gift cards.

After all, why bother going to the trouble of actually making things better for everyone, against the wishes of the well-heeled insurance lobby, when you can just foist off a gift card and declare the job done?

Privacy Is Whatever We Say It Is

Over the past few years, the Bush Administration has taken a hatchet to the dictionary, redefining "torture" to exclude...well, torture. And now they're at it again. We have always defined "privacy" as government or other entities keeping their noses out of our personal business, but that's being redefined as well.

We already know that the White House secretly worked with AT&T to vacuum up billions of telephone calls, E-mails and Internet browsing histories in total violation of law and morality. Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, now says that privacy no longer means keeping your personal business private. Rather, it means that the government can spy on everything you do as long as the resulting data isn't misused.

Somehow, that isn't very reassuring. Is anyone else wondering whether a politically-connected company - Halliburton, for example - is getting a no-bid contract to fill America with telescreens?

Vote for Me or Die

In this election cycle, when the various GOP candidates are competing to see who can torture and bomb more than anyone else, I suppose it had to happen sometime. Rep. Tom Tancredo, the rabidly anti-immigrant long-shot candidate, now has a TV ad which sums it up: vote for me or die horribly.

Tancredo is, of course, no stranger to controversy. He supports nuking Mecca in the event of a nuclear terror attack, has called Miami a "Third World country," and addressed a pro-Confederate group as members dressed as Southern officers sang "Dixie."

But this takes fear-mongering to a new level. Tancredo's position is clear: hate anyone who doesn't look like you, because any one of them could be a terrorist. (He seems to have forgotten a fellow by the name of Timothy McVeigh.)

Sheesh.

Unconditional Surrender, Again and Again

Am I dreaming or something? Did the Democrats win control of Congress in last year's elections or did they not? Because it sure doesn't look like it.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have knuckled under to President Bush again and again this past year. More blank-check war funding, more unrestricted spying, you name it - the Democrats have repeatedly handed Bush one victory after another without putting up a real fight.

The latest example of their surrender was the under-cover-of-darkness confirmation of Michael Mukasey as Attorney General. Sure he won't renounce the use of torture. Sure he says the president can ignore the law as long as he uses the magic words "national security." Sure he'll refuse to enforce Congressional contempt subpoenas against the White House. Confirm him anyway.

(Speaking of Mukasey, blogs are reporting that Reid rushed through the Mukasey vote in exchange for being allowed to vote on a military spending bill that doesn't include off-the-books spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He wouldn't even allow traveling senators time to get back to Washington in order to vote. Thanks for nothing, Harry.)

And people wonder why Congress' polling numbers are even lower than Bush's. It's not because they confront the White House and make life miserable for the president; it's because they simply refuse to do so. It doesn't matter how unpopular Bush is - in fact, he has now become the first president with a 50% "strongly disapprove" rating. (Even Nixon didn't get that high.) They just won't do it.

Why in the world won't they do their jobs? Are they really that scared of GOP attack ads, that they'll roll over and play dead whenever Bush makes unhappy noises? Do they not realize that the American people so can't stand Bush that another round of dishonest talking points won't make a dent? Or are they so in love with the notion of bipartisanship that they still haven't figured out how the Republicans define it - make the Democrats bend over and give them everything they want?

With media-anointed "front runner" candidates refusing to support an Iraq pullout until at least 2013 and being similarly wishy-washy on other issues, the Democrats are running the real risk of a third-party movement splitting the vote next year. Is the party leadership so beholden to playing it safe that they'll give up yet another presidential election?

Enough cowardice. It's way past time for some real cojones on Capitol Hill. If they keep on going like this and lose the White House next year to a Bible-thumping theocrat like Mike Huckabee or a corrupt would-be dictator like Rudy Giuliani, it'll be their own damn fault.

Here We Go Again

It's two weeks to Thanksgiving. Stores are hawking Christmas trees, Christmas decorations, Christmas music, and so on and so forth. (The really enterprising stores started putting all this stuff up right after Labor Day.) I guess that means it's time for Bill O'Reilly and Fox News to go into their annual "War on Christmas" paroxysm of spluttering outrage. And this year, the jihad starts in Fort Collins, Colorado.

You see, last year there was a kerfluffle in Fort Collins because the city rejected requests to include a Chanukah menorah in the city's official holiday display. Because of this, an official "Holiday Display Task Force" was convened to find ways of including non-Christian residents in the official celebrations. One of their recommendations was to use white lights rather than colored lights as part of the displays.

As Bugs Bunny used to say, "Of course you realize this means war."

On his TV show last night, O'Reilly went into a frothing rage over the decision, calling it "insane...an assault to diminish Christmas for secular progressive reasons," blaming (nonexistent) ACLU lawsuits and sneering that "we're going to decorate Fort Collins public buildings with snowflakes."

A guest didn't stop there, calling it "something out of the old Soviet Union."

For the record, people in Fort Collins or anywhere else are perfectly free to put up or not put up any decorations they choose. The task force's recommendations are just that - recommendations, with no force of law - and concern themselves only with official city decorations, not any private displays. But that doesn't matter to Bill.

O'Reilly has been pushing his "War on Christmas" nonsense now for years, and every time around it just gets more shrill and hysterical. He should quit before he bursts a blood vessel or something.

You Call This Progress?!

"If you lived in Iraq and had lived under a tyranny, you'd be saying, God, I love freedom - because that's what's happened. And there are killers and radicals and murderers who kill the innocent to stop the advance of freedom. But freedom is happening in Iraq. And we're making progress."

President Bush denying (again) that Iraq has become a quagmire and regurgitating (again) the usual buzzwords to hide from reality

Welcome to Beautiful Downtown Baghdad

It sounds like a joke. Granted, pretty much anything that comes out of the White House these days sounds like a joke, but this really sounds like a joke. It's not a joke, though - it's real.

In an apparent attempt to make Baghdad look less deadly, we now have A Visitor's Guide to Baghdad's International Zone, posted on an official Pentagon website and supposedly "written by tourists for the tourist" in 2006. To no one's surprise, the authors are not casual visitors at all but are actually a GOP think tank staffer and a "confirmed war tourist."

This guidebook renames the much-hated Green Zone into the less sinister-sounding "International Zone" (IZ) and offers some helpful hints for interested tourists, including:

• "Moving about the IZ is a fairly easy venture. Unless you crash through a very visible and well marked gate, you should have no concern about accidentally venturing into the red zone."
• "Probably one of the oddest named parts of the IZ, Little Venice is the neighborhood between the former US Embassy complex and the U.S. Chancellery building. It is believed to be nick-named Little Venice because of the many cement waterways, bridges and fountains that adorn its streets and park."
• "FOB Honor is the site of one of the most recognizable buildings from the "shock and awe" campaign waged in March 2003."
• "A number of buildings dot the horizon as seen from the International Zone. While tantalizingly close, the current security situation dictates that most IZ occupants will probably never to do more than view them from afar."

And so on.

An American officer serving in Iraq begs to differ:

The mentality associated with walking around this nation like it's your own little sight-seeing trip stuns me. You look at the backgrounds of the authors - a CA [civil affairs] guy and an NGO [non-governmental organization] guy - and you just expect better of them. Instead, every local they saw on their sight-seeing wound up seeing the ultimate in ugly American tourists. How can we claim any credibility in anything we do when they see that this is how seriously we take the responsibility we have assumed by doing what we as a nation have done here, and are claiming to do now... Thanks for the efforts you so very clearly expended in your time here, guys. There's nothing like a little understanding.

This one is mind-boggling. I know the Bush Administration is desperately trying to put lipstick on this particular pig, but this is just mind-boggling. What on earth were these people thinking? Do they really believe that people can be fooled into mistaking the shooting-gallery Green Zone for poolside at a resort somewhere?

Where are professionals when you really need them?

They Won't Be Able to Run Away, You See

"When the State Department appears to be filled with reluctant personnel, let's turn to those who have bravely followed the American flag in the most dangerous of assignments... They are veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters and you can be sure that when called on for difficult assignments, they won't convene a town meeting to protest. Especially for those whose mobility has been impaired by wounds, State Department positions, not only in Baghdad but around the world, will provide excellent jobs as well as availing our nation of their enormous talent."

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), suggesting that diplomats resisting forced posting to Baghdad be fired and replaced with wounded veterans

It's OK When We Do It

"In our opinion, no."

White House press secretary Dana Perino, on being asked whether it is acceptable for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf "to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism"

Please Tell Me You're Kidding

"One man's torture is another man's CIA-sponsored swim lesson."

GOP strategist Rachel Marsden on CNN, opining that waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay is no different from a dip in the pool at the local Y

Oh Yeah, They're Exactly the Same

"Eighty-eight percent of the country believed in slavery at one time. Was that correct?"

Foreign Service general director Harry Thomas, responding to State Department staffers complaining about being forced to serve in Baghdad and who pointed out that only twelve percent of department staffers believe that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is supporting them

Why Won't You Just Get Sick and Die Already?!

Here we go again.

To nobody's surprise, President Bush has once again proved he just doesn't learn. This time, he's threatening to veto - again - the SCHIP bill reauthorizing federal health coverage for children of working-class families who can't afford to buy private insurance.

"There's a bill moving through Congress that's disguised as a bill to help children," he said on Wednesday, "but I think it's really a trick on the American people."

You'd think from the hammering he got after the first veto, he might have realized that this fight is a guaranteed loser. But of course he hasn't. He's determined to bash ahead no matter what the consequences.

As a rule, people don't like it when kids get hurt. Bush hasn't figured that out, and from all appearances he never will.

The GOP is making unhappy noises but is generally standing behind their leader. Let's see if the Democrats have the stones to make this a real campaign issue.

I'll Take My Football and Go Home, Too

"If the Senate Judiciary Committee were to block Judge [Michael] Mukasey on these grounds, they would set a new standard for confirmation that could not be met by any responsible nominee for Attorney General. And that would guarantee that America would have no Attorney General during this time of war."

So said President Bush today at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, one of his few remaining bastions of support. Why does he sound a lot like a spoiled brat on the playground, threatening to quit a game if the rules aren't bent to allow him to win?

It's not like Mukasey, now facing an uphill battle to be confirmed as Attorney General, has particularly distinguished himself. After all, when asked repeatedly if waterboarding and other tortures are, well, torture, he delivered a perfect fog of obfuscation. Not only that, he proclaimed that Bush has the unlimited power to ignore any laws he likes just by using the magic words "national security," the Constitution be damned.

Has Bush really made the prospect of public service so toxic that no qualified candidate will come within a mile of the job? Are we really stuck with this loyal Bushie of a nominee, whose best qualification appears to be that he isn't as dreadful as his predecessor? Since when it is an impossible standard that an Attorney General should be dedicated to enforcing the law rather than warp it for the political pleasures of his boss?

Bush is acting like a petulant brat, telling the Senate to do it his way or else. The Senate should vote no on this nomination, with another vote telling Bush to grow up.

Waah, Again

"Judge [Michael] Mukasey is not being treated fairly. He's made the rounds on Capitol Hill, he's answered questions, he's been to hearings."

President Bush, complaining that the Senate is taking its "Advice and Consent" role seriously and not just rubber-stamping his nominee to be Attorney General