Your Daily Dose Of Reality...Starts Now! Voice Of The Majority is a Progressive-Leftist blog covering National and Austin Texas/Travis County politics. WE MUST WORK TOGETHER AND TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK! This Blog Is Protected By The First Amendment........Well, at least for now it is.

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    Joshua Angell, also known as Josh Angell (born June 3, 1979), is an outspoken Liberal activist who has run a news blog since 2004, entitled "Voice Of The Majority" Angell, a frequent caller to radio shows such as Lynn Samuels, is often outspoken on what he calls "the lies of the Bush Crime Family". Known locally in Austin, Texas to appear at rallies and anti-war demonstrations, Angell is self described as "The most famous gay activist in Austin that everybody knows OF but nobody KNOWS".


    Monday, February 28, 2005


     
    The Rant:
    Is Dubya in the closet?
    By DOUG THOMPSON

    Ah, the irony of it all. The administration of George W. Bush, easily the most homophobic president of modern times, deployed a homosexual escort and promoter of gay life styles as one of its "propaganda as journalism" shills. James Dale Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon, infiltrated the White House press corps as a so-called journalist working for two GOP-backed web sites. He quit after some left-wing blogs outed him but - like most Washington scandals - the story gets juicier.The bloggers revealed Guckert had registered a number of web site domain names with gay themes, including hotmilitarystud.com. Guckert admitted registering the names but claimed he never put up any web sites with gay themes.Like so many who shill for Bush's White House, Guckert is a liar.Paul Leddy, a California Web designer, says Guckert contacted him in an America Online chat room in 1999 and contracted with him to create a gay escort web site, paying $200, plus $50 in monthly maintenance fees. Checks to pay the fees came from Bedrock Corp., a company also listed as the owner of Guckert's blog, jeffgannon.com. Leddy says Gannon submitted nude photos of himself for posting on the site.Another of Guckert's web sites offered his services as a male escort for $200 an hour or $1200 a night. Guckert described himself as "military, muscular, masculine and discrete." (His misspelling, not ours).Guckert is also a tax scofflaw. Delaware court records show he failed to pay more than $20,700 in personal income tax from 1991 through 1994.Bush's minions saw Guckert as a valuable commodity, granting him access to classified documents, including the infamous memo that outed Ambassador (and Bush critic) Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Palme, as a CIA operative. House Democrats are demanding a special investigator into that stunt.Still unanswered is how Guckert became a poster child for an administration that preaches homosexuality is a sin and threatens the wrath of God on anyone who advocates gay lifestyles. We thought the holy rollers who have taken over the Republican Party only dropped to their knees in prayer.Yet Guckert's sexual preferences are not the story here (they just make it more interesting). Real concerns should be raised over increasing revelations on how the Bush administration uses paid propagandists disguised as journalists. From video press releases dressed up to look like real news stories to hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to right-wing columnists to write favorable opinion pieces about the administration, the Bush administration proves it will stop at nothing to mislead the American public.We once thought it impossible that anyone could top Bill Clinton's ability to look the American public in the eye and lie like hell but Dubya makes Bubba look like a bumbling frat boy.Bush lied to Congress, our allies and the American people about why we needed to invade Iraq. He lied again to Congress and the country about the true cost of his politically-motivated Medicare prescription plan. He lies repeatedly about when the Social Security system will run out of money. Recently disclosed audio tapes shows he lied (through omission) about his past drug use.And, to promote his lies, Bush's administration and backers deploy liars like James Guckert to pose, under an assumed name, as a journalist. And were these political hacks are so desperate to find a shill they didn't even bother to check his background?Perhaps. Perhaps not.Perhaps Bush, like other public homophobes, decries the gay life because of yet another secret in his sordid past. Maybe booze and cocaine wasn't the only thing our President stuffed into an available orifice.



    Sunday, February 27, 2005


     
    * Air America Comes To Air Austin *
    BY KEVIN BRASS

    After months of rumors, radio industry sources confirm that Air America, the liberal talk format starring Al Franken, is about to find a home in Austin, where the airwaves are still dominated by tough-talking Rush Limbaugh wannabes.
    Air America is now heard on 48 stations around the country, but on only one in Texas, KCCT-AM in Corpus Christi. An announcement on an Austin affiliate is expected within days, according to one source.
    Although details are still sketchy, speculation focuses on Border Media Partners, the Houston-based company that now owns seven Spanish-language stations in Austin (see "Austin Radio Spanish"). BMP president Tom Castro was national deputy finance chair of the Kerry for President campaign, and one of the company's main investors is notable Democrat Tony Sanchez, the former candidate for governor. Asked to analyze the Austin market last week, Castro immediately pointed to the lack of a format for "intelligent and interesting dialogue." Austin, he said, seems like a place where "a lot of people want an outlet for voicing their opinion."
    Castro declined to detail any specific plans, but industry sources say BMP has been talking with Air America, as well as other networks, about new programming for Austin. If BMP did, in fact, pick up Air America, KFON-AM (1490), which simulcasts a norte–o music format, or KOKE-AM (1600), which has been struggling to establish a Spanish talk format, are the likely targets.
    The other likely suspect to sign up Air America would be Clear Channel Communications, which has brought Franken and Co. to other markets. But Clear Channel has no plans to make any changes in Austin, said market manager Dusty Black. Like Castro, though, he believes a liberal talker in Austin simply makes sound business sense. "It would surprise me if somebody wasn't planning on doing it," he said.
    http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-02-25/pols_naked9.html
    The above isn't official yet but it soon should be which will put Air America Radio affiliates at 49 or 50 stations before the 1 Year Anniversary. AAR is almost 11 months on the air, starting on March 29, 2004.




     
    AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
    April 8-10
    Hyatt Regency, Austin, TX
    Join Amnesty members from across the country and activists from around theworld at the 2005 Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Austin, TX, April 8-10!

    Learn more:
    http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/ctt.asp?u=265736&l=12057




     
    Take A Look At Some Hate Mail That Democratic Activist Websites Are Getting In Their Inbox These Days:


    Some of the republican hate mail sites have generated :
    (sent to dontblamemeIvoted4kerry.com)
    The following tirades are from the same folks that brought us Pat Robertson, Rush and Dubya.... I am publishing the latest- I promise to update the site and to make it easier to read. Following is an example of the bullshit I get every day and my response. by the way he would not even accept by response via email so here it is!!!!!!!!!!!
    From: Joe Jackson [yourmentor1953@blackplanet.com]Sent: Sunday, February 06, 2005 6:12 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: The Rabid Hate Of Radical Left WingersOne rarely sees this kind of hate emanating from Republicans. Of course your predicted response will be Rush, O'reilly, Fox News, and any others that pointout the lies of the left. Fortunately, yourwrong sided views are in the minority, albeit a very vocal and well financed minority. It's been my experience that those at the low end of the IQ spectrum tend to think along the lines of the items you are selling and some of extremely gullible even think Fahrenheit 911 was a documentary rather than a huge smear campaign. Those on the left have historically been on the wrong side of history and have always been the easy targets of enemy infiltrators. One only has to research the Democratic party to see how many times foreign operatives have not only operated freely from within, but were encouraged and then defended when caught.You mentioned something about Republicans at least being smart enough to turn on a computer, and I'll respond by stating that Republicans can also make web sites that wrap content so the viewer doesn't have to scroll like one must do here. --
    From: info [info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.com] Sent: Sunday, February 06, 2005 10:42 PM To: 'Joe Jackson' Subject: RE: The Rabid Hate Of Radical Left Wingers Let’s see, hate emanating from Republicans. Rush, Fox News, all of the other day time talk radio dicks – if that is not enough give me a minute and I can start talking about the hate mongers that are in the papers 0 that probably being paid by the white house or the RNC. What about the 8 years Clinton was in the White house and the witch hunts! As far as minorities, I remember 2000 when the white house was STOLEN from the Democrats, who by the way had a majority! I do not consider, bush’s second win, by pushing fear and hatred, a mandate. It is still my right and obligation to object to the right wing bull shit! dontblamemeivoted4kerry.com
    I have been corrected by a few people that have objected to my title for this page. Not all of the following is hate mail, some of it is just interesting. Also, this is not an all inclusive list. Some email I'm too embrassed for the writer to even publish- goes to show even idiots can turn on a computer....
    From: agailmoore@netscape.net Sent: Friday, November 26, 2004 1:41 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Get over it
    Get over it! Thank me I voted for From: GcMcD [g.c.mcdonald@att.net]Sent: Monday, November 29, 2004 12:02 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.com
    Bet ya 10 bucks your a New York Blood Sucking Liberal Jew Bastard.. -- Grant
    From: Dahl Doug [DDahl@tuvam.com]Sent: Monday, November 29, 2004 3:04 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Ranting?
    I was reading your "ranting" section of your site. (There were a couple of curses, but for the most part it sounds RIGHT to me!) I can, with a clear conscience and without ranting, tell you that the people have spoken. The majority are not "dumb". The elitist minority seem to be. HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT JESUS WAS A LIBERAL WHEN YOU WANT TO CHANGE OUR LAWS TO VIOLATE HIS? That's the epitomy of hypocracy!! The real reason Kerry lost is that he had no "plan". To say: "I have a plan", and not give even a clue as to what his plan was didn't help him. The bottom line is the majority of americans do not agree with a liberal agenda. Don't take it so personal. I didn't hear or see anyone say that the dem voters were dumb. Heck, if the dems could actually come up w/ a candidate I could believe in, I might even vote for them. But NEVER would I vote for Hanoi John!! I'm surprised he even made it to senator!
    From: Norton Wheeler III [nc.wheeler3rd@sbcglobal.net]Sent: Monday, November 29, 2004 9:15 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: America the Beautiful
    It is time to stand with the majority of America and thank our armed forces and the Commander in Chief for their sacrifices and courage. Their resolve is the reason you sleep at night. Thank you
    From: David Still [david@davidstill.org]Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2004 5:09 PMTo: whoever atSubject: losersHi Losers,
    Guess what? You lost the election. 59 million votes for W cannot be totally wrong. You may not agree, and GOD bless you *AND* me for your right to dissent, but you are wrong. I hope you continue to sell tons of your moron merchandise, proudly claiming a vote for Kerry. Oh yeah... Did I mention? You are losers. W won. Be sure to post your loser picture on http://www.sorryeverybody.com . Also, don't forget to move to Canada. Good riddance, me. ______________________________
    From: Ryan King [rking@lakeorion.k12.mi.us]Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2004 11:00 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Democrat....why?
    You democrats make yourselves sound more and more stupid each and every day dont you realize it? nobody cares about you people, get over it bush won 4 more years, please show me your tears ;(
    From: A_Kansan [a_kansan@yahoo.com]Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2004 5:03 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Re: Jesus was a Liberal
    Excuse me, but Jesus didn't believe in government, so he wasn't a liberal. His answer, "Render unto Caesar . . ." was a retort to a trick question. Kind of like, "Have you stopped beating your wife?"
    Jesus believed that we should take care of the poor with our own money. He didn't believe that we should form some over powering bureaucracy that would take under threat of force our wages.
    Remember he instructed the tax collectors to only tax what was rightfully theirs. Usually that was 10%. Last time I checked, my direct tax was 34%, (Income = 28% and FICA = 7.65%) and that didn't include the taxes we pay indirectly on the goods we purchase. __________________________________
    From: Timothy Donahue [t-donahue@sbcglobal.net]Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 8:57 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Don't Blame me website
    Your website reminds me too much of the aftermath of the 1972 election (the first one I was eligible to vote in). All over town I saw bumper stickers that said "Don't Blame Me I Voted For George Wallace". So the concept seems pretty stale to me and, worse, lifted from disgruntled right-wing bigots. I read what you referred to as "Hate Mail" from Republicans and there was a much better idea in one of the letters. It said (I'm paraphrasing) "Don't blame me for voting for Kerry, blame the beer". Change Kerry to Bush and I'd even buy it.
    P.S. I held my nose and voted for Kerry only because Bush was a worse alternative. The Democrats need much better candidates.
    From: JackSchrier1@cs.comSent: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 3:52 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Thanks
    Thanks for continuing to do your small part to undo democracy and foster mindless hatred in this greatest nation in world history. Disagreement is one thing but you and your ilk are politicoterrorists who need to leave the country -- quickly -- before you bring it down around our ears. The 2004 election is over, and you should get over it. You lost, we won. If you do not understand what the war against terror is about, ask some of mu friends who lost family members and friends on September 11. Have a nice day.
    From: brenttsnotclever@netscape.netSent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 10:42 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: qusetions NOT hate mail
    good morning. today i viewed you site and just wanted to ask (considereing that i am 20 years old and did not vote due to that fact that both major candidates had too many flaws) why you think that it is okay to abort children, or as they are scientificaly called, fetuses? also why is okay to mock God, who is the holiest of all and the being who created both you and i? i want to make it clear that this is not hate mail and that i DO understand that there was more to this past election. however i am sending this to you not as a rhetorical question, but i do want to and will, as openly as possible, listen to what you have to say. Godbless you and your family this holiday season, brentt cumbaa. ps - i thank you for your time.
    From: tob9360 [tob9360@zdial.com]Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 9:01 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: You've overstepped your rights again
    Dear Sir or Ma'am,I am offended by your Christian references in your bumper stickers: 1- Forgive them Father..., 2- Jesus was a liberal..., 3- The righteous were wrong...
    I respectfully request you take down these three. You have neither the wisdom, knowledge, common sense, or religious education and facts to make such remarks. These statements show your thinking is as erroneous as the leaders in Jesus time. You think only your point of view can be correct. Shame on you. Sincerely,Dan T.
    From: KEVIN MCCOOL [kmc5150@msn.com]Sent: Friday, December 10, 2004 12:51 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: some of the republican hate mail our site has generated
    Well it seems that even a few of your fellow Dems disapprove of this bullshit website also....hmmm...I know you jokers have money/time/dreams and whatever else wrapped up in this venture but this is a very piss poor way to make a buck.....jeez...why don't you listen to some of thier comments....they make sense. This website is based on a destructive and negative concept (contempt for a standing President in a time of war and his Party). Whats new for 2008...."dont blame me I voted 4 Hillary"....how many recounts then, huh?? I surmise that you really are more concerned with the bottom line....$$$$$.....much like corporations you all bitch about. Haliburten,.....thats a staple in your diet of Liberal one liners. In WWII we as a nation stood together in a time of war, we put aside disagreements and such for after the war. You and the Liberal left in the Democrat party however are becoming what is known as the enemy within....politics/power first and national security somewhere waaaaay below Gay marriage, the U.N. and higher taxes. Traitors?? Sounds harsh but not as much as your product and attitude. As I've told some of your Fecal brain zombies that email me.....theres always Canada, please feel free to leave.
    From: Holly [jrmynt@yahoo.com]Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 1:04 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: CommentDear Reader,
    I was on your site "dontblamemeivoted4kerry.com" and I was outraged to see you twist scripture in the Bible to something so negative. I am a seventeen year old Christian and I know that not many people like Christians but you have most definatly offended me by twisting God's word into something else that it isn't. Please feel free to email me back. I am very interested in hearing what you have to say. In Christ Jesus My Lord,An Outraged Teen._____
    From: chefsteve [chefsteve@comcast.net]Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 5:38 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.com
    Dear Don"t Blame Me:You are a loooooser. Yu back a loser and you will always be a loser. Thank you for your kind attention to these words. Very truly yoursChefsteve
    From: Mike [msn56@twcny.rr.com]Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 7:21 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: hate mail
    Hey where can I send some hate mail to ?Mike
    From: Claude Matson [claude1966@hotmail.com]Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2004 9:44 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: not too smart!
    I feel so sorry for you mis-guided liberals, you are so freaking confused! You morons would vote for a lying, ignorant, hating, man like Kerry instead of Bush, it just doesn't make sense! Sure, Bush has done some things wrong (border security, timing of Iraq), but you people just don't get it. Your man Clinton is the sole cause of 9/11, can't you see that? Clinton allowed US soldiers to be murdered by Bin Laden's terrorists 7 times, and did nothing but drop one bomb! HE SHOULD OF FOUND BIN LADEN AND HAD HIM KILLED!!!!!! But because Clinton wanted to kiss the rest of the worlds butt, and make Europe happy, he let it go! Clinton let our men and women be murdered with no consequences!!!! If he would of done the right thing and not sit on his lying butt being passive, we probably could of stopped 9/11 because we would of been on the offensive. The "offensive" is something you morons don't understand, it means going after murderers and terrorists where ever they are, not waiting for us to be attacked, even if countries like Germany, Russia, and France (who were all getting our billions from the food for oil scandal from Sadam) don't like it. We finally have a president who has it right, he has a deep belief in our one and only creator, he believes that lying to the public (Clinton in a congressional hearing! He should of went to jail!!!) is wrong, he believes that we need to be responsible for ourselves and that giving us more of our hard earned money if better for the economy! Bush believes in the sanctity of marriage!!!! Bush is for the morals (you libs better look up this word in the dictionary) and ethics that this country was founded on. Let me just say this in closing, the farther we get from Godly values, pushing God out of our country, electing immoral presidents (clinton), and moving to the left, the worse things will get for all of us. Mark my words and remember! God save us from Hillary!
    I will pray that orgs like you will figure it out and come to the right side!
    From: Claude Matson [claude1966@hotmail.com]Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2004 9:44 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: not too smart!
    I feel so sorry for you mis-guided liberals, you are so freaking confused! You morons would vote for a lying, ignorant, hating, man like Kerry instead of Bush, it just doesn't make sense! Sure, Bush has done some things wrong (border security, timing of Iraq), but you people just don't get it. Your man Clinton is the sole cause of 9/11, can't you see that? Clinton allowed US soldiers to be murdered by Bin Laden's terrorists 7 times, and did nothing but drop one bomb! HE SHOULD OF FOUND BIN LADEN AND HAD HIM KILLED!!!!!! But because Clinton wanted to kiss the rest of the worlds butt, and make Europe happy, he let it go! Clinton let our men and women be murdered with no consequences!!!! If he would of done the right thing and not sit on his lying butt being passive, we probably could of stopped 9/11 because we would of been on the offensive. The "offensive" is something you morons don't understand, it means going after murderers and terrorists where ever they are, not waiting for us to be attacked, even if countries like Germany, Russia, and France (who were all getting our billions from the food for oil scandal from Sadam) don't like it. We finally have a president who has it right, he has a deep belief in our one and only creator, he believes that lying to the public (Clinton in a congressional hearing! He should of went to jail!!!) is wrong, he believes that we need to be responsible for ourselves and that giving us more of our hard earned money if better for the economy! Bush believes in the sanctity of marriage!!!! Bush is for the morals (you libs better look up this word in the dictionary) and ethics that this country was founded on. Let me just say this in closing, the farther we get from Godly values, pushing God out of our country, electing immoral presidents (clinton), and moving to the left, the worse things will get for all of us. Mark my words and remember! God save us from Hillary!
    I will pray that orgs like you will figure it out and come to the right side!
    From: ron poole [bknight6@sc.rr.com]Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2004 3:02 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: you lost
    I am sure the same type of material was available when Clinton won the erection(excuse me election). I hope you make a lot of money selling this stuff. If you do make a lot of money maybe you will become a thinking Conservative. There is nothing like having the money you earned redistributed to the 40 Million or so that do not pay taxes. Ron
    From: Marvin [gysgt@cox.net]Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2004 3:06 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Don't blame me.Hi Tony,
    Was checking out your site. You really do hate G.W. don't you. Have you made much money selling your Bumper stickers, caps etc? Now for me I did vote for G.W. and the main reason was, I am a Vietnam War Vet and John F. Kerry betrayed me and the other Vietnam Vets. I am not knocking you for voting for Kerry, that was your right to do. Isn't it great that we have a system in the United States that give us the choice to vote for who we believe in? If John F. Kerry had won, I would not have change my way that I live, well maybe some, paying more taxes, living in fear of another terrorist attack, sucking up to the U.N. and France. Now I won't say HAHAHA like some others have email you. I respect your rights to vote for the Democratic Party, heck, I voted the Democratic Party for years. Then after Jimmy Carter was elected, I got wise and change my party to the GOP. I couldn't live on the peanuts that he was handing out to me. I wish that I knew how old you are, I am 75 and have been around for awhile. Don't claim to know all of the answers, only 99% of them. So you can see that I am not perfect. Tony, in closing let me wish you a very happy "Chanukah" and/or "Merry Christmas" and a safer New Year in 2005, 2006. 2007 2008. GySgt Marvin Bush USMC Retired
    From: Ron L Jackson [rlj@amsautomotive.com]Sent: Monday, December 27, 2004 3:05 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: web site
    Damn, got a kick out of the fact that you really can make a good living off of fools. So, how liberal are you, through and through or just when it comes to trying to make a dollar by selling sleaze? Your man lost because he is an incompetent nitwit, but, when compared to the others that were running in the Democratic primary, he truly may have been the lesser of the evils. You go from one whore monger as your hero to a coward who hasn't the brains to come in out of the rain. A lower GPA than Dubya, less education, has to marry his money (ugly at that) and had JFK as his hero? Wow, thank God for the people of Massachusetts for giving him a job and keeping him off of the welfare rolls. Not to worry though, once all of the power truly shifts to the right-wing zealots, we truly will let some of you come over to our side. See how generous we are, why hold a grudge like you seem to be doing. Ron Jackson
    From: James Riedl [tradewinds@joimail.com]Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2004 2:26 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: how about these bumper stickers
    How about a bumper sticker that reads: "Quit your crying all you bleeding heart liberals" or Who's the dumb-ass? "You lost" or "No one likes a crying Demee" My point is this, you people need to stop your crying and acting like 2 year olds and move on. If Kerry would have won, thank God he did not. The Republicans would have gotten behind him and moved forward with the country. Trying to improve our way of life. But you people are so paranoid and with your conspiratress attitude have to dwell on this issue. One last choice for your bumper sticker " Grow up "
    From: Al Ciammaichella [gotribe31@hotmail.com]Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2004 8:00 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Liberal
    If you hate this country so much, why dont you just leave? The rest of the country really would be much better off.
    From: Pilot-Doofy [pilotdoofy@gmail.com]Sent: Friday, December 31, 2004 1:02 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Seems you're merely a cry baby..
    You can say that only stupid people vote for Bush but the fact is Democrats can't let their loss go. They can't quit crying about it, instead they have to say everyone is stupid. If Bush was such a horrible leader he wouldn't have won the most popular vote in History would he?
    I think that Democrats need to accept the fact that Kerry was rejected, not elected.
    If Kerry was truly the better man he would've won. All people can say about "Dubya" is that he is stupid. Why don't you find proof other than the lies that Michael Moore stretches? Democrats say they are loving to their neighbor but look at your site and the others in affiliation with it.
    You all call Republicans rednecks, etc. Well, I'll tell you what, I'll bet you wouldn't come down to a Bush rally or a gun show and tell us that we're all a bunch of rednecks. Don't bother posting this on your stupid "hate mail" section because it isn't hate mail. Jesus teaches us not to hate, but to love and teach.
    I can't hate you for your difference in opinion, I can only try to teach you the way of God, which is not to vote Liberal. John Kerry supported post-birth abortions. How can you claim that he is a man of God? The Christian aspect is gone when you think about Kerry.
    You said killing one person is murder but the death of thousands is foreign policy. Well, in retaliation against that how about this. Killing a grown-up adult is murder but killing a defenseless baby before it has a chance to develope enough to defend itself is the mother's choice right?
    The only one capable of taking a life is God himself. If you are honestly a Christian man you should believe in that. If you believe in that, there is your reason not to vote for Kerry.
    I pity you. I truly do. On a funnier note I pity your lack of web scripting skills and even lack of markup language skills. Seems you can't even write nicely put together HTML, much less could you wrap up a project in PHP or another scripting language.
    Let me guess, you hired the work done right? I would take my time to use SQL injections and/or other techniques to bring your website to its knees but I don't have that much spare time on my hands. Just be glad I'm not as upset about the election as you all are. If I was, I'd cry, throw a fit, and completely erase all data on the server that holds your bandwidth-waster you call a website.
    Enjoy your life. You probably won't live long if you make the choices of a Democrat. ---DanPilot-Doofy
    From: TennTexan2@aol.comSent: Saturday, January 01, 2005 2:42 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: LOSERS
    you lib LOSERS cannot get past the fact that most of America disagrees wirh you. That is because you somehow feel you are intellectually superior to more than half of the country. Even if that were true, our country is set up to not let the "intelligentsia" become rulers of your ideal state of Communism. So your true cause is lost. why don't you move on to animal rights or something? SincerelyTennTexan2@aol.com
    From: Robert Paul [ropaul69@hotmail.com]Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 8:59 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: More hate mail for you.. LOL
    In "the small print," you make a couple of statements about where portions of proceeds from sales of your propaganda will go..."PROVIDED IT IS LEGAL."
    My question to you is...WHY WOULD THAT MATTER??? Democrats have long held to the belief that the law means nothing to them. If you are to remain to true democrat ideals and principles, you will do whatever you want with whatever proceeds you are able to scoop up, and you will have no respect whatsoever for anything the law has to say on the matter. Robert Paul
    From: Richard Olsen [rolsen7777@hotmail.com]Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 2:01 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: your web site
    It's a shame that the only way individuals like you can express yourself is by ridicule. It's a clear demonstration of your own inadequacies. You should try taking a class in debate. That way you may be forced to check out the facts prior to placing half the country into a class you call "stupid". But then, that would take time and effort - which you show you do not have by the name calling because someone doesn't believe the way you do. You are taking the path of 'least resistance' - which is a clear indication of where your values are located. I don't expect you to share this email with your fans as it is written. If anything, you'll probably add a line here and there to make this email sound, well, "stupid". You really need to evaluate yourself and get a grip on reality. What a shame.
    RichardIt's a shame that the only way individuals like you can express yourself is by ridicule. It's a clear demonstration of your own inadequacies. You should try taking a class in debate. That way you may be forced to check out the facts prior to placing half the country into a class you call "stupid". But then, that would take time and effort - which you show you do not have by the name calling because someone doesn't believe the way you do. You are taking the path of 'least resistance' - which is a clear indication of where your values are located. I don't expect you to share this email with your fans as it is written. If anything, you'll probably add a line here and there to make this email sound, well, "stupid". You really need to evaluate yourself and get a grip on reality. What a shame. Richard
    From: KEVIN MCCOOL [kmc5150@msn.com] Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2004 8:22 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Products
    My God.....you Dumocrats have quite a high opinion of yourselves...."I think, therefore I am... A Democrat."??????? You are the most pathetic LOSERS I have ever seen. Your problem is YOU don't think and that's why you're losing again and again. Most people with an ounce of sense understand your message and your views....they just don't buy it anymore. So pleeeeease FUCK OFF AND SHUT UP with your dumbass bumper sticker crap!!!!!! You Dumocrats are dieing a slow death and you know it...... if your so "evolved and intelligent" why cant you morons grasp the fact that America is rejecting you and your politics.....you're arrogant and foolish and irrelevent....now die!! From: robert kench [robertkench@yahoo.com]Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2004 9:56 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Bitterness
    Wow. I reviewed your website (didn't buy anything, of course) and am amazed at how bitter you must be. It's actually quite disturbing and unpatriotic in my mind. I didn't piss and moan when Clinton won both elections in the 90's...I moved on and supported our country. Regardless of who wins our elections, it's unfortunate we can't pull together and support the victor uniting as a country. It's my opinion we can do this without losing our individual views and positions which makes our country successful. Nonetheless, your bumper stickers and shirts don't help but only contribute to the division. Do you think you could be creative enough to come up with something positive? _____
    From: James Ripley Westmoreland [ripleyw@mac.com]Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2004 12:24 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.com
    good luck with your sales. you are just guaranteeing another republican win with your elitist, smarter than thou attitude!!! From: Mira Reinstetle [mecordcoopreindev@panhandle.rr.com]Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2004 12:26 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: See.........
    See........Bush is helping the economy already........Glad I voted for him!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    From: rma814@tds.netSent: Monday, November 22, 2004 8:03 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.com
    You people are a bunch of shameless, devisive scumbags, whose sole concern seems to be turning a profit, even if you do so at the expense of perpetuating the animosity between left and right in this country. Why don't you find something constructive to do with your time, rather than rehashing an election that is already over? I suppose you are still whining about 2000, too. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, and I hope you all rot in hell. It's sad to think that a significant subset of the American people are so backward-looking that there is actually a market for your trash. Get a job, you losers! Greg
    From: Advocate7day@aol.comSent: Friday, November 12, 2004 6:43 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Jesus
    Of one thing I am certain: No part of democrat follows JESUS. You cannot be for homosexual relations, and abortions and claim to follow JESUS. Also those who partake in such activities will definetly not be in the "Eternal Kingdom". They would have the same chance as satan their father. I'll pray for you because you are so obviously decieved.
    From: Griffith, Joshua D [joshuadgg@neo.tamu.edu]Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2004 9:13 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Why???
    I am not coming down on how you may have voted, but this stickers, shirts, hats, etc are not going to help the movement of unity in America. Calling 59 million "DUMB" - this doesn't justify any logical thinking of the future of our country, no matter how someone voted. Majority rules and Electoral Rules and that's the way it is. It is the past. So, let's get started on the future of a closer country by possibly not insulting over half of the voters of United States. Thanks - God Bless America--
    From: bjc@att.netSent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 9:00 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: don't blame me either
    You may have voted for Kerry, but at least I voted my conscious. Most "evolved" Democrats didn't.
    But if you're only in this to make money, got any pro Bush stickers?From: The Crawford's [crawfo_d@bellsouth.net]Sent: Sunday, November 07, 2004 2:54 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Where's Kerry?
    Has anybody seen Kerry? Has he fallen off the face of the earth? It goes from Kerry being on every channel on the TV before the election, to looking under ever rock to find him after the election. What a total LOSER! He's not man enough to even show his "french" looking face after taking a beating in the election. LOSER!!! Maybe, you should make a sticker that says "Where's Kerry", or "I can't believe I voted for a LOSER like Kerry." Here's one "Don't blame me for voting for a LOSER like Kerry, blame the beer."
    From: Ryan Oswald [roswald@alltel.net]Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2004 11:09 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: IdeaMake one that says"Do blame me, If I had my way it would have been even worse!"or "The only people dumber than Bush are the people that voted against him."I think those two would serve you well.
    From: Jgbunny00@aol.comSent: Sunday, November 07, 2004 9:46 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: (no subject)You must be reeeeally sad......
    From: Anthony Pellegrino [antpel@tampabay.rr.com]Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2004 10:03 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: in denial
    Bill Maher and you are pieces of shit.
    From: Brian Linn [brianlinn@charter.net]Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2004 5:17 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: How about - Thank me I voted for BUSH!!I guarantee it will outsell the Kerry stuff :)
    From: RMath82058@aol.comSent: Saturday, November 06, 2004 11:17 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Give it UP!Instead of being BITTER chip in and GIVE a Hand! HAHAHHAHAHAHBush 2004
    From: Gary Simmons [Gettglost1@netscape.net]Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2004 12:30 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: KerryIdiot
    From: APRIL NEAL [labell00@sbcglobal.net]Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 6:01 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: KERRYHOW ABOUT THIS ONE? KERRY SU_KS? GET OVER IT.
    From: kevin young [kyoung65@lycos.com]Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 11:47 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: not to blame you, but to thank you
    I stumbled across your website and I am thankful that there is a minority of idiots in this country instead of a majority. -- From: Larry Castell [larry@vikingsoft.com]Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 11:38 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Don't blame me?
    Don't blame me I voted for Kerry?? I would never blame the mentally handicapped. Even criminals get off "by reason of insanity" so why shouldn't you?My advice to you....SHUT UP, YOU LOST.
    From: Spencer Carlson [Spencerc@migonline.com]Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 9:59 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: very sad
    Despite your fervent attempts to mock the president, and your constant attacks on bush as well as the rest of the national media and most singers, President Bush still won. So to coin a phrase from a sticker I saw when Bush lost in ’92.. “He lost, Get over it!”Thank youSpencer CarlsonSpencer CarlsonSupport TechnicianMortgage Investors Group8320 E. Walker Springs Ln.Knoxville, TN 37923
    He can't even get the address right. I hear you are getting a lot of these emails.-----Original Message-----From: Justin Cover [mailto:x0jcover@ti.com]Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 5:18 PMTo: nfo@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject:
    Kerry did not deserve to win. He is not qualified to run this Country. Bush is a great person and a better leader. Thank goodness for free speech so you can peddle those bumper stickers etc. I hope that the market will put you out of business form lack of sales. This stuff just causes discourse upsets people. We should support Bush even if we disagree. You can vote again in four more years. The economy will be much better then I am confident. Come up with something better to sell that does not divide people.Thank you for your timeAn American as you are.
    From: Michael Kelley [mkelley@intertekinc.com]Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 1:20 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Losers
    This is how you plan on making money? What a joke.Now if you had hats, and tee shirts that said."Kerry is a loser""And so am I"Now there you have something.Best of luck!!Mike
    From: Ravens31Fan@aol.comSent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 1:10 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: sore LOSERSSSSSSSSSSSS
    WOW 2 days after the election and you are back to your old tricks SORE LOSERS!!!
    Isn't America wonderful that you can benefit from all the stupid people that will buy your junk. Usually Liberals are Blame America first and hate America.
    From: Majekchance@aol.comSent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 1:00 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: grow up you lost get over it .....................................
    Blame you for what? He inherited a recesion . 9/11 would have happened no matter who was in office and president clinton signed NFTA..I dont get the hate for him..
    From: Stacey Hall [staceymarie3@hotmail.com]Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 12:00 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: How does this show support?
    To Whom it May Concern,Don't blame me, I voted for Kerry? How does this show support? I believe this type of paraphanalia shows great immaturity and willingness to remain a bitter and divided nation. I'm disappointed that you have chosen to go this route, but hey, free country!Sincerely,StaceyVancouver, WA._____
    From: Kathryn Joyce [kathryn200@mac.com]Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 10:53 AMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: comment
    Why can't you have the option of "I Voted for Kerry" without that silly, childish and provocative " don't blame me"--which I would be ashamed to be seen dead with or in.
    From: Chris Greene [cgreene@microsoft.com]Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 7:34 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.comSubject: Bush Won!!! Are you upset? Too bad. Get over it.Chris Greene Oak Ridge, TN (My opinion is not necessarily the opinion of my employer)
    From: Theresa Cloyd [EchoTC2@charter.net]Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 4:35 PMTo: info@dontblamemeivoted4kerry.com
    Your products are ridiculous. Why don't you spend your time doing something positive for the USA instead of continuing such negativity A man such as Kerry who suports infantcide (third term abortions) should not and will never be President.



    Saturday, February 26, 2005


     
    Legislative leaders take wait-and-see attitude.
    AUSTIN, Feb. -- Lawmakers from both parties proposed restrictions Monday on the use of anonymous corporate donations like those that helped finance the Republican takeover of the Legislature three years ago and then became the focus of a grand jury inquiry into Texas officials, lobbyists and the state's largest business organization.
    Reps. Craig Eiland, D-Galveston, and Todd Smith, R-Euless, said House Bill 1348 would clarify and modernize the state's century-old ban against corporate and union money being used for political activities. Despite that ban, some groups use that money for so-called issue ads that attack candidates or stop just short of endorsing the hopefuls they favor. The bill would explicitly outlaw those ads in the last 60 days before an election.
    Sens. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, and Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, D-McAllen, will carry the legislation in the upper chamber.
    "Preventing unlimited and undisclosed big union and corporate contributions which flood the process with last-minute attack ads isn't a Republican issue and it isn't a Democratic issue," Smith said at a Capitol news conference. "It's a 'people' issue that ensures our political system responds to the public and has their faith."
    Money, whether it's from plaintiffs' lawyers supporting Democrats or from business interests promoting Republicans, dictates the direction of state policy such as public education and abortion rights.
    In 2002, the Texas Association of Business spent $1.9 million of corporate money — largely from anonymous sources and at unprecedented levels — for direct mail to voters in two dozen legislative districts and then refused to identify the corporations that paid for the ads. It defended the ads as protected free speech that sought to educate voters without advocating the election or defeat of any candidate because they avoided using so-called magic words such as "support" or "oppose."
    Eiland compared it to corporations buying the naming rights to sports stadiums: "We don't need to authorize corporate naming rights to politicians and elected officials."
    He added that there is enough campaign money from individual donors without tapping corporate or union sources.
    "There is plenty of money to go around," Eiland said. "We don't need corporate or union money to add to the tens of millions of dollars that currently fund elections in Texas."
    Although Eiland and Smith said they are not trying to affect the criminal investigation into what happened during the 2002 legislative elections, they said the public demands action.
    "The public is disgusted and turned off by these attack ads when they learn they are paid with unlimited, undisclosed union and corporate money," Smith said.
    At the news conference, representatives from organizations as varied as AARP Texas, the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Texas League of Women Voters flanked the lawmakers.
    Suzii Paynter with the Baptist General Convention of Texas said anonymous attack ads make it difficult to recruit public servants.
    "Their life, their family will be slammed by sham issue ads," she said. "And good people willing to do public service are prevented from entering the arena because of the way money is used inappropriately in Texas."
    Smith said the magic-words test, the cornerstone of the legal defense by the state business group, should not allow the use of secret corporate money to finance attack ads in the last weeks of a campaign. He quoted a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision as saying the magic-words test is "functionally meaningless."
    "A magic-word test would destroy both our 100-year-old prohibition against big union and corporate contributions and our disclosure law," Smith said.
    The bill would prohibit corporate or union money from being used to advocate the election or defeat of a candidate, regardless of whether the magic words are used. It would allow the money to be spent on a political committee's overhead — such as office rent, phones and clerical salaries — but would bar using it for political consulting, phone banks or campaign fund raising.
    Also, Texans for a Republican Majority, a political committee created by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, spent $600,000 of corporate money on consultants, pollsters and fund-raisers, arguing that those expenses represented overhead for the political action committee and not money to help candidates.
    Last fall, a Travis County grand jury indicted three of DeLay's associates and eight corporate donors, three of which have settled with the district attorney. District Attorney Ronnie Earle continues to investigate the statewide business group as well as the roles of House Speaker Tom Craddick and lobbyist Mike Toomey, formerly the chief of staff for Gov. Rick Perry.
    That might make passing the legislation difficult.
    Craddick said Monday that he would neither support nor oppose the bill. Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and the Texas Association of Business are all taking a wait-and-see attitude.
    Eiland said he suspects some Texas corporations will fight the bill ...
    Full Story: Austin American-Statesman




     
    Zogby Poll Shows Clinton Leading Potential 2008 Democratic Field. CNN's Inside Politics reported a new Zogby poll "is the latest to find that Senator Hillary Clinton is the top choice among potential Democratic presidential contenders. John Kerry was second, followed by the party's 2000 nominee, Al Gore. John Edwards and Howard Dean round out the top five." US News Bulletin has learned Clinton led with 32% in the poll of 370 likely Democratic voters, followed by Kerry at 16% and Gore at 12%.
    Conservatives Expect Clinton To Win Democratic Nomination In 2008. The Washington Times reports in its "Inside Politics" column, "Conservatives expect Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat, to snag her party's presidential nomination in 2008, according to a straw poll conducted last week during the Conservative Political Action Conference and released yesterday."



    Thursday, February 24, 2005


     
    Gunman, two others dead in Texas shooting
    TYLER, Texas --
    A gunman wearing a bulletproof vest opened fire outside a county courthouse in Tyler, Texas, Thursday, killing his estranged wife and a bystander.
    Police said the shooter, David Hernandez Arroyo, fled from the scene in a vehicle, but officers fatally wounded him during a chase, KLTV-TV in Tyler reported.
    Three other people were wounded when the gunman opened fire with a rifle outside the Smith County Courthouse about 1:30 p.m. They were identified as a Tyler police detective, a Smith County sheriff's deputy, and Arroyo's son.
    The Arroyo's were reportedly at the courthouse on a child support or custody issue.
    I saw people lying everywhere that had been shot, attorney Nathan Hoffman told the Tyler Morning Telegram after the shooting spree. He works in an office across the street.
    Hoffman said he locked the front door of his office and crawled on the floor, urging co-workers to get down.
    Print article · · Email This Article




     
    Every Hour someone commits a hate crime.

    Every Day eight blacks, three whites, three gays, three Jews and one Latino become hate crime victims.

    Every Week a cross is burned.

    Hate in America is a dreadful, daily constant. The dragging death of a black man in Jasper, Texas; the crucifixion of a gay man in Laramie, Wyoming; and the murder of 168 citizens in Oklahoma City are not "isolated incidents." They are eruptions of a nation’s intolerance. Bias is a human condition, and American history is rife with prejudice against groups and individuals because of their race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or other differences. The 20th Century saw major progress in outlawing discrimination, and most Americans today support integrated schools and neighborhoods. But stereotypes and unequal treatment persist, an atmosphere often exploited by hate groups. When bias motivates an unlawful act, it is considered a hate crime. Race and religion inspire most hate crimes, but hate today wears many faces. Forty percent of bias crimes target blacks and 13 percent are anti-white, but the greatest growth in hate crimes in recent years is against Asians and homosexuals, according to FBI statistics. Once considered a Southern phenomenon, today seven out of eight hate crimes take place in the North and West. In the late 1990s there were more public Ku Klux Klan rallies, complete with white sheets, in Pennsylvania than in Alabama. States with large immigrant populations, such as California, find the "hate line" between people of color. Spread on the Internet and accessible by personal computers, hate clearly knows no geographic bounds. The Good News Is … All over the country people are fighting hate. Standing up to hate mongers. Promoting tolerance and inclusion. More often than not, when hate flares up, good erupts, too. This guide sets out 10 principles for fighting hate along with a collection of inspiring stories of people who acted, often alone at first, to push hate out of their communities. Their efforts usually made smaller headlines than the acts of the haters, but they made a difference. Even in the wake of some of the most horrific hate crimes of the last century, seeds of promise sprouted. Whether you need a crash course to deal with an upcoming Ku Klux Klan rally, a primer on the media or a long-range plan to promote tolerance in your community, you will find practical advice, good examples and additional sources in this guide. The steps outlined here have been tested in scores of communities across the U.S. by a wide range of human rights, religious and civic organizations. Our experience shows that one person, acting from conscience and love, can neutralize bigotry. A group of people can create a moral barrier to hate from the site http://www.splcenter.com I encourage everyone to check out the site and read the article on the ten things to stop hate.




     
    WASHINGTON --
    A broad coalition of sexual assault groups, medical professionals, religious leaders, and advocates for womens health and rights sent a letter today to the U.S. Department of Justice urging it to amend the first-ever national protocol for treating sexual assault survivors to include information about preventing pregnancy."The failure to include a specific discussion of emergency contraception in the first national protocol for sexual assault treatment is a glaring omission in an otherwise thorough document. Including counseling about pregnancy prevention and the provision of emergency contraception would help rape victims prevent unintended pregnancies, avoid abortions, and safeguard their mental health," todays letter argues. more




     
    Subject: From Senator John McCain
    In light of the recent appeals court ruling in California, with respect to the Pledge of Allegiance, the following recollection from Senator John McCain is very appropriate:. "The Pledge of Allegiance" - Senator John McCain As you may know, I spent five and one half years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. In the early years of our imprisonment, the NVA kept us in solitary confinement or two or three to a cell. In 1971 the NVA moved us from these conditions of isolation into large rooms with as many as 30 to 40 men to a room. This was,as you can imagine, a wonderful change and was a direct result of the efforts of millions of Americans on behalf of a few hundred POWs 10,000 miles from home. One of the men who moved into my room was a young man named Mike Christian. Mike came from a small town near Selma, Alabama. He didn't wear a pair of shoes until he was 13 years old. At 17, he enlisted in the US Navy. He later earned a commission by going to Officer Training School. Then he became a Naval Flight Officer and was shot down and captured in 1967. Mike had a keen and deep appreciation of the opportunities this country and our military provide for people who want to work and want to succeed. As part of the change in treatment, the Vietnamese allowed some prisoners to receive packages from home. In some of these packages were handkerchiefs, scarves and other items of clothing. Mike got himself a bamboo needle. Over a period of a couple of months, he created an American flag and sewed on the inside of his shirt. Every afternoon, before we had a bowl of soup, we would hang Mike's shirt on the wall of the cell and say the Pledge of Allegiance. I know the Pledge of Allegiance may not seem the most important part of our day now, but I can assure you that in that stark cell it was indeed the most important and meaningful event. One day the Vietnamese searched our cell, as they did periodically,and discovered Mike's shirt with the flag sewn inside, and removed it. That evening they returned, opened the door of the cell, and for the benefit of all of us, beat Mike Christian severely for the next couple of hours. Then, they opened the door of the cell and threw him in. We cleaned him up as well as we could.. The cell in which we lived had a concrete slab in the middle on which we slept. Four naked light bulbs hung in each corner of the room. As I said, we tried to clean up Mike as well as we could. After the excitement died down, I looked in the corner of the room, and sitting there beneath that dim light bulb with a piece of red cloth, another shirt and his bamboo needle, was my friend, Mike Christian. He was sitting there with his eyes almost shut from the beating he had received, making another American flag. He was not making the flag because it made Mike Christian feel better. He was making that flag because he knew how important it was to us to be able to Pledge our allegiance to our flag and country. So the next time you say the Pledge of Allegiance,you must never forget the sacrifice and courage that thousands of Americans have made to build our nation and promote freedom around the world.. You must remember our duty, our honor, and our country "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible,with liberty and justice for all."




     
    (Washington)
    On the heels of a new report by the Government Accounting Office showing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has cost taxpayers more than $200 million since its inception in 1993 a group of congress members has announced plans to introduce legislation to end the ban on gays in the military. The GAO report was sought by more than 20 lawmakers, concerned about the cost of the policy instituted in the Clinton administration. Of primary concern to the members of Congress were the costs associated with drumming out gay service members in "critical occupations" and "important foreign language skills."
    The report will be released officially on Friday but the New York Times obtained an advance copy. More than 10,000 service members have been discharged over the last 10 years under the policy according to statistics from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. Since 9-11 the number of gay discharges has dropped which SLDN says is an indication that when the nation's security is at danger the military turns a blind eye to gays serving in the armed forces.
    The GAO report says that it cost taxpayers $10,500 a person, to recruit replacements for enlisted service members who were discharged from 1994 to 2003 for being gay. The figures do not include the hundreds of officers had also been discharged under the policy.
    The report said that GAO investigators could not quantify the cost of losing personnel discharged after having been trained in certain areas of expertise like intelligence or languages like Arabic, Chinese, Farsi or Korean.
    Rep. Martin Meehan of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Terrorism, Conventional Threats and Capabilities, said he was shocked by the findings.
    Meehan (D-MA) has drafted a bill to repeal "don't ask, don't tell. It will be introduced on March 2 and is already supported by a bi-partisan coalition of Congressional representatives, including Reps. John Conyers (D-MI) and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) among others.
    "Our homeland is more secure when every qualified, capable American who wants to serve is allowed to do so," said C. Dixon Osburn, Executive Director of Service members Legal Defense Network (SLDN).
    "The choice we now face is clear: Spend $191 million on firing patriotic Americans or spend the same amount on a dozen Blackhawk helicopters or 800 sidewinder missiles. Our priority should always be defense and security." During the ten years that "don't ask" has been in force many of the United States' closest military allies, including Great Britain and Canada, repealed their prohibitions on gay service personnel. ©365Gay.com 2005




     
    Red State Alert: Rove-Orchestrated GOP Says Gay Prostitution is Fine With Them
    A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
    To paraphrase Bill Maher, Gannon/Guckert had two jobs: he had a seedy, sleazy one and then he had his business as a gay prostitute. The Rove shills, such as Washington Post mole Howard Kurtz and a variety of Right Wing homophobes, are filling the airwaves. What's the Rovian spin?Well, that evil left wing bloggers are delving into "the personal life" of Gannon/Guckert and upsetting his "family." "Personal life" -- excuse us, but prostitution, gay or otherwise, is illegal in the District of Columbia. And what about all those Internet nude photos of Gannon/Guckert (he's "cut" he wants the kiddies to know) that America's children could have been exposed to?Indeed, this is quite a milestone for the Republican Party to be defending Gay Internet Prostitution. In fact, it's a revolutionary turn around from an election in which they rode the homophobic horse as their twin issue, paired with scaring the nation half to death (what ever suddenly happened to all those terror alerts AFTER the election?).We can't imagine how the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today have not yet written any editorials commenting on the new White House orchestrated position that considers gay prostitution aprivate matter. This is indeed such an unprecedented change in their faux "moral values" that it should be noted on the editorial pages of every newspaper in the nation -- as well as 24/7 on cable television.Yes, Rove has sent his message points out on Gannon/Guckert to thousands of right wing Stepford media moles -- and the word is that only liberals would discriminate against a gay prostitute trying to make his name as White House stenographer for Rove. Yes, and the usual diversions have started to pop: an American citizen suddenly being "unrendered" from the torture chambers of Saudi Arabia and charged with plotting to kill President Bush three years ago! And we have the odd so-called pre-election tapes popping up, which reveal nothing other than that they can grab some headlines from the Gannon/Guckert scandal. Oh, and that Bush oddly said in them that he wouldn't condemn gays, because he was a sinner too, whatever that meant, since he rides atop homophobia like a bunking bronco. But the real issue here is that the White House Republican noise machine has now come out in defense of prostitution -- and gay prostitution inparticular -- as a private issue, which Republicans are entitled to practice without being exposed by mean bloggers. Maybe the White House is scared of Gannon's little black book filled with client names? Or we've just always misunderstood that they were earnest and committed supporters of gay hookers. So, let's hear one for the Republicans, the hobgoblins of hypocrisy. Who would have thought that they would have embraced gay prostitution as a personal choice and privacy issue? Who said Rove isn't full of surprises? Maybe there are even more of his"positions" that will come to light. Now that it's out in the open, will someone please tell the grassroots evangelicals that their fearless leader and his spokespeople in the media hinterlands now support gay prostitution as a personal right. Let the word spread into the fundamentalist Bush base like wildfire. Gay prostitution and gay prostitution websites are sanctioned by the RepublicanParty. Let the pitchfork rebellion commence! The red state homophobes have done been had. The GOP leadership has laid down the line: only the Democrats would criticize gay prostitution. The Republican Party considers whatever consenting adults do in their bedrooms, even if it involves paying a "Bulldog" for sex, is fine with them .We hope the red state newspapers are reporting the Republican message points on Gannon/Guckert and letting their readers see some of his more personal features evidenced in photos on his websites (which he is now, apparently,trying to sell for a profit). And if their readers are outraged, just tell them that they know it's all part of the White House scene. And that for this to unfold, as it has, Gannon had access to more than classified information. So, they should write Rove and Scottie McClellan and ask, "Hey, bros, what's up with that?" But that's okay with the GOP, because Gannon/Guckert's prostitution business was entrepreneurial -- and the man knew how to take orders. A good military man, so to speak. And his services were in need. In the profiteering-oriented Republican Party, it's simply an issue o fsupply and demand.
    A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL




     
    Denver Post, CO, February 2005
    Commentary
    Marriage in a loving family
    By Keith W. Swain
    drkswain@hotmail.com
    Denver - She was 80 years old, stoop-shouldered, her face weathered from life as a farmer's wife in the San Luis Valley. She made her way down the aisle toward her grandson, a rosary in her trembling hands.When she got to the altar, she nodded to the priest, who stepped aside as she turned to face the two young men who stood side-by-side in front of the church. In a soft, almost crumbling voice, she spoke. "I was married to Jose Contreras on May 19, 1921, by a circuit priest. I remember how he took our hands and placed them together, like this ... "she said, turning to the young man on the right, her grandson, taking his hands and placing them into the other man's open palms. "Then, he took this very rosary, and wrapped them around our wrists, saying a prayer in Latin, explaining that from this point on, we were bound to each other, that we were tied to each other in the eyes of God. We were standing in a field. There was no church nearby; there was no town hall for us to go to. We were married in the eyes of God. That's all that counts."She kissed each young man on the cheek, then slowly headed to a seat in the front pew. The priest wrapped the two men's hands with the rosary,said a prayer in Latin, and turned and announced to the congregationthat Jeff and Richard had been bound to each other in the eyes of God. I wept like a baby. I had never experienced such an act of pure love,familial acceptance, and social disobedience all rolled into one. But was this marriage instead an act of social obedience? Richard had been raised in a large, loving Hispanic family where the primary rule was la familia prima, your family is foremost. And he couldn't have agreed more. His family also believed in a God who said, "Love one another as you love yourself." At the reception afterward, I asked Richard's grandmother about her feelings toward her new son-in-law. "Well, he's gringo, but other than that ... ." Her black eyes twinkled at her joke. "My grandson loves him. He follows his heart. He is soft like me. He feels love deeply, so I love him, too. Jeff is now family. " I wanted to marry into this family. I wanted a grandmother, a father, a brother-in-law, a kid sister, all of whom were there, supporting me and trusting me to know what was best for me. In Richard's family, there was no disagreement over law or church doctrine. There was no need to head to city hall for a marriage license, because they all knew the truth: Richard and Jeff were married in the eyes of their God, their family and their community. Recently, Focus on the Family and its leader, James Dobson, announced the need to better protect Colorado marriages, its families and its children through a constitutional amendment. I couldn't help but think of Richard's family. Would Dobson feel that the state was better off if Richard had not made a marriage commitment, and instead chose to live apart, disconnected from family and tradition? Would Dobson feel that the marriages of Richard's parents and grandparents had been lessened in value by his own marriage? In his family's eyes, Richard's continuation of the family traditions, a marriage for life, in the eyes of God, was a nod of approval to the family he had been raised in. Richard's act of following tradition actually strengthened his family's values. But here's a bigger question: Does Dobson think he knows what religious beliefs Richard and his family should follow? And, if so, who is James Dobson to be telling them how to practice their faith? I suppose we could say that the larger church does not condone such marriages and that "allowable" marriages are simply questions of majority rules. But, if so, should we then disregard Jewish marriages performed in Colorado? The total population of Jews in Colorado amount to only around 1.7 percent, while gay men account for 4 percent.But we do recognize marriages of various religious faiths and practices,regardless of the size of their membership. We do so as an act of respect. We believe that adults know what is best for them when it comes to their choice of religious beliefs. Can't we also trust each other to know whom he or she loves as well? I can understand the confusion that the arrival of gay marriage has brought to our state. New things can be uncomfortable. I had never beento a gay wedding before the marriage of Jeff and Richard, and honestly I had two concerns: the "kiss" and what to bring as a gift. I did OK with both. And, as a state of good, decent people, we will do the same. We may be awkward at first, unsure of what is expected of us. But as we learn that gay marriages actually strengthen families, most Coloradans will be supportive of those gay men and women who want to support ongoing traditions of love and faith. These acts of social obedience are surely something all of us can support..
    Keith W. Swain
    drkswain@hotmail.com
    is a psychologist, aprofessor at Front Range Community College, and a columnist for OutFront Colorado.




     
    National Religious Leaders Reject Pope's Defamation of Same-Sex Couples
    Washington D.C.

    The National Religious Leadership Roundtable today rejected Pope John Paul II’s statement in his recently-published book calling equal civil marriage rights for same-sex couples "part of a new ideology of evil."
    "We share with the rest of the world concerns for the Pope’s health in light of his recent illness, and pray for his strength and wholeness. But we cannot be silent when he questions the human dignity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people," said Bob Gibeling* on behalf of the National Religious Leadership Roundtable.
    "As the Pope's fellow clergy and religious leaders, we strongly disagree with the Pope's statement that protecting the rights of gay people, 'attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man,'" Gibeling continued, "We call on him to remember that the essence of the Christian faith and all religious tradition is the continued empowerment of the poor, the outcast and the marginalized. We believe that greater recognition of the inherent value of gay and lesbian families through equal rights can only lead to strengthening of the family and humankind."
    Gibeling added, "As people of faith, we call on the Pope to pray and consider the devastating results of his statements to millions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Christians. We challenge all religious leaders to contemplate the reality that history and the Creator have brought the world to a place of understanding that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are a necessary component of the human family."
    National Religious Leadership Roundtable member Sam Sinnett, President of Dignity USA further commented, "One cannot properly teach morality on homosexuality if one excludes the vast body of medical and social science knowledge that shows it is a normal part of the great diversity of God's creation and if one excludes the lived experience of same-sex couples experiencing love and intimacy in the families they form," Sinnett called on the Pope and other Roman Catholic leaders to, "properly form their consciences and abandon their misguided attempts to equate homosexuality and same-gender marriage with evil."
    "If same-sex marriage qualifies as part of 'a new ideology of evil,' then the world is in far better shape than I thought," said Catholic theologian and National Religious Leadership Roundtable member Mary Hunt, Co-director of Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER). "Marriage, whether in a same-sex or opposite-sex context, is a celebration of love and commitment, fidelity and family, and all desirable aspects of common life. Poverty, greed, war, and ecological destruction would better fit the Pope's category of 'evil' and be more worthy of his scrutiny. In a world full of such evil, the power of same-sex love is a refreshing antidote."
    * Bob Gibeling is a member of the steering committee of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Religious Leadership Roundtable and a member of
    Lutherans Concerned.



    Wednesday, February 23, 2005


     
    Gannongate: It's worse than you think
    Bush's press office gave Jim Guckert access, even knowing his only credentials were from the blatantly partisan group GOPUSA. - - - - - - - - - - - -By Eric Boehlert
    Feb. 23, 2005
    When the press first raised questions about why Jim Guckert had been awarded access to the White House press room for two years running while he worked for Talon News, critics charged that Talon, with its amateurish standards and close working ties to Republican activists, did not qualify as a legitimate news organization. It turns out the truth is even stranger: Guckert was waved into the White House while working for an even more blatantly partisan organization, GOPUSA. White House press secretary Scott McClellan originally told reporters that Guckert was properly allowed into press briefings because he worked for an outlet that "published regularly." But that's when the questions were about Talon. More recently McClellan offered up a new rationale. Asked by Editor and Publisher magazine how the decision was made to allow a GOPUSA correspondent in, McClellan said, "The staff assistant went to verify that the news organization existed." (Emphasis added.) That, apparently, was the lone criterion the press office used when Guckert (aka Jeff Gannon) approached it in February 2003 seeking a pass for White House briefings. Not yet working for Republican-friendly Talon News, which came into existence in April 2003, Guckert, using an alias and with no journalism experience whatsoever, was writing on a voluntary basis for a Web site dedicated to promoting Republican issues. To determine whether Guckert would gain entrance to the press room, normally reserved for professional journalists working for legitimate, recognized and independent news organizations, the press office simply logged on to the Internet and confirmed that GOPUSA "existed," and then quickly approved Guckert's access. In a White House obsessed, at least publicly, with security and where journalists cannot even move between the White House and the nearby Old Executive Building without a personal escort, Guckert's lenient treatment was likely unprecedented. Yet, if there's one other person who did manage to receive the same type of kid-glove treatment from the White House press office, it was Guckert's boss at GOPUSA and later at Talon News, Bobby Eberle. A Texas-based Republican activist and a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 2000, Eberle founded Talon News after he became concerned that the name GOPUSA might appear to have a "built-in bias." With no journalism background, he too was able to secure a White House press pass, in early 2003, on the strength of representing GOPUSA, dedicated to "spreading the conservative message throughout America." This is not how the White House press office has traditionally worked. "When I was there we didn't let political operatives in. It was completely contrary to what the press room should be used for," says Joe Lockhart, who served as White House press secretary to President Clinton during his second term. Asked what would have happened if a reporter from a clearly partisan operation, say "Democrats Today," had requested a White House press pass, Lockhart said that if the chief of the Democratic National Committee were attending an event at the White House, then perhaps the Democrats Today reporter might be allowed in for that one day. "But to be admitted as a reporter and sit in a chair and act like a reporter" for months on end the way Guckert did? "No," said Lockhart, "that's not within the realm of what [is] proper." Guckert and Eberle remain at the center of the scandal. When liberal bloggers revealed that Guckert, who posed reliably friendly questions to administration officials, had recently offered his services online as a gay male escort, the questions for the White House only became more uncomfortable. Guckert first came to national attention when he asked President Bush a question at his Jan. 26 press conference. Guckert's query, in which he ridiculed Democratic leaders for having "divorced themselves from reality," was what initially raised the ire of liberals. It was not how an openly Republican partisan got inside the White House press room, because partisans have been there for years. Lockhart recalls having been confronted with a similar question of White House access regarding veteran Baltimore, Md., radio host Lester Kinsolving, who for decades has pitched eccentric, long-winded and usually conservative-leaning questions inside the briefing room. (Kinsolving is currently recuperating from triple-bypass surgery.) Lockhart thought it was inequitable that Kinsolving was virtually the only local radio show host with daily access. "The issue got kicked up to my level. I thought it was fundamentally unfair, and it was clear that he was an annoyance to everyone in the room. And frankly we should have shut him down. But I knew if we kicked him out it would be a big story with the right-wing press, and I didn't need that." Unlike Guckert, though, Kinsolving has an authentic background in journalism, having worked for the San Francisco Chronicle and the Indianapolis Star. Talon's defenders suggest that it too is a legitimate news outlet. But providing some insight into how it operates, Eberle told the New York Times last week that he rarely monitored Guckert's White House work. "Jeff did his thing. I did my thing," Eberle said. In other words, it appears that Guckert, who often cut and pasted White House press releases and posted them on Talon as "news," did not even have an editor. As Media Matters for America noted, Talon "apparently consists of little more than Eberle, Gannon, and a few volunteers." Just how blatantly the White House press office looked the other way in regard to Guckert and his dubious status as a legitimate reporter comes into stark relief when examining his attempt to secure a similar press pass to cover Capitol Hill. Guckert submitted his application in December 2003 to the Standing Committee of Correspondents, a press group in charge of handing out credentials. In April 2004, the committee denied Guckert's request. Writing to Guckert, committee chairman Jim Drinkard outlined three clear deficiencies in Guckert's application:
    1) "Committee guidelines require that on-line publications 'must charge a market rate fee for subscription or access, or carry paid advertising at current market rates.' You have not demonstrated to the committee's satisfaction that Talon News has any paid subscribers, that paid client newspapers publish Talon News stories, or that it is supported by advertising."
    2) "The application for accreditation to the press galleries states that 'members of the press shall not engage in lobbying or paid advertising, publicity, promotion, work for any individual, political party, corporation, organization, or agency of the Federal Government.' Talon News has not demonstrated to the satisfaction of the committee that there is a separation from GOPUSA." 3) "Gallery rules and the application state that the principal income of correspondents must be obtained from news correspondence intended for publication in newspapers or news services. The committee feels that paying a single reporter a 'stipend' does not meet the intent of the rule." The White House, in contrast, said that as long as Talon News or GOPUSA "existed," Guckert was free to attend its press briefings. Yet, in the past, a reporter seeking a permanent White House press pass has had to first secure credentials to cover Capitol Hill. Without those, the White House would not submit the application for a background check. But even though Guckert failed to secure Capitol Hill credentials, the White House waved him into press briefings for nearly two years using what's called a day pass. Those passes are designed for temporary use by out-of-town reporters who need access to the White House, not for indefinite use by reporters who flunk the Capitol Hill test. To obtain a day pass during the Clinton administration, a reporter "had to make the case as to why that day was unique and why [he] had to cover the White House from inside the gates instead of outside," Lockhart says. So the mystery remains: How did Guckert, with absolutely no journalism background and working for a phony news organization, manage to adopt the day-pass system as his own while sidestepping a thorough background check that might have detected his sordid past? That's the central question the White House refuses to address. And like its initial explanation that Guckert received his press pass the same way other journalists do, the notion first put out by White House officials that they knew little or nothing about GOPUSA/Talon News, its correspondent Guckert or its founder Eberle has also melted away. Instead, we now know, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer personally spoke with Eberle about GOPUSA, so concerned was Fleischer that it was not an independent organization. (Eberle convinced Fleischer that it was.) Additionally, Guckert attended the invitation-only White House press Christmas parties in 2003 and 2004, and last holiday season, in a personal posting on GOPUSA, Eberle thanked Karl Rove for his "assistance, guidance, and friendship." salon.com



    Tuesday, February 22, 2005


     
    YOU'RE INVITED
    to the GRAND OPENING
    of the Margot Clarke Campaign Office!
    This Thursday, Feb. 245:30pm-7:30pm
    at Our NewCampaign Office!
    5035 Burnet Rd. Suite 200371-8770
    Everyone Welcome!
    Come meet Margot, learn more about the campaign, see our recently opened office, and enjoy music, food, and fun!
    We invite you to to learn more about the campaign and join our vision of a better Austin. Visit our web site at www.MargotClarke.com
    or call our office at 371-8770



    Monday, February 21, 2005


     
    How is it that someone with no journalistic credentials was elevated to a position of asking propaganda questions at White House press conferences? The issue is not whether Mr. Guckert (Jeff Gannon) may have moonlighted as a prostitute. The real question is whether the press itself, in the exercise of its professionalism, should have more control over the process. Is time for Congress to get involved to make sure the tough questions are asked? What do you we should do?Here is an easy one-click form you can use make your voice heard. It automatically looks up your senators and house representative and sends them your personal message all at the same time:http://www.usalone.com/press.htmDo you want our representatives in Washington to stand up for you more often? We must back them up with our vocal support if we expect them to fight for us on this or any issue. The People's Email Network encourages you to speak out and keep speaking out, regardless of your political position, until our representatives truly hear you.And now you can have your own custom Issue Action Center featuring any issue of interest to you for you for no charge. It's an amazingly small block of HTML code you can drop into any web page anywhere for an instant dynamic action menu effect. And we will set up a corresponding issue action page on The People's Email Network for you too. Pursue your own policy initiative! See the code in action athttp://www.usalone.com/action_center.htmlPlease forward this message and post these links everywhere you can to everyone you know.




     
    The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'
    THE prayers of those hoping that real television news might take its cues from Jon Stewart were finally answered on Feb. 9, 2005. A real newsman borrowed a technique from fake news to deliver real news about fake news in prime time.Let me explain. On "Countdown," a nightly news hour on MSNBC, the anchor, Keith Olbermann, led off with a classic "Daily Show"-style bit: a rapid-fire montage of sharply edited video bites illustrating the apparent idiocy of those in Washington. In this case, the eight clips stretched over a year in the White House briefing room - from February 2004 to late last month - and all featured a reporter named "Jeff." In most of them, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, says "Go ahead, Jeff," and "Jeff" responds with a softball question intended not to elicit information but to boost President Bush and smear his political opponents. In the last clip, "Jeff" is quizzing the president himself, in his first post-inaugural press conference of Jan. 26. Referring to Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton, "Jeff" asks, "How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"If we did not live in a time when the news culture itself is divorced from reality, the story might end there: "Jeff," you'd assume, was a lapdog reporter from a legitimate, if right-wing, news organization like Fox, and you'd get some predictable yuks from watching a compressed video anthology of his kissing up to power. But as Mr. Olbermann explained, "Jeff Gannon," the star of the montage, was a newsman no more real than a "Senior White House Correspondent" like Stephen Colbert on "The Daily Show" and he worked for a news organization no more real than The Onion. Yet the video broadcast by Mr. Olbermann was not fake. "Jeff" was in the real White House, and he did have those exchanges with the real Mr. McClellan and the real Mr. Bush."Jeff Gannon's" real name is James D. Guckert. His employer was a Web site called Talon News, staffed mostly by volunteer Republican activists. Media Matters for America, the liberal press monitor that has done the most exhaustive research into the case, discovered that Talon's "news" often consists of recycled Republican National Committee and White House press releases, and its content frequently overlaps with another partisan site, GOPUSA, with which it shares its owner, a Texas delegate to the 2000 Republican convention. Nonetheless, for nearly two years the White House press office had credentialed Mr. Guckert, even though, as Dana Milbank of The Washington Post explained on Mr. Olbermann's show, he "was representing a phony media company that doesn't really have any such thing as circulation or readership." How this happened is a mystery that has yet to be solved. "Jeff" has now quit Talon News not because he and it have been exposed as fakes but because of other embarrassing blogosphere revelations linking him to sites like hotmilitarystud.com and to an apparently promising career as an X-rated $200-per-hour "escort." If Mr. Guckert, the author of Talon News exclusives like "Kerry Could Become First Gay President," is yet another link in the boundless network of homophobic Republican closet cases, that's not without interest. But it shouldn't distract from the real question - that is, the real news - of how this fake newsman might be connected to a White House propaganda machine that grows curiouser by the day. Though Mr. McClellan told Editor & Publisher magazine that he didn't know until recently that Mr. Guckert was using an alias, Bruce Bartlett, a White House veteran of the Reagan-Bush I era, wrote on the nonpartisan journalism Web site Romenesko, that "if Gannon was using an alias, the White House staff had to be involved in maintaining his cover." (Otherwise, it would be a rather amazing post-9/11 security breach.) By my count, "Jeff Gannon" is now at least the sixth "journalist" (four of whom have been unmasked so far this year) to have been a propagandist on the payroll of either the Bush administration or a barely arms-length ally like Talon News while simultaneously appearing in print or broadcast forums that purport to be real news. Of these six, two have been syndicated newspaper columnists paid by the Department of Health and Human Services to promote the administration's "marriage" initiatives. The other four have played real newsmen on TV. Before Mr. Guckert and Armstrong Williams, the talking head paid $240,000 by the Department of Education, there were Karen Ryan and Alberto Garcia. Let us not forget these pioneers - the Woodward and Bernstein of fake news. They starred in bogus reports ("In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting," went the script) pretending to "sort through the details" of the administration's Medicare prescription-drug plan in 2004. Such "reports," some of which found their way into news packages distributed to local stations by CNN, appeared in more than 50 news broadcasts around the country and have now been deemed illegal "covert propaganda" by the Government Accountability Office. The money that paid for both the Ryan-Garcia news packages and the Armstrong Williams contract was siphoned through the same huge public relations firm, Ketchum Communications, which itself filtered the funds through subcontractors. A new report by Congressional Democrats finds that Ketchum has received $97 million of the administration's total $250 million P.R. kitty, of which the Williams and Ryan-Garcia scams would account for only a fraction. We have yet to learn precisely where the rest of it ended up.Even now, we know that the fake news generated by the six known shills is only a small piece of the administration's overall propaganda effort. President Bush wasn't entirely joking when he called the notoriously meek March 6, 2003, White House press conference on the eve of the Iraq invasion "scripted" while it was still going on. (And "Jeff Gannon" apparently wasn't even at that one). Everything is scripted. The pre-fab "Ask President Bush" town hall-style meetings held during last year's campaign (typical question: "Mr. President, as a child, how can I help you get votes?") were carefully designed for television so that, as Kenneth R. Bazinet wrote last summer in New York's Daily News, "unsuspecting viewers" tuning in their local news might get the false impression they were "watching a completely open forum." A Pentagon Office of Strategic Influence, intended to provide propagandistic news items, some of them possibly false, to foreign news media was shut down in 2002 when it became an embarrassing political liability. But much more quietly, another Pentagon propaganda arm, the Pentagon Channel, has recently been added as a free channel for American viewers of the Dish Network. Can a Social Security Channel be far behind? It is a brilliant strategy. When the Bush administration isn't using taxpayers' money to buy its own fake news, it does everything it can to shut out and pillory real reporters who might tell Americans what is happening in what is, at least in theory, their own government. Paul Farhi of The Washington Post discovered that even at an inaugural ball he was assigned "minders" - attractive women who wouldn't give him their full names - to let the revelers know that Big Brother was watching should they be tempted to say anything remotely off message.The inability of real journalists to penetrate this White House is not all the White House's fault. The errors of real news organizations have played perfectly into the administration's insidious efforts to blur the boundaries between the fake and the real and thereby demolish the whole notion that there could possibly be an objective and accurate free press. Conservatives, who supposedly deplore post-modernism, are now welcoming in a brave new world in which it's a given that there can be no empirical reality in news, only the reality you want to hear (or they want you to hear). The frequent fecklessness of the Beltway gang does little to penetrate this Washington smokescreen. For a case in point, you needed only switch to CNN on the day after Mr. Olbermann did his fake-news-style story on the fake reporter in the White House press corps."Jeff Gannon" had decided to give an exclusive TV interview to a sober practitioner of by-the-book real news, Wolf Blitzer. Given this journalistic opportunity, the anchor asked questions almost as soft as those "Jeff" himself had asked in the White House. Mr. Blitzer didn't question Mr. Guckert's outrageous assertion that he adopted a fake name because "Jeff Gannon is easier to pronounce and easier to remember." (Is "Jeff" easier to pronounce than his real first name, Jim?). Mr. Blitzer never questioned Gannon/Guckert's assertion that Talon News "is a separate, independent news division" of GOPUSA. Only in a brief follow-up interview a day later did he ask Gannon/Guckert to explain why he was questioned by the F.B.I. in the case that may send legitimate reporters to jail: Mr. Guckert has at times implied that he either saw or possessed a classified memo identifying Valerie Plame as a C.I.A. operative. Might that memo have come from the same officials who looked after "Jeff Gannon's" press credentials? Did Mr. Guckert have any connection with CNN's own Robert Novak, whose publication of Ms. Plame's name started this investigation in the first place? The anchor didn't go there.The "real" news from CNN was no news at all, but it's not as if any of its competitors did much better. The "Jeff Gannon" story got less attention than another media frenzy - that set off by the veteran news executive Eason Jordan, who resigned from CNN after speaking recklessly at a panel discussion at Davos, where he apparently implied, at least in passing, that American troops deliberately targeted reporters. Is the banishment of a real newsman for behaving foolishly at a bloviation conference in Switzerland a more pressing story than that of a fake newsman gaining years of access to the White House (and network TV cameras) under mysterious circumstances? With real news this timid, the appointment of Jon Stewart to take over Dan Rather's chair at CBS News could be just the jolt television journalism needs. As Mr. Olbermann demonstrated when he borrowed a sharp "Daily Show" tool to puncture the "Jeff Gannon" case, the only road back to reality may be to fight fake with fake. -------some comments from friends regarding all this (before the Frank Rich column) ---> Comment 1Something is VERY fishy about this wholething. This guy is NOT good looking by any standard;he's not a bear, he's a whale; he's not beefcake, he'sa potato; and he sure aint a cute skinny boy oranything else. I think the whole thing is a set up tomake gay people look bad. I think the wholeporn-website thing is yet ANOTHER fake role for thisguy. And I'm sure he's being paid good Republicanmoney to do the whole thing.Put that out on the blogs.-------Comment 2I generally shy away from conspiracy theories, but on reflection of a couple of things, this is, as Spock would say, interesting. A couple of month ago, in the DC area, there was a report that a "pro-life" counseling center had been vandalized, allegedly by pro-choice people. I haven't heard any follow-up to the story, but it struck me as very fishy at the time because a) it's the first I had ever heard of such, and b) all of the pro-choice people that I know completely eschew the combative tactics used by the "pro-lifers". When I saw the news report on local TV, my first thought was that it was a staged set-up so that the pro-lifers could get publicity, insurance money and attempt to make the pro-choice people look as combative and militant as the pro-lifers have been over the last couple of decades. (Naw! Now 'em good God-fearin' Kreestyans wouldn't do nuttin' like 'at, now would they?) tlw-------Comment 3 --- following the Wolf Blitzer CNN Gannon/Guckert interview --- Good God, what disgusting, unmitigated brass Chutzpah!!! After the way his ilk of reporters hounded Clinton for his peccadillos, he's asking such ludicrous questions? This guy's reality check bounced all the way to the bank and back and he got slapped with a well deserved Karma penalty. Gannon's tirade has proved him to be a jackass, liar and hypocrite without morals, manners or ethics. What a sleezeball! What a slur to the GLBT community! I hope he can't even get a gig with the National Enquirer after this vile load of horsecrap. tommylee



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