Empire Burlesque 1.0: One of the blogosphere's finest writers, Chris Floyd, informs us that his Empire Burlesque site has been repeatedly hacked. If you are a regular EB reader, you might want to bookmark the EB 1.0 link above, and keep it handy if you find the main site shut down or in the hands of bellicose hijackers.
And not all people of faith are buying into the Fox News "War on Christmas" wackiness. A Common Good Christmas is a religious website that, ahem, makes total sense to me:
The real assault on Christmas...is an excessive consumer culture that has turned a holy season into a celebration of commercialism and materialism. By focusing our attention on shopping malls and the consumerism that accompanies Christmas, [the so-called "war on Christmas" furor] further distracts us from the real message of the holiday.
I find it so ironic that today we celebrate the independence declared by our Founding Fathers against King George, only to find ourselves 231years later chafing under the all-but-crowned King George W. Bush. I can't lie; it's taken much of the sense of celebration out from me this year. So I went in search of some of my favorite writers in the blogosphere to see how they perceive Independence Day.Bob Geiger: No Joy This Fourth of July
ABCnews reports that physicians all over America are being awarded the distinction of "Physician of the Year". Seems strange that so many people can get such an award in any given year. There is one stipulation that you make a $1,250 contribution to the National Republican Congressional Committee. The reward is the opportunity to travel to Washington for the scheduled events March 14-15, which included a tax-reform workshop as well as appearances by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and President Bush.
Seems like an ethical no-no, but Delay is involved so it must be legit. But it gets more suspicious, "The Republicans, under the direction of DeLay, came up with the idea for the awards five years ago as a means of helping to raise funds for the congressional campaign efforts for their party. ... In fact, signs reading "A Celebration of the House Republican Majority" and "Moving America's Agenda" decorated the hotel ballroom where last month's events were held."
This last statement sums it up, "A Republican spokesman said there were thousands of doctors around the country content with their Physicians of the Year awards, and that there was nothing about the program to apologize for."
That's right and if I see one of these awards in physician's waiting room I will promtly use my free will and leave. Perhaps to find one of the other Physicians of the Year.
On the left, most of us would probably feel saddened to learn that a child would be kicked to the curb by her parents because of her sexuality. via WaPo "Alan Keyes and his wife, Jocelyn -- threw her out of their house, refused to pay her college tuition and stopped speaking to her." On the right there's probably a celebration going on in honor of this great tribute cast forth by Alan Keyes. "That will teach those freaks," will most likely be the prevailing thought for many of the right wing ideologues; most of whom won't have the courage to voice that opinion publically, but who are probably humming "Dancing in the Streets" to themselves while reading the story of Keyes rejection of his daughter.
Mike Stark somehow managed to get on Rush Limbaugh's radio show yesterday. After confronting Limbaugh with Reagan's actual "accomplishments", Stark asked how on earth Limbaugh and conservatives could possibly support Reagan. The response (or lack thereof) was just classic radio, not to be missed.
You just have to love this: "I want to know why an amnesty-giving, tax-raising, cut-and-running, negotiating-with-terrorists kind of guy is a hero to the conservative movement."
Rush has no answer other than to blame Media Matters and suggest that liberals "just wouldn't understand." Predictably, he turns it into proof that liberals just need to be destroyed:
So you, sir, a nice individual, I'm sure you're a fine guy (probably not too much fun at a ball game, unlike Bill Clinton), but still, you illustrate that people like you just have to be defeated, not met halfway and gotten along with. I mean politically.
Stark's question has been my question. I can point to a lot of Reagan damage, but by today's conservative standards, Reagan would be considered too liberal for their movement. The Social Security payroll tax had to go up. Had it not been raised, Social Security would have been bankrupt within 10 months. There was no option. The trade-off for that was the increase in Social Security retirement age, which could have been averted had the wage base for Social Security been determined in a way that kept up with the rise in wages.
This weekend, conservatives are descending on Santa Barbara, California, for the Grand Celebration of Reagan's 100th birthday. That's right up the road from me. Sarah Palin is the keynote speaker tonight. Cheney will be speaking tomorrow. It's an extravaganza! I hope to survive the pollution that comes with all these prominent "conservatives" hanging out in my neighborhood, and wonder how it is that they can dance so delicately around the fact that Ronald Reagan was no conservative, at least not as they define it.
The full transcript is at the end of Stark's post here. It has some of the most amazing contradictions I've ever seen. I wonder how it must have pained Limbaugh to twist himself up like a pretzel in order to go where he went.
