Sinking About Dad.

Thanks to Atticus

Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun Italian Style.

Thanks to Dick

U.S. demands civilian trials -- except in the U.S.

U.S. demands civilian trials -- except in the U.S.

The Sweetest Little Rose this Garden Ever Grew.

Palin accuses Obama of being in bed with Big Oil

http://www.allhatnocattle.net/5-24-10_palin_obama.htm

Thanks to Gene

We'll Miss You Dorothy. Thanks for the Thrills.

Dorothy Kamenshek, a former star of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League who helped inspire the lead character in the movie"A League of their Own," died of natural causes May 17, 2010 at age 84 at her home in Palm Desert, Calif.  Kamenshek, who also went by Dottie and Kammie, played for the Rockford Peaches in Illinois from 1943 to 1953. The left-handed infielder was a seven-time All-Star and chosen on of the top 100 female athletes of the century by Sports Illustrated.

Time Moves On. I Love Dolly and Have the Same Nostalgic Feelings but Wouldn't Go Back.

Get Right With God.

Voice of the Day from Sojourners

Family values and social justice aren't separate issues. The health of the community depends on the health of the family and the health of the family depends on the justice of the community.
- John Perkins, from Welcoming Justice, co-written with Charles Marsh

Just the Usual Nightmares.

"Just the usual nightmares...a really dumb, crazed Republican Congress could take over and finish the Great Depression they began. Snooky would actually be a real person with brains. Watching Tim Griffin actually turn into a serpent before my eyes. He appears to be half way there already." Manifesto/Bio

Thanks to Gene

Holt Practices What Boozman Preaches. Boozman is Appalled.

I mentioned yesterday that Republican senatorial candidate John Boozman's campaign manger, Sarah Huckabee, had complained about opponent Jim Holt taking his campaign to churches on Sunday. It's no place for politics, she Tweeted.
Democratic research highlights the towering hyprocisy of such a complaint from the Boozman camp. It shows he not only is fine with politics in church (politics and politicians are not barred from churches, but it can be hazardous to tax-exemptions if a church pushes a specific candidate), he'd go much farther:

Boozman Voted To Allow Churches To Participate In Political Campaigns.
In October 2002, Boozman was the only member of the Arkansas delegation to vote for the Houses of Worship Political Speech Protection Act that would amend the tax code to allow churches and other houses of worship to participate in political campaigns. The bill failed 178-239. [Vote 429, 10/2/02; NYT-AR States News Service, 10/4/02]  
Boozman Sponsored Reintroduction Of Bill Too Allow Churches To Participate In Elections And Retain Tax Exempt Status.
In July 2004, Boozman advocated for the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act of which he was one of 166 co-sponsors, following an IRS complaint about a a sermon at First Baptist Church of Springdale in his district. The sermon by Rev. Ronnie Floyd was equated to an endorsement of President Bush by the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. [Arkansas Democrat Gazette, 7/23/04]  
·         Sermon Instructed Congregants To “Vote God” And Held Up Pictures Of Bush And Kerry. According to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, “Americans United claimed that the sermon amounted to an endorsement of President Bush's re-election. The group said this is prohibited under the IRS code for tax-exempt organizations. Church officials said the sermon was easily in compliance with the rules because in the part of the service cited by Americans United the names of Bush and his Democratic challenger, John Kerry, weren't mentioned. In the sermon, Floyd told the congregation to ‘vote God’ in November. He contrasted the positions of the candidates, with a picture of each candidate displayed as Floyd said something pertaining to him.” [Arkansas Democrat Gazette, 7/23/04]

·         Boozman: Sermon Did Not Violate IRS Code.
Boozman said, “This is the kind of talk that's going on over coffee tables and dinner tables nightly. I really believe pastors should have the right to speak about current issues and values without losing their tax-exempt status.” [Arkansas Democrat Gazette, 7/23/04]

First Church of the Hypocrites by Max Brantley  | Permalink

Thanks to Gene.

Happy Birthday Bonnie Grimes

God Bless Texas All Over Again, and Save Us From Texans.

Meet the Crusader Behind Texas' Textbook Whitewash.
The plan in Texas to rewrite history textbooks to fit a right-wing agenda could pass this week. The Guardian spoke with the evangelist lawyer behind Meet the Crusader Behind Texas' Textbook Whitewashthe push, Cynthia Dunbar, who has plenty of interesting ways of looking at history.

Dunbar was elected to the state board of education for her evangelical Christian credentials, but no real surprise there because we already know that Texas has a large number of crazies in positions of power. A proponent of home and Christian private schooling, Dunbar says that sending kids to public schools is like "throwing them in to the enemy's flames." But because of the sheer number of the state's textbook purchases, the changes suggested by Dunbar could eventually reach most of the states in America.

In an interview with The Guardian, Dunbar says:

In Texas we have certain statutory obligations to promote patriotism and to promote the free enterprise system. There seems to have been a move away from a patriotic ideology. There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections."

What kind of corrections? Some pretty big ones!

§  Remember that thing called the slave trade? Well, it turns out what you learned was all wrong, because it wasn't some evil buying and selling of human beings, it was simply "Atlantic triangular trade."

§  The Civil Rights Movement created "unrealistic expectations of equal outcomes" for minorities in America. And Martin Luther King, Jr? Pretty much a Black Panther.

§  Thomas Jefferson? He was an insignificant, God-hating heathen who made sure that church and state remained separate.

§  Senator Joe McCarthy was right to go after the Godless commies in Hollywood and Washington. He will be vindicated.

§  The right to bear arms is essential to democracy and kids really need to learn this in school.

§  Sir Isaac Newton didn't know shit. We have military technology to thank for America's successes in science. So please, take the time to write Lockheed Martin and let them know that you appreciate everything they do for America.

§  Along with military technology, America can only flourish economically through "minimal government intrusion and taxation."

§  Capitalism was once a great word, but has been dragged through the mud by liberals. We now call it "free enterprise."

§  The Israel-Palestine conflict? Blame the whole thing on a bunch of dang fundamentalist Muslims.

§  Moses had a greater influence on the US Constitution than Thomas Jefferson did.

Advising Dunbar and the school board is David Barton, founder of the revisionist group WallBuilders, whose stated goal is "to exert a direct and positive influence in government, education, and the family by (1) educating the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country; (2) providing information to federal, state, and local officials as they develop public policies which reflect Biblical values; and (3) encouraging Christians to be involved in the civic arena." Because if Christians aren't involved in the indoctrination of our youth, then the terrorist-loving liberals will continue to ruin our nation unchecked.

For more information, be sure to check out Dunbar's book, One Nation Under God, which is "an undeniable tool in the fight against the spiritual and political propaganda dispensed through media and special interest groups." You understand now? ThatGoddamn dang liberal media is hell bent on destroying our values. Take a stand.

"Texas #1."  Take it away Kinky . .

Thanks to Rich & Eileen.

You Done Marilyn Proud, Anne Sofie

Deportee (Plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon) by Woody Guthrie Done Here by The Highwaymen Dedicated to Rosalia Garduño and Sarah Puglisi.

". . .somewhere out in the world tonight a bright fire is burning inside the heart of a young champion among us, she is a shining example of the best in all of us. Strong, beautiful, honorable, fair , unflinchingly honest, able to think. A child that grew to love to read, to hold onto and value independent thought. A child I taught who managed to make my life one terrifically better place for her being. And I ask myself the question...where is my mind? And I ask myself the question....where is my mind? I am thinking of you Rosalia and thinking of the education of children just like yourself......a child of my life carrying me into the future with the potentials of infinite truths. I ask myself the question where are we now?"

From For Rosalia Garduno-Thinking of Rosalia, my former student by Sarah Puglisi

Already Broken - Every Moment Is Precious.

My friend Bruise is dying.  He always has been, but only recently did I recognize it. He's back from the hospital and by my side.  He is accepting and serene.
"You see this goblet?.For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, `Of course.' When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious." 
 Achaan Chaa

Is There A Difference in What We've Done With Car Companies & Banks and What Hitler Did With The Jews?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Back in Black - Glenn Beck's Nazi Tourette's
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Thanks to Eileen

Family Values- Safe Sex Takes A Village.

Thanks to Ken.

Who Killed Jesus? Kinky's Closer than the Church, but Santa’s Clean. He Was Kissin Mama at the Time.

Sex, Lies and Oil Spills

A common spin in the right wing coverage of BP's oil spill is a gleeful suggestion that the gulf blowout is Obama's Katrina. In truth, culpability for the disaster can more accurately be laid at the Bush Administration's doorstep. For eight years, George Bush's presidency infected the oil industry's oversight agency, the Minerals Management Service, with a septic culture of corruption from which it has yet to recover. Oil patch alumnae in the White House encouraged agency personnel to engineer weakened safeguards that directly contributed to the gulf catastrophe. The absence of an acoustical regulator -- a remotely triggered dead man's switch that might have closed off BP's gushing pipe at its sea floor wellhead when the manual switch failed (the fire and explosion on the drilling platform may have prevented the dying workers from pushing the button) -- was directly attributable to industry pandering by the Bush team. Acoustic switches are required by law for all offshore rigs off Brazil and in Norway's North Sea operations. BP uses the device voluntarily in Britain's North Sea and elsewhere in the world as do other big players like Holland's Shell and France's Total. In 2000, the Minerals Management Service while weighing a comprehensive rulemaking for drilling safety, deemed the acoustic mechanism "essential" and proposed to mandate the mechanism on all gulf rigs. Then, between January and March of 2001, incoming Vice President Dick Cheney conducted secret meetings with over 100 oil industry officials allowing them to draft a wish list of industry demands to be implemented by the oil friendly administration. Cheney also used that time to re-staff the Minerals Management Service with oil industry toadies including a cabal of his Wyoming carbon cronies. In 2003, newly reconstituted Minerals Management Service genuflected to the oil cartel by recommending the removal of the proposed requirement for acoustic switches. The Minerals Management Service's 2003 study concluded that "acoustic systems are not recommended because they tend to be very costly." The acoustic trigger costs about $500,000. Estimated costs of the oil spill to Gulf Coast residents are now upward of $14 billion to gulf state communities. Bush's 2005 energy bill officially dropped the requirement for the acoustic switch off devices explaining that the industry's existing practices are "failsafe." Bending over for Big Oil became the ideological posture of the Bush White House, and, under Cheney's cruel whip, the practice trickled down through the regulatory bureaucracy. The Minerals Management Service -- the poster child for "agency capture phenomena" -- hopped into bed with the regulated industry -- literally. A 2009 investigation of the Minerals Management Service found that agency officials "frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives." Three reports by the Inspector General describe an open bazaar of payoffs, bribes and kickbacks spiced with scenes of female employees providing sexual favors to industry big wigs who in turn rewarded government workers with illegal contracts. In one incident reported by the Inspector General, agency employees got so drunk at a Shell sponsored golf event that they could not drive home and had to sleep in hotel rooms paid for by Shell. Pervasive intercourse also characterized their financial relations. Industry lobbyists underwrote lavish parties and showered agency employees with illegal gifts, and lucrative personal contracts and treated them to regular golf, ski, and paintball outings, trips to rock concerts and professional sports events. The Inspector General characterized this orgy of wheeling and dealing as "a culture of ethical failure" that cost taxpayers millions in royalty fees and produced reams of bad science to justify unregulated deep water drilling in the gulf. It is charitable to characterize the ethics of these government officials as "elastic." They seemed not to have existed at all. The Inspector General reported with some astonishment that Bush's crew at the MMS, when confronted with the laundry list of bribery, public theft and sexual and financial favors to and from industry "showed no remorse." BP's confidence in lax government oversight by a badly compromised agency still staffed with Bush era holdovers may have prompted the company to take two other dangerous shortcuts. First, BP failed to install a deep hole shut off valve -- another fail-safe that might have averted the spill. And second, BP's reported willingness to violate the law by drilling to depths of 22,000-25,000 feet instead of the 18,000 feet maximum depth allowed by its permit may have contributed to this catastrophe. And wherever there's a national tragedy involving oil, Cheney's offshore company Halliburton is never far afield. In fact, stay tuned; Halliburton may emerge as the primary villain in this caper. The blow out occurred shortly after Halliburton completed an operation to reinforce drilling hole casing with concrete slurry. This is a sensitive process that, according to government experts, can trigger catastrophic blowouts if not performed attentively. According to the Minerals Management Service, 18 of 39 blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico since 1996 were attributed to poor workmanship injecting cement around the metal pipe. Halliburton is currently under investigation by the Australian government for a massive blowout in the Timor Sea in 2005 caused by its faulty application of concrete casing. The Obama administration has assigned nearly 2,000 federal personnel from the Coast Guard, the Corps of Engineers, the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, EPA, NOAA and Department of Interior to deal with the spill -- an impressive response. Still, the current White House is not without fault -- the government should, for example, be requiring a far greater deployment of absorbent booms. But the real culprit in this villainy is a negligent industry, the festering ethics of the Bush Administration and poor oversight by an agency corrupted by eight years of grotesque subservience to Big Oil. Sex, Lies and Oil Spills, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Thanks to Bob.

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New Arkansas Law-Other States to Follow.

New Law Requires Women To Name Baby, Paint Nursery Before Getting Abortion

Thanks to McGraham

Happy Day to All You Mothers.

There are lotsa good ones out there, but Cousin Jim's & Barb's Grandson Cameron has one of the best in Kim. God bless her and all like her.

Thanks to the Devil for Giving Sis the Fiddle and to Her Mama for Teaching Her.

I love Arkansas, the fiddle, and Sis Draper.  BTW, it is Arkansawyer-not Arkansan.

She came down from the Boston mountains
There was lightnin' in the air
Honey on her fiddle strings
Magnolia in her hair . . .

Sis Draper is the devil's daughter 
Plays the fiddle Daddy bought her 
Plays it like her mama taught her 
She's a travelin' Arkansawyer

Sis Draper by Guy Clark.

Thanks to Sammy.

I also love those whom she inspired.

A Long Long Way.

Though commercials touted the new fangled equality for women in the 60's,

there were no athletic teams for girls in Rogers and only boys were allowed to go to Girls' State in 1966.

Say Good Night Dick.

AP Photo/Ron Edmonds

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill could end up being the worst American man-made environmental catastrophe of this generation. With the oil still spilling and investigations into the causes yet to come, it's too early to neatly assign blame to any one person. But for now, let's hold Dick Cheney personally responsible for the whole thing.
Here's the evidence: The Wall Street Journal reports that the oil well didn't have a remote-control shut-off switch. The reason it didn't have a thing that it seems every single offshore drilling rig should have? According to environmental lawyer Mike Papantonio, it's because Dick Cheney's energy task force decided that the $500,000 switches were too expensive, and they didn't want to make BP buy any.
Is that not enough reason to blame the former Dark Lord of the Naval Observatory? Guess what: Halliburton is involved, too! The Los Angeles Times reports that BP contracted Dick Cheney's old company to cement the deepwater drill hole. Cementing the hole was, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, "the single most-important factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period." And Hallburton is already under investigation for faulty cementing in an Australian well last year.
The spill will very likely destroy the fragile economies of at least five states and it could even plunge the nation back into a recession. So thanks, Dick. Nice work. Who's to blame for the oil spill? Dick Cheney By Alex Pareene

Thanks to Bob

Leaders at the First Meeting of the Benton County Chapter of "The Silent Majority."

Black Tea Party? Right On?

"Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called 'Imagine.' The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure - the ones who are driving the action - we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.

So let’s begin.

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protesters — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose. . . . "  From What If the Tea Party Were Black? by Tim Wise
Please play the full game.  The second picture is what happened to a very small group of Black Panthers in Philadelphia in August of 1970, but we've come a long way baby.  Haven't we?
Thanks to Sammy