theCLog

You know a country’s in trouble when not one, not two, but three preachers are in the national news at the same time — particularly the kinds of preachers who just lo-o-o-o-ve to see their faces on TV and their names in print (preferably on a freshly donated check). In the past week, we’ve seen God’s Toothy One, Joel Osteen, in the news for standing by his wife Victoria, who was unsuccessfully sued by a flight attendant when Mrs. Preacher flipped out because of a stain on her first-class seat armrest. Then, rightwing preacher Rick Warren, of “The Purpose-Driven Life” fame, hosted a joint appearance by Obama and McCain, the driving purpose of which was to glorify, umm, Rick Warren. Now, in case you haven’t had enough of these self-important windbag Pharisees, the inimitable Rev. Jeremiah Wright has announced that he’s written a new book and will begin his national book tour … wait for it … a few days before Election Day, just in time to gum up the works again for Barack Obama. As Salon.com’s Thomas Schaller put it, when it comes to high-profile preachers, it’s all about them.

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How pathetic is George W. Bush? A day after Preznit Cowboy strutted and made a big TV show of announcing that the US military would damned well bring humanitarian aid to Georgia — “and we expect unfettered access to Georgia’s ports and airports” — the administration had to back down because Bush had spoken too quickly. It turns out that, well, umm, Turkey hadn’t given permission for American ships to access the Black Sea. Now, Pentagon officials say they doubt any U.S. Navy vessels will be dispatched. Pitiful, or what? Such is the weakened international status of the Bush administration after eight years of the Preznit’s swagger, disregard for international law, delusions about the limitlessness of U.S. power, and depletion of our military forces. After Dubya’s first meeting with Vladimir Putin in 2001, Bush said that he had looked into Putin’s eyes and “got a sense of his soul.” What an embarrassing amateur, and that’s being generous. My guess is that Putin got a pretty good sense of Bush’s brain during that meeting and figured out that Preznit Cowboy would hang himself soon enough with his own ignorant arrogance. And here we are. Five years after our own invasion of a sovereign nation, at a time when the US military is exhausted and bleeding, the Bushies have the audacity to swagger around, accusing Russia of, you guessed it, invading a sovereign nation, and making threats they can’t possibly carry out.

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So John Edwards had sex with his videographer. He was an asshole, and the whole thing stinks for his family. But in the end, it’s none of my, nor your, business. I know, I know, a lot of Americans care about this kind of stuff — and apparently care pretty deeply, seeing as how we’re being told that Edwards’ infidelity means his political career is over. To quote George Carlin, when did this bullshit start? U.S. history is littered with Presidents — not just candidates — who screwed around: Wilson, Harding, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Bush Sr., Clinton, and those are just the ones we know about from the 20th century. Strangely, the new politicosexual “law” that says an adulterer can’t have a political career hasn’t affected John McCain, the GOP Presidential candidate who ran around on his first wife with several women, and then left her for a younger, rich woman after his wife had been severely hurt in a car wreck. Someone needs to raise the issue: If Edwards’ infidelity wrecks his career, then how about McCain’s? Or is there a time limit — maybe only unfaithful sex within the past couple of years counts, is that it? No, candidates’ sex lives are none of our business (unless it’s tight-assed fundamentalists who are caught, but then the issue is hypocrisy, not sex). But if Edwards is run out of politics for his mistakes, then what’s good for him should be good for John McCain.

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John Grooms

OK, today’s the first day of the Olympic Games in Beijing (insert obligatory whooping and cheering here), and here’s hoping the athletes do well and have a good time. But, hey, did anyone else think it was ludicrous, not to say hurl-worthy, that Dubya gave the Chinese grief about their human rights record just before sitting his butt in a comfy booth to watch the Olympics? Granted, the Chinese police state is a scary thing, but how are they supposed to react to complaints about human rights from Bush? That’s George W. Bush, the man who wipes his ass with the US Constitution, who has turned the US into a nation known around the world for running a secret prison network, torturing prisoners, and practicing “extraordinary rendition” of prisoners, most of whom are nabbed without any due process whatsoever. What’s even more pathetic is that Bush and his few remaining hardcore supporters have no clue as to how outrageous his anti-Chinese remarks really were.

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People who are tired of politics, high gasoline prices, fist-fighting jocks, and, especially, the world’s avalanche of bad environmental news have something to be glad about today. Researchers and scientists with the Wildlife Conservation Society have found more than 125,000 western lowland gorillas in the Congo. Before this discovery, the species was listed as critically endangered.  Part of the gorillas’ habitat is being declared a national park, and agreements have been reached with logging companies in the Congo to insure responsible harvesting practices that preserve the parts of the primates’ habitat not included in the park land. In related news, Sen. John McCain announced his support for an ExxonMobil plan to drill for oil in the gorillas’ habitat. The presumptive nominee of the GOP (Grand OLD Party) declared, “We need all the oil we can get, and since now there’s more apes than we need, I say let it rip.”

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Remember when John McCain was saying he planned to run a civil, respectful campaign? Well, that shit’s over. Ever since McCain replaced his top advisers with disciples of Karl Rove, it’s gotten real nasty. Using outrageously divisive rhetoric (Obama “would rather lose a war than lose an election”), McCain’s campaign has been hammering Barack Obama with a new negative ad every day since the beginning of the Illinois senator’s foreign trip. The latest was the ad in which Obama was compared to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton as a shallow mere “celebrity,” unfit for public service. This is the earliest point in a post-primary Presidential campaign that the rhetoric has been so harsh and unrelenting, but it’s not surprising considering the Rove influence. Rove, who learned cutthroat politics at the feet of the master, South Carolina’s Lee Atwater, has long believed in “stripping the bark” off opponents and diverting attention from his own candidates’ weaknesses. So now, McCain isn’t just a Bush clone in terms of policies, he’s willingly given over his campaign to followers of Bush’s “boy genius.” It’s gonna be a long, long, long, campaign, folks. Considering the past success of GOP fear-mongering (and this time around, after eight years of abject failure, what else have they got to run on?), don’t count the geezer out yet.

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Another day, another death-by-Taser. On the heels of revelations that Charlottean Darryl Wayne Turner’s death resulted from a police officer’s misuse of a Taser, another young man has been, in effect, Tasered to death. This time, the victim is Anthony Davidson, 29, of Statesville, and, again, the weapon was used improperly. Davidson was shocked multiple times by Tasers at the Iredell County jail Saturday and died later that day in hospital. Charlotte police, meanwhile, are reviewing their Taser training and use and may come up with tighter controls for officers. In the meantime, as we have written here before, it just might be a good idea for City Council to take the issue seriously, especially since, you know, they’re supposedly in charge and everything. Council should direct the police department to stop the use of Tasers until more definitive research is available about the weapons’ full effects and complications. At the very least, Taser uses should be stopped until the police have finished their review of the department’s Taser training and use. If the ladies and gentlemen of the Council can see fit to remove their heads from developers’ rear ends long enough to do something for the general public, they could save lives, avoid the lawsuits we all know are coming, and restore confidence in the police department.

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Now here’s a smart move: Sen. Richard Burr wants to be sure that whacked-out veterans can get their hands on guns. Burr, a U.S. Senator from North CArolina who’s been making moves to ascend the national GOP ladder, has apparently found that one way to do so is to climb right up the National Rifle Association’s butt. This week, he introduced a bill that would prevent the Department of Veterans Affairs from declaring veterans mentally unfit to own a gun. Burr said that some veterans were added to the agency’s “mentally defective” list not because they were a risk but because the VA assigned them guardians to oversee their finances — which is what happens when veterans are mentally unable to handle their own affairs. Burr’s bill is irresponsible in that mentally unstable veterans are a high risk for committing suicide, not to mention the fact that no one wants crazy guys with visions of roadside bombs walking around their neighborhoods with loaded weapons. With so many returning Iraq veterans, who have been subjected to long and repeated tours of duty, coming home with mental problems, Burr’s bill seems particularly ill-advised, not to mention grossly butt-kissing toward his NRA buds.

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Caution: side effects of reading this may include vomiting and depression. High blood pressure sufferers, do not read the rest of this blog entry, especially if you’re also paying for blood pressure medicine. If you think big pharmaceutical companies are in cahoots with Congressional crooks, a new report shows that you’re absolutely right. The report from the Center for Public Integrity shows that the drug industry, which is the largest lobby in Washington, spent more than $189 million on lobbying last year — nearly three times what they spent 10 years ago. CPI’s report, “Pushing Prescriptions,” shows that the pharmaceutical lobby increased its campaign contributions, aka “bribes,” to Democrats since they took control of Congress last year. As Heather Gehlert of AlterNet reports, the bribes seem to have worked. The drug approval process has been speeded up (making the companies “more competitive,” while reducing public protection against unsafe drugs), while delaying the introduction of generic drugs into the market and increasing the number of direct-to-consumer drug ads we’re subjected to. You can read the report here.

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Enough already about taxpayers being forced to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or the New Yorker’s satirical “Obama & Michelle as Terrorists” cover. The real news today is that CBS isn’t renewing Billy Packer’s contract as a college basketball announcer. Woo-hooo! It’s about time, although I do give Packer credit for introducing actual analysis into hoops broadcasting. For years, Packer, a former Wake Forest hoops star during the prehistoric days of my childhood, was an very knowledgeable analyst whose insights into the inner game of basketball were fun and enlightening.

Over the years, particularly the last ten, however, he morphed into a brittle, know-it-all haranguer whose egomania got in the way of his commentary. He’d start every game by announcing how each team should play and, more often than not, he’d spend the rest of the game scolding the teams for not playing the way he’d said they should. I used to enjoy him, but I sure won’t miss him now.

As for the Obama New Yorker cover, it’s appalling how humorless and paranoid many obsessive progressives on the Internet have become; I know many liberals are gun-shy after nearly 8 years of Bush’s idiot version of tyranny, but try to relax, people! By the way, the actual New Yorker story on Obama is excellent. Read it here.

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