Tuesday Link Rodeo!

The Tuesday Link Rodeo Officical Graphic

Welcome one and all to Tuesday Link Rodeo! This is where I, link to what I feel is the most interesting blog posts written today.

In this post from Reason Magazine’s Hit and Run, we find that Britian has established special Sharia courts to settle cases between Muslims. The Reason piece is largely comentarty about this blog post at the GW Patriot blog. While because there is established Religion in the UK, this is not illegal, it is incredibly dumb to create separate court systems for people of various religions.

From Orac at Scienceblogs‘ Respectful Insolence we have a story about a scientific study. This study answers that age old scientific mystery that has plagued scientists since Newton’s day… Oh wait this study is about what turns people on more, the sound of an economy car or a supercar. I just hope that this wasn’t paid for by the tax payers of some country…

The next and final link is to The Agitator’s Radley Balko. This post calls out two of the main things that get on my nerves (updated to make coherent) 1. the idea that the federal government through the current crop of incompetents running for the Office of President of the United States are running for the job of your personal savior (Thats Mr. Dobbs‘ job) and the only hope for this country is them. 2. The federal government will make everything better.

To make any people that are upset about there only being three stories happy, here are some videos of Jethro Tull performing.

The Republican National Convention and other stuff

Live blogging!!!
This is going to be the first day in which I will watch the coverage of the Republican Convention. Although I do support the Republican party because it is somewhat of the lesser of two evils, because it at least gives lip service to being anti tax, and anti government spending, I severely dislike both major American political parties. I mean look at both parties over the last few years. The Democrats are slowly mirroring the Republicans on foreign policy and national security policy. The Republicans are moving towards the democrats on spending, just as fast. The result will eventually be two nearly identical parties, that they might as well merge.

And now, my almost nearly live bloging:

Meg Whitman: (former Ebay CEO)

Speech mostly about stuff I care about. Lower taxes, simplify tax code, lower government spending. Typical Republican stuff but how serious is McCain about this? Remember, this is from the party of Star Wars, the 600 Ship navy, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Carly Fiorina: (Former CEO of Hewlett Packard)

Former CEO night continues, but this is a general mixed speech. Continues themes of lower taxes, and simpler tax code. While this speech was just a sampler, with no meat given to any one issue, there were two main themes, one was that Fiorina had met John McCain, (Would anyone endorse a politician that they didn’t meet?) and the other was the support our troops / McCain is a national hero stuff that one has come to expect from the Republicans.

(UPDATE: In an MSNBC interview Fiorina repeated her claims that attacks on Palin’s competency are sexist)

Mit Romney:

First off, this was the big nationalistic speech, which was interrupted by shouts of USA! USA! twice. but first I have a correction for Romney, it is conservative to rule in favor of Guantanamo detainees (As in conserving that the constitution applies to everybody the US has jurisdiction over). Romney made a few good points like receiving welfare limiting a person’s initiative, but come on who is going to believe that Mit Romney isn’t part of the Eastern Establishment. (Update) “Providence of the Almighty” opens the door to other religions…

Huckabee:

More nationalism and support our troops / veterens. Huckabee is a very good speaker In my opinion, and better than Romney’s cardboard cutout performance. I was surpirsed that Huckabee didn’t go into religious subjects more. In a sane country, the story about the desks would have no place in a national election. Decent speech, continues the low taxes thing. Huckabee made a point about the difference between Republicans and Democrats, in that Democrats believe that the government is the only one that could help people, and that Republicans beleive that people can help themselves. A very decent speech overall, and in my mind indicates that Huckabee isn’t done looking for national office.
Rudy Giuliani:
Decent speech, very aggressive thought he’d try to add more 9/11 to it…

Sarah Palin:

This speech didn’t strike me as anything out of the ordinary. It was still very good, and covered a wide range of material. She continued to drive home the same attack points that the other speakers set up, providing a sense of consistancy. One thing that I did feel was odd, was that her youngest child was passed between people during the speech. The child started with the oldest daughter, than as far as I can tell went to Cindy McCain (I think), and than to Palin (there may have been an intermediate stop).

Overall:

I think the Republicans are doing more to start the general election season going than the Democrats did at their convention. The Republicans have a multi line, multi level attack narrative drawn out that they are already selling, while the best the Democrats seemed to offer was that McCain was four more years of the same. The Democrats have to fight as dirty as the Republicans if they want to win. The Republicans made a good showing, and were able to even keep their culture war stuff toned down. I was however disappointed at the lack of celebration after the actual nomination. All they had was some projected confetti…

Tuesday Link Rodeo #8

Hello and Welcome to this weeks edition of the Tuesday Link Rodeo!

The first link today goes to the general at Jesus’ General, as is one of his letters to far right wing lunatics. This one is goes to a pro life Republican congressional candidate who paid for his girlfriend’s abortion.

Our next link goes to this blog post about George Carlin by Ed Brayton of Dispatches From the Culture Wars. Via PZ Meyers, comes this video of George Carlin doing one of his routines. This video is great.

Our last article for the day is this post at reason magazine’s blog hit and run, about an article that claims that airlines need to be re-regulated. Now, for anyone who knows anything about the history of the airline industry knows that this would be a disaster, unless your idea of fun is one air carrier having a monopoly on international travel, and other such things. (Of course, regulation also breeds creative ways to avoid it, this is way Southwest Airlines, and the airline from which it acquired its business model from (PSA) were both intrastate carriers, and were thus regulated by their local states) I should so bring up the IATA, which had its own crazy rules (The IATA’s price fixing attempts as decreased)

The Protestant Rights Crusade against women’s rights

No, this post is not about the more visible aspects of the Religious Right’s attempts to control women’s access to abortion and birth control (Anti contraceptive activity among the Religious Right is really starting to increase) but rather about one of the Religious Right’s more insidious attempts at undermining the rights of women everywhere. A major problem for much of the religious right, especially the Protestant Right is the emergence of feminism. The empowerment of women has meant that the Protestant Right’s dream of imposing their 1950s television show style world on the rest of us has gotten harder, due to women being able to do what they want. The solution? Bringing back the “Biblical Family”. To remove the code words talk, this means that they want to restore families to being under the complete control of the man, with the wife doing all of the dirty work, and the children being seen and not heard. (Or paraded out to do tricks for the neighbors) The Protestant Right quote one of the Epistles of Paul, Ephesians 5, to justify one mens domination over women. Unlike some of the odd Biblical quotes that the Protestant Right twists to justify some of their practices this quote is clear:

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

(I am a man and this still creeps me out. I would never want to be completely in control of another human beings life like that)

Friday Special feature: Fun With Jack Chick

For this weeks Friday Special feature I am going to feature the black hole of insanity that is Jack Chick. For those that don’t know, Jack Chick is a writer / illustrator of especially odious Christian Right Propaganda. (This is odious by standards of Christian Right propaganda) Much of the material is anti-Catholic, and anti-Islam (This means that it is bigoted against roughly 1/3 of the worlds population)

Fight Telecom Immunity

The leadership of the Democratic party is moving to bring the “compromise” FISA ammendment to the full house for a vote. Call or email your congress person telling them that you don’t want this to happen. For the more ambitious / rich, you can support an anti immunity ad buy. (conservative blogger links to ACT BLUE film at 11)

Find contact info for your congress person here, or have the ACLU send a message for you here.

While I doubt that any public outcry  will stop the passage of this law, at least we can try.
more information and coverage of this outrage is here, here, and here.

Why I think the Democrats are doomed

While I despise almost all of what the modern Republican Party stands for, (Authoritarianism, Crony Capitalism, big government, and rule by fear and moral panic), and its near total domination by the Christian religious right, I still hate the Republicans slightly less than the Democrats. This means that I will choke back my disgust, put a big smile on face and campaign for McCain. While I think that the Republican party is also doomed to collapse, this collapse is quite visible and anyone with the brains of a five year old can see it coming, and people like me get to watch in wide eyed helpless horror as the party  implodes. (if the Republicans lose big this year (as in both the White House and a loss of a large number of house and senate seats) look for the party to get more extreme and to pander even more to the religious right)

Friday Special Feature

(Updated with tags and more detail)

I have decided to bring my Friday special feature back from hiatus. Today, instead of pointing out an odious or ridiculous statement, I am featuring a good speech, the recent resignation speech of Mr. David Davis, former shadow home secretary. (As an American, I am baffled by the idea of a shadow cabinet, but when in Rome…) Mr. Davis, and many members of the British Conservative Party unsuccessfully (The bill passed by nine votes, because of included pork (Don’t know if this is a British term as well…) resisted Gordon Brown, the current Prime Minister, and his Labour Party in a vote over whether the Government of the UK could hold terrorism suspects for 42 days with out charging them. (I suppose that this is better than the forever claimed by the Bush administration) Mr. Davis also mentioned the proliferation of databases and security cameras in the UK. Unlike the American Republican Party (The rough American equivalent of the Conservatives) the UK Conservatives, and Mr Davis especially seem to feel that it is important to conserve the liberties of their constituents. (I think that it would make an interesting study about the factors that made the British Labour Party (the more liberal party) become the adovocates of a national security state in the UK, while the center-right Republican Party took on this role in the US) Mr. Davis, who is running for the seat that he resigned from (On a platform of restoring liberties) will be opposed by a Rupert Murdoch henchman.

coverage by the BBC

Tuesday Link Rodeo #7

The first link of the day goes to a post made yesterday by Dave Neiwert to his blog Orcinus about the effects of a large immigration raid on a Iowa town. Other posts mainly about immigration by Neiwert (and his biography) are here, on firedoglake. To make up for the old news, here is a more recent Neiwert post on immigration.

Continuing our firedoglake theme here is an update on the Haggee story. It seems that Joe “Holy Joe” Lieberman is still sticking by Hagee, and will headline Hagee’s convention in July.

According to talk left, Obama has been claiming that one of his relatives were involved in the liberation of Auschwitz.  As everyone of course knows, Auschwitz was liberated by none other than the Soviet Union. while it appears that Obama did have a relative that was involved in the liberation of a concentration camp it just wasn’t Auschwitz. (Unless, Obama had a relative that volunteered for the Soviet Army) This will probably be the big story on the “liberal” media and right wing blogs for the next several days. CNN is covering it here.
I am going to close with this incredible example of Homeland Security grants gone amok. It seems that a Colorado casino shuttle has managed to get $382,000 for Eris knows what. Jesus’ General has more details here.

Wright and Hagee part 2

McCain rejects Hagee’s endorsement, thus rendering this post obsolete.