Red State Renegade

Wow I feel like it’s the 12 days of Christmas!

(See previous post for add’l details)

What are the odds that a religiously based, conservative values website would have an article decrying homosexual men having anonymous sexual trysts in airport bathrooms next to a report praising Senator Larry Craig for a religiously based, ‘pro-life,’ vote?

The Idaho Values Alliance describes it’s mission as “to protect the values that have made Idaho such a great state in which to live [and] raise a family…to protect…the sanctity of marriage and the family, the sanctity of life, and to restrain judicial activism.”

In an April newsletter, the following item appears directly under a photo of Senator Craig and an accompanying article about the Senator’s ‘pro-life’ voting against a stem cell research bill (in agreement with President Bush):

“One of the tragic characteristics of the homosexual lifestyle is its emphasis on anonymous sex and multiple sexual partners. It is a little-acknowledged secret that many active homosexuals will have more than 1,000 sex partners over the course of a lifetime (the average among heterosexuals is seven – still six more than we were designed for). This sordid fact of homosexual life surfaced yesterday in an AP article yesterday that reports on the number of arrests police have made for indecent exposure and public sex acts in the restrooms at Atlanta’s airport, the busiest in the world. The increased restroom patrols, begun to apprehend luggage thieves, instead uncovered a rash of sex crimes. Airport restrooms have become so popular that men looking for anonymous sexual trysts with other men have advertised their airport availability on Craigslist. One such ad was from a man saying he was stuck at the airport for three hours and was looking for “discreet, quick action.”

At least he’s not a pedophile (as far as we know)!

Less than one year ago today, Idaho Senator Larry Craig’s office publicly denied allegations made by a gay activist website that he was a homosexual. The website claimed he had been having sex with men for years, and that they had interviewed (but not identified) four such men.

But it wasn’t the first rumor alleging the Senators lust for man-meat. Check out this 1982 clip, where the Senator appears on NBC news to pre-emptively deny involvment in congressional sex & drug scandal involving young page boys (Deja Vu?).

Now the Senator has pled guilty to charges of lewd public conduct, in an airport restroom known for homosexual hook-ups. The police reports claim that Craig made the moves on an undercover officer in a restroom stall.

After pleading guilty and paying the fines, Craig now says he isn’t guilty, and that it was a mistake to do so.

One might guess that his personal ‘flip-flop’ has to do with the fact that he’s up for re-election in 2008.

Or maybe it was due to pressure from Roboto-Republican presidential candidate and Hair-Club-For-Men founder Mitt Romney (perhaps no stranger to airport bathrooms himself), whose Idaho campaign was headed by Craig (he was also the campaign’s co-liason to the US Senate).

In a video posted on Youtube by the Romney campaign (now quickly un-posted), Craig explains his backing for Romney is due in part because “he has very strong family values…That’s something I grew up with and believe in.”

Or could it simply be that soliciting a plainclothes officer for sex in a public restroom doesn’t fit well with a man who on TV in 1999 rambled about “what a bad boy, a naughty boy” Bill Clinton was.

In perfect Republican fashion, Craig also has a perfectly homophobic voting record:

* Voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. (Jun 2006)
* Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. (Jun 2002)
* Voted NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. (Jun 2000)
* Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Sep 1996)
* Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation. (Sep 1996)

Brings to mind Florida State Representative Bob Allen, who last month was popped for offering another undercover cop, in a different bathroom, $20 for a blowjob!

Allen was the author of Florida House Bill #1475, the “Lewd Or Lascivious Exhibition Act” which would have made public masturbation in the presence of another consenting adult illegal; as well as the “Sexual Predators Elimination Act,” which would eliminate plea bargaining and parole and force mandatory life sentencing for sexual predators.

In another similarity, Allen was co-head of John McCain’s Florida campaign.

Mr. Allen lists “watersports” as his sole recreational interest…

Just when you thought he would never leave, Gonzales suddenly quits!

I think there’s a very good reason for his sudden departure, and my guess is someday we will know it. Till then it’s anyone’s guess…

For now though, our Justice Department has been left an absolute mess (perhaps that’s best for Bush, Rove, and Cheney). Besides having no Attorney General, there’s also no deputy attorney general, no No. 3, and no head of the Office of Legal Counsel.

And the administration will be in no rush to replace Gonzales. After all, any replacement will end up getting absolutely grilled for weeks in confirmation hearings. Think of the dirty laundry that might come up (particularly from within the Justice department, now that Gonzo’s not there to squelch it).

Let’s just hope the lame-ass congress can redeem itself, when that time comes, by not bending over and allowing yet another corrupt Bush crony to step right in.

Right now, it can only get better…

“How many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?”

This week video surfaced from 1994 of Dick Cheney being asked about the decision to NOT continue on into Baghdad at the end of Gulf War I.

As I understand it, he was speaking to the “Association of Wingnuts Who Feel We Should Invade The Rest of The World,” or American Enterprise Institute for short:

Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?

A: No.

Q: Why not?

A: Because if we’d gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families — it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?

Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.

YAY…Now that he’s no longer under the umbrella of executive privilege, let’s make him testify!

This is not a joke!

Yet another brilliant idea to help bring stability to the Middle East:

“The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.

The (Israeli) Prime Minister’s Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a “bonus” the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram.

The new pipeline would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel.”

PISSES ME OFF!

In the aftermath of the bridge collapse, CNN spent a half hour blathering today about our crumbling architecture and the money required to fix it.

There are 70,000 more bridges in our country that have been rated structurally deficient, and engineers estimate that fixing these bridges will take at least a generation and cost more than $188 billion.

$188 billion just for bridges!

N.Y. City has exploding 100-year old steam pipes. The New Orleans levees will never be rebuilt to the level of promises made. Roadways and interstates are starting to fall apart. And forget about our water systems.

What pisses me off is that the answer is plain as day: The money’s all going to Iraq! Well not to the iraqis per se…just the contractors, arms dealers, oil companies, and friends of Dick Cheney’s that have profited obscenely from our ‘mistake’ in the Middle East.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers:

“It will cost $9.4 billion a year for 20 years to eliminate all bridge deficiencies. Long-term underinvestment is compounded by the lack of a Federal transportation program”

Well we are spending $10 billion A MONTH in Iraq. That’s such an unreal number it means nothing to us anymore. But it equates to about $200,000 per minute!

The National Priorities Project has more information on what could be done with this money in the areas of housing, education, health, and college scholarships.

Perhaps the Bushies are determined to enrich themselves even at the cost of making us a third-world country?

Am I wrong, but weren’t the last mid-term elections viewed as a ‘vote for change?’

After flip flopping and giving in on every bill relating to defense, and the Iraq troops, the do-nothing congress has also compromised again on a proposal to boost automobile fuel mileage.

At the same time, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid continue to insist that impeachment is ‘off the table,’ despite a petition for Cheney’s impeachment that now lists 127,000 names. As well, An American Research Group poll last month found a majority of Americans — 54 percent — favored Cheney’s impeachment.

Aren’t these people called ‘representatives’ for a reason?

Another upcoming issue is Health Care. We will see if they take a real stand on that or just pay it enough lip service to say that they tried….

While the administration and the media keep scapegoating Iran and Syria for the mayhem in Iraq:

Some media outlets report that the insurgency is largely made up of Iraqis, and that foreign fighters are but a small minority of the EDTWAUHIWDFTT.** (In effect, the ‘evil-doers’ are simply Iraqis who are fighting the occupation of their land by a hostile foreign power).

The LA Times reports in a sobering article that the overwhelming majority of the inurgensts come not from Syria or Iran but from our “Ally,” Saudi Arabia. (Coincidentally, 15 of the 19 9-11 hijackers also came from Saudi Arabia).

And finally, our own government released a study this week which basically said that we cannot account for 190,000 guns issued to Iraq security forces in the last two years (not to mention hundreds of thousands of helmets and body armor pieces).

So tell me again who is arming the insurgents?

**EDTWAUHIWDFTT: ‘Evil-Doers-That-Will-Attack-Us-Here-If-We-Don’t-Fight-Them-There’