New Poll - Americans (read - Religious Right Wing Americans) Favor Restricting Muslim Rights

If you think my collegue's post about Republicans being out of touch based on the University of Maryland poll was chilling, just check this one out. Lest you truly believe that right wing fundamentalists are in favor of "religion" (as in, be religious, any religion will do), check out this poll, as reported by Newsday. I don't know how I missed this one, but it certainly tells me nothing that I didn't viscerally believe before.

Apparently 1/2 of Americans favor restricting the rights of Muslims, including making them register with the Federal government. Now I'm sure that someone like Rehnquist, Scalia or Thomas could find some manner of showing this is constiutional, but let's face it, 1/2 of this country doesn't believe in the Bill of Rights, plain and simple. Ah, but let's look further into the numbers for the whole picture. Turns out that by a 2-1 margin, the people who believe this are religious Republicans. So, they don't believe in freedom of religion after all, the believe in the tyranny of their religion, with grudging tolerance to Jews like me, since we're part of the prophesy of the end of the world and are going to roast in hell anyways, and regardless, we don't proselytize like Muslims do. Therefore, we're a harmless little group that will be crushed someday, either by God at the end of days, or by the Holy American Empire headed by one of the later Bush administrations. As far as they're concerned, they'll give us Hollywood without a problem since they have Fox News to keep them happy.

Don't get me wrong, I've never had any illusions that this was true, but for so long after the McCarthy era, the end of segregation and Watergate, even Republicans felt the need to remain politically correct and not speak too loudly about their desire to split the races (and religions) back up, giving all but white, conservative Christians a 2nd tier role in out society. Now, with Bush firmly in charge of this country (by a whopping 3%), they feel no need to hold back on their feelings anymore.

That 50%, who support ending the Bill of Rights, that is the Republican majority. Something to be so proud of.

Thanks to Blogger Greg Stephens at New Zealand Politcal Comments for his post on the subject. Makes me think that New Zealand really is the place that right thinking Americans should be seeking political asylum.

Missile Defense Test Fails

Hey kids, what's that mushroom cloud doing over your city? Guess that missile defense system that the president spent your generation's education money on just failed. No harm trying, though, right?

Yeah, right, it only encourages nations to find technology that works even better, spurring an arms race that must be paid for somehow - usually by the export of technology to, ahem, unsavory people who may use it in a manner not easily deterred in bilateral state-to-state diplomacy (Al Qaeda, perhaps?).

So, the nothing ventured, nothing gained idea is actually way wrong. This attempt by us has probably already spurred Russia and China - at a minimum - the attempt to foil the system with even better technology on their part. Oh well, at least we're out of that annoying and burdensome Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty that served us so poorly for the last 3 decades.

Have no fear, though, I'm quite sure Bush will hold a press conference tomorrow heralding the great success of missile defense, and holding it up alongside Iraq as among his administration's great accomplishments. And, our idiotic electorate, or at least the 70% who voted for Bush and still believe that Hussein had WMD, will just cheer right along. Boy, it's great to live a life unencumbered by facts.

How about Dems use a new language???

Alright, I'm following this whole hubbaloo about the failure of the military to adequately outfit our troops, or for that matter, our failure to send adequate numbers out there, like this is any big surprise. Talking Points Memo has a couple of blurbs about this and the "official" Congressional Republican response.

Two issues.

First of all, how is it that the Republicans have managed to bottle this issue up and not have it made an election year issue? It's been talked about for nearly 2 years now. There were stories dating back to the start of the war about the fact that families were sending body armor to their kids since it wasn't being provided by the military. That's unconscionable. Our failure to send enough troops to the fight has led to the trouble we're in now, and when General Shinseki pointed this out, he was forced out of the military.

Of course, none of this is by coincidence, in fact, it's by design. Donald Rumsfeld had been fighting for years to remake the military as a smaller, more lightly armed and mobile force. Since he took office he has been trying to remake the military in that fashion. We should give him full credit for succeeding. It's nice, of course, when the Republicans actually succeed at something they set out to do, it's just a pity that it so often ends up being the absolutely wrong thing to do. This has to be the most typical situation of this president, he sees the world as he wants it to be, not as it is, and acts accordingly. Simply put, believing is seeing, rather than the other way around.

Point number 2 is this: Why are the Dems calling for "hearings," and "heads to roll," and other language of a responsible, yet irrelevant opposition. It's time to call a spade a spade. The Republicans hate the military, they hate the soldiers in uniform. They love the uniform, the trappings of military and the power it entails, but they hate the soldiers actually doing the fighting. They aren't insensitive, they weren't unprepared, they don't care how many die because they have contempt for working Americans, whether they work at Walmart and want them to shoulder an ever greater share of our nation's burdens for less money and benefits to help lower the burden of the wealthiest, or whether they work in the military for even paltrier pay and less benefits. Only now, they want to put these people in danger because they just don't care, they are, in point - ANTI-AMERICAN, ANTI-SOLDIER, AND UNPATRIOTIC.

It's time we shouted this out from the highest rooftops, instead of speaking of them like they really care and just messed up. They don't care, and don't let the starting point of their arguments be that they do care, and how they messed up inadvertantly. Make them defend their patriotism on TV, radio and any other medium they appear. Let's put ads on TV about how they hate the working troops. It's time to stop fighting with kid's gloves.

Republicans showcase future of Social Security (failure)

According to the Washington Post, Bill Frist's investments intended for use in political ads, have lost significant money in the stockmarket in the last few years. I guess this shows what's likely to happen during any downturn to our social security benifits. They may not make much money as they're presently invested, but imagine our pensions going down the tubes like the NASDAQ has done over the last 4 years. Who will pay, who will suffer. My bet on both counts is few Republican leaders, and few heavy Republican donors. Read the article for more.