The Family Institute of Connecticut Would be Proud!

of this Christian family that is taking a stand on the very issues and views that the FIC supports:



The only difference between that whacko family and what FIC espouses is that Family Institute of Connecticut soft peddles their bigoted messages.

Soft peddling their message doesn't make the FIC any less dangerous to this country. It just makes them dangerous AND dishonest about their message. That family is the product of the thinking and messanging put forth by the far-right-wingnuts at the Heritage Foundation and taken to into the relms of their wildest wet dreams.

Like it or not FIC, you should be proud of how your messages have enlightened: That whack-job family is one of yours!

You broke'em, you bought'em.

bush Hires and Fires Illegaly?

First bush breaks the law by firing a reservist... And then bush makes a recess apointment that is, very likely, an illegal hire:

Mary Ann Akers of the Washington Post explains why President Bush’s recess appointment of Sam Fox as ambassador to Belgium may break the law:

To fight the Fox appointment, Democrats are questioning the Bush administration’s plan to have Fox serve in a voluntary capacity — receiving no pay for his duties as ambassador. This is an important legal technicality, as federal law prohibits “payment of services” for certain recess appointments. However, if the recess appointee in question agrees that he or she will take an unpaid position and not sue the government at a later date for compensation, then the appointment can go forward, at least as the White House sees it. …

But here’s the rub that makes Democrats view Bush’s recess appointment of Fox as a major-league no-no: Federal law prohibits “voluntary service” in cases where the position in question has a fixed rate of pay, as an ambassadorship does. That’s how the Government Accountability Office, an arm of the Democratic-controlled Congress, interprets the law.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) said today, “I intend to seek an opinion on the legality of this appointment from the General Accountability Office and invite other Senators to join with me in that request.”

It is kindof appropriate that bush would do something illegal for a swifty-boat-liar that would gladly break the laws for him. ctblogger has more on the kindof Joes that are riding the bush crazy train, and how it is going off the rails on this one...


President Bush opens this YouTube video with a cheeky message for America, her soldiers, and her laws:




Ozzy follows with an excellent explanation of bush's opening message.

Bush Fires a Reservist for Serving?

Can you get anymore illegal than this?

ravings of a semi-sane madwoman:

"Docked for Duty?'

The Justice Department called David Iglesias, the U.S. attorney in New Mexico, an 'absentee landlord'—a key reason listed for his firing last December. Just one problem: Iglesias, a captain in the Navy Reserve, was off teaching classes as part of the war on terror. Now Iglesias is striking back, arguing he was improperly dismissed."

There are laws against this. This may not be the lowest of the low in bush's mistreatment of soldiers and the military, but it comes pretty close.

Don't ever tell me that the bush administration, or any other republican politician, supports the soldiers or the military. They abuse them and fuck with them any way they can. Especially when it is politically convenient.

Hillary Reacts to Obama Donor News

(AP Photo/Jim Cole and H/T to Mock, Paper Scissors)

"A snapshot of Senator Hillary Clinton’s reaction to the news that Obama had more individual donors (50,000 +++) on the internet alone than she had altogether on the net and off the net. Barrack Obama has yet to triangulate his reaction to Hillary's mild reaction to the news."

Ok... Now that you have had a good laugh. In reality I don't have a clue what that photo is about but the fact that Obama had more donors is significant:

One other quick detail from the Tribune article:

Obama raised $6.9 million—more than a quarter of his total—over the Internet from more than 50,000 online donors, the Illinois Democrat's campaign said from Chicago this morning.

Now look at Hillary's press release from April 1st. It reports a total of 50,000 donors overall.

Obama had more online donors than Hillary had in total contributors.

- Greg Sargent - Election Central -TPM Cafe

They provide a somewhat more complete breakdown of the money for both Republican and Democratic candidates over at TPM Cafe showing that Senator Chris Dodd managed to raise about 4 million dollars towards his Presidential campaign.

Got another beef with a CT Dem? I do.

Spazeboy pointed this out once and they removed the offensive name from the CT Democratic party list... Now they have put him back on as spazeboy points out again:

Once upon a time, I recommended that Joe Lieberman’s name be removed from the list of Democratic Members of Congress at the CT Dems official website.

Within 2 days, it was.

But after reading this comment from PamB about how her invitation to this year’s JJB Dinner lists Senator Lieberman as a special guest…

WTF ??@!??
Did anyone else just get the Jefferson Jackson Bailey Dinner Invitation today?? Included on the invitation, as Special Guests, no other than Joseph I Lieberman, US Senator, who’s name appears with Chris Dodd, Joe Courtney, John larson, Rosa DeLauro, Murphy, Blumenthal, Bysiewicz, Nappier, etc, etc!!!

My first call shall be to Howard Dean, then one to Pelosi, and then an email to DiNardo telling her how pissed off I am. I really wanted to go this time to hear Nancy Pelosi speak.

Can you believe the GALL of this Ct. party and DiNardo to dare and bring Lieberman into our Dem Dinner????????

…I went poking around the Democratic State Central site, I find that Senator Lieberman’s name has been re-added to the list of Democratic Members of Congress.

It is still there a few weeks later.

Democratic Members of Congress

• Sen. Chris Dodd
• Sen. Joe Lieberman <<<
  
• Rep. John Larson
• Rep. Rosa DeLauro
• Rep. Chris Murphy
• Rep. Joe Courtney

Needless to say, the MAJORITY of Democratic supporters have HUGE beefs with Lieberman... But the CT Democratic party better get their act together if they don't want to get "Liebermanned" (kicked to the curb) in their primaries as well.

Talk about the ultimate in insults to the majority of Democratic voters in this state. Nevermind the grassroots that has proven that they can set the agenda in CT's left politics.

Equal Rights to Marriage: Far Right Wingnut Editon

This is a bit about Equal Rights, Civil Rights and, more importantly, knowing your wingnut opposition, and who they chose to associate and share political tactics with. (Please bear with me if it seems to meander a little! CM1)

Via tparty at My Left Nutmeg:

"The Courant's editorial page endorses marriage equality

The debate over legalizing gay marriage is as raucous as the reaction to civil unions has been quiet. The recent Judiciary Committee hearing overflowed even the overflow room at the Legislative Office Building. Bloggers and protesters are loudly weighing in on the rights and wrongs of same-sex marriage.

Why push the question? Connecticut has lived with civil unions for a year and a half in utter peace and quiet. Many couples are happy and secure, with virtually all the rights of traditional marriage that the state can confer.

But not happy enough. Gay couples want the real thing. They deserve marriage and the full panoply of legal privileges that accompany it.."

If you want to see what CT politicians and concerned citizens had to say about all of this, ctblogger has a pretty complete look at the hearing they had last week.

Marriage Equality video highlights

And ctblogger has an important sidenote reminding us all what we are up against on almost every issue:

Sidenote

Question: How are [Maggie] Gallagher and conservative lapdog Armstrong Williams related?

Answer: They were both bought and paid for by the Bush Administration.

Maggie Gallagher is actually notorious. Back in the 2005, her and Armstrong Williams (and others) were found to have received money from the Bush administration while claiming to be independent reporters.

It really doesn't matter what the issue is. The incompetent and lying bush administration has no problems with buying propaganda to slip into our News Media everywhere. Add to that, they couple this bought'n'paid-for media PROPAGANDA pressure with co-ordianted efforts at portraying "ground swell support" with front groups in local areas.

The biggest naysayer, bordering on gay bashing, concerning Equal Rights in Marriage in Connecticut is the small and little read FIC Blog, that is associated with the far right wingnut Heritage think tank, which is little more than a bush cheerleading squad, and where any criticism of bush and his policies is a firing offense:

Last month (ed note: First posted on August 7, 2006. CM1) the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, fired John Hulsman. Heritage refuses to say exactly why they let him go, but the New Republic reports the “reasons for Hulsman’s departure” are “perfectly evident”; he criticized the Bush administration’s foreign policy. Hulsman previously had kept his dissent to himself, but “years of insurgency, civil war, and general chaos” in Iraq led him to speak out.

In an essay last year for The National Interest, Hulsman took issue with Bush’s policy in Iraq:

[N]eoconservatives, through their policies of expending blood and treasure for problematic gains such as Iraq, are significantly retarding America’s ability to act against the true barbarians at the gate - Al-Qaeda and Islamist extremists.

And Hulsman criticized the Bush administration’s refusal to talk to regimes it dislikes, specifically Iran:

America, on the other hand, having determined the mullahs in Iran were evil, disdained to engage them. But we cannot only conduct diplomatic relations with Canada; I have always naively thought a major reason for diplomacy was talking to those one didn’t agree with, in an effort to modify their behavior to suit one’s own national interests.

These critiques may seem mild, but as Chris Preble of the Cato Institute explains: “At Heritage, anything that smacks of criticism of Bush will not be tolerated.”

Have a thought that is counterproductive to the neocon agenda and you lose your job at Heritage. That is some quality thinking that Brian and the FIC Blog choses to associate themselves with. Low quality thinking, and kool-aide drinking. The far right skewered Heritage Foundation lists Brian and the FIC as a resource for their far tight wingnut agenda on a couple of issues: Education (much like right wing fanatics across the country, FIC wants to kill the public education system in favor of privatization... See Iraq and Katrina for inevitable results of privatization of our school systems) and, of course, Marriage.

Some of FIC's funding seems to come from sources that finance Heritage and a littany of other far right wingnut organizations. (You can research that one on your own, just know that it is true and would likely take another whole post to dig.) I wonder what would happen to bush poodles like Brian if they actually turned on bush policies? Would the funding for FIC Blog dry up?

FIC's sitemeter proves that his Blog is not read very much by Connecticut residents, so I doubt they are paying his bills. And unless the CT's left Blogosphere links to him, which is why, likely, he tries to pick little arguments with us all the time, he gets little traffic from nutmeggers. (You can see his traffic at sitemeter, and we have already proven this point, much to Brian and the FIC's chagrin)

So... Whomelse is the FIC associated with? People like this:

Jeffrey Satinover:

In cooperation with the Heritage Foundation and under the auspices of the ICQA, Dr. Satinover is overseeing the development of a fully crooss-linked international database of medical, social science and legal citations with associated metanalyses and aggegrated data tables. The purpose of the database is assist concerned scholars, attorneys, social scientists, policy analysts and citizens worldwide in addressing the nearly-universal problem of the embedding in legal documents of gross distortions (or even wholesale inventions) of social science conclusions to make ideologically-driven alterations in public policy appear rationally based.

He speaks widely to both public and professional audiences and is the author of numerous articles, chapters and books on topics ranging from brain neurophysiology to the psychology of narcissism to the breakdown of modern society. Dr. Satinover is a trustee of the Family Institute of Connecticut and on the Board of Directors of Toward Tradition. He serves on the scientific advisory board to the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality and is a former medical advisor to Focus on the Family,

and:

Kenneth Von Kohorn

Kenneth Von Kohorn is the founder and president of Von Kohorn Research and Advisory, an investment advisory firm located in Westport. He is a graduate of Yale University and Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. In addition to serving on the Yankee board, Kenneth also serves as chairman of the board of the Family Institute of Connecticut and as a board member of the Institute for American Values and of Toward Tradition.

Now, we all know pretty much about Focus on the Family, and we are also familiar with the Heritage Foundation's fanatacism, but it seems that FIC has a link to "Toward Tradition" as well as Heritage:

Toward Tradition is a non-profit (501.c.3), educational organization working to advance our nation toward the traditional Judeo-Christian values that defined America’s creation and became the blueprint for her greatness. We believe that only a new alliance of concerned citizens can re-identify and dramatically strengthen the core values necessary for America to maintain that greatness and moral leadership. These values are: faith-based American principles of constitutional and limited government; the rule of law; representative democracy; free markets; a strong military; and, a moral public culture.

Objectives:
Using both classic and contemporary tools of persuasion, Toward Tradition promotes these positive traditional values while opposing the negative forces of “secular fundamentalism” and anti-religion bigotry. In his best-selling book of the same name, Rabbi Lapin labeled this mission “America’s Real War”

Concerned Jews share this objective with many evangelical and conservative Christians. Working together, they focus on our common cultural, moral, and political goals. The corollary benefit of this alliance is that the majority gentile culture sees that American Jews are not monolithically liberal, and that many of the “progressive” forces in this country are advocating positions that are in fact abhorrent to traditional Judaism.

Just another group hellbent on portraying bush policies as the rightous way and Liberalism as "abhorrent to traditional Judaism." Sounds like he is soft peddling the "anti-semite" label on us, doesn't it? And obviously, against Jews as well:

Why So Many Jews Are Liberal
As a visible, politically conservative rabbi, whose conservatism flows inevitably and directly from his Judaism, I endure a never-ending barrage of attacks. I don’t much mind them as they remind me of my mission—standing astride America’s secular path to decline, decadence, and depravity, but I do feel sorry for the pain these assaults cause my family. Especially so since most of these attacks come from other Jews; indignant Jews outraged by a rabbi who does not subscribe to the principles of liberalism.

Yes... The Liberals, and especially the Jewish Liberals that attack you the most, the one's that are "standing astride America’s secular path to decline, decadence, and depravity" are the cause of all your problems and you are the victim, constantly being attacked by everyone.

Do any of you wingnuts ever stop to think that this barrage comes at you from everywhere because of the load of crap that you spew daily?

In the same way that the rabbi is couching "anti-semitism" (IMHO) in his soft peddling of radical views, the FIC is soft peddling their bigotry against gay and lesbians in their war against Equal Rights in Marriage and couching it in their extremist views of religion and politics. We aren't buying. None of us in CT are buying it.

In other words: If you don't want your FIC Blog to remain in the miniscule minority of the Connecticut Blogosphere Brian:

Stop being such fringe-thinking far right wingnuts. OK? And stop soft peddling a bigoted agenda against Marriage Equality.

I said you would have problems with the Marines CPL Matt Sanchez

I just never thought it would be this much trouble...

Just a little refresher on CPL Matt Sanchez from an earlier post of mine for those of you that don't remember:

----------

What's the problem CPL Matt Sanchez?

"Wow, who knew a little award and a couple of pictures would get me all this attention? Death threats, hate mail and plenty of people who want to be my "friend"--and it's not even 4 pm!!!" - CPL Matt Sanchez, CPAC honoree

What is the problem?

Is it Matt's service in the Marines?




Nope. He can still be proud of that, regardless of what the right wing will now say about him (and until the military gives him the boot, AND THEY WILL. Even from the Reserves.)(ed note: I told ya so...CM1)

Is it because both Hannity and O'Reilly championed Matt's cause at Columbia Universtiy?




Nope. But this is partly why CPAC made him a TOP honoree last week.

Is it Matt's association with GOP candidates?




Nope. GOP politicians love guys like Matt. Lots of guys like Matt...

Is it because of Matt's short-lived enamoured support from radical right wing pundit-wannabees like Malkin?




Well, not really...

Is it Matt's show of support from noted gay-basher and all-around-hater Ann Coulter?




UMMMM? Ya, that and the fact that Matt is a gay porn star known as Rod Majors:




And... Matt is a male escort as well. <<<(WARNING!!! Nudity in that link.) The Jeff Gannon story all over again.

Michelle Malkin is on top of the story after learning the truth about her former hero, and even answers her own question before asking it:

It's only a matter of time before the MSM goes nuts with the story. Report on the everyday progress in Iraq? Forget it. Sex, homosexuals, and the GOP? Get ready for wall-to-wall coverage a la Foley, Gannon, and Haggard.

Should CPAC organizers be embarrassed if the rumors about his alleged porn star past are true? Well, yes. Next time, they should do more extensive background research before handing out an honor with Jeane Kirkpatrick's name on it.

snip

I guess we'll see who the real bigots--on both sides of the aisle--are now.
(You can find the link for the bigot Malkin here...)

Here is the problem Matt Sanchez:
It doesn't take her more than a few paragraphs to say something really, really stupid and hypocritical. Malkin has Matt going from hero to zero, and all because Malkin and most of her, and Coulter's, CPAC ilk are bigots.

As for Malkin's reports on progress in Iraq?

Here it is: More bombs are going off, more bullets are flying, and more Americans and Iraqis are needlessly dying today because of what semi-epsilon-moron-minuses like Malkin call progress.

H/T to Matt Browner-Hamlin at Emboldened.

----------

But that is just the begining of the tale as the Marine Corps is investigating charges that CPL Matt Sanchez “solicited more than $12,000 from private organizations by asking them to fund a deployment to Iraq he never made.”

Ann Coulter’s favorite ex-gay porn performer may be in big trouble.

From Marine Corps Times:

The Corps on Friday was slated to wrap up an investigation into allegations that a corporal in the Individual Ready Reserve who appeared in gay porn films before enlisting solicited more than $12,000 from private organizations by asking them to fund a deployment to Iraq he never made, according to e-mails from the investigating officer forwarded to Marine Corps Times.

Reserve Col. Charles Jones, a staff judge advocate called to Marine Corps Mobilization Command in Kansas City, Mo., on temporary orders that expire Saturday, informed Reserve Cpl. Matt Sanchez of the allegations against him in a March 22 e-mail that advised Sanchez of his rights.

Jones wrote that Sanchez’s participation in porn films was part of the investigation, but that two of the three allegations against him involved lying “to various people, including but not limited to, representatives of the New York City United War Veterans Council and U-Haul Corporation” about deploying to Iraq at the commandant’s request.

CPAC sure is an interesting group when you consider bigots like Malkin, noted vote fraudster and hatemonger Ann Coulter, as well as "male escorts/gay porn stars" and (possibly) con men like Matt Sanchez.

Not like I didn't warn you the Marines would have a problem with you Matt. I suppose CPAC, and their ilk, could chalk this up to the famous Liberal Media Bias that the Marine Corps Times is well known to exhibit. If by "Liberal" you mean they report the facts?

White House Provides 3 Good Reasons to Discredit Dowd

Think Progress notes the White House's counteroffensive reaction to criticism concerning bush's continued failures in Iraq:

Dowd “said he hoped in part that by coming forward he would be able to get a message through to a presidential inner sanctum that he views as increasingly isolated.” This morning on CBS, White House Counselor Dan Bartlett crushed any such hopes that Bush’s inner circle would heed the advice of a once-trusted aide. Instead, as it has done frequently in the past, the White House engaged in a counteroffensive, assailing the character of the person sounding the alarms.

The New York Times noted Dowd’s distancing from Bush came at the same time one of his “premature twin daughters died, he was divorced, and he watched his oldest son prepare for deployment to Iraq.” Bartlett latched onto these difficulties in Dowd’s personal life in an effort to undermine his substantive concerns about Bush’s Iraq policy.

Bartlett said Dowd has been on a “long personal journey…in his private life” and that he had become too emotional over the war. CBS host Bob Schieffer interrupted to ask: “Are you suggesting he’s having some kind of personal problems and this is just what has resulted?” Bartlett denied that’s what he was doing, but then returned to his talking point, suggesting Dowd’s views should be evaluated in light of the fact the he was going through “personal turmoil.”

In reality, the White House does offer a few good arguments for why Dowd might really be concerned:

1. His son is preparing for deployment to Iraq.
2. His son is preparing for deployment to Iraq.
3. His son is preparing for deployment to Iraq.

Of course, there is no legitimate reason to be concerned about those facts, is there?

According to John McCain it is all just a walk in the park anyways. What he doesn't mention is that he needs a Flak vest, about 100 soldiers, 3 Blackhawks, and 2 Apache gunships providing security for him while takes his little hypocritical walk... And if he needed to go outside of “the very, very, very heavily secured Green Zone,” he needed to travel in armored military vehicles under heavy guard.”

No Dowd... You have absolutely no insane reason to be concerned. Not according to those White House talking pointy heads using offensive reasoning to smear you.