This is great fun!

General asshats
Circle I Limbo

Rednecks and, in general, Albertans
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

Mop & Pail columnist Margaret Wente
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

Conservatives
Circle IV Rolling Weights

Catholic bishops
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

Stephen Harper
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

Anti-abortionists and Creationists
Circle VII Burning Sands

James Dobson
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

Who else but George Bush
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell

Go to the link to design your own hell. Thanks to WTF Is It Now? for the link.

SpongeBob and Friends

See the story at United Church of Christ News Release: SpongeBob welcomed by UCC
What a great photo of happy people. And thanks so much to Sharkbabe for the link.

Hate crimes

Orcinus has the best post I have ever read about hate crime laws and why they are important. Its a deeper perspective which gives context to the recent uproar in Vancouver about whether a prosecutor should have called the beating death of a gay may a hate crime. I know the circumstances of this particular case were not as sympathetic as perhaps the prosecutor would have liked -- a gay man was beaten to death by a gang, yes, but he was naked in the park at the time. That said, however, the crime would certainly have qualified as a hate crime uncer Orcinus' description. Here is part of the piece:

"Actually preventing crimes, as always, is hard and often complex work; there are no panaceas when it comes to hate crimes. But a good place to start is understanding the mindset of the people motivated to commit them.
Typically, we're talking about a young male age 16-20 who has both a strong sense of racial identity and a persecution complex, perhaps even an antisocial personality disorder. He is most likely a broadly accepted member of his community (only about 8 percent of all bias crimes are committed by members of so-called hate groups) with some likelihood of previous police contact.
Most are so-called "reactive" offenders: that is, they react against what they perceive as an "invasion" of their community by "outsiders," often spontaneously. What's remarkable about the crimes is their real viciousness, particularly in the case of gay-bashing, in which an overkill of violence is the norm.
But many if not most hate-crime offenders refuse, even after incarceration, to admit that what they did was morally wrong. This is because they believe they are acting on the unspoken wishes of their previously homogeneous community, and thus taking action on a moral plane all their own.
This is why it's important for communities to stand up and be counted when hate crimes occur in their midst. Making public their utter condemnation of such acts sends an important message to the would-be perpetrators: the community does not condone violence to expel outsiders. Using the stiff arm of the law to back that message up is essential, especially when the need is so clear.
Conversely, pretending that a swastika on a synagogue is just another case of vandalism, or treating (especially in law enforcement terms) a "fag bashing" as just another bar fight, sends quite another message, one that in the mind of a hate-crime perpetrator equates with approval. A slap on the wrist is too often seen as a pat on the back; equanimity as forbearance."

Its Gonzo but I like it

This -- Dick Cheney, Dressing Down -- is just good old Gonzo Journalism -- using a politician's irrelevant personal attributes to create a story out of nothing, and not even giving the guy a chance to rebut.
Like when the New York Times ran a story about Kerry's campaign staff making him sandwiches -- or when the Globe ran a story that in some mystical way blamed Paul Martin for the press bus running late during the Normandy memorial in France last June.
And on principle, I object to this stuff.
But since it is virtually the first time anyone in the Bush administration has been subject to this kind of coverage, and since Cheney is such an insufferable warmongering stuffed shirt blowhard know-it-all -- well, I must admit I did laugh as I read it.

Well, I'll have to watch

Apparently Bill O'Reilly thinks he is under attack by the CBC. the fifth estate's recent show "Sticks and Stones" was about the "uncivil" war of words in the US media. And O'Reilly thinks its all about him. I didn't see the show, but fifth estate is on again this weekend -- now I HAVE to watch it.

Bloody Sunday in Iraq

Iraq Insurgents Kill 12 As Election Nears
As opposed as I am toward the Iraq War, it must be pointed out that the insurgents are on the wrong side of history here.
Now, I am no historian, but when I studied the history of Germany after WWI, one of its many problems was the general perception that democracy had been "imposed" on them by the allies. Misunderstanding the potential value of democracy, they elected Hitler, who rapidly dismantled it.
Now, it appears the insurgents in Iraq perceive the vote on Sunday as an American imposition on their society, or at least are trying to undermine its likely results by tarring it with the American brush. Originally targeting only those Iraqis who actually worked for the Americans, like translators, the insurgents now target anyone and everyone who shows even the slightest support for the elections themselves. It will be a Bloody Sunday in Iraq, and the question will be, I think, whether the candidates survive to form an assembly.
Juan Cole doesn't appear to be particularly optomistic, but he describes one possibility: "There are, of course, lots of elections in the Arab world. Some are more rigged than others. But there are almost no elections where the sitting prime minister and his party would be allowed to be turned out unexpectedly by an unpredictable and uncontrolled electorate. If Iraqi interim Prime Minister Allawi's list does poorly and his political star falls as a result of a popular vote, something democratic will have happened in Iraq, for all the serious problems with the elections."
What are the chances of a clear-cut result? There are more than 100 different "parties" running, and I don't know how any Iraqi citizen could decide which to vote for. And given how chaotic the voting will be, not to mention the difficulties of gathering and counting and certifying the ballots both inside and outside Iraq, it will apparently be a week or two before the results are declared.
The results may be fragmented, but they will be honest, at least. I am proud that Canada is stepping forward to provide international endorsement of the Iraqi election by organizing the International Mission for Iraqi Elections to work on the three Iraq votes planned for this year, including Sunday's vote. Supporting democracy is always the right thing to do.

And here's your s**t sandwich, soldier! That will be $6.75

Of all the cheap stunts that a government could pull, this -- Salon.com News | Insult to injury -- takes the cake ($2.00)
As the article says, "Paying for food at an Army hospital after fighting in a war doesn't seem right" -- I agree. I thought the American government was promoting a Mom-and-apple-pie ($3.50) feel-good policy about supporting the troops/ So what kind of hot-dog ($4.00) bureaucrat would have thought up such a thing? Trace it back to Rum($5.50)sfeld and the neocon gang - after all, they have to save their phoney-baloney ($1.50) jobs here, gentlemen!

The pink triangle side of the street

Government to introduce same-sex bill next week
Well, I've been blogging in support of gay rights and gay marriage since I began this blog last March. Now we're reading news stories about how some Conservatives and some Catholic bishops are saying the nation needs more time -- specifically, their arguments are two: first, that civil unions are good enough for now and second, that the government should use the notwithstanding clause for just five years, by which time either more people would support gay marriage (from its present 60 percent in favour, to maybe 70 or 80 percent?) or else we would have elected a Conservative government and so signified that a significant majority are now opposed to it; either way, the argument seems to go, the decision wouldn't be as difficult or divisive as it is today.
What is wrong with these arguments? Well, on civil unions, seven provincial supreme courts have already ruled that these are not good enough, and does anyone think the Canadian Supreme Court would overturn these decisions? Not.
Second, charter rights are not a popularity contest. We elect governments to lead, not to follow. Look at what is happening now in the United States. Eleven states voted against gay marriage in November. Now, they didn't vote to hate gay people, or to discriminate against them, or to ignore their civil rights -- but that is exactly what is starting to happen. The wording of the state referenda was broad enough to deny gay couples any civil union rights, and states like Michigan are now moving to change their state employee benefits to reflect this -- if they did not change their benefits, somebody could and would sue them to do it, I would think. And I noted with dismay that even the recent fight over Spongebob was refuted, not by a ringing or even muted expression of solidarity with gay people, but rather by the assertion that the disputed video didn't actually support gay people at all.
The whole thing just underscored how gay people are being increasingly targeted all over the States in response to the message of the gay marriage vote. This message is that it is OK to discriminate now against gay people in every way, and that even innocuous attempts to promote tolerance can be branded as part of some insidious "gay agenda" - like No Name Calling Week in schools.
Like it or not, gay marriage has become symbolic -- the whole issue of civil rights for gay people has become wrapped up in this issue. Thus, anyone who opposes gay marriage has moved to the pink triangle side of the street along with James Dobson (now known as SpongeDob Stickeypants) and the Matthew Shepard revisionists.
The basic issue is neither difficult, nor divisive -- do gay people deserve the same civil rights as straight people? Yes? Then support for the gay marriage legislation is how that belief must be expressed. Its defeat would signlal nothing less than a return to pink triangles thinking.

A vote for Gonzales is a vote for torture

In the Stars & Stripes Letters column today: "As retired professional military leaders of the U.S. armed forces, we are deeply concerned about the nomination of Alberto R. Gonzales to be attorney general . . . The United States' commitment to the Geneva Conventions - the laws of war - flows not only from field experience, but also from the moral principles on which this country was founded, and by which we all continue to be guided." letter from 12 retired generals opposing the nomination of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general.
Well, its about time. The vote is sometime this week.
Daily Kos has been leading the bloggers' campaign against Gonzales and today has a petition for everyone to sign. Among the 300+ replies to this post, I found reference to the Stars and Stripes letter.
The attitude toward Gonzales among many Democratic Senators seems to have been, unfortunately, that his approval is a foregone conclusion so there's no particular point in "losing" political capital by being "obstructive".
These people need a reality check -- in the eyes of the world, a vote for Gonzales is a vote for torture. Period.
Not only should the Democrats vote against him, the Republicans should too. Anyone who votes in favour of Gonzales should be ashamed of themselves.
The world is watching.
UPDATE: Liberal Oasis says the Senate Dems DO seem to be organizing now against Gonzales.

LookingGlass Wars

MSNBC - Secret unit expands Rumsfeld's domain
First, this is EXACTLY what Seymour Hersh SAID was going on in the Pentagon a week ago -- vigorously denied by the Pentagon at the time.
Second, considering how things have gone in Iraq, where Rumsfeld's bombastic neocon overreach have combined with Pentagon miscalculations to create an unwinnable war situation for the US, I have serious doubts about how competent or effective this new bunch of spies will actually be.
Third, as I was reading this I started thinking about John LeCarre's The LookingGlass War . In The LookingGlass War, an army intelligence unit ambitiously but incompetently tries to ferret out some East German secrets, and the British Secret Service, while obstensibly helping them, actually sabatoges the mission. It was one of LeCarre's themes in many of his novels that intelligence agencies advance their own political fortunes more by viciously undermining their so-called allies than by merely defeating their enemy - which, by remaining undefeated, also provides a continuing justification for budgets and personnel.

Want to be inspired?

See this post at Daily Kos :: one from the heart and read the comments. This actually IS a ray of sunshine.

Well, isn't this just a ray of #ucking sunshine!

So first I read this story -- Iraqi insurgency growing larger, more effective
Then this one (on Buzzflash) - What Could Go Wrong in 2005
And then, just as I was about to sink into a slough of despond, this one - Do You Suffer News Fatigue? Sick of dour headlines? Too much Bush and war and death and homophobia and Bush? You are not alone.

SpongeBob supports gay rights, too

Conservatives Pick Soft Target: A Cartoon Sponge Well, the vicious Christian Right has a new target - cartoons! Newly self-crowned king of the wingnuts, James Dobson, told a dinner of republican congressmen that he thinks the new "We are Family" video is "pro-homosexual".
So, SpongeBob SquarePants supports gay rights? Well, good for him!
Actually, I don't know why Dobson would think this, unless he is mentally ill, drunk with power, or just plain drunk. And say it to a fancy republican inaugural dinner, too, though I was unable to find out what organization sponsored his remarks.
We watched the whole video on Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight. Its just a cheery little riff with Barney, the Muppets, Winnie the Pooh and SpongeBob dancing and singing about how wonderful families are. Thinking that this video promotes some kind of insidious agenda is crazy, unless you think that anything that promotes tolerance and joy is some kind of plot. Maybe in Dobson's America, it is.
The video is produced by the We Are Family Foundation, which also dares to have on its website the Tolerance Declaration from the Southern Poverty Law Centre.
"Tolerance is a personal decision that comes from a belief that every person is a treasure. I believe that America's diversity is its strength. I also recognize that ignorance, insensitivity and bigotry can turn that diversity into a source of prejudice and discrimination. To help keep diversity a wellspring of strength and make America a better place for all, I pledge to have respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race, sexual identity or other characteristics are different from my own."
Well, can't have THAT in today's America, can we?
After showing the video, Keith quoted Mark Barondess, the foundation's lawyer, as saying that Dobson and the rest who are criticizing this video 'need medication.' Well, said Obermann, we agree.
I wonder if the republicans applauded Dobson at the dinner -- the NYT article doesn't say. But the next day, Dobson's assistant repeated the charge "We see the video as an insidious means by which the organization is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids. It is a classic bait and switch." Switching to WHAT he didn't say. But they seem to think they have to draw the line at tolerance, because its so dangerous for America.
Countdown is now the only US news show we can stand to watch, because Keith Olbermann is the only "progressive" newsperson on American TV now - he covered the Ohio vote recount and hearings when no other network was covering them; his "bloggerman" blog is the only newsperson's blog that really is one (most of the rest just shill for their upcoming shows); and generally he demonstrates little patience with the stupider aspects of the republicans or the Christian Right.
The week before last, he bashed an Ann Coulter doll to pieces on the set. It was great!
And by the way, there is also a WeAreFamily organization that supports gay and lesbian youth in Charleston, SC. Check them out.

The worst photo I have ever seen

A four-year old Iraqi girl whose parents were just shot by American soldiers.
Here is the story.

And here's another one

to add to my list below.New trial in sex assault case In this one, three men sexually assaulted a 12 year old and two of them got off with the defense that they were drunk and they thought she was 14.
Does that sound ridiculous? Not if you're from Saskatchewan, and you know that the men were white and the girl was Aboriginal.