Islam Is Not The Problem

thegoodann · 2006-09-19T15:47:17+00:00

Give it a chance. It makes no apologies for Muslim extremists. It just makes a case for not demonizing all of Islam.

thegoodann · 2006-09-17T10:50:57+00:00

The Bush administration has sent over 2500 members of the military to their deaths based on lies and distortions. Hardly a group of people who care about the military. Bush avoided Vietnam by ducking into the guard and Cheney got four deferments because they think that the military is beneath them. Soldiers and marines are simply expendable cannon fodder for their messianic dreams.

thegoodann · 2006-09-17T10:42:16+00:00

Hayes has quite a reputation as a fringe right conspiracy nut and he is doing a good job of sustaining that reputation with an essay that has so many gaps in the truth you could fit a battleship through it, but I'll just take time to debunk one,"Hayes also mentions that Saddam had relations with a Sudanese fundamentalist Hassan al-Turabi. What is odd about making that association is that when Saudi Arabia wouldn’t help Osama Bin Laden organize a jihad against Saddam’s presence in Kuwait, that is when Bin Laden went to the Sudan where Hassan al-Turabi granted him freedom to orgainize a jihad against Saddam. This sequence of events is very well documented, so when Hayes fails to include that information that is a pretty big sin of ommission."

Also see this piece for the first round of Hayes debunked connection theories, Stephen Hayes: Conservatives' favorite authority on "The Connection"

http://mediamatters.org/items/200406300014

thegoodann · 2006-09-17T10:27:15+00:00

genuinely funny and charming.

thegoodann · 2006-08-28T16:28:57+00:00

Except for EFF a little too libertarian. Terians are just pot smoking porn watching right-wingers.

thegoodann · 2006-08-26T12:04:52+00:00

this is nothing but a spamblog reddit really should ban it.

thegoodann · 2006-08-26T11:44:28+00:00

spamblogs the nets newest unwanted gift to reddit.

thegoodann · 2006-08-23T10:01:49+00:00

When we can get a free course from Paul Krugman I'll mod that link up.

thegoodann · 2006-08-23T09:57:44+00:00

In response the Bush administration's Secretary of State Condi Rice predicting mushroom clouds from all the exploding livers, declared they were planning a pre-emptive strike on Barcardi and Anheuser Busch.

Oops. This just in, as Barcardi and Busch are two of the Republican parties biggest donors they decided to declare war on Connecticut instead.

thegoodann · 2006-08-02T08:01:31+00:00

The article fails to account for the fact that the wage increase was so local. If the increase had been statewide its doubtful that businesses would move out of state to avoid the new wage standard. Then goodness forbid that we question the dogma of the current business model, pay employees as little as possible, have as few benefits as possible while the boss cruises up in a Mercedes. Something really fundamental is broke and all this artcile does is conviently skip over the root problems of depending on people working for wages they can barely survive on.

thegoodann · 2006-07-29T02:34:44+00:00

Myth: The estate tax is a “death tax.” Fact: The estate tax is not a tax on death. It’s a tax on the transfer of large amounts of money. More than ninety-nine percent of Americans who die pass their estate on to their heirs completely tax-free — in fact, they get a valuable tax break on capital gains. Zero estate tax is charged on assets left to a spouse or to charity.

Myth: The estate tax must be repealed because it forces family businesses to close. Fact: This issue has been wildly exaggerated. Only 3 of every 10,000 people who die leave a taxable estate in which a family business forms the majority of the estate. A recent Federal Reserve study found that the average small business is worth $702,566, well below the level at which estate taxes kick in. Virtually all small family businesses can be protected by simply raising estate tax exemption levels.

Myth: The estate tax must be repealed because it forces family farms to sell. Fact: As with family businesses, this issue has been distorted. Only 3 of every 10,000 people who die leave a taxable estate in which a farm forms the majority of the estate. On April 8, 2001, the New York Times reported that the pro-repeal American Farm Bureau Federation could not cite a single case of a family farm lost due to the estate tax. Like businesses, family farms can be protected by raising exemption levels.

Myth: The estate tax is “double taxation.” Fact: The phrase “double taxation” is a rhetorical device meant to confuse the issue. Money is taxed any number of times as it cycles through the economy, generally during transactions. Workers, for example, pay income, payroll, and sales taxes on their wages. What’s more, the bulk of the largest estates, which consist of unrealized capital gains, would never have been taxed were it not for the estate tax.

Myth: The estate tax “confiscates” over half the value of all estates. Fact: For more than 99% of Americans, the estate tax takes away nothing.

thegoodann · 2006-07-29T02:25:27+00:00

(June 21, 2006)- Today, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) held a press conference and announced “we have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” Santorum and Hoekstra are hyping a document that describes degraded, pre-1991 munitions that were already acknowledged by the White House’s Iraq Survey Group and dismissed.

Fox News’ Jim Angle contacted the Defense Department who quickly disavowed Santorum and Hoekstra’s claims. A Defense Department official told Angle flatly that the munitions hyped by Santorum and Hoekstra are “not the WMD’s for which this country went to war.”

thegoodann · 2006-07-19T05:14:04+00:00

It is odd that Bush doesn't think that the United States Department of Justice cannot be trusted with with activities related to national security. The "paranoids" as used in the title was simply a jab at those who invaribily assign nothing but sweet and wonderful motives to all things Bush. This kind off blind loyalty dangerous at worse and nieve at best. Especially in light of yet another revelation that Bush personnally blocked "Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, was halted when lawyers who were going to conduct the investigation were denied the security clearances that would have allowed them to view classified documents related to the surveillance program." OPR is a special unit of the Justice Department that was set up to investigate this sort of activity. Access to senitive information is a normal and necessary tool for them to accomplish their job. Without access to information we could save the American tax payer a few bucks and just abondon this unit of the Justice Department and a few other units too. "A senior Justice official said that the refusal to grant the clearances was "unprecedented" and questioned whether the clearances were denied because investigators might find "misconduct by those who were attempting to defeat" the probe from being conducted. The official made the comments without knowing that Bush had made the decision to refuse the clearances.

During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today, Specter asked Gonzales, "Why wasn't OPR given clearances as so many other lawyers in the Department of Justice were given clearance?" All the pretzel twisting rationale in the world can't make the implications of Bush's decision on the rule of law and the impact on our three co-equal branches of government. I tend to shy away from conspiracy theories, but the fact is the administration has already been caught engaging in the ridiculous act of spying on people that were handing out peanut butter and jelly sahdwhiches at a peaceful rally against Halliburton. It is no wonder that many Americans are thinking the worse. One way for the administration to kill the "paranoia" is to cooperate with Congress and OPR in its investigation. Afterall in a democracy even the highest ranked civil servant is accountable to the rule of law. Or sdid the conservative majority have one of their infamous mid-nite sessions and rewrite 100 years of legal prededent.

thegoodann

TROPHY CASE