Text of Letter to Bush from Iranian President Ahmadinejad
10 MayFull text of letter by President Ahmadinejad to President Bush
Warning: Link is to a pro-Iran website, so consider that following it may get you on the NSA watch list.
I have copied the letter to my own website, and the link above is now going there rather than to the original source (which is here).
Hookergate?!?
10 MayIn case you have been asleep for the past few days, here’s a real nice summary of Hookergate and why you should care.
Hookergate: Poker, hookers and the Watergate building by Molly Ivins
Excerpt: Any journalist who claims Hookergate is not a legitimate scandal is dead — has been for some time and needs to be unplugged.
Cognitive dissonance anyone?
9 MayWorking Mom writes book dissing working moms.
It’s hard out there for a working mother. She is her offspring’s designated maid, cook, chauffer, playmate, teacher, nurse, and of course, the source of absolute, unconditional love. Yet nothing she does is ever quite enough — at least not for cultural conservatives, to whom she is the very epitome of female narcissism, a selfish monster eager to sacrifice the happiness of her children to meet her personal needs.
More alarmingly, it’s not just NASCAR rednecks or James Dobson followers who subscribe to this anti-feminist cant. The breadth of its appeal can be measured by the career of someone like Caitlin Flanagan, who has been a staff writer for two of the nation’s most prestigious magazines, the Atlantic Monthly and now the New Yorker. Flanagan’s singular claim to fame: her relentless advocacy of the idea that a “good” woman sets aside her needs to serve those of others, a task best achieved by remaining within the confines of the home.
Flanagan, as it turns out, is no happy housewife quietly tending to husband and child, but a “domestic diva” who delegates the actual housework to the less fortunate, leaving her free to wax eloquent about the virtues of homemaking in lengthy essays that have now been turned into a new book, “To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife.” . . .
Now that’s just annoying. Very annoying. How many families do you know who can really afford to let the wife stay home and care for the kids these days? (In the interests of full disclosure, my fiancée does stay home. I know how lucky we are. But even for us, it can be a struggle sometimes.) Why must we constantly judge one another? Why can’t we just see that this is the way things are, and start working to make the situation better for everyone?
In that vein, I offer this link:
MomsRising.org
This is an activist site that is in direct opposition to the views of the Dobsons and Flanagans of the world. Here you can find a great deal of interesting materials regarding this particular front in the culture wars. The site also offers a book that pretty much goes head to head against the likes of Caitlin Flanagan.
Also, read velvetpage on this same issue here and here. The first of these is what prompted me to go ahead and post this, and where I found out about the disgusting Ms. Flanagan.
Delay and Dean on ABC This Week
9 MayVIDEO – GOP Roadkill: Dean Buries DeLay’s Rotting Political Corpse
If you are a fan of DNC Chairman Howard Dean then you’ll enjoy this video. For those that get physically sick at the sight of DeLay, you might want to skip the first 5 minutes.
Bush renames the “War on Terror”
7 MayBush calls terror fight World War III
US President George W. Bush has said the September 11 revolt of passengers against their hijackers on board Flight 93 had struck the first blow of “World War III”. Continue reading
Republican Arlen Specter comes out fighting – Against Bush and the “signing statements”
6 MayThe chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, accusing the White House of a ”very blatant encroachment” on congressional authority, said . . . he will hold an oversight hearing into President Bush’s assertion that he has the power to bypass more than 750 laws enacted over the past five years.
”There is some need for some oversight by Congress to assert its authority here,” Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said in an interview. ”What’s the point of having a statute if . . . the president can cherry-pick what he likes and what he doesn’t like?”
Penn and Teller – Bullshit episode
5 MayThis is a 26 minute (43.3MB) Windows Media (wmv) file. You have been warned. Save a copy for replay later, if you aren’t afraid the Feds will come knocking on your door…
ETA: Most browsers have a right-click option to Save Link As, or Save Target As… You can use that instead of left click on the link, and you should be able to save this WMV file.
Found via
The Moussaoui Paradox in The Nation
5 MayThe Moussaoui Paradox
Bruce Shapiro
Anyone who feels that the Moussaoui verdict somehow cheated justice should also consider the fact that an individual with genuine, direct criminal responsibility for the 9/11 conspiracy is in US custody yet the Justice Department has no intention of bringing him to trial. For three years the Bush Administration has held and interrogated Al Qaeda’s Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in secret prisons, unindicted, untried and unrepresented–at least in part to avoid revealing details of his probable torture.
Click through to read the entire editorial.
An Aging Trans Woman 