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How does an unsigned band, strapped for cash, go about filming a proper music video?  The Get Out Clause, a local band in Manchester, have used the growing ubiquity of CCTV surveillance to provide a novel solution.  Unable to afford a camera crew, the band setup in front of surveillance cameras in various locations around the city, performed their song, and then used the Freedom of Information Act to acquire the relevant video.

The Get Out Clause, Manchester stars of CCTV

It seems that the circling of the wagons at the White House also includes everyone’s favorite manwhore and former White House reporter[wink wink, nod nod], Jeff Gannon.

The Bush administration’s favorite [in the closet]gay prostitute is parroting the White House on his blog.  In the post "Scott, We Hardly Knew Ye", Gannon, like Bush, Rove, and the rest of the gang, is puzzled by the new Scott McClellan.

Add me to the growing list of those who are having great difficulty understanding McClellan’s motives. I spent two years as a White House reporter, much of it during McClellan’s reign. At no time did Scott ever indicate, either publicly or privately, he had the misgivings he expressed in this book.

What I hear about the book does not sound like the Scott McClellan I knew for two years. I can say without fear of contradiction, that I knew Scott better than any other White House correspondent or Washington reporter.

Really, Jeff?  You knew Scottie better than any other correspondent or reporter?  How well did you know him, Jeff, and in what way?  One shudders to think.  Did you get to know him during the course of your many overnight stays at the White House?  Was Scottie a sucker for your ‘Hot Military Stud’ mangina?  Nevermind.  I really don’t want to know.

Scott, We Hardly Knew Ye

Wikipedia - Jeff Gannon

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Speaking at a news conference in Wales this past Sunday, Jimmy Carter publicly acknowledged that Israel is in possession of at least 150 nuclear weapons.  Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade was quick to try and lay the blame for outing the Israelis at Carter’s feet, saying "No one has ever talked about it, very few people are privileged to know about it, and almost no one speaks about it …"

The only problem with Brian Kilmeade’s assertion that Carter is to blame for outing Israel’s nuclear weapons stockpile is that it’s patently false.  Jimmy Carter has only confirmed what Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of Israel, admitted to a year and a half ago during and interview with Germany’s Sat. 1 channel.

Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, was yesterday trying to fend off accusations of ineptitude and calls for his resignation after he accidentally acknowledged for the first time that Israel had nuclear weapons.

After decades in which Israel has stuck to a doctrine of nuclear ambiguity, Mr Olmert let slip during an interview in Germany that Israel did indeed have weapons of mass destruction.

What is so upsetting about Carter saying what everyone already knows and that Israel’s PM has already admitted?  Why would the US and Israeli governments work so hard to deny that Israel is a nuclear power?

Simple.

US law forbids providing funding to countries that proliferate weapons of mass destruction.  In order to skirt the law and provide military aid to Israel, the US and Israeli governments must maintain the lie that Israel does not possess nuclear weapons.  Now that the lie can no longer be maintained, US aid to Israel is on very shaky ground.  Either the US will have to stop providing aid to Israel or it will have to change the law to legalize foreign aid to a proliferator of WMD, becoming an admitted hypocrite in the process.

Israel: Carter Offers Details on Nuclear Arsenal

Calls for Olmert to resign after nuclear gaffe

President Bush was supposed to be headlining at a planned fundraiser for John McCain this coming Tuesday at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona.  The venue had to be scrapped, but not merely because they couldn’t sell enough tickets to fill the space.

Sources familiar with the situation said the Bush-McCain event was not selling enough tickets to fill the Convention Center space, and that there were concerns about more anti-war protesters showing up outside the venue than attending the fundraiser inside.

Another source said there were concerns about the media covering the event.

I almost couldn’t stop laughing long enough to write this post.  You couldn’t make this up, lol!

Poor ticket sales, expected protests scuttle Bush-McCain fundraiser at Phoenix Convention Center

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Hillary Clinton has had something on her mind for a while now.  At least since March 6th, when she spoke off the record with Richard Stengel, Managing Editor at TIME magazine.  She voiced it publicly Friday while speaking to the editorial board of the Argus-Leader in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and giving her reasoning for staying in the race.

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it."

What the fuck, Hillary?!?  Are you so desperate to win the nomination and so incapable of accepting defeat that you are holding on to the dark hope that your opponent will be assassinated like Robert F. Kennedy?  Are you truly that batshit insane?

Get out now, Hillary.  GET. THE. FUCK. OUT!!!

Hillary Raises Assassination Issue

When John McCain was seeking the Republican nomination for President, he was doing poorly among right-wing Christian evangelicals.  Desperate to gain their support, he went shopping for endorsements and was thrilled to gain the support of televangelist pastors John Hagee and Rod Parsley.

When McCain received Hagee’s endorsement, he said "I’m very honored by Pastor John Hagee’s endorsement today … He has been the staunchest leader of our Christian evangelical movement in many areas, but especially, most especially, his close ties and advocacy for the freedom and independence of the state of Israel."

Speaking in Cincinnati on February 26th, McCain made a show of being endorsed by Rod Parsley and said "I’m very honored today to have one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide - Pastor Rod Parsley …"

Their support helped to shore up McCain’s weakness among the Christian Right and to secure his nomination.

Now that McCain has secured his party’s nomination, he is looking to appeal to independent voters and the endorsements he sought and was proud to receive have become a problem.  Independents, it seems, aren’t too hot on so-called men of God who believe that Hitler was God’s instrument to drive the Jews back to Eretz Yisrael or that God created the United States of America to exterminate Muslims.

What to do?  Simple.  Repudiate them and pretend you never wanted anything to do with them in the first place.

"Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them," McCain said of the remarks by John Hagee. "I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee’s endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well."

“I believe there is no place for that kind of dialogue in America, and I believe that even though he [Rev. Rod parsley] endorsed me, and I didn’t endorse him, the fact is that I repudiate such talk, and I reject his endorsement,” McCain said in a statement.

Flip-flop accomplished.

Pro-Israel evangelical leader endorses McCain

McCain rejects pastor’s backing after Hitler remark

Preachers a problem for McCain too

McCain Rejects Parsley Endorsement

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Now that John McCain has repudiated John Hagee and rejected his endorsement - which McCain actively sought out - we are left wondering when and if the senator from Arizona will repudiate and reject Rod Parsley.

John McCain has called Rod Parsley "one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide …"

Parsley has openly preached since 9/11 that God created the United States of America for the purpose of destroying the ‘false religion’ of Islam.

In other words, Parsley sees it as America’s holy duty to wage genocide against 1.5 billion Muslims.

"We were built for the battle!  We were created for the conflict! We get off on warfare!"

– Pastor Rod Parsley, World Harvest Church

Preachers a problem for McCain too

After actively seeking the endorsement of John Hagee and defending Hagee’s endorsement against critics who pointed out Hagee’s record of anti-Catholic rhetoric, John McCain has finally ‘rejected and renounced’ pastor Hagee and his endorsement.

"Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them," McCain said of the remarks by John Hagee. "I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee’s endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well."

If making a career of calling the Catholic Church the ‘Great Whore’ wasn’t enough to make John McCain reject the endorsement he actively sought out, what changed his mind?

"’And they the hunters should hunt them,’ that will be the Jews. ‘From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.’ If that doesn’t describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust, you can’t see that," Hagee had said.

I guess Catholics now know where they stand with McCain.  It’s okay to bash the Catholic Church, calling it the ‘Great Whore’, but McCain draws the line when it comes to saying the Holocaust was God’s will to drive the Jews back to Eretz Yisrael.

I am reminded of the albatross that the GOP hung around John Kerry’s neck in the 2004 election.

John McCain: He was for Pastor Hagee before he was against him!

McCain rejects pastor’s backing after Hitler remark

Conservative talk show host Michael Medved would have been a darling of the Third Reich.  Yes, I know, he’s a Jew - what could possibly have endeared him to the likes of Hitler and Goering?  How about Medved’s take on nationalism and racial superiority?

Mr. Medved has recently written an article, Respecting - And Recognizing - American D.N.A., espousing the idea that there is a unique and identifiable American genotype and that it is superior to other human genotypes.

In today’s ruthlessly competitive international economy, the United States may benefit from a potent but unheralded advantage: the aggressive edge sustained by the inherited power of American DNA.

If this idea sounds familiar it’s because it’s not new.  The Nazis espoused the same concept with their belief in the Aryan master race.  Like the Nazis, Medved thinks that other races, other genotypes, are inferior.  He even goes so far as to use the idea of a superior American genotype to explain "our most persistent and painful racial divide."

Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits.

Medved advances the notion that the racial divide between blacks and whites is not a matter of centuries of slavery, brutality, prejudice, deprivation and discrimination.  Instead he proffers the explanation that blacks in America are descended from inferior genetic stock - unlike the rest of the American population.

What makes Medved even scarier - apart from being a racist - is his attempt to tie racial superiority to nationalism just as the Nazis did.  In Michael Medved’s worldview, America’s position as a global hyperpower is not due to chance or circumstance.  America is on top because we are the master race, the inheritors of a superior genotype.

In recent years I have jokingly referred to the American right as the Reichwing.  It seems I may have unwittingly stumbled onto the truth.  With people like Michael Medved espousing Hitlerian concepts of national and racial superiority, one can only wonder how long before we hear cries from the right for lebensraum.

Respecting - And Recognizing - American D.N.A.

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Mike Huckabee, speaking at the NRA convention in Louisville, Kentucky today, made an impromptu joke about someone pointing a gun at Barack Obama and him hitting the floor.  Way to go preacher!  Like the Good Book says, "Who would Jesus assassinate?"

Well, what can we expect from a hick Baptist preacher?  By the way, Mike - who the fuck wouldn’t hit the ground if somebody aimed a gun at them?  Not Jesus freaks like you, right?  After all, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord!  Right??

Don’t worry, preacher - I’m sure that joke will slay at the next cross lighting.

Huckabee’s Obama Joke Falls Flat