Progress Now Action

For several years now the evidence of the Alberto Gonzales gang's manipulation of the Federal Civil Service within the Department of Justice has been well publicized. The fact that right-wing political ideologues were being approved for career professional positions based on social issue orthodoxy, rather than competence and qualifications, is yet another blight on the scandalous legacy of the current occupant of the White House.

Today's report in the Washington Post reveals that this practice of burrowing right-wing political operatives into the Civil Service is also in-place in the scientific agencies. Perhaps this is the mis-administration's strategy for making permanent the Republican obsession for combating the truth of science with their twisted political and social priorities.

The Center for Public Integrity is soon to release their "Broken Government" study. The fund-raising teaser release promises 120 specific cases. This kind of investigative effort to hold the Bushies accountable as the mis-administration fades into oblivion is crucial.  Revealing and acting on the depth and breadth of this conspiracy is vital to the success of any reforms and corrects to the offenses of the past eight years.

The Obama-Biden Administration will be stretched and tested to uncover and flush-out these right-wing activists who have burrowed their way into the Civil Service like so many termites. The evidence of these infestations must be met with quick action.

Executive appointees selected for positions above these people must be prepared to take every possible action within the laws and regulations of the Civil Service structure to either get them dismissed, or make it too hard for them to stay and accomplish their nefarious goals. Attention to the selection of the Administrator of the Office of Personnel Management will be a key to success in this area.

Various Executive agency inspectors general must be supported in investigating these political opportunists. IF they are found to be substantially unqualified for the job description that they were hired to fill, then it should be clear grounds for dismissal as an unlawful appointment.

The Obama-Biden appointees who are saddled with these burdens must enforce clear, precise and enforceable performance standards. When confronted with qualitative requirements to enforce and perform based upon laws and regulations that these infiltrators are likely to hold ambitions to undermine and avoid, could more easily force them to resign.

Even in its demise the minions of the current mis-administration are appearing to be increasingly unwilling to follow the current occupant of the White House and the vice out of Washington. This certainly adds to the challenge and urgency of establishing the new administration's executive leadership. Too many months and too many acting, caretaker, leaders in the executive departments will make it all the harder to untangle the tentacles of the Bush parasites.

Colorado becomes the first state to reject an initiative being pushed across the country that would have eliminated race- and gender-based affirmative action programs by voting down Amendment 46.

By a slim margin, voters turned down the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative backed by California millionaire Ward Connerly and a local committee headed by Jessica Corry of the Golden-based Independence Institute.

Connerly's initiative had passed 10 years ago in California and since then has passed in Washington, Michigan and Nebraska. He intends to take it to other states in an effort to end affirmative action programs.

Results remained too close to call election night and throughout Wednesday, but returns have continued to pile up and the slender lead widened for the "no" side.

"I am incredibly proud an honored to have been part of the first campaign to defeat Connerly's initiative," said Melissa Hart, leader of the No on 46 campaign. "It's a great testament to the people of Colorado that when they understood the truth about the initiative, they rejected it. Coloradans stand for equal opportunity."

Corry wasn't immediately available for comment.

Glennzilla speaks:

Barack Obama has, on numerous occasions, emphatically expressed his support for repealing DOMA. When he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004, he wrote a letter to Chicago's Windy City Times, calling DOMA "abhorrent" and its repeal "essential," and vowing: "I opposed DOMA in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor." But he went on to cite what he called the "the realities of modern politics" in order to proclaim (accurately) that DOMA's repeal at that time -- 2004 -- was "unlikely with Mr. Bush in the White House and Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress." After Tuesday, that excuse is no longer availing.

This is about expanding civil rights for all citizens.  This nation's path has been to expand rights to all it's citizens no matter how long it takes.  There will be stumbling blocks to granting rights to all citizens but the arc of American history shows that justice will be done.

President-elect Obama has specifically included the GLBT community as an integrel part of change.  As Glenn writes:

Obama and Congressional Democrats deserve some time to figure out what they will do and what they will prioritize.  It's irrational to criticize them for things they haven't done.  It's probably politically wise for the first steps they take to be related to the economy, and there are numerous other non-economic priorities of vital importance that nobody should wait for (restoring habeas corpus, closing Guantanamo, imposing a government-wide ban on torture).  But repealing DOMA, and certainly its most destructive part, is a quick and important way to establish who they are, and doing that is consistent with, not contrary to, prevailing political sentiment.

OBAMA CITY, JAPAN:  Banners on parade and dancing in the streets with shouts in English "YES WE CAN"

KENYA:  Dancing in the streets - 2 days of national holiday declared amid chants of "YES WE CAN"

FRANCE:  People pour into the streets of Paris amid dancing and singing there are shouts "YES WE CAN"

LONDON, SOUTH AFRICA....ALL OVER THE WORLD: The REVOLUTION has been legitimized, accepted and praised.

              WE actually won the 2nd revolution for the United States of America.

Dear Neighbor,

I know you're being bombarded with election mailers, TV commercials, and emails, but I need your help to defeat one of the most deceptive and harmful measures on the Colorado ballot next Tuesday.

Amendment 46, if passed, would alter the Colorado Constitution and roll back critical civil rights protections. This would result in an damaging precedent, eroding equal opportunity and diversity programs that are vital to the economic and social well-being of America.

Click here to join me in opposing Amendment 46:

http://progressnowaction.org/stop46

Amendment 46 would force our colleges and universities to worry about being sued for any program that fosters diversity, or encourages women or minorities to pursue fields in which they are currently under-represented.

Amendment 46 is a fraud. The author of Amendment 46, Ward Connerly, created Amendment 46 to be intentionally deceptive, vague and confusing. He has used allegedly fraudulent methods to obtain signatures. Numerous Colorado voters demanded that their names be removed once they learned the truth about Amendment 46.

Petition-gatherers led signers to believe they were actually supporting equal opportunity laws. Little did they know the proposed amendment would actually dissolve those rules in Colorado!

Amendment 46 is misleadingly called the "Colorado Civil Rights Initiative," but the Ku Klux Klan supports Amendment 46. In fact, a Michigan news report cited Connerly saying "he despises the KKK, but accepts the support." ("Connerly criticized for Klan comments," Associated Press 11/4/2006)

"If the KKK was endorsing equal rights, God bless them," Connerly was quoted as saying.

Don't be fooled. Pledge to SAY NO to Amendment 46:

http://progressnowaction.org/stop46

NO on Amendment 46 needs your support RIGHT NOW to beat this terrible proposal. Recent polls show support for Amendment 46 has dropped dramatically as more people learn the truth. Click here to make a contribution to the campaign:

https://secure.progressnowaction.org/page/contribute/46IsAFraud

Thank you for standing up for civil rights in Colorado. This isn't over yet!

Sincerely,

Rep. Rosemary Marshall

The McCain Campaign is out answering the internet blogosphere again.

A continuation of the policy of smoke and mirrors...

"SO, Mr. McCain, what about the Economy?"

  "uh, uh, HEY! Look over here...Obama stubbed his toe and he didn't bleed - proves he's a vampire!!!
Afterall,we knew he had to be...

He runs with alien terrorists from MARS!!!!!

The Washington Post has films of the landing and met with their leader.....

We are demanding right here and now....RELEASE THE FILM!!!!!"

YES McCAIN and his Campaign are LIKE BUSH in one major way...

They will SAY anything (LIE); They think WE are STUPID; And when all else fails, blame the Democrats!

The "right-to-life" movement that elevates embryonic life above women's lives is more accurately termed "right-to-prenatal-life." One of the most extreme 2008 anti-abortion, anti-contraceptive ballot measures is the so-called Colorado "Personhood" amendment - number 48 - defining fertilized eggs as "persons" with Fourteenth Amendment rights to "life, liberty and due process of law." Simultaneously, rightists have opposed the same rights for women as "reading feminism into the Constitution."

Both Amendment 48 and a rule change proposed by the Bush administration Department of Health and Human Services would re-define pregnancy as the point of conception, disregarding the medical definition of pregnancy - "the implantation of a fertilized egg." They would effectively categorize as abortion any contraception (e.g., the pill, IUD, emergency contraception, contraceptive patch) that interferes with the implantation of a fertilized egg, thus outlawing most contraception - the primary means to reduce the need for abortion.

In a slippery slope to 19th century status for women, rightists have promoted "conscience clauses" permitting pharmacists' and others' refusal to fill prescriptions or provide health care for women. The HHS proposal states, "[T]he conscience of the individual or institution should be paramount in determining what constitutes abortion..." - holding women's health hostage to anyone's professed religious/ideological beliefs.

It is time to recognize that abortion serves as surrogate for a spectrum of unspoken issues related to female personhood and male entitlement. The anti-abortion political litmus test was introduced by Paul Weyrich, who dictated that women step aside and "make way for new life." It serves dual purposes - the marginalization of women and the lightning rod around which to mobilize political coalitions, notably, Evangelicals and Catholics. The elevation of fetal life over women's lives, coupled with conservative strategist Howard Phillips' euphemistically described goal of return to "one-family-one-vote," is calculated to marginalize and disenfranchise women, consistent with the ultraright tenet that ultimately, only select white Christian males should retain the right to vote or hold office.

Rickie Solinger concluded from her historical research of women's health care that women's rights have often been held hostage by politicians and others with "political agendas hostile to female autonomy and racial equality" (Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade, 1992). The criminalization of contraception and abortion, and the widespread U.S. adoption black market that assigned value to babies and punishment to women based on race, were some effects of pre-Roe efforts to control women's reproduction.

At core, Weyrich's anti-abortion, anti-contraceptive and abstinence-only ideology serves as cornerstone of an anticipated male supremacist theocracy. It is the platform upon which the majority of Republican candidates continue to run in 2008. The greatest conceit - that pregnancy is not a health issue and women's lives are expendable - underlies the dual standards of Republican Party pronatalist policy demanding female submission to males who presume the right to hold women hostage to personal beliefs.

The Rocky Mountain News weighs-in this morning with a good report on the growing revelations of the GOP voter suppression agenda. Curiously, this shows in Colorado as a fight between the GOP Secretary of State and two strong GOP County Clerks.

The County Clerks, Republicans Scott Doyle (Larimer) and Pam Anderson (Jefferson), are holding the line for what is right and just in the face of CD-6 Candidate and Secretary of State Coffman's fixation on a questionable policy. This year's election controversy is increasingly looking like valid charges of radicals in the GOP deliberately using technicalities and irrational procedural hoops to deny eligible citizens the right and opportunity to vote.

The contemporary "voter fraud" cries of the GOP are a manufactured issue with the sole purpose of suppressing likely Democratic voters. There is no problem other than the radical conservatives seeing their political clout wither with each succeeding election. The facts of the miniscule number of REAL cases of Federal and State voter fraud charges and convictions in recent history defy the hysteria of the GOP.

Doyle and Anderson are providing leadership and good public policy for all of Colorado. Too bad that there is some other influence keeping Mike Coffman from recognizing, and acting on, that good example. Maybe it is too much for him to run for Congress and be responsible for a fair election.

Read the Rocky's full story online at:

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/oct/22/secretary-of-state-stands-by-registration-check/

The Fools on the Hill......

I love that those all-knowing Grand Wizards of all things important, sitting on the Hill in D.C., are JUST figuring out what many have known for 10 friggin' years.
The so-called housing bubble, that churn and burn growth of a market based on air, was the ONLY thing propping up an economy that has needed to do an adjustment since 1998; Staved off by the Republicans in their bids to keep the sleazy corporatists going without oversight.....

UNFETTERED GROWTH without any natural controls is called CANCER....

On August 29, the Friday before the Republican Convention, members of the Council for National Policy convened in Minneapolis to grant their imprimatur to the vice presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin. Focus on the Family's Tom Minnery described the group's reaction in a Focus on the Family Action video, which has since been removed from their website: "There could not be more excitement based on the little we know about Palin so far," enthused Minnery. Given general longstanding opposition to women in positions of power among CNP members, Minnery was asked whether James Dobson could possibly support a woman for the office. He quoted Dobson: "If it's the right woman, we are ready to vote for her." Dobson has been hoping for some time to find a "Margaret Thatcher" type, noted Minnery.

Outside the obvious, i.e., her anti-gun control and anti-abortion positions, Minnery recited Palin's positives as a conservative candidate: a hocky mom in an intact marriage who "has not rejected her feminine side"; because she and her husband are union members, it was speculated that blue collar voters in important swing states would be attracted; and (improbably) because she is a woman, that she would appeal to Hillary Clinton supporters.

The Council for National Policy (CNP) has remained largely below the radar since its 1981 founding as an umbrella group uniting a network of over 500 members from Congress, the business community and hard-right evangelicals. The press are excluded from their secretive invitation-only strategy meetings, held three times annually.

The group is strongly influenced by the teachings of the late Rousas Rushdoony, a CNP member and patriarch of the reactionary Christian Reconstructionist (Dominionist) movement that has infused the doctrine of conservative churches since the '60s, and seeks Christian dominion over all aspects of society and the world.

I caught this off Newshounds.us, Ellen writes:

There’s been a lot of talk about Sarah Palin's ties to the Alaskan Independence Party which the McCain campaign has been trying to minimize...

But during last night’s (9/16/08) interview with Greta Van Susteren, Palin’s husband Todd explicitly distinguished “Alaskan families” from “American families.” It was a jarring suggestion that they’re not all part of the same country. With video.

I believe that this issue should be brought to the forefront because it really is about whether or not Palin supports secession for Alaska via her taped video to the Alaska Independence Party's conventions.  As can be seen it is readily apparent that the "1st Dude" still has a secessionist mind set.

I would point out that Sarah Palin has a racist attitude towards Afro-Americans.  Gwendolyn Alexander, President African American Historical Society of Alaska, Inc. writes:

While meeting with black leaders concerning the absence of any African-Americans on her staff, Gov. Palin responded that she doesn’t have to hire any blacks and was not intending to hire any. What kind of attitude is this toward African-American for who may be the first Vice-President of the United States?

Makes me wonder if there is a locked closet with the "Stars 'n Bars" hanging in it.