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Friday, June 17, 2005

"Misleading Congress is an Impeachable Offense" 

You can look it up.

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Wednesday, June 15, 2005

The Old Religion 

in the old growth forest
there are trees
that were born
before Jesus

their brothers and sisters
were crucified
cut into cross beams and planks

nails hammered through their flesh
to make redwood decks
for good christian homes

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Bumper Sticker 

Still on the road. Here's a bumper sticker I saw in Arcata, California the other day:
Draft SUV drivers first

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Fall-Out from Wal-Mart Nazi Bookburning Ad 

You may recall my earlier posts about Wal-Mart's support for a ballot initiative in Flagstaff, Arizona, to overturn that city's "Big Box" ordinance.

Wal-Mart threw hundreds of thousands of dollars into the local election, making it the most expensive in Flagstaff's history. Their efforts included several highly controversial full-page ads in the local newspaper. One of them attempted to equate the Big Box ordinance with the burning of books and featured a photo of a book-burning event in Nazi Germany.

That ad created such a stir that Wal-Mart apologized for the ad (bad taste, you understand, but good politics -- the Wal-Mart forces won by a narrow margine). Wal-Mart has been trying to distance itself from the ad ever since.

Apparently that distancing has included the resignation of Wal-Mart's PR guy for Arizona and Southern California, and the firm that designed the ad no longer works for Wal-Mart, either.

According to the
Washington Post:
Peter Kanelos, who oversees the chain's public relations effort in both states, will leave the company Friday, said Daphne Moore, who runs the community affairs program for Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Wal-Mart has not publicly announced Kanelos's resignation, but Moore acknowledged it in an interview yesterday. Asked if Wal-Mart requested that Kanelos leave the company, Moore said, "I can tell you he resigned."

Kanelos, in an e-mail, said he is leaving the company "on mutually agreeable terms" but would not elaborate.

The firm Wal-Mart hired to design the ad said it had severed its six-year relationship with the company as well.

Wal-Mart has said it reviewed and cleared for publication a full-page advertisement in the May 8 edition of the Arizona Daily Sun featuring a 1933 photo of Germans throwing books on a pyre at Berlin's Opernplatz. The ad was part of a campaign, funded by Wal-Mart, to defeat a Flagstaff, Ariz., ballot initiative that would have restricted the chain's growth. Voters later narrowly rejected the measure.
You can bury your dead
but don't leave a trace,
hate your next door neighbor
but don't forget to say grace

Thanks to BD for the tip.

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Monday, June 13, 2005

Dean got it right 

For the record, I think the Chairman is right on the money: The Republicans are the White Christian Party and Faux News is their primary propaganda outlet.

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Insignificant Technocalities 

Much quoted Sunday Times graphs.
MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.
The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.

The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.

This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.
Let the impeachments begin.

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Invasion of the Gay-Haters 

When Kansas fundie preacher Reverend Fred Phelps heard that a high school in California had re-instated its Gay-Straight Alliance, he sent a bus full of follwers to protest at the school's graduation ceremony.

Then, when they showed up at the wrong school (must be a science thing), they were trashed by the locals who told them to go back to Kansas and take Toto with them.

Score one for the left coast.

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