Archive for: July 2006

Computer’s going into a box. I check this sometimes at work, but I don’t like to actually blog at work, so I’ll be signing off until I unpack it at the new place. It shouldn’t be long. I’m moving about 4 miles.

So long.

Click here for the I&R page

Fist of all, it’s pretty sad that in this day and age, only 28.3% of Alabama’s candidates for the offices of governor, lieutenant governor and the legislature have a listed email address for their voters to contact them with. You can get a free email address from Gmail or Yahoo in about 5 minutes. And I’m sure you can get a campaign volunteer or one of your children to check it for you if you’re technology challenged. This is for the Democrats: the Republicans are beating you big time in the email business.

Regardless of the fact that so few candidates have email addresses, so far we have the position information of 22.6% of the candidates we are looking into. This includes one gubernatorial candidate, Loretta Nall (L) and one candidate for Lt. Governor, Luther Strange (R). Unfortunately, Jim Folsom doesn’t have a listed email address, so I’ll have to wait until Phase II before I solicit a response from him. I think 22.6% is a great number considering we’ve only contacted 28.3% so far. Also, I told each candidate to please respond by August 7, so they may just be waiting it out a little bit. I’m sure several of them have to look into what I&R means.

I’d also like to point out that Representative Jack Williams (R-47) is the only person opposed to I&R who had the courtesy to send me an email to tell me. As he said in that email, adults can disagree on an issue and still be polite. Unfortunately, Mr. Williams is the only one so far who understands that.

Joe Turnahm has filed suit, attempting to block Gov. Riley to be appointed as the Special Master.

Development of a statewide voter registration database is getting politically charged, with the state Democratic Party chairman going to court Thursday to try to stop the Republican governor from getting appointed to take over the duty from the Democratic secretary of state.

Democratic Party Chairman Joe Turnham said moving the responsibility to Gov. Bob Riley looks like “a partisan attempt to affect the Democratic secretary of state negatively in the upcoming election, while affecting the Republican governor and other Republican candidates positively.”

Riley’s communications director, Jeff Emerson, said, “Governor Riley’s only concern is the state be in compliance,” and it’s fine if a federal judge wants to appoint someone else to complete the voter database.

[…]

Turnham filed court papers Thursday seeking to intervene in the case before the hearing next week. He said 19 states have had problems similar to Alabama’s, but Alabama has been singled out.

It creates the “appearance that this effort will result in a system controlled by the Republican Party for purposes of furthering partisan political ends,” Turnham said.

Turnham said the special master should be someone removed from the November election, and he suggested appointing two retired probate judges to handle the duty — one Democrat and one Republican.

We have not been singled out. There have been two states that have been sued, Alabama and New York. Both of these states have not even attempted to go live with a state wide voter registration database. The other states that have done this, are in the good graces of the DOJ for now.

The political argument that he is making is absolutely false. This is the same cry that every democrat makes when they are sued (i.e. Don Siegelman). Nancy Worley is a democrat, and she has been given every opportunity to at least get started on this process, but has failed to do so. It is now time to appoint someone that can get it done, and the Governor is the perfect person.

This brings another point I want to make, why is it (and please answer this question in comments if you know) that when the Federal Government does their job, that Democrats automatically assume that it is a politically motivated lawsuit? Why can the reason not be that you have broken the law, or that in this case, you have not complied with federal guidelines in a timely manner. I mean for goodness sake, take some responsibility for your actions.

Cross Posted at Politics in Alabama.

Just when you thought that old dead mare couldn’t take another beating, the U.N. jumps on the FEMA-bashing bandwagon. The Human Rights Committee criticized U.S. federal response to Hurricane Katrina and noted that reconstruction efforts should focus on helping poor and black communities that may have been disadvantaged during the evacuation.

The panel’s only punishing power is a severe finger-wagging, but they have specifically asked to be kept informed on several investigations. Sure, that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but politically it’s a pretty big slap in the face for an administration that’s already taken its fair share of flack for the disaster. I hope Michael Chertoff is ready for a dance-off because he just got served!  

What did everyone get me? I’m also packing this weekend and moving on Monday. There may be no posting until sometime next week. Don’t worry, I’m not moving away from Alabama or even outside the county. I’m moving from Northport to Tuscaloosa. Big move.

I know you’re gonna ask, so I’m 25.

Pack the bags! Grab the children! Run for the mountains! Hide under your desks! Close your eyes and cover your ears because the the world may just be coming to an end!!!!!

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has a good idea!

For starters, if you want to run for governor, don’t start by insulting the state you’re trying to administer the government of:

“Alabama, that’s my home. I’m thinking about running for governor; they need the help,” [Charles] Barkley said as the crowd laughed. “If it wasn’t for Arkansas and Mississippi, we’d be dead last in everything. I think we can do better.”

Actually, I think it would be really refreshing if a candidate ran who wasn’t afraid to blatantly say that Alabama sucks. I also think this part is great, despite what everyone thinks:

Republicans and Democrats want to argue over stuff that’s not important, like gay marriage or the war in Iraq or illegal immigration. They push those issues because they play well on TV and because they deceive people. When I run - if I run - we’re going to talk about real issues like improving our schools, cleaning up our neighborhoods of drugs and crime and making Alabama a better place for all people.

Everyone is calling Barkley an idiot for confusing national issues like illegal immigration and Iraq with state issues (or for saying Iraq and illegal immigration is “not important.” Actually, it’s the current candidates for governor who are confusing whether this is national or local (and, they’re really not important in a gubernatorial race). Just a few months ago, I asked why the (then) primary election candidates were arguing over illegal immigration so much.

So he’s right. The Republicans and Democrats [in Alabama] are arguing over things that don’t matter [for Alabama]. They’re talking about things that will get emotions riled up but will do nothing to move this state forward. So if you have some time, pull your head out of your A and don’t be so afraid of a black man.

You may even realize you have a lot in common. I wish he would run as a Republican, because this kind of stuff resonates with those guys:

“There are too many black kids and their parents who do not value a good education,” he said. “There are places where a black kid who is a good student and tries to speak correctly, you hear stuff like, `He’s trying to be white.’ Well I say, if that’s true, we need more kids trying to be white.”

Barkley attacked rap music as promoting a culture that is not good for black Americans.

“I used to think it was just music. I was wrong,” Barkley said. “I think it’s having a negative effect on black kids, especially young black men, who grow up believing things that hurt them and hurt people.”

But the best quote of all has to be, “I used to be a Republican until they lost their minds.”

Click here to go to the I&R page!

I have just finished emailing every candidate for Governor, Lt. Governor and the legislature who has an email address and whose position on I&R wasn’t already known. Everyone told me that simply asking a candidate wouldn’t go anywhere. I guess they want me to sit at home and do nothing. Instead, I make a list.

Actually, several candidates for the Senate have already contacted me. So far, out of the 58 candidates for the state senate that I know of, we have the position of 8 candidates - 6 are pro-I&R, 1 is anti-I&R, and 1 gave an ambiguous answer.

I emailed all candidates for the House who have an email address tonight, so I should be hearing from several of them in a few days (UPDATE: after just a few hours, I already have 6 responses). I have given everyone until August 7 to respond to the email. I will then snail mail a letter to those who haven’t responded and to those who don’t have a listed email address (in this day and age…). For those who still won’t answer the question (and I expect several), I’ll phone them and corner them on any talk show or campaign event they attend.

Please help. If you know any of the candidates (or you are a candidate), please let either me or Dr. IQ know how they feel by email.

Reposted with permission, this is Lee P’s response to a question I asked him on his blog, A Bama Blog. The comment was asked on his post, “Anniston Star: Blame Israel First.”

Dan,

I thought a little more about your question, “why are conservatives such big supporters of Israel?”, so let me give it a try. First of all, there is actually a wide range of opinion among conservatives about the degree to which U.S. Middle East policy should be influenced by our concern for Israeli interests. (The same could probably be said about liberals, by the way.)

There has always been a pro-Arab, anti-Israel crowd lurking around in the corners of the conservative movement. On the fringes, you’ve got those who are just outright anti-Semites. Since those guys are not really a part of the conservative movement, I won’t pay them much attention. Move over a little from the fringe, though, and you find people like Pat Buchanan - who has never had much of a soft spot for Zionism, and has just recently condemned Israel’s war in Lebanon. Then, there are the oil companies and other commercial interests, whose pro-Arab tendencies are based largely on economic self-interest.

On the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got a few Christian “fundamentalists” who believe that a war in the Middle East will usher in the Second Coming of Christ, and that those who side with Israel will be the eventual victors. That’s a fairly radical view, but still, I’d say that most Christians do tend to sympathize with Israel, for obvious religious, historical, and cultural reasons.

The prevalent foreign policy view among mainstream conservatives is a compromise between many, often-competing positions, each of which are factors in determining what exactly “America’s interests” are. With respect to Israel, this view takes as a given that Israel has evolved into one of the few adamantly pro-Western democracies in the Middle East, and that the survival of the modern Israeli state is essential to U.S. interests. It also recognizes that our support for Israel has to be balanced by a myriad of other interests in that part of the world, including 1) the survival of moderate Arab regimes that are pro-Western , 2) the need to keep trade routes to the Middle East open, 3) the need to maintain a balance of power between nations in the region, and 4) legitimate concerns over the rights and interests of the Palestinians.

While this traditional conservative outlook has often led to a foreign policy that is favorable to Israel, it is not reflexively “pro-Israel.” By and large, it has characterized U.S. policy towards the region for decades.

Under Bush II, I think everyone would agree that the U.S. has taken a more pro-Israel stance than it did under previous administrations. Many would say that this shift in policy is warranted in light of changing circumstances - the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the prospect that radical regimes and/or terrorists will become powerful enough that they can alter the balance of power in the Middle East and emerge as direct threats to the U.S. and its European allies. That seems to be a reasonable argument to me, but whether it plays out as advertised remains to be seen.

Case in point - the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The Iraq War removed a growing menace to Israel, and predictably, the Israelis were strong supporters of the war. However, the war also removed a threat (and a balance) to Iran, and the pre-war warnings to that effect seem more prophetic with each passing day. The Iraq War has altered the balance of power in the Persian Gulf, and there is now a real concern over growing Iranian influence throughout the Shiite-dominated areas of the Middle East and South Asia: parts of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Lebanon, Pakistan, etc. (For an interesting analysis, see this article in Foreign Affairs magazine.)

I’m still a supporter of the War in Iraq, and I think it would be a major mistake to pull out prematurely (insert crude joke here). But, I think that when it’s all over, we will have learned that there is a great deal of wisdom inherent in a more traditional (and conservative) approach to foreign policy than what the Bush administration has pursued.

Now…to address the “chosen people thing” again. Undoubtedly, some fundamentalist Christians are pro-Israel primarily because they believe that the Jews are God’s “chosen people” and that God will look with favor on the friends of Israel. There are also some Jews in America who believe that - for the most part - Israel’s interests are America’s interests. While the influence of both of these groups inside the Bush administration has been grossly exaggerated, they have certainly made it easier for the administration to tilt American policy in Israel’s direction. But, it was a tilt that already had a great deal of momentum behind it. Given the 9/11 attacks, the growing threats to our own security, and the nature of our enemies - it seemed obvious that the times called for a different course.

Faced with the challenges in Iraq, the Iranian and North Korean nuclear threats, and the prospect of a wider war engulfing the whole Middle East - we are currently seeing the administration revise its foreign policy towards a more traditional balance of interests. We can only hope that they are able to strike the right balance.

Jeff at Politics in Alabama recently covered the Mobile Register’s story about Governor Riley changing up his staff. The story focused a lot on Bill Johnson, who has worked with Riley since his days running for Congress. In 2002, Johnson was instrumental in Riley’s gubernatorial campaign and was later appointed to ADECA by the governor. Jeff asked,

I have spoken with many people who work on Riley’s campaign and they are excited that Bill Johnson is back on leading them … Not sure why this is really newsworthy. This switch happened almost two weeks ago, but I guess the news is just now noticing.

I’m not sure if a few internal staff changes are newsworthy, but this Bill Johnson character surely is. The Register said he ran for the Senate in Missouri as an independent, but that’s very misleading. He actually ran as a Libertarian against John Aschcroft. He managed to get 4.6%, which is respectable considering his campaign advocated the legalization of drugs and prostitution.

That’s not even half of it. Johnson, an alumnus of John Carrol High School, has had quite a colorful career. He used to have his life story detailed on his website — http://billjohnson.org/. Everything except his contact information has mysteriously disappeared since being transferred to Riley’s campaign, but a great tool called the Internet Archive can find his website the way it looked throughout the years.

Click here to see snapshots of his website since 2001.

Johnson left medical school to be a fighting man. Instead of joining the US military, he spent a large part of his life traveling to war-torn countries to offer his services to various revolutions in Nicaragua and Afghanistan. He was present as a sort of freedom fighter/mercenary when the Taliban first took over. Here is what he says of the Taliban and their autocratic regime:

The Taliban, comprising the Pashtun tribal majority, and religious fundamentalists, stepped in to restore normalcy to civil government. To a war-torn country, civil order surpassed the need for civil liberty. The forbiddance of music and equal rights for women seemed a fair price to pay for order and security.

The Register also claims that Johnson refused to pay taxes for 14 years of his life because he didn’t recognize the authority of the federal government. It fails to go into any detail about that part, and I have been unable to independently verify it since Bill Johnson is such a common name.

I think I like this guy… a lot actually. He’s maybe a little too ideological for my temperament, but nobody’s perfect. Even though I agree with him, though, I wonder how many Bob Riley supporters would like to know about this unusual man who is apparently the leader of the Riley campaign.

• Saw the Taliban theocracy as a necessary force for order
• Wrote, “civil order surpassed the need for civil liberty”
• Refused to pay taxes for 14 years
• Served as a hired gun (or freedom fighter)
• Publicly supported the legalization of drugs and prostitution

Personally, the fact that Riley has this guy as a friend makes me happy. But I’m sure most Alabamians who plan to vote for him don’t feel the same way I do.

Now what I don’t get is why isn’t THAT newsworthy?

**Cross-posted at Politics in Alabama

I just wanted to point everyone to my new I&R page. Dr. IQ and I intend to ask every candidate for Governor, Lt. Governor and the legislature their position on I&R. Specifically, the question will be:

Will you actively support the proposition of bringing Initiative and Referendum to the voters of Alabama, both in your campaign and afterward?

The page will list the responses to this question. A few will be assumed based on previous correspondance and voting records, but these candidates may feel free to amend their position by emailing me (see the link at the bottom of the article). There are 142 offices we are looking for and many have at least two candidates running. If you’d like to help, please do. If you find out a candidate’s position on I&R, just email me or Dr. IQ. He can be reached at driq@doctoriq.com.

I would like to have everyone color-coded as either green, blue or red by the end of August.

I just read about this part. Apparently, the fundraiser that Dick Cheney attended for the Bob Riley campaign was held in Houston County, Lucy Baxley’s home town.

The $5,000 per-couple event is expected to pump up to $250,000 into Riley’s campaign but, as Aubun University’s D’Linell Finely said, “The Bush administration gained more from this appearance than the Riley campaign.”

That got me thinking. Even in Alabama, as red a state as we are, is this the most that the Bush administration will be able to do to help? There will always be hardcore Republicans and supporters who will pay big bucks to see the Vice President, but is it politically safe for Riley to be seen often at public gatherings with Cheney?

It certainly couldn’t help. All it could do is hurt. At this point, Riley just needs to have a pulse to win the election, so I doubt he would risk a public reaction by appearing with the Bush administration… unless he got something in return. Bush and Cheney can gain a lot from being seen with Bob Riley, a popular southern governor in a state that wants to love Bush. Riley doesn’t have much to gain, but he does have some points he could spare. I think one appearance that made his campaign $250,000 is just smart fundraising. But if more appearances and campaigning continue until November, I’ll be curious as to what sort of back-room deals are going on.

Roy Moore reguarly acussed Riley of giving Bush whatever he wanted for political favors. Of course, I’m not a big Moore fan, but I think a lot of what he says about special interests and power games have some basis in fact. If Bush comes to visit and later on endorses Riley for Pres or VP, we’ll know what happened.

I just wish people would get over themselves and their stupid conceptions of the world based on nothingness and fueled by church, ignorant friends and Fox News…

So anyway, Kristen Trotter is a UA student and journalist who was working in Lebanon when all of this started happening. She wasn’t there because of the story. She just happened to be there for some international journalism experience when her life was dramatically interrupted. She wrote a first-person account for the Crimson White on July 20th. To be fair, it is critical of Israel. She’s relating her experience and the anger that others have shown toward Israel and the United States.

Anyway, here’s what someone who calls himself “A tidy American with a democratic, peaceful worldview” responded with online:

That is a heartfelt, though naive view of the situation. Perhaps you could explain the situation to Israeli mothers, whose children are blown to bits by suicide bombers.

When surrounded on all sides by people who not only want your country gone, but your entire race wiped off the face of the world, you would probably find little sympathy.

The tragic part of ANY war is that innocent people get hurt and killed when in proximity to enemy combatants.Lebanon, thru no fault of its own, has allowed Syria and Iran to use it as a battleground in its support of Hezballoh.

Perhaps the anger should be directed at those countries, rather than Americans. Thanks for the sermon.

I obviously don’t know who this guy is, but I bet he’s between 18-22, lives off his parent’s income, has never been outside the country, has seldom been outside of Alabama, and is majoring in some enlightening subject like Basket-Weaving. This guy isn’t automatically an idiot for having an opinion (which I can agree with to an extent, by the way) and he isn’t automatically an idiot for being 18-22 and such. He’s an idiot for not realizing that his naive and ill-experienced understanding of the world does not qualify him to make such a definitive and rude statement to someone who was literally having bombs dropped around her at the time he was writing on a computer in the university library.

Even if this guy has done something with his life (doubt it), it’s still no reason to be rude. Go ahead and criticize me of being hypocritical all you want.

Wheeler at Alablawg has Roy Moore’s excuses for losing the election according to a recent interview. It’s pretty funny and here are the best ones:

I think the press is there to continually deceive the people as to what’s going on. They continually don’t reveal things about the other side as to what’s going on in the world of politics.

That’s exactly what they’re there for, Roy. Idiot. Roy seems to want you to believe that the media is purposely deceiving the people for some evil goal. It’s not just that the media is ignorant — they’re actively deceiving you. That’s just paranoid rubbish. If he does just think they’re ignorant of the “real world,” he would better spend his time exposing the “world of politics” to the press instead of just insulting them. This quote also supports the view that Moore doesn’t believe that the people of Alabama are intelligent enough to think for themselves.

MP: Did you feel like you got support from the Christian community?

RM: Well, we needed more. Let me just put it that way.

I think it’s great that Roy Moore feels like the Christian community lost him the election.

Here’s why I think Roy Moore lost. Even though he had great support initially from people who see the world as a battlefield for God against Democrats, he lost steam. People began to really think about it. Even the ones who have apparently never read the First Amendment and think the Ten Commandments should be on public property were uncomfortable with his refusal to obey a federal court order. Add to that Bob Riley’s successful tenure as governor and you have a candidate who ran out of steam before the campaign even started.

Moore can keep up the old Repubican mantra of blaming the liberal media all he wants. His dead-end strategy of trying to become the next Messiah lost him the election. People were excited about it at first (”God is fightin’ the ACLU!”), but then it just got old.

** This post is quoted by Jeff Vreeland of Politics in Alabama in “Roy Moore Interviews on Election Lost“

Visits and hits are up, but comments and email are way down. Am I not being funny enough or something? (sniffles).

To be honest, I haven’t really kept up with this whole Montgomery Advertiser controversy over the transgendered story. But if there’s one thing I’m fairly sure of, it’s that being “transgendered” and being a “crossdresser” are two completely different things.

Victor Nelson of Tallahassee is an idiot. At least he’s from Florida.

I have to agree with S. F. Johnson about the transgender cover story. It is inappropriate for the front page, much less anywhere else in the paper.

It’s bad enough that the Montgomery Advertiser would write such an article in a positive light, thereby giving its stamp of approval on Mr. Freeman’s twisted choices, but to devote two whole articles to him and his wife is going too far.

Many people already know that God is highly against homosexuality, but for those who are not aware, it is just as evil for people to dress up as the opposite sex.

There is nothing good about this marriage. I make this statement based on the Bible. Trusting in any other book is a dead end.

Victor Nelson
Tallassee

So does God hate fags and transgendered people, or does he just love them so much that he’s going to make them burn in hell for having a birth defect that he apparently gave them?

You just can’t make this stuff up. A man in Helena was charged with making a false police report:

A Helena man admitted to police today that he fabricated an armed robbery report last week because “he wanted to get off work 30 minutes early,” Sgt. Brad Flynn said.

Coby Odom, 26, filed the report Thursday night, saying he was robbed at gunpoint by two men while delivering pizza.

Apparently, the story didn’t even sound very believable. Can a pizza boy not just leave work without worrying about it?