Jeff Dunham & Achmed the Dead Terrorist

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~ The Brilliant Ventriloquist Jeff Dunahm ~

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Schwarzenegger’s “F… You” Veto

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From The Swamp, the Chicago Tribune's political blog.

"Schwarzenegger to foe: (Veto) 'you'”

San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano had sponsored a bill which passed unanimously granting the Port of San Francisco financial power to redevelop a former shipyard for a new neighborhood known as Pier 70.

Ammiano also had made something of a scene at a Democratic Party fundraiser early this month in San Francisco at which Schwarzenegger, a Republican, had been invited by former San Francisco mayor and Assembly speaker Willie Brown, a Democrat. This surprised many, in light of the heated budget wars between the governor and legislature.

Ammiano could be heard invoking the cry of Republican South Carolina's Rep. Joe Wilson at President Barack Obama's address to a joint session of Congress - "You lie" - as others heckled Schwarzenegger's brief speech. After the governor left, Ammiano took the stage with a rambling criticism of Schwarzenegger for a variety of offenses — among them the governor's vetoes of bills that would have legalized gay marriage.

When the governor's office delivered a veto-message for Ammiano's own port bill a few days later, on Oct. 12, there appeared to be an unmistakable hidden message within: Reading the first letter of each line of the letter's two main paragraphs:

"My goodness. What a coincidence," a shocked, shocked Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear is quoted by the Associated Press as saying. "I suppose when you do so many vetoes, something like this is bound to happen."

With some back-of-the-envelope calculations of probability, I'm sure we could set about refuting McLear's disingenuous response that the acrostic is merely a "coincidence." Scholars of Shakespeare have argued whether the following acrostic in A Midsummer's Night Dream, in which the character Titania spells out her own name, could have appeared by chance:

Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no,
I am a spirit of no common rate,
The summer till doth tend upon my state;
ANd I do love thee. Therefore go with me.
I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee;
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep…

But I think in this case it's pretty clear that we're dealing with intentionally mischievous acrostic-making in the Governor's office. It reads very smoothly, so kudos to the writer of the veto message. Could it have been Ahnold himself? Doubtful, although he might have told someone in his office to construct the acrostic. (I wonder if whoever did it also leaked the story to reveal his or her handiwork.)

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/10/schwarzenegger_veto_you.html

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Dither This, Dick!

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Former Vice-President Dick Cheney accuses President Obama of dithering on executing a plan for the Afghan War. Typically overstated, the former VP criticizes the President for taking too much time to formulate a cohesive plan for prosecuting the war. Lives are being lost, he says, as President Obama consults with his advisors on strategy for Afghanistan.

Dick Cheney has no shame. None. It is precisely because Dick Cheney and his administration failed to take enough time to formulate plans for initiating the Afghan and Iraqi wars that Barack Obama is even facing this decision. Thousands of Americans and allied soldiers died while Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld took years to fix their half-assed strategy. That is an historical fact. If they had thought these wars through to their full-assed endgames, President Obama wouldn’t be struggling with Afghan war strategy eight years later.

When we send our troops to war let’s make sure we have a plan. Give President Obama the requisite time to do it the right way this time, not the Cheney way.

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Previously Insane Homicide Defendant Runs for Homecoming Queen

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As reported by KUSA-TV in Denver.

60-year-old running for homecoming queen was accused of murder

written by: Jeffrey Wolf

PUEBLO - A 60-year-old woman who is running for homecoming queen at Colorado State University-Pueblo was accused of shooting three people, killing one woman, at a Denver women's shelter in 1989.

Juanita Whitaker was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

At the time, the Rocky Mountain News reported that Whitaker blamed the rampage on a computer chip her ex-husband planted in her brain.

When asked about it, Whitaker says she's made mistakes in her past and this is her second chance.

Whitaker says she's changed her life and has joined nonprofit groups that help the disabled and mentally ill.

CSU-Pueblo says Whitaker meets all the requirements to run for homecoming queen, including good grades and there is no reason to disqualify.

She is running against two other students; one is a gay man.

The homecoming election was held on campus on Thursday. Results will be announced Saturday.

(Copyright KUSA*TV, All Rights Reserved)

http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=125598&provider=top

Ed. Update: Neither Juanita nor the gay man won.

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Health Insurance Follies

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Blue Shield California twice refused to pay $2,700 emergency-room claims by Rosalinda Miran-Ramirez, concluding that it was not a "reasonable" decision for her to go to the ER that morning that she awoke to a shirt saturated with blood from what turned out the be a breast tumor. Only after a KPIX-TV reporter intervened in September did Blue Shield pay the claim. [KPIX-TV, 9-25-09]

National Women's Law Center found that the laws of eight states permit insurance companies to deny health coverage to a battered spouse (as a "pre-existing condition," since batterers tend to be recidivists), according to a September report by Kaiser Health News. [MSNBC, 10-7-09]

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Don’t Ask / Don’t Tell – A Penalty of Status

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A status crime is a crime of being rather than a crime of doing. Examples of status crimes include addiction, homelessness, prostitution, or even belonging to a certain minority group. Included in “minority group” are gays. Laws making a person’s status criminal have been repealed and rejected nearly uniformly around the world. The simple rationale is that you can’t make a person’s very being a criminal act. Such a person could, theoretically, be jailed for life merely for existing. Even at their worst, those saturated in ignorance, intolerance, phobia and bigotry never made being gay a crime. Sodomy – yes, but the status of being gay – no. In recent, relatively enlightened decades most sodomy laws have been repealed. In today’s society, gay marriage and civil unions are nearly humdrum.

Nevertheless, US law prohibits any soldier who “demonstrate(s) a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts” from serving in the military. (10 U.S.C. §654) This section of the US Code prohibits gay soldiers from disclosing or talking about their sexual preference, i.e., don’t tell. It also prohibits superior officers from initiating an investigation into a soldier’s sexual orientation in the absence of the disallowed behavior (the homosexual acts thing), although mere suspicion of being gay can be sufficient to investigate, i.e., don’t ask.

The penalty for violating section 654, i.e., being gay, is discharge from the armed forces. An unsuccessful challenge to the disposition of an investigation results in the soldier being dishonorably discharged from the armed forces.

We have a successful volunteer army. Under DADT a gay soldier may remain at his chosen job only if he denies his being. Those who choose not to live that way are fired. Losing one’s job for reasons of economic, financial conditions is experienced by far too many due to fallout from the struggling economy. A gay soldier loses his job for being gay, not for any other reason. That is not fallout; that is a penalty for status. That gay soldier is being deprived of his livelihood as a penalty for being gay.

Gays serving openly in the military is a non-issue in most Western armed forces. Really. Polling in the US shows that both private citizens and servicemen are in favor of gays serving openly in the military. (The web is replete with supportive data.) Standing in the way of the uptight, puritanical US of A joining more socially sophisticated societies are sexually hung-up generals and legislators whose panties are too tight to let go of age-old bigotry, fear and ignorance. They would rather sacrifice American lives in battle than, let’s say, utilize highly skilled Arabic translators (who happen to be gay) to obtain accurate intelligence. Please see the hundreds of online articles about First Lieutenant Daniel Choi, who came out on the “Rachel Maddow Show”.

A 2007 study by the University of California recommended that the US follow Israel’s example on gays in the military. What would that be? In a nutshell by David Saranga former IDF officer and Israel’s consul for media and public affairs in New York:

"It's a non-issue... You can be a very good officer, a creative one, a brave one and be gay at the same time."

Case closed.

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