A page for randomness

Republican presidential candidate John McCain cashes his monthly Social Security checks despite calling the federal program “a disgrace,” the Associated Press reports.

“I’m receiving benefits,” McCain told campaign reporters, but added, “the system is broken.”

In 2007, he received benefits of $23,157 from Social Security, approximately $1,930 a month. The maximum monthly benefit under Social Security is $2,185. Social Security benefits are determined by age at retirement.

McCain, who is 71, has received benefits since he was 65.

Last week, McCain told observers at a town-hall meeting in Portsmouth, Ohio, “Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers … and that’s a disgrace.”

B.J. Jarrett from the Social Security Administration said that individuals can refuse retirement benefits.

In 2006, McCain’s wife Cindy earned $6 million, and has a net worth of approximately $100 million.

Source: McCain gets $1,930 a month from ‘broken’ Social Security system - San Francisco Business Times:

The following interview was banned in the United States:

The interview with Coleman should go down on record as definitive proof of Bush’s utter incompetence, a priceless picture of a madman who had no business occupying the highest office of the land.

Read more: Bush’s Banned Interview: An Insight Into Insanity

Like many Christians, he said grace before dinner and read the Bible before bed. Four years ago when he was deployed to Iraq, he packed his Bible so he would feel closer to God.

He served two tours of duty in Iraq and has a near perfect record. But somewhere between the tours, something changed. Hall, now 23, said he no longer believes in God, fate, luck or anything supernatural.

Hall said he met some atheists who suggested he read the Bible again. After doing so, he said he had so many unanswered questions that he decided to become an atheist.

His sudden lack of faith, he said, cost him his military career and put his life at risk. Hall said his life was threatened by other troops and the military assigned a full-time bodyguard to protect him out of fear for his safety.

In March, Hall filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, among others. In the suit, Hall claims his rights to religious freedom under the First Amendment were violated and suggests that the United States military has become a Christian organization.

“I think it’s utterly and totally wrong. Unconstitutional,” Hall said.

Hall said there is a pattern of discrimination against non-Christians in the military.

Read more: Atheist soldier sues Army for ‘unconstitutional’ discrimination - CNN.com

This weekend, Pixar’s latest film “WALL-E” debuted at No. 1, earning $65 million at the box office. The film has been hailed by critics, scoring a whopping 97 percent “Fresh” rating on RottenTomatoes.

The film portrays a lonely robot’s quest for love, as he is left to clean up a trashed earth. Meanwhile, the over-indulged humans wait it out aboard gigantic spaceships run by a monolithic corporation-turned-government that “resemble spas for the fat and lazy.”

Somehow, this touching love story has outraged the radical right.

Read more: Think Progress » Right-Wing Apoplectic Over Pixar’s WALL-E: ‘Malthusian Fear Mongering,’ ‘Fascistic Elements’

Sun-Sentinel Editorial

Impeachment not worth another minute of anybody’s time
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board

June 12, 2008

ISSUE: Some in Congress want an impeachment.

The nation does have a few pressing issues pending that could use some attention from our federal lawmakers.

Let’s see. There are a couple of wars going on, unemployment is on the rise as the value of a house continues to fall, millions of Americans have no health insurance, and did we mention that gas prices are expected to hit $5 a gallon? You get the idea. And still, some in Congress feel the nation is just itching for another presidential impeachment.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who has made a career out of eye-rolling  issues like these, said this week he wants the House to consider a resolution to impeach President Bush. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, who is smarter than this, supported the Articles of Impeachment, which won’t go anywhere and thankfully have been buried in a committee not likely to hold hearings before Bush leaves office.

Last year, Kucinich led the misguided charge to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney, and Wexler supported that. In the case of Bush, Wexler called it a “sworn duty” of Congress to act.

Actually, it’s nobody’s sworn duty to take up any time to go after a badly battered president with only a few months left in office. This is a president so unpopular, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain won’t make many public appearances with him. This is a president who is such a non-entity, peace activists didn’t even
bother to protest his appearance in Berlin this week.

Nor should Congress bother with the ridiculous idea of impeachment,  which Kucinich contends is warranted because Bush deceived the nation into war.

There’s plenty of evidence to fuel Kucinich’s ire, but not his choice of remedy. If Congress needs more things than impeachment to keep lawmakers busy, it has myriad options.

BOTTOM LINE: Get on with REAL issues.

Copyright (c) 2008, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

The Wexler Response:

The Sun-Sentinel recently ran an editorial criticizing my support for  the articles of impeachment against President Bush opining that Congress should instead “get on with REAL issues” such as the Iraq war.  In fact, it is this very war — entered into following an unprecedented campaign of lies and manipulated intelligence by the Bush Administration — that necessitates impeachment hearings.  This war has cost us the lives of 4,090 US soldiers, injuries to over 30,000, and more than a trillion taxpayer dollars when it is all said and done.

It is a dark day when the Sun-Sentinel has the gall to tell the parents of the soldiers who have died in Iraq that pursuing
consequences for those that prosecuted this war of choice based on outright deception is not a “REAL” issue that Congress should address.

Sadly, the war is only the beginning. We now know that this Administration illegally ordered the torture of prisoners, obstructed justice by lying about the outing of a covert CIA agent and authorizing warrantless spying on American citizens.

No one can deny that if proven these allegations amount to High Crimes. Our failure to act sets an awful precedent and enables future Presidents to break the law and violate our Constitution without sanctions from Congress.

The Sentinel says impeachment is the wrong “remedy” for this litany of crimes.  What then is the proper remedy? A harsh lecture? A strongly worded editorial? Or how about doing absolutely nothing in the face of these outrageous abuses of power?

Impeachment hearings need not distract us from other important priorities such as the economy, gas prices and bringing the troops home from Iraq.  Congress can and should address all important issues - including safeguarding our constitutional rights and obligations.

Source: Congressman Robert Wexler

Even when Google commemorates Independence Day, Lopez has looked for hints of a clandestine liberal sensibility. Last year, she printed a comment from a reader who claimed that the American eagle on Google’s logo was clutching olive branches—but not arrows, the symbol of America’s military might: “I think they’ve gone with a remodeled ‘peace is patriotic’ bumper sticker. They just couldn’t bring themselves to do something ‘American’ without making some kind of signal about current policy.”

All this vitriol leaves Hwang mystified. All they’re trying to do, he says, is bring a little humor and quirkiness to their search engine. “This is just something that grew organically, a culture that developed over the years,” Hwang says. “It made Google feel like it wasn’t just a cold machine, not just an algorithm.” It’s not an issue of Google—like, say, American Airlines or America Online—trying to mask its national origin from foreign eyes. Still, almost from the beginning, the company caught hell for corrupting Americans with evil doodles. “We got e-mails complaining that we celebrated Earth Day,” Hwang laughs. “I was just surprised. We all live on this planet, and celebrating that just seemed like a harmless thing to do.”

Perhaps the most extreme condemnations come from the editors of the populist WorldNetDaily.com, who have all but accused Google of advancing the cause of godless communism. “Google consistently ignores patriotic American holidays such as Memorial Day and Veterans Day,” WorldNetDaily’s editors wrote last October, “but today it acknowledged an accomplishment of the communist Soviet Union, which launched the Sputnik satellite fifty years ago.” The news site, which has also complained that Google’s search rankings keep its stories in the basement, even ominously reported that the company misspelled its logo when commemorating Valentine’s Day last year. “Previous Valentine’s Day logos for Google, obtained by WND, have no such possible confusion for spelling,” the site noted. Could Google even have it in for love?

“If you’re going to choose to commemorate some really quite bizarre occasions, and never, never in their history, never once commemorating Memorial Day, which is a very significant holiday in the United States, I think that says something about who Google is,” says WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah. “By the way,” he adds, “I like Google’s product. I wish there were another company out there that didn’t make me sick to my stomach.”

Read more: Does Google hate America? - By Chris Thompson - Slate Magazine

During a live interview, FOX Contributor Liz Trotta jokingly wished for the assassination of Sen. Barack Obama.

This latest incident from FOX News continues the trend in violent rhetoric about Sen. Obama from pundits, politicians, and entertainers.

Grinning While Joking About Killing A Candidate
The incident happen in an exchange with the FOX News anchor. When asked her opinion of the recent scandal surrounding some comments made by Sen. Hillary Clinton, which Trotta described by saying that, “some are reading [it] as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama.” Hemmer quickly corrected Trotta, having noticed that she had said “Osama” when she meant “Obama.” At this point, Trotta said, “Obama. Well…both if we could!” Trotta then laughed gleefully.

What prompted Trotta to joke about the assassination of Sen. Obama was her apparent inability to differentiate between Sen. Obama and the terrorist leader responsible for the terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001.

Since Sen. Obama first declared his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for president, right-wing pundits on FOX News and a variety of other broadcast outlets have regularly called the Sen. Obama by the name “Osama” in a systematic propaganda campaign to convince the American public that a sitting member of their government has secret ties to terrorists.

As if she were providing a punchline to that long-running propaganda campaign, Trotta made known that the conclusions the public should draw were (1) that Sen. Obama and Osama bin Laden are equivalent, and (2) they both deserve to be assassinated.

Read more: Jeffrey Feldman: FOX Pundit Wishes for Obama Assassination, Laughs - Media on The Huffington Post

If the recent exchanges between President Bush, Barack Obama and John McCain on Hamas and terrorism are a preview of the general election, we are in for an ugly six months. Despite his reputation in the media as a charming maverick, McCain has shown that he is also happy to use Nixon-style dirty campaign tactics. By charging recently that Hamas is rooting for an Obama victory, McCain tried to use guilt by association to suggest that Obama is weak on national security and won’t stand up to terrorist organizations, or that, as Richard Nixon might have put it, Obama is soft on Israel.

President Bush picked up this theme yesterday. Without naming Obama during his speech last night to Israel’s Knesset, Bush suggested that Democrats want to “negotiate with terrorists” while Republicans want to fight terrorists.

The Obama campaign was right to criticize the president for his remarks and for engaging in partisan politics while overseas. Many presidents have said things abroad that could be construed as violating this unwritten rule of American politics. But it is hard to remember any president abusing the prestige of his office in as crude a way as Bush did yesterday. Charging your opponents with appeasement and likening them to Neville Chamberlain in the Knesset is a brutal blow. It is bad enough that Republicans use the politics of personal destruction here at home, but to deploy that kind of political weapon at an occasion as solemn as an American president addressing the parliament of a friendly government marks a new low.

McCain, meanwhile, is guilty of hypocrisy. I am a supporter of Hillary Clinton and believe that she was right to say, about McCain’s statement on Hamas, “I don’t think that anybody should take that seriously.” Unfortunately, the Republicans know that some people will. That’s why they say such things.

But given his own position on Hamas, McCain is the last politician who should be attacking Obama. Two years ago, just after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections, I interviewed McCain for the British network Sky News’s “World News Tonight” program. Here is the crucial part of our exchange:

I asked: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”

McCain answered: “They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

Read more: James P. Rubin - Hypocrisy on Hamas - washingtonpost.com

Talk show host Rush Limbaugh is sparking controversy again after he made comments that appear to call for riots in Denver during the Democratic National Convention this summer.

He said the riots would ensure a Democrat is not elected as president, and his listeners have a responsibility to make sure it happens.

“Riots in Denver, the Democrat Convention would see to it that we don’t elect Democrats,” Limbaugh said during Wednesday’s radio broadcast. He then went on to say that’s the best thing that could happen to the country.

Limbaugh cited Al Sharpton, saying the Barack Obama supporter threatened to superdelegates that “there’s going to be trouble” if the presidency is taken from Obama.

Several callers called in to the radio show to denounce Limbaugh’s comments, when he later stated, “I am not inspiring or inciting riots, I am dreaming of riots in Denver.”

Limbaugh said with massive riots in Denver, which he called part of “Operation Chaos,” the people on the far left would look bad.

“There won’t be riots at our convention,” Limbaugh said of the Republican National Convention. “We don’t riot. We don’t burn our cars. We don’t burn down our houses. We don’t kill our children. We don’t do half the things the American left does.”

He believes electing Democrats will hurt America’s security and economy and appeared to call on his listeners to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Read more: Rush Limbaugh ‘Dreaming’ Of Riots In Denver - Denver News Story - KMGH Denver

The following comes from humaneventsonline.com, a “conservative news” source. The page has the following to convince you to get a free book:

Dear Reader,

Thank you for signing up to receive HUMAN EVENTS’ new special report, Barack Obama: Exposed! If you are looking forward to getting the ugly facts about the Left’s new favorite poster boy, you’ve got to check out my bestseller Godless (which you can get absolutely FREE just for trying HUMAN EVENTS).

Though liberalism rejects the idea of God and reviles people of faith, this liberal hostility to traditional religion stems from the fact that liberalism is itself a religion — a godless one.

In Godless, I reveal (with the help of the liberals who dominate our courts, government bureaucracies, schools, and media) that liberalism is now the established religion of our country. I throw open the doors of the Church of Liberalism and show you:

• Its sacraments (abortion)
• Its holy writ (Roe v. Wade)
• Its martyrs (like Soviet spy Alger Hiss)
• Its clergy (public school teachers)
• Its churches (government schools, where prayer is prohibited but condoms are free)
• Its doctrine of infallibility (as manifest in the “absolute moral authority” of spokesmen from Cindy Sheehan to Max Cleland)
• Its cosmology (in which mankind is an inconsequential accident)
• And, of course, the liberal creation myth (Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution)

For liberals, evolution is the touchstone that separates the enlightened from the benighted. But I debunk the myth of the “rational” liberal guided by the ideals of free inquiry and the scientific method and expose the truth about Darwinian evolution that liberals refuse to confront: It is bogus science.

In Godless, you will see how liberals’ absolute devotion to Darwinism has nothing to do with evolution’s scientific validity and everything to do with their refusal to admit the possibility of God as a guiding force.

The tolerant liberal suddenly becomes very intolerant when their official religion is challenged.

So, call me intolerant! But, when have I ever cared about what a liberal thought?

You can get my new book Godless — absolutely FREE — when you start a risk-free trial to the conservative flagship publication HUMAN EVENTS.

HUMAN EVENTS is my editorial home and the only publication that I make sure to read every week. Why? Because, HUMAN EVENTS has helped bust the conspiracy of furious spin the liberals use to keep Americans misinformed, since 1944 — longer than any other weekly publication — and is the one paper to have published my columns through thick and thin.

Order today and you can get a free copy of my book, Godless, plus my weekly column delivered to your home with the unvarnished truth contained in HUMAN EVENTS.

My liberal critics won’t enjoy my book (the truth hurts), but I’m sure you will.

Smells like a heaping pile of bullshit to me.