Black Comedy Gold
This story about the Bush administration’s shameless cronyism and incompetence isn’t exactly breaking news. But I’ll be damned if it isn’t fun to read. Check it out:
After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans — restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O’Beirne’s office in the Pentagon.
O’Beirne’s staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade.
Many of those chosen by O’Beirne’s office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq’s government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance — but had applied for a White House job — was sent to reopen Baghdad’s stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion budget, even though they didn’t have a background in accounting.
No biggie. They can just pray and ask God to give them advice for rebuilding the stock market. Third awakening, baby!
The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration’s gravest errors.
I’m not sure if you can call being this stupid “an error.” It’d be like saying, “Brad R.’s gravest error came when he tied meat to his testicles and dunked them into a pirana tank.” When people do things that are as unquestionably flat-out retarded as hiring a bunch of twentysomething homeschoolers to rebuild the entire Iraqi economy, they probably took a great deal of perverse pleasure in their actions, and they wouldn’t hesitate to do them again if they ever got the chance.
At least, that’s how I feel about my experience with the pirana tank.
[M]any CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States.
Correction: that should read, “a new nation that looked a lot like what they wished the United States looked like.”
To recruit the people he wanted, O’Beirne sought résumés from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and GOP activists. He discarded applications from those his staff deemed ideologically suspect, even if the applicants possessed Arabic language skills or postwar rebuilding experience.
Will knowing Arabic help institute a flat tax? I think not!
Smith said O’Beirne once pointed to a young man’s résumé and pronounced him “an ideal candidate.” His chief qualification was that he had worked for the Republican Party in Florida during the presidential election recount in 2000.
In other words, he was a ruthless, unethical scumbag with no respect for democracy…
…y’know, come to think of it, maybe that did make him the perfect guy to work in Iraq…
O’Beirne, a former Army officer who is married to prominent conservative commentator Kate O’Beirne, did not respond to requests for comment.
You don’t say.
One former CPA employee who had an office near O’Beirne’s wrote an e-mail to a friend describing the recruitment process: “I watched résumés of immensely talented individuals who had sought out CPA to help the country thrown in the trash because their adherence to ‘the President’s vision for Iraq’ (a frequently heard phrase at CPA) was ‘uncertain.'”
Above: the President’s vision for Iraq.
Anyway, the piece goes on and on and on. The stories of stupidity and ideologically-driven incompetence are virtually limitless. Read the whole thing, as they say.
and exactly why is this surprising?
Dear America:
Had Enough?
Have you noticed how fat Michael Moore is?
I
In a reasonable world, the CPA debacle alone would bring down the Administration. For more on the subject, I’d recommend Greg Palast’s Armed Madhouse.
Goodness, it’s going to be fun if the Reps take a pasting in November. Assuming the Dems actually investigate this, it’ll be a buffet of scandal, an all-you-can-eat special of cronyism, morning noon and night.
I used to wonder why I drink so much.
Sounds like a bunch of sour grapes from people who couldn’t get a job on the Iraqi reconstruction.
Here’s the most excellent thing about this story: BushCo can point to Mr. Kate and say “Well, sure, that guy was a doofus. It was all his fault. Gosh, who knew?” And the nut wing will fall right into line. “You can’t blame this on Bush or Cheney.” Any suggestion that this is another brick in the Wall of Corruption will be met with chants of “Bush Derangement Syndrome!” and “Clenis! Clenis!”
I would like to see a Democrat get up in Congress and recite the entire litany of corruption from this administration. But who has the cojones?
Oh, you applied too, did you Gary? Why didn’t they take you?
Well, anyone who wants to sell the conservative vision of America has only to look at Iraq. That’s what you’ll get, you put this bunch in charge.
Once upon a time, there were Democrats willing to have the Pentagon Papers entered into the official congressional record expressly for the purpose of negating some of the issues that were arising from newspapers publishing classified documents.
But that was back before the Spine-Eating Monsters from Planet Plutron secretly inflitrated the party.
Look, mistakes were made. But lessons were learned. It’ll be a WHOLE lot better in Iran and hell, by the time we do Syria, we’ll have it down. Then it’s on to Asia!!
mikey
How about a snake roundup, except instead of snakes replace them with all the Bush cronies. After we round ’em all up we can make crony stew or maybe crony on a stick?
In all seriousness, I’d still say that the Dems are gonna probably be just as bad. The folks with the money on K street own all of these flunkies. It’s funny to see how the lobbiests are preparing for a democratically run congress. Money can sure do great things, terrirble too.
Mikey, you forgot all about those damn Canadians…
Sounds like a bunch of sour grapes from people who couldn’t get a job on the Iraqi reconstruction.
“Oh, I’m so sad I didn’t get sent to work in a quagmire of bombs, shootouts, and beheadings! I know–I’ll go to the Liberal Media (TM) and make Bush look bad!”
We can all learn from this, when asked if you support the POTUS, and money is to be made, say HELL YES!
I remember reading about this (in a blog, naturally) when it was actually going on, but it engendered no great commotion in the news or among the Dems. Frustrating.
If your heart is filled with the Ineluctable Hand of Adam Smith and your soul has the shriveled black countenance of a Tellicherry peppercorn, your mind need only be an empty vessel.
Someday science will move beyond these crude tests of loyalty that require scrutinizing resumes for hints of the author’s intent dedication to Dear Leader’s vision.
The God-given ability of Dear Leader to look deep into the eyes and see into the soul will one day be mechanized for the good of all humanity.
Dear leader actually stared into the ass of his confidants to measure their dedication. If your ass muscle flinched while he was digging around it was obvious that you were a traitor to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. It’s the reason why he always wore long sleeved shirts and jumpers, he had to hide the shit stains
this is off topic, but I gotta ask:
If GW thinks this is the “third awakening” of Christianity, is he talking about for this country or the world? And if it’s for this country, when and what were the First and Second awakenings?
The Second Awakening happened in the 19th century and was a big Protestant movement in American and the UK. I’ve never heard of the Third Awakening till now, but I assume it’s a reference to that. The First Awakening killed the dinosaurs.
Yes, the Bush administration is laughably incompetent. And, yes, this incompetence is structural, because they make hiring decisions like the ones regarding Iraqi reconstruction on the basis of ideological purity and party loyalty, not experience, skill, knowledge, and so forth.
But it’s really worth remembering that incompetence isn’t the only thing that’s wrong with the Bush administration. Here’s why: there are a _lot_ of people in DC (many of them members of the opposition party) who’d be just fine with Bush’s foreign policy if only it were done competently. These folks wished we’d had our illegal war with Iraq, but had done it with more troops and with trained Iraq specialists instead of twenty-something party hacks as the administrative staff.
Unfortunately, a competent version of the Bush administration would have been only slightly less disastrous than what actually happened. And in some ways, it could have been even worse: the incompetence — which has essentially hog-tied our military — may be one of the few things that is keeping us out of another war against Iran or Syria.
The Bush administration’s incompetence has provided scads of cover for the “decent left”/pro-war liberals, who still haven’t owned up to the depths of the errors that they made in the run up to war. Similarly, the adminstration’s incompetence is a convenient excuse to continue to ignore the voices of those who predicted the outcome of our Iraqi adventure well in advance of its beginning.
The First Awakening happened in the years leading up to the American Revolution. See “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” for more information.
Ben- yes, I’m very familiar with the incompetence dodge.
Even so, the incompetence *is* pretty breath-taking. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.
BenA is absolutely right. This is whats wrong with the Hilary/Biden demo position on Iraq. This belief that if it had only been done right it all would have worked out. That’s beyond crazy. Leaders have known for ten thousand years that if you invade and occupy a people by force of arms, they are going to resist you. Loyalty to the tribe, nationalism, is the most powerful ism. Going back to Alexander or Khan, they knew that you had to brutally subjigate the occupied people or they would fight you for generations. Since brutality on that level would not be acceptable in todays world, there was never any hope that Iraq could be anything but an unmitigated disaster. And the saddest piece of all, history will recognize that that was obvious from the very begining.
And I will not accept this line that “the democrats will be just as bad”. Oh sure I get the cynicism. But this assault upon the very meaning of America, both in unchecked presidential power in violation of the constitution and a foreign policy based upon wars of aggression, is unprecedented. And I am certain that, while we’ll still have corruption and lots of economic problems, once we remove these irrational idealogues from office, at least the worst of the crimes of the American government will be reversed. And slowly, if we exercise care and restraint, perhaps the world will begin to forgive us…
mikey
Mikey:
u r teh best!!
agree that the line of “Democrats are as bad/corrupt/immoral as the Republicans” does nothing to remove the political cancer that is today’s GOP
your posts are the yin to Gary’s yang (not sure if i have that backwards) – your posts are brilliant (great use of language, historical context, life experience, PoV, etc) – i think i have mancrush – on your writing that is….
thanks – stay healthy and wise!
Holy fucking Lucky Charms…
We’ve put fourteen thousand people into illegal prison camps?!
I knew we were doing it, but I somehow assumed it couldn’t be more than a thousand or two people. Fourteen thousand?
Imagine if some other country were arbitrarily holding fourteen thousand American citizens without charging them or otherwise giving them due process of law. Imagine what we would have done to them by now.
And the saddest thing about this for me on a purely personal level is that I’m not particularly shocked or horrified. Surprised at how high the number is, yes. Anything else, no.
It’s official – I’m beyond the capacity for horror anymore.
Odds of Mrs O’Beirne being asked about this when she’s on one of her five weekly TV guest spots?
Brad R.: Agreed. The incompetence is breathtaking.
Another thing to think about is the fact that this is how he’s filled all the domestic posts, too.
The folks that got hired to go to Iraq were the ones who got beat out for the political appointments here.
Odds of Mrs O’Beirne being asked about this when she’s on one of her five weekly TV guest spots?
“There were some WOMEN who ruined the program. So there.”
I remember reading about this back when it happened, too. Didn’t Michael Ledeen’s duaghter Simone preside over the disappearance of a couple billion dollars? She was working to set up the currency system, IIRC.
She was working to set up the currency system, IIRC.
Oh that’s gonna look great on a resume.
hey i just noticed!
third awakening = third reich!
darn.
It’s worse than you could possibly imagine:
Many of us who had worked on Iraq issues during the Clinton and Bush I administrations called, pleaded, offered our time and effort for free, just to be able to have some influence and keep the Administration from making horrible mistakes. We were rebuffed. I had been part of a team of US relief workers who had organized the successful US government relief efforts in the aftermath of the Gulf War and the 1991 uprising. All of us volunteered to advise the Administration during the lead-up to the war. None of us got so much as a return phone call. (Full comment from here.)
So the people who helped Bush 41 rebuild after Gulf War I were somehow not qualified to work for W. And Beirne turned down free expertise in favor of fanatical ideology, blind naivete, and unquestioning obedience.
I’ve seen this pattern once before. While my old high school was in the process of building a new campus, the new Principal and Vice Principal starting purging the long time, experienced staff and replacing them with just out of school newbies. Many of the staff were let go just before their pensions kicked up to the next level, so most of us assumed it was a “get rid of the expensive old geezers before we have to pay for their retirement scheme.”
But then even the second tier staff started getting driven out. Some of the excuses for not renewing contracts became patently ridiculous, like “parents complained about you, but we can’t tell you who or why or let you defend yourself” (it was a private school, so they could more easily get away with it). In about two years, not one of the staff who had been around before the administration remained; this was just about the time the new campus was complete and the final parts of the old school were brought over.
And suddenly, the principal and the vice principal were both driving new cars, fixing up their houses, wearing more expensive clothes, new watches, etc. After a year or so, some of the parents who used to volunteer in the library (one of the last parts moved over) realized that there were a lot fewer shelves than there used to be, and the rare books collection was nearly depleted, and some of the antique tables and desks were nowhere to be seen.
The library had been the depository for the most valuable books and furniture bequeathed to the school by over a hundred years of loyal alumni. None of this had made it over to the new campus.
The principal and the vice principal had taken the opportunity of the move to systematically loot the school, but first they had to get rid of anyone with enough experience, smarts, or a clue to notice what they were up to. So the better the teacher, the longer they’d been around, the more experience they had with the school, the more important it was to get rid of them.
Sound famliar?
http://www.richard-seaman.com/Travel/TrinidadAndTobago/Trinidad/PitchLake/GuideHoldingTarHigh.jpg
http://www.nekomitech.net/taters/photo/step1-01.jpg
and
http://www.scalecreep.com/catalog/images/dixon/DIX-WGV4.jpg
Some assemby required.
Harlotwood calling http://www.anglo-saxonisrael.com/buttcrackmountain.php
Harlotwood calling http://www.anglo-saxonisrael.com/buttcrackmountain
Here is a short list of some of the diseases that are shared and spread abroad by deathfags, especially by those who “go both ways� and share their death culture with the opposite sex:
AIDS
Syphilis
Gonorrhea
Typhoid fever (caused by ingesting human feces via anilingus)
Herpes (from fellatio)
Gay Bowel Syndrome
Hepatitis (due to ingesting feces and smearing feces on their bodies)
(According to one study, the average homosexual male has from twenty to 100 sex partners per year, with half of these encounters involving the swallowing of semen, ¾ of these encounters involving anal intercourse, and 25% involving ingested feces. The “liberal� networks have been telling us for decades now that we are supposed to accept this as “normal.�)
Due to their multiple sex partners, at any given time, 80% of these deathfags will be carrying some sort of venereal disease.
One of the advantages homosexuals have over families is that, since they don’t have to raise or support children, they have much more “disposable income.� With this extra money, they can hop planes from New Babylon to San Fagcisco and infect each other from coast to coast. They can spend all their money on self-indulgence…and what’s left they donate to their pandering politicians.
Pretty twisted idea of “Keeping the day Holy”.
Then again I bet doing all that research into ‘gay sex’ is a pretty rapturous experience for you innit? Well, at least that ‘one study’.
To make it perfect I guess you need someone to call you dirty names tho?
You poor poor thing, how hard it must be to never be able to look yourself in the eye while staring into a mirror.
Hey, I’ve got deathfags first album. Dudes rock.
Lets see. God hates fags. God is an imaginary mythological construct, like “Thor” or “Zeus”. So if I’m gay, I ain’t too upset.
Sheesh, I thought we pulled the fateful lever on these losers….
mikey
Hmm. I guess I could point out that heterosexuals contract/spread AIDS and heterosexuals contract/spread syphilis and heterosexuals contract/spread gonorrhea and heterosexuals contract/spread typhoid and heterosexuals contract/spread herpes and heterosexuals contract/spread hepatitis . . .
and that heterosexuals have multiple sex partners and that many heterosexuals get their down ‘n’ dirty on by way of mouths and arses and suchlike and therefore do things like swallow semen and *gasp!* come into contact with feces . . .
I mean, I could point all of that out. But why bother, since apparently this god guy just hates fags?
Well, that, and also — what the hell does any of this have to do with the stupefyingly crude corruption (moral, political, and intellectual) of the Bush administration?
Gary. Son. That is seriously the sorriest goddamn excuse for a pro-Bush argument I have ever seen. The fact is, you can do better than that.
Anyhow. Hey, y’all, this makes me think it’s these kids who are the happiest folks on the planet concerning the existence of Diebold. Think about it, would you want “part of the Bush Administration’s post-war recoconstruction of Iraq” on your resume if you had to play out in the real world? Even your most hardcore capitalist or party loyalist would hire one of these clowns to do anything but park cars. But as long as there’s the omerta, they’re set.
The spambot blocker needs upgrading, I think.
I love it when they operate on the assumption that this would NEVER happen in hetrosexual acts. “New Babylon”! “San Fagcisco”! Ohhh, someone’s been gleening tips on hi-LARIOUS parody from the bastion of wit that is Mad Magazine.
Um, actually, I know a few gays who have kids. I ALSO know a lot of hetrosexual maried couples who don’t have kids.
What the HECK is “gay bowel syndrome”? Or did he mean gay VOWEL syndrome?
[…] One would think that the rebuilding of a nation the size of Iraq would need the best and brightest but apparently the questions that the applicants had to answer were based on a lot of ideology and Right Wing views. […]
Shorter troll:
“DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE QUEERS ARE DOING TO THE SOIL?”
Homosexuality is psychologically unhealthy because it is based on sex obsession. Since it is a culture of self-indulgent wantonness, deathfags need to feed their lust in increasingly bizarre ways. Sadism and sadomasochism are often on the menu. You may have noticed that serial killers John Wayne Gacy and Geoffrey Dahmer were homosexuals who had a taste for death and sex. Homosexuality and murder often go together. Torture and risky sex are always likely when deathfags get together, especially when drugs and alcohol are added to the mix. They complain about “gay-bashing,� but fags are much more likely to be killed by each other.
Up to 50% of suicides are committed by homosexuals. What’s the matter? Are we normal people not letting them have enough sex? As things get more and more kinky, these lost souls start to play deadly sex games, including deliberate oxygen deprivation with nooses tied around their necks. Combining orgasm with the thrill of a near-death experience is, to me, the exact opposite of what sex is for. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned! Silly me!
Homosexuals make up the vast proportion of pedophiles.
Yeah, dammit, we like our serial killers straight like Ted Bundy. Jeezus, I hate these fucks. They’re not even funny, like wingnuts. Can we arrange a rumble or some damn thing?
mikey
What a lazy troll. he’s posting the same thing on both threads. What, we just get re-runs?
sloppy seconds. 😉
Hey! I want emoticons! How did you get them, Jillian?
What a lazy troll. he’s posting the same thing on both threads. What, we just get re-runs?
Seriously! What–do we have a substitute teacher today? We’ve already seen this!
Dorothy, please tell me that the principal and vice principal were arrested, charged with multiple felonies and jailed. Please. I need to be able to fool myself into thinking that the analogy might apply on the upside as well.
Dan Someone,
They were fired and the Diocese of Phoenix (who owned the school) was filing charges. The criminal investigation was under way–that’s how this all came to light.
http://icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk/sundaysun/news/tm_objectid=16667347&method=full&siteid=50081&headline=was-our-ken-telling-it-straight–name_page.html
Well, if that’s your take, then at least they’ve succeeded at that. In spades.
The Second Awakening happened in the 19th century and was a big Protestant movement in American and the UK. I’ve never heard of the Third Awakening till now, but I assume it’s a reference to that. The First Awakening killed the dinosaurs.
IIRC, the ‘First Awakening’ tag was invented to link the upstart American Talibangelicals like Jonathan Edwards & Cotton Mather with the historical figures who invented Protestantism. The Second Awakening led to the invention of a number of uniquely American cults, I mean philopsophies, including Mormonism & the Seventh-Day Adventists. Along with a lot of new religions that didn’t survive but did leave behind some very American technologies, like the Shakers and the Oneida Commune. (Not to mention Spiritualism, but the groundwork for that was mostly done in England, about which I haven’t read much.)
The ‘Third Awakening’ talk seems to have started back in the early 1980s when academics wanted to make Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed’s Moral Majority people look like respectable objects for academic study, not just lucky grifters taking advantage of the desperate and stupid. It was taken up by the new ‘Charismatic Catholics’ as well as a grab-bag of the usual fundamentalist-fringe groups, partially because it fed into the psychology of the whole Apocalypse-in-the-Year-Two-Thousand feverdreams. The Jews-for-Jesus people were very taken with it, and I remember it being mentioned in conjunction with the Heavens Gate tragedy as well. Today, using the ‘Third Awakening’ seems to have devolved into one of the under-the-radar code phrases, like the “mentioning Dredd Scott signals I want to overturn Roe v Wade” meme. It would be a harmless eccentricity if it weren’t being promoted by a lot of people — like Karl Rove, John Roberts, and Pope Benedict — who actually do stand a chance of being able to trigger an apocalypse, if not the Second Coming after which they claim to hunger.
From the irony department:
“Fighting corruption topped the agenda of the World Bank’s gathering Monday in Singapore, with the institution’s President Paul Wolfowitz stressing that accountability and transparency are essential for promoting economic growth and fighting poverty.”
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/business/4194435.html
[Bush loyalist] Haveman arrived in Iraq with his own priorities…He urged the Health Ministry to mount an anti-smoking campaign, and he assigned an American from the CPA team — who turned out to be a closet smoker himself — to lead the public education effort.
You have got to be shitting me.
I’d take all this with a grain of salt. I mean look at the author’s name, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, pretty dodgy sounding don’t you think? He’s probably just pissed off because they wouldn’t hire him.
I mean I’m certain our fearless leader would tolerate this behaviour in his minions.
“Dear America: Had Enough?”
Darling…you know my masochism knows no bounds.
USE A BIGGER STRAP-ON!!
I just love the suppleness of a young boy’s ass…er, GOD WILL PUNISH YOU ALL!
I would love to be there when one of these idiot RW children presents their resume at a business interview, nodding their head gleefully, saying, “I helped make Iraq what it is today!�
Look us in the eyes you liberal Gasbags!You who have dental floss for spines! Vist the site{afore mentioned in name section}.
Why, they’re building landing strips for gay martians! I swear to God!
You know what, Stuart? I like you. You’re not like the other people here in the trailer park.
If you get me a burl owl, I’ll never ask for another thing as long as I live.
Meh, http://www.christiangallery.com is for fags dear…
Christiangallery isn’t overly concerned with teh gheys….except for all those gays that are somehow getting abortions as well.
It’s the site that became infamous for publishing the hit list for doctors who perform abortions, and then crossing off their names when they were assasinated.
Give that some thought before you even click through to their site. It’s worth asking yourself if you even want stuff like that in your browser history.
If God hates homosexuals, then how come the people He sends to speak out against homosexuality are, without exception, such FUCKING IDIOTS?
I mean, you’d think if He wanted people to believe He hated them, He’d appoint at least one person with brain to show homos the error of their ways. Instead, we keep getting offensive, ignorant fuckwits who are impossible to take seriously.
I’d take that as a sign from God that He doesn’t have a problem with homos-if He wanted them to change, He’d send more persuasive disciples. Clearly He wants us to ignore people like that troll.
OT on this thread, but we have a Phucked Up Phelps event coming right here to the heart of Iowa. The West Des Moines Valley High School is putting on the play about the horrible murder of Matthew Shepard. Of course, various idiot parents are objecting, and there is due to be a big meeting to discuss it. They’ve removed some of the profanity to appease these jerks, but there are still those who want it pulled. Thankfully, the WDM school district seems to have a better than dental floss spine, and it looks like the play will happen. Into the fray come Phearless Phred. He’s going to bring his gang of inbreds here to protest, if the play is performed. Now, I’m inclined to be glad for the old dirty bastard’s interference; with friends like him, the protesters just look like, well, what they are… bigotted morons. Most soccer moms don’t wanna be in that company. So let the idiots rave, they do their own cause more harm than good. But it would be good to have the lever pulled on them here, because they are really boring and all.
Whatever happened to Jose, btw? it’s been ages.
Now, on-topic, it seems clear that W’s administration is going to go down in history as the most corrupt ever. And that’s fairly impressive, actually. I don’t have a lot of faith in at least 30% of my fellow citizens, but corruption on this level is astounding and quite simple to grasp. Only someone who is deliberately deluding themselves could fail to see that the kind of good ol’ boy network going on today makes the old Chicago Machine smoke-filled room politics of old seem like nursery school.
“Look us in the eyes you liberal Gasbags!You who have dental floss for spines! Vist the site{afore mentioned in name section}. ”
I laughed out loud when I read this!
You’d think if he feels so passionate about it he’d at least spell out the site address again instead of referring us to the name section.
Lies! Damned lies! Everybody knows that I primarily fuck my daughters, ever since the ol’ ball and chain went through menopause. I mean, what good to me is the old cow if she can’t bear me more congregation? The girls, on the other hand, are poppin’ out grandkids just fine!
I don’t suppose that you’ll take into account that it was consenting soil?
Candy, one of the best things to do in the face of a Phelps protest is to use it as a fundraising opportunity.
Just issue a press release that you’ll be getting people to pledge funds for every minute that the Phelps protest lasts, and donate those funds to a human rights/equality/tolerance organization of your choice. You can also circulate amongst the throngs that sometimes gather at one of his protests to collect funds if you have the right permits.
It’s a good fundraising opportunity, because even people who are ambivalent on gay rights generally hate Phelps, and it allows the bile he generates to be used for something good. It also chaps his ass something fierce.
Hi Jillian, yes, I’ve been thinking along those lines myself. I’ve also heard that there will be a counter-protest if he shows up. I definitely plan to be there.
Not long ago – I believe it was when they were here to protest a scholarship being given out at a Des Moines High School in Matthew Shepard’s name – there was a fundraising deal where, for every inbred dingbat who showed up funds were donated. That is just about the perfect response, isn’t it?
man, fundies piss me off.
THEY are the ones going to hell, if there is one.