copyright © 2007-2008, Rudis Muiznieks

Happy Monday morning everyone. I’m feeling better and I’m ready to be productive at work tomorrow (I’m writing this Sunday afternoon). This is bound to be a very short issue of our weekly Monday Morning Funnies. Being sick all last week I didn’t read the news much. So I only have a few short things to share.

Huckabee Jokes About Obama Assassination

For the record making off the cuff jokes about the assassination of America’s first serious African-American presidential candidate is not funny. In case you were wondering. In his defense though Huckabee thought that McCain’s “Bomb Iran” song was funny too. So maybe the guy just sick. (h/t Crooks and Liars)

Click here to view the embedded video.

McCain vs. McCain in Video Format

I have a lot of fun with my “McCain vs. McCain” pieces which try to highlight the incredible pandering and flip flopping of John McCain. This video is a great visual reminder of that fact. I’m impressed by the restraint as this video could have easily been much much longer. Video courtesy of Brave New Films.

Chris Matthews Grills Right Winger on Talking Points

The standard formula when a right winger appears on one of these shows is to blindly repeat the parties talking points. If questioned or whenever the other side talks just keep repeating the same points louder and louder until you win. Well, Chris Matthews finally calls one of them on it and its quite fun to watch. (h/t Seeing the Forest)

Click here to view the embedded video.

GodTube Video of the Week

Thats about it for this week. Thanks for reading and as always I really appreciate your comments and emails. Feel free to let me know if something struck you as funny recently.

William ~ WWJV4.com

Now, I know many of you are going to read this and immediately get defensive and attack me for saying that you don’t care about unborn children or whatever. I’m not. I believe that the vast majority of pro-lifers really do want to end abortion. Sadly they are too uncaring, or too shallow, or too dimwitted to see that the policies advocated by the pro-life establishment are completely opposite of your supposed goal. These same policies that you fight for in the name of ending abortion and “saving babies” directly cause an increase in abortions, increase in infant mortality, increase in unwanted pregnancy, increase in abandoned babies, and an overall decrease in the quality of life for women and their children.

This morning I read that Mike Huckabee is supporting the “Egg as Life” Human Life Amendment recently proposed in Colorado. This amendment will define human life as starting at the moment that the egg is fertilized. The Denver Post quotes Mike Huckabee as saying that “This proposed constitutional amendment will define a person as a human being from the moment life begins at conception,”. Of course, this is just another attempt at making abortions illegal, which is shown to have no effect at reducing abortions and only serves to make them more dangerous. This is exactly the kind of policy that is proposed by the pro-lifers, yet will leave horrible negative effects rippling across the entire state, while at the same time accomplishing nothing to reduce abortion.

Seriously, in a sane world where reality was a factor in government and policy this type of resolution would never even see the light of day. The obvious results are not at all in line with the supposed goal of the group proposing the change, yet luckily for them their followers are too blind to notice or don’t care. I am out of time to write this morning but as luck would have it George Monboit is also writing on the pro-lifers policy effects in his column for The Guardian today. I highly suggest you read it. If you like you can also read the story at his blog which contains references.

Please pro-lifers, wake up to the actual harmful effects of your policies. Stop fighting against those whose actions are actually exceptionally more effective at reaching both our supposed goals of reducing abortions than your own ever will be. If you drop out the controlling women and restricting freedom part of your agenda we may be able to find some middle ground. Of course that’s not really possible since that is your agenda. The pro-life part is just the whitewash.

William Ludwig
WWJV4.com

Well, I was reading through my news feeds earlier and stumbled across this great video at Crooks and Liars that perfectly illustrates this point. Americans, especially fundamentalist Christians, are completely ignorant of even the most basic information about our presidential candidates. Whats worse is they have no interest in fixing the problem. Watch and weep…

Click here to view the embedded video.

It seems that nowadays one of those two tickets will appeal to your values, and the other will scare the daylights out of you. If you are a progressive, or if you value the freedoms and liberties that our country was founded on, you have to agree with me on this. Anyone who is willing to change our constitution to force their religious views on the rest of us is not fit to be in office. That goes for any office, but especially not the President of the greatest country on earth.

Somehow there seems to be enough people that believe that this is ok that he trounced McCain here in Kansas. This absolutely boggles my mind. In a sane world where the American people believed in safeguarding our constitution that statement alone would have ended his presidential run. Instead a bunch of people actually applauded at the idea of shredding our first amendment.

I have no problems with voting for the candidate that reflects your values, that’s the nature of our government. But how can so many people actually believe that their personal religious views are more important than the liberties and freedoms of everyone else? This is not in line with the teachings of Jesus, or the founders of our country. So what makes this seem ok to so many, when it’s clearly not?

So my question is this. Have conservatives finally pushed so far to the right that they have broken through to a whole new dimension of crazy? Or is it just that after supporting a President and political party with no respect for our Constitution and the principles upon which this country that they have become blind to their own actions? If anyone has any insight into this please feel free to comment. Thanks.

Also, here is Keith Olberman on the issue. As always he says it better than anyone.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Campaigning is reaching a fever pitch in most camps and the voter turnout expectation is growing. 130,000 Democratic voters are expected and 80,000 Republicans. Candidates have been mostly positive in their recent efforts at attracting voters, at least on the Democratic side. Republicans Romney and Huckabee are still going at it with Huckabee maintaining that he is not going to fire back at Romney’s critical ads, and then previewing a commercial in which he does just that. (He did tell reporters the commercial would not air in Iowa.)

Democratic voters have reported receiving phone calls from “pollsters” in which certain candidates were painted in a not so nice light. Hillary would cost the Democrats the election in November if she won the nom, Edwards plan for Iraq would be disastrous, and Obama would deny health insurance to millions of Americans. There were even calls reminding voters of the very important Orange Bowl that was airing on Thursday. So far no one has claimed responsibility for these calls.

My favorite candidate, Kucinich, has urged his supporters to throw their votes toward Obama if he does not meet the cutoff point for voting in the caucuses. The reason behind the support of Obama? His message of change. Obama has shown an amazing ability to garner new supporters from groups that traditionally do not have a high voter turnout. He is a charismatic speaker but his idealism and naivety make him hard for me to support.

William is an ardent supporter of Clinton, and there are times that I agree with him. She has come out strong in the past few days pounding her message home that she alone has the experience needed to start off right as President, she would move decisively on the issues that matter most to Americans, such as her incredibly good health care plan, and she really does come across as a nominee who really cares. To combat this, Obama had a former Clinton supporter introduce him at an event, stating that the “positive” tone of Obama’s campaign is what drew him in.

Personally, I haven’t found Obama’s campaign to be positive overall. In almost every debate and speaking engagement there is a point in which it feels that he is campaigning solely around the fact that he has always been against the Iraq War and Hillary wasn’t. Now, I find it refreshing that there are candidates who have always had better sense than to support this illegal war, however; being against something in the beginning and having a good plan to end it now are two very different things. I have not always agreed with the way that Clinton has handled the fact that she did vote for military action in Iraq, I felt strongly that she should have apologized. I also stopped supporting her when she voted for the Kyl/Lieberman amendment.

Every time something bad happens in the Middle East (which is quite a bit it seems) Obama finds a way to blame it on Hillary’s vote for force. It is very important to keep in mind the context in which Congress voted for the use of force in Iraq. It was at a time when the majority of their constituents supported the proposal, America was grieving, the president was enjoying high approval ratings, and not many people thought that our administration would outright lie to us. The job of a Senator is to represent their constituency, something that she did to the best of her ability at the time and a majority of Congress did as well.

I feel strongly that Obama would be best served by showing us that he in fact has the experience, diplomacy, and fortitude to be our next president. I am not convinced that he has any of those things at this point and I am not one who is convinced merely by rhetoric.

So how is Edwards dealing with his third place position? By a drastic new plan to end the US occupation of Iraq of course! In an interview yesterday Edwards called for the withdrawal of almost all US troops, including those training the Iraqi military and police, within 10 months. This has been a topic in which Edwards’ view has evolved over time, much like the rest of America. He also voted for the use of force, later apologized for it, recommended a gradual reduction of troops over time, and now, citing the failure of the Iraqi government over the last four years, wants to pull virtually every US troops. He would make allowances for 3,500-5,000 troops to protect the US Embassy and possibly some humanitarian workers. (( Edwards Calls For Pullout of Troops Training Iraqis ~ MSN ))

Democrats Joseph Biden and Chris Dodd have already mentioned dropping out of the race if they do not garner enough support in Iowa, which would narrow this bitterly contested playing field in time for the New Hampshire Primary.

I am excited to see that the political process is generating so much enthusiasm and involvement this time around. There isn’t a single Democratic candidate that I believe could not be a good President. I do support Kucinich above them all but I could feel comfortable voting for any of them in the November election. Stay tuned for our continued coverage of the Iowa caucuses and the ongoing election process and let us know your thoughts.

~ Summer ~ WWJV4.com

I included the video below, but don’t expect to hear an answer from Huckabee since like most politicians he is allergic to answering questions. Instead he gives a long winded answer about his killing streak as Governor in Arkansas then ends with a joke about Jesus being too smart to run for public office. Now this isn’t an attack on Huckabee for carrying out his duties as governor. In fact Huckabee at least has the humanity to dislike the death penalty even though he supports it. No I don’t understand that logic either.

Click here to view the embedded video.

That being said, the question presented to Mike Huckabee has still not been answered. For some reason Huckabee, a Baptist Pastor, was somehow unable to formulate an answer for this simple question. The obvious reason for this is because telling the truth that NO JESUS WOULD NOT SUPPORT THE DEATH PENALTY would seriously hurt his support among the pro-life/pro-death penalty Christians. As a Baptist Pastor Huckabee probably would not feel comfortable lying about Jesus so he did the only thing he could do, avoid the question.

Now I am aware that there are many who will pick and choose their way through the Bible to justify their belief in the death penalty. This is the same methods that have been used for centuries to justify all sorts of abominations. Rape, torture, murder, slavery or whatever; you name it the Bible has been used to justify it. Conveniently enough the same book contains passages that condemns the exact same actions. This works out nicely no matter which side of the argument you want to be on.

Since the Bible is an unreliable source at best due to its vagueness and double talk we are forced to outside reading to answer the simple question of whether or not Jesus is for the death penalty. I could easily list dozens of sources but instead I want to suggest one that was very enlightening for me. It is title “Would Jesus Pull The Switch” and was written by Sister Helen Prejean. It is a bit long but well worth the read.

I cannot believe in a God who metes out hurt for hurt, pain for pain, torture for torture. Nor do I believe that God invests human representatives with such power to torture and kill. The paths of history are stained with the blood of those who have fallen victim to “God’s Avengers.” Kings, popes, military generals, and heads of state have killed, claiming God’s authority and God’s blessing. I do not believe in such a God.

Please let me know what you think. Personally I have been against the death penalty for a while. Its barbaric and inhumane to put a prisoner to death. The act of murdering a captive and harmless prisoner serves no rational purpose. It does not deter further crimes, it costs more than life imprisonment, and it simply spreads the pain and loss. All these negatives without any positives makes the death penalty indefensible to my mind and thats before you throw in the possibility of murdering an innocent man.

As I have written time and again, conservative right wing republicans cannot argue with logic so they bring on the barrage of verbal nastiness. Almost everyone agrees that the holocaust was a horrible thing so equating whatever it is that they don’t agree with with either Nazi’s or the holocaust itself is a surefire way to rile up their followers. The other word that they have managed to manipulate to conjure up images of death, torment, and horror is liberal. Notice that he doesn’t just say abortion it’s “liberalized” abortion.

These semantic games that they are playing have been highly tuned to strike just the right chord in their close minded base. It doesn’t matter that logically the holocaust and legalized abortion have nothing in common or that “liberal” means “favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.”

Huckabee also pulled out another verbal weapon from his arsenal “God”. In the same speech he stated “I’m very tired of hearing people who are unwilling to change the constitution, but seem more than willing to change the holy word of God as it relates to the definition of marriage.”

This statement is, to me, the embodiment of what is wrong with the Religious Right. He makes it clear that he believes political decisions should be guided by religious beliefs, effectively throwing the separation of church and state right out of the window. He said this while speaking to the crowd about the necessity of conservative lawmakers to pressure for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

To sum up Huckabee’s apparent platform: The Christian conservatives’ idea of God and his wishes will decide the laws and anyone who disagrees are liberalized nazi’s. Nice.