I AM SO ASHAMED...


that Roy Moore is from Alabama. I am so ashamed of Alabamians who voted him into his job as Chief Justice, I am so ashamed. This from the Washpost.com:
"Roy Moore has been riding the Ten Commandments as a campaign issue since he first struck out for judicial office. And left to his own devices, he intends to ride the Decalogue as far as his appeals to emotions and lust for power will take him.

Mr. Moore managed to get his name on the map -- and his face in the news -- when he was an Alabama circuit court judge. He took the decidedly un-judicial route of defying a court order to remove a hand-carved, wooden plaque of the Ten Commandments from behind the bench in his courtroom. Flushed with the attention and acclaim he won for that stunt and depicting himself as the 'Ten Commandments Judge' and a defender of Alabama against moral decline, Mr. Moore advanced his political career in 2000 by winning an election for the chief justice post.

Mr. Moore's decision to deliberately link his theology to the justice dispensed by the Alabama judiciary, to thumb his nose at the First Amendment prohibition against state establishment of religion, and then to go before an Alabama crowd of thousands and tell them that he will continue to defy a federal court order, recalls the worst days of Alabama Gov. George Wallace's defiance of federal desegregation decrees and is an affront to the rule of law. "

I am so ashamed. It is a shame that my state allows such demogogues hold political office. It is a shame that my state is last in every respect concerning the well-being of its citizens. This latest idiocy proves to the world just how shamefully we act in Alabama.

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND...

From the nytimes.com, today's issue:
"Bush allies and foes alike are coming to the conclusion that the progress may not be noticeable by the time Bush faces the voters again in 15 months. For a president who has staked his reputation on making 'a tough decision to make the world more peaceful,' this could be a big problem.

Both Republican and Democratic strategists have begun adjusting their plans for what they once viewed as unthinkable: that Bush's handling of national security in general, and the war in Iraq in particular, could become a vulnerability rather than an asset in his reelection race.

One presidential adviser said the suicide attacks hours apart in Iraq and Israel, which undermined the two anchors of Bush's ambitious effort to transform the Middle East, made Tuesday "by far the worst political day for Bush since 9/11." End quote.

I wonder if Republican's remember when a legitimately elected President of great stature and dedicated to improving the lot of average Americans, rather than his rich cronies and heavy contributor criminals like Ken Lay of Enron, was not reelected because they pointed with great clarity and hubris at the failure of our helicopters in the sands of the mid-east. That's when that great actor known as the "Great Communicator" began the tear down of all the safety nets in the world and set us upon the suicide mission we are continuing under the current illegimate inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Yes, they took down Jimmy Carter, but look what they gave us. A shrub of a man who struts about in military uniforms after refusing to serve his cushy National Guard term in Montgomery, AL after getting deferred from real service in Viet Nam.

All this is sad but true. We must recall, impeach, vote out and by all legal means rid our White House of this political vermin along with his neo-con handlers Chaney, Rumsfield, Rice and Wolfowitz. We need to do this for Jimmy... and America.

Maureen Dowd, in today's NYTimes, see nytimes.com, nails Bushco to the cross by highlighting how they have driven the terrorists in Iraq to start a Jihad against our soldiers. They were content for a while to just kill one or two a day, hoping we citizens would not notice and allow them the joy of that, but now, with the increase in number killed by the truck bomb, the idiots who like to blow themselves up are flocking to Baghdad to join in the fun.

Sadder days have visited our country but it hard to remember when. Yet Bush's popularity ratings remain over fifty percent. It is hard to discern why American citizens don't see through his lies.

You may have guessed...
that I am a Democrat. You're right, a Yellow Dog Democrat that usually just pulls the big lever, like some pull the big lever for the Republican list of candidates. I vote this way because Republicans are for big business and Democrats are for everybody else. I once voted for a Republican, Guy Hunt, who was impeached before his term ended. I wasn't surprised. The reason I voted for him was a protest against the slate the Democrats put forward that year. Alabama Democrats were ashamed of the slate that year and put Hunt into the Governor's office. Painful lesson.

Now I am about to commit to voting for another Republican, Bob Riley, who is Alabama's current Governor. I didn't vote for him but he has earned my vote if he gets the tax plan we are to vote on next month into law. Poor people in Alabama carry the load on taxes, paying about 12%, while very rich people pay about 3% of the total tax bill. Poor people start paying taxes if they make the huge sum of a little over four thousand dollars per year. Riley is going to raise that to twenty thousand dollars as the threshold. I like that. Poor people will get a lot of the benefit of the new tax law in that their children will be assured of a state paid education all the way through college. No loan, no payments after graduation, just free. If there were no other benefits, that would be enough.

People who don't want to pay their fair share of taxes are not appreciative of the fact that they make a lot of money off everybody in the state, sure, they work hard and risk their capital to achieve their financial goals, but they enjoy a much higher quality of life than most of their customers. Most of them were educated at a public college or university, paid for by taxes, but they seem to forget about that soon after getting the first big paycheck. People who fight against paying their fair share of taxes are just plain selfish. President Bush is leading us toward a real schism in this country based on income. There will be no middle class, just rich and poor. If you don't know where you will wind up, you will most likely be in the poor group. For the first time a millionaire will be considered "poor". The tax bill under the new tax plan will be handed, not to middle class earners like you, but to big corporations who pay no taxes, huge landowners like Alabama Power Company and the timber companies who own all those pine trees you see planted in straight rows. These people now pay about a dollar a year per acre.

We need this tax increase and if we get it, I will vote for another damn Republican at the next election for Governor.