The Recent Outrage

There was a lot about the RNC that I found offensive tonight. But as a pastor, a resident of a small town, and a Christian who is a passionate progressive (because of issues of social justice) I was most deeply offended by the routine mocking of "community organizing."

It seems KBR is at it again, and just when you thought they couldn't get worse, they did.

Who has the Bush administration hired to make sure our voting rights aren't violated on Election Day? Meet Hans Von Spakovsky, a key player in the right-wing vote-suppression agenda.

When 80% of Americans would rather see our government invest in renewable energy than drill for more oil, you have to ask yourself...Why are we still having this argument?

The other day, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann told us that we don't need Nancy Pelosi to save the planet. Jesus has it covered.

This weekend, the American Psychological Association will be holding their annual conference, but it won't be as harmonious as you would think: a group of psychologists are organizing to change the association's position on the presence of psychologists during interrogations of Guantanamo detainees.

Even though state representative Myra Crownover is a Republican and an oil-drilling company owner, we still thought she had to be playing a joke on us when she posted an op-ed in the New York Sun, proclaiming oil drilling as the new 'clean' energy.

The Department of Homeland Security recently gave Customs and Border Patrol the right to search laptops without probable cause at airports along the borders.

H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, in Tampa, Florida, has hired lobbyists to advocate for the institution in Florida's capitol, and seven of those lobbyists are also tobacco lobbyists.

Lucas Senecall, a Navy veteran, took his life just two hours after he was released from the VA medical center in Spokane, WA on July 7th . Yet despite Lucas' state of agitation and weeping, despite his history of bipolar disorder, substance abuse and multiple suicide attempts, despite his having been diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, and despite reports quoting Lucas as saying “I don't want to exist right now,” and “My heart just wants to leave my body,” Lucas was assessed by the VA as a non-suicide risk and was released from VA suicide watch.

It's time for a new direction for America — one where hateful people like the man who sponsored this billboard are no longer in power — and one where we're focused on bringing the troops home from Iraq, ensuring health care for all Americans, improving our education system and taking action to tackle global warming.

Maybe President Bush is smarter than he appears. After all, it takes an aspect of cunning to introduce a proposal that would require federally funded medical institutions to hire health care providers who don't believe in abortion or birth control, and present it as an “anti-discrimination rule.” I imagine even Houdini could not achieve such an act of illusion.

This week, Reuters reported that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki requested that the U.S. provide a timeline for troop withdrawal. In response, the White House released a statement on Maliki's reported request, questioning whether the media made a transcription error.

In the first court review of the Bush Administration's secret evidence for holding a detainee at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, it was revealed that the government claimed the accusations presented in its secret documents should be considered truth — not because there were hard facts backing them up — but because the accusations were repeated in multiple government documents.

You've probably heard by now that the Supreme Court let Exxon off the hook for $2 billion in punitive damages for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, the worst in the nation's history. Talk about judicial activism. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out in her dissent, the court had little to no legal basis for reducing the punitive damages awarded by lower courts. "The new law made by the court should have been left to Congress," she wrote.

This past Friday, June 20, the House of Representatives wrote the Administration another blank check: it ignored its 2006 electoral mandate to stand up to the White House’s bullying – instead passing an unconstitutional plan in new FISA legislation that allows the federal government and the telecom companies to wiretap Americans’ phone lines without a warrant.

Rush Limbaugh recently called the mostly black and impoverished Katrina victims, "people raping people in the street," while saying that the mostly white Midwestern victims of the recent floods were "the backbone of America." Rush's racist tirades are nothing new. Which is why it's outrageous that a big company like Barnes and Noble continues to be one the Rush Limbaugh Show's major advertisers.

From the folks that brought you campaigns to build a border fence and de-fund Planned Parenthood, we now present Carbon Belch Day. Tomorrow, grassfire.org is encouraging people to put as much CO2 into the air as possible by smoking cigars, traveling in airplanes and driving as much as possible.

VA Secretary James Peake referred to the growing concern surrounding the veterans' mental health crisis as “overblown,” then went on to say, “Many of the brain injuries are serious but some of them are akin to what anyone who played football in their youth might have suffered.”

There's no greater symbol of security in this country than the home. But everywhere we look, Americans are losing that sense of security, and none faster than the very people who fight for our national security -- our troops and veterans. Military towns face foreclosure rates are 4 times higher than those in civilian towns.

President Bush should be careful when pointing out hypocrisies. His call for the liberation of Cuban political prisoners seems to ignore the fact that he is keeping 270 political prisoners of his own on the eastern coast of the island in Guantanamo.

More than half of the 1,600 EPA staff scientists who filled out a detailed questionnaire indicated some level of political interference in their work.

Two days ago, I discovered that there’s another horrifically lethal and unaccountable war profiteer. It’s called L-3/Titan, and after Halliburton it’s the second biggest – and most deadly – contractor in Iraq for which to work. L-3/Titan makes about $1 billion each year out of outsourced intelligence gathering and translation services.

Yesterday, USA Today reported that Nobel Prize winner and leader of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement Nelson Mandela is currently flagged on the United States' terrorist watch list.

Last week, dozens of corporate bigwigs gathered in Baton Rouge, just a stone's throw away from New Orleans, for the 25th Annual Business Awards and Hall of Fame. Among the vague references to the devastating effects of Katrina, there was no talk of tax cuts for the poor that provide financial relief to the growing number of poor Americans.

At Progressive Future, we've been diligent about spreading the otherwise buried reports of the atrocities and abuses committed by military contractors in Iraq. As outraged as they made us, we had to wonder why these stories failed to reach the mainstream American public. Now we know why.

President Bush and Senator McCain have made clear that they favor welfare for Wall Street, but not Main Street. They happily bail out irresponsible investment banks like Bear Stearns, but have no plan for providing substantial relief to American families faced with losing their jobs or even their homes.

It’s outrageous enough that President Bush railroaded the country into the Iraq war. Now, even as he touts a plan to scale back the length of troop deployment — a promise he knows he will never have to keep — behind the scenes he is starting negotiations with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to keep U.S. troops in Iraq long after he leaves office.

Bush and Cheney have proposed to let the telephone companies off the hook for releasing private information of U.S. citizens to the government.

In a Rose Garden press conference yesterday, George W. Bush blamed the Democratic-controlled Congress for the Bush recession. It was classic Bush: cause a problem (in this case, our economic troubles), and then try to blame it on others (in this case, Democrats and farmers). Bush offered nothing new in terms of ideas or solutions, but nevertheless he attacked Congress for failing to support his Right-wing, special-interest-backed policies.