goofballs

From AP: Islamic clerics in Malaysia rule to ban tomboys By JULIA ZAPPEI Associated Press Writer Oct 23rd, 2008 | KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Malaysia's main body of Islamic clerics has issued an edict banning tomboys in the Muslim-majority country, ruling that girls who act like boys violate the tenets of Islam, an official said Friday. The National Fatwa Council forbade the practice of girls behaving or dressing like boys during a meeting Thursday in northern Malaysia, said Harussani Idris Zakaria, the mufti of northern Perak state, who attended the gathering. Harussani said an increasing number of Malaysian girls behave like tomboys, and that some of them engage in homosexuality. Homosexuality is not explicitly banned in Malaysia, but it is effectively illegal under a law that prohibits sex acts "against the order of nature." Harussani said the council's ruling was not legally binding because it has not been passed into law, but that tomboys should ...

I see no one (well, hardly anyone) in the Obama camp calling for anywhere near the sort of violence to be visited on Bush, Cheney or McCain and Palin. There is a certain small minority calling for an organized campaign to place Karl Rove, John Yoo, David Addington, Roberto Gonzalez, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and were they not under the protection of the Secret Service (SS anyone? no, too far?), Bush and Cheney under citizen's arrest for their war crimes. I am among that minority. ..and if I were for the death penalty, which I certainly oppose, I would say that for some of them "hangin' is too good". But I am a radical who believes in crazy things like if you are responsible for the unjust deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians you are a war criminal. That if you eavesdrop on millions of innocent people without a legal court order, you are a criminal. That if you peddle influence and deal in cronyism, you certainly have no place in a supposed democratic fo...

Forwarding from Writers for Obama, memo by Wade Hudson: [NOTE: After receiving lots of very positive feedback to my "One-pager?" post last night and some suggested changes, I've rewritten it a bit and reformatted it. If you want a one-page Word doc that you can print and distribute in your campaign work, email me and I will send it to you. Feel free to remove my name if you wish. Also, I've posted it on my blog at http://my.barackobama.com/ page/community/post/ wadehudson/gG5LY7 if you want to comment there or refer people to that version.] Barack Obama: Ready to Lead by Wade Hudson wadehudson@ progressiveresourcecatalog. org> Given his temperament, track record, and life-long commitment to public service, the American people can trust that if elected President Barack Obama will run the Executive Office effectively, with the common good foremost in his mind. He will also use the “bully pulpit” of the Presidency to rally ordinary people to counter the power of th...

I think the final tally was something like 5-to-1 Obama over McCain. Mind you, Linux World 2008 was in downtown San Francisco, which may be the "bluest" city in the world (eat your heart out, Eugene, Oregon!). What is it? Open Voting Consortium has designed and created a secure, open sourced version of the electronic voting machine. These run Linux, but I do not see any reason why they couldn't also support Free or Net BSD, Open Solaris or some other platform (even MS Windows or OS X). Instead of paying $4000 or more for a Diebold manufactured proprietary and closed-architecture voting machine, these machines run on commodity hardware with a price tag of roughly $400 or less. And unlike their proprietary counterparts, the OVC machine provides a paper trail with a securely signed receipt. More over, the ultimate value of this system is that peer review is possible for anyone who cares to download the code and read it themselves. Unlike today, to borrow a phrase from a movi...

Pass it on: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/23/politics/animal/main4376842.shtml Fournier Is At It Again By Steve Benen (Political Animal) FOURNIER IS AT IT AGAIN.... The latest piece from Ron Fournier, the AP's Washington bureau chief and the man responsible for directing the wire service's coverage of the presidential campaign, on Joe Biden joining the Democratic ticket, is drawing a fair amount of attention this morning. More importantly, McCain campaign staffers are pushing it fairly aggressively to other reporters, in large part because it mirrors the Republican line with minimal variation. Who is Ron Fournier? http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ron_Fournier Ron Fournier is the acting Washington bureau chief for Associated Press (AP). [1] He formerly served as the AP's chief political writer and subsequently as "online political editor". In mid-2006, Fournier was a founding member and editor in chief of the online political and socia...

I am ambivalent about this commercial, but stripped of its religious underpinning, I agree with (and who wouldn't) the underlying argument. In the 1990s, especially after the 1994 mid-terms and Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America", the hegemony of the right wing and the religious right became iron-firm (although it has its roots with Reagan, a draft-dodging Hollywood actor and sportscaster who beat last centuries most authentically religious president, Jimmy Carter, partially by appealing to "family values" conservatives). The net effect of the past 31 years of religious rule in America has arguably been a disaster for many people. The effect of the cynicism of "new" Republican rule and their systematic and intentional bungling of services can been seen on a daily basis in San Francisco, a city that is understandably liberal. Reagan's dismantling of services for the poor, the addicted and the mentally ill has now become my problem, as a San ...

Folks, As you know, Jerome R. Corsi of "Unfit to Serve: Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" infamy has penned another precious tome to fuel the pulpy conflagration that is this election cycle, namely, " The Obama Nation ". This screed is poised to overtake, if it has not already, the #1 slot in the New York Times Nonfiction Bestsellers list, which is ironic as by most reasonable accounts the book is a work of fiction. Never mind that many book stores have received bulk orders of the book, some by the palette. Surely not all of the book's readership is also fictional. Yet, Corsi has enjoyed a plethora of media coverage, bolstered by the "fact" of his latest opus' "status" as a top selling book. If this offends your sense of fairness, Nation, you are not alone. The Corsi commentator conundrum requires containment. But what can be done? As you know, I would never, never, never recommend that we, as Obama supporters, take the tack of hitt...