Tuesday, September 30, 2008




sleep tight!




well, i got my new lipstick. the pictures are of the same lipstick but the colors look different. go figure!


i do like the color it's close to the color of my lips. i don't wear lipstick often because i'm picky about it and because i never got used to the feel of it on my lips.


like i wrote, makeup is fun. little things make me smile.

wrote some c&c (comments and critiques)at my poetry group. sent in my submission for c&c to the group.
we were asked to send in a poem about work for national poetry day in the u.k. which is oct. 9th.jim wants to put together a pk list on-line anthology.

i've participated in a few. it sharpens me and nudges me to search around for my muse.


it's also a bit of a odd thing that the subject is work as the scholarship that i am a committee member and judge of is always on work and personal work ethic.


tho, i think writing an essay is far easier than coming op with a poem on a given subject. i did it. now i'll see.
back, yes i'm back!

had a dentist appt. got my teeth cleaned. good news? my hygienist always compliments me on my oral hygiene. the bad news? another loose filling! damn!
America by Allen Ginsberg


America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January
17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I
need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not
the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back
it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical
joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday
somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid
I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses
in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle
Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by
Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner
candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Business-
men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of
marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable
private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour
and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of
underprivileged who live in my flowerpots
under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers
is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that
I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly
mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as
individual as his automobiles more so they're
all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500
down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Com-
munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a
handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and
sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-
cere you have no idea what a good thing the
party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand
old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me
cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody
must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.
And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power
mad. She wants to take our cars from out our
garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers'
Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-
tions.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.
Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us
all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in
the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes
in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and
psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Berkeley, January 17, 1956
i have a dentist appt. later.
phooey. my new dentist is nice but i miss my old dentist.
he was the best! i was never tense no matter what was wrong.
i think my bio, etc. has permanently taken refuge
at the bottom right.

ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/bannedbooksweek/supportingbbw/supportingbbw.cfm

IT'S BANNED BOOK WEEK


do something scandalous. read.



(you might want to start with just reading the constitution, not really a book but hey, read it before they ban it!)

Monday, September 29, 2008






i've done just about everything i can think of to clear my thoughts of the foolishness that today brought.


so bath time and a little poetry reading or maybe catalogue browsing will do
me good






i LOVE this movie, only because of betty white.
it's one of the few movies that i will click onto if i'm channel surfing.










Fort Mill Mayor Danny Funderburk says he was "just curious" when he forwarded a chain e-mail suggesting Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama is the biblical antichrist. "I was just curious if there was any validity to it," Funderburk said in a telephone interview. "I was trying to get documentation if there was any scripture to back it up."
Funderburk apparently sent the e-mail from his business account at Gastonia Sheet Metal where he works as a business agent. The e-mail, which has circulated in the last six months since Obama secured the Democratic nomination, claims the biblical book of Revelation says the antichrist will be in his 40s and of Muslim ancestry.

This urban legend has been debunked by Snopes.com, and it's been widely reported that Obama is not Muslim. Funderburk insists, however, that there is a possibility of Obama's rise as part of the End Times:
When asked if he believed Obama was the antichrist, Funderburk replied, "I've got absolutely no way of knowing that."
Funderburk said it "probably does give that impression" that he believed the e-mail was true "but that was not my intent."



from pam's house blend













Cadbury Recalls Chinese-Made ChocolateBy MIN LEE, AP
posted: 34 MINUTES AGOcomments: 141filed under: Health News, World NewsPrintShareText SizeAAAHONG KONG (Sept. 29) - British candy maker Cadbury said Monday it is recalling 11 types of Chinese-made chocolates found to contain melamine, as police in northern China raided a network accused of adding the banned chemical to milk.
A Cadbury spokesman said it was too early to say how much of the chemical was in the chocolates made at its Beijing plant.

Greg Baker, AP
The Cadbury chocolates that have been recalled were made at a factory in Beijing.

"It's too early to say where the source was or the extent of it," said the spokesman, who declined to be identified because of company policy.
The company said its dairy suppliers are generally cleared by government milk testing.
Meanwhile, police in Hebei province arrested 22 people and seized more than 480 pounds of the chemical, used to make plastics, in the raids, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The report said the melamine was produced in illicit plants and sold to breeding farms and purchasing stations.
Xinhua said 19 of the 22 detainees were managers of pastures, breeding farms and purchasing stations. It did not say when the raids took place.
The scandal broke this month when authorities said infant formula produced by Sanlu was causing kidney stones in babies and young children. Four infants have died and some 54,000 have become ill after drinking the contaminated baby formula.
Subsequent tests revealed melamine contamination in products ranging from yogurt to candy to pastries.
Authorities believe suppliers added melamine, which is rich in nitrogen, to watered-down milk to deceive quality tests for protein.
Cadbury said the 11 recalled chocolate products were distributed in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Australia.
Cadbury's chocolates sold in the United States are not affected by the recall, said Kirk Saville, a spokesman for Hershey's, Cadbury's sole U.S. distributor.
Saville said he is also "positive" no Hershey's suppliers receive milk products from China, making their products safe.
Separately, Kraft Foods, the maker of Oreo cookies, and Mars, the maker of M&Ms and Snickers candy, said they believe Indonesian authorities were mistaken when they announced they had found melamine in samples of their products made in China.
"We don't use any milk ingredients from China in any Oreo products, no matter where they are made or sold," said Claire Regan, a Kraft spokeswoman.
Mar said, in a statement on its Web site, it is confident there's no melamine in any of its chocolate or candy made in China and called the Indonesian results "completely inconsistent" with test findings from other government and independent labs in Asia and Europe.
So far, only a local agency has checked the products for melamine, but the levels found were considered very high.
Melamine in food products is considered safe by Hong Kong health authorities at 2.5 parts per million or less.
Hong Kong supermarket chain PARKnSHOP also pulled its Chinese-made Oreo, M&M and Snickers products as a precaution, spokeswoman Pinky Chan said.
Countries around the world have removed items containing Chinese milk ingredients from store shelves or banned them outright.
Authorities in China had previously arrested at least 18 people and detained more than two dozen suspects in connection with the scandal.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2008-09-29 07:32:30
Was it "Obsession"? Hate crime at an Ohio mosque


There's been a huge debate within the newspaper world -- and beyond -- about a fiery DVD targeting Islamic extremism called "Obsession" that over the last couple of weeks has been packaged in newspaper ads and distributed to hundreds of thousands of readers, especially in swing states. (The Philadelphia Inquirer was one of those papers.) Proponents say its an honest portrayal of anti-American jihadism, while critics said the video would stir up hatred toward decent God-fearing Muslims, not just those involved in or supporting terrorism. Some wonder if it's all just a big ploy to help John McCain and the GOP, who want to focus the campaign on the threat of Islamic extremists. Here's a review from the Orlando Sentinel, for example:

It's a complicated mess, but if you invoke Neville Chamberlain's "appeasement" of Hitler (not sure what anybody could have done, other than force a confrontation years before Germany or the Depression ridden, war-weary West were really "ready" for WWII ) often enough, show enough snippets of Michael Moore (yeah, I want HIM making Middle East policy about as much as the accident prone GOP) and reduce things to "the culture of hatred," you can certainly stir folks up. I stopped counting the historic Mein Kampf/Hitler comparisons at about the 50 minute mark.

This inflammatory video -- funded by a new and, I think it's fair to say, shadowy group called the Clarion Fund -- "Obsession" is the kind of controversial thing that newspapers tend to stay away from, but only a couple have turned the insert down so far. Understandably, without hard proof that the documentary contains major factual errors, many are concerned about the First Amendment issues and, let's be candid, given the battered state of the newspaper economy, some publishers NEED the money.

There's no more key battleground state in America than Ohio -- and sure enough thousands were delivered there on Monday in a number of newspapers, including the Dayton Daily News, which is in a hotly contested corner of the Buckeye State.

Four days later, this happened as Muslims in Dayton attempted to worship:

DAYTON — Baboucarr Njie was preparing for his prayer session Friday night, Sept. 26, when he heard children in the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton coughing. Soon, Njie himself was overcome with fits of coughing and, like the rest of those in the building, headed for the doors.

"I would stay outside for a minute, then go back in, there were a lot of kids," Njie said. "My throat is still itchy, I need to get some milk."

Njie was one of several affected when a suspected chemical irritant was sprayed into the mosque at 26 Josie St., bringing Dayton police, fire and hazardous material personnel to the building at 9:48 p.m.

Someone "sprayed an irritant into the mosque," Dayton fire District Chief Vince Wiley said, noting that fire investigators believe it was a hand-held spray can.

Many in Dayton are wondering if the mass distribution of "Obsession" has anything to do with this. It's unclear whether or not this was in the works before or after the attack on the mosque, but religious leaders were meeting in Dayton yesterday to talk about the DVD:

The Rev. Gary Percesepe, executive director of Greater Dayton Christian Connections, characterized the DVD as "fanning the flames of fear and prejudice against Muslims, with the potential to inspire hate crimes."

It should be noted that right now, until the police make more progress in investigating this, that the link is circumstantial based on the timing -- and sadly there've been many anti-Islamic hate crimes in this country before "Obsession" was so widely released. That said, I think that while the case is under investigation, any newspapers that were planning to distribute the DVD but haven't done so yet should call a time out, and wait until we know more about what happened in Dayton.

Is distributing "Obsession" a matter of pure free speech? Or is it yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre?

People need to make that call before someone gets killed.


Posted by Will Bunch @ 12:52 AM




me here, i posted before about getting this hate filled piece of crap in my paper.some
people, who think they are so damn HOLY in their god's eyes have no fucking decency
and SOME people that use religious fear mongering to advance their political agendas have even less.
this is a stunning poem, terrible in it's truth. beautiful in it's way.










shapeshifter poems by Lucille Clifton
1

the legend is whispered
in the women's tent
how the moon when she rises
full
follows some men into themselves
and changes them there
the season is short
but dreadful shapeshifters
they wear strange hands
they walk through the houses
at night their daughters
do not know them

2

who is there to protect her
from the hands of the father
not the windows which see and
say nothing not the moon
that awful eye not the woman
she will become with her
scarred tongue who who who the owl
laments into the evening who
will protect her this prettylittlegirl

3

if the little girl lies
still enough
shut enough
hard enough
shapeshifter may not
walk tonight
the full moon may not
find him here
the hair on him
bristling
rising
up

4

the poem at the end of the world
is the poem the little girl breathes
into her pillow the one
she cannot tell the one
there is no one to hear this poem
is a political poem is a war poem is a
universal poem but is not about
these things this poem
is about one human heart this poem
is the poem at the end of the world

Credit: Copyright © 1987 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.



What's Sexy About Your Name



You are sexy because you are reserved. You keep most of your passion hidden.

In truth, you are a very sensual and sexual person. But you mostly keep this to yourself.



You are secretly very interested in sex and very open minded. You definitely have a wild side most people don't know about.

You are comfortable with every aspect of your sexuality... but you don't flaunt it.



When you're finally alone with someone you trust, it's like flipping a switch.

You're sexually savvy, exciting, adventurous, and carefree. No one would ever guess it!







hey, well HOT DAMN!!!!!!
and a good monday morning.


damp and foggy and phooey.

Sunday, September 28, 2008




nighty-night!



i've met bailey. she is just the most loving and in need of love sweet baby!



if anyone is looking to adopt a wonderful abandoned dog or if you'd like to donate to help care for sweet dogs that cruel callous people drop off out in the woods to starve or get hit by cars or attacked by bigger animals please check out the west deer animal shelter. you won't be sorry. thanks, sherry










http://www.westdeertownship.com/dogs/index.htm#dogs




this just says a lot!











Dear sherry,

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Please pass this email on to your friends and colleagues. Add the link to your Facebook and MySpace pages, and promote in any way you can. Every vote counts.

I so appreciate your taking the time to vote for this worthwhile project and making a difference without even having to make a donation.

Thank you,



Wes Clark






Paid for by WesPAC -- Securing America's Future. Contributions and gifts made to WesPAC are not tax-deductible for federal income tax purposes.




Tell your friends and family about WesPAC -- Securing America's Future!
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If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for WesPAC.
just fooling around.



yes, it IS popeye!
from an interview with general wes clark:



"I know he's trying to get traction by seeking to play to what he thinks is his strong suit of national security," Clark said of McCain while speaking from his office in Little Rock, Arkansas. "The truth is that, in national security terms, he's largely untested and untried. He's never been responsible for policy formulation. He's never had leadership in a crisis, or in anything larger than his own element on an aircraft carrier or [in managing] his own congressional staff. It's not clear that this is going to be the strong suit that he thinks it is."

Resume aside, though, Clark also took issue with the Arizona Republican's instincts on national security. "McCain's weakness is that he's always been for the use of force, force and more force. In my experience, the only time to use force is as a last resort. ... When he talks about throwing Russia out of the G8 and makes ditties about bombing Iran, he betrays a disrespect for the office of the presidency."

* * *
Clark also said Democrats are making progress in becoming a "full-service party" that can compete on security concerns as well as domestic issues. "Republicans like to focus on the threat, on fear, on insecurities. It's what motivates their base," he said. "As Democrats, we focus on hope and possibilities in the future. So the two parties are asymmetrical. And because the two parties are different, it makes the national security [issue] play differently to both parties. But I think we have to point out the failures and shortcomings of the current approach. In the foreign policy arena, John McCain has pretty much bought the central thrust of the Bush administration's foreign policies: relying on threat and bluster [and] isolating people we don't agree with instead of engaging them."

Still, Clark says Democrats can't afford to be branded as unwilling to use force. "My take is that Senator Obama has been very clear ... As he said in his recent appearance before AIPAC, he is strongly committed to America's allies. And it would be a mistake for anyone to assume he won't use force when it's necessary and appropriate. ... I think it's a question of whether you believe all intercourse with an enemy must end in conflict or not."

Citing the issue of Iran's nuclear program, Clark suggested a prime window of opportunity may have been missed early in the Bush presidency, before the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "I think Iran has come out of the Bush administration as a much stronger power," he said. "First of all, we eliminated the primary blocking force to their west in Iraq. Secondly, we have been ineffective in using the broader tools of U.S. diplomacy and moral suasion in the region -- and that's allowed Iran to capture Hamas, displace Fatah and strengthen [its] grip on Hezbollah. ... Without effective diplomatic engagement of Iran, we've allowed them to pursue a nuclear program that is likely aimed at achieving nuclear weapons. But we've refused to sit down and talk to them about it. ... I still favor an effort to engage Iran, but the clock is ticking on their probable nuclear program. This makes everything much more complicated and difficult now.

"I think that there was a window [for diplomacy]. Maybe two or three windows of opportunity. They might or might not have been fruitful. There are never any guarantees with diplomacy. But there are never any guarantees with force, either. John McCain should know that. He and I, along with many others, were caught up in an inconclusive war in southeast Asia."

* * *
Still, for all of Clark's authority on defense issues and his willingness to go after McCain, some observers remain skeptical of his potential usefulness to Obama in the vice presidential slot. An unsteady first impression with the press in 2003 provided enough fodder for doubts that linger to this day regarding Clark's effectiveness as a campaigner.

It's clear that the former general, who studiously avoids any chatter about the current veepstakes, is keen to note his "learning curve" as a politician and his work ethic as a surrogate, citing the dozens of congressional candidates who requested his assistance in 2006. A source at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee confirmed that work ethic, saying that Clark has done everything that's been asked of him -- from voicing robo-calls to mining his email list for donations to making those personal appearances. "I don't want to brag on myself," Clark said, "but we got into places where no other Democratic spokesmen were invited."

Clark also suggested those travels have been good for his own political education. "You have to learn how to run for elective office, no matter where you've had responsible positions before. You have to learn how to hit the pitch. I think I had a pretty good learning curve in my run for office. By the time I was campaigning in January, I was doing very well. But you don't do it overnight."

When asked, Clark reports a feeling of contentment with his work in the private sector. Joined with the opportunity to comment on current affairs, he rightly deems it "a full life." But even Clark admits he doesn't have everything. "I miss my friends in the military. You know, the camaraderie," he said.

Perhaps he'll have the opportunity to reenlist for one more campaign.



HEY, it's some of the owls!

HOOT HOOT!



of course i couldn't hold a candle to palin's kid.



i wore things like this back in the day...


but i did wear a bra. this picture just brought back a lot of memories.





yep, pretty soon!
yeah, what a mavericky mcmaverick he is!






McCain and Team Have Many Ties to Gambling Industry


By JO BECKER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
Published: September 27, 2008
Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings.




HONING AN IMAGE Senator John McCain, as chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, at a hearing in 2005 to examine accusations of misconduct made by six Indian tribes against their former lobbyist, Jack Abramoff.

Multimedia
Interactive Feature
McCain and Tribal Gaming
Graphic
Links to the Gambling Industry
Graphic
Campaign Contributions From the Gambling Industry
Related
Top Ten Gambling Industry Donors to McCain (September 28, 2008)




Tim Cook/The Day, via Associated Press


BETS Mr. McCain supported tax breaks for casinos over the years, including one that helped Foxwoods in Connecticut. He has also gambled there.
A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Party’s evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who represents that casino, according to three associates of Mr. McCain.

The visit had been arranged by the lobbyist, Scott Reed, who works for the Mashantucket Pequot, a tribe that has contributed heavily to Mr. McCain’s campaigns and built Foxwoods into the world’s second-largest casino. Joining them was Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s current campaign manager. Their night of good fortune epitomized not just Mr. McCain’s affection for gambling, but also the close relationship he has built with the gambling industry and its lobbyists during his 25-year career in Congress.

As a two-time chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain has done more than any other member of Congress to shape the laws governing America’s casinos, helping to transform the once-sleepy Indian gambling business into a $26-billion-a-year behemoth with 423 casinos across the country. He has won praise as a champion of economic development and self-governance on reservations.

“One of the founding fathers of Indian gaming” is what Steven Light, a University of North Dakota professor and a leading Indian gambling expert, called Mr. McCain.

As factions of the ferociously competitive gambling industry have vied for an edge, they have found it advantageous to cultivate a relationship with Mr. McCain or hire someone who has one, according to an examination based on more than 70 interviews and thousands of pages of documents.

Mr. McCain portrays himself as a Washington maverick unswayed by special interests, referring recently to lobbyists as “birds of prey.” Yet in his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests — including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors.

When rules being considered by Congress threatened a California tribe’s planned casino in 2005, Mr. McCain helped spare the tribe. Its lobbyist, who had no prior experience in the gambling industry, had a nearly 20-year friendship with Mr. McCain.

In Connecticut that year, when a tribe was looking to open the state’s third casino, staff members on the Indian Affairs Committee provided guidance to lobbyists representing those fighting the casino, e-mail messages and interviews show. The proposed casino, which would have cut into the Pequots’ market share, was opposed by Mr. McCain’s colleagues in Connecticut.

Mr. McCain declined to be interviewed. In written answers to questions, his campaign staff said he was “justifiably proud” of his record on regulating Indian gambling. “Senator McCain has taken positions on policy issues because he believed they are in the public interest,” the campaign said.

Mr. McCain’s spokesman, Tucker Bounds, would not discuss the senator’s night of gambling at Foxwoods, saying: “Your paper has repeatedly attempted to insinuate impropriety on the part of Senator McCain where none exists — and it reveals that your publication is desperately willing to gamble away what little credibility it still has.”

Over his career, Mr. McCain has taken on special interests, like big tobacco, and angered the capital’s powerbrokers by promoting campaign finance reform and pushing to limit gifts that lobbyists can shower on lawmakers. On occasion, he has crossed the gambling industry on issues like regulating slot machines.

Perhaps no episode burnished Mr. McCain’s image as a reformer more than his stewardship three years ago of the Congressional investigation into Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Republican Indian gambling lobbyist who became a national symbol of the pay-to-play culture in Washington. The senator’s leadership during the scandal set the stage for the most sweeping overhaul of lobbying laws since Watergate.

“I’ve fought lobbyists who stole from Indian tribes,” the senator said in his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination this month.

But interviews and records show that lobbyists and political operatives in Mr. McCain’s inner circle played a behind-the-scenes role in bringing Mr. Abramoff’s misdeeds to Mr. McCain’s attention — and then cashed in on the resulting investigation. The senator’s longtime chief political strategist, for example, was paid $100,000 over four months as a consultant to one tribe caught up in the inquiry, records show.

Mr. McCain’s campaign said the senator acted solely to protect American Indians, even though the inquiry posed “grave risk to his political interests.”

As public opposition to tribal casinos has grown in recent years, Mr. McCain has distanced himself from Indian gambling, Congressional and American Indian officials said.

But he has rarely wavered in his loyalty to Las Vegas, where he counts casino executives among his close friends and most prolific fund-raisers. “Beyond just his support for gaming, Nevada supports John McCain because he’s one of us, a Westerner at heart,” said Sig Rogich, a Nevada Republican kingmaker who raised nearly $2 million for Mr. McCain at an event at his home in June.

Only six members of Congress have received more money from the gambling industry than Mr. McCain, and five hail from the casino hubs of Nevada and New Jersey, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics dating back to 1989. In the presidential race, Senator Barack Obama has also received money from the industry; Mr. McCain has raised almost twice as much.

In May 2007, as Mr. McCain’s presidential bid was floundering, he spent a weekend at the MGM Grand on the Las Vegas strip. A fund-raiser hosted by J. Terrence Lanni, the casino’s top executive and a longtime friend of the senator, raised $400,000 for his campaign. Afterward, Mr. McCain attended a boxing match and hit the craps tables.

For much of his adult life, Mr. McCain has gambled as often as once a month, friends and associates said, traveling to Las Vegas for weekend betting marathons. Former senior campaign officials said they worried about Mr. McCain’s patronage of casinos, given the power he wields over the industry. The officials, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity.

“We were always concerned about appearances,” one former official said. “If you go around saying that appearances matter, then they matter.”

The former official said he would tell Mr. McCain: “Do we really have to go to a casino? I don’t think it’s a good idea. The base doesn’t like it. It doesn’t look good. And good things don’t happen in casinos at midnight.”

“You worry too much,” Mr. McCain would respond, the official said.

A Record of Support

In one of their last conversations, Representative Morris K. Udall, Arizona’s powerful Democrat, whose devotion to American Indian causes was legendary, implored his friend Mr. McCain to carry on his legacy.

“Don’t forget the Indians,” Mr. Udall, who died in 1998, told Mr. McCain in a directive that the senator has recounted to others.

More than a decade earlier, Mr. Udall had persuaded Mr. McCain to join the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Mr. McCain, whose home state has the third-highest Indian population, eloquently decried the “grinding poverty” that gripped many reservations.

The two men helped write the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 after the Supreme Court found that states had virtually no right to control wagering on reservations. The legislation provided a framework for the oversight and growth of Indian casinos: In 1988, Indian gambling represented less than 1 percent of the nation’s gambling revenues; today it captures more than one third.

On the Senate floor after the bill’s passage, Mr. McCain said he personally opposed Indian gambling, but when impoverished communities “are faced with only one option for economic development, and that is to set up gambling on their reservations, then I cannot disapprove.”

In 1994, Mr. McCain pushed an amendment that enabled dozens of additional tribes to win federal recognition and open casinos. And in 1998, Mr. McCain fought a Senate effort to rein in the boom.

He also voted twice in the last decade to give casinos tax breaks estimated to cost the government more than $326 million over a dozen years.

The first tax break benefited the industry in Las Vegas, one of a number of ways Mr. McCain has helped nontribal casinos. Mr. Lanni, the MGM Mirage chief executive, said that an unsuccessful bid by the senator to ban wagering on college sports in Nevada was the only time he could recall Mr. McCain opposing Las Vegas. “I can’t think of any other issue,” Mr. Lanni said.

The second tax break helped tribal casinos like Foxwoods and was pushed by Scott Reed, the Pequots’ lobbyist.

Mr. McCain had gotten to know Mr. Reed during Senator Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign, which Mr. Reed managed. Four years later, when Mr. McCain ran for president, Mr. Reed recommended he hire his close friend and protégé, Rick Davis, to manage that campaign.

During his 2000 primary race against George W. Bush, Mr. McCain promoted his record of helping Indian Country, telling reporters on a campaign swing that he had provided critical support to “the Pequot, now the proud owners of the largest casino in the world.”

But Mr. McCain’s record on Indian gambling was fast becoming a difficult issue for him in the primary. Bush supporters like Gov. John Engler of Michigan lambasted Mr. McCain for his “close ties to Indian gambling.”

A decade after Mr. McCain co-authored the Indian gambling act, the political tides had turned. Tribal casinos, which were growing at a blazing pace, had become increasingly unpopular around the country for reasons as varied as morality and traffic.

Then came the biggest lobbying scandal to shake Washington.

Behind an Inquiry

At a September 2004 hearing of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain described Jack Abramoff as one of the most brazen in a long line of crooks to cheat American Indians. “It began with the sale of Manhattan, and has continued ever since,” he said. “What sets this tale apart, what makes it truly extraordinary, is the extent and degree of the apparent exploitation and deceit.”

Over the next two years, Mr. McCain helped uncover a breathtaking lobbying scandal — Mr. Abramoff and a partner bilked six tribes of $66 million — that showcased the senator’s willingness to risk the wrath of his own party to expose wrongdoing. But interviews and documents show that Mr. McCain and a circle of allies — lobbyists, lawyers and senior strategists — also seized on the case for its opportunities.

For McCain-connected lobbyists who were rivals of Mr. Abramoff, the scandal presented a chance to crush a competitor. For senior McCain advisers, the inquiry allowed them to collect fees from the very Indians that Mr. Abramoff had ripped off. And the investigation enabled Mr. McCain to confront political enemies who helped defeat him in his 2000 presidential run while polishing his maverick image.

The Abramoff saga started in early 2003 when members of two tribes began questioning Mr. Abramoff’s astronomical fees. Over the next year, they leaked information to local newspapers, but it took the hiring of lobbyists who were competitors of Mr. Abramoff to get the attention of Mr. McCain’s committee.

Bernie Sprague, who led the effort by one of the tribes, the Saginaw Chippewas in Michigan, hired a Democratic lobbyist who recommended that the tribe retain Scott Reed, the Republican lobbyist, to push for an investigation.

Mr. Reed had boasted to other lobbyists of his access to Mr. McCain, three close associates said. Mr. Reed “pretty much had open access to John from 2000 to at least the end of 2006,” one aide said.

Lobbyist disclosure forms show that Mr. Reed went to work for the Saginaw Chippewa on Feb. 15, 2004, charging the tribe $56,000 over a year. Mr. Abramoff had tried to steal the Pequots and another tribal client from Mr. Reed, and taking down Mr. Abramoff would eliminate a competitor.

Mr. Reed became the chief conduit to Mr. McCain’s committee for billing documents and other information Mr. Sprague was digging up on Mr. Abramoff, Mr. Sprague said, who said Mr. Reed “did a great to service to me.”

“He had contacts I did not,” Mr. Sprague said. “Initially, I think that the senator’s office was doing Reed a favor by listening to me.”

A few weeks after hiring Mr. Reed, Mr. Sprague received a letter from the senator. “We have met with Scott Reed, who was very helpful on the issue,” Mr. McCain wrote.

Information about Mr. Abramoff was also flowing to Mr. McCain’s committee from another tribe, the Coushatta of Louisiana. The source was a consultant named Roy Fletcher, who had been Mr. McCain’s deputy campaign manager in 2000, running his war room in South Carolina.

It was in that primary race that two of Mr. Abramoff’s closest associates, Grover Norquist, who runs the nonprofit Americans for Tax Reform, and Ralph Reed, the former director of the Christian Coalition, ran a blistering campaign questioning Mr. McCain’s conservative credentials. The senator and his advisers blamed that attack for Mr. McCain’s loss to Mr. Bush in South Carolina, creating tensions that would resurface in the Abramoff matter.

“I was interested in busting” Mr. Abramoff, said Mr. Fletcher, who was eventually hired to represent the tribe. “That was my job. But I was also filled with righteous indignation, I got to tell you.”

Mr. Fletcher said he began passing information to John Weaver, Mr. McCain’s chief political strategist, and other staff members in late 2003 or January 2004. Mr. Weaver confirmed the timing.

Mr. McCain announced his investigation on Feb. 26, 2004, citing an article on Mr. Abramoff in The Washington Post. He did not mention the action by lobbyists and tribes in the preceding weeks. His campaign said no one in his “innermost circle” brought information to Mr. McCain that prompted the investigation.

The senator declared he would not investigate members of Congress, whom Mr. Abramoff had lavished with tribal donations and golf outings to Scotland. But in the course of the investigation, the committee exposed Mr. Abramoff’s dealings with the two men who had helped defeat Mr. McCain in the 2000 primary.

The investigation showed that Mr. Norquist’s foundation was used by Mr. Abramoff to launder lobbying fees from tribes. Ralph Reed was found to have accepted $4 million to run bogus antigambling campaigns. And the investigation also highlighted Mr. Abramoff’s efforts to curry favor with the House majority leader at the time, Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, a longtime political foe who had opposed many of Mr. McCain’s legislative priorities.

Mr. McCain’s campaign said the senator did not “single out” Ralph Reed or Mr. Norquist, neither of whom were ever charged, and that both men fell within the “scope of the investigation.” The inquiry, which led to guilty pleas by over a dozen individuals, was motivated by a desire to help aggrieved tribes, the campaign said.

Inside the investigation, the sense of schadenfreude was palpable, according to several people close to the senator. “It was like hitting pay dirt,” said one associate of Mr. McCain’s who had consulted with the senator’s office on the investigation. “And face it — McCain and Weaver were maniacal about Ralph Reed and Norquist. They were sticking little pins in dolls because those guys had cost him South Carolina.”

Down on the Coushattas reservation, bills related to the investigation kept coming. After firing Mr. Abramoff, the tribe hired Kent Hance, a lawyer and former Texas congressman who said he had been friends with Mr. McCain since the 1980s.

David Sickey, the tribe’s vice chairman, said he was “dumbfounded” over the bills submitted by Mr. Hance’s firm, Hance Scarborough, which had been hired by Mr. Sickey’s predecessors.

“The very thing we were fighting seemed to be happening all over again — these absurd amounts of money being paid,” Mr. Sickey said.

Mr. Hance’s firm billed the tribe nearly $1.3 million over 11 months in legal and political consulting fees, records show. But Mr. Sickey said that the billing statements offered only vague explanations for services and that he could not point to any tangible results. Two consultants, for instance, were paid to fight the expansion of gambling in Texas — even though it was unlikely given that the governor there opposed any such prospect, Mr. Sickey said.

Mr. Hance and Jay B. Stewart, the firm’s managing partner, defended their team’s work, saying they successfully steered the tribe through a difficult period. “We did an outstanding job for them,” Mr. Hance said. “When we told them our bill was going to be $100,000 a month, they thought we were cheap. Mr. Abramoff had charged them $1 million a month.”

The firm’s fees covered the services of Mr. Fletcher, who served as the tribe’s spokesman. Records also show that Mr. Hance had Mr. Weaver — who was serving as Mr. McCain’s chief strategist — put on the tribe’s payroll from February to May 2005.

It is not precisely clear what role Mr. Weaver played for his $100,000 fee.

Mr. Stewart said Mr. Weaver was hired because “he had a lot of experience with the Senate, especially the new chairman, John McCain.” The Hance firm told the tribe in a letter that Mr. Weaver was hired to provide “representation for the tribe before the U.S. Senate.”

But Mr. Weaver never registered to lobby on the issue, and he has another explanation for his work.

“The Hance law firm retained me to assist them and their client in developing an aggressive crisis management and communications strategy,” Mr. Weaver said. “At no point was I asked by Kent Hance or anyone associated with him to set up meetings with anyone in or outside of government to discuss this, and if asked I would have summarily declined to do so.”

In June 2005, the tribe informed Mr. Hance that his services were no longer needed.

Change in Tone

After the Abramoff scandal, Mr. McCain stopped taking campaign donations from tribes. Some American Indians were offended, especially since Mr. McCain continued to accept money from the tribes’ lobbyists.

Resentment in Indian Country mounted as Mr. McCain, who was preparing for another White House run, singled out the growth in tribal gambling as one of three national issues that were “out of control.” (The others were federal spending and illegal immigration.)

Franklin Ducheneaux, an aide to Morris Udall who helped draft the 1988 Indian gambling law, said that position ran contrary to Mr. McCain’s record. “What did he think? That Congress intended for the tribes to be only somewhat successful?” Mr. Ducheneaux said.

Mr. McCain began taking a broad look at whether the laws were sufficient to oversee the growing industry. His campaign said that the growth had put “considerable stress” on regulators and Mr. McCain held hearings on whether the federal government needed more oversight power.

An opportunity to restrain the industry came in the spring of 2005, when a small tribe in Connecticut set off a political battle. The group, the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, had won federal recognition in 2004 after producing voluminous documentation tracing its roots.

The tribe wanted to build Connecticut’s third casino, which would compete with Foxwoods and another, the Mohegan Sun. Facing public opposition on the proposed casino, members of the Connecticut political establishment — many of whom had received large Pequot and Mohegan campaign donations — swung into action.

Connecticut officials claimed that a genealogical review by the Bureau of Indian Affairs was flawed, and that the Schaghticoke was not a tribe.

The tribe’s opponents, led by the Washington lobbying firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers, turned to Mr. McCain’s committee. It was a full-circle moment for the senator, who had helped the Pequots gain tribal recognition in the 1980s despite concerns about their legitimacy.

Now, Mr. McCain was doing a favor for allies in the Connecticut delegation, including Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a close friend, according to two former Congressional aides. “It was one of those collegial deals,” said one of the aides, who worked for Mr. McCain.

Barbour Griffith & Rogers wanted Mr. McCain to hold a hearing that would show that the Bureau of Indian Affairs was “broken,” said Bradley A. Blakeman, who was a lobbyist for the firm at the time.

“It was our hope that the hearing would shed light on the fact that the bureau had not followed their rules and had improperly granted recognition to the Schaghticoke,” Mr. Blakeman said. “And that the bureau would revisit the issue and follow their rules.”

Mr. McCain’s staff helped that effort by offering strategic advice.

His staff told a lobbyist for the firm that the Indian Affairs Committee “would love to receive a letter” from the Connecticut governor requesting a hearing, according to an e-mail exchange, and offered “guidance on what the most effective tone and approach” would be in the letter.

On May 11, 2005, Mr. McCain held a hearing billed as a general “oversight hearing on federal recognition of Indian tribes.” But nearly all the witnesses were Schaghticoke opponents who portrayed the tribe as imposters.

Mr. McCain set the tone: “The role that gaming and its nontribal backers have played in the recognition process has increased perceptions that it is unfair, if not corrupt.”

Chief Richard F. Velky of the Schaghticokes found himself facing off against the governor and most of the state’s congressional delegation. “The deck was stacked against us,” Mr. Velky said. “They were given lots of time. I was given five minutes.”

He had always believed Mr. McCain “to be an honest and fair man,” Mr. Velky said, “but this didn’t make me feel that good.”

Mr. Velky said he felt worse when the e-mail messages between the tribe’s opponents and Mr. McCain’s staff surfaced in a federal lawsuit. “Is there a letter telling me how to address the senator to give me the best shot?” Mr. Velky asked. “No, there is not.”

After the hearing, Pablo E. Carrillo, who was Mr. McCain’s chief Abramoff investigator at the time, wrote to a Barbour Griffith & Rogers lobbyist, Brant Imperatore. “Your client’s side definitely got a good hearing record,” Mr. Carillo wrote, adding “you probably have a good sense” on where Mr. McCain “is headed on this.”

“Well done!” he added.

Cynthia Shaw, a Republican counsel to the committee from 2005 to 2007, said Mr. McCain made decisions based on merit, not special interests. “Everybody got a meeting who asked for one,” Ms. Shaw said, “whether you were represented by counsel or by a lobbyist — or regardless of which lobbyist.”

Mr. McCain’s campaign defended the senator’s handling of the Schaghticoke case, saying no staff member acted improperly. The campaign said the session was part of normal committee business and the notion that Mr. McCain was intending to help Congressional colleagues defeat the tribe was “absolutely false.”

It added that the senator’s commitment to Indian sovereignty “remains as strong as ever.”

Within months of the May 2005 hearing, the Bureau of Indian Affairs took the rare step of rescinding the Schaghticokes’ recognition. A federal court recently rejected the tribe’s claim that the reversal was politically motivated.

Making an Exception

That spring of 2005, as the Schaghticokes went down to defeat in the East, another tribe in the West squared off against Mr. McCain with its bid to construct a gambling emporium in California. The stakes were similar, but the outcome would be far different.

The tribe’s plan to build a casino on a former Navy base just outside San Francisco represented a trend rippling across the country: American Indians seeking to build casinos near population centers, far from their reservations.

The practice, known as “off-reservation shopping,” stemmed from the 1988 Indian gambling law, which included exceptions allowing some casinos to be built outside tribal lands. When Mr. McCain began his second stint as chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee three years ago, Las Vegas pressed him to revisit the exceptions he had helped create, according to Sig Rogich, the Republican fund-raiser from Nevada.

“We told him this off-reservation shopping had to stop,” Mr. Rogich said. “It was no secret that the gaming industry, as well as many potentially affected communities in other states, voiced opposition to the practice.”

In the spring of 2005, Mr. McCain announced he was planning a sweeping overhaul of Indian gambling laws, including limiting off-reservation casinos. His campaign said Las Vegas had nothing to do with it. In a 2005 interview with The Oregonian, Mr. McCain said that if Congress did not act, “soon every Indian tribe is going to have a casino in downtown, metropolitan areas.”

Prospects for the proposed California project did not look promising. Then the tribe, the Guidiville Band of Pomo Indians, hired a lobbyist based in Phoenix named Wes Gullett.

Mr. Gullett, who had never represented tribes before Congress, had known Mr. McCain since the early 1980s. Mr. Gullett met his wife while they were working in Mr. McCain’s Washington office. He subsequently managed Mr. McCain’s 1992 Senate campaign and served as a top aide to his 2000 presidential campaign. Their friendship went beyond politics. When Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, brought two infants in need of medical treatment back to Arizona from Bangladesh, the Gulletts adopted one baby and the McCains the other. The two men also liked to take weekend trips to Las Vegas.

Another of Mr. McCain’s close friends, former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, was a major investor in the Guidivilles’ proposed casino. Mr. Cohen, who did not return calls, was best man at Mr. McCain’s 1980 wedding.

Scott Crowell, lawyer for the Guidivilles, said Mr. Gullett was hired to ensure that Mr. McCain’s overhaul of the Indian gambling laws did not harm the tribe.

Mr. Gullett said he never talked to Mr. McCain about the legislation. “If you are hired directly to lobby John McCain, you are not going to be effective,” he said. Mr. Gullett said he only helped prepare the testimony of the tribe’s administrator, Walter Gray, who was invited to plead his case before Mr. McCain’s committee in July 2005. Mr. Gullett said he advised Mr. Gray in a series of conference calls.

On disclosure forms filed with the Senate, however, Mr. Gullett stated that he was not hired until November, long after Mr. Gray’s testimony. Mr. Gullett said the late filing might have been “a mistake, but it was inadvertent.” Steve Hart, a former lawyer for the Guidivilles, backed up Mr. Gullett’s contention that he had guided Mr. Gray on his July testimony.

When asked whether Mr. Gullett had helped him, Mr. Gray responded, “I’ve never met the man and couldn’t tell you anything about him.”

On Nov. 18, 2005, when Mr. McCain introduced his promised legislation overhauling the Indian gambling law, he left largely intact a provision that the Guidivilles needed for their casino. Mr. McCain’s campaign declined to answer whether the senator spoke with Mr. Gullett or Mr. Cohen about the project. In the end, Mr. McCain’s bill died, largely because Indian gambling interests fought back. But the Department of Interior picked up where Mr. McCain left off, effectively doing through regulations what he had hoped to accomplish legislatively. Carl Artman, who served as the Interior Department’s assistant secretary of Indian Affairs until May, said Mr. McCain pushed him to rewrite the off-reservation rules. “It became one of my top priorities because Senator McCain made it clear it was one of his top priorities,” he said.

The new guidelines were issued on Jan. 4. As a result, the casino applications of 11 tribes were rejected. The Guidivilles were not among them.


Kitty Bennett and Griff Palmer contributed to reporting.

More Articles in US » A version of this article appeared in print on September 28, 2008, on page A1 of the New York edition. Enjoy the convenience of home delivery of The Times for less than $1 a day



















Bio
JONATHAN TURLEY

Professor Jonathan Turley is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal theory to tort law. He has written over three dozen academic articles that have appeared in a variety of leading law journals at Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Northwestern, and other schools.

After a stint at Tulane Law School, Professor Turley joined the George Washington faculty in 1990 and, in 1998, was given the prestigious Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law, the youngest chaired professor in the school’s history. In addition to his extensive publications, Professor Turley has served as counsel in some of the most notable cases in the last two decades ranging, representing whistleblowers, military personnel, and a wide range of other clients. These include his representation of the Area 51 workers at a secret air base in Nevada; the nuclear couriers at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the Rocky Flats grand jury in Colorado; Dr. Eric Foretich, the husband in the famous Elizabeth Morgan custody controversy; and four former United States Attorneys General during the Clinton impeachment litigation. In the Foretich case, Turley succeeded recently in reversing a trial court and striking down a federal statute through a rare “bill of attainder” challenge. Professor Turley has also served as counsel in a variety of national security cases, including espionage cases like that of Jim Nicholson, the highest ranking CIA officer ever accused of espionage. Turley also served as lead defense counsel in the successful defense of Petty Officer Daniel King, who faced the death penalty for alleged spying for Russia. Turley also served as defense counsel in the case of Dr. Tom Butler, who is facing criminal charges dealing with the importation and handling of thirty vials of plague in Texas. He also served as counsel to Larry Hanauer, the House Intelligence Committee staffer accused of leaking a classified Presidential National Intelligence Estimate to the New York Times. (Hanauer was cleared of all allegations).

Among his current cases, Professor Turley represents Dr. Ali Al-Timimi, who was convicted in Virginia in 2005 of violent speech against the United States. He also represents Dr. Sami Al-Arian, accused of being the American leader of a terrorist organization while he was a university professor in Florida. He also currently represents pilots approaching or over the age of 60 in their challenge to the mandatory retirement age of the FAA. Turley has served as a consultant on homeland security and constitutional issues, including the Florida House of Representatives.

Professor Turley is a frequent witness before the House and Senate on constitutional and statutory issues as well as tort reform legislation. Professor Turley is also a nationally recognized legal commentator. Professor Turley was ranked as 38th in the top 100 most cited “public intellectuals” in the recent study by Judge Richard Posner. Turley was also found to be the second most cited law professor in the country. In 2008, he was ranked in a study of the nation’s top 500 lawyers - one of only a handful of academics. In prior years, he was ranked as one of the nation’s top ten lawyers in military law cases as well as one of the top 40 lawyers under 40.

Professor Turley’s articles on legal and policy issues appear regularly in national publications with over 500 articles in such newspapers as the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal. He is on the Board of Contributors of USA Today. In 2005, Turley was given the Columnist of the Year award for Single-Issue Advocacy for his columns on civil liberties by the Aspen Institute and the Week Magazine. Professor Turley also appears regularly as a legal expert on all of the major television networks. Since the 1990s, he has worked under contract as the on-air Legal Analyst for NBC News and CBS News to cover stories that ranged from the Clinton impeachment to the presidential elections. Professor Turley is often a guest on Sunday talk shows with over two-dozen appearances on Meet the Press, ABC This Week, Face the Nation, and Fox Sunday.Professor Turley teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional criminal law, environmental law, litigation, and torts. He is the founder and executive director of the Project for Older Prisoners (POPS).

Professor Turley received his B.A. at the University of Chicago and his J.D. at Northwestern. (In 2008, he was given an honorary Doctorate of Law from John Marshall Law School for his contributions to civil liberties and the public imterest.











from jonathan turley's blog:


http://jonathanturley.org/







The Devil Makes Him Do It: Christian Leader Suggests Satan is Behind Obama and God Has Sent Palin in Response


James Bramlett, a well-known Christian advocate and former CBN employee, has unraveled the political and biblical entrails this year. The result is quite alarming. Barack Obama’s true campaign sponsor? SATAN. Fortunately, Bramlett has informed his readers that God sent Sarah Palin, who appeared to protect the faithful from the Godless hoard.


Once associated with the Campus Crusade for Christ, Bramlett posted his essay that noted:

Barack Hussein Obama has taken the nation by storm. From obscurity, with zero executive experience, or much of any kind, he has vaulted into the position of Presidential frontrunner. It is stunning. On the surface, it appears attributable only to his eloquent oratory and his race. But an invisible factor may be a strong spiritual force behind him, causing some people to actually swoon in his presence. . . . Therefore, there is, indeed, another spirit involved. And this spirit has come into our national life like a flood. Last week at Obama’s acceptance speech, that spirit exalted itself in front of a Greek temple-like stage, and to a huge audience like in a Roman arena. Omama was portrayed as god-like. His voice thundered as a god’s voice.[my emphasis]

Obama is surrounded by legions of false ministers and servants like Pastor Joel Hunter, who appears to have revealed himself as a dark minion by the act of praying at the Democratic convention: “At the end, Democratic sympathizer Pastor Joel Hunter gave the benediction and shockingly invited everyone to close the prayer to their own (false) gods. This was surely an abomination, but it was compatible with Obama’s expressed theology, and Hunter’s leftist leanings.”

Bramlett explains, however, that the Satanic host followed around Obama has run into a little problem in the god-fearing, moose-shooting body of Sarah Palin:

“Enter Governor Sarah Palin. With incredible timing, the very next day, Sarah Palin also appeared out of nowhere. Her shocking selection as John McCain’s running mate stunned the world and suddenly took all the wind out of Obama’s sails. . . . Sarah is that standard God has raised up to stop the flood. She has the anointing. You can tell by how the dogs are already viciously attacking her. But they will not be successful. She knows the One she serves and will not be intimidated. (emphasis mine)

What is important for the faithful to understand is that the more controversial Palin may become due to any statements or question, the most it is evidence that she is the anointed one. That means that she is virtually divine at this point, of course, and she is moving toward deity status.

whywhyWHY does max enjoy licking wet leaves??

i've been outside with him 5 times, only 2 of which he actually did what he's supposed to.

he adores licking wet leaves and it rained here all night!

Saturday, September 27, 2008




no kidding. it's a real book.
check out amazon.com


thanks, cr.

saturday night babies! may be wet here(may be wet there)
but it's the night to have some FUN!!!!!
rain, rain and max thinks it's great fun to drag me around in it while he plays.














from the group news blog...





Obama: You voted with the President 95% of the time. How can you say now you're against the budget when you were for it?

McCain: I'm well known as the Maverick of the Senate. I was against the Budget, against the war, against everything, and I'm glad I have a Maverick with me as a partner.

OH MY FUCKING GOD. And the moderator just moved on to the next question. Oh.My.God.
Obama Pictures and McCain Pictures
see Sarah Palin pictures
i really liked this man. on and off the screen






Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Saturday, September 27, 2008 -- 10:04 AM ET
-----

Paul Newman Has Died at 83, His Spokeswoman Says

The actor Paul Newman has died at 83 of cancer, his
spokeswoman told The Associated Press. Mr. Newman, whose
career spanned five decades, was also a prominent social
activist, a major proponent of actors' creative rights and a
noted philanthropist. He was nominated for Academy Awards 10
times, and won a best actor Oscar in 1987 for "The Color of
Money."

Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/?emc=na



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You received this message because you are signed up to receive Breaking News
Alerts from NYTimes.com.



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Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company



oh come on now. be honest.


is THIS woman qualified???













Bird With Two Right Wings


And now our government
a bird with two right wings
flies on from zone to zone
while we go on having our little fun & games
at each election
as if it really mattered who the pilot is
of Air Force One
(They're interchangeable, stupid!)
While this bird with two right wings
flies right on with its corporate flight crew
And this year its the Great Movie Cowboy in the cockpit
And next year its the great Bush pilot
And now its the Chameleon Kid
and he keeps changing the logo on his captains cap
and now its a donkey and now an elephant
and now some kind of donkephant
And now we recognize two of the crew
who took out a contract on America
and one is a certain gringo wretch
who's busy monkeywrenching
crucial parts of the engine
and its life-support systems
and they got a big fat hose
to siphon off the fuel to privatized tanks
And all the while we just sit there
in the passenger seats
without parachutes
listening to all the news that's fit to air
over the one-way PA system
about how the contract on America
is really good for us etcetera
As all the while the plane lumbers on
into its postmodern
manifest destiny

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
the turkeys and my groundhog and the deer, squirrels and chipmunks are having a feast with the acorns that are all over the yards and woods here.

my chipmunks are chooking away continuously.

they are so cute and so bold. one even sits on my front step and just sits straight up and chooks!

Friday, September 26, 2008












from c&l:






The Rachel Maddow Show: Rep. John LaBruzzo (LA) Wants To Sterilize Low Income Women
By: Nicole Belle @ 1:10 PM - PDT




You know, it would really be much easier to not go all Godwin on the Republicans if they wouldn’t just open themselves up for such blatant charges of being Nazis. The thing that never ceases to astonish me is how little they attempt to hide it. ABC News:

That heartbreaking scenario (of people displaced after natural disasters like Hurricane Gustav) inspired Louisiana Republican State Rep. John LaBruzzo to start thinking about ways to stem generational welfare, in which many welfare recipients have children who also end up dependent on government assistance, according to the representative.

His idea — giving $1,000 to poor women to undergo reproductive sterilization by Fallopian tube ligation — is stirring up controversy among some medical professionals, who say that the proposal is offensive and smacks of long-discredited eugenics programs.

LaBruzzo has also suggested other controversial ideas: paying poor men to get vasectomies and giving tax incentives for college-educated wealthy couples to have more children.

LaBruzzo doesn’t know why it would be considered eugenics if it’s voluntary or racist if most welfare recipients are white. I don’t know why this guy has a job representing the people of Louisiana.