196. PRESIDENT FOR LIFE

From the Archives

(February 2006) DC's City Paper used to call Marion Berry “Mayor for Life” before he got busted for crack cocaine.

If Bush & Co had moved forward with their plan to cancel the recent presidential election (citing the threat of a terrorist attack), as Newsweek reported, then the City Paper would have perhaps revived this phrase while kicking it up a few notches.

Yep, the White House and DOJ seriously considered cancelling the elections (no doubt before those computer programmers devised a way to change Kerry votes to Bush ones).

So, who knows, we could have had a president for life who raises the terror alert to high whenever someone protests his position on the throne.

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Meanwhile, an Austrian court has sentenced a historian to three years in prison for espousing his belief that the Holocaust never existed.

That’s in Austria.

In the US, people like Dr. Paul Cameron—who was kicked out of the APA long ago for announcing manufactured and bigoted results—continues to spread their homophobic crap far and wide.

And politicians like Rick Santorum continue to pronounce Cameron’s fictions as fact.

Cameron is the one who broadcast the lie that gay men routinely insert hamsters into their rectums.

Research groups failed to find even a single queer who practices this sex act and Cameron was uable to back up his claim with evidence, yet Santorum et al. repeat this data as if it’s accurate.

They also repeat the rumor that queers die in their forties, which is a lie even when you factor in the AIDS epidemic.

And no. I don’t believe one should be jailed for espousing opinions, even when they’re misguided and hateful and ignorant.

The Klan had the right to their ignorant opinions and so does Dr. Cameron. I’m glad that thinking people challenge their lies and logic though and kick them out of societies that require e-v-i-d-e-n-c-e. . .

(and don’t you wish the press still had to offer fair and balanced news? Thanks a whole lot, Ronnie.)

Telling historians that they cannot explore controversial theories—even about horrific events such as the Holocaust—limits knowledge. And I believe that scholars should be free to pursue their theories.

That’s how we learn new things and expand our knowledge.

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And now a quote.

The now busted Ralph Reed said the following to Christian teens:

We will never know how many marriages and lives were saved, or how many children were spared the consequences of compulsive gambling, because of our work to shut down casinos.

To quote Ecclesiastes, all things shall come to pass, Asshole.

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Okay. I’ll close with this factoid. It’s 27 February 2006. On this date in 1991, President Bush the Older declared “Kuwait is liberated. Iraq’s army is defeated.”

Prescient, wasn’t he?