Utility Thread 2: Christmas

[norml]

This campaign - which is being hyped on Fox and conservative talk radio - is an odd one. Christmas remains ubiquitous, and with its celebrators in control of the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court and every state supreme court and legislature, it hardly lacks for powerful supporters. There is also something perverse, when Christians are being jailed for discussing the Bible in Saudi Arabia and slaughtered in Sudan, about spending so much energy on stores that sell "holiday trees."

What is less obvious, though, is that Christmas's self-proclaimed defenders are rewriting the holiday's history. They claim that the "traditional" American Christmas is under attack by what John Gibson, another Fox anchor, calls "professional atheists" and "Christian haters." But America has a complicated history with Christmas, going back to the Puritans, who despised it. What the boycotters are doing is not defending America's Christmas traditions, but creating a new version of the holiday that fits a political agenda.

The Puritans considered Christmas un-Christian, and hoped to keep it out of America. They could not find Dec. 25 in the Bible, their sole source of religious guidance, and insisted that the date derived from Saturnalia, the Roman heathens' wintertime celebration. On their first Dec. 25 in the New World, in 1620, the Puritans worked on building projects and ostentatiously ignored the holiday. From 1659 to 1681 Massachusetts went further, making celebrating Christmas "by forbearing of labor, feasting or in any other way" a crime.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=103&topic_id=177345&mesg_id=177345

http://www.chrismukkah.com/content/chrismukkah_yatatata/chrismukkah_blog/

[norml]

1. Bush Holiday Greetings

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=177080

[underpants]

2. I can see them spinning the part about Mass (I have a quesiton too)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2291859&mesg_id=2291859

[norml]

3. 0

Proof: Bill O'Reilly hates Christmas!
Posted by EarlG
Added to homepage Wed Dec 07th 2005, 12:16 PM ET

Thanks to a very alert DU reader who just emailed this information to me...

If you go to Bill O'Reilly's home page right now (hold your nose) you'll see that he's got a nice, tasteful, flashing wreath stuck on top of his website logo. As the person who sent this to me wrote: "Apparently, that's his idea of 'traditional' Christmas. What a moron."

But there's more: this alert reader happened to right-click on the wreath and check its image properties, and wouldn't you know it - the filename is "holidaylogohome.gif"

For shame! The Falafel Master must really hate Christmas, or that graphic would be appropriately titled.

Someone get Jerry Falwell on the phone! Someone call the AFA! There's a Christmas-hating mole in their midst who goes by the name of Bill O'Reilly!

Here's the offending image:



Discuss this topic (58 responses)


Regarding Gov. Dean's comment ...
Posted by H2O Man
Added to homepage Tue Dec 06th 2005, 03:02 PM ET

Flipping through the morning news, I saw a loud-mouthed fool on Fox, identified as "ManCow," ranting about Howard Dean's comment that the USA could not win the war in Iraq. As is the general tactic for those who appeal to emotion at the expense of common sense -- which is why Fox has this fellow on to begin with -- "ManCow" ignores what Dean actually said, and substitutes a lie instead. He went on to say that democrats get a kick out of US soldiers getting killed in Iraq, which is the exact opposite of the truth.

Normally, I think it is a good thing to avoid responding to Fox and their ilk. They have indeed missed their calling in life: rather than waste their time in media, they should be pursuing doctorates in the science of scatology .... because they can change hard facts into a soft fecal matter in the blink of an eye.

I am going to quote a paragraph from Seymour Hersch's 2004 book "Chain of Command" (Harper) that DUers should "cut & paste" for use in e-mailing Fox and other media sources. It shows clearly that Dean simply expressed a truth that others have said for a couple years now. From page 352:

"Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, who supported the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq, took it upon himself at about the same time to privately warn Vice President Dick Cheney that America had lost in Iraq; according to an American close to Barak, he said that Israel 'had learned that there's no way to win an occupation.' The only issue, Barak told Cheney, 'was choosing the size of your humiliation.' Cheney did not respond to Barak's assessment. (Cheney's office declined to comment.)"

Hersch includes information on how military experts recognize that while there is no way the US military is going to be defeated on the battle field per say, the insurgents will continue to gain strength and support as the occupation continues. History is a funny thing: sometimes when a leader starts a war based on a lie, the exact opposite of what he says will happen, actually does occur. Thus, it seems rather ironic that Bush/Cheney supporters attack Dean for telling the public what others have told the administration in private.

It is not just our allies in Israel that recognize what Fox does not want Howard Dean to tell the American public. Michael Scheuer, in "Imperial Hubris," (Brassey's, 2004), quotes Ayman al-Zawahiri from 2003: "We thank God for appeasing us with the dilemma in Iraq after Afghanistan. The Americans are facing a delicate situation in both countries. If they withdraw they will lose everything and if they stay, they will continue to bleed to death" (xxi).

Contrast this with the president's saying that he will accept nothing short of total victory. He assures the public that despite what is reported daily in the media, things are getting better in Iraq. Bush tells us that the US can get out only after training the Iraqi police and military.

Recent surveys show that more than 40% of the general population of Iraq believes that it is okay to attack the US soldiers who occupy their country. Common sense would indicate if 40% of the police and soldiers the US is training are okay with attacking our soldiers, we are not going to achieve the total victory that Bush believes he is entitled to.

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Cannonfire's got a huge story
Posted by sellitman
Added to homepage Tue Dec 06th 2005, 07:51 AM ET


Deeper into the Wilkes/MZM scandals (Updated)

The good news is that reporters working for the mainstream media have caught on -- in part. They understand that Randy "Duke" Cunningham is hardly the only Republican politician to receive economic "assistance" from Brent Wilkes, head of the Poway-based "defense" firm ADCS -- a.k.a. the Wilkes Corporation, a.k.a. Group W Advisors, a.k.a. lots of other names.

But they still treat this company as though it were something real. Not a single mainstream reporter has scrutinized those web sites and reported on the obvious signs of fakery.

No reporters -- and, for that matter, no procurement officers at the Pentagon -- bothered to do any checking at the patent office. If they had, they would have found that there are no patents covering the "proprietary" designs and innovative equipment advertised by the many ADCS subsidiary firms.

The truth: Wilkes was a mechanism by which public funds earmarked for national defense were funneled to G.O.P. candidates and causes.

More...

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2005/12/deeper-into-wilk...

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PRESS RELEASE--BOSTON COLLEGE BANS GAY DANCE AND HIV/AIDS FUNDRAISER
Posted by WindRavenX
Added to homepage Mon Dec 05th 2005, 04:46 PM ET

Hey DUers, my name is Genevieve and I go to Boston College. I am a member of the Gay Leadership Counsel (GLC).

They cancelled our dance. I NEED YOUR HELP to get BC to realize that just because they CAN legally discriminate, that does NOT mean that you will tollerate their bigotry against the queer communities at Catholic schools. I will post more later, but look in the papers tomorrow and listen to Air America, because this is going to be a HUGE battle.

Continued. Click "Discuss this topic" to read the rest. --Skinner

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Dean: US Won't Win in Iraq
Posted by ECH1969
Added to homepage Mon Dec 05th 2005, 03:02 PM ET


Saying the "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean predicted today that the Democratic Party will come together on a proposal to withdraw National Guard and Reserve troops immediately, and all US forces within two years.

"The White House wants us to have a permanent commitment to Iraq. This is an Iraqi problem. President Bush got rid of Saddam Hussein and that was a great thing, but that could have been dome in a very different way. But now that we're there we need to figure out how to leave. 80% of Iraqis want us to leave, and it's their country."

Dean also compared the controversy over pre-war intelligence to the Watergate scandal which brought down Richard Nixon's presidency in 1974.

"What we see today is very much like what was going in Watergate," Dean said. "It turns out there is a lot of good evidence that President Bush did not tell the truth when he was asking Congress for the power to go to war.

More...

http://www.woai.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=C3...

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DNC: DoD's Propaganda Company Founded by Major Republican Donor
Posted by Rose Siding
Added to homepage Mon Dec 05th 2005, 02:39 PM ET

Within many of the recent news reports about the U.S. military paying for propaganda to run in Iraqi newspapers was a paragraph like this, which appeared in the L.A. Times...



The operation is designed to mask any connection with the U.S. military. The Pentagon has a contract with a small Washington-based firm called Lincoln Group, which helps translate and place the stories. The Lincoln Group's Iraqi staff, or its subcontractors, sometimes pose as freelance reporters or advertising executives when they deliver the stories to Baghdad media outlets.

In essence, the military was laundering the information through a firm to "mask any connection with the U.S. military." Sounds logical, but was that the only reason? The Project on Government Oversight has this, which makes you wonder if masking connections was the only reason...

Today, Senator John Warner (R-VA) visited the Pentagon to find out why contractor Lincoln Group has been hired to pay off media outlets to place positive news articles in Iraq. What the White House probably won't be looking into is how a tiny little-known start up named the Lincoln Group landed more than $100 million in Defense Department contracts which led, in part, to the news buys.

In August, 2004, the New York Times captured the Lincoln Group's young founder, Christian Bailey, on camera at a Republican National Convention event where he talked about the importance of cultivating the next generation of donors to the Republican Party: "These are going to be the big supporters, the big donors to the Republican Party in five years' time." Bailey was co-chair of an event for the organization known as Lead21, which claims to be an organization which promotes "political involvement for business leaders." But, from the looks of their web site, Lead21 is only interested in Republican political involvement. Government Executive notes that some of Bailey's political activities have been taken down from the web in recent months.

http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/12/propaganda_comp.php



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AP Shocker: Iraq VP Disputes Bush on Training of Forces
Posted by kpete
Added to homepage Mon Dec 05th 2005, 12:48 PM ET


Iraq VP says Bush is wrong about Iraq army
by kos
Mon Dec 05, 2005 at 10:32:15 AM PDT

Remember how Bush couldn't shut up about the great state of the Iraqi security forces? We've already had plenty of information disputing Bush's rosy assessment. But here's the harshest dissent yet. And it comes from Iraq vice president Ghazi al-Yawer.
The training of Iraqi security forces has suffered a big "setback" in the last six months, with the army and other forces being increasingly used to settle scores and make other political gains, Iraqi Vice President Ghazi al-Yawer said Monday.

Al-Yawer disputed contentions by U.S. officials, including President Bush, that the training of security forces was gathering speed, resulting in more professional troops.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_di...
http://www.dailykos.com



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After Scathing 9/11 Report, White House Points Fingers
Posted by sabra
Added to homepage Mon Dec 05th 2005, 07:18 PM ET


http://www.nbc4i.com/news/5467517/detail.html

After Scathing 9/11 Report, White House Points Fingers

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is defending its anti-terror efforts and blaming Congress for any deficiencies.

White House counselor Dan Bartlett is responding to a report from former members of the 9/11 commission. The panel said the government deserves "more F's than A's" in adopting the commission's recommendations to better guard the country.

Bartlett said that lawmakers on Capitol Hill spend homeland security money "based on old models, pre- 9/11 models."

He said the administration has acted on about 70 of the panel's recommendations while others wait for congressional action.

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NOLA Free Wi-fi Prompts BellSouth to Withdraw Donation
Posted by iconoclastNYC
Added to homepage Mon Dec 05th 2005, 11:06 AM ET

First BellSouth's CEO starts talking up his plans to destroy the Internet by erecting anti-competitive speedbumps to companies that don't pony up the cash for "premium" access to it's broadband customers. Now the cold hearted company is going back on a promise to give flood-destroyed NOLA a building.

From Slashdot:


"Shortly after learning of the New Orleans plan for free city-wide wireless internet, Bellsouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate a damaged building to be used for police headquarters. According to the Washington Post, 'Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert.'"

From Washington Post:


Hours after New Orleans officials announced Tuesday that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday.

According to the officials, the head of BellSouth's Louisiana operations, Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert, who oversees the roughly 1,650-member police force.

City officials said BellSouth was upset about the plan to bring high-speed Internet access for free to homes and businesses to help stimulate resettlement and relocation to the devastated city. Around the country, large telephone companies have aggressively lobbied against localities launching their own Internet networks, arguing that they amount to taxpayer-funded competition. Some states have laws prohibiting them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

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Bombshell memos released: Blanco Begged Bush for Katrina help!
Posted by Bluebear
Added to homepage Sun Dec 04th 2005, 08:54 AM ET


Documents Show Katrina's Political Storm

NEW ORLEANS - As Hurricane Katrina roared ashore and thousands of people waited days amid the floodwater for rescue, a series of letters passed between the governor and the White House that reveal delays, claims that requests for federal help weren't received, and concerns on both sides about public relations.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco late Friday released 100,000 pages of memos, handwritten notes, e-mails, phone logs and other documents requested by congressional committees that are now investigating what happened behind the scenes in the frantic days surrounding the deadly Aug. 29 storm.

Among those documents are the back-and-forth communications between Blanco's office and the White House, starting with a letter Blanco sent President Bush a day before the hurricane hit.

"I have determined that this incident will be of such severity and magnitude that effective response will be beyond the capabilities of the state and the affected local governments and that supplementary federal assistance will be necessary," Blanco wrote.

More...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051204/ap_on_re_us/katrina...




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LA Times: FBI reopens Niger forgery case.
Posted by RSchewe
Added to homepage Sat Dec 03rd 2005, 02:52 PM ET


FBI Is Taking Another Look at Forged Prewar Intelligence

WASHINGTON — The FBI has reopened an inquiry into one of the most intriguing aspects of the pre-Iraq war intelligence fiasco: how the Bush administration came to rely on forged documents linking Iraq to nuclear weapons materials as part of its justification for the invasion.

The documents inspired intense U.S. interest in the buildup to the war — and they led the CIA to send a former ambassador to the African nation of Niger to investigate whether Iraq had sought the materials there. The ambassador, Joseph C. Wilson IV, found little evidence to support such a claim, and the documents were later deemed to have been forged.

more...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ni...

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Fitzgerald Reaffirms that Grand Jury Investigation is Ongoing
Posted by Halliburton
Added to homepage Sat Dec 03rd 2005, 03:10 PM ET


CHICAGO The prosecutor in the CIA leak case on Friday opposed public release of some details about the criminal investigation, while supporting the disclosure of information regarding I. Lewis Libby, the indicted former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

In court papers, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said continued secrecy is not necessary with respect to portions of a federal appeals court ruling from 10 months ago that "directly relate to Mr. Libby." Libby was indicted on Oct. 28 on five counts of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI.

Secrecy is necessary for other material in the court ruling to protect witnesses or subjects of the investigation from public embarrassment or ridicule "as well as to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation," Fitzgerald argued.

Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, is seeking release of redacted portions of an appeals court decision from Feb. 15, 2005. In it, Judge David Tatel affirmed that New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper were in contempt of court for refusing to testify in Fitzgerald's investigation. Both subsequently testified.

<snip>

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp...