So, after just eight hours, the truth about the Israeli attack of flotilla aid workers comes out. Thank the lord that the Israeli government decided to film and document their boarding of the vessels.

Dear stupid flotilla people, when entering any port of any country around the world, it is customary to allow that countries officials on board to see a bill of lading and other documents as well as allow a thorough search of the vessel for contraband.

You idiots pulled the trigger on yourselves by attacking the Israeli officials and military as they boarded your vessel. Perhaps it might have been a good idea to read maritime laws and procedures of Israel before you crossed into their waters. JD

President Tries to Salvage Overhaul’s ‘Core Elements’ Amid Capitol Hill Chaos

ITS THE ECONOMY, STUPID! Remember that clarion call by the democrats during the Clinton campaign? Most of you don’t remember what you had for dinner last night. Its embarrassing. JD

President Barack Obama suggested he’s open to Congress passing a scaled-back health-care bill, potentially sacrificing much of his signature policy initiative as chaos engulfed Capitol Hill Wednesday.

Top Democrats said they would press ahead despite growing doubts among rank-and-file members that they can pass a bill they’ve been laboring over for nearly a year. A host of ideas offered in recent days have lost favor.

One day after losing their filibuster-proof Senate majority in a Massachusetts special election, exhausted Senate Democrats looked downtrodden as they filed into their weekly lunch in a second-floor room at the Capitol. “People are hysterical right now,” said one Senate aide.

Party members clashed over what to do next. Sen. Max Baucus, a top Senate Democrat, appeared to throw cold water on a bill that would focus only on stiffer insurance regulations. Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, scotched another idea, a complicated parliamentary maneuver to usher a bill quickly to the president’s desk.

In an interview with ABC News, President Obama said he would be open to scaling back the legislation in order to salvage it. “I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements in the package that people agree on,” Mr. Obama said. White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said later the president would prefer Congress to pass the comprehensive package, and hasn’t given up on that option.

A pared-down bill could still restrict insurance companies from denying care and overcharging customers, but would likely jettison a mandate requiring everyone buy insurance. That provision opened Democrats to charges that they were unreasonably expanding the scope of government.

Without such a mandate, government would no longer need to raise as much money to subsidize the uninsured and expand Medicaid, and so wouldn’t have to significantly raise taxes. A smaller bill could offer a more modest expansion of insurance coverage, help for small business to buy policies, and new cost controls, among other things.

Insurance companies, however, argue that without a mandate that everyone buy insurance, premiums would likely rise.

Democrats cautioned they were far from settling on the scope of the smaller package.

The Democrats’ top leadership in Congress wouldn’t say where the bill would head next. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said lawmakers would heed the message voters sent in the Massachusetts election, “but we will move forward.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said: “We’re not going to rush into anything.” A senior White House official said Ms. Pelosi was in the midst of counting votes to see if she could move the more comprehensive package through the House.

Several Democrats said Mr. Obama’s suggestion of paring the bill was a top option, and perhaps the only one.

Winning Republican support for even a modified version also seemed unlikely. “You can’t drive a policy that doesn’t have the support of the American people,” said Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, the Republican who had shown the most openness to passing the bill during last year’s health negotiations.

Republicans said the election results were a clear order to stop the health bill and start over. Asked whether he thought the bill was dead, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said: “I sure hope so.”

Democrats hoping to salvage the initiative argued it was in the party’s political interests to pass a bill, given that lawmakers are already on record as having voted for the expansive version of the legislation. They will be attacked on the campaign trail for that vote either way, the reasoning goes, and need something to show for it.

Republican Scott Brown won in Massachusetts partly by presenting himself as the 41st vote that could thwart the health-care bill. Mr. Obama warned Democrats not to “jam” through a health bill before the Senate seats Mr. Brown, whose surprise victory in Tuesday’s special election deprives Democrats of their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, making it easier for the minority Republicans to block legislation. In addition, some Democrats in the Senate, especially conservative members and those up for re-election later this year, could get cold feet about backing the bill after the Massachusetts result.

“The people of Massachusetts spoke. He’s got to be part of that process,” Mr. Obama said of Mr. Brown. Senate Democrats vowed they wouldn’t act before their newest member is sworn in.

Democrats openly disagreed Wednesday about what to do next. Mr. Baucus, Senate Finance Committee Chairman, said he doesn’t envision simply passing a bill based on changing the insurance market. “I don’t think that’s what we’ll do,” said Mr. Baucus, a key architect of the Senate’s bill. “We want to pass health reform.”

Top House Democrats were weighing a handful of options. In one plan, instead of having the House pass the Senate bill and later modify it, the House would pass the Senate bill and the modifications at about the same time. The changes could later be passed through the Senate using a parliamentary procedure called reconciliation, since it requires fewer votes.

Other options include using the reconciliation procedure to enact parts of the bill, including subsidies for the uninsured, or moving a stand-alone bill that enacts insurance reforms. The latter measure is difficult, though, since it would require 60 votes in the Senate, a Democratic leadership aide said.

The Senate’s version has key provisions House Democrats oppose, including a tax on high-end insurance plans, smaller subsidies to help lower earners buy insurance and a greater emphasis on state regulation of insurers instead of federal oversight.

Any of the alternatives would require Congress to sink more time into a health bill at a time when the White House wants to focus on creating jobs and improving the economy.

During the ABC interview, Mr. Obama listed the current bill’s popular features, leaving out the central feature: covering as many as possible of the 47 million uninsured Americans. That’s what costs money—about $1 trillion over a decade, and that’s what Democrats have been working towards for decades.

Hey Jerry! Is there any way that you can tell us from the grave what Satan actually looks like? I figure with all of the money you stole from them stupid crackers in the south, you pretty much assured us all that you had a one way ticket to hell.

JD

LYNCHBURG, Virginia: The Rev. Jerry Falwell, known both for his scathing comments linking the Sept. 11 attacks to abortion, homosexuality and liberals and for shaping the conservative Christian right into a major force in U.S. politics during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, has died. He was 73.

Falwell was discovered without a pulse in his office at Liberty University on Tuesday and pronounced dead at a hospital an hour later. Dr. Carl Moore, Falwell’s physician, said he had a heart condition and presumably died of a heart rhythm abnormality.

Driven into politics by the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that established the right to an abortion, Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979. One of the conservative lobbying group’s greatest triumphs came just a year later, when Ronald Reagan was elected president.

Falwell credited the Moral Majority with getting millions of conservative voters registered, aiding in Reagan’s victory and giving Republicans control of the Senate.

“I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved,” he said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.
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Fellow TV evangelist Pat Robertson, himself a one-time Republican candidate for president, declared Falwell “a tower of strength on many of the moral issues which have confronted our nation.”

The rise of Christian conservatism — and the Moral Majority’s full-throated condemnation of homosexuality, abortion and pornography — made Falwell perhaps the most recognizable figure on the evangelical right, and one of the most controversial ones, too.

Over the years, Falwell waged a landmark libel case against Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt over a raunchy parody ad, and created a furor in 1999 when one of his publications suggested that the purse-carrying “Teletubbies” character Tinky Winky was gay.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Falwell said that abortionists, feminists, gays and others “have tried to secularize America … helped this happen.” President George W. Bush, himself a conservative Protestant, rebuked Falwell, who soon admitted the comment was a mistake.

Matt Foreman, executive director of National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, extended condolences to those close to Falwell, but added: “Unfortunately, we will always remember him as a founder and leader of America’s anti-gay industry, someone who exacerbated the nation’s appalling response to the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic, someone who demonized and vilified us for political gain and someone who used religion to divide rather than unite our nation.”

The 1980s marked the religious conservative movement’s high-water mark. In more recent years, Falwell had become a problematic figure for the Republican. His remarks a few days after Sept. 11, 2001, essentially blaming feminists, gays and liberals for bringing on the terrorist attacks drew a rebuke from the White House, and he apologized.

Falwell’s declining political star seemed apparent when he quietly led in and out of the Republican Party’s 2004 national convention. Just four years earlier, he was invited to pray from the rostrum.

In a statement, Bush said he and First Lady Laura Bush were “deeply saddened” by the loss of a man who “cherished faith, family and freedom.”

The big, blue-eyed preacher with a booming voice started a fundamentalist church in an abandoned bottling plant in Lynchburg in 1956 with just 35 members. He built it into a religious empire that included the 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church, the “Old Time Gospel Hour” carried on TV stations around the country and 7,700-student Liberty University, which Falwell founded in 1971 as Lynchburg Baptist College.

From his living room, he broadcast his message of salvation and raised the donations that helped his ministry grow.

“He was one of the first to come up with ways to use television to expand his ministry,” said Robert Alley, a retired University of Richmond religion professor who studied and criticized Falwell’s career.

Falwell had once opposed mixing preaching with politics, but changed his views. The Moral Majority grew to 6.5 million members and raised $69 million (€51 million) as it supported conservative politicians and railed against abortion, homosexuality, pornography and bans on school prayer.

Falwell became the face of the religious right, appearing on national magazine covers and on talk shows. In 1983, U.S. News & World Report named him one of 25 most influential people in America.

“Jerry’s passions and convictions changed the course of our country for the better over the last 20 years,” said James Dobson, founder of the conservative Christian Focus on the Family ministry. “It was Jerry who led an entire wing of Christianity, the fundamentalist wing, away from isolation and into a direct confrontation with the culture.”

“Dr. Falwell was a man of distinguished accomplishment who devoted his life to serving his faith and country,” said Sen. John McCain, a Republican presidential contender who during the 2000 primaries referred to Falwell and Robertson as “agents of intolerance.” McCain has since distanced himself from those comments.

In 1984, Falwell sued Hustler for $45 million (€33 million), charging that he was libeled by an liquor-ad parody that quoted him as saying he lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse. But a federal jury found he was not libeled and awarded him $200,000 (€147,732) for emotional distress.

The verdict was overturned in a landmark 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that even pornographic spoofs about a public figure enjoy constitutional protection.

With Falwell’s high profile came frequent criticism, even from fellow ministers. The Rev. Billy Graham once rebuked him for political sermonizing on “non-moral issues.”

Falwell quit the Moral Majority in 1987, saying he was tired of being “a lightning rod” and wanted to devote his time to his ministry and Liberty University. But he remained outspoken and continued to draw criticism for his remarks.

In 1999, he told an evangelical conference that the Antichrist was a male Jew who was probably already alive. Falwell later apologized for the remark but not for holding the belief.

Falwell was re-energized after family values proved important in the 2004 presidential election. He formed the Faith and Values Coalition as the “21st Century resurrection of the Moral Majority,” to seek anti-abortion judges, a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and more conservative elected officials.

In 1987, Falwell took over the PTL (Praise the Lord) ministry in South Carolina after the Rev. Jim Bakker got caught in a sex and money scandal. Falwell slid fully clothed down a theme park water slide after donors met his fundraising goal to help rescue the rival ministry. He gave it up seven months later after learning the depth of PTL’s financial problems.

Largely because of the sex scandals involving Bakker and fellow evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, donations to Falwell’s ministry dropped from $135 million (€100 million) in 1986 to less than $100 million (€74 million) the following year. Hundreds of workers were laid off and viewers of his television show dwindled.

Liberty University was $73 million (€54 million) in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy, and his “Old Time Gospel Hour” was $16 million (€11.8 million) in debt. By the mid-1990s, two local businessmen with long ties to Falwell began overseeing the finances and helped get companies to forgive debts or write them off.

Falwell dreamed that Liberty would grow to 50,000 students and be to fundamentalist Christians what Notre Dame is to Roman Catholics and Brigham Young University is to Mormons.

Falwell’s father and his grandfather were militant atheists, he wrote in his autobiography. He said his father made a fortune off his businesses — including bootlegging during Prohibition.

As a student, Falwell was a star athlete and a prankster who was barred from giving his high school valedictorian’s speech after he was caught using counterfeit lunch tickets.

He ran with a gang of juvenile delinquents before becoming a born-again Christian at 19. He turned down an offer to play professional baseball and transferred from Lynchburg College to Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri.

“My heart was burning to serve Christ,” he once said in an interview. “I knew nothing would ever be the same again.”

Falwell had made careful preparations for a transition of his leadership to his two sons, Jerry Falwell, Jr., now vice chancellor of Liberty University, and Jonathan Falwell, executive the pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church.

Falwell’s survivors include his wife, Macel, his two sons and a daughter, Jeannie Falwell Savas. The funeral is set for 2 p.m. Monday at Thomas Road Baptist Church.

We here at DOJAK want to wish everybody (with the exception of illegal aliens) a Merry Christmas and a happy new year! With any luck Santa will have put that wall up at the border last night and made sure that Vicente Fox got hit by a Tiajuana taxi. Alright already, I am just kidding!!! NOT! I hear that Santa left millions of FREE TAMALES about three miles south of the border. Hurry home! It’s like the riots in 1992…. ITS ALL FREE!!!

JD

This is the new Dojak Blog. Here is what I intend to do with this site. I want to point out on an almost daily basis how the weak and apathetic in our society are responsible for what is now going on within the body politic. This is your fault mother f*&%er!!! All of you that sit on your fat ass and cry about how your vote doesn’t make any difference and the “who cares anyway” crowd. I am going to do a PODcast from this site as well. It will be about news of the day, politics and why illegal immigration needs to be stopped. I also intend to ruin as many political careers as possible Starting with David Dreier, Congressman of the 26th district (where I live) of California. For those of you that don’t know, A bunch of us dopey Californians got together and in a grass roots effort nearly unseated Mr. Dreier in one of the most conservative districts in California. And get this…. We ran a lesbian Democrat againt him!!! For those of you that are not familiar with Mr. Dreier, he is the chair of the House Rules Commitee, which makes him the third most powerful man in Washington. So here it is, I hope you will enjoy my tirades and contribute as much as you can.

Regards;
John De Gennaro