Moral Reciprocity AKA The Golden Rule

The problem with Bush is that he took American virtue as a given. He thought it was given to him like his last name. Like the rich spoiled kid he is, he never acted with virtue but took full advantage of it for his own use. Morality was always a monologue for him, never a dialogue.

"Harry Truman, who George W. Bush often praised but never understood, once said that “We all have to recognize—no matter how great our strength—that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please.” To Bush and Cheney and Palin, the sentiment is offensive. Why should America not do as it pleases? After all, since our power stems from our virtue, the more unrestrained we are, the more good we will do."

Peter Beinart relates that quote to Obama's Oslo speech accepting the Nobel Prize.

"But Barack Obama, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech Thursday morning, showed that he understands just what Truman meant. Because he understands, in a way Cheney and Palin never will, that true moral universalism requires recognizing that Americans are just as capable of evil as anyone else. And that means recognizing that we are in just as much need of restraint. For Obama and Truman, the paradox of American exceptionalism is that only by recognizing that we are not inherently better than anyone else, and thus must bind our power within a framework of law, can we distinguish ourselves from the predatory powers of the past."

You can't overturn 8 years of Bush overnight, but this is the step in the correct moral direction.

Source: Daily Beast

The Geography Of AIDS Around The World

An AIDS cartogram. Each square equals 10,000 people:



More education and condoms, less faith-based bullshit.

Source: FlowingData

The "Valid" Concerns Of Glenn Beck

Fanning the flames, looking for his pay-out.

"In a segment about the rising price of gold, [Jon] Stewart noted that one of the major advertisers on [Glenn] Beck's program is Goldline, a company that traffics in the yellow metal. The irony, Stewart notes, is that the price of gold tends to move in inverse relationship to public fear."

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In fairness, liberal talkers like Randi Rhodes and Ed Schultz have also personally recorded ads for sponsors who sell gold, but they don't spend all their time predicting Obama will end the world.

Source: RawStory

Feigning Support While Railing Against It

These are contradictory messages out of the GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's website, a day apart.

It's like they want Medicare to stay exactly the same, frozen in time. They don't want to cut waste, because it's great the way it is. They don't want to let more people have it, because I guess more healthy people scares them?

Programs are perfectly fine if the money is going into the pockets of corporations. Programs are wasteful if the money is going to add value to regular people's lives.

"Now, though, Democrats are pondering a Medicare expansion of sorts. They want to let people between the ages of 55 and 64 buy insurance through Medicare. And suddenly, Republicans are stuck in a booby-trapped rhetorical space, defending Medicare from all attackers--real and perceived--and also lashing out at the idea of letting more people benefit from it."

How do the Republicans oppose Medicare for 40 years, then spend six months "defending" it from health care reform, only to turn around and oppose letting more people buy into it?

The GOP's frothing defense of every last Medicare dollar being spent, whether it's wasted or not, is the party's final nail in the coffin of fiscal conservatism.There really isn't a thing that the GOP has done or championed that is fiscally conservative anymore.

And no, championing more tax cuts that get funded by borrowing is NOT fiscally conservative, especially when increasing spending at the same time (see the records of Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II as compared to Clinton).

Mind you, these are the same Republicans who voted for Bush's Prescription Drugs Medicare expansion without a way to pay for it. Do they not understand what "borrow with interest" means?

Source: TPM

Loud Mouths Are Needed Sometimes

The Left HAS to be loud and as vocal as possible:

"We’ve seen how the right in this country gets things done today. They get on TV and scream out “DEATH PANELS DEATH PANELS KILLING GRANDMA”, and you know what happens? Rather than trying to explain themselves, the Democrats remove a perfectly reasonable part of their bill. Like it or not this is how it works."

At this critical moment, we need leadership and activism to get us back to real change. If not now, when? If not Obama, then who?

As Obama is fond of saying, “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” We should start of with perfect, then settle for good. In this debate it seems that they started with the good and are now settling for the even less good. And if the left stopped “bothering” them on reform, they’d gut this thing even more.

Source: Daily Dish

The Greatest Generation Paid For Their Wars

For those who like history and facts:

"The top marginal tax rate in 1941 was 81 percent on incomes greater than $5 million (about $72 million in today's dollars). In 1942 and '43, it was 88 percent on $200,000 per year ($2.6 million today). In '44 and '45, it was 94 percent on $200,000 ($2.3 million today).

The Greatest Generation did more than just save pennies to buy war bonds... most everyone paid more in taxes and some 40 million people paid taxes for the first time."

Then you have Bush who started two wars and cut taxes to the richest Americans, thus putting all of America so deep in the red for decades to come. The Right Wing's idea of sacrifice is so focused on helping the wealthy, yet they still have the balls to think they are the military or fiscal superior party. Complete and utter failures beyond any measure.

Even more effed up, the Right's infatuation with the Greatest Generation was under a four-term Democratic President who would make modern liberals look uber-Conservative.

Source: Andrew Sullivan

The Harlem Children's Zone

Geoffrey Canada and his Harlem Children's Zone are breaking the pattern of poverty. Making the "Land of Opportunity" a reality.

"The results are in and are nothing short of stunning."

It costs $5,000 a year to educate someone, about $100,000 a year to incarcerate. You do the math.

Here's a link to donate to The Harlem Children's Zone.


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Source: Oliver Willis

Only Missed by $198 Billion

So much for Fox's zero tolerance policy for wrong information on-screen.

"Earlier Tuesday, President Obama said that at least $200 billion had been saved from the TARP program, savings that he plans to use to help fund his new job creation initiatives.

A few minutes later, Fox took that $200 billion figure and cut it by $198 billion, telling their audience in an on-screen graphic that the TARP savings would be just $2 billion."

"Reporting" on good news from the Obama Administration must be pure hell for them.



Source: DailyKos

Internet v Talk Radio

Truth to power versus echo chamber of opinion.

"We live in parallel universes -- the left on the Internet and the right on talk radio." -- Barney Frank

While the internet has its' wackos, nothing like having some bloated dittohead spoon feed you the "news".

Skull And Bones v Becksters

For all those mentally unemployed people trying to cobble together some "secret" previous life for President Obama, here is a picture of Skull & Bones "tomb" on the Yale Campus in New Haven, CT. [Note: Yale has 5 secret societies on campus]

The Birthers and Becksters would want you to get all mad and suspicious at Obama, he of the secret Kenyan Muslim brown person paranoia they spread.

But what about the suspicion when the the previous 3 Presidents, that's the last 20 years, have all been members of a real secret society. That's Bush 41, Clinton and Bush 43. Add John Kerry and you have the biggest names in politics. All Skull & Bones.

Oh wait, they are rich white people. They are entitled.