Neo-Theocrats Ask God To Stop Health Care Reform

Separation of Church and State for these Neanderthal Christianist neo-theocrats means you have to have God stop Kings from passing laws in a democracy. Truly villainous use of peoples' superstitions to thwart a normal discourse in Congress. Bending and piecing together religious dogmas to suit there needs. I guess God is a Democrat because it passed. Also, God is omniscient, you can't tell him what to do. Um, hubris?

Top Republicans Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) want God to stop Health Reform. Was Jesus busy? He had no interest whatsoever in healing or helping the sick or the poor, right?

They use abortion, rationing care, medical marijuana and killing people, ALL NOT IN THE BILL, as examples of why they are against it. Specious and misleading and they know it.

Rachel Maddow has a great piece on the "Prayercast" they use to publicly convince their followers of their sincerity. You may ask yourself, "Is this The Onion?"

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Source: Washington Monthly

Lieberman Socks

Lieberman is as charismatic as a sock.

An Empty Prison Looking For Detainees

Chris Matthews and two Illinois Congressman discuss torture, closing Gitmo and bringing convicted detainees to a built, yet empty, $150 million dollar maximum security prison in Illinois.

Rep. Aaron Schock [R] uses the "ticking time bomb" scenario that never exists to justify torture anytime, anywhere. Conclusion: zero principles for his American exceptionalism. I guess Republican exceptionalism means claim all the benifits from American goodwill, "except" do nothing that actually has principled meaning or basis in Rule of Law.

"I don't believe that we should limit waterboarding - or, quite frankly, any other alternative torture technique - if it means saving Americans' lives." Schock doesn't even bother to say "enhanced interrogation techniques," or maybe he just flubs the Orwellian talking point.

Note: 95% of the locals voted for bringing the detainees to the prison and the 3,500 jobs to their area. The fact that Schock never toured the prison, in his own district, did not stop him from getting in completely over his head.

Note 2: Schock is the youngest person in Congress and it shows.

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Source: The Daily Dish

Media Bias?

Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Fox Noise and Friends, Mike Huckabee, G. Gordon Liddy, Michael Medved, Mark Levin, Neal Boortz, Lou Dobbs, Laura Ingraham, Neil Cavuto, John Stossel, Bill Kristol, Ann Coulter, Peggy Noonan, Jonah Goldberg, John Fund, Brent Bozell, Cal Thomas, Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Sarah Palin, Matt Drudge and Armstrong Williams all agree conservatives do not have a voice in the media.

He didn't mention Michelle Malkin.

VIDEO: Keith Olbermann Explains The “Liberal Media” Bias | Oliver Willis - Watch more Politics Videos at Vodpod.

It Is Never Really About Socialism

Socialism is synonymous in Foxland with "anything that scares me."

So what is it really? It's about the feared redistribution of privilege that these hicks think they've "earned" that scares them. Redistribution of wealth and Socialism are code words in their class warfare. They'll do anything to stop "coloreds" or "homos" from getting their shot at prosperity and equal freedoms. Obama is Marxist, a Muslim, a non-Christian, he wants to socialize the entire country. The same shit as calling Martin Luther King Jr a communist for wanting equal rights back in the 60s or these cretins [pictured] in Little Rock, AR, in 1959.

Why no protests under Bush for creating historic debt, nationalizing all the banks and mortgage companies, wiretapping Americans without warrants, growing the size of the Government to its largest levels ever, all while wasting money on endless wars? It all ties into race and other social objectives and has nothing really to do with taxation, deficits, and big government.



Marriage and access to health care are things that help you become independent of the State. You and your spouse care for each other. Health care keeps you out of expensive hospitals. But why address the real problems when you can call out "socialism" and the lemmings all mindlessly nod on.

The Doomsday Hyperbole v Justice

The Republicans and Neo-Cons broke all the rules for carrying out Justice, now they get to complain when Justice actually happens.

"The Obami, in all their sanctimonious glory, will rise above the mundane concerns for safety and security and throw overboard our own judicial history and precedents. This is nothing more than an exercise in moral preening. We’ll impress our European friends and the academic Left. For the enemy is us," - Jennifer Rubin, on moving detainees to Thompson, Illinois.

John McCain, Colin Powell, David Petraeus, and George W. Bush all supported closing Gitmo. Are they our "European friends" or the "academic Left"? The whole fake war was to spread Democracy and "our values". You eventually have to live up to your words.

Rule of Law is moral preening? Obama is sanctimonious? I think Jennifer needs a dictionary.

Source: The Daily Dish

22 Million Emails "Found"

There is a difference between lost and deleted.

"White House computer technicians have found 22 million e-mails that were believed to have been lost during President George W. Bush’s administration, according to the Associated Press."

These were around the time of the politicized Justice Department firings during the Alberto Gonzales' regime and the Valerie Plame–CIA leak scandal that nailed Dick Cheney's patsy, Scooter Libby.

Their excuse was that they were mislabled. 22,000,000 emails?!

Source: Wired

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."

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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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.


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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.