Warning: this diary contains language some readers may find offensive. It's the rage talking. Sorry.

At the blog Be John Galt (no, thanks), Ayn Rand disciple bc3b claims that BP had been contemplating the top kill maneuver as early as May 9, but didn't attempt it until now because President Obama was playing golf.  No, I am not making this up.  (bc3b also confuses the top kill maneuver with the junk shot manuever, but that's another matter.  Here's some help for you, bc3b, if you're interested.)

Andrew Corsello does a fine job of stating what I think about Ayn Rand.  My negative feelings about her have been more intense lately, since we can blame what Corsello calls Ayn Rand Assholes, or ARA's, for the last few years of economic trauma:

Thanks to them, the Rand Experience is no longer limited to those who have read the books. It's metastasized. You, me, all of us, we're living it. Because it's the ARA Army of antigovernment-antiregulation puritans who have spent the past three decades gleefully pulling the cooling rods out of the American economy. For a while, it got very big and very hot. Then it popped. And now the rest of us have to spend the next decade scaling the slippery slopes of the huge suppurative crater that was left behind.  

Anyway, some pack of adolescent Rand disciples is trying to find a way to criticize Obama for the screw-ups of BP, and this is the shit they come up with.  Hey, bc3b, why don't you take the advice of your hero and check your premises?

Given the intimate relationship between the previous administration and oil companies, perhaps bc3b might be forgiven for thinking that Obama is an oil company executive.  But he's not, so you can't have that particular premise, bc3b.

Ayn Rand called her "philosophy" objectivism.  Academic philosophers have virtually no respect for Rand or objectivism.  Now, I'm wondering why bc3b, who I assume is an objectivist, would blame Obama, a public official, for the oil spill in the Gulf, when objectivists believe that government regulation of the private sector is wrong.  To assume that Obama is responsible for this mess is to believe that government ought to regulate and control business.  I have no problem with that premise, but you can't have that one, bc3b, because you are a stinking objectivist.

So why would bc3b and Republicans in general want to hold Obama responsible for BP's mess?  Because they all believe that the private sector can do no wrong, and that government is responsible for everything that ails us.  Remember the health care reform debate?  Republicans like Rep. Mike Pence warned against a "government takeover" of health care:

Folks know a government-run option would result in tens of millions losing insurance they have with their employer now and millions of Americans losing their jobs, and the idea now that piling on top of all that big government takeover of health care are going to be tax increases on businesses and employees is just astonishing. . . . Republicans are coming together around conservative values. We need the American people to ride to the rescue. We can stop this government takeover of health care, and we request demand this Congress take action that will get this economy moving again.

Months later, Pence is changing his tune. "The American people deserve to know why the administration was slow to respond, why necessary equipment was not immediately on hand in the area and why the president did not fully deploy Cabinet-level federal officials" to the Gulf Coast until April 30, Pence recently said.

Pence wants government out of the health care business, but he wants government all over the oil business.  Why?  Republicans can be counted on to defend the interests of big business every time, and the little guy can go fuck off and die (literally).  So Pence and the rest of the Republicans did everything they could to kill health care reform, since they saw it as antithetical to the interests of the health care corporations and their profits.  Now they're defending BP by trying to blame their royal screw-up on President Obama, since bad PR for BP is antithetical to the interests of oil companies and their profits.

And let there be no doubt: this catastrophe in the Gulf is BP's fault.  According to the Associated Press, "Dozens of witness statements obtained by The Associated Press show a combination of equipment failure and a deference to the chain of command impeded the system that should have stopped the gusher before it became an environmental disaster."  And that's not Obama's fault.

In addition, President Obama's response to this catastrophe cannot be compared to President Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina, no matter what Republicans looking for a political advantage say.  According to the Associated Press,

The Gulf region, ravaged five years earlier by Hurricane Katrina, was on the verge of a second ecological disaster. Would there be a repeat of the bureaucratic bungling that marked President George W. Bush's response to the hurricane?

While the Obama administration has faced second-guessing about the speed and effectiveness of some of its actions, a narrative pieced together by The Associated Press, based on documents, interviews and public statements, shows little resemblance to Katrina in either the characterization of the threat or the federal government's response.

Lemme guess, Republican, the reporting of the Associated Press suffers from liberal bias, right?

And if you stop and think about it, the differences between Katrina and BP are stark.  Government is responsible for responding to natural disasters like Katrina, and government was responsible for the construction and maintenance of the levees protecting New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain.  BP is responsible for the man-made disaster in the Gulf that BP itself caused, and BP is also responsible for cleaning up its own mess.

Some Republicans and adolescent objectivist bloggers might want to blame the catastrophe on lax government regulation.  Consider the following lead paragraphs of an Associated Press story:

At a 2005 workshop, a senior official in the U.S. government's Minerals Management Service raised concerns about ultra-deepwater drilling and included the bullet point, "Few or no regulations or standards." Within two years, Jim Grant left his post as chief of staff of the government's Gulf of Mexico region to take a job with BP PLC - one of the companies his former agency regulated in its oversight of offshore drilling.

Grant's change is one example of the revolving door between the Interior Department's MMS and the oil industry, which increasingly has the attention of Congress, the Obama administration and watchdog groups after the disastrous BP oil spill at an ultra-deepwater rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

Just this week, a government report said drilling regulators have been so close to the industry they've been accepting gifts from oil and gas companies and even negotiating to go work for them.

For someone like me, this is disturbing.  But haven't Republicans and ARA's wanted to deregulate the private sector and get government off the backs of corporations so that they could make more money?  Sorry, assholes: you can't on the one hand insist on deregulation, and then fault Obama for regulatory failure.

Republicans like former FEMA "director" Michael Brown have even gone so far as to claim that the spill was a conspiracy on the part of Obama to provide an excuse to reestablish the ban on offshore oil drilling.  Sorry, Brownie, but that just reeks of desperation and stupidity.

So, what have we learned?

John Galt can go fuck himself.  

Once again, Jon Stewart calls it correctly. Calling out the hypocrisy, and hatred of an extremist group, who hate, but, take part in the offerings of what they claim to despise, but, with humor, of course!!!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
South Park Death Threats
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Is a woman morally obligated, in all circumstances, to carry her unborn child to term? This is the question at the heart of the abortion debate. This singular question has branched off into many others, concerning the time at which life begins and the legal status of a fetus. While such questions are certainly interesting and worth debating, for the purposes of this essay, I shall focus only on the first one. As I will argue, and as I hope to convince you, a woman is not always morally obligated to carry her unborn child to term. I say not always because, as I will also argue, there are circumstances in which she may be obligated to do so. But these circumstances are merely exceptions - in the large number of cases, no moral obligation exists.

The basis of my position comes from a though experiment first proposed by the philosopher Judith Thomson in her paper A Defense of Abortion. Thomson writes:

You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.

The question facing us now is, are we morally obligated to remain hooked up to the violinist? I would venture to guess that most of us would say that we are not morally obligated. It would be a commendable moral gesture if we elected to do so, but it is not a moral imperative. Of course, we may be blameworthy for his death since we abstained from remaining attached, but I highly doubt that anyone would say that we acted immorally by detaching him. We certainly have moral obligations to the violinist, even if he's a stranger, but our moral obligations don't extend to the point where he must allow him to co-opt our kidneys. Such an arrangement, although short term, would be quite cumbersome to us; everywhere we go, the violinist would have to come along, and our kidneys would be overworked from having to filter the blood of two people. Furthermore, the violinist has no special claim to your organs, or any other part of your body. If you elect to let him use your kidneys, that's fine, but he may not say that you are required to be attached to him, solely in virtue of the fact that he needs your kidneys to survive. As a moral imperative, this is too much to demand of any individual, and I should think that most would agree with me.

If it is the case that we are not morally obligated to remain attached to the violinist, then it should hold that a woman is not morally obligated to carry her unborn child to term. Pregnancy is quite cumbersome to the woman, it can lead to many complications, and - if things should go horribly awry - it can kill her. In both cases, the individuals have been thrust into arrangements to which they did not consent, and upon which the live of an individual hinges. If we say that the violinist has no right to co-opt your kidneys, why then does a fetus? Opponents of abortion will undoubtedly assert that there are differences between the violinist and the fetus. Firstly, they will challenge my assertion that the pregnancy is a non-consenting arrangement.  The woman, by electing to engage in sexual intercourse, has implicitly given consent to have this child, so she may not have an abortion, while it is permissible to detach the violinist, because he was attached while you were asleep. But this can't be the case all the time. In reality, the only time when pregnancy is a consensual arrangement is when the woman actively tried to get pregnant. Rape-induced pregnancy is not consensual, and neither is accident pregnancy. To say that having sex amounts to an implicit consent to pregnancy is the equivalent of saying that every time you drive, you are giving implicit consent to be involved in a car accident. If someone crashes into you, it's your problem, since you must have known that you could get into an accident while driving. Of course, no one ever says that, because it's not true. If you had sex without intending to get pregnant, and then you get pregnant, you have not consented, implicitly or explicitly, to the pregnancy. Like the car accident, it just happened.

Abortion opponents will try to raise a second objection by arguing that the fetus is a part of the mother in the sense that the mother contributed to the conception of the child, whereas the violinist, while famous, is a total stranger. But that can't matter morally, can it? Some will say that it does, that our evolutionary psychology is such that we have different moral obligations to relatives than strangers. While this may be entirely possible, I doubt that it applies to this case. Can our moral obligations to relatives be so strong that it is morally permissible to detach the violinist but immoral to have an abortion? If that's the case, then we don't simply have different moral obligations to relatives than strangers - we have two entirely different moral codes, one for relatives and one for strangers. The fact that the fetus is related to the mother may matter, but it doesn't matter this much. A variant of this argument against my position may be to say that the fetus, unlike the violinist, does have a special claim to the woman's organs, since the fetus is part of the woman's body and is living inside of her. This train of thought does get around the argument I just presented, but it quickly meets a pitfall of its own. The emphasis is now shifted from relatives vs. strangers to the positions of the two individuals relative to one another. The stranger is indeed separated from you in a way that a fetus isn't from its mother, but again, is it truly the case that proximity has such a tremendous bearing on our moral landscape? The fetus is anatomically part of the mother, but it does not mean that it has a right to its mother's body. Like the violinist, the fetus will be gone in nine months, so for the time that it is inside, the fetus is not part of the mother's body, but is merely co-opting it.

In a last-ditch attack on my abortion stance, opponents will likely use an argument used many times, and in many different forms, by the pro-life community. For the sake of this essay, I shall use one form of the argument, which I call the Stephen Hawking argument. Suppose that, in the fall prior to his birth, the parents of Stephen Hawking learned from their doctor that their child would grow up to develop amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. His parents, noting the immense pain that their child would go through and the costs associated with caring for a completely paralyzed adult, decide not to carry him to term and abort him. In one fell swoop, say the abortion opponents, humanity would be robbed of one of the greatest physicists in modern history. The Stephen Hawking argument and its variations are immensely popular, and I am certain that they have convinced many to become steadfast opponents of abortion. As it happens, I actually agree with the conclusion that pro-lifers draw from this argument - it would have been a terrible thing if Stephen Hawking had been aborted. However, I go on to say that I do not believe that the Stephen Hawking argument sufficiently demonstrates the inefficacy of abortion. The Stephen Hawking argument is a retrospective argument concerning the future fate of individuals who, in the moment, would have been denied life if pro-abortionists like me had their way. Carried to its logical conclusion, then, the Stephen Hawking argument seems to suggest that every minute not spent procreating robs the world of the next great scientist or writer. Instead of sitting and reading this essay, you could be out having sex, thereby potentially bringing into existence the next Wolfgang Mozart or Albert Einstein. Pause and consider the countless number of individuals you have failed to bring to life because you went to class, or watched a movie, or took a Caribbean cruise. According to the Stephen Hawking argument, every instance in non-procreation is tantamount to the destruction of a potential life. This is obviously a silly conclusion, and one that no one follows, but it does make sense according to the Stephen Hawking argument. It may have been a bad thing if Stephen Hawking's parents elected to abort him, but it's also bad that you're sitting and reading an essay on abortion, when you could be out there creating the next Stephen Hawking. Most of us would say that no moral equivalence exists between these two scenarios, and I agree, which is why I think we must reject the Stephen Hawking argument.  

In the beginning, I suggested that there are instances in which it may be morally obligatory for the woman to carry her unborn child to term. If a woman consciously decided that she wanted to have a child, then, barring extraordinary circumstances, she must carry the child to term. A conscious decision to have a child is tantamount to making a promise to the unborn child that she will care for and provide the fetus with all the necessary resources for the coming nine months. On its face, the idea of making a promise to an unborn child sounds odd, and some may think that such a promise carries no moral responsibility to hold it, but I believe it does. To return to the violinist experiment, suppose you promised the Society of Music Lovers that you would remain hooked up the violinist for nine months, and then three months in, you arbitrarily decided to liquidate the arrangement. Clearly, we have acted immorally to the violinist by breaking the promise, and by the same token, I believe that a woman would act immorally by deciding to carry the child to term and then arbitrarily electing to have an abortion at a later time. That being said, this promise is not ironclad, and there are situations in which the woman may break her promise to the unborn child and abort it. If the woman has a high risk of dying in childbirth, or if it is discovered that the child has a debilitating birth deflect or genetic abnormality, then it is permissible for the woman to have an abortion. To see how this works, I once again appeal to Thomson's thought experiment. Suppose, three months into the consensual arrangement, you discovered that the violinist was a raging drunkard, and that your kidneys were being damaged as a result of filtering his alcohol-polluted blood. If the violinist's attachment to your kidneys will cause lasting damage to your body, breaking the arrangement and disconnecting the violinist would be completely morally permissible. You should not have to suffer lasting damage in return for your generous action, especially since you have no moral obligation to help the violinist to begin with. In another scenario, you learn, three months in, that the violinist has a heart defect, and that he will die of a heart attack not long after his kidney ailment disappears. If the result of detaching the violinist is that he will die now, while the result of remaining attached is that he will die in seven months, then there is nothing wrong with deciding to detach the violinist and allowing him to die now. Carrying him for another six months will surely be a waste of your time and energy, since he will not live long enough to enjoy the fruits of his fully functioning kidneys. He won't gain much, since he'll die one month later, but you will lose a lot.

In her paper, Thomson states, "the right to life consists not in the right not to be killed, but rather in the right not to be killed unjustly." She goes on to say that, in order to prove to immorality of abortion, "it is by no means enough to show that the fetus is a person and to remind us that all persons have a right to life - we need to be shown also that killing the fetus violates its right to life, i.e., that abortion is unjust killing. And is it?" This is the question I wish to leave you with. Is abortion unjust killing? In my opinion, it is not anymore unjust than refusing to attach yourselves to a nephrologically-challenged violinist.

http://babylonblogs.blogspot.c...

Let this be a lesson to you girl: Don't come around where you know you don't belong.
They're riding on the avenue and probably coming after you and they all look mean and strong.
Mean and strong like liquor.
Mean and strong like fear.
Strong like the people from South Alabama and mean like the people from here.

We ain't never gonna change.
We ain't doin' nothin' wrong.
We ain't never gonna change
So shut your mouth and play along.

-Drive By Truckers, 'Never Gonna Change'
~~~~~~~~

Every year at this time, we see a story or two about it; The gay kid who wants to attend the prom. As a society, we should be beyond this. Way beyond. It shouldn't be a story, it shouldn't be news.

It's a disservice to all of us, even when it's supposed to be positive, even when the message is how well the event played out. We read 'interviews' with the heterosexual attendees, where they all say they were fine with it, and no collateral sexual identities was damaged. How many times are we supposed to clasp our hands to our hearts and sing Whitney Houston songs about children being the future?

It's not news when no one is offended by something that's none of their god damn business. Or at least it shouldn't be, not anymore.

Indoor plumbing isn't newsworthy anymore, not even when some wretched hill folk who've never encountered it before, are frightened by it. It's just a fact that it exists. Our society doesn't put up outhouses on our Main Streets, to accommodate people who aren't ready to accept bathrooms.

And homosexuality has actually been around quite a bit longer. So why are we still entertaining the opinions of people who want it to 'go away'?

Everybody already knows by now, the story of Constance MacMillen, the young lesbian girl who wanted to go to her prom. A normal and modest enough goal, you would think. But instead, she had to battle a prejudice that seemingly engulfed an entire county in the state of Miss..

A Federal court, told them they were not free to discriminate. The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA told them, it was not permissible to treat a young girl, practically a child, as a pariah.

But these good folks have a view of the world that's as self-serving, as it is small. Oh, they're all about God and Country. But they'll change either one of those things any which way they can, until the message suits their motives.

So they set up a fake prom. They. Set. Up. A. Fake. Prom. An entire community, children and adults. Citizens and school administrators. They set up a place, and seeded it with a handful of other youngsters shunned by these 'people'. The lesbian and the learning disabled, and one or two other kids who would do well to celebrate the fact that they were cut from that particular herd. It will only benefit them later in life to be grateful to be excluded from this grotesquerie of a mini-caste, these grubby cretins, enfeebled by their own hatefulness.

How hard they worked to hold on to their petty hostility, they hoarded their prejudice like it was pirate gold, they secreted it away and held it aloft to glory in it for a few private hours.

How did it feel to them, this momentary victory? Was it the decadent, exhilarating high of the criminal who made off with a coveted prize? Or did they dance all night in their tuxes and gowns, with the grim satisfaction that some southerners get, when they've once again fended off the will of the present culture?

It doesn't matter. Who cares why? My personal opinion, based on stories coming from the south (and other places too, sure.) is that there are people in America, who feel they have a right to prejudice. A right to amend discrimination laws, to exclude some other Americans.

They're looking for a loophole, in which it is permissible to allow some group less rights than they are afforded.

It doesn't matter why they feel that way. We can no longer indulge their voices in the conversation.
~~~~~~
Tomorrow, 'Why they feel that way'.

Here's a bonus link, the story itself, won't give you anymore insight but maybe the guy in the comments section whose ramblings vacillate between Jesus hating gays, and lesbian vaginal afflictions, can help you understand the school board's case.
http://content.usatoday.com/co...  

As I've said before, I not only read articles on the web, I also read the comments by users at the bottom of the article.

What is currently driving me crazy these days are the people who are bitching that they are losing freedoms and we have a dictator as a President.

First of all, the fact that you can call the President all sorts of nonsense in a public forum is proof that you DO have freedoms.

Secondly, the fact that people dressed in black suits and driving black SUVs under the cover of night are NOT coming to knock on your door and "disappear" your ass is proof that we do NOT have a dictator.

Let's think for a minute here - if you called Stalin, Mao, Hitler, or Pol Pot some sort of derogatory name, I'd give you about 3 days before you're never heard from again.  And yet, none of these bloggers are being hauled off.

It saddens me to no end that people, while exercising their freedoms, are bitching that they are losing their freedoms.

It maddens me to no end that people treat Obama as a vicious dictator, even though he doesn't act in any manner like one.

This all just goes to how pathetic the right handles losing.

They equate a "mandate" on health care coverage to a loss of freedom.  Well, let me know Gov't agents start going around confiscating weapons.  Let me know when people start disappearing for speaking out.  Let me know when you are dragged away to a death camp.  Then I'll start to believe what you are saying about Obama.

Until then, the right just sounds like a bunch of chicken little cry babies.  And I don't say that lightly.  As many of you know, I can't stand the "us VS them" mentality of our nation.  But even the proverbial blind man can see that Obama is no where near what they claim him to be!

So the party of "fiscal responsibility" (Ignore the last eight years when a non-Democrat black guy was in office) and "family values" was recently caught with its pants down and sweaty one dollar bills in hand when it was discovered that The Republican National Committee reimbursed about $2,000 in expenses rung up by the Young Eagles at a Hollywood nightclub featuring topless dancers and bondage outfits. The good news is that it the women were of age and, um, they were ACTUALLY women.

"Gay Marriage is a foul and detestable affront to family values and the word of the lord. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go and bareback some gay biker I met on manhunt." ~ Rep. Roy Ashburn

Whether obfuscating or obstructing, the Republican party lost its footing a long time ago and, more recently, has been handed down to a horde of fat, stupid, angry white men and their equally fat, stupid and angry spouses. Moreover, a group that has about as much understanding of public (not pubic)policy and democratic governance as they do with sex slang. A group that thinks Obama is some sort of secret radical, half-breed fabric.

 

 

A group that somehow and someway believes the ability to articulate oneself in public equates one to the murdering of six million Jews.

Indeed, the party has nothing to run on but fear and fear itself.

In short, the salacious and lascivious peregrination on the part of Michael Steele and the GOP has finally brought back some dignity to the Republican party.

 

 

http://babylonblogs.blogspot.c...

"With all their beady little eyes
And flapping heads so full of lies
Blame Canada!"
~~~
-Sheila Broslovsky

"Since I've arrived in Canada, I've been denounced on the floor of Parliament - which, by the way, is on my bucket list - my posters have been banned, I've been accused of committing a crime in a speech that I have not yet given, I was banned by the student council, so welcome to Canada!"
~~~
-Ann Coulter

Can you spot the true statement in the above sentence? Ann Coulter's I mean, not Mrs. Broslovsky's, a woman who may be Coulter's only rival for both cartoonishness and agenda driven Canada bashing.

Give up?

"I've arrived in Canada." One true statement, told only as a springboard, to be used to leap into a pool of excrement, where you'd imagine she feels most at home. Her relevance in the U.S. at low ebb, Coulter launched a P.R. attack on unsuspecting Canada, using her well-worn catalog of easy stereotypes and ugly cliches to try to battle her way back into the limelight. An offensive offensive, if you will. She created a goldmine of out-of-context 'slights' to report to her dwindling fan base back home, painting herself as the brave stormer of a castle that had all but rolled out the red carpet for her arrival.

But who did Brave Sir Ann really slay in her quest for 'matterdom' ?

By my count: One young girl, a college Provost who offered her counsel, her hosts and benefactors for the evening, and of course her two most elusive enemies: Honesty and Irony.

The young girl was cut down for the sins of being of middle eastern heritage, and making a very human, very affecting statement. It was essentially ' Because of statements you've made, I'm afraid to be in airports.' Ann's response? "Then ride a camel."

Sa-NAP! Who wouldn't want someone that witty lecturing their leaders of tomorrow, amiright?

Well, THAT got some attention, and Ann like any rock star or circus geek, knows when you've got their attention, it's time to kick it up a notch. That's when she fired back at the Provost of University of Ottawa, Francois Houle for accusing her of 'committing a crime in a speech she had not yet given'. Or, as she calls him "A-Houle." A-Houle, get it?

Whew. Whatever they're paying her, it's not enough!*

And what kind of reactionary-socialist-monster would make such a brazen accusation? No kind, really. What actually happened was, a career academic whose job it is to make sure such things run smoothly, sent Coulter an e-mail welcoming her (rather effusively) to his campus.

Here's the entire transcript:
http://www.nationalpost.com/ne...

He does caution her about the differences between Canadian and American laws. But that's just a courtesy, isn't it? When people from the States come to visit me, I caution them about several things. The speed limit signs are in kilometers not miles, don't get a speeding ticket. It was a nicety that he performed in the course of his job.

I suppose if you're the type of vicious unprincipled thug who's comfortable calling a young girl a camel jockey (essentially), you may be paranoid enough to misinterpret someone else's graciousness as threatening behavior. But to be sure, that's the way she spun it when she leaked it to the press.

With conservatives like Ann, the help you offer may not be as valuable as the help that can be attained from you. That's how you make headlines, if you're distasteful enough to be controversial, but not interesting enough to fill a hall.

Well that got asses in the seats, with asses left over. Really, from Ann's perspective there was nothing left to do. Certainly no reason to fulfill her contractual obligations. It's not her fault the University/campus security/demonstrators/Ottawa Police demanded the appearance be cancelled, is it?

Here's a link that shows how none of those things happened:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/n...

So she lied. So she mobilized the aging frat boys who frequent her website to perpetuate the lie. They LOVE Ann, and it's only not because she talks just like one of the guys from Omega House that used to spank you in your underpants....It's also that she looks like one of those guys but is, technically, a woman. Unless you're elected to Public Office, a conservative's gotta keep those feelings repressed!

But this isn't about that! It's about.....FREE SPEECH! Yeah That's it, FREE SPEECH! Ann LOVES the free speech! Oh, you didn't know that about her? Hell yeah. She's a fierce advocate of the right to free expression!

And to prove it, she took her show to Calgary, in the more conservative (at least by the socialist standards of Canada, wink-wink) praries,where they had to change venues form a 400 seat hall to a 1000 seat hall, where Good Sir Ann who was now describing herself as a "hate-crime victim" would preach the gospel of beautiful, glorious free speech!

Oh, by the way? ""While there will be a Q&A to ensure open, intellectual discussion between attendees of the event and Ann Coulter, the Question and Answer period will be moderated, and any sort of ranting, heckling, or otherwise disrupting of the event will result in removal by security and/or police...As well, individuals caught recording this event will be removed."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

You can almost taste the freedom! I want to know all about Ann the Victim's heroic tale of overcoming the adversity she single-handedly manufactured.

No officers, I DON'T have any questions!

~~~~~~

* As mentioned in Part1, they were paying her 10,000 Cdn, down roughly 150% from her speaking fees from two short years ago. For those of you cynical enough to suspect that would motivate her to create some controversy for attention? Yeah, I hear you.

( - promoted by leftake)

After the airplane attacks on 911, it took very little effort to get the people in line behind Bush & Cheney allowing them to engage in a war.

The attack was unacceptable to the American People and we wanted it stopped, the perpetrators identified, and someone to pay for it.  Iraq was selected as the arena for the initial airshow and then it spilled into Afghanistan.

I will reserve my personal feelings on this whole ordeal for a later time, except to mention that Dick Cheney has close ties to Halliburton (now KBR), who is still receiving government contracts worth hundreds of millions.  Every Republican voted YES and did not require a debate before going to war, and any Democrat who mentioned debate was anti-American and a communist.

Now consider how many Americans are still dying annually because their healthcare insurer would not provide coverage for a vital test which could have prevented their death, denied them a much needed treatment, or cancelled their policies all together.  And, there were no laws against this practice in America.  Why do killings of this nature not draw the same hurt and anger we felt on 911?  Why must thousands be killed in a single moment before it gets our attention and stirs us into action?

Since late January I've been busier than a double-amputee carpenter, so nowadays I barely get to catch the headlines, let alone delve into details (I hear tell the House of Representatives passed some kind of health insurance reform bill and Obama signed it.  Cool!  Didn't take very long to accomplish, did it?).  

Among the headlines that caught my eye was one today that detestable conservative neocon David Frum and detestable conservative neocon organization American Enterprise Institute have parted ways.  

Mere coincidence, I'm sure, coming only a Mitt*-ful of days after his blog post on Sunday taking the GOP to task for their own "Waterloo," wherein to his mind they squandered an opportunity to propose any viable alternative plans and instead were merely the Party of No, slaves to the Teabaggers and their pouches of brewing resentment dipping their way past America's collective tongue.  

Mitt (n): Extra-small handful; very shallow vessel

Worth noting, also, is that Frumpy had been pretty caustic over the past year or more about the current GOP spending more time pandering to the base and the knuckledraggin' drool fools, and less time on what he considers true conservatism.  One might be tempted to think that behavior also contributed to his departure from AEI.

Re that departure - I found it interesting to note most headlines used vocabulary like "fired," "dropped," "loses job"... except (shocking, I know) on the right (Faux "News," WSJ), where he "resigned" or "quit."  

I thought this difference in vocabulary merited further investigation; after all, as I've been told repeatedly the bad, bad liberal media always distorts, and Faux and Fiends always tell The Truth... no matter what the facts are.  I stumbled across a link to Frumpy's own website and his blog, where he posted the full text of his letter of resignation.  For your schadenfreude-esque pleasure, I will post his text in full (yes, I'm actually posting a full, unedited blog entry by David Frum.  You may want to check that the sky is intact).  

                               

Ten U.S. House of Representatives Members have asked for additional security. Washington D.C Capital Police and the FBI are receiving request to provide the security to not only Members of Congress but THEIR FAMILIES.

At least four offices of Democratic members of Congress have been vandalized. One such case of vandalism was in the form of a brick with a note attached.

Threatening messages received just today:

"Snipers to kill the children of people who voted yes."

"You are dead, we know where you live, we will get you."

I am sorry for those who may not like to face the facts that what we have here is a revisit to a past time in the Untied States.

I am a fairly intuitive person.  My wife and I both lost relatives to people who killed them to either takeover a farm or killed the relative just for fun. JUST FOR FUN!!!!!!

I wonder if anyone who reads this dairy knows that during the dark ages (JIM CROWE ERA and more recent times), it was common to advertise lynchings in newspapers and telephone pole postings. (One step further and I will repost a diary that I posted a few days back.) I wonder if people realize that for some lynchings were purely entertainment, people traveled from hundreds of miles away to witness the entertainment, women were lynched (FOR WHAT???), and the lynchings took place from the deep south to Washington State, up to Minnesota and across the mid-west. (I will spare LEFTAKERS of empirical visual and written evidence of statements in this paragraph.  The pictures and verbiage on the web site is not fit for many eyes and brains).

I totally agree with Representative Clyburn (S/P) when he said,if people are quiet they are enablers.

The problem is much more serious now because it is not restricted base don race and ethnicity. Meaning, the potential problems are more widespread.

http://www.leftake.com/diary/1...  

(Totally awesome.   - promoted by leftake)

This has got to be one of the best things I have read in a long time. I'm sure you all will enjoy it.

Dear Conservative Americans,

The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home, so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now.  You've lost me and you've lost most of America.  Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I'd like to give you some advice and an invitation.

First, the invitation:  Come back to us.

Now the advice.  You're going to have to come up with a platform that isn't built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more.  But you have work to do even before you take on that task.

Your party -- the GOP -- and the conservative end of the American political spectrum have become irresponsible and irrational.  Worse, it's tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred.  Let me provide some examples -- by no means an exhaustive list -- of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.

If you're going to regain your stature as a party of rational, responsible people, you'll have to start by draining this swamp:

Hypocrisy

You can't flip out -- and threaten impeachment - when Dems use a parliamentary procedure (deem and pass) that you used repeatedly (more than 35 times in just one session and more than 100 times in all!), that's centuries old and which the courts have supported. Especially when your leaders admit it all.

You can't vote and scream against the stimulus package and then take credit for the good it's done in your own district (happily handing out enormous checks representing money that you voted against, is especially ugly) --  114 of you (at last count) did just that -- and it's even worse when you secretly beg for more.

You can't fight against your own ideas just because the Dem president endorses your proposal.

 

 

I am writing this in response to the diary that is posted by the “fearless leader” on the front page Republicans: Not just wrong, but really, really, really stupid too. I have to say that at first glance I agree there are a lot of really stupid republicans. 

However after looking at the numbers something seemed off, yes people have some crazy beliefs but I wasn’t buying that large numbers of peoples hold these thoughts. So to take a cue from the wise member "THE PARDU" I wanted to examine the motives that are in play here. 

Here is what I found, the poll was commissioned by the author of the book “Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America” John Avalon. This right here is probably one of the biggest strikes against the poll, he has a decided interest in the poll showing some crazy thoughts to try to sell books. If this alone where the only issue it may still be conflicted and questionable but still reliable however there is more.

 The poll was conducted by Harris Interactive using people who sign up to click through questionnaires via the Internet in exchange for points redeemable for cash and gifts. So this is by far not a random sampling of America and it uses a sampling method that has been shown to have very little value in telling the opinions of a population.  This is an example of non-probability sampling which suffers from a number of statistical problems. 

The next issue is the way that the questions are created, the questions are begin with “People have said about President Obama,…” then the question and whether they think that it is true or false. This is a biasing opening statement and will skew the results toward the positive parts of the question as it makes the statement seem credible because others have said it. You can see this as the number of true responses is high even among democrats, independents, and the college educated who we wouldn’t expect to be as “stupid”.

 So there is a motive of the person who wanted to poll to have outlandish numbers to bring about monetary gain and there are problems with the design and sampling of the poll. This adds up to something that is very unreliable and not really worth the space it takes up on the computer server.   I am rather disgusted at the responses and unquestioned acceptance of this by progressives community here it makes one tend to think they are not too different from the republicans in this poll. Even fearless leader starts off with the caveat that he knows a lot of very smart Republicans which suggests that even he does not fully believe the numbers but did not care to put in the research to see what was behind them. I understand that this is more a piece that we can laugh at and say “oh those silly republicans” but really they already do enough on there own that we don’t need a very poorly made poll to allow us to make fun of them. The take away from this should be that everyone must be more diligent in looking behind things and not just taking everything we see on the internet as the truth. Otherwise you are on the path that many of the people who DO hold these beliefs are on, which is not one that I want to go down.

Our great nation was brought to its knees in great shock and horror when it learned of a an unspeakable tragedy. Sitting Vice-President and Gaffe Machine 2.0 Joe Biden said the word fuck during the historic signing of President Obama's Health care legislation.

"This is a big f-----' deal," Biden whispered into President Barack Obama's
ear and was picked up by a very sensitive microphone, The Hill reported.

Oh, would somebody please think about the
children!

Shame on you, Mr. Vice President! Vice-president's cannot become overly effusive and utter such offensive vulgarities upon witnessing the promulgation and signing of a monumental achievement that will avail millions of Americans, but rather they may only use this word when they want to unapologetically tell a Senior Senator to go F--k themselves!

And you wonder why his daughter turned out to be gay? Over the years she was perpetually overhearing her father telling folks to "go fuck themselves" and I guess she just ran with it.

Now, I refuse to kowtow to the supercilious and ridiculously punctilious merits of political correctness and its complete and utter destruction of the English language. The Fuck word (not the F-word) and its usage is one of my all time favorite past times, and I vehemently defend its usage, however. It is vital to be vigilant of decorum and context when using it. For instance, it would be a great disservice to Abbey Hoffman and George Carlin if one were to say " I just beat the fuck out of that homeless bum with no arms or legs." Better yet, telling a senior senator to "go fuck himself" when he was questioning the voracity behind your (Dick Cheney) noisome activities.

But let's momentarily step away from the fuck word to highlight the type of language the GOP and its supporters (e.g., the Teabaggers) inappropriately use.

During their million moron march on Washington on the eve of passage of the HCR, the Teabaggers--notorious for saying vile, outdated slurs--chanted "nigger," as civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) and fellow Congressional Caucus member Andre Carson (D-IN) walked by.

Indeed, the Teabaggers speak redneck as a second language. But come on! Surely you fat, white, old and angry fodder of the GOP aren't just socially backward racists?

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), an openly gay congressmen, was called a "faggot," as protesters shouted at him with deliberately lisp-y screams. Such thoughtful, intelligent opposition! I suppose it is a refreshing change from the usual irrational and retarded "Obama is a muslin (not Muslim but 'muslin') socialist Nazi" ephitets for which these empty-headed shittards are so famous.

In short, let's stop pretendingthat Vice-President Biden saying fuck to express his joy and jubilation over something for which he worked his entire legislative career is newsworthy. Instead, let's focus on how far and far the GOP and their supporters are from kookistan and devolving by the second.

Selected Exerts for an article posted on AOL.COM

Final Health Care Push Met With Bitter Resistance
Alan Fram
AP

WASHINGTON (March 20) -- House Democrats heard it all Saturday - words of inspiration from President Barack Obama and raucous chants of protests from demonstrators. And at times it was flat-out ugly, including some racial epithets aimed at black members of Congress.

EXERT 1.) The tone was set outside the Capitol. Clogging the sidewalks and streets of Capitol Hill were at least hundreds - no official estimate was yet available - of loud, furious protesters, many of them tea party opponents of the health care overhaul.

EXERT 2.) Rallies outside the Capitol are typically orderly, with speeches and well-behaved crowds. Saturday's was different, with anger-fueled demonstrators surrounding members of Congress who walked by, yelling at them.

"Kill the bill," the largely middle-aged crowd shouted, surging toward lawmakers who crossed the street between their office buildings and the Capitol.

EXERT 3.) As police held demonstrators back to clear areas for lawmakers outside the Capitol Obama's speech, some protesters jeered and chanted at the officers, "You work for us."

Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., told a reporter that as he left the Cannon House Office Building with Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a leader of the civil rights era, some among the crowd chanted "the N-word, the N-word, 15 times." Both Carson and Lewis are black, and Lewis spokeswoman Brenda Jones also said that it occurred.

"It was like going into the time machine with John Lewis," said Carson, a large former police officer who said he wasn't frightened but worried about the 70-year-old Lewis, who is twice his age. "He said it reminded him of another time."

EXERT 4.) Kristie Greco, spokeswoman for Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., said a protester spit on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., who is black. Cleaver's office said the protestor was arrested but said the congressman won't press charges.

Clyburn, who led fellow black students in integrating South Carolina's public facilities a half century ago, called the behavior "absolutely shocking."

"I heard people saying things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to try to get off the back of the bus," Clyburn told reporters.

No, look at the intellect!!!

Interestingly, I do not see one minority, one young person in the RIGHT WING ORGY.

EXERT 5.) Among the demonstrators was Delane Stewart, 65, of Cookeville, Tenn., who had come with her husband, Jesse.

"You know what's coming next if this happens?" she said, referring to the health bill's passage. "They're going to come after gun control."

Retired businessman Randy Simpson, 67, of Seneca, S.C., also said the health bill was just a first step.

"My concerns are about the health care bill, and the direction it takes us is toward communism, quite frankly," he said.

While I know that the majority of LEFTAKERs subscribe to or read FACT CHECK.org, the following link navigates to a great summary of "Whos Who Among Health Reform Truths".

http://www.factcheck.org/2010/...

Before you check-off of this dairy, try the following.

The following Political quiz is making the rounds around the Internet and has been mentioned in the Washington Post.

Interesting Political Quiz..........

Takes only a minute. You might be surprised.

Try out this little quiz - just 10 questions. See where your "red dot" lands.

You'll be asked just 10 questions, and then it instantly tells you where  you
stand politically. It shows your position as a red dot on a "political map" so you'll see exactly where you score.

The most interesting thing about the Quiz is that it goes beyond the Democrat, Republican, and Independent.

The Quiz has gotten a lot of praise. The Washington Post said it has "gained respect as a valid measure of a person's political leanings." The Fraser Institute said it's "a fast, fun, and accurate assessment of a person's overall political views."  Suite   University  said it is the "most concise and accurate political quiz out there."

Click on the link below or copy and paste it into your browser ...

http://www.theadvocates.org/qu...

On a completely different topic. Why do you think no one on the RIGHT has informed John Boehner that lying under that tanning booth lamp can be dangerous to his health?  

Project Reason, a non-profit organization created by Sam Harris (author of 'The End of Faith' and 'Letter to a Christian Nation' in case you didn't know -- btw, in case you didn't know that, I suggest that you go and read those books ASAP), is holding a contest where people post their own atheism advocacy videos. Visitors to the website can vote for their favorite video and the winner gets $10,000. I haven't watched all of the videos, but this one really struck me as brilliant and I thought I'd share it with you all. It's called "The Values We All Stand For":

If you'd like to see the rest of the videos, here's the link to Project Reason's contest page: http://www.project-reason.org/...

Hysterical compilation video from New Left Media. (Hat tip to Daily Kos for turning us on to this)

(Possibly one of the best titles ever on Left Take.  Bravo.   - promoted by leftake)

Either Bart Stupak does not understand the question before him, or he is simply tap dancing for votes.

Stupak used his opportunity to provide medical care to Americans who are being denied coverage under their current plans, to make a stand against Roe vs. Wade.  He remains convinced by picket signs that taxpayers would pay for all the abortions that occur in the United States, and some would even be performed by President Obama himself.  He is talking out of his ass because his mouth knows better.  It has been explained to him many times that abortion coverage will not be paid for with tax dollars.

I think we all agree that abortion is not healthcare unless the pregnancy directly threatens the mother's life. If she elects the surgery because her reputation, freedom, or financial situation is at stake, it falls more under the category of 'cosmetic surgery'. A panel of doctors could be installed with the health Ins. bill to make that determination on behalf of the taxpayers.  Re-embursements would be made to those who payed out-of-pocket expenses due to time constraints.
 

( - promoted by leftake)

This article literally made me burst out laughing at how stupid people can be.

Conservative websites are up in arms this week over the Obama administration's new plan to outlaw recreational fishing in America. It's an egregious abuse of executive power, slightly mitigated by the fact that it's not remotely close to being true.

 

Okay, so the conservatives are watching ESPN and they see this opinion piece by Robert Montgomery. He starts off his piece by saying....

The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation's oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters."

 

Ok, so they start to freak out and almost immediately it's on conservative blogs. They start bashing Obama about his abuse of power and his supposed ban on sports fishing. If they had done their research, they would've seen that there were no new regulations on sports fishing. Montgomery was talking about the "Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force that has been charged by the White House with developing a comprehensive federal policy for managing the nation's waterways."

So there is not going to be any bans on sports fishing. Maybe commercial fishing so we don't deplete our food supply. But not sports fishing. They could've easily looked this all up, too, since they released an interim report that discusses the goals of the group. And it does not contain anything about a ban on recreational fishing whatsoever.

But of course, you confront a Republican with the truth and they'll ignore it.

One blogger muses: "That a bill like this could even get this much serious consideration is an indication of just how far left Obama has shifted the federal government."

 

Even with evidence that debunks their claims, they are still trying to say Obama is abusing federal power. Why does that not surprise me?

The writer of the ESPN opinion piece, Montgomery, even says himself that he did not mention anything about recreational fishing. (But he's also convinced there's a secret plot to destroy recreational fishing.)

In the end, though, this is another example of Republicans not doing their homework and spewing hate all over the place.

We have one less Republican running for a House seat. His name is Ralph Reed, a former Christian Coalition executive director and chairman of the Georgia Republican Party.

That's a relief. But wait...what's he going to be doing instead?

In a statement, Reed said Wednesday he could be more influential leading a new conservative grassroots organization he started, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, than by serving in Congress.

 

“In 2010 and 2012, [the Faith and Freedom Coalition] will register an estimated one million new faith-based voters and make tens of millions of voter contacts in what may be the largest conservative get-out-the-vote effort in modern political history,” he said. “These nationwide efforts offer a much better prospect for changing the direction of the country than winning a Congressional race myself.”

 

How many more of these groups are going to pop up on the right side? I'm not sure whether to be upset or not about this. It could end up splitting the votes if some of them are also Tea Party members. But it could also put a majority of Republicans in the House and Senate.

The worst part is that he's got a great idea here. Just round up a large group of people who all believe in the same thing and get them to vote in every election possible. I can see him being very successful if he can get people all across the nation to join forces and that scares the living daylights out of me.

But he's mostly concentrating on evangelical christians.

Reed launched the Faith and Freedom Coalition following the 2008 election as a way of getting more evangelicals involved in politics. The group has attracted little public attention, but quietly helped mobilize Christian conservatives in last fall's gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia. Reed is working to establish state-based branches of the group and was in Iowa Tuesday night speaking to evangelical activists about his plans.

This could be good or bad since not all evangelical christians are conservative. But they'll probably attract more than just evangelicals right now.

This leaves me to wonder why isn't our side as vocal. I always see news articles about the right having protests and big grassroots movements. What about us? Do we need to start a movement? Or do we need to revamp a movement? Because I never hear about a big liberal group going around like the right does.

Do we need to start a movement to expose their lies and reverse the brainwashing that has been going on for years and years?

I think we do. And we may have some already. But we need to get the attention the Tea Party has gotten. We need to get more people on our side voting more.

 

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34198.html

http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v17n2/evangelical-demographics.html