"Obstructionism," for example, only refers to Democratic minorities opposing Republican proposals.
"Tyranny" is found when an elected Democratic majority passes legislation that Republicans don't like.
"Reconciliation" describes a Senate process that Republicans are allowed to use to overcome Democratic "obstructionism."
"Terrorism" refers to acts of political violence committed by people who aren't white guys.
"Bipartisanship" is found when Democrats agree to pass Republican legislation.
"Big government" describes a dangerous phenomenon to be avoided, except in cases relating to reproductive rights or gays.
"Treason" refers to Democrats criticizing a Republican administration during a war.
"Patriotism" refers to Republicans criticizing a Democratic administration during a war.
"Fiscal responsibility" is a national priority related to keeping our deficit in check, which only applies when Republicans are in the minority.
"Parliamentarian" is a seemingly independent official on the Hill who Senate Republicans are allowed to fire when the GOP disapproves of his/her rulings.
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Amen. But god forbid we ever elect an effective Democrat to anything.
"I think the biggest mistake that he has made in his first year was to put bipartisanship ahead of fixing the country," Maher declared Wednesday on MSNBC's Countdown With Keith Olbermann.
He said Obama should have "com[e] in with all the energy from the election and saying, you know what, we're in a crisis mode, I won this election by a sizable mandate -- here's what we're going to do; if you don't like it, Republicans, you can suck on it."
"Justice's wife launches 'tea party' group The nonprofit run by Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is likely to test notions of political impartiality for the court."
"“Those who do not believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God will find many points in this book puzzling,” says the introduction to “Biology: Third Edition” from Bob Jones University Press. “This book was not written for them.” The textbook delivers a religious ultimatum to young readers and parents, warning in its “History of Life” chapter that a “Christian worldview … is the only correct view of reality; anyone who rejects it will not only fail to reach heaven but also fail to see the world as it truly is.”"
"“Think of it as like Mayberry,” Precourt told the Palm Beach Post News. “That’s when I grew up — the ’60s. That’s what life was like. I want Florida to be known for making those kinds of movies: Disney movies for kids and all that stuff. Like it used to be, you know?”"
"'My three cents,' began Andrew Sullivan, blogging for The Atlantic. '[No] president in the twentieth century did as much damage to this country as Bush: in terms of unfathomable debt, unwinnable wars, political cynicism, the dangerous fusion of politics and religion, the integration of torture into the DNA of America, the squandering of American soft and hard power, the lost years on non-carbon energy, the trashing of constitutional balance, and the immiseration of most ordinary Americans, he was a disaster. The only way in which Fish is correct is that the damage was so deep and so intractable that Obama, perforce, cannot undo it overnight and so cannot help but be tarred with its consequences, including a brutal recession."
"A proposed law designed to prevent child abuse in schools has been lauded by children's protection advocates, and slammed by House Republicans as an unnecessary expansion of federal government power."
And those like you are not being ignored:
"Washington -- A Democratic activist announced today she's challenging Rep. Bart Stupak out of her frustration that his hard line on abortion funding threatens to derail health care legislation pending in Congress.
"After years of underinvestment in new technology and unrealistic budgeting, the President's plan will unveil an ambitious plan for NASA that sets the agency on a reinvigorated path of space exploration," the White House said in a statement.
"'He got the prize because he has been able to change the international climate,' Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said. 'Some people say, and I understand it, isn't it premature? Too early? Well, I'd say then that it could be too late to respond three years from now. It is now that we have the opportunity to respond — all of us.'"
"Republicans and right-winger have been working overtime to find ways to use Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize as ammunition against him. None, however, has gone quite as far as radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who proclaimed on Friday that 'we all agree with the Taliban.'"
"'They understand that if Barack Obama were somehow able to cure hunger in the world, the Republicans would blame him for overpopulation,' Grayson continued. 'They understand that if Barack Obama were to somehow bring about world peace, they would blame him for destroying the defense industry. In fact they understand that if Barack Obama had a BLT for lunch tomorrow, they would try to ban bacon.'"
The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists — the Taliban and Hamas this morning — in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize. Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize — an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride — unless of course you are the Republican Party. The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It’s no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore – it’s an embarrassing label to claim.
"In reference to the health care the president wants for us, I do not want his program. He wants to destroy the Medicare supplemental policies we can purchase now. I am satisfied with what these companies furnish.
If you have Blue Cross and Blue Shield or any other supplement he wants that taken away. He wants to destroy the insurance companies.
He is cutting Medicare now. He wants the money we purchase insurance with so he can be in control of you and me. If you pay attention to what is going on, his plan is to take charge of one-sixth of the economy (which is health care).
Social Security is in trouble, so is Medicare. Please do not let him in charge of health care.
If they would give us the same coverage the Congress and the Senate have or the same care the president and his family have I would not object. Instead they want to take away what we have now. And God knows what their plan is.
Dorothy Treadwell
Florence"
We scored points, naturally, for being "a world-class technology hub" and the wealth of college and graduate degrees among our populace. But the analysis continues, "The Bay Area only fell short of No. 1 because of a relatively low score in political engagement, undercutting the reputation of this notorious activist hotspot."
"Margaret, I haven’t laughed so hard since Katie Couric interviewed Sarah Palin. A few thousand white folks called in sick to work last week so they could parade around the nation’s capital on Saturday and Fox News declares a revolution is underway. My goodness. I don’t know which is more sad – the fact that they couldn’t spell half the words written on their illegible signs or that they all left their white hoods at home. Bring the hippies back. Their protests were much more entertaining.
Just to give you some perspective:"
After a preview screening last week (at which I did a Q&A session with Michael), he came over to my home for a late night bite. Over lasagna, he told me about an incident that occurred while he was filming that exemplifies how the economic crisis cannot be looked at through a left vs right prism.
It happened while he and his crew were shooting the climax of the movie, where Michael decides to mark Wall Street as a crime scene, putting up yellow police tape around some of the financial district's towers of power.
While unfurling the tape in front of a "too big to fail" bank, he became aware of a group of New York's finest approaching him. Moore has a long history of dealing with policemen and security guards trying to shut him down, but in this case he knew he was, however temporarily, defacing private property. And his shooting schedule didn't leave room for a detour to the local jail. So, as the lead officer came closer, Moore tried to deflect him, saying: "Just doing a little comedy here, officer. I'll be gone in a minute, and will clean up before I go."
The officer looked at him for a moment, then leaned in: "Take all the time you need." He nodded to the bank and said, "These guys wiped out a lot of our Police Pension Funds." The officer turned and slowly headed back to his squad car. Moore wanted to put the moment in his film, but realized it could cost the cop his job, and decided to leave it out. "When they've lost the police," he told me, "you know they're in trouble."
Congressman Blunt then went on to tell an anecdote which suggested that life in Washington, for GOP members today, is comparable to the lot of imperial British agents in India who had to contend with monkeys running amok on a golf course that the colonial occupiers had carved out of the verdant Indian jungle. There was a problem, the Missouri Representative explained; monkeys would come out of the jungle, grab golf balls, and throw them about. Amidst swelling laughter from his audience Roy Blunt narrated,
"I could go into great and long detail about how many things they did to try and eliminate the 'monkey problem.' But they never got it done, so finally this golf course and this golf course only, they passed a rule and the rule was - you have to play the ball where the monkey throws it. [audience laughter swells] And that is the rule in Washington all the time."
It seemed like a direct window into the psyche of the revanchist wing of the GOP; politics is a golf game and unruly Democrat "monkeys" have swarmed out of the jungle to disrupt the play. Since it is impractical to "eliminate" the monkeys, accommodations will have to be made. Republicans will now "play the ball where the monkey throws it."
"The fight for Net Neutrality took a big step forward on Monday with the chair of the Federal Communications Commission announcing plans to expand the rules to protect a free and open Internet.
In a speech at the Brookings Institution, Julius Genachowski said the FCC must be a 'smart cop on the beat” preserving Net Neutrality against increased efforts by providers to block services and applications over both wired and wireless connections."
Or take the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their constituents." An urge they should resist because their constituents don't know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket.
.................
"And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy? Please, this country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget town halls, and replace them with study halls. There's a lot of populist anger directed towards Washington, but you know who concerned citizens should be most angry at? Their fellow citizens. 'Inside the beltway' thinking may be wrong, but at least it's thinking, which is more than you can say for what's going on outside the beltway.
And if you want to call me an elitist for this, I say thank you. Yes, I want decisions made by an elite group of people who know what they're talking about. That means Obama budget director Peter Orszag, not Sarah Palin."
No shit.Ugh. I just have to highlight this again, as perfect example of Everything. Sarah Palin, determined to battle healthcare reform:
"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."
Seriously? I mean, come the flying monkey hell on. How is it that this hollow-headed dimwit doesn't get run out of town for statements like that? Obama's going to come murder her son?
The whole Republican party can absolutely make stuff up, no question about it, 100% lies, no factual basis whatsoever, outrageous, known false stuff about euthanasia and "death panels" and denying care to people that are no longer "productive", stuff that's right out of the most venomous propaganda playbooks around, weird-assed, depraved, paranoid stuff that would be perfectly at home in a Henry Ford tract about the secret methods of the evil Jews or the like -- and not a goddamned news outlet on the planet is making a story out of the fact that these supposed leaders of their party are gleefully lying through their teeth about all of it, or that the "teabaggers" carrying these selfsame lies into public meetings aren't just angry Americans with a different point of view, but people spreading known, 100%-goddamn-freaking-false-and-false-from-the-very-first-time-it-was-uttered bullshit, and intentionally doing it so loud that they hope nobody can possibly shout them down.
"The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems."
We had a number of emails last night discussing how much of what we're hearing from the right now should be considered incitement. There are numerous instances of anti-reform advocates explicitly comparing President Obama's health care plan to the Holocaust, for instance -- jumping from the hideous and outrageous claim that reform means euthanasia and going from there. We get desensitized to this stuff. But it's worth taking a moment to give that a long think -- comparing the president's reform plan to the Holocaust.
Most significant here is not the right-wing liars and demagogues making this stuff up but the fact that they've convinced a significant number of their followers that this stuff is true. That's a very dangerous situation.
We should also keep in mind that the birther-mania, as comical as it is on one level, is all part of the same fabric with the Hitler and Holocaust comparisons, an aggressive process of denigration and dehumanization, dressed up around claims about paperwork and places of birth, but all escalating and churning the belief of a minority of Americans that President Obama is not a legitimate president but rather a usurper.
It's always important for us to remember what the last eight years have again taught us, which is that America has a very strong civic fabric, one that can withstand, absorb and conquer all manner of ugly behavior. It can take in stride a lot of angry rhetoric, townhall fisticuffs and more.
But as this escalates we should continually be stepping back and thinking retrospectively from the vantage point of the future about where this all seems to be heading.
Op-Ed Columnist - The Town Hall Mob - NYTimes.com:
"Does this sound familiar? It should: it’s a strategy that has played a central role in American politics ever since Richard Nixon realized that he could advance Republican fortunes by appealing to the racial fears of working-class whites."
Can you trust bing? - The Inquirer:
"IT SEEMS THAT Microsoft tinkers with its Bing search algorithms to push its own marketing.
According to PC World, if you tap in the phrase 'Why is Windows so expensive?' you get as a top link 'Why are Macs so expensive?'
The rest of the links on the first search page answer everything including the price of windows you can see through and little about the price of the Windows OS.
There are a few entries about why Windows hosting providers are so expensive, and one about fish! The five other links on page one are about the expensive price of Macs. The Windows client OS is not even mentioned.
If you do the same search at Google, you get a long list of links about whether the Windows OS is expensive.
_______
Yeah, Australia rocks.
Australian Sex Party gets all-clear:
"Sex and politics have officially come together, with the Australian Sex Party obtaining approval from the Australian Electoral Commission for registration as a political party."
"Less than a week into his tenure as a Democrat and Sen. Arlen Specter is already stepping sharply on the toes of party elders. Key Democratic figures warned on Monday that their newly minted colleague, despite having the backing of the White House, could face a tough primary challenge should he continue to oppose key tenets of the party's agenda.
'I'm pleased that he saw the light and decided he would be a better fit for the Democratic Party and I think you have to allow for his political views to evolve,' said former DNC chairman Howard Dean in an interview with the Huffington Post. 'But he won't win the Democratic primary by taking the position that you should not have [the Employee Free Choice Act] or a public option for health insurance... If he takes these kinds of views, of course there is going to be a Democratic primary.'"
"Sessions' dismal record on race -- including a black former assistant U.S. attorney's testimony that Sessions once said he 'used to think they [the Klan] were OK' until he found out some of them were 'pot smokers' -- was chronicled in a 2002 article in The New Republic."
"Known legally as Samuel Wurzelbacher, “Joe” spoke of queers and remarked that he “wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children"
"Almost 20 years after its dedication, the text has yet to be fully deciphered. A bleary-eyed global community of self-styled cryptanalysts—along with some of the agency's own staffers—has seen three of its four sections solved, revealing evocative prose that only makes the puzzle more confusing. Still uncracked are the 97 characters of the fourth part (known as K4 in Kryptos-speak). And the longer the deadlock continues, the crazier people get."
.......
"Whether or not our top spooks intended it, the persistent opaqueness of Kryptos subversively embodies the nature of the CIA itself—and serves as a reminder of why secrecy and subterfuge so fascinate us. 'The whole thing is about the power of secrecy,' Sanborn tells me when I visit his studio, a barnlike structure on Jimmy Island in Chesapeake Bay (population: 2). He is 6'7', bearded, and looks a bit younger than his 63 years. Looming behind him is his latest work in progress, a 28-foot-high re-creation of the world's first particle accelerator, surrounded by some of the original hardware from the Manhattan Project. The atomic gear fits nicely with the thrust of Sanborn's oeuvre, which centers on what he calls invisible forces."
"A Southern California man employed in the entertainment business is the fourth person verified by scientists to have an ultra-rare memory gift: He recalls in detail most days of his life, as well as the day and date of key public events, says Larry Cahill, who co-leads a project on people with super-memory."
"01-22) 11:30 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- Trees are dying faster than ever in the old-growth forests of California and the mountains of the West, a phenomenon scientists say is linked to rising regional temperatures and the destructive forces of early snowmelt, drought, forest fires and deadly insect infestations brought on by global warming."
" Russians have long used drink to take the edge off workplace stress: one man's senses were so dulled he failed to notice a knife stuck in his back by a colleague."
"My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours."
"MONDAY, Dec. 29 (HealthDay News) -- Teens who take virginity pledges are just as likely to have sex as teens who don't make such promises -- and they're less likely to practice safe sex to prevent disease or pregnancy, a new study finds."
"From sneers to full-blown smiles, our facial expressions are hardwired into our genes, suggests a new study.
The researchers compared the facial expressions from more than 4,800 photographs of sighted and blind judo athletes at the 2004 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games."
"Rob Spence looks you straight in the eye when he talks. So it's a little unnerving to imagine that soon one of his hazel-green eyes will have a tiny wireless video camera in it that records your every move."
"Nobody who loves San Francisco defines the city the same way. But all are likely to agree on this: Enjoying the moment is more important than seeing the well-known sights.
That's what comes through in readers' responses to last Sunday's article in which The Chronicle retraced the 1961 steps of guidebook writer Jack Shelton and his 'One Perfect Day in San Francisco.'"
"Brain research is accelerating, and a new era of 'cognitive enhancement' - the use of brain-stimulating drugs and devices by healthy people - is approaching, the authors said.
While thorny ethical and medical questions must be addressed, pharmaceutical enhancement of inborn mental gifts is a trend to be welcomed, the seven co-authors from Harvard, Stanford and other prestigious institutions said."
"When did this petty anti-intellectualism take over the conservative movement? The respectable wisdom of William F. Buckley and George Will has been set aside for the pablum of crowd-pleasing know-nothings like Sarah Palin. Anyone using more than two syllables in a word is suspected of communist leanings; 'articulate' has become a four-letter word. Judging from crowd behavior at GOP rallies, the Republican base seems intent on establishing a flag-waving, cross-bearing idiocracy -- and it isn't just this one letter-writer clamoring for government a la Harrison Bergeron. The trend is general, reflected in the talk of 'Joe Six-Pack' having a shot at the vice presidency. Frankly, that prospect scares the hell out of me. Joe might be a perfectly good plumber, but how will he keep Wall Street MBAs from walking all over the taxpayers?"
"Republicans turned their backs on smart people. Just like that, being smart was less important than being 'real'. Being qualified was about being ordinary. New ideas and thoughtful discourse was something to be ridiculed and not something to be examined. A good education and vocabulary became something to disdain and not something to celebrate. The Republicans stopped being leaders and started becoming drum bangers. Oh, they'd pull out their tanks and missiles like they were penises and pretend that asking questions was akin to treason. Scary.'"
"I realize there are people uncomfortable with aggressive language and action. That's the difference between liberal weenies and movement progressives. Liberal weenies sit around thinking that 'the truth' is enough for victory, and that if we simply explain to voters why Democrats are better, why, we can't possibly lose any elections! That's the crowd that wants to keep the 'high ground' and doesn't want to go down in the gutters and fight the GOP where they live, lest we get a little muddied ourselves.
Movement progressives realize that we must do everything necessary allowable under the law to win because elections have consequences. This isn't about who is most pure, but about taking the fight to the enemy and aggressively embracing progressivism, offering clear contrasts between us and them, and fighting fire with fire. There's no ambiguity about where I belong."
"It has long been suspected that humans have an ancient history of drug use, but there has been a lack of proof to support the theory.
Now, however, researchers have found equipment used to prepare hallucinogenic drugs for sniffing, and dated them back to prehistoric South American tribes."
"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."
"The responses of Barack Obama and John McCain to the economic crisis today tells you all you need to know about the choice in this election.
One the one hand, in Barack Obama we've got a statesman who wants to work together to get things done for all Americans. On the other hand, in John McCain we've got a yipping little dog (apologies to canine lovers everywhere) who will tear anything down to get ahead.
Here's a short video I put together to illustrate the contrast:"
"In the second test, the volunteers were subjected to a loud, unexpected noise, with scientists measuring the involuntary blinking that followed. A strong startle response is indicative of heightened fear and arousal. The results, which are published in the journal Science, revealed significant differences in both responses, which corresponded with people’s political views. Those with “markedly lower physical sensitivity to sudden noises and threatening visual images” tended to support liberal positions, while those with strong responses tended to be more conservative.
This would fit with the hypothesis that people who have more fearful responses to perceived threats are more likely to be conservative, while those who have weaker responses develop more liberal views."
"6. The impressive dimensions of the strap-on system in your dresser would make your average Alaskan redneck hockey player scream in horror even as it openly titillated a dozen Republican senators from Colorado Springs to Idaho, though it would probably still get you arrested in Alabama.
7. You know what a strap-on is."
"By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer Tue May 13, 1:31 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's wave of superdelegate endorsements puts him within reach of the Democratic presidential nomination by the end of the primary season on June 3 — even if he loses half of the remaining six contests."
"In a new interview with the Politico today, President Bush says that he has given up golf because of the Iraq war, to show “solidarity” with U.S. troops and their families. He added that “playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal”:"
"Oh Snorg chick. T-shirt temptress. Your siren song is oft the focus of my day dreams. Could it be the short-shorts? Or is it you snaggled smile that sets my heart a flutter. (Call me!)
(I'm spending WAY too much time on MySpace)"
"WTB: Do you consider yourself a sports fan? Are you a fan of a particular team or player?
Alice:I am definitely a sports fan! I am a HUGE Andruw Jones fan. I love the braves, always have, and I have always loved Andruw. He’s one of my top 5 favorite people that I don’t actually know. And of course I am an Auburn football fan as well."
"She’s got that I’m-so-fucking-cute-I-can-fix-the-Middle-East-conflict-with-my-smile look. She probably could."
"TUSCALOOSA | I'm getting reports from all over that CBS's '60 Minutes' is gathering information in Alabama about the case of incarcerated former Gov. Don Siegelman.
First I got an email from a friend who forwarded another email saying that a women who works for the program had contacted the Alabama Department of Archives and History 'in an effort to locate the negative television ads that [former lieutenant governor] Steve Windom ran against Siegelman in 2002.'"
"'If you break the law, you have to pay for it,' American icon tells Alex Jones Show"
"Among all Americans, 19% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 77% disapprove. When it comes to Bush's handling of the economy, 14% approve and 79% disapprove."
"'The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.' Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today's very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations."
"'It's been forgotten now in the mythology of World War II that even when the Nazis invaded Poland and attacked England, overwhelming majority of Americans were opposed to American involvement in the war,' she said. 'The reason they came around is not just Pearl Harbor. Franklin D. Roosevelt spent several years trying to educate a resistant public about the stake that America had in the future of Europe. The renewal of the draft in 1941, six months before Pearl Harbor, in the summer of 1941, passed by one vote. Imagine what would have happened if the Army had been disbanded, if FDR had not made all those educational efforts, where we would have been six months later when Pearl Harbor was attacked.'"
"A hunger for carnitas nearly led to some carnage after a Fontana man was robbed of a bag of tacos at gunpoint.
Police Sergeant Jeff Decker says the 35-year-old victim had just bought about $20 in tacos from a street-corner stand Sunday night and was bicycling home when the suspect confronted him and said 'Give me your tacos.'
Decker says the suspect grabbed the bag of food, punched the victim in the face and began to flee.
When the victim demanded his tacos back, the suspect pointed what appeared to be a handgun at the man and threatened to kill him before running away."
