Blog sprinkles

Friggatriskaidekaphobia!

War on reproductive rights. What Health Reform means for women.

"Non-toxic" chemicals that can kill you

10 Worst States To Be a Woman

Defining Natural Born for the last time

Eight facts and three thoughts about Social Security by Ezra Klein

The Information Sage: Meet Edward Tufte, the graphics guru to the power elite who is revolutionizing how we see data.

Full meltdown

Perspective on Chomsky

Why Ayn Rand and Her Legion of Followers Are Hopelessly Wrong

The universe.

An embarrassment to the whole nation

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Certificate of embarrassment.

What we look like to the Brits. (h/t to Ali in comments)

Some thoughts by Melissa Harris-Lacewell

Trumped.

Another one from Dave

I posted this letter on August 24th and made a joke about Godwin's law:

________ A delight to hear from you. I'll give you a rundown in response to your "fact sheet" point by point shortly. Just finished a book which I highly recommend to you: "The Nazi Seizure of Power...The Experience of a single German town 1930-1935" by William Sheridan Allen. As one on the Right (or perhaps Center Right) I find a frightening similarity to the swift takeover of Germany to what has been transpiring here over the past few months. That is not to say in any way that I believe Obama to be a Nazi as his Marxist credentials are most obvious. You may find of interest my recent letter to the editor of the Denver Post in response to that paper's editorial which implied that those who bring up the similarity are way off base....same is attached. No, it is a rather liberal publication and my letter was not printed...even though I gave myself a PHD after my name hoping the editorial board would believe me to be one of the Left. P.S. "PHD" = Patriot-Humanitarian-Dedicated. Best for now, ________.

IT IS A VALID COMPARISON: U.S.A. 2009 and Germany early 1930’s

Regarding Post Editorial on health care debate 8/13/09 and comment “….went off the rails by likening Obama’s tactics to those of Adolf Hitler,” Read the history of Germany 1930-1935…I recommend “The Seizure of Nazi Power…The Experience of a Single German Town 1930-1935” by William Sheridan Allen. Then in Germany and recently here in the U.S. there was an economic crisis. A charismatic political figure emerged promising HOPE & CHANGE: Hitler and Obama. Both wrote best sellers of their plans for the country: “Mein Kampf “ (English “My Struggle”) by Hitler and “The Audacity of Hope”by Obama. Hitler established total governmental control…Obama seeks (and has partially established) total government control. Under Hitler and his party, The National SOCIALIST Workers Party (the Nazi Party), opposition was steadily intimidated, newspapers and organizations were taken over, a scapegoat for all their problems was created, the youth were organized and indoctrinated. Here the Left intimidates with “political correctness” smears, ridicule, and distortion. Here the institutions of learning teach the Leftist viewpoint and ridicule Conservatism. Hitler had his Storm Troopers, the “Brownshirts” of his Sturm Abteilung (the SA); Obama has his “Community Organizers…ACORN. Hitler had his Hitler Youth; Obama plans his own youth corps. The Nazis used informants as a means of control (as have all authoritarian regimes); Obama has his flag@whitehouse.gov website. Hitler had his Jews to blame for Germany’s ills…..Obama has President Bush. The Nazis moved with lightening speed to consolidate power. Obama and the Democrats are rushing legislation through Congress as fast as they can. And you don’t think the comparison between then and now is not valid? _________PHD, Denver CO

Well... here is my friend Dave's response:

NOT A PASS ON. I WRITE MY OWN STUFF. THIS IS FROM THE RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL, BUT I WAS THE AUTHOR. I HAVE HAD NO ASSASSINATION THREATS, BUT AS A HEAVILY ARMED LIBERAL, I AWAIT THEM WITH ANTICIPATION. (SEE, LIBERALS CAN BE CRAZY TOO.)

I DON'T DO THIS OFTEN, NEVER WITH POORLY WRITTEN PROPAGANDA CRAP FROM RIGHT OR LEFT, BUT IT SEEMS TO ME GETTING TO THE FACTS IS ESSENTIAL, AT LEAST THAT'S WHAT I TOLD MY STUDENTS IN CRITICAL REASONING. YOU HAVE BEEN SPARED A LONGER MISSIVE BECAUSE THE PAPER INTELLIGENTLY LIMITS LETTER TO TWO HUNDRED WORDS. THAT WOULDN'T ACCOMMODATE ONE OF SARAH PALIN'S SENTENCES. IF ONLY SHE WOULD SEND ME HER STUFF TO EDIT. DAVE

Heeeere's Davy:

FACT CHECK: (Please do. Please, please do.)

1. No version of healthcare reform presently in the House or Senate requires end of life counseling. Incidentally, Medicare provides for end of life counseling, but no one seems to mind, and no one has been advised to cash in his or her chips.

2. No health care proposal covers illegal aliens. Illegals have to go to emergency rooms, just like always. (If this seems extravagant, join up with No Hearts for a Better America, and you can be one of the volunteers who get to turn away sick children.)

3. No health care proposal covers abortions.

4. Medical insurance companies take 20% plus off the top (they are asking for more), about the same as the casinos [they seem to do all right]. Medicare operates with less than a 3% administrative overhead. No one wants to give Medicare up or swap it for private care, and the OMG it’s socialism crowd in Congress doesn’t want to repeal it (men and women of real conservative principles—oh yes).

5. Oh, and President Obama was born in Hawaii, part of the United States. (Drop a line to the folks in North Carolina who appear to be confused on the issue.)

David Sundstrand

IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO HEAR FROM ME, DROP ME A LINE AND WE CAN CHAT ABOUT IT.

Birthers are indifferent to facts

But just in case there are some out there who read, here is a list of facts that destroy all of the Birther arguments.

President Barack Hussein Obama is really and truly president, you guys.

And do you remember what you were telling us when Bush was selected as president eight years ago? Remember?

Live with it.

Mob riots brought to you by your health insurance.

Crooks and Liars:

The DNC has a winner here, going straight for the jugular with these assholes.

"They lost the election. They lost on the Recovery Act, the budget and children's health care," the script reads. "They've lost the confidence of the American people after eight years of failed policies that ruined our economy and cost millions of jobs."

Now, desperate Republicans and their well-funded allies are organizing angry mobs - just like they did during the election. Their goal? Destroy President Obama and stop the change Americans voted for overwhelmingly in November."

Who is behind these fake mob attacks.

Joe Sudbay of AmericaBlog:

The Republican National Committee doesn't want to hear from people who are upset over its thuggish tactics at Town Hall meetings. The DNC launched an ad, Enough of the Mob, which asked people to call the RNC. Heard from readers, Tim Beauchamp and ShirleyGoodnessandMercy, that the RNC is dumping those who call about the ad.

Stuff you can do. And here.

Commenters at Digby's Hullabaloo's post have suggestions.

Who the individuals in the mobs are:

A telling anecdote recounted by Pat Buchanan to New Yorker writer George Packer last year captures the dark spirit that still hovers around the GOP. In 1966 Buchanan and Richard Nixon were at the Wade Hampton Hotel in Columbia, S.C., where Nixon worked a crowd into a frenzy: "Buchanan recalls that the room was full of sweat, cigar smoke, and rage; the rhetoric, which was about patriotism and law and order, 'burned the paint off the walls.' As they left the hotel, Nixon said, 'This is the future of this Party, right here in the South.' "

That same rage was on display again in the fall of 2008, but this time the frenzy was stimulated by a pretty gal with a mocking little wink. Sarah Palin may not have realized what she was doing, but Southerners weaned on Harper Lee heard the dog whistle.

The curious Republican campaign of 2008 may have galvanized a conservative Southern base -- including many who were mostly concerned with the direction Democrats would take the country -- but it also repelled others who simply bolted and ran the other way. Whatever legitimate concerns the GOP may historically have represented were suddenly overshadowed by a sense of a resurgent Old South and all the attendant pathologies of festering hate and fear.

And:

The right, by contrast, seems perpetually fired up, and not just on health care. At a town meeting last month, Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) was booed and heckled when he wouldn't concur with a noisy "birther" who argued that President Obama had been born in Kenya. This bit of social psychosis is limited almost entirely to Republicans: 77 percent of Americans, according to one recent poll, believe that Obama was born in the USA, but only 42 percent of Republicans do.

When future historians look back at this passage in our nation's history, I suspect they'll conclude that this Obama-isn't-American nuttiness refracted the insecurities and, in some cases, the hatred that a portion of conservative white America felt about having a black president and about the transformation of what many thought of as their white nation into a genuinely multiracial republic. But whatever the reasons, a mobilized minority is making a very plausible play to thwart a demobilized majority.

Media Matters.

We've seen this before. Think back to the recount of the election in 2000 and consider what we got then by not saying enough. We will not be hijacked again.

Update: Don Briggs of the Daily Kos: Tea Baggers FAIL to disrupt Health Care meeting, lessons shared.

The queen of the Birther movement

In all of her shining glory:

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Dear god! I hope she runs for public office.

This is just too hilarious

For words!

Sorry, WorldNetDaily: Kenya wasn't a republic until Dec. 1964

WorldNetDaily and the right-wing fringe are very excited about their scoop that Orly Taitz has "released a copy of what purports to be a Kenyan certification of birth" for President Obama. According to WND, "Taitz told WND that the document came from an anonymous source who doesn't want his name known because 'he's afraid for his life.' " So in order to believe Taitz and WND, one would have to assume that this document was requested 45 years ago, preserved that entire time, withheld through the entire election and transition period, and yet somehow ended up in the hands of someone sympathetic to Orly Taitz.

DailyKos' David Waldman has identified what appears to be an even more glaring problem with WND's latest smoking gun. The document posted by WND purports to have been produced by the "Republic of Kenya" on February 17, 1964. But Kenya didn't even become a republic until December 12, 1964. An article from that day's Washington Post, for example, reported that "Kenya became the newest republic within the British Commonwealth at midnight."

It's WTF Tuesday!

The breathlessly hilarious top ten!

Lou Dobbs is an idiot. Tell CNN so.



SteveAudio wonders where the rightwing outrage is about Cheney wanting to circumvent the Constitution and use the military for arresting Americans. Apparently the Birthers can use the rules of the Constitution to proclaim Obama was born in a ferrin country, but breaking the Constitutional laws when keepin' us 'safe' is ok?

Another Commie Founding Father speaks from the past:

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

Guess which president/founding father? Thomas Jefferson

Gee, whoddah thunk?:

The new study, which entailed outfitting the cabs of long-haul trucks with video cameras over 18 months, found that when the drivers texted, their collision risk was 23 times greater than when not texting.

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which compiled the research and plans to release its findings on Tuesday, also measured the time drivers took their eyes from the road to send or receive texts.

In the moments before a crash or near crash, drivers typically spent nearly five seconds looking at their devices — enough time at typical highway speeds to cover more than the length of a football field.

Who would ever imagine that reading something on a small screen would distract someone from seeing that large truaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.....

Obama becoming president has tipped the wingnuts into madness

And out into plain view for all to see:

The shrieking Birthers are sure, just sure that Obama CAN'T be the rightful president. He cheated on his exams! He faked his Illinois driver's license! He was born less than 35 years ago in a foreign land! Like Hawaii! I mean, who knows what foreign island types lurked about in those days planning to lie about the birth of a black child just to get him into the White House 47 (I mean 35) years later?/!!

Excellent overview of the Birthers' conniptions:

Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961. Here is is birth certificate. Hawaii was and is an American state. When Barack Obama was elected, he was 47 years old and had lived in the US since 1971. According to the Constitution, the president must be a natural-born citizen 35 years old or order who has lived in the US for 14 years. Barack Obama is eligible to be the president. It's that simple. Unless you're in America's fastest-growing group of nuts with modems, the Birthers! Then it is much more complicated, and stupid.

Wonkette notes that the government is going to be overthrown by the righteous indignation of the wingnuts:

The person who runs FreeRepublic.com is cold gonna overthrow the U.S. government — that means you, blackenstein — and ho ho, no more taxes on the millionaires! Hooray! Anyway, folks, things are getting Seriously Weird with the wingnuts, birthers, paultards and other middle-aged white suckers who bought into that whole Reagan thing 30 years ago and, whoops, are still poor and doomed.

And then, in 2008, Americans mysteriously voted in droves for a common African Soviet from, er, Hawaii, who has been president now for what, six months? And this NON-PRESIDENT is, uhm, trying to get some health coverage for these poor dumb AM-radio listeners, so …. OVERTHROW THE GUBMINT.

And then we have the breathtaking insights of 'The Family' with its roots deep into the workings of elected officials of Congress:

Jeff Sharlet continues his brilliant reporting on the bizarre christo-fascist cult called "the Family" which counts among its members some of the most powerful people holding elected office in the United States. How bizarre and extreme is the Family?

Attempting to explain what it means to be chosen for leadership like King David was -- or Mark Sanford, according to his own estimate -- [Doug Coe, son and heir-apparent to Family leader David Coe] asked a young man who'd put himself, body and soul, under the Family's authority, "Let's say I hear you raped three little girls. What would I think of you?" The man guessed that Coe would probably think that he was a monster. "No," answered Coe, "I wouldn't." Why? Because, as a member of the Family, he's among what Family leaders refer to as the "new chosen." If you're chosen, the normal rules don't apply.

And Randall Terry decides that domestic terrorism is the best way to show his love of America:

Randall Terry took time out of his twelve-city, "Defeat Sotomayor" tour yesterday to grace the National Press Club's podium. His message? Expect more domestic terrorism in response to health care reform.

Christy Hardin Smith has more:

Randall Terry is at it again. Because apparently the half-skull poster of Sonia Sotomayor and exhortations to his unstable flock about the Angel of Death weren't nearly enough to get him the fundraising haul attention he needed.

In any polite society, his brand of dangerous stoking of the fires of hell would get him shunned by decent people.

In fact, it's well past time that GOP lawmakers were asked -- clearly and without any ambiguity -- what they think of Terry's fire and brimstone violence stoking on behalf of their policy agenda.

Because they cannot have it both ways any more that Terry can.

Using Terry's dangerous rhetoric to push the Republican policy agenda makes them just as responsible for the ends of those means as Terry is.

Not to be outdone, the book burners demand libraries be cleansed of evil:

(CNN) -- A fight over books depicting sex and homosexuality has riled up a small Wisconsin city, cost some library board members their positions and prompted a call for a public book burning.

The battle has stirred much of West Bend, a city of roughly 30,000 people about 35 miles north of Milwaukee. Residents have sparred for months on blogs, airwaves and at meetings, including one where a man told the city's library director he should be tarred and feathered.

The row even spread to this year's Fourth of July parade, which included a float featuring a washing machine and a sign that read "keep our library clean."

"If you told me we would be going through a book challenge of this nature, I'd think, 'Never in a million years,' " said Michael Tyree, director of the West Bend Community Memorial Library.

The strife began in February when West Bend couple Jim and Ginny Maziarka objected to some of the content in the city library's young-adult section. They later petitioned the library board to move any sexually explicit books -- the definition of which would be debated -- from the young-adult section to the adult section and to label them as sexually explicit.

Ginny Maziarka, 49, said the books in the section of the library aimed at children aged 12 to 18 included homosexual and heterosexual content she thought was inappropriate for youths.

She and her husband also asked the library to obtain books about homosexuality that affirmed heterosexuality, such as titles written by "ex-gays," Maziarka said.

"All the books in the young-adult zone that deal with homosexuality are gay-affirming. That's not balance," she said.

So... instead of trying to work with our first black president, the rightwingers will ignore any kind of proof that Obama is who he says he is, they plan massive book burnings, the tar and feathering of librarians, domestic terrorism, homophobia, and destruction of the government.

This will show everybody just how much they love America and its freedoms.

Next?

Witch trials and hangings!

I'm reading Idiot America at the moment

Charles Pierce is right!

Proof:



Via Eli.

Update:
Matthew forces a Republican Congressman to admit Obama is legit.