I am Spartacus

MoveOn can be pretty slick.

Last Time I went to Church...

I felt as if I'd landed on an Alien planet, had established rapport with the local indigenous fauna, and then, having been invited to their weekly gathering, had been completely shocked from the ridiculousness and utter lack of reason inherent in their kooky, and otherwise meaningless rituals and sermons:













from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot:

Consider again that pale blue dot. Take a good long look at it. ["That's us. That's Earth."] Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn't strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?

Do some "Big Think", and doesn't every resulting religion or ideology resemble or become a self parody of this?

An equal right to keep death at bay

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Bill Moyers was right, and still is right

UPDATE:

More recently, this week:

Don't watch this anywhere near a desk...

Because 2 minutes in, you will find your head repeatedly bouncing off of it.

My first YouTube upload

Evil people pass away...

Via Radley Balko:

The remaining half of America’s great freedom-loving couple has passed away.

Yeah not so much.

Again, between the stark dichotomy of free markets vs. free people, you need to define "freedom" for clarity's sake...

After right-wing “free market” economist and longtime University of Chicago professor Milton Friedman dropped dead in 2006, it did not take long for the U of C administration to spark a minor firestorm on campus by proposing to name an economic research institute in his honor. In the 1970s Friedman and his “Chicago Boys” notoriously served as economic advisers to the bloody CIA-backed Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet that massacred 30,000 workers, peasants and leftists and imprisoned and tortured thousands more. Last year, in response to the U of C proposal to launch a Milton Friedman Institute, faculty formed the Committee for Open Research on Economy and Society (CORES), which initiated an online petition against the Institute and held a number of well-attended campus events. Over 100 professors signed a letter of protest to the administration, and the full Faculty Senate convened for the first time in a decade to debate the proposal.

It is truly an affront to working people and the oppressed around the planet that the University would attempt to honor the legacy of this man. It would be utopian to think that bourgeois universities would not name buildings in honor of sundry capitalist moguls and their academic mouthpieces. But Friedman was not simply a reactionary ideologue; his hands were drenched in the blood of the Chilean masses. In 1975, the New York Times accurately labeled him “the guiding light of the junta’s economic policy” (21 September 1975). The CIA funded a 300-page Friedmanite blueprint given to the leaders of the junta in preparation for the coup. In March 1975 Friedman himself, accompanied by his U of C cohort Arnold Harberger, flew to Chile for high-level talks with the regime to outline the economic “shock treatment” that led to the mass starvation of those who had survived the initial phase of bloodletting.

If there's an afterlife, and any justice in the Universe, Rose Friedman now joins her husband in Hell where they are eternally drowning in fire ants, 1 for every victim of the dictatorships they supported and whose life they otherwise destroyed.

CNBC goes looking for Town Hall Anger

From TPM:

CNBC approached Tea Party activists, looking for angry protest events that would make good television, according to a leaked email from a Tea Party discussion group. And one Tea Bagger responded by flagging an upcoming event that, he said, "should be a riot ... literally."

Yesterday, Tea Party Patriots national coordinator Jenny Beth Martin sent an email, obtained by TPMmuckraker, to a Tea Party google group. Martin told the group: "We have a media request for an event this week that will have lots of energy and lots of anger. This is for CNBC."

She then asked: "So, where are the big events this week and where can TPP best be represented on the news?"

Later that day, a Tea Bagger named Pat Wayman responded with a suggestion, also obtained by TPMmuckraker: "This one should be a riot! literally...." he wrote.

*UPDATE*: Moron acts Moronic, gets to be interviewed on TV so we can see how much of a dope she is.

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Sigh, I liked this better when it wasn't purportedly "Serious" news, and it was called "Jaywalking".


*UPDATE II*:



Okay, Gray Hair, you feel free to sign a waiver rescinding your Medicare benefits, which are paid for by the taxes on our hard-earned labor. If not, STFD & STFU, you're wrong. And even though you lose, you win.

I mean, if the one of the claims of the website called "StopMedicare" is that "Anyone that has ever used Medicare has died or will die.", then what else can be said?

Everyone that has ever been attracted to another man or another woman has died or will die.

Anyone that has ever used a toothbrush has died or will die.

Okay, you don't want to change the companies dictating policy at all, we get that. What are you for? What do you propose?

Toby: You think we should run a counter ad.

Will: We have to.

Toby: Saying what?

Will: Oh. I don't know.

Toby: What do you mean?

Will: What do you mean?

Toby: We've been sitting here for twenty minutes.

Will: I came in to show you the spots and to tell you I think we should run a counter ad. I don't have an idea for one.

Toby: Well get one. Have an idea! Don't come in here with half a thing and not be able to – you know, after you've walked me to the brink, and say "We've got to do this, it's important, though I have no earthly idea how"! Like one of those guys who buys a big new thing but doesn't really know how to get the most out of it!

Thinking with your gut leads to talking out of your...

A skeptical look at insurance reform

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To every conservative that ever clutched their pearls using the phrase "Bush Derangement Syndrome"...

...Go straight to hell. This is so fucking stupid (via Sadly):

Tucker: (taken aback) A car cake?! How come they get a car cake?!

Church: What are you complaining about, man? We're about to get a tank cake in the very next drop.

Tucker: (disappointed) You can't pick up chicks in a tank cake.

Church: Oh you know what? You could bitch about anything couldn't you?

There's a reason he's the most trusted news anchor in America

Howie Kurtz has nothing on Stewart's media criticism.


Also, a must see birther takedown


Also, too, lets say for the sake of argument Obama was born in Kenya. His mother was a US Citizen which according to laws passed in the 1950s, would have automatically made BHO a natural born US Citizen born on foreign soil (Even before that it's likely that it would still be the case, as John McCain was born in Panama, but is a "Naturally born" US citizen. The US Consolate in Kenya would have had issued a Passport for him in order for him to be able to return to Hawaii and travel abroad as well. Even if they're right, They're wrong!

Mike Pence None the Richer

And so it went, up and down the street, in between tents and tables, squeezing past pedestrians to inspect the offerings in one booth after another, we milled around this marketplace in downtown Baghdad for more than an hour. I told reporters afterward that it was just like any open-air market in Indiana in the summertime.
-Rep. Mike Pence (R-ID), April 4, 2007.

"“Freedom in fact may be flowering in Iran as hundreds of thousands rally for democracy and free elections. While I appreciate President Obama's comments yesterday at the White House that he was, ‘troubled by the violence,’ and his belief that the voices of the Iranian people should, be ‘heard and respected,’ it seems by my lights that this administration has yet to express the unqualified support of the American people for those who are courageously taking to the streets for free elections and for democracy in Iran. “Let me say from my heart, the American cause is freedom and in this cause the American people will not be silent, here or abroad. If the President of the United States won't express the unqualified support of our nation for the dissidents in the streets of Tehran, this Congress must. “Today I'm introducing a resolution that will do just that. It will express its concern regarding the reported irregularities of the presidential election of 12 June, 2009. It will condemn the violence against demonstrators by pro-government militia in Tehran in the wake of the elections. It will affirm our belief in the universality of individual rights and the importance of democratic and fair elections. And lastly, and most importantly, it will express the support of the American people for all Iranian citizens who struggle for freedom, civil liberties and the protection of the rule of law. “Believe it or not in my small town of Columbus, IN, I grew up next door to a Hungarian immigrant who fled Hungary in the wake of the Soviet repression of the Hungarian revolution in 1956. I sat often with Julius Perr, now passed away, and heard of the way the Hungarian people, inspired by our calls for freedom, stood up for their own freedom. And as Brett Stephens recounts in today's Wall Street Journal we stood by idly. We didn't want to interfere. And the Soviet tanks rolled. “We cannot stand idly by, speak of Iran's sovereignty, speak of her own right to choose her own leadership at a time when hundreds of thousands of Iranians are risking their lives to stand up for free elections and democracy. “Ronald Reagan said, ‘No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.’ All of us desire a fresh start with Iran and it seems from news reports and the extraordinary images coming from the streets of Iran that millions of Iranians long for a new start in their government. There is a reformist movement afoot in Iran. “Today I’ll introduce a resolution. I urge all my colleagues in both parties to join me in expressing their support for these brave and courageous men and women.”

Mike Pence, Today.

A brief history of Iranian-American Relations over the last 60 years.

What good ole Mike wants us to say, what he wants to declare publicly, and purely for his own political gain; will let Ahmadinejad and his higher proxies declare for propaganda purposes in service of retaining their own power, that all these people,



are actually astro-turf surreptitiously working here:

Put your head down on the desk.

From a scrubbed post at the dish:

Shorter:

"Look what I started!—

From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered- We few, we happy few, we band of brothers bloggers"

The man desperately needs a nap.

It isn’t about the excellent and relentless job Sullivan has done to make this ongoing story known. To me, it isn’t even about superficial showings of global solidarity. To me, it is about Andrew’s total immersion in the story beginning to blur his reality between Cape Cod and Tehran. As much as he keeps re-iterating that this isn’t about us, he sure is using the pronoun “WE” an awful lot.

As a writer, an aggregator, and an opinion-shaper, he seems to be conflating his ground-breaking coverage of the event with the actual events, which are ground-breaking. And as he delves into reciting poetry and bending his ‘Know Hope’ branding to play as captions underneath truly moving photography, the feedback loop of the energy of the movement igniting Sully’s raw enthusiasm grows and edges toward Delusions of Grandeur territory.

And I’m saying this, not as one of his detractors. I’m a huge fan of his blog and his writing. The guy needs a few hours on the hot seat of a dunk tank, for his own good. He's relentless and works his ass off, but that doesn't mean he's incapable of being wrong, or too caught up in the story.

Case in Point, he quotes NIAC from today:

Until it’s clear what the fate of the new elections are, we will chant “Allah Akbar” three times every night – once at 10:00, 11:00, and midnight.

I wonder if Hitchens will have to qualify his assertion that religion poisons everything

I want the Green Revolution to be successful. However, even given the occurrence of one of the best-case scenarios, for instance perhaps one of the dissenting Ayatollah's stepping into power as a new Supreme Leader with the blessing of the people and the military, Iran will still be known as the Islamic Republic of Iran. A Theocracy is still a theocracy, whether or not they have Web 2.0, CNN, and the new Terminator movie. Is it possible for any secular advocates to promote a separation of Mosque and State in Iran? If not now, will it, could it be possible after a successful Green Revolution? Is it likely that a reformist Ayatollah appointed to Supreme Leader would rescind the fatwa ordering the murder of writer Salman Rushdie for apostasy?

I think Islam in this instance is more of a communal tool that can be used by the protesters to show solidarity and retain the populist sentiment of the 1979 Revolution as a reflection of the actual will of the people. However, I don't think Hitch's claim needs any footnotes or an asterisk. The issues are separate. A reformed Iran might be more free than in its current state, but true freedom is bolstered by and is recognizable as open and secularized democracy. Authoritarianism, whether that takes the form of a "benevolent" dictator, monarchy, or priestly hierarchy will never cede power or influence on an even battlefield of ideas, and will continually resist Enlightenment values of free speech, free press, and free religion. However good the change in Iran may be, Mousawi is not Jefferson, Madison, Adams, or Washington.

Let's try a little confidence.

Obama's strength is finding middle ground between seemingly irreconcilable parties, and a long view political insight that puts Washington to shame. However, you're never gonna repeal DADT, or get us safely out of two wars, if everybody has to stop and hold hands first. Things like gay rights or upholding the rule of law in the face of things like torture, are binary issues, and ambivalence born out of political expedience is not one of the options.

I assumed I was electing a leader who, while understanding how people can hold a different opinion and wasn't condescending about mandates, would do as he saw fit to take this country in a better direction.

This is what I assumed, and I hoped I'm right, but healing this nation requires leadership. It requires someone who will put himself out there, on the record giving orders to implement change.

Question.

Just where the hell is Michael Steele? Liz Cheney has a bigger media presence that he does right now.

Believe in something, even if it's WRONG, BELIEVE IT!

Your homework for today:

Go. Read. Dave. Neiwert.

"Beck offered the following rationale on his Fox News show tonight:

Beck: What they're missing is: The pot in America is boiling. And this is just yet another warning to all Americans of things to come.

Actually, Beck has this exactly right. But frankly, it's boiling because of people like Glenn Beck, ranting hysterically every night about impending apocalypses of various forms -- looming "liberal fascism," the "economic meltdown," the "New World Order," violence spilling over the Mexican border, even FEMA concentration camps.

As I tried to explain in the case of the shooting of Dr. George Tiller, when you spread far-right conspiracy theories through mainstream channels the way Beck does with such abandon, it not only validates their beliefs, it rather hyper-validates them: It tells these people -- who see the Becks and O'Reillys as part of the "liberal media" -- that things are even worse than they thought, and it often spurs them into action."

Fox News' conscience.

Quote of the Day, from Lawyers, Guns, and Money:

If radical Muslims had carried out terrorist attacks in Kansas and Washington DC over the past five days, we might be trying to pass legislation giving the president the legal authority to place people in preventive detention, and Daniel Pipes would be implying that we need to round up Arab-Americans (correction: Muslims) and put them in relocation camps.

But it was only a couple of old white guys, so our civil liberties remain unthreatened.

Courtroom murmers, "Jesus, what BALLS!"

Jonah Goldberg at the NRO on Anonymous Blogging and the defense of Ed Whelan:

A (anonyblogging) reader writes, in part:

Jonah-

If it's cowardly to blog anonymously, were Madison, Hamilton, and Jay cowards for publishing the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym "Publius"?

Answer: No. Madison, Hamilton, and Jay weren't amateur pundits. Seems like a pretty big category error.

Update: Several readers take offense to my use of the word "amateur." For instance:

Hang on a second.

Pundits are divided into "amateur" and, I would suppose, "professional" catagories?

Isn't one of the joys of the internet the ease with which previously unknown wise voices can be heard?

Both complaints miss the point. First, yes there are professional and amateur pundits. Who disputes this? Are the professionals always better than the amateurs? Of course not. But some people do work as pundits for a living, some do it as a hobby.

Meanwhile, follow this link for the current header on the NRO website (06/08/09).



Jonah Goldberg, Professional Blogger.

Bias, and forget the Dems when they act like entitled gangsters

I'm left of center, as one could probably tell from this site, but
even Clintonian politics bug the shit out of me.

Hillary Clinton's Campaign Manager runs for Governor of Virginia, and the best way he can think of creating a brand:


(via Mark Gisleson and Narconews):

I’m not sure which of these two scenarios would be worse for the future of the Democrats: Terry McAuliffe wins Tuesday’s primary for governor, and Independent voters, horrified, begin an exodus from their fairly recent Democratic voting patterns to bring a resurgence of the GOP in the Old Dominion, or that McAuliffe could win on Tuesday and then somehow pull off a general election victory to become a daily embarrassment to the national Democratic Party from his mansion in McLean, just a golf ball’s shot from Washington, DC.
[...](graphic, i.e. an image)
But in recent years McAuliffe has been on the wrong end of the two big revolts that paved the way for the Democratic Party to finally win again. As chairman of the Democratic National Committee, McAuliffe was overthrown by the insurgent candidacy of Howard Dean (paving the way for the 50 state strategy and so many other reforms). As finance chairman, and frequent TV surrogate, for the Clinton 2008 presidential campaign, McAuliffe continued to embody that fast-and-loose money-obsessed yuppie old guard of the Democratic Party of the last century that Obama and his community organizer and small donor army toppled in historic battle.

A McAuliffe victory on Tuesday would thus have repercussions beyond Virginia. It would announce to the nation that the party hasn't really changed, that 2008 was a mere abberation. It would strongly suggest that, hard as so many in it try, that what Howard Dean called “the democratic wing of the Democratic Party” will never be able to complete the clean-up of its worst, most corporate, elements. It would reestablish that those who nearly destroyed the Democratic Party in the 1990s are an incurable affliction, like herpes; and they will keep coming back as a big oozing sore on the lips to frighten swing voters away.
[...]
But first things first: On Tuesday, Virginia will be ground zero in the ongoing struggle to dump the dirty bath water from the Democratic Party tub. A defeat of McAuliffe in the primary would start the ball rolling for the 2010 midterm elections for the newly regenerated community organizer wing of the Democrats to continue advancing. It would encourage other candidates to step forward throughout the country to continue to challenge and defeat those that not too long ago crucified the party on a cross of special interests. Tuesday's lesson could be that one good Deeds deserves another…

Screw Politics for Politicians' sake. Let McAuliffe wither on the vine. He failed Clinton because he and Clinton are 20th century pols, trying to play checkers on a chessboard. The sooner the dinosaurs are extinct we will all be better off. Good Riddance. I'm sure all the registered Democrats and the PUMA's will hold a silent vigil upon your inevitable defeat, and loss of relevance.


UPDATE: McAuliffe lost his primary. Boy, it sucks being right. At this point, I'll never get my own Column for the Washington Post or the New York Times.