By Hanlon, on August 31st, 2010 at 08:22 PM
GOP ads this cycle focus on whether or not candidates agreed with Pelosi, rather than Obama.
I’m guessing this is because Pelosi’s poll numbers are much worse than Barry-O’s, and most people who would be swayed by these ads (read: Teabaggers) don’t know enough about how our government is structured to know that Pelosi really doesn’t have much power.
By Hanlon, on August 31st, 2010 at 08:19 PM
 As we get closer to September 11th, and stories like people planning Koran burnings become more commonplace, we can look forward to all of this craziness coming to a head. Specifically, I’m talking about violence.
This isn’t a full-on case of Islamophobic violence, but it sure as hell is a harbinger of things to come. Worst of all, the perpetrators are 18 and under.
he same teens, from nearby Holley, had also shouted epithets and honked horns as they drove past the mosque on Friday, Orleans County Sheriff Scott Hess said. District attorney Joseph Cardone said Mark Vendetti, 17, fired a shotgun twice into the ground near the mosque on that occasion.
Vendetti, who hasn’t yet been assigned a lawyer, was charged with felony criminal possession of a weapon and ordered held on $10,000 bail. He told police he fired the gun “because he was afraid that they (mosque members) may come after him,” Cardone said.
In truth, I don’t actually blame the teens themselves. Seventeen year olds were about eight when the planes hit, and at the time didn’t know bin Laden from a Beni Hana. Any opinions they formed about this situation came from someone else, and that means the culture that says Muslims are evil and they will attack you in your sleep. That Osama bin Laden is a ringleader of a worldwide Islamic movement to destroy America and burn our Constitution.
These kids absorbed the hateful rhetoric that Becks and Limbaughs have been slinging for the past near-decade, and now they’re acting on it. I’d like to point out, also, that this was predicted in that DHS report a few years ago. The one that was much maligned as politically slanted and total bullshit.
I’d also like to point out that no left-wing rhetoric either advocated or resulted in violence during the Bush years. Or Bible burnings.
I’d also also like to point out that, as an atheist, the reason this kind of thing bothers me is that the Koran burnings are in the spirit of “our God is better than your god”. I have no particular affinity for Islam, nor do I believe it an especially good influence on any part of the world. Just that this “holy war” bullshit enrages me.
By Hanlon, on August 30th, 2010 at 05:24 PM
Glenn Beck claimed on his show a few minutes ago that the Smithsonian asked him for items from the rally, so that they may be “preserved”.
I’m hoping that “preserved” is code for “burned” or “the Smithsonian called me” is code for “I read on Twitter”.
By Hanlon, on August 30th, 2010 at 05:22 PM
 I think many of us internet denizens are unique in that we actually remember the formation of the modern Tea Party. You remember that? Back when it was Ron Paul and neo-libertarians who rejected both parties in favor of a bunch of policies that pissed off and enthralled the left and right in equal measure? Agree or not, at least they had a unified idea.
Cue 2010 and now the Tea Party is basically a more extreme conservative party, one who only nominally gives a damn about the Constitution. They all but formally kicked Paul out of the party some time ago, and now he’s got this to say:
“As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined.”
These days, the Tea Party’s philosophy can best be summed up in three words: “we hate liberals”. Watch the speeches, read the signs, check out transcripts, whatever. All the Teabaggers give two shits about is opposing Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.
In fact, I have a fact-finding mission: if anyone can show me a sign from the rally that attacks Bush/Cheney, that would really mean the world to me.
By Hanlon, on August 29th, 2010 at 09:37 PM
And so it begins.
Shots fired, too.
September 11th is going to be very, very ugly.
By Hanlon, on August 28th, 2010 at 08:09 PM
 Glenn Beck’s star continues to rise (honestly, has no one figured out that all he’s doing is making himself money??), and with it we keep having normally serious-minded people attempting to deconstruct his claims and statements. Now it’s the constantly argued point of whether or not the US is a Christian nation.
Quick background: it’s not.
That said, some yahoo over at CNN decided to argue on Beck’s side that it is, and so we’re subjected to one of many trash heaps of ignorance that pop out of these people now and again. In the middle of it all, he spouts out this gem:
Bunch complains that, “In April, Barton told Beck’s 3 million TV viewers that ‘we use the Ten Commandments as basis of civil law and the Western world [and it] has been for 2,000 years.’ ”
Perhaps this is why the Ten Commandments numerals are represented at the bottom of a door to the U.S. Supreme Court courtroom and why Moses, revered as the lawgiver to Jews in the Hebrew bible, and Christians in the New Testament, appears holding two tablets elsewhere in the Supreme Court building.
Not to be a complete asshole, but here’s the decalogue (and I’ll be using the King James version from Exodus, abbreviated slightly):
- I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before Me.
- You shall not make for yourself a graven image.
- You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
- Remember the Sabbath day.
- Honor your father and your mother.
- You shall not murder.
- You shall not commit adultery.
- You shall not steal.
- You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
- You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.
Now, reprinted to include only the things that we have laws against.
- You shall not murder.
- You shall not steal.
- You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
And even #3 there is only if we count perjury, so I’m being generous in saying that 30% of the Ten C’s are included in our laws. Hell, 40% of the Commandments are related to worshiping God correctly, so one could accurately say that our First Amendment eliminates more of the Decalogue than our laws embrace it. Not only that, but it seems to be missing a lot of other things. Rape, slavery, abuse, arson, prostitution, child labor. Possibly because the Old Testament wholly endorses most of those things.
The rest of the article picks out one statement of John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, ignoring that he also wrote things like the following:
I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved — the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!
Or…
The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?
Yet there he is, using Adams as evidence of devout Christianity. Pathetic, really. And then, despite using something Adams wrote in a letter to Jefferson, discounts the famous “wall of separation” quote as “from a letter from President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptists.” Pot? Kettle.
Really, articles like this simply piss me off. I don’t know if the authors are intentionally misleading readers, are just so lazy that they don’t want to do any real research, or are afraid of what they’d find if they did. The Razor would say go for option #2, but I’m not so sure. Call me skeptical.
By Hanlon, on August 27th, 2010 at 09:06 AM
By Hanlon, on August 26th, 2010 at 03:01 PM
Good for him. He didn’t even need to be caught in an airport bathroom or a hooker.
As friend of the Razor Ryan says, you know times are a-changing when Republicans feel comfortable to come out.
By Hanlon, on August 26th, 2010 at 02:57 PM
It’s probably not a coincidence that those who believe in the infallibility of the Bible also act as though the US Constitution is set in stone and can never be changed or questioned.
By Hanlon, on August 26th, 2010 at 02:51 PM
 Now that we’re rearing up on the end of Barack Obama’s second year as president, it seems like a good time to really start judging how he’s been doing so far. Most of his major victories have been in ways that will take a while to spider their way into fruition, so all of the boo-hooing and naysaying that happened within weeks after various bills passed was just stupid to begin with.
So let’s take the stimulus package. Verdict? Yes.
For starters, the Recovery Act is the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world’s largest venture-capital fund. It’s pouring $90 billion into clean energy, including unprecedented investments in a smart grid; energy efficiency; electric cars; renewable power from the sun, wind and earth; cleaner coal; advanced biofuels; and factories to manufacture green stuff in the U.S. The act will also triple the number of smart electric meters in our homes, quadruple the number of hybrids in the federal auto fleet and finance far-out energy research through a new government incubator modeled after the Pentagon agency that fathered the Internet.
…
The stimulus really is starting to change Washington — and not just the buildings. Every contract and lobbying contact is posted at Recovery.gov, with quarterly data detailing where the money went. A Recovery Board was created to scrutinize every dollar, with help from every major agency’s independent watchdog. And Biden has promised state and local officials answers to all stimulus questions within 24 hours. It’s a test-drive for a new approach to government: more transparent, more focused on results than compliance, not just bigger but better. Biden himself always saw the Recovery Act as a test — not only of the new Administration but of federal spending itself.
Sometimes it’s important to realize that many of us had absolutely astronomical expectations for Barack Obama. Yes, he promised us the moon and most people realized it was unrealistic to expect even a few acres of that, but at the same time even the most “realistic” liberals figured that Obama could storm the barn and do everything all at once.
Obama took possibly the smartest strategy there is: put all of his chips into more long-term investments that would benefit the country immensely when they finally flowered, not only giving a more idealistic bonus to Americans at large, but situating himself in a fantastic spot come 2012. After all, what will his opponent be able to say when Obama points out that his stimulus plan was a success on all fronts, despite what the haters were crying early on?
|
|
|
