Everything You Need To Know About the Republican Convention and Repuglycans

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Mike Huckabee is a Liar. Period.

Some Republican Super-Pac is now running an ad in which Mike Huckabee utters this lie: ObamaCare has been defined as the largest tax increase in American history. This is not a difference of opinion: It's a lie, plain and simple.

The media needs to call a lie a lie and a liar a liar. It's not a subjective matter. The facts are out there, they can be measured and evaluated. Not doing it is lazy, and doing it and not reporting it is cowardice.

Mike Huckabee is a liar and an idiot. He deserves no respect. He is a shill. He has stooped to the level of Rush Limbaugh's idiocy and deceit Proof of this? He has his own show on Fox News Channel. And this article.

I rest my case.

The Fantasy of A Revolution

Dante Atkins at the Daily Kos wrote a spot-on post titled The Second Amendment and the fantasy of a revolution. And that's what an armed insurrection against the government of the United States in the third millenium is: a fantasy. Too bad that it's a useful idiocy for the useful idiots (and hobbyists) that the NRA co-opts in support of a deadly serious cause (more deadly than serious actually).

I'll highlight a couple of passages from the post, but please do follow the link above and read the whole, merciless analysis of the whole rationale of the advocacy of insurrection:

When the Second Amendment was written in the late 18th century, the main weapons of war consisted of muskets and flintlock pistols. There are two very worthwhile things to note about this period in weaponry: First, it would have been very difficult for any individual to walk into a crowded theater and commit a massacre with one of these weapons, mainly because by the time the shooter had managed to reload the weapon, everyone could have already run out of the theater, or even escaped at a leisurely stroll [...]

and this:

But previous history has taught us that perhaps the most effective insurgency weapon is the Improvised Explosive Device. If we are serious about defending American liberty against our own military, it's clear that we need our patriotic bomb-makers to have the freedoms they need to defend our country. As long as our government is monitoring and regulating purchases of fertilizers and other nitrates that could be used to make the explosives we need for self-defense, it's quite clear we can't have the freedoms we deserve to defend ourselves against tyranny.

This Bears Repeating, Until Election Day

During my local news tonight, I saw at least 6-8 commercials very critical of "Barack Obama" (that's that Republicans and their Super-PACs call the President, to reinforce the idea among racist voters that he is a freedom-hating, un-American foreigner) because of "his" deficits, and stimulus money he gave to friends and family (a lie, and a reference to the now bankrupt Solyndra, but who's keeping track?). So this bears repeating, until election day, in hopes that it will reach a few ears: the smallest government spender since Eisenhower is... "BARACK OBAMA!'

Incidentally, over the half hour of local news, there was only one ad for President Obama, which featured the President himself, calmly and quite civilly explaining that in the next election the choice couldn't be starker between himself and--wait for it--"Gov. Romney". The contrast between the angry, accusatory, and--quite frankly--borderline racist ads ran by or for the Republican candidate and the civil ad running for President Obama couldn't be clearer.

I know that Democrats and their Super-PACs have run negative ads against Gov. Romney, but they were generally, by today's standards of political conduct, factual and respectful: They asked tough questions about facts, and about the obvious weakness of Gov. Romney: that there is not one issue on which he hasn't taken diametrically opposed positions if it helped earn him the favor of a political constituency. The same cannot be said for Republican ads, which have very little to do with facts and a lot to do with painting President Obama as the prime practitioner of crony politics and reckless spending, which is particularly astounding coming from the party of a truly crony and reckless spender, who all but bankrupted the nation: George W. Bush.

After half an hour of negative ads, I was so disgusted by the tone of the rhetoric that I started wondering: What kind of person responds POSITIVELY to that kind of commercial? What does it say, about our politics and about us, that political organizations and candidates confidently spend hundreds of millions of dollars each election seasons to influence the opinion of a few million people whose mind is not made up yet, and whose votes the election basically revolves around? And what does it mean that many of the voters who are targeted by those ads do accept, and in fact end up basing their voting preference, on narratives so false and so offensive that they would want most of us turn our TV sets off?

If I were an undecided voter I like to think that I would end up voting against the candidate who runs such ads because the commercials say so much more about him than about his opponents. I find their viciousness and their use of lies repulsive, and I would hope that I am not the exception among voters. But even if my views reflect the views of a plurality of voters, the fact is that in such a closely divided electorate a small minority can make a destructive difference for the outcome of an election, and the lives of millions of Americans.

Oh, Hunter!

You know, if the world were a fair place, Hunter at the Daily Kos would have a show called "Crush the Hacks" or something like it, and it would be watched by 200 million Americans every day, including weekends and holidays. As luck would have it, he has landed at Daily Kos a while ago and he has yet to write anything duller than spectacularly spot on and clever. And his latest post demolishes the spin, hackery, and incompetence of the Wall Street Journal's Gordon Crovitz (and of the rag that published the article). Oh, and by the way, let me quote this stunningly funny remark which I found via one of the links in Hunter's post (go find it), which comes from an interview with Vint Cerf:

Interviewer: Crovitz also writes approvingly of this blogger's quote (from 1999): "The Internet, in fact, reaffirms the basic free market critique of large government. Here for 30 years the government had an immensely useful protocol for transferring information, TCP/IP, but it languished...In less than a decade, private concerns have taken that protocol and created one of the most important technological revolutions of the millennia." Since you developed the TCP/IP protocol, I'd like to know your reaction.

Cerf: I would happily fertilize my tomatoes with Crovitz' assertion. "

But please click on all the links that Hunter provides that debunk Crovitz's asinine contention, particularly the last one, which ends with the following undeniable truth: "It's now so important for conservatives to claim that nothing good has ever come out of the federal government that they're literally willing to say anything. After all, how many of Crovitz's readers will ever read Hiltzik's response? One percent of them? Mission accomplished."

A Brilliant Takedown of Dinesh D'Souza's Views On President Obama

I stumbled across this beautiful, spirited, and witty analysis of Dinesh D'Souza's "The Roots of Obama's Rage", one of the many insanity-filled screeds against the current President of the USA. Read it, and pass it along to your sanity-deprived conservative friends.

Bill Keller's Five Myths About Obamacare

Bill Keller, NYT's editor,on Obamacare.

Read, educate, and pass on to your friends.

Stop The Presses

Here's an interesting statement for my (10) Republican/Libertarian friends to ponder:

I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.

The statement was made in Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators, a Bloomberg op-ed by entrepreneur Nick Hanauer, who "founded the Internet media company aQuantive Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) in 2007 for $6.4 billion [and] was also the first non-family investor in Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)."

Go read, and ponder.

Duh!

Here's a report from the reputable Guttmacher Institute, showing that public funding contraception reduces unwanted pregnancies.

Of course, the United States is full of morons who think that abstinence education is the only solution to unwanted pregnancies, that we should not subsidize the lifestyle of poor "sluts" who "choose" to have sex, get pregnant and would seek an abortion, if state law allowed it. I also understand that Congress is full of callous, truly evil politicians who view abortion as the immortal wedge issue that can be applied to a stupid electorate every election to obtain the desired results; so these politicians cut public funding for reproductive care, in hopes that the "moral" divide between good Evangelicals and bad everyone else will play their advantage.

What I don't understand is how people of average intellect cannot see through the ploy of those who speak against abortion, and say they would like it to be banned, and also fight against access to contraceptive care. They are obviously not paladins of morality. They are just manipulative liars who care not one iota about women and their children and would say just about anything that people are dumb enough to believe to hold on to and expand their own power.

Occupy Wall Street Protesters Aren't Against All Capitalism

There is an excellent piece on the Huffington Post that everybody who is mindlessly pooh-poohing the Occupy Wall Street movement and repeating the hateful, mindless drivel that the right's bullshit-emitting volcanoes, Rush Bimbo and Faux News, are making up of whole new cloth, day in, day out. (Yes, I do have in mind more than a couple of friends/acquaintances who fall in the category of mindless pooh-poohers. Not to say that none of them has a mind. Unfortunately some do, which makes them pretty evil in my book).

Anyway, you should read the whole post, Not Here To Destroy Capitalism, But To Remind Us Who Saved It. And here's an excerpt, to get your appetite for intelligence up:

Kristof's right to suggest that the Occupiers aren't "half-naked Communists aiming to bring down the American economic system." This isn't the "Project Mayhem" of Chuck Palahniuk novels -- we're talking about a movement that's spurring people to move their money from "too big to fail" banks into credit unions. That's not exactly "smash the system." That's more like a group of people seeking out a means to maximize their power within the system, or using consumer choice to preserve, enhance and improve the best parts of the system. As Matt Taibbi notes in a fitting companion piece to Kristof's, "These people aren't protesting money. They're not protesting banking. They're protesting corruption on Wall Street." [Emphasis added]

If You Read Nothing Else For The Rest Of The Year, Read This

Go to The Daily Kos, and read A Voice From the 1%. It speaks about the perspective of the Occupy Wall Street movement as seen from a person who "made it" in life.

I was particularly moved by this passage, which is obvious to those with an ounce of perception and intellectual ability, but not to the typically brainwashed right-wing American:

I was not amazed but disgusted when John Boehner and his crew tried to justify the extremity of their position by rebranding the wealthy as "job creators." While true in a very basic sense, it obscures the fact that jobs are a cost that is voluntarily incurred only as a result of demand. Hiring has no correlation at all to profits or to income - none. Let me keep more of my money without increasing customer demand and I will do just that - keep it. Perhaps I will spend a little more of it, though probably not, but even if I do it won't help the economy very much. Here is another secret of the well-to-do: we don't really buy much more stuff than everyone else. It may be more expensive stuff, sure, but I don't buy cars, or appliances, or furniture, or anything else more frequently than the average consumer. The things I do spend more money on are services such as travel, entertainment, restaurants and landscaping, none of which generate well-paying middle class jobs. There, in a nutshell, is the sad explanation of what has happened to the American economy over the last 25 years of "trickle down" economics.

With this cherry on top, which answers the most irritating criticism that conservatives like to triumphantly level at the OWS movement, i.e. that no one really knows what the protesters stand for (as if it should stump anyone with a brain):

As George Orwell wrote in "Homage to Catalonia" about fighting fascists, I don't always need to know what I am fighting for when it is clear what I am fighting against.

Fucking Liars and Their Fucking Talking Points

Thanks to the incomparable Joan McCarter of Daily Kos for drawing my attention to this chart, which exposes naked the Republican lie about the fact that too many Americans don't pay their fair share and pay no taxes.

The Greatest Scam Perpetrated by The Financial Sector on Unwitting Americans

Now that the title of the post got your interest, you do want to know what the greatest scam ever perpetrated on the unwitting American public is, right? 401Ks. There, I said it. And I have been saying that for a long time, to my friends and to my wife. And now, after a long time, they are starting to understand what I meant and still mean. And last night Rachel Maddow put things in perspective for you, with the help of Simon Johnson.

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

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

Immoral Games

Markos Moulitsas is right:

Every time you hear conservatives talk about the "rights of the unborn," remember this—their opposition to abortion has nothing to do with babies. If it was, they wouldn't oppose funding for pre- and postnatal care. If it was, they'd support wider dissemination of contraception and better sex education and family planning services. After all, the best way to avoid an abortion is to avoid unwanted pregnancies in the first place.

No, this has nothing to do with babies, and all about controlling human sexuality. If people can have abortions, if they can use condoms, then they will fuck—and that will somehow bring about "social collapse." Forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies to full term is, in their minds, a just punishment for being sluts.

To conservatives, sex is simply bad. (See Markos's full post here.)

It's typical of Republican/Conservative hypocrisy to fight their battles under false premises. Against taxing the oligarchs and plutocrats? Say you're defending job creators. Fighting for your donors in the oil and gas industries? Say environmental regulations are destroying America's job base. And the same applies to sex. Sexual freedom (as Orwell understood well) is one of the pillars of free society. Particularly sexual freedom for women. If you can control what people can do in the most intimate sphere of their lives, which is what they do with their bodies, is there really anything else you cannot control, squash, impose? So the Republicans' real agenda on sexuality is one of tyranny masked as compassion for the unborn, and it is quite telling that the Conservatives' compassion for human beings stops at the unborn. They have no problem condemning the unborn, once born, to a life of misery, poverty, tribulation, subjugation, modern slavery, ill health.

Shame on them, and on all those who enable them in defense of ideals that Republicans have betrayed daily for close to 50 years.

Matt Damon Is My New Hero (As He Schools a Dumb Reporter)

I always liked Matt Damon, now I like him another bit more.



This is exactly how to confront the drivel of too many libertarians and Republicans, and their platitudes about economic incentives in the free market.

The Job Creation Myth

Hello! I just stumbled across a post on the "job creators" myth on the blog of a radio personality from St. Louis: Paul Harris. The guy has the right ideas about job creators and he hosts a show on poker. How bad could he be?

Surprise, Surprise? Nah!

President Obama and Congressional Democrats tried to pass (minor) health insurance reform for health care reform. Anyone who followed things closely could have told you that it was, for the most part, a sham, a scheme aimed at giving the impression of taking action when in fact the goal was to leave things as they were and, if possible, to expand the revenues of a powerful industry. Mission accomplished, for the industry at least. For Americans? Who are we kidding?

The Lone Tree Declaration Dissected

The Constructive Curmudgeon re-posted The Lone Tree Declaration, which is a conservative manifesto "released in conjunction with the upcoming Western Conservative Summit, sponsored by Colorado Christian University."

1. In our adherence to the self-evident truths of the American Founding, we are conservatives.

2. In our debt to the civilizational heritage of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, and Philadelphia, we are Westerners.

3. In our concern for the mounting threat to liberty, seeing freedom in the balance, we convene with solemn purpose at this Summit.

4. We seek a conservative renewal for our country through civic action that puts principle above party, resists the corruption of power, bridges intramural disagreements or rivalries, and protects an open public square centered on the nation’s Judeo-Christian core.

5. We commit ourselves unswervingly to a political and social order that upholds individual freedom and personal responsibility, limited government and the rule of law, free enterprise and private property, traditional family values and sanctity of life, compassion for the poor and voluntarism in service to others, natural law and morality, strong defense and secure borders, all in keeping with the original intent of the Constitution.

6. We reject, and will resist, the socialist temptation, transnational progressivism, secular utopian illusions, appeasement, disarmament, or capitulation to jihad and sharia.

Since I live just a few miles from Lone Tree, I feel I have a stake in this. Though the Declaration, which has a thinly-veiled undercurrent of xenophobia, is obviously not representative of the views of all Coloradans (or Lone-Tree-ers), it nonetheless will get the endorsement of many, particularly many who are easily swayed by declarations which appeal to the limbic system more than to the cerebral cortex. I thought of sending the following response to the blog where I found the Declaration, but then I thought I'd rather post here instead. So here's the point-by-point response.

1) It will be news to the liberals in this country that adhering to the allegedly (and hazily-defined or undefined) "self-evident truths of the American Founding" leads to conservatism.

2) It will be news, and unflattering news at that, to the Native-Americans, the Asians, Africans, the millions of immigrants from Eastern Europe, and many more, that "we" are Westerners.

3) You probably have to be a signatory of the Declaration to see freedom in the balance and liberty under a mounting threat. (And then again it might be, but not at the hands of foreigners and "Islamofascists"; rather at the end of the Supreme Court Justices who found for the plaintiff in Citizens United v. FEC, or who ruled that a class action suit brought against Walmart by 1.6 million women had no standing because the class lacked the element of sufficient commonality)

4) That's commendable, but what exactly does putting "principle above party" mean? Is it the same principle that allows transnational corporations to ship jobs out of the United States at the expense of Americans, for the glory of corporate profits? Methinks "principle" needs defining.

5) The unswerving commitment to "a political and social order that upholds individual freedom and personal responsibility" is also commendable, but it should not be at the top of the list (in order of appearance), otherwise it looks like a sneaky act of bait and switch: Traditional family values and the sanctity of life should be mentioned at the top, as they obviously trump the individual freedom and personal responsibility of individuals in the LGBT community, or those of incestuously raped or life-endangered girls and women who would presumably be forced to carry their pregnancies to term if the Lone Tree Declaration happened to be the founding manifesto for law of the land. The unswerving commitment to free enterprise and private property, for example, is mentioned ahead of compassion for the poor, which is obviously the right ranking for conservatives, seeing how supposedly compassionate conservatives prioritize budgets: Tax breaks for everybody who doesn't need any more money and crackers and catsup for the poor; you know, "vegetables" in the diet. Or no subsidies for heating oil. It took America to popularize the concept of free-enterprise, and American conservatives to give the concept a bad name.

6. 4 out of 6 items in this list appear desirable to me. The non-desirable ones are appeasement and capitulation to jihad and sharia. In fact, one should never appease those who seek to establish a religiously inspired form of government, no matter which religion.

Corporate Tax Whiners

You know the meme that corporations are overtaxed, that the tax rates on corporations in the United States is one of the highest in the world, and that cutting all kind of taxes (corporate, capital gains, and individual taxes on millionaires and billionaires) would create jobs? Well, it's a meme, as I said. But don't believe me: Check out Marie Diamond's article at Think Progress.

Refute Ted Rall... If You Can

Someone had to say it, Ted Rall did it: "The family budget talking point is a fascinating meme that reflects a rarely considered national blind spot." Like their government, Americans live on debt.