A GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING...

SHARRON ANGLE!!!

Sharron Angle Claims United Nations Is Unconstitutional

In a recent interview with a local TV station, Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle claimed that it is unconstitutional for the United States to remain in the United Nations:

ANGLE: The United Nations resides on our soil and costs us money. We are – I don’t see any place in the Constitution — in those eight priorities — about the United Nations. So when we start talking about cutting programs, 5-percent per year, I think the United Nations fits into that category, yes.

THIS WAS NEEDED

(h/t The Raw Story)

40 Religious Leaders Denounce Sarah Palin and Fox’s Hate Speech
Posted on August 13, 2010 by Jason Easley

Forty different Catholic, evangelical, mainline Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders and scholars came together to release a statement condemning the hate language of Fox News, Sarah Palin, and Newt Gingrich as it relates to the so called Ground Zero mosque, “Fear-mongering and hateful rhetoric only undermine treasured values at the heart of diverse faith traditions and our nation’s highest ideals.”

The statement released by Faith In The Public Life condemned the religious bigotry of Gingrich, Palin, and Fox News, “As Catholic, evangelical, mainline Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders and scholars committed to religious freedom and inter-religious cooperation, we are deeply troubled by the xenophobia and religious bigotry that has characterized some of the opposition to a proposed Islamic center and mosque near where the World Trade Center towers once stood.”

These are two of the 40 signers:

The Rev. Canon Peg Chemberlin
President, National Council of Churches
Executive Director, Minnesota Council of Churches

Rabbi Joy Levitt
Executive Director
Jewish Community Center in Manhattan

IS FATS LOSING IT?

(h/t Atrios)

I noted below Limbaugh's absurd claims about common English words and now he seems to have outdone that:

Limbaugh: "It's the Democrats that try to keep black people out of political powerful positions, it ain't us"
August 13, 2010 2:51 pm ET

THE NOISE MACHINE HAS WON ANOTHER ROUND

I've looked at some of the comments on Yahoo News about this and there aren't many Baggers defending the 1st Amendment.

Obama backs controversial New York mosque project
By Ross Colvin and Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON | Fri Aug 13, 2010 10:39pm EDT
Reuters

MORE FROM PREACHER BECK

Beck just repeatedly said that there will be "miracles" in the 8/28 crowd and I can already see how he will describe some petty event as a "miracle."

THE GOP STILL HAS A "SOLID SOUTH"

(h/t Steve Benen)

The newest NBC/WSJ poll found that the GOP is very strong in the South, (52% to 31%) and the Democrats are very strong in the Northeast, (55% to 30%). The Dems are still ahead in the Mid-West (49% to 38%) and the West is a toss-up.

GEORGE WILL, NEO-CON TOOL

Will writes that calling one's self a "citizen of the world" is a very bad thing, especially if that person is Pres. Obama, and that's why we should ALWAYS support Israel & the Likudniks.

Will deliberately ignored the long history of this phrase and its importance to our notion (not his!) of Western Civilization:

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, I am a citizen of the world. ~Socrates

If I knew something that would serve my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it; for I am a citizen of humanity first and by necessity, and a citizen of France second, and only by accident. ~Montesquieu

Thomas Paine, speech opposing the execution of Louis XVI: "I was present at the time of the flight or abdication of Louis XVI., when he was taken and brought back. The proposal of restoring to him the supreme power struck me with amazement ; and although at that time I was not a citizen, yet as a citizen of the world, I employed all the efforts that depended on me to prevent it."

THE BECKSTER IS AT IT AGAIN

Today on his radio show, Beck said Deuteronomy was the basis of our Constitution.

WE NEED BETTER JEFF GOLDBERGS...

(h/t Atrios)

or maybe none at all. Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution finds that Mr. Goldberg and consistency are not friends.

Goldberg in 2002:

Saddam Hussein never gave up his hope of turning Iraq into a nuclear power. After the Osirak attack, he rebuilt, redoubled his efforts, and dispersed his facilities.

Goldberg in 2010:

In 1981, Israeli warplanes bombed the Iraqi reactor at Osirak, halting—forever, as it turned out—Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions

A TIDBIT FOR THE ANTI-IMMIGRANT CROWD

Obama as border cop: He's deported record numbers of illegal immigrants

New data suggest that the dramatic rise in deportations for illegal immigrants since 9/11 has continued under President Obama, hitting record levels in 2009.
By Lourdes Medrano, Correspondent / August 12, 2010
Tucson, Ariz.
Christian Science Monitor

In 2009, the United States deported a record 387,790 people – a 5 percent increase over 2008. Nearly two months before the end of the 2010 federal fiscal year, the deportation rate is down slightly from 2009, but the number of removals is still likely to be more than triple what it was in 2001.

An increasing share of deportees are immigrants who have been convicted of a crime, reflecting President Obama's desire to reorient the deportation process toward targeting criminals.

n 2008 and 2009, for instance, the majority of removals were people who had not been convicted of any crime, according to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data. Through Aug. 2, 51 percent of the 294,230 people deported or forced out this fiscal year were convicted criminals.

FRANCO & OIL

Hugh Thomas's The Spanish Civil War is a very readable history and includes many nuggets like this one:

The Texas Oil Company and, to a lesser extent, Standard Oil of New Jersey, gave much help to Franco by their substantial supplies on credit. Nearly 3 ½ million tons of oil were apparently delivered by these companies to the rebels during the civil war...(page 943)

HOW DID THE NY TIMES MISS THIS?

(h/t Atrios)

The Republican Noise Machine has been going a full speed trying to prevent the creation of a Muslim community center near Ground Zero but that's not reported by Anne Barnard of the NYT.

In fact, she seems to blame the victims, as Adam Serwer points out:

The Times report, however, descends into a kind of "liberal" media known-nothingism when it comes to how this became a controversy, suggesting that " a combination of arguable naïveté, public-relations missteps and a national political climate in which perhaps no preparation could have headed off controversy." This is a remarkable formula that manages to place the blame everywhere except where it belongs -- on a right-wing smear machine that went into overdrive in an effort to portray Rauf and Khan as terrorist sympathizers, an experience no one outside of contemporary partisan politics could have possibly been prepared for.

IT'S ABOUT GROVELING

One of the reasons the wingnuts are so upset about unemployment benefits is the power they give to employees. They would much prefer that the workers go back to 19th Century groveling. Last night, John Gibson related an anecdote from a friend of his that made this point very clearly. The friend owns a restaurant and fired everyone in it. He did hire some back and told Gibson that they work harder but he complained that many were content to take unemployment instead of going back to work for him.

F. A. HAYEK DESCRIBED NEWT GINGRICH OVER 50 YEARS AGO

In 1960, Hayek claimed that American conservatives were really only concerned about power and a former colleague of Gingrich's supports that claim:

Esquire’s John Richardson notes that despite Gingrich’s apocalyptic rhetoric, when encountering radical conservative activists, Gingrich “over and over again…takes the long view and becomes the very soul of probity.” “I wouldn’t be able to describe what his real principles are,” former Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards said of the former speaker. “I never felt that he had any sort of a real compass about what he believed except for the pursuit of power.” (h/t Alex Seitz-Wald at Think Progress)

I THOUGHT WE WERE "USEFUL IDIOTS"

Back in February, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel called us liberals "fucking retarded" and we don't get much love from Press Secretary Gibbs (h/t Atrios):

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

Gibbs should have gone full winger and called us all a bunch of Marxists.

THIS MIGHT BE THE QUOTE OF THE YEAR

David Boies was on Face the Nation yesterday and had this to say about the trial that overturned California's Prop. 8:

We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost.

CONSERVATIVES LOVE THE CONSTITUTION?

(h/t DougJ at Balloon Juice)

Then why do they want to make so many changes to it?

Constitutional Conservatism
Jonathan Chait
August 3, 2010 | 11:44 am
The New Republic

Okay, let's tally up the list of Constitutional amendments that are generally endorsed by mainstream Republicans:

1. The Flag Desecration Amendment

2. Balanced budget amendment

3. Supermajority to raise taxes

4. “Parental rights” amendment – the right of parents to “raise their children as they see fit, introduced last year by Jim DeMint and Peter Hoekstra.

5. Human life amendment, banning abortion

6. The Federal Marriage Amendment, banning gay marriage

7. Believing that the DC Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional, Lisa Murkowski proposed an amendment giving the District a single voting representative.

8. Last year, Jim DeMint introduced a term limits amendment (3 terms in the House, 2 in the Senate).

MAYBE THIS IS TRUE ON HER PLANET

Sharron Angle, AKA Harry Reid's savior, repeats the usual conservative line that America has the best health care in the world and adds her own little bit of krazy:

"But how many people get access to the best healthcare in the world," asks Action News reporter Marco Villarreal.

"The access is not what is being denied. It is the cost that has become prohibitive and that's what we need to address," she answers.

NEXT TIME....

There's post that turn up on POLITICO threads once in a while and tries to show that liberals try to control others but conservatives don't. Last night I realized that abortion and gay marriage would be huge exceptions.

THIS MAY BE WILDLY OPTIMISTIC

But according to one projection, computerizing health care may save tens of billions a year.

Stimulus technology money aims to reduce health care costs
By Max Frumes | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Sunday, August 8, 2010

DANVILLE, Pa. — In the middle of rural Pennsylvania's rolling pastures and farmland sits the sprawling 2 million-square-foot headquarters of what's supposed to be the future of health care.

The Geisinger Health System employs 13,000 people and provides health care to 2.6 million in 42 counties across central and northeastern Pennsylvania. Helicopters fly in and out every day, carrying patients from around the state. Just one of its buildings spans more than five football fields.

The government has chosen this health care metropolis as one of 15 model health care information-technology systems around the country, giving it $16 million in taxpayers' stimulus money to expand its efforts in the hope of dragging much of the country's paper-based health records system and organization into the 21st century.

By modernizing care and generating savings, America's health care costs could drop by as much as $77.8 billion a year, according to a recent report from the Center for Information Technology Leadership, an academic research organization.

TED OLSON 1 FAUX NEWS NIL

Olson smacked around the wingnut objections to legalizing gay marriages and managed to get in a great point:

Two other arguments Olson posed have gotten attention, and they were damn clever ones. The first one was Olson’s comparison of Fox News to gay couples, which has tickled the Internet greatly. “Would you like Fox’s right to free press put up to a vote and say, “Well, if five states have approved it, let’s wait till the other 45 states do?” said Olson. “These are fundamental constitutional rights.” Apples and oranges? Sure. Point made? Damn straight.

WHAT I'M UP AGAINST LOCALLY

back in 1996, I flew out to Tucson to see if I would like to live and work there. The work would be fine but I recall picking up the Tucson Weekly and reading about a GOP state representative who claimed that the Russians were hiding soldiers and wheat (?) in caves all across America in preparation for a takeover.

Things haven't changed much.

Rob Haney isn't just any right-wing nut, he's the elected chairman of the Republican Party of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix. Here's some of his kraziness, courtesy of The Nation:

"One night in the '90s I went to Mass and the priest prayed for forgiveness for Bill Clinton," Haney, an ardent Hayworth supporter, says with obvious disgust. "That was it for me. The US Conference of [Catholic] Bishops, we believe, is a socialist organization with a socialist agenda."

"John McCain is right in bed with them," he continues while munching a bagel. "He says, 'Character matters.' Get me a barf bag! John McCain is the spearhead of socialism in America."