The Paleo-Americans at the Lincoln Memorial (PALM) Saturday fun fest is underway.
Michele Bachmann:
The focus of the rally will be on American exceptionalism. Hence, the title Restoring Honor….
I have had African Americans, Latino’s, men, woman, young, old, retired and people from every economic strata contact me with their concern for the Obama Agenda. They are all supportive of restoring America back to our Constitutional framework….
Just so you know my favorite Bachmann Turner Overdrive song is “Taking Care of Business”!
The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to ensure maximum individual liberties by placing restraints on the power of the federal government to act….
It’s like George Bush was never president, and the Republican party never jammed war, electronic snooping, military tribunals or the Dept. of Homeland Security through Congress. Freedom? As in freedom to buy elections so that Wall Street can be self-regulated?
Bob Herbert:
Beck is a provocateur who likes to play with matches in the tinderbox of racial and ethnic confrontation. He seems oblivious to the real danger of his execrable behavior. He famously described President Obama as a man “who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”
He is an integral part of the vicious effort by the Tea Party and other elements of the right wing to portray Mr. Obama as somehow alien, a strange figure who is separate and apart from — outside of — ordinary American life. As the watchdog group Media Matters for America has noted, Beck said of the president, “He chose to use the name, Barack, for a reason, to identify not with America — you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify, with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical?”
Facts and reality mean nothing to Beck. And there is no road too low for him to slither upon. The Southern Poverty Law Center tells us that in a twist on the civil rights movement, Beck said on the air that he “wouldn’t be surprised if in our lifetime dogs and fire hoses are released or opened on us. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of us get a billy club to the head. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us go to jail — just like Martin Luther King did — on trumped-up charges. Tough times are coming.”
Tough times are coming indeed, the inevitable legacy of eight years of deficit spending coming hard on the heels of eight years of austerity preceded by twelve years of maniacal spending sprees as Reagan-Bush weaponed up.
How fucked are we? The U.S. birth rate (which peaked as recently as 2007), has just cratered to its lowest level in a hundred years. I’d call this the ultimate consumer confidence poll, and one we just flunked big time.
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If you must watch, Driftglass has the 3-D glasses you’ll need to catch all the special effects. Also:
Neiwert on MLK haters
Stewart: I have a scheme
Mormon Glenn’s Catholic predecessor
Juan Cole has a draft of Beck’s speech
Digby on the stupendosity of it all
The oppression of religious liberty
Isaiah J. Poole on the Rebuild America march in Detroit
Tony “the Vegan/animal rights activist” La Russa endorses Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck’s MLK chalkboard
Glenn Beck’s divine destiny
TBogg on Beckstock
BTW, I tried to check out the march on the network’s websites. Do those fuckers EVER load? For the bandwidth they were demanding from me, I could have downloaded Titanic in hi-def. More proof (to me) that the news networks play their viewers for chumps.
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At the last Yearly Kos I attended a panel devoted to the linguistic stylings of George Lakoff. When it was done I turned to the guy next to me and said that I thought that the better we adopted the tactic of framing, the more we would sound exactly like the fearmongering Republicans.
Now The Daily Beast has a review of Markos Moulitsas’ new book, and they seem to think Moulitsas sounds a lot like the people he’s criticizing.
I honor Markos for lots of things, but I’ve never thought him to have a particularly deep or sophisticated take on politics. Doing what they do is not going to move things forward. Not at all.
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I do not at all appreciate Sarah Palin’s sock puppet referencing Minnesota’s very painful, slowly counted and Republican obstructed 2008 Senate election.
If Murkowski makes this a three-way race, the Democrat will win. If she doesn’t, the Democrats will win.
Alaska has had its fill of Palin’s politics. An abortion prop won’t carry the day in November, and calling Murkowski a prostitute isn’t helpful even if that is an accurate description of most U.S. Senators.
Still more talk of a third party candidate. More wingnuttery:
Erick Erickson’s man crush on Vlad Putin
Trumka on Palin
Talton on the kookocracy
Driving that train, high on insane….
Dancing with B-listers
Bush best friends forever: the Sauds
Derbyshire gets punked by Pam Geller
MinnGOoPer sarcasm is off the charts (this from the same fascist bastards who wouldn’t let Minnesota teenagers attend a Bush rally because they had a pro-Democrat bumpersticker on their car)
Still e-stealing elections (not even trying to pretend they’re not)
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Sometimes I think Josh Marshall’s canny grasp of the news comes at the expense of his understanding of how politics work.
In yesterday’s post-mortems about the apparent big upset in Alaska, I heard a lot of commentators going back and forth about Sarah Palin’s winning percentage in the various endorsements she’s made over the last year. I think that line of commentary misses the point. While her percentage is pretty decent, what really stands out has been her ability to completely transform a handful of races, taking some candidates who weren’t even in contention and make them winners, almost entirely on the strength of her endorsement.
Any student of politics could have picked more primary winners than Palin did. Primaries and caucuses are tailor made for extremists. The Republican party is going to fall flat on its face this November because Palin’s candidates are not electable.
Republican wins will come in states where the Netroots just couldn’t stay the fuck out of the primary process. Activists pick the candidates but if they want to win in the fall, they really need to back the fuck off and let real voters pick the primary winners. Leveraging the crazy in August is a ticket for losing in November.
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Great quote find from Helmut:
It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?
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How Jack DeCoster did an end around on regulators after he was justly banned from further expanding his non-hygenic egg operations:
In 2000, DeCoster faced several lawsuits that accused him polluting Iowa rivers and streams with hog manure. That resulted in the state labeling him a habitual violator after he lost a series of cases.
The designation banned DeCoster from establishing any more animal farms through October 2004. It also included stiffer punishment for any future violations, a $150,000 fine and a requirement that he improve his handling of manure.
Weeks after DeCoster accepted habitual violator status, his associates founded Environ Egg. Its registered agent was a Des Moines lawyer who had represented DeCoster in the environmental lawsuits.
Soon, the company was pushing for approval of a project that would house 1.8 million hens near Galt.
The state issued the permit, believing that DeCoster was “neither constructing nor financing the project,” wrote Wayne Farrand, then a supervisor in DNR’s wastewater section.
Environ later transferred ownership to a company called Environ/Wright County Inc., which leases the site to Wright County Egg – owned by DeCoster.
By 2007, DeCoster was signing documents as owner.
Dude belongs in prison. He should be charged for each and every person he sickened with his dirty eggs. [More from Jeralyn on life in American prisons.]
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More econacy:
Avedon Carol on Wall Street Rules
They want more deregulation?
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War and peace, all in the same headline:
[link]
See also, Any bastard can be a rabbi:
Some 30 years ago, the Hebrew slogan was coined: “Medinat halakha – halkha hamedina,” which means more or less that if Israel becomes a state governed by Jewish law, that will be the end of the state. Is the end near? It is coming….
[T]hey are assembling communities of supporters – 250 of their species gathered last week to lend support to their colleagues, Dov Lior and Yaakov Yosef, who have approved the book of abomination, “Torat Hamelech” (The King’s Torah ) written by one Yitzhak Shapira from the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in Yitzhar.
This theological treatise is a kind of guide to the perplexed – when it is permitted to kill Gentiles in general and babies in particular, and all of this according to Jewish law.
The King’s Torah sounds very much like A Protocol for the Elders of Zion, except this one’s for real. Just like Glenn Beck, just like Rush Limbaugh, just like End Times preacher John Hagee. You’d have to turn to the pages of DC or Marvel to find a bigger assemblage of villainy.
This is what the Lubbavitcher extremists teach. Because of these beliefs, rightwing Jews believe themselves to be entitled to screw over non-Jews in business deals, to cloister themselves off from those who believe otherwise, and even to murder with impunity as they have done repeatedly in Lebanon and Gaza.
United with the Christian right, these paranoid messianics have the potential to eclipse Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin and Hitler’s legacies.
With our help, of course.
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The Tell-Tale Return Address.
As opposed to the wholly Minnesota originated local content.
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Etc.:
Ten cars that refuse to die (frankly, it’s been decades since I was able to “use” a car up — engines just don’t die anymore, at least not General Motors’ motors)
Cloned steer takes top honors at Iowa State Fair
Daily Beast’s smartest cities in America has Ames at #15, Rochester #18, Iowa City #20 (as always, it’s a bullshit list that penalizes large cities for their diversity instead of measuring brainiacs only which would favor large population centers)
Malpractice results in open-heart surgery baby’s system being flushed with alcohol
Bill O’Reilley’s porn interviews
Dirpy converts your favorite YouTube video into an .mp3 file!
Les NYTimes perdu
Banning pawnshops: the poor may not sell their goods but must instead give up everything that doesn’t fit into one shopping cart
Samsung Blu-ray update won’t let you watch Warner or Universal movies (better living through predatory capitalism)
Locking up the past behind paywalls
Creating royalty-free cultural archives
PZ seems to be feeling better
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Very light Fair traffic this morning. Not unusual. The early crowd is disproportionately made up of professional Fair goers who camp on the grounds and only leave to join in the obligatory “let’s see how badly we can jam up Snelling Avenue traffic” parade.
Black Robe Regiment? Do the ret.-tards who attended that freaking rally have any idea how extreme or heretical Beck’s theology is?
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Econacy:
