Something from Nothing

The Huffington Post reports that Kirk Cameron, best known for his role in the 1980s sitcom Growing Pains, now spends much of his time advocating for far-right Christian evangelical causes.

The following videos pick apart Cameron's statements on intelligent design.

Watch them:

The Purge has Begun

Glenn Beck "promises to ensure a continued purging of moderates from the Republican Party."

That's right, Glenn "the Drooling Creatin" Beck is creating a right-wing, wingnut, conservative party. And there are candidates who want to join his movement.

Conservative blogger Charles Johnson of the site Little Green Footballs reported yesterday that Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate in the NY-23 special election, signed a pledge to uphold Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project principles in Congress. The signed pledge is available online, and Hoffman touts his endorsement from the 9/12 organization on his website. Like the lobbyist-planned tea parties, the 9/12 Project is a creation of Beck, used to go after Beck’s liberal enemies and to organize hateful anti-Obama rallies.[...]

Along with his corporate front group allies like FreedomWorks and Club for Growth, Beck promises to ensure a continued purging of moderates from the Republican Party.

Unless Republicans start to be as angry in the shift toward the right in their party as they are to whatever Obama does, they might just wake up one morning to find the Republican Party hijacked by the SSSRWNJ's..sanctimonious, shrilly, screaming, right wing nut jobs!!!! h/t Gil Ross

It is Time to Listen to Matthew Hoh

CNN's Fareed Zakaria Interviews State Department Official Matthew Hoh Who Resigned In Protest Over Afghanistan War - 11/01/09

Be Afraid...Be Very Afraid...

...of Republican, GOP'n, Conservatism, Right-Wing'n, Bull Crap'n & Outright Lyin'!!!

This takes the cake from Think Progress:

Few Republican congressional members have served as a greater fount for hyperbolic and uninformed ranting about health care reform as has Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC). As ThinkProgress previously documented, Foxx has claimed Democratic reforms would mean...

seniors are “put to death by their government,” that

health reform is a “distraction,” and that

“there are no Americans who don’t have health care.”

She was at it again today on the House floor, arguing that health reform is a greater threat to our country than “any terrorist right now in any country”:

Everywhere I go in my district, people tell me they are frightened. … I share that fear, and I believe they should be fearful. And I believe the greatest fear that we all should have to our freedom comes from this room — this very room — and what may happen later this week in terms of a tax increase bill masquerading as a health care bill. I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.

Watch it:

I really believe these fear mongers and false information peddlers should look at themselves in the mirror and see it is their ignorance and fear hysteria that is doing more harm than good to this country. They are right to be afraid...of their own shadow!

Rebranding or Purging?

Steve Benin at the Washington Monthly has posted an article about "The Great Purge."

In a district represented by a Republican lawmaker in every election since the Civil War, the national Republican Party not only endorsed the consensus choice of local GOP leaders in the special election in New York's 23rd, they also invested $1 million last month. Yesterday, on the verge of an embarrassing third-place defeat, she quit.

The right-wing inmates have decided it's their asylum now, and they're just getting started. [...]

Scozzafava was a respected local Republican, with a record slightly to the right of most GOP state lawmakers in New York, but she was deemed insufficiently conservative. Sen. Arlen Specter was a Republican senator for nearly three decades, but he was deemed insufficiently conservative. Gov. Charlie Crist is supposed to be a rising GOP star from the nation's largest swing state, but his future is in doubt because he's been deemed insufficiently conservative. Eight House Republicans supported energy reform in July, and the base has targeted them for retribution. Newt Gingrich, for reasons I've never understood, is considered one of the GOP's great idea men. But the Tea Party/wingnut crowd has turned on him, too.

When Newt Gingrich is too moderate, and trying to pull the Republican Party closer to the American mainstream, it's safe to say there's something deeply wrong.

Is this now a Republican Party in which "right-wing nihilists are deliberately driving moderates from the party ranks?"

Have They No Decency?

This Memo is from Michael B. Keegan, President, People For the American Way. It is important to put into context the hate talk of today with the hate speech of the past.

McCarthyism is back. Let's call it what it is.

We are seeing one witch hunt after another led by right-wing opinion leaders, media outlets, organizations and even members of Congress. They pursue personal smear campaigns, grasping at straws to create "guilt by association" and challenge the legitimacy, allegiances and patriotism of their opponents.

Remember the Bush-era attacks on the patriotism of anyone who questioned the administration's policies? Those look tame in comparison. Now, with Democrats in power, the insinuation is that the president, his advisers and his political allies are actively trying to destroy America from within and, despite being elected by the people, are inherently unfit to lead.

We stand up to right-wing bullies every day, and we want to help all courageous Americans do the same. People For the American Way is ready to confront this new McCarthyism head-on. In the coming days and weeks we will be exposing the Right's tactics and rhetoric, creating tools to help activists combat them and educating Americans about the insidious nature of what we see happening in this country, and we will impress upon Americans the urgency of stopping it.

In a 1954 Senate hearing, Army head counsel Joseph Welch famously put Senator Joseph McCarthy in his place, saying, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

In that great moment in American history, Welch called McCarthy out for his "cruelty" and "recklessness." After the testimony, the crowd at the hearing erupted in applause and all of a sudden McCarthy's power started its decline.

It's time for all of us to ask that same question -- Have you no sense of decency? -- of those on the Right who have resurrected McCarthy's tactics.

Radical Right activists ("Birthers," "Tea Baggers"), paranoid anti-government extremists and irresponsible media personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh (and media outlets like FOX News) -- in many cases with the backing of entrenched right-wing and corporate interest groups -- have simultaneously raised the ominous, not to mention incompatible, specters of socialism, communism, fascism, Nazism and infiltration by foreign elements. This has created a backdrop of suspicion in which McCarthy-like intimidation, guilt by association and character assassination thrive.

In the last two weeks alone, we've seen:

• 53 right-wing members of Congress sign a letter to the President requesting that he fire Kevin Jennings who heads the office at the Department of Education tasked with keeping schools safe, for "promoting homosexuality and pushing a pro-homosexual agenda in America's schools." Jennings, a gay man and founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), has been the target of right-wing groups like Family Research Council for months. He was also the victim of false accusations that he broke the law in counseling an underage student when he was a teacher -- and the congressional letter included that allegation even though the office of the letter's primary signer, Rep. Steve King, had been made aware that the story was wrong.

• Glenn Beck, whose "6 degrees of Obama" guilt-by-association attacks have generally lacked any shred of coherence, has been going after White House Communications Director Anita Dunn for once offhandedly referring to Mao Tse-tung (along with Mother Teresa) as one of her favorite political philosophers. He has repeatedly implied that this means she must endorse his heinous deeds and personal ideology while remaining conspicuously silent about the fact that many icons of the conservative movement have approvingly cited the political writings and tactics of communists like Mao, Lenin and the Viet Cong.

• Just this past Sunday, the notoriously right-wing editorial page of the Washington Times savaged Judge Edward Chen, who is nominated to the Northern District Court of California, opening the piece with the sentence, "Another day, another Obama nominee who doesn't appear to love America." For its 'evidence,' the editorial cites: Chen's acknowledgement of what we all know -- that a judge's life experiences affect how he or she views a case (shades of the attacks against Sonia Sotomayor); the fact that he expressed concern -- as many thinking Americans did -- about potential recriminations for Muslim Americans following the tragedy of September 11; and his former work with the ACLU.

Of course, the use of race-baiting, red-baiting, gay-baiting and lies to characterize people as enemies of America doesn't stop with attacks on administration officials and nominees. There have been many more examples, and sadly, there will undoubtedly be many more to come.

That's why we must all be vigilant. We must call out fear-mongering and intimidation in government, in the media and in our own communities. And when we confront it, we must ask the vital question, "Have you no sense of decency?"

People For the American Way is getting out in front of this troubling and pervasive new trend. Through research, educational materials and activism tools, we'll give you what you need to stand up to the Right and McCarthyism.

You can watch Joseph Welch take on McCarthy in that famous 1954 exchange here:

"Have you no sense of decency?" Let us not forget!

Money is Drying Up for Blue Dogs

In March of 2009, Chris Bowers from Open Left suggested that, "We simply must stop funneling money to the Blue Dog coalition."

Let's take a quick review of the Blue Dog behavior we are ratifying. The Blue Dog coalition has made it clear that they believe they have veto power over the entire agenda of the Obama administration and the Democratic congressional leadership. After a meeting with President Obama three weeks before the election, the Blue Dogs declared:

"He also recognized that we had the numbers to block or clear" legislation coming from the White House if he is elected.

If they are coasting that they can block or clear whatever legislation they want, the Blue Dogs consider themselves to be in charge of D.C., not Speaker Pelosi or President Obama. Some highlight of their past behavior include being the driving force in the Democratic Party behind the 2005 bankruptcy bill (they voted 32-4 in favor), the 2006 ending of habeus corpus, the 2007 Iraq War blank check, and the 2008 FISA re-write (see here for both). So far in 2009, they only allowed the stimulus package to go through after extracting a pay-go promise from the Obama administration. Last month, they joined with the New Democrats to block foreclosure relief legislation, which Evan Bayh's Blue Dogs in the Senate seem to have killed. And most of them will vote against the budget, too.

The Blue Dogs are an overt obstacle to progressive governance. For crying out loud, their entire name comes from feeling "choked blue by the left-wing of the party." In the recent past, they have refused to send money to the DCCC because another member of Congress criticized them on Iraq. They are overtly anti-progressive and anti-left wing. They don't even work to help other members of the party. So, why are we working to help them?

As previously discussed, Blue Dog Sen Evan Bayh has a monetary incentive to stop a real and robust healthcare reform including a Public Option from becoming reality.

Finally, a Center for Public Integrity analysis shows that fundraising for the Blue Dog Democrat Coalition has significantly been cut over the course of the year.

It’s official. The Blue Dog’s fundraising slowdown was not just a symptom of the dog days of summer. Newly released public disclosure forms indicate that over September, the coalition’s PAC took in its smallest monthly total yet this year.

Our analysis of the fiscally conservative and increasingly influential Blue Dog Coalition and its funding noted that the group’s political action committee had averaged more than $176,000 in receipts from other PACs over the first half of 2009. Their monthly haul dropped to a surprisingly low $27,000 in July, rebounded somewhat in August, and but then dropped again to just $12,500 in September.

That September money came from just three donations — $5,000 from accounting and professional services giant Ernst & Young’s PAC, $2,500 from the Food Marketing Institute PAC, and $5,000 from the National Rifle Association of America Political Victory Fund.

After raising $1.1 million from January to June, the committee raised less than $87,000 between July and September — less than it brought in during any one of the preceding five months. And in just three months, the Blue Dog PAC’s monthly fundraising average dropped by more than $50,000 — probably not the sort of fiscal conservatism the 52-member coalition was hoping for.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/27/blue-dog-fundraising-dimi_n_335448.html

Ask yourself, is it undemocratic when our elected officials believe that their constituents are corporate supporters rather than the people who elected them?

Lack of Class of the Conservative in NY-23 Race

The Daily Kos has the lowdown on the NY-23 race.

For all intents and purposes, the special election to replace Republican Congressman John McHugh should have been over the second GOP nominee DeDe Scozzafava decided to fall on her sword and drop out of the election.

With the battle between Democrat Bill Owens and third-party insurgent candidate Doug Hoffman within the margin of error, Hoffman should have picked off the bulk of the Republican vote from Scozzafava's remaining core group of supporters, and that should have been the ball game.

Few people suspected that in an historically Republican district, Owens could survive without split opposition.

But, then, by virtue of his own gracelessness, Doug Hoffman complicated matters...for himself.

Just appreciate the distinction between the candidate statements that emanated from Scozzafava's stunning decision to suspend her campaign.

First, the statement by Democrat Bill Owens, which offered a very conciliatory tone:

"Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava has been an honorable public servant for years now and I have a tremendous amount of respect for her and her commitment to her principles. While we disagree on certain issues, we share a dedication to serving the best interests of Upstate New York and the Obama administration's efforts to get our economy back on track. Those interests will always be my highest priority."

Contrast that statement with this sneering, almost taunting, statement from Doug Hoffman:

"This morning's events prove what we have said for the last week; this campaign is a horserace between me and Nancy Pelosi's handpicked candidate, Bill Owens. At this moment, the Democratic Party, the Working Families Party, ACORN, Big Labor and pro-abortion groups are flooding the district with troops and they are flooding the airwaves with a million dollars worth of negative ads. They are throwing mud; they are trying to stop me."

To give a succinct recap: Owens praised Scozzafava and promised to work for upstate New York. Hoffman cackled a quick "I told you so" before returning on the attack.

That might explain why a large number of Scozzafava supporters, from the head of the state's Independence Party to several voices within organized labor, immediately turned to the Democrat Owens rather than her fellow Republican, Hoffman. This morning, one of the more prominent newspapers in the district, The Watertown Daily Times, followed suit, switching its endorsement from Scozzafava to Owens.

And then, in the second shocker from her in as many days, the Republican nominee endorsed the Democratic nominee:

Since announcing the suspension of my campaign, I have thought long and hard about what is best for the people of this District, and how to answer your questions. This is not a decision that I have made lightly.

You know me, and throughout my career, I have been always been an independent voice for the people I represent. I have stood for our honest principles, and a truthful discussion of the issues, even when it cost me personally and politically. Since beginning my campaign, I have told you that this election is not about me; it’s about the people of this District.

It is in this spirit that I am writing to let you know I am supporting Bill Owens for Congress and urge you to do the same.

Now, this is not to say that Scozzafava, a social moderate, would have sent an endorsement letter for right-wing ideologue Doug Hoffman if only he had been nicer to her. But her initial statement on Saturday seemed to make a very neutral statement. That neutrality had disappeared just 24 hours later. It is hard not to conclude that Owens' graciousness, and Hoffman's arrogance, might have pushed Scozzafava off of the fence.

In the final analysis, it might not matter, of course. Owens is still fighting upstream in a GOP district against what is now for all intents and purposes a single GOP opponent. But Hoffman's own lack of class might have made this a lot of harder on him than it could have been.

If the Cconservative Doug Hoffman wins, the radical right will claim it as a victory. If Democrat Bill Owens wins, the Republicans will claim foul. This is getting interesting!

Does President Obama Get It?

Looking at the Bible through Cartoons UPDATE

The Book of Genesis, Illustrated by R. Crumb: A Review
By Greta Christiana's Blog

It's true what they say. Sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Especially when those pictures are drawn by Robert Crumb.

And especially when those words come from the Bible.

For those who haven't heard yet: Legendary comics artist Robert Crumb has just come out with his new book: The Book of Genesis, Illustrated by R. Crumb, a magnum opus, five years in the making, telling the complete, unedited book of Genesis in graphic novel form. And I'm finding it fascinating. It's masterfully illustrated, of course, Crumb being among the very best creators in this burgeoning literary form. And it's getting Genesis across to me, deep into my brain and my imagination, in a way that it had never quite gotten there before.

Of course I've read Genesis. More than once. It's been a little while since I've read the whole thing all the way through, but it's not like it's unfamiliar. But there's something about seeing the story fleshed out in images to make some of its more striking narrative turns leap out and grab your brain by the root. There's nothing quite like seeing the two different creation stories enacted on the page to make you go, "Hey! That's right! Two completely different creation stories!" There's nothing quite like seeing Lot offer his daughters to be gang-raped to make you recoil in shock and moral horror. There's nothing quite like seeing the crazed dread and burning determination in Abraham's eyes as he prepares the sacrifice of his own son to make you feel the enormity of this act. Reading these stories in words conveys the ideas; seeing them in images conveys the visceral impact. It makes it all seem vividly, immediately, humanly real.

Now, that is something of a mixed blessing. Spending a few days with the characters in Genesis isn't the most relaxing literary vacation you'll ever take. Richard Dawkins wasn't kidding when he said, "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction." The God character in Genesis is cruel, violent, callous, insecure, power-hungry, paranoid, hot-tempered, morally fickle... I could go on and on. And God's followers aren't much better. They lie, they scheme, they cheat one another, they conquer other villages with bloodthirsty imperialist glee, they kill at the drop of a hat. This isn't Beatrix Potter here. It's more like Dangerous Liaisons by way of Quentin Tarantino. With tents, sand, and sheep.

Yet at the same time, there's an unexpected side effect to reading this story in images as well as words. And that's that the story becomes more... well, more of a story. Reading it in comics form made it easier for me to set aside, just for a moment, the relentless hammering on the text that I typically engage in when I read the Bible: the theological debates, the treasure hunt for inaccuracies and inconsistencies, the incessant "How did this pissy, jealous, temperamental warrior god get shoehorned into the All-Knowing All-Powerful All-Good ideal again?" bafflement. It made it easier to set all that aside... and just read it as a story. A story about some very human, very fallible characters: strong and interesting, but not moral paragons by any stretch of the imagination... and not really intended to be.

Including the God character. Who, in many ways, is the most human and the most fallible of them all.


[Click on pictures to enlarge]

Read more>>>here.





___________________________________________
UPDATE: For another review see:

Crumb’s Genesis

by Paul W. Morris

Keep on truckin’ in the Garden of Eden.

Liz Cheney, The Defender of Lies

Lawrence O'Donnell tears into Liz Cheney for her remarks criticizing President Obama for his visit to Dover AFB. Liz Cheney lies again. Chip off the old block.

Via Crooks and Liars:

O'DONNELL: When President Obama honored our Afghanistan war dead by taking part in a military ritual at Dover Air Force Base yesterday, it was easily predictable that a Republican would criticize him for it. And in our fourth story on the Countdown, the former Vice President's pet attack dog, his daughter Liz Cheney, has now done just that. And once again, she wasn't going to let the facts get in the way.

On the John Gibson radio show yesterday, Ms. Cheney was rehashing her father's fact-free critique of President Obama's war in Afghanistan, and then Mr. Gibson asked her about the President's appearance at Dover Air Force Base.

LIZ CHENEY (RADIO AUDIO): I don't know why he went to Dover. I mean, I think that clearly it is very important for a commander-in-chief, whenever he can in whatever way it possible, to pay tribute to our fallen soldiers, our fallen military folks. But, I think, you know, what President Bush used to do was to it without the cameras, and I don't understand sort of showing up with the White House Press Pool with photographers and asking the family if you can take pictures. I just... that's really hard for me to get my head around—I think it's an honorable and important thing for us to pay tribute. There's no greater sacrifice people make to the nation. But, it was a surprising way for the President to choose to do it.

O'DONNELL: As we mentioned yesterday, President Bush never went to Dover Air Force Base to honor dead American soldiers on their final journey. And Vice President Cheney... never did either.

Hey Liz, have you ever lost a relative in battle? I have. My cousin Johnny, West Point graduate like his father before him. I wish the President or the Vice President had met his casket on the way home.

You know what 'never' means, Liz? It means zero. It means that in over seven years of two wars, your dad never left the comfort of his White House office or the Vice President's mansion and got himself up to Dover to bear witness to how his warmongering fell on families of dead American soldiers. Never, not once.

Liz, don't let your dad do this to you. Don't let him parade you onto the stage to defend the indefensible. Let him suffer the full weight of the shame that we know he must feel when he watches Barack Obama do what he never had the decency to do.

President Bush did meet with grieving military families in private, and he went to military hospitals to visit the wounded. As for Ms. Cheney's reference to cameras, the policy of banning media coverage of coffins continued unaltered throughout the Bush administration. Thus, even families that wanted media coverage of their loved one's ceremony were not given any choice in the matter.

Furthermore, President Obama did not make any special requests to any of yesterday's eighteen families as Ms. Cheney implies, I mean lies. The vast majority of those families had already made their individual decisions about media coverage under the current policy before the notification that President Obama would be part of the ceremony.

As for Dick Cheney, when he was Vice President, he sometimes met with the war wounded, but like President Bush, he never went to Dover, either. Never.

And a reminder, Mr. Cheney successfully sought out five deferments from the draft to avoid having to serve his country in the Vietnam War. Mr. Cheney's fifth and final deferment a result of his wife's becoming pregnant with Liz. Mr. Cheney was granted a 3A status, the hardship exemption by his draft board, which was available to men with children at that time.

Another South Carolina Republican Sex Scandal

The Family Values Party

It's Time to Rethink Strategies

President Obama has a difficult decision to make in Afghanistan. Should the U.S. add more troops, or change strategies in Afghanistan?

Matthew Hoh, a highly regarded U.S. foreign service officer, who also served as a Marine captain in Iraq, has made his decison.

Hoh has resigned over what he sees as a hopeless situation in Afghanistan. In his resignation letter, Hoh said he had "lost understanding" of why the U.S. is fighting, and that the presence of foreign soldiers just fuels the insurgency.

Glenn Greenwald thinks Hoh's resignation is remarkable.

[I]t entails the sort of career sacrifice in the name of principle that has been so rare over the last decade, but even more so because of the extraordinary four-page letter (.pdf) he wrote explaining his reasoning.

Hoh's letter should be read in its entirety, but I want to highlight one part. He begins by noting that "next fall, the United States' occupation will equal in length the Soviet Union's own physical involvement in Afghanistan," and contends that our unwanted occupation combined with our support for a deeply corrupt government "reminds [him] horribly of our involvement in South Vietnam." He then explains that most of the people we are fighting are not loyal to the Taliban or driven by any other nefarious aim, but instead are driven principally by resistance to the presence of foreign troops in their provinces and villages.

The Pashtun insurgency, which is composed of multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups, is fed by what is perceoved by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies.

The United States military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency.

As John Nichols sums up Hoh's words, the continued U.S. presence is making things worse rather than better in Afghanistan.That's not a radical conclusion.

It parallels statements made by veteran Central Intelligence Agency analysts, diplomats and soldiers in Robert Greenwald's powerful documentary, "Rethink Afghanistan."

As such, the decorated Marine says, the point of the continued occupation is called into question.

Making his objections known as President Obama is weighing calls for a dramatic expansion of the U.S. military force in Afghanistan, Hoh's letter is a blockbuster.

As Glenn Greenwald asks:

How long are we going to continue to do this? We invade and occupy a country, and then label as "insurgents" or even "terrorists" the people in that country who fight against our invasion and occupation. With the most circular logic imaginable, we then insist that we must remain in order to defeat the "insurgents" and "terrorists" -- largely composed of people whose only cause for fighting is our presence in their country.

Breaking CA News

Gavin Newsom quits gov.'s race Via Los Angeles Times The San Francisco mayor is withdrawing from the Democratic primary amid lackluster poll numbers and meager fundraising receipts. His withdrawal leaves state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown with little opposition in the primary.

Who Gets Credit for the Stimulus?

Is the stimulus working?

The figures show that July through September, the economy grew at a rate of 3.5%.

Can you imagine?

I feel like we should all be in Times Square kissing strangers. Except that gets you arrested now.

In any case -- does the stimulus get the credit. What are the economists saying?

"This is very much in line with an economy that is growing of its own merit not simply because of support from government."

The economy growing on its OWN. So -- if the numbers are showing MORE than just the effect of Cash for Clunkers, does that mean the stimulus was the spark, or would the economy have recovered without it?

I can answer that! If this turns out to be a real recovery -- there is NO WAY the stimulus gets the credit.

Remember what people were calling it?

"Relentless march towards Socialism designed to subvert the work of the individual."

It was socialism:

"We're here to stop Barack Obama's Socialist revolution."

In fact it was worse than Socialism: (!)

"I think he's a Fascist."

Fascism:

"Non-violent Fascism."

So no way the Obama stimulus gets the credit because that would mean that the capitalist's best friend is fascism.

But then who SHOULD get the credit! I say it's this guy:

"The Bible teaches that God wants you rich, that God wants you to have more than enough."

And this guy:

"Money is trying to get in to your hands right now even as I speak."

And maybe even this guy who keeps calling me:

"Hi, this is Victor Simmons with Suburban Debt Solutions. We'll even loan you $1000 to get you started."

I feel like kissing a stranger.