GEICO Is Socialist! State Farm Is Socialist! Allstate Is Socialist! All Insurance Is SOCIALIST! - Democratic Underground

GEICO Is Socialist! State Farm Is Socialist! Allstate Is Socialist! All Insurance Is SOCIALIST! - Democratic Underground

Here's the video:

I wish this man represented my district! And I'm sure he meant to say not go to jail. You'll have to listen to find out what I mean.

James Inhofe Wins GOP Hypocrite of the Week Award For His Concern For Sanctity of Non-Gay Life Only | BuzzFlash.org

James Inhofe Wins GOP Hypocrite of the Week Award For His Concern For Sanctity of Non-Gay Life Only | BuzzFlash.org

Buzzflash is calling out the good senator as one whom Rachel Maddow exposed as a supporter of the Ugandan legislative initiative to proscribe the death penalty to gays via his involvement in the secretive religious organization called the family.  Kudos to Buzzflash and Rachel Maddow.

Accepting Peace Prize, Obama Evokes ‘Just War’ - NYTimes.com

Accepting Peace Prize, Obama Evokes ‘Just War’ - NYTimes.com"By JEFF ZELENY 18 minutes ago
Formally accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Thursday, President Obama robustly defended the use of military force “on humanitarian grounds” and to preserve peace."  This is one of those days when I just don't have the energy to get into the whole war peace debate thing, so don't look to me for answers if yet another war breaks out.  If, however, peace breaks out ...

Senate tentatively OKs dropping public insurance option | National | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Senate tentatively OKs dropping public insurance option | National | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle:

"WASHINGTON — Senate negotiators struck a tentative agreement Tuesday night to replace the controversial government-run insurance plan in their version of health-care legislation, hoping to remove one of the last major roadblocks preventing the bill from moving to a final vote in the chamber.
“We have a broad agreement,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters at the Capitol. “Tonight, we’ve overcome a real problem that we had.”

My comment = "Whew! A public option might have meant the end of all the "help the Jones family pay the medical bills so their daughter Suzie will live" bake sales at the entrance to Krogers. Now we can count on a never ending supply of delicious home baked brownies.
I just knew Congress would come through with providing Americans the best health care a bake sale can buy! Hmmm, pass the cookies."  But don't look for it. It was removed by the censors at the Chronicle.

Kucinich: US tax dollars help fund Taliban attacks | Raw Story

Kucinich: US tax dollars help fund Taliban attacks | Raw Story:From the story at Raw Story "Ohio's Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a strident anti-war crusader, cited a report on the floor of the House of Representatives Tuesday which claims that US tax dollars used by defense contractors to bribe the Taliban in Afghanistan ultimately help fund attacks 'on our troops.'

“U.S. contractors are paying U.S. tax dollars to the Taliban in order to protect the delivery of U.S. shipments of U.S. goods to U.S. soldiers so that our soldiers can fight the Taliban,' Kucinich's press release sent to RAW STORY states."

  I'm thinking if one were to investigate the history of U. S. military engagements one could site numerous incidents of active duty military personnel profiting from illegal activity during said engagements. I would bet, however, that those activities wold pale in comparison to the contractor fraud perpetrated since the Reagan/Rumsfeld privatization of the military.

Fox News anchor suggests abortions would help control low-income population | Raw Story

Fox News anchor suggests abortions would help control low-income population | Raw Story:  The rest of the story is at Raw Story "Even by the standards of Fox News, which routinely takes a drubbing from liberal critics over sensationalist rhetoric, a comment by Fox News anchor Alisyn Camerota Monday seemed to toe the most outrageous line."  

It's always been a somewhat evil contention of mine that were it pointed out to the "high & mighty", who go on about the sanctity of life in the womb, that we are no longer an agrarian or manufacturing society.  And that large families and pools of semi-skilled workers no longer serve our economic model they would begin to arrive at this woman's conclusion.  Of course a less vicious and scurrilous person would propose education and encouragement of effective birth control and family planning.

Here's the video:

It's All About Joe

Here's the video, and a tip of the hat to Americablog.

Sharing an email from Media Matters

I would encourage you to subscribe to Media Matters

Media Matters: On Afghanistan, Fox News decides, then reports

President Obama never had a chance ...

It didn't matter what decision he came to regarding troop levels in Afghanistan, or what he said about the ongoing conflict there, because Fox News and the rest of the conservative media had already reached two conclusions. First, he took too long. Second, he was wrong.

Since the Bush administration stuck him with the untended-to mess in Afghanistan, Obama had to make a choice -- more troops, fewer troops, withdrawal. When Obama signaled that he actually wanted to consider his options before making a decision, the Fox News followed the lead of Dick Cheney -- one of the primary authors of the Afghanistan debacle -- in accusing the president of "dithering" and "inaction." Glenn Beck, never one to be subtle or reasonable, accused the president of "letting our troops literally bleed and die" and said Obama would "pay for it" in the hereafter.

Of course, Cheney's idea of "dithering" is another man's idea of a "substantive discussion" that came as part of a "good" process. That other man just so happens to be Gen. David Petraeus, who was asked by MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on December 2 if Obama had been "dithering" as Cheney alleged. Petraeus responded: "This process was actually quite good, Joe. It was a very substantive discussion. Everybody's assumptions and views were tested. I think out of this have come sharpened objectives, a very good understanding of the challenges and the difficulties and what must be done in a much more detailed and nuanced fashion."

But the big moment finally arrived, and Obama made his decision -- 30,000 more troops, with a set time limit of July 2011. The decision was announced during a prime-time speech to the nation on December 1. Before the teleprompters had even cooled down, Fox News got right to the mischief. Bill O'Reilly chastised the president for not "saying, 'Look, these are bad guys. We're fighting evil.' " While it's true that Obama didn't use those exact words, he did use some that sounded awfully similar, like when he called Al Qaeda "extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam ... to justify the slaughter of innocents," and when he called the Taliban "a ruthless, repressive, and radical movement."

Other Fox News personalities got in on the fun -- the crew of Fox & Friends complained that Obama never said the word "win" during the speech, even though he spoke several times about the "successful" conclusion to the war. And when they weren't complaining about things that Obama didn't (but really did) say, conservatives were complaining that it wasn't the best speech the world had ever seen. O'Reilly said it was "not exactly the Gettysburg Address." Sean Hannity said: "I didn't hear Winston Churchill, I didn't hear Ronald Reagan, I didn't hear George Bush." Charles Krauthammer was hoping to get his Shakespeare fix, lamenting that it wasn't "exactly the kind of speech that you would have heard from Henry V."

And speaking of history, conservatives took the occasion of Obama's speech to do a little rewriting of the historical record. Former Bush adviser Karl Rove said Obama was "in no position whatsoever to criticize what President Bush did" in Afghanistan because "at the time, he didn't speak out on this." Rove must've been too busy ignoring subpoenas to have noticed the many, many, many times that Obama spoke out against the Bush administration's Afghanistan policy. And then there was Hannity, who disregarded the many thousand troops Obama sent to Afghanistan earlier this year in claiming that the president has "had a "less-than-consistent stance on the issue of Afghanistan."

The bottom line is that for conservatives, there are plenty of substantive ways to disagree with Obama's policy prescriptions. He's a Democrat, he's going to propose policies that fall on the left side of the spectrum, and conservatives can and should bring to the table what facts they can in making their counter-arguments. But judging by their treatment of Obama's Afghanistan policy, Fox News isn't interested in that. They're simply going to reflexively gainsay anything Obama does. That's why you get superficial, ludicrous, and transparently false claims like these -- the point isn't to be right; the point is to say the other guy is wrong.

People For the American Way: Right Wing Watch In Focus - Rise of the New McCarthyism: How Right Wing Extremists Try to Paralyze Government Through Ideological Smears and Baseless Attacks

People For the American Way: Right Wing Watch In Focus - Rise of the New McCarthyism: How Right Wing Extremists Try to Paralyze Government Through Ideological Smears and Baseless Attacks

Introduction

On December 2, 1954, the U.S. Senate voted to censure Sen. Joseph McCarthy, bringing to an end four years of political intimidation and character assassination so ferocious that McCarthy’s name is still synonymous with a particularly destructive form of demagoguery.

McCarthy’s campaign against supposedly widespread communist infiltration of the U.S. government brought down sitting Senators and intimidated even President Eisenhower (who loathed McCarthy) and his advisors. McCarthy’s campaign was boosted by conservative think tanks, media figures, and clergy, and abetted for years by the unwillingness of most of his colleagues to stand up against his false charges and clear abuses of power.

It all sounds so familiar.  I'm a member of People For and encourage others to also join.

Super Vidoqo: Sarah Palin & Al Qaeda

Super Vidoqo: Sarah Palin & Al Qaeda:I really love this post at suprvidoqo. It begins "I've been thinking about the trap so many liberals fall into with conservative ideologues. Basically, we're suckers. Our political enterprise is one of exploration. This is why academia & journalism, two pillars of civilization, are fundamentally liberal. Professors don't get to throw up their hands and say (as the modern conservative might), 'There, all finished! We've got it pretty well figured out.' Journalists don't get to simply report events that unfold, like automatons."

  The author then goes on to clearly define the basic difference between the guideposts with which conservative and liberal thinkers construct their reactions to the events and things of their respective worlds.  Do yourself a favor and click on over there to read the entire post.  And make sure to read the follow up posts.

Call the Waaaaahmbulance! Senators who voted against Al Franken's anti-rape amendment blame him for resulting bad PR | Crooks and Liars

Call the Waaaaahmbulance! Senators who voted against Al Franken's anti-rape amendment blame him for resulting bad PR | Crooks and Liars

Here's the video:

I like when Keith says "the liberal blogoshpere, which apparently rules the world"

Saturday morning cartoons

The Facts

The Facts:

Quoting a particularly disturbing letter to the editor of the Facts, "Send criminals to fight our wars

Draft, please do, but only the child molesters, murderers and rapist. Why do we have to take care of people who do the things?

We as taxpayers are paying for the people in prisons. What does that say about us? Oh, that its OK to do crimes cause you will get free meals, medical, dental and a free education?

Send those people over there to fight. Who cares if they die? They have done wrong. I bet there would be a lot less crime then.

Crystal Andrews, Freeport"

There is so much wrong about this sentiment that one hardly knows where to begin. Paramount in my thinking is the folly of placing the defense of our nation in the hands of a segment of it's population that has already demonstrated it can't function by the rules. What on earth does this woman think it takes to be a member of our military forces?

Dispute pits comics against church goers

Dispute pits comics against church goers: "By Marty Toohey
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, December 03, 2009

In a North Austin strip mall along U.S. 183, the main stage at Capitol City Comedy Club and the gospel music ensemble of Fresh Oil Family Fellowship church are close enough that comedian and drummer could perform a Wednesday night duet, if not for the shared wall between them.

But the wall is not thick enough to keep noise from bleeding through, triggering a bitter dispute pitting churchgoers against comics. In an unlikely twist, it's the comedy club complaining that the church is too loud."

As usual I find the back and forth between believers and unbelievers, in the comments that follow the story, more interesting than the conflict that brings them into the ring.