Month: June 2010

Confidence Building

by digby

So consumer confidence is way down and the market tanked on the news. I don’t suppose it might have anything to do with the fact that nearly every elite gasbag in the world is blathering on endlessly that the sky is falling because of the potential, maybe, could be future deficits and telling everyone they are going to have to sacrifice for decades and pull in their belts for years to come? Nah, couldn’t be that.

And nothing builds consumer confidence like month after month of 10% unemployment and housing foreclosures. The lazy, drug addicted unemployed are obviously very upbeat and those who are working feel incredible freedom and opportunity in that environment because lord knows that while working people may not be able to leave jobs or start new businesses or get a raise in this environment there’s no reason to be gloomy.

It can’t be that the rubes see an economy that is moribund at best and a dysfunctional government that is telling them constantly that they are going to have “accept” high unemployment and “pitch in” to fix an economy that was destroyed by wealthy gamblers — and assume they are well and truly screwed for the foreseeable future.

Cheer up people. The wealthy “producers” are doing fine and that’s all you should worry your pretty little heads about. Snap out of it!

Update: Republicans once again block unemployment extension. DOW tanks further. Nothing to see here folks. Everything’s just fine.

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Family Values

by digby

According to Sharon Angle, God wants fathers to rape their daughters. Or at least he wants daughters to bear their fathers’ children. That’s what they call family values in her neck of the woods:

MANDERS: Is there any reason at all for an abortion?

ANGLE: Not in my book.

MANDERS: So, in other words, rape and incest would not be something?

ANGLE: You know, I’m a Christian, and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things.

The truth is that she is being more consistent than most allegedly “pro-life” people. If you genuinely think that abortion is murder then you can’t justify “killing” the blastocyst or fetus just because of the way it was conceived.

On the other hand, Angle seems to see conception by rape and incest as something God purposefully directed and so the results of which are something the birthing vessel must embrace. That’s a very disturbing point of view no matter where you come out on the issue.

Harry Reid, on the other hand, must be thanking the Good Lord every night for “interceding” and providing him with Sharon Angle as an opponent. He must feel that God definitely intends for him to win re-election.

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Beauregard Sessions says “Free At last, free at last, thank God almighty the corporations are free at last!”

by digby

No really. Citizens United is just like Brown vs Board of Education because it went back to the first constitutional principles which were, evidently, that slaves and corporations should be equal under the law. Or something. I can’t believe you people don’t see that.

“[Marshall] was right on Brown v. Board of Education. It’s akin in my view to the Citizen’s United case. The court sat down and we went back to first principles–What does the Constitution say? Everybody should be equal protection of the laws,” Sessions told me after a Senate vote last night.

“Is it treating people equally to say you can go to this school because of the color of your skin and you can’t?” Sessions asked rhetorically. “We’ve now honestly concluded and fairly concluded that it violates the equal protection clause.”

How is that like Citizens United? “I think this Court, when they said ‘Wait a minute! If you’re talking about a precedent that says the government can deny the right to publish pamphlets, then we’ve got get rid of this one outlier case Austin — 100 years of precedent — and go back to what the Constitution [says].’ I don’t think that’s activism.”

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Destroying Themselves For A Generation

by digby

Looks like Marco Rubio had better start carrying his papers:

Florida Republican leaders have begun crafting anti-illegal-immigrant legislation modeled after an Arizona law that has incited widespread protests and fueled national and international debate over U.S. immigration policies.

Under the proposed bill, police would have broad power under state law to ask suspects for proof of legal residency, said Rep. William Snyder, a Republican from Stuart who plans to introduce the legislation in November.

“We have significant components from the Arizona bill that I plan to incorporate,” he said. “We have the beginnings of it.”

The effort, which would be filed for consideration during the March legislative session, is already drawing broad support within the GOP.

In an election year shaped by anti-incumbency sentiment, majority leaders in the Florida Senate and House said a new approach is needed to address the federal government’s failure to temper illegal immigration.

The effort has the backing of both leading Republican gubernatorial candidates — businessman Rick Scott and Attorney General Bill McCollum.

Lest you suspect this is nothing but a raw political ploy to gin up racial resentment and get their hate filled neanderthals out to the polls, think again. It’s actually a humanitarian exercise:

Snyder, a former police officer, said the proposed legislation is needed to protect undocumented immigrants, who are vulnerable to abusive employers and violent criminals.

“This is a human right issue,” he said. “They don’t enjoy the same rights and privileges that you and I do. The solution is to enforce the laws that currently exist and to discourage people from coming here to ‘find a better life’ when in fact they just come here and are victimized.”

This is very much like the unctuous faux paternalism of the anti-abortion crowd who try to portray themselves as protectors of women when they deny them their agency. It’s cute but unconvincing.

I asked Alan Grayson about Florida and immigration earlier today on his Blue America chat and he said this:

It Will Destroy the Republican Party for a Generation.

The Republicans are down to three Latinos in Congress, all from South Florida. As soon as they show their true colors, they’ll be down to zero.

Take a look at what happened to voter registration by party in California, after the Republicans started race-baiting there.

Carly and Meg are having a hell of a time walking back their primary campaign race baiting here in California.It’s still a mine field for Republicans.

Grayson’s words point to an irony and a sort of progressive achievement. Lyndon Johnson famously said that the Democrats would lose the south for a generation when they passed civil right legislation. Now, 45 years later, the Republicans are in danger of losing for a generation because they are still using the same politics of racial resentment. They refused to evolve and so the country changed around them.

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“Blacks Don’t Own Martin Luther King”

by digby

Oh, and “too many” have gotten lazy and distorted Martin Luther King’s ideas.

Yep that’s Beck, the most idiotic man in the media. Well almost. Wingnuts everywhere are having a hard time understanding what’s wrong with that comment:

@DanFosterNRO offensive b/c Beck wrong 2 say blacks think that or b/c blacks DO own MLK?

I guess it just doesn’t occur to these people that any discussions of “owning” an African American civil rights icon are, by definition, offensive. To then derisively tell blacks that they don’t own him and then in the next breath say they have gotten “lazy” and distorted his ideas is so obviously outrageous that I have to think they are being purposefully obtuse. This isn’t political incorrectness, it’s just plain old crude stupidity.

Please listen to the whole thing. It’s unintentionally hilarious in the places that aren’t hideously offensive.

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Grayson Live Chat At C&L

by digby

5pm. Join Us.

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Moneybombbomb

by digby

Rand Paul is holding one of those famous moneybombs popularized by his father during the presidential race. Guess what? Doesn’t look as though Daddy’s donors think Junior is all that — and his teabagging followers seem to have deserted him:

Republican Rand Paul’s Internet fundraising appears to be off to slow start for his general election campaign.

Paul, who is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Jim Bunning, had banked about $70,000 by late afternoon on Monday in a one-day online fundraiser.

That’s a pittance compared with the more than $1 million he banked in a series of Web-based fundraisers during the GOP primary. The largest of the three, held last August, netted more than $400,000.

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High Tech Lynching Of A Dead Man

by digby

I missed the Kagan hearings this morning, but from what I’m gathering it was pretty much a high tech lynching of Justice Thurgood Marshall. Seriously. Evidently, he was one of those “activist” judges (and a community organizer too, I’m sure)and I think we all know what he was agitating for, don’t we?

Meanwhile, she is an “out of the mainstream” elitist, weirdo (lesbian, NY Jew) who worked for a you-know-what and liked it. Ever since Beauregard Sessions ascended to the ranking Republican position on the Judiciary Committee whatever uhm … subtlety the Republican strategy once had has evaporated into crude dogwhistling.

They really have been reduced to nothing but a walking wingnut id. That’s all there is.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court today just overturned 70 years worth of gun control precedent. Nothing activist about that, no sirree.

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Uncivilized behavior

by digby

Keeping us safe from the dangerous anarchists:

Peaceful G20 protest at Queen & Spadina from Meghann Millard on Vimeo.

The sound at the end is tasers, I believe.

h/t to C&L

Your Daily Crazy — What’s Rand Up To Now?

by digby

Barefoot and Progressive went to a Christian Homeschool Educators of Kentucky conference where Rand Paul was featured and took questions. (This group’s objective is to “protect children from mental physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by secular humanists in a socialist society or governmental system,” btw.)

Anyway, all the allegedly rational libertarians throughout the land must be thrilled to see their standard bearer pass on a question about how old the earth is, among other things:

In answering the question about immigration, you’ll notice that he didn’t set forth his brilliant plan to put a super-duper, Dr Evilelectrified underground fence along the border. He did quote Milton Friedman saying that you can’t have open borders and a welfare state — which he describes as schools and hospitals. I didn’t actually realize that schools and hospitals were considered welfare state institutions, but evidently public education and laws that require hospitals to treat the sick are tantamount to welfare as we know it (or socialism.) The Christian Homeschoolers agree, I’m sure, thus finally explaining the otherwise inexplicable alliance between the social conservatives and the libertarians.

Be sure to click through for a fascinating look at some of the materials from the “CHEK” conference.

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