Sestak nails it with the best political ad this year

Pennsylvania senate candidate Joe sestak takes it to Pat Toomey in an ad that's true, snarky (but not too snarky) and hits just the right tone. Go Joe!

Dylan Ratigan with the single most sane, coherent political diatribe about terrorism ever

Sure Dylan loses his mind every once in a while, but this is a series of brilliant observations about the nature of the war on terror and cognitive dissonance.

Mor lik dis plz.

The America of Glenn Beck and the tea party

This is the America that the tea baggers "want back". The post WWII, pre-Vietnam days, where everything was fine. Just ask the Cleavers.



Which of these aspects of Beck's World is most offensive in a 2010 context?
A) A woman's place is in the home, and if they're in the home, why not be in the kitchen? Giving me a blowjob.
B) Women do alright with modern conveniences, but if you take away the blender, they're shit.
C) Women can't handle the rugged outdoors, where us cavemen peel pre-pressed burgers off of wax paper?
D) That "less government regulation" will allow a return to the time when asbestos gloves could be sold?

Here's what else was happening in Beck's hunky-dory post WWII period: thalidomide babies because of a lack of government oversight of medicine, civil rights protests for basic rights, beatings and dogs being turned on protesters and lots of other good nostalgic stuff.

It was a great period, if you were a white man.

Yeah, let's go back.

Republicans are illogical asshats

Richard Shelby is blocking the nomination of Peter Diamond to sit on the Fed board of governors.

Why?

Shelby says Diamond is unqualified.

Diamond is a professor of economics at a little school called MIT.

Diamond won the Nobel Prize for economics.

Diamond was Ben Bernanke's teacher!

"While the Nobel Prize for economics is a significant recognition, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences does not determine who is qualified to serve on the Board of Governors," said Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Senate Banking Committee.

via Cesca

Right. He's unqualified. Notice Shelby didn't say he disagreed with him - he said that he's unqualified.

This is stupidity for stupidity's sake.

Family Research Council tacitly advocates bullying gays under guise of religion

The Washington Post should be embarrassed to print this editorial by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. In it, he displays the hypocrisy inherent in his Christian position of 'love the sinner, hate the sin', the reason that Christians like him are causing homosexuals such mental and social problems, as well the untenability of his position.

He begins:

The media has recently been filled with reports of several recent suicides by teenagers who are reported to have been victims of "anti-gay" bullying. Some homosexual activist groups lay blame at the feet of conservative Christians who teach that homosexual conduct is wrong, as well as pro-family groups such as Family Research Council which oppose elements of the homosexual political agenda, such as same-sex "marriage."

The Christians and pro-family leaders I know are unanimous in believing that no person, especially a child, should be subjected to verbal or physical harassment or violence--whether because of their sexuality, their religious beliefs, or for any other reason. Such bullying violates the Christian's obligation to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and receives no support from the pro-family political movement.

Yay! Excellent! On this we agree, bullying is wrong. However, he then lays out the groundwork, if not the claim, that it's not only okay, but it's incumbent on Christians to create a climate where bullying can fluorish.

However, homosexual activist groups like GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) are exploiting these tragedies to push their agenda of demanding not only tolerance of homosexual individuals, but active affirmation of homosexual conduct and their efforts to redefine the family.

So according to Perkins, although bullying should not be tolerated, it's necessary to oppose a climate where homosexuals are accepted and can live their lives out of the shadows. After all, we don't want to affirm that being gay is acceptable. We have to make sure that people know that being gay is wrong in the eyes of the Lord and that Christians have a duty to make sure that gays don't make social strides towards acceptance and equal rights. Just don't hit them.

So to sum things up to this point, bulling gays is bad, but so is accepting them. They shouldn't be physically harmed, but under no circumstances should they feel they're normal.

Read on:

There is an abundance of evidence that homosexuals experience higher rates of mental health problems in general, including depression. However, there is no empirical evidence to link this with society's general disapproval of homosexual conduct. In fact, evidence from the Netherlands would seem to suggest the opposite, because even in that most "gay-friendly" country on earth, research has shown homosexuals to have much higher mental health problems.

Ahhhh! Homosexuals are mentally defective. Yes, of course. So they should know that they're abnormal in both conduct and mental make-up. In fact, everyone should know this. So it's OK to advertise that gays are aberrant, even though we know that society tends to terrorize it's outcastes.

Some homosexuals may recognize intuitively that their same-sex attractions are abnormal--yet they have been told by the homosexual movement, and their allies in the media and the educational establishment, that they are "born gay" and can never change. This--and not society's disapproval--may create a sense of despair that can lead to suicide.

Again, the use of the word abnormal. Even though we know that homosexuality is part of the animal kingdom, right-wingers want to paint this as "abnormal". But it's not the condemnation that Perkins wants heaped on gays that leads to their suicide, it's the knowledge that they're defective - even though it's people like him heaping these thoughts of abnormality on them.

'It's not our fault that we tell them what they do is an abomination. Our scorn doesn't lead to their problems, it's their internalization of their abomination that leads to problems.

How do we fix this, Tony? How?

The most important thing that Christians can offer to homosexuals is hope--hope that their sins, just like the sins of anyone else, can be forgiven and their lives transformed by the power of Jesus Christ.

OHHHHH! The invisible ghost in the sky can fix all of their problems. If they just embrace our fairy tale, things will get better, they'll stop being abominations and we canall live in the clouds with Invisible Man.

Perkins belives in fairy tales and yet it's homosexuals who are delusional?

Doesn't Perkins realize that - while he calls for an anti-bullying stance - taking the position that gays are "abnormal" and "suffering from mental health problems" in being gay IS BULLYING. Bullying isn't just what happened to Matthew Sheppard, bullying is living in a climate where you're told that you're less than fully human. You're told that you made a choice to be an abomination, but that by accepting a farcical notion of the spirit in the sky, you can be made whole.

The climate that Christians are trying to create IS bullying.

the Post should be embarassed to print this on National Coming Out Day - the one day that homosexuals should feel some measure of support. And the Post publishes this guest editorial from a bigot.

Stewart and Colbert on Indecision 2010

Midterm report card contradictions... GOP gets lowest grades

We're told that Obama is politically dead, but he polls better than either party in Congress, especially Republicans. How does this reconcile with the dire predictions for election day in three weeks? There are only two real explanations. One is that the pundits are listening to a vocal minority of loudmouths and over-extrapolating. The other is that Americans are schizophrenic.

Either is possible.

Also look at the variation in grades between generic members of Congress (about 1.75) and the respondent's own Congressperson (2.22). It seems to say that we hate pork and spending, unless it gets brought back to my district.

There are also some interesting stats on who likes Obama and who doesn't and it suggests that targeted turnout will be critical in 2012 (duh, I know...).

Graph via Cesca

Matt Taibbi on the nucleus of the Tea Party

Brilliant. The whole thing is brilliant. There is no better commentator on the state of America than Taibbi. read the whole thing at Rolling Stone.

The dingbat revolution, it seems, is nigh.

"We're shaking up the good ol' boys," Palin chortles, to the best applause her aging crowd can muster. She then issues an oft-repeated warning (her speeches are usually a tired succession of half-coherent one-liners dumped on ravenous audiences like chum to sharks) to Republican insiders who underestimated the power of the Tea Party Death Star. "Buck up," she says, "or stay in the truck."

Stay in what truck? I wonder. What the hell does that even mean?

Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn't a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — "Government's not the solution! Government's the problem!" — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.

"The scooters are because of Medicare," he whispers helpfully. "They have these commercials down here: 'You won't even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!' Practically everyone in Kentucky has one."

A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.

Tea Party condemns "personal attacks" that center on Tea Party bad behavior

Dave Weigel

Organizers of this (Virginia Tea Party Patriots) convention woke up to an editorial in the Richmond Times-Dispatch calling on them to disinvite Saturday speaker Lou Dobbs, the former CNN host turned radio host, in the wake of a Nation story on undocumented workers employed to handle horses owned by his family. Steve Bannon, an organizer of this convention and director of a trilogy of Citizens United-Sponsored films, was disgusted.

"It's the politics of personal destruction," said Bannon, "and it keeps happening. Sarah Palin. Niki Haley. Bill O'Reilly. Rush Limbaugh and oxycontin. Christine O'Donnell, whatever you think of her. It's the same thing. I talked to Lou and I asked him, why go on Lawrence O'Donnell's show to talk about this? And he was adamant. He said there's nothing there. I'm not surprised."

Right. The politics of personal destruction for pointing out the hypocrisy of their members. I LOOOOOVE that Bannon actually cited Rush Limbaugh's drug use as an unfair attack. According to Bannon it's unfair to attack an anti-drug crusader for being a hypocritical drug addict who got off because of his fame, celebrity and connections.

It's unfair politics to hold moral crusader Bill O'Reilly accountable for a sexual harassment suit he settled and hushed up.

It's unfair politics to ask an anti-sex, anti-masturbation Christian crusader how she reconciles that with a first date on a Satanic altar.

So I have to ask:

Is it unfair to bring up the fact that a GOP House candidate from Ohio dresses up in Nazi paraphernalia? It would seem to be, as Rich Iott has complained that the campaign should stick to the issues, when his dressing up as a Nazi is precisely the issue.

Is it unfair to criticize New York Senate candidate Carl Paladino (he of the 10 year old daughter born out of wedlock, the product of an extra-marital affair) for saying: "I don't want (children) to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option. It isn't." and then insisting that he's not a homophobe?

Of course, it's hypocrisy, pure and simple. The Republicans run on it. As Eric Boehlert tweets: "Under Bush it was contemptible to 'root against America.' Guess that's off the table as gleeful cons toast unemployment numbers."

Are these the people you want in charge?

Anti-elitist, anti-establishment teabaggers sport serious Ivy League credentials

The anti-establishment Tea Party has backed some candidates with some serious elitist, establishment ties.

Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller - Yale Law
Kentucky's Rand Paul - Duke Medical
Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck - Princeton
Pennsylvania Senate candidate Pat Toomey - Harvard

Hypocrites. The Tea Party is being used.

Even Christine O'Donnell (R-witch) claims to have gone to Princeton. Of course, that's a lie, too.

MSNBC