Dammit, I want my country back. I want my freedom-loving, free country with its free people fighting for their freedom back. Now. Because Paul Revere loved FREEDOM. And also, Martin Luther King. Because he was free. Well, once he got out of jail he was. FREEDOM!! Freedom is important and we should all fight against those people who want to take away our freedom. In fact, I'm going to go out and protest against people who hate freedom. Just as soon as check a few things off of my to-do list. For instance, I have to buy a gun on the internet. Then, I have to write a letter that will most likely be published in my local newspaper about why I will go all REVOLUTIONARY on anybody who hates my freedom. Then, I have to go outside. It's dangerous outside. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN!! There are so many people who want to take away my freedom that I have to be CONSTANTLY VIGILANT as I walk to my car. Somebody might stop me, for example, to say "Good Morning." Bastard. What if I'm not having a good morning? STOP TAKING AWAY MY FREEDOM TO HAVE A BAD MORNING. Once I finally get to my car, I have to drive on the streets paid for with tax dollars. Fucking taxes. More government taking away my freedom. And what's with all the other cars? They should get out of my way because I'm very important and I have important places to go and those other drivers are in the way of my FREEDOM. Why do other drivers hate America? And don't even get me started on those fascist pedestrians--buy a car you hippie assholes. This is AMERICA where we buy big cars because we love FREEDOM. Speaking of America and freedom, immigrants get the fuck out. This is my free country, not yours. RONALD REAGAN!! I love the smell of freedom in the morning. Because I am a PATRIOT! And I want my country back. FREEDOM! Why did those anti-American, freedom-hating bastards get in government anyhow? I know why. Because Acorn hates my freedom. I know what to do about Acorn. Cut down all the trees. BECAUSE TREES HATE FREEDOM. With all the wood, I can make sign posts for all the signs I'm going to put around so that everyboy will know how much I love FREEDOM! That's what freedom fighters do. We make FREEDOM SIGNS out of trees that will never grow another acorn again. Hah. And all you anti-freedom fascists can suck it. Get out of my way, get out of my country. Go live in Canada if you love your anti-freedom, socialist medicine so much. THOMAS JEFFERSON! NATHAN HALE! PATRICK HENRY! FREEEEEEEEEEEDOM!
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Cross posted at the fascist, anti-freedom, communist, liberal, shaggy, long-haired hippie, tree-hugging Dagblog.

Last night, Congressman Alan Grayson stood up on the floor of the House and read out the number of people who died from lack of health insurance in each Congressional district represented by a Republican. It was the latest in a steady stream of very public, sometimes over-the-top statements he's made in an effort to shine the light on Republican obstructionism in order to help get healthcare reform passed.

Grayson's district in Florida is similar to my district in Indiana--about half Democrats and half Republicans. My Congressman, Joe Donnelly, is much smarter than Alan Grayson. Donnelly doesn't make waves. He's never out in front of an issue. He's never on national television. Because he knows that if he advocates for anything slightly controversial, he's risking his seat. 

Grayson, on the other hand, is all over the place, yelling and screaming and being rude to Republicans. It's kind of dumb for a guy in his first term. Probably, Grayson should be keeping his mouth closed and his ears open. He should be making friends with influential members of Congress who can open up pathways to major Democratic campaign contributors. 

Aside from all the juicy corporate donations he's likely losing, it's also sort of stupid to be so out front on an issue before you've convinced everybody in your district that they can't afford to lose your representation. Let's face it, Grayson hasn't had time to bring a lot of pork home or to rise in the committee ranks. He probably doesn't even know the names of his entire staff yet. 

I've heard Donnelly repeatedly trying to persuade his liberal supporters about how he has to run to the center because that's where the district is, but that he'll be there when the President really needs his support. In other words, in order to keep his seat, he's going to vote with the Republicans as much as possible but once or twice, when it's really important, he'll be there for us. 

I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that Donnelly is one of Pelosi's 40 Democratic votes to lose on the HCR bill. Don't worry though, because when the President really needs him, he's going to be there. 

Alan Grayson doesn't appear smart enough to learn the ins and outs of Congress in time to insulate himself from conservative criticism in the next election. Instead, he appears to think that standing up for what he believes is best for the people in his district, and his country, is enough. Poor guy.

Ok. So suffrage isn't really under attack. But twice this year I've read accounts of writers who think it wouldn't be such a bad idea to deny women the right to vote. It makes me wonder if the Republican party, having just this year burned major bridges with minorities and gays, is going for the trifecta.

The first account was by some blogger in Chico, California. I wrote about it here.

Now, we have another account. British-American conservative thinker extraordinare John Derbyshire suggests that we would be a better country if women didn't vote. Apparently, he's devoted a whole chapter to the topic in his new book. But from an interview he gave on Alan Colmes' radio show, it seems to boil down to his idea that women "lean hard to the left."

So, Derbyshire thinks women shouldn't be granted the vote because they don't vote the way he wants them to. What a shining beacon of democracy this guy is. I wonder what he thinks of women in office. More importantly, I wonder if Michelle Malkin and Laura Ingram both voted for hard-left candidate Ralph Nader in 2000. Maybe it's their fault we got President Bush.

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Cross-posted at Dagblog.

 

When I want to learn about something, I generally start with my good friend, the Google. Depending on how much I want to know, it can stop there, or lead me to the local public library. Sometimes, when I want to know a lot about one particular thing, I even head for one of the university libraries in town.

What I want to learn today is why climate change is bad. Apparently, that can't be learned through Google or the library. It also can't be taught with access to the most current scientific studies or personal consultation with experts in the field.  It appears to require about a hundred grand, access to airplanes, and true bi-partisanship. 

Bi-partisanship is supposed to be what it's all about, right? So when ten members of Congress (and their spouses) took an eleven-day trip to Australia and the South Pole to see for themselves what climate change is doing to the planet, it ought to warm our hearts that four of them were Republicans and six were Democrats.

And warm my heart it does. I'm so happy that they put aside their partisan bickering for the good of the country. They snorkeled together. They played with penguins together. That's just awesome. I'm so glad that both parties can talk--without irony--about cost control and deficit management when they are spending $100,000 plus (not including air transportation on military planes) on a "fact-finding" trip. I'm interested to hear about the samples that they collected and what conclusions they reached when they brought the samples back to their labs for analysis.

I'm also interested to hear about what another bi-partisan delegation, of Senators this time, learned after spending $121,000 (not including airfare) to attend the Paris Air Show. For that price, it's got to be good.

Congressional overseas travel cost the taxpayers $13 million last year, almost 10 times the amount spent in 1995.  The spouses have to pay for their own food, but not the airfare or hotel. To hear one representative tell it, if spouses didn't get to go along, either nobody would travel or marriages would end. Probably Governor Sanford didn't get that memo.

I'm not suggesting that overseas travel isn't necessary. Visiting our military installations, for example, is important. But if bi-partisan Congressional delegations are dropping more than twice what the average American makes in a year in what amounts to a vacation so that they can "learn" what I'm guessing I can find out in twenty minutes on the Internet, they should probably think twice the next time they try to convince us that universal healthcare is too expensive.

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Cross posted at Dagblog, as usual.

Will wonders never cease? Last week, Congressman Mark Souder, a conservative Republican from Indiana's 3rd district, voted--with 12 of his conservative Republican colleagues on the House Education and Labor Committee--for an amendment that would allow states to opt out of the federal health insurance reform plan as long as they set up a single payer system in their state. The amendment was sponsored by uber-liberal Dennis Kucinich (D-OH).

No, it wasn't opposite day at the local junior high. But the Republican's were apparently displaying a similar level of maturity in casting their votes. According to a report by Sam Stein at Huffington Post, the Republicans didn't expect the amendment to pass and voted the way they did to make trouble for first-term Democrats from conservative districts. 

The fact that it did pass and, if widely publicized, will most likely backfire and instead make trouble for those 13 Republicans, makes me smile a little.

But it would make me much happier if elected officials on both sides of the aisle would simply vote for what they think is right, rather than playing politics with the lives of Americans. Sadly, I think I'm going to have to let that dream die.

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Cross posted at Dagblog, where Nebton is offering 2-for-1 Null Fish.

Yesterday, Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly pointed out that Paul Ryan had a piece at the American Spectator Web site. In it, Ryan writes:

The American character itself and the principles of free market democracy which protect and preserve it may be lost beyond recovery if Congress chooses the wrong path to health care reform

Ryan's core argument is that even though healthcare falls into the inalienable right category, government shouldn't provide healthcare no more than it should build homes for its citizens.

Before I explain why reading Congressman Ryan's argument makes me very, very angry, I'd like to unpack it just a bit.

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So she could smack down shit like this:

http://tpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com/?id=2977330

In the video, Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) suggests that the mothers of both the President of the United States of American and a sitting Supreme Court Justice may have chosen abortion if only they had been able to access public funding for the procedure.

I've heard a lot of intellectually dishonest arguments in my life. Until today, my favorite was conveniently forgetting the marginal tax rate when calculating tax burden on our beleagured wealthy citizens. Tiahrt has reached a staggering new level of crass and insulting by suggesting that if public funding for abortion had been available decades ago, we'd be deprived of two of our current leaders.

But if the Congressman wants to play the What If game, I've got a couple scenarios for him to consider:

*If Congress had stopped sitting on their collective thumbs in fear of losing elections, and stopped George Bush from launching an agressive war, we wouldn't have been deprived of all of the soldiers killed in Iraq. What if one of them would have been our president some day?

*What if, in 1995 when Tiahrt first went to Congress, instead of using stem cell research as a political football, they would have gotten serious about providing funding for research into cures for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and a whole bunch of other diseases? How many people have been lost to illness that could have been stopped or slowed since then?

Why doesn't he talk about those hypotheticals on the floor of the House, instead of whose mother would have chosen abortion if only she'd had the money 50 years ago?

This is a man who is running for Senate in 2010. The mind reels.

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This one is not cross posted at Dagblog, but there is a health care cost savings discussion just itchin' to get started.

Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN) and Congressman Howard Berman (D-CA) have introduced a resolution expressing support for Iranian citizens, condemning the violence in Iran, and spouting off about the importance of free and fair elections.

Berman said, "It is not for us to decide who should run Iran, much less determine the real winner of the June 12 election...but we must reaffirm our strong belief that the Iranian people have a fundamental right to express their views about the future of their country freely, and without intimidation."

When I read this statement, my immediate thought was, "Why?"

Why must we reaffirm our belief in freedom of expression and democracy? It's not exactly a big secret that the United States holds these beliefs. And, current decade notwithstanding, we can be pretty good at working with longstanding and emerging democracies around the world.

Where we fail, again and again, is trying to overlay not only our ideals but how we put those ideals into practice onto countries whose cultures and traditions are different from ours. Our leaders have not, over the long term, shown much imagination when it comes to understanding that other socieities might have their own path to achieving such important ends as freedom and democracy.

Smart, experienced foreign policy experts of all political persuasions have suggested that President Obama has taken exactly the right approach to the situation in Iran, and that any strong response by the United States could be used by the Iranian government against the protesters. Yet, conservative members of the House and Senate, as well as conservative talk show hosts, have been insisting over and over that the President is not going far enough; that he needs to decry the election results and make demands.

In my opinion, these people don't know anything about Iran, don't care about Iran or the Iranian people, and couldn't care less what position they're advocating for as long as it's the opposite of what the President is doing. That's become the Right's MO on all issues since Obama took office. Whatever Obama says is wrong--reason, public opinion, and even public safety be damned.

And here we go again. Iran is reaching a tipping point. After the Ayatollah's speech today, protests are now increasingly dangerous. What will happen on Saturday, when protesters return to the streets? I don't know, but I fear the worst. I fear that the government will put down the protests, brutally and violently.

Pence, Berman, and the like are behaving as if they are blind to this potential outcome. They see an opportunity to score political points, and if it results in the deaths of tens or hundreds or thousands of citizens in a country so far away, who cares? The goal is to undermine the President for the benefit of the Repbulican party.

Such naked narcissism takes my breath away.

 

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Cross posted at Dagblog.

We've had quite a month in South Bend. When the President accepted the invitation to speak at Notre Dame's commencement ceremony, the media jumped all over the supposed re-ignition of the abortion debate.  

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Sometimes, I get confused when people use slang or terms of art. I'm more of a straightforward, un-fancy communicator. I'm ashamed to admit it might be something I have in common with our former president--although I tend not to make up my own words.

Something I am less ashamed to admit is that I don't always follow some of the terms bandied about on the blogs. One of those terms is "strawman." I'm from the Midwest. Out here, strawmen live in fields and they don't generally talk, which makes it difficult for them to participate in arguments.

But, I'm proud to admit that today, for possibly the first time, I feel I have an absolute grasp of what "creating a strawman" means. Thanks, Republicans!

See if you can follow the trail of metaphorical straw. (Side Note: Real strawmen leave a straw trail too, only it's not metaphorical and it makes me sneeze.) From what I'm hearing coming out of conservative mouths this week, here's what I've got so far:

• President Obama is going to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.
• There are bad men who have been living there for many years.
• We will have to find a new place for the bad men.
• During the campaign, then-Senator Obama and his staff saved money by asking supporters to allow out-of-town campaign staff to stay in their spare bedrooms.
• We can save money and solve the detainee housing crisis by asking Obama supporters to house terrorists.

Wheeeeeeee. Because it's not like we have maximum security prisons or anything. Those prisoners are coming to your neighborhood and Republicans want you to be hiding-under-your-bed-wetting-your-pants scared.

Honestly. It's not like we should expect anything remotely honest from the people who want you to believe that dinosaurs weren't extinct until a few thousand years ago, at which point we were calling them dragons. But just how stupid do they think we are?

Don't answer that. I can only handle one strawman per day.

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Cross posted, as usual, at Dagblog.com

I feel dirty.

And also, somehow, proud of Rachel Maddow and Ana Marie Cox. Tonight on Rachel's show, the found the Holy Grail of double entendre. I wonder if Glenn Beck gets it.

These days, everybody is blaming someone. The democrats blame the republicans, who blame them right back. The rich blame the poor. The poor are ordering pitchforks. 

What many still consider the greatest step forward in equality for the sexes, was more then just a glancing blow however. It was in fact a deadly strike that entered the very heart of the ship and has been smoldering since. The damage caused by the 19th amendment was slow in its destruction, but after almost 100 years we can now see how complete the destruction really was. 

So, you see, ladies and gentlemen, it's all very simple. The day that American women gained the right to vote, we, as a society, took the first step toward our ruinous end. How can that be, you ask? The author of said blog, OneVike, is only too happy to elaborate: 

From the beginning of time women have been the emotional nurturers of society while men have been the logical protectors and managers. It was the men who had to do the dirty deeds that required more logic then emotion. Men have always debated and discussed what it is they thought was best for their communities. There has always been strong women have stood behind their men and supported them in the tough decisions they had to make. Behind the scenes these strong women would prod and nudge because they thought the men moved to slow at times. 

However it was that slow and methodical thought process that allowed for an orderly progression that worked for thousands of years. And please do not bring up all the wars men have gotten us into. The biggest war in history was WWII, and it happened with men elected after women around the world won the right to vote. 

Unfortunately men eventually abdicated their God given responsibility and allowed their emotional partner an equal footing in deciding the country's fate. From that day forward, men have been vying for the emotional vote of the women and worrying about their reactions after they got in office. Thus they have become more emotional in their legislating then logical. 

Logical. But not grammatical. This link's for you, OneVike. 

Poor bankers.