An important cautionary tale from the Onion.
Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be
NOVEMBER 14, 2009 | ISSUE 45•46
ESCONDIDO, CA—Spurred by an administration he believes to be guilty of numerous transgressions, self-described American patriot Kyle Mortensen, 47, is a vehement defender of ideas he [...]
At One News Now – the house organ of the arch-conservative group American Family Association – they published an article by Marcia Segelstein in which she declared:
Listen up, parents. The goal of sex education is not to prevent unwanted pregnancies and diseases. The goal is to promote sexual freedom.
Segelstein’s [...]
Barack Obama is being besieged from all sides about his pending decision on what to do about an undeclared war. I don’t know why this should be his decision alone. If conservatives in congress still have ants in their pants for war, as they did when Lyndon Johnson was president, [...]
Charge of the Scots Greys at Waterloo
Via HuffPo’s Ryan Grim, Glenn Greenwald and Daily Kos.
In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance Committee [...]
Its true! One of our regulars here at OneUtah provided free legal services to the prisoners in Guantanamo. See if you can guess who?
Apparently AG Eric Holder’s firm also represented these terrorists, and that pretty much proves that Obama IS effectively, Al Quaida.
Here’s proof.
Its true! One of our regulars here at OneUtah provided free legal services to the prisoners in Guantanamo. See if you can guess who.
Apparently AG Eric Holder’s firm also represented these terrorists, and that pretty much proves that Obama IS effectively, Al Quaida.
Here’s proof.
Representative Craig Frank has a blog post with a big headline:
Repeal of 1% Restaurant Tax Receives Unanimous Approval
Repealing a tax should be popular right about now. Especially since Senator Howard Stephenson and others are proposing to raise the sales tax on food.
Unfortunately, repealing this tax isn’t as pretty as [...]
NOM* the National Organization for against Marriage, really knows their morality. So they quietly dumped their newly disgraced vapid spokesmodel.
Carrie Prejean, the decrowned Miss California and darling of the Christian right, appears to have been scrubbed from the National Organization for Marriage website. The move comes [...]
This is getting depressing. I’ll let Rachel Maddow take it, she’s always upbeat even when the chips are down.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
It’s as if Congress is determined to make us all sorry we ever asked for health [...]
So, here’s my thing: When I wrote this post originally I was in a foul mood. I should know better than that but apparently I don’t. I’ve made some adjustments. If you read the original post, and read this updated version , you’ll see the wonders of being reminded to [...]
I’ve been avidly following the debate in the D-News Letters to the Editor section about sex education. The debate has actually been surprising – a large number of persons have supported sex education.
An intriguing theme emerged among those opposing sexuality education – the “teaching morals” argument. Boiled down to its [...]
If you have not had your head buried in the sand you have likely noticed that Chris Buttars has been going all out to win the “ignorant homophobe of the decade” award. He is a veritable quote mine:
In interviews, Buttars says that gays and lesbians [...]
In response to Ken Bingham’s loving concern that The African Prince has “demeaned” POTUS by “groveling” to foreign leaders; Not to worry Ken, even Republican presidents understand the idea of showing respect to others as well as their culture and public status.
Even people who live on farms understand this concept. [...]
From Towleroad:
A 2005 amendment banning same-sex marriage in the Texas may have inadvertently banned all marriages, says Houston attorney Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a candidate for attorney general [snip]
“The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that “marriage in this state shall consist only of the [...]
Via Think Progress:
Last night on Faux News, the network’s top legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano explained the system of justice laid down by the U.S. Constitution– and how it applies to trials of accused terrorists. Host Bill O’Reilly then rejected the Constitution in favor of military tribunals.
Napolitano: There was [...]
I’ve been thinking back over the many debates that took place here at OneUtah and elsewhere during the fight over California’s Prop 8. An argument I heard over and over from church members supporting Prop 8 was that legal precedents that applied in racial, sex, and religious [...]
Via Media Matters, where they are reading Sarah Palin’s new book so we don’t have to:
From Page 388 of Palin’s memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life:
We got into this economic mess because of misplaced government interference in the first place. The mortgage crisis that [...]
At heart, I really am a little kid. I know this. I accept it. I embrace it most of the time.
…and right now I am pretty much jumping up and down and chanting “nah nah na nah nah!”
I love watching the homophobes at the Sutherland Institute twist in the wind. [...]
The Nation’s Aram Roston has a blockbuster piece explaining how Afghan Taliban groups actually get more funding from U.S. taxpayers than they do from selling opium.
This morning, the Roston article was a topic of discussion on Dylan Ratigan’s MSNBC show.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, [...]
According to KSL, Senator Orrin Hatch is calling the present health care bill a “potential disaster”. Of course, our present healthcare system is not a potential disaster. There’s nothing potential about it. It’s a full-on disaster for many people.
The couple in this video made too much money to [...]
Not an exact likeness of Rep. Jim Matheson
It’s time to let Rep. Jim Matheson know what we think of his votes for the poison-pill Stupak Amendment and against the House health insurance reform bill, the America’s Affordable Health Choices [...]
After visiting Arlington National Cemetery in the morning, President Obama completed his eighth meeting of the war council this afternoon without making a decision about Afghanistan strategy.
The President asked the Pentagon brass for more options on Afghanistan. They gave him [...]
He’s not just a state senator, he’s the president of the Utah Taxpayer’s Association, “your tax watchdog”. His own personal web site says,”Fighting to reduce your taxes, not add more!” (exclamation point is his)
But now Sen. Howard Stephenson, taxpaper advocate, is saying we need to increase the tax [...]
I previously posted a great video which I believe condensed the health care debate to simple terms. I found this additional video by the same young men.
I have nothing to add here except the fact that these young men did NOT impugn the police department in any way.
[...]So, there’s been a lot of discussion about “Do you remember where you were when the Berlin Wall came down?”
The answer is yes – I was in Grinnell, Iowa at college. For the most part, I don’t remember the day being terribly remarkable. I ran into a friend – [...]
The President of the United States demeaned himself and the office of the Presidency by using an extremely offensive term (tea-bag) ,referring to a lude sex act, to describe his critics.
From the New York Times Blog Prescriptions:
“Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going [...]
Hat Tip to mcjoan at Kos. From Jessica Arons, Director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
1. It effectively bans coverage for most abortions from all public and private health plans in the Exchange: In addition to prohibiting direct government funding for [...]
At Open Left, Paul Rosenberg is discussing the idea of strong, progressive primary challenges to the crappy Dems who voted for the Stupak or who voted against the health care reform bill. Utah’s Jim Matheson is one such craptacular Democrat. From Democracy for Utah, we get this provocative passage:
Matheson’s [...]
Political realignments in the US tend to be painful things. Forty years ago, the US entered a period of political dealignment – one that fractured the New Deal coalition, that shattered a great many assumptions about politics and policy, that broke the American consensus about the role of government. For [...]
I am overcome with emotion. The election of The African Prince accompanied by the defeat of many Republicans was a good start. The passage of this bill in the face of the lies and distortions of evil people, the Tea Baggers, ALL republicans, Blue Dogs and powerful corporations, is [...]
Civility isn’t the end all be all of politics but this is overboard.
[...]I blame Hugo Schwyzer, who has been publishing and republishing a series of posts about sex, relationships and intimacy.
Hugo recently republished a post in which he wrote:
I’ve generally held in recent years that sex outside of the context of “commitment” falls short of both a feminist and a Christian [...]
Rep. Michele Bachmann led the charge today in what she described as a “last stand,” storming Capitol Hill to prevent Congress from enacting health care reform. Describing the protest as a “desperate act,” Bachmann told supporters that she hoped to scare congressional' [...]
The Democrats picked up a seat in the House yesterday NY-23 – a seat held by Republicans since shortly after the Civil War. In this race, the Republican candidate was chased out of the race by the Teabagger/9-12 hard core base, and threw her support to the Democrat. Of all [...]
Once again, at great expense, Utahn’s are voting on machines audited by a private corporation which has changed it’s name at least three times. In the first two years, Utah spent over 20 million dollars for the privilege of leaving our fingerprints on a touchscreen, (an actual ad campaign.)
After becoming [...]
After many months of not offering any alternative health care reform plan, the House Republicans have unveiled a proposal for the de facto total deregulation of the health insurance industry.
Rep. John Boehner
If you’re uninsured, this won’t help you.
If you’re insured, but you worry [...]
For many months after leaving Washington DC in disgrace, former President Bush refrained from public statements. Now he’s speaking out, reminding us of his administration’s multiple catastrophes.
Via Think Progress:
Eight years ago, President Bush asserted with great bravado that al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden would [...]
Rep. Lynn Hemingway is proposing a bill that would create a two-track system of sex education in Utah schools – the first track the current “keep your knees together and pray” abstinence only and a new track of comprehensive sex education.
The problem – the major obstacle to meaningful reform of [...]
Would you be happy if:
You did not worry about being laid off from your job? You knew you could afford the cost of health care for your family? You could be paid to go to college?My sister was recently telling me about an Oprah segment about Denmark, the happiest people in the [...]
The gun lobby’s favorite pieces of research – a 1995 study by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz that reported an astounding 2.5 million defense gun uses each year in the United States. Yep, you read it right.
The Kleck study claims that 2.5 million times per year, someone uses a gun [...]
This morning on CNN Fareed Zakaria aired an interview with Matthew Hoh, the first U.S. official to resign in protest over the Afghan war. In his eloquent letter of resignation (PDF), he wrote:
I fail to see the value or the worth in continued US casualties or expenditures [...]
I’m a member of a listserv for sexuality educators. This week I got this email:
Today, I was interviewed by two Eden seminarians. One question that was asked is one I’d love you to respond to:
As a Christian religious educator in sexual education in a community of faith, what do you [...]
This morning on Dylan Ratigan’s MSNBC show, Glenn Greenwald took on Dan Senor. You may remember neocon Senor as the spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He’s currently with the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), popularly known as “PNAC 2.0.”
There is an America still stuck in the fifties, isolated from our cities and from each other by virtue and circumstance and the placement of highways and byways.
Where no gangs roam and real gun play is only on TV and children are not killed by stray [...]
In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.
“If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger [...]
From Andrew Sullivan:
My worry about the tea-partiers is not that just they are Johnny-Come-Latelies (even though most are). It is not that they are partisans (some of them clearly aren’t). It is that they are motivated by an amorphous distrust and loathing of of government that never seems to get [...]
It must be very lonely being the last flat-earther.
Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, committed climate-change denier, found himself in just such a position Tuesday morning as the Senate environment committee, on which he is the ranking Republican, took up legislation on global warming. Sen. Lindsey Graham [...]
I usually like to highlight little-noticed news items. Today we have big news about Afghanistan that’s everywhere, and probably everyone has seen it– but I don’t want to feel like I’m ignoring it.
First, October 2009 is officially the deadliest month in Afghanistan for the United States since our [...]
Nothing like a little comic relief to sooth the tragedy of Americas infuriating health care struggle.
This is just too funny for anybody not to see. Like a child forced to laugh at himself by his loving parents after an overblown tirade, even the targets of this epic passage can’t help [...]
Last Friday, Rachel Maddow led off her MSNBC show with a side-splittingly funny musical video from the satirical group Billionaires for Wealthcare (B4W). If you haven’t seen it, follow the link and you won’t be disappointed.
Billionaires for Wealthcare is a grassroots network of health insurance CEOs, HMO lobbyists, [...]
In recent times, it has been suggested that the Republican party has become the party of white men. This has never been more true than it is today. Between Congress and the Senate, Republicans can claim exactly zero African Americans and one Jew; Eric Cantor, and he is a pathetic [...]
This morning on the Sunday talk shows I learned that General Stanley McChrystal did not go back to Kabul, stay there, and be quiet after appearing to lobby for his war plan and getting chewed out by the Commander-in-Chief in Denmark. Instead, he popped up in Brussels on Thursday, [...]
–adjective
1. depraved, villainous, or base.
2. Archaic. holding a false or unorthodox religious belief; heretical.
–noun
3. a vicious or depraved person; villain.
4. Archaic. a heretic or infidel.
The White House “attack” on Fox is being derided as bad politics, as ineffective and as a distraction from [...]
I went to the 350 SLC rally today in a less hopeful frame of mind. After all, according to at least one poll, the well-funded denial campaign has made a dent in the number of people who accept the reality of global warming. And here was [...]
It’s not very often that I can give Kudos to the “main-stream media” but for this I must. The Obama administration, who has become increasing intolerant of criticism, tried to get Fox News excluded from [...]
Global average temperatures, with 1978 as the reference point.
Global warming has happened already. Climate change is happening now. If you’ve been to Lake Powell in the last few years, you know what I mean (if not, check out this series of Landsat [...]
Okay, I saw this courtesy of Towleroad and just had to comment:
Man’s naked in his kitchen, making coffee. Uptight woman is taking a shortcut through his yard taking her kid to the school bus stop. Sees aforementioned man’s tackle. Calls cops. Man now facing charges for indecent exposure.
Seriously? [...]
The Keystone Kops were a silent film series about a group of bumbling, incompetent police officers who were more likely to blow up the police station than arrest criminals. They were apparently the inspiration for yesterday’s hearing on Capitol Hill in Salt Lake.
Lawmakers spent two hours debating sex education in [...]
How hard can it be to put 226 prisoners on an airplane, and take them to Leavenworth? Nine months is too long.
Check out the new Close Gitmo Now! website from New Security Action.
Did you know:
Of the 779 detainees who have spent time at Guantanamo’s detention center, 226 still remain. [...]Some mysteries are better left unsolved. I wasn’t sure what to think when we were told that DNA evidence had identified an old skeleton found along Comb Wash as Everett Ruess. You have to sympathize with the family members who searched for an answer for so long. On the [...]
Whether you love Glenn Beck or hate him there is no denying he has become the most powerful man in America. Glenn Beck has achieved what few ever do and [...]
Friday of last week, Democracy Corps released their latest study with the title The Very Separate World of Conservative Republicans. The study basically found that conservative Republicans literally do not inhabit the same world as the rest of us.
The Republican base voters are not part of the continuum leading [...]
One of my favorite movies is William Friedkin’s “To Live and Die in L.A.” (1985). It’s about a fictional, reckless Secret Service agent (William Petersen) who breaks the law to take down a big-time counterfeiter (Willem Dafoe). It’s all predicated on a self-perpetuating, endless cycle of crime, totally amoral. [...]
I’m not a big fan of the reality show genre. However, it can be surprisingly instructive with regard to game theory. I also want to mention that I’m not an expert on game theory – I’ve read a book or two and some articles – but based on what I’ve [...]
Just in time for Halloween, Glenn Beck is on Faux News with another witch hunt.
Witch hunt scene from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975)
Via Media Matters:
In attacking Anita Dunn, claiming that she “worships” her “hero” Mao Zedong, Glenn Beck has targeted yet [...]
On cue and without any sense of irony, Joe Cannon in this morning’d D-News published the editorial Mormons are entitled to defend their freedom of religion. The editorial begins with a brief paragraph describing Dallin Oaks’ speech on religious freedom then offered a swipe at critics of the speech:
[...]
Via Glenn Greenwald:
Yesterday, the British High Court reversed a previous decision to go along with the cover-up of torture in the Binyam Mohamed case. Mohamed was arrested in Pakistan in 2002, and held by the United States without charges until being charged with conspiracy in 2005. The charge [...]
I touched on this the other day in my post about Dallin Oaks’ comments but I want to expand on it.
Oaks argued that respect for religion has declined in our society, there has been a corresponding increase in the number of people who are nonbelievers and an increase in criticism [...]
While the cable news channels were giving us in-depth coverage of Balloon Boy, the Associated Press reported this:
The U.N. Human Rights Council voted Friday to endorse a Gaza war crimes report and send it to the Security Council, possibly setting up international prosecution of Israelis and Palestinians [...]
Its official. Glenn Beck has serious issues.
If I understand his message, he assumes everyone else has an inner devil. Beck is still afraid of his father.
I’ll leave it to the professionals to interpret that.
[...]For the lead-up to the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen in December, Google Earth has put together a new way to “explore the potential impacts of climate change on our planet Earth and find out about possible solutions for adaptation and mitigation.”
Can DeChristopher put climate change on [...]
You know, it’s not often I get the chance to say one of the leaders of a religious denomination is so full of shit his eyes are green but Mormon Elder Dallin Oaks has given me the chance. (For those not in the know, Elder is his actual title, not [...]
“Court rules that KBR employee’s gang rape wasn’t a personal injury ‘arising in the workplace.’“
Franken’s “No Arbitration for Gang Rape” amendment was passed 68-30. The thirty Republican Senators who voted against the amendment bear an uncanny resemblance to one another.
How much more evidence do we need that the [...]
I’m writing about trashy novels. Deal with it.
When I saw the short lived tv series The Dresden Files I was intrigued. In an odd twist, the TV series turned out to be more interesting than the books (though equally flawed). Other than book one Storm Front, I thought the Dresden [...]
Max Blumenthal’s Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement that Shattered the Party is a hit and miss book – Blumenthal shrewdly documents the carnival of personal dysfunction that defines so many leading figures on the American Right, offering a broad analysis drawn from Erich Fromm’s Escape From Freedom.
The authoritarian nature of [...]
Posting for posterity of record.
Steven Weber: GOP Pisses Off World; Wins Prize!.
Welcome to the new world order where isolationism is as fusty a notion as fairness and balance. Actions on the local level reverberate so globally that even the pissy little nyah-nyah-nyahing which the right wing Republicons persist in [...]
Every now and then, I check in on the Traditional Values Coalition to see what they’re fussing about. Their upset is oddly predictable – on any given day they’re angry about gay people and liberals – usually in that order. Under the headline:
If You Hate America You Have a [...]
How did this slip past the editors of the BBC? One of the leading global warming promoters is asking the forbidden question “what happened to global warming?“. To even use the [...]
Via TPM: Utah’s own Rep. Jason Chaffetz went on Faux News yesterday to demonize U.S. Bureau of the Census workers as killers, rapists and child molesters. Somebody ought to tell the congressman he can’t out-crazy Michele Bachmann, so why even try?
Chaffetz, to Fox’s Gregg Jarrett (emphasis added):
“It is paramount [...]
Why do you carry a gun? Why, so you can shoot it if you need to. Like this situation. Yessiree, what this country needs is more guns. Just be careful you don’t get caught in the crossfire.
CBS: October 9, 2009 3:17 PM
Police released surveillance video to identify gunmen captured [...]
When I was a kid I loved the prizes we got in cereal boxes. When we opened a box of cereal we would excitedly dig down deep to find the prize. Back then we got cool stuff like Matchbox Cars and Hot Wheels, Army Men, yoyos, puzzles, games, iron-ons, temporary [...]
Via Media Matters, the same people who overlooked former President Bush and VP Cheney’s televised public confessions of high crimes want to impeach President Obama for… what exactly?
Of course, the first calls for Obama’s impeachment came from the right [...]
Once again, President Obama needs to bolster his commander-in-chief cred. His Afghanistan commander went off freelancing, and Obama is listening to the wrong people about Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy.
October 1: In a public appearance in London, Afghanistan commander General Stanley McChrystal flatly rejected proposals to switch to a counterterrorism strategy more [...]
In a move that would make Neville Chamberlain proud President Barack Obama has become the first President to snub the Dalai Lama to appease Communist China. The Dalai Lama is visiting Washington and was scheduled to [...]
Comics Edition.
One of the ways i like to keep track of the mentality of any particular group, is to se what images they feel resonate with them. You can get a pretty good idea of the opinions and general attitudes of a subculture by looking at the posters, signs, bumper [...]
There is little grace or beauty in the Obama-Hating crowd. For they are generally dull and uninformed people.
This comment posted on TheDonovan (Johan Goldberg Fans) struck me as uniquely articulate as it is incredulous. Extra points for writing skills.
A must read.
Eric,
If by ‘concrete-headed, ignorant, [...]
Just as the U.S. Army is trying to investigate the operational snafus that led up to a very tough fight last year at Wanat, we learn of another battle where American outposts have been overrun by Taliban fighters.
Outpost at Wanat, Nuristan [...]
A great quote from Tennessee Williams:
The great difference between people in this world is not between the rich and the poor or the good and the evil, the biggest of all differences in this world is between the ones that had or have pleasure in love and those that haven’t [...]
Today Joe Cannon at the D-News approvingly reprints an editorial by Rev. Richard John Neuhaus from 1994. In this article, Neuhaus wrote (in this quote, the term plurality is used in place of pluralism):
Truth, not tolerance, he goes onto say, is what religion is about. None of us should want [...]
Last night, I went to Moore’s latest cinematic op-ed, “Capitalism: A Love Story.” I haven’t seen a Michael Moore film since “Roger & Me.” I did watch his brilliant, short-lived network series “TV Nation” (IMHO the immediacy of television makes it a better medium for Moore).
[...]
Robert Reich:
This morning’s job numbers are bad enough — 263,000 more jobs lost in September, and unemployment now at 9.8 percent — but look behind them and the news is even grimmer. The only reason the numbers don’t look worse is that 571,000 workers dropped out of the labor force. [...]
Rio may have gotten the Olympics regardless of President Obama’s ill-advised junket to Copenhagen to lobby for Chicago’s bid for [...]
I will admit, I did not believe it when Michele Bachmann began to question the loyalty of congressional Democrats. I thought the claims that liberals were ‘America haters’ was hyperbole.
I can admit when I am wrong.
During this secret meeting of self-proclaimed American patriots, the [...]
Big hat tip to Barry Ritholz.
The economic picture is not pretty. September 09 job losses were more than expected – 263,000. While that’s better than last winter it’s still ugly. Don’t forget – the US needs to add around 1.3 million jobs per year just to keep up with [...]
Richard Warnick, Glenden Brown, Ken Bingham, Larry Bergan, Cliff Lyon, shane, Becky Stauffer
