The Palin Charm Wears Out in Moments
This is a great video but watch carefully at 1:10 for the Palin family reaction to the woman’s saying she’s a teacher. When did being a teacher become an object of derision?
Day: August 9, 2010
Verbatim
If this ruling is upheld, millions of Americans will face for the first time a legal system that is committed to the view that our deeply held moral views on sex and marriage are unacceptable in the public square, the fruit of bigotry that should be discredited, stigmatized and repressed. Parents will find that, almost Soviet-style, their own children will be re-educated using their own tax dollars to disrespect their parents’ views and values.
– Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for [Hets-Only] Marriage, offering the professional homophobes’ take on the ruling striking down Proposition 8.
Verbatim
Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that it should read ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.’ The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan [Muslim], the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.
– Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826), third president of the United States, author of the Declaration of Independence, referring to the Virginia Statute For Religious Freedom, which became law on January 16, 1786.
Tea Baggers Exposed Gaming the Digg System
Here’s a story we doubt you’ll see reported on FOX News. AlterNet recently completed a year-long investigation into so-called “gaming the system” at the content aggregator, Digg. A Yahoo group calling itself the Digg Patriots (whose site has since been taken down) figured out how to rig Digg’s voting. If you don’t know, at Digg and many similar sites, you can vote for the stories you want to see featured prominently, or in this case, those you want “buried.” As AlterNet reported:
It’s easier to tell you what the group is against than what it’s for: Obama, progressives, diplomacy, health care reform, immigrants, science, the separation of church and state, acknowledgment of human-induced climate change, the government, pro-choice protections, public schools, and higher education. They also claim to believe Obama is a Muslim and a socialist, and that he was born in Kenya.
Literally thousands of stories have already been artificially removed from Digg due to this group. When a story is buried, it is removed from the upcoming section (where it is usually at for ~24 hours) and cannot reach the front page, so by doing this, this one group is removing the ability of the community as a whole to judge the merits or interest of these stories on their own (in essence: censoring content).
The immensity of the impact is commensurate with the reach of Digg. Again, according to Alternet:
It is ranked 50th among US websites by Alexa (117th in the world), by far the most influential social media site…Digg generates around 25 million page views per month, over one third of the page views of the NY Times. Front page stories regularly overwhelm and temporarily shut down websites in a process called the “Digg Effect.”
Conservative Olson: All Rights Aren’t Up for a Vote
Olson was probably only allowed to speak without being shouted down because of his conservative creds. After all, he was the man who won Bush v. Gore and was rewarded with the job of Solicitor General under George W. Bush. The entire exchange is great, but the part where he asks Chris Wallace whether we should also put FOX News’ right to free speech up to the voters is brilliant.
Polls Finally Open in Florida. Will the Republican Blood Letting End?
After what seems like decades, but is only a matter of hundreds and hundreds of days, the polls were finally opened in Florida, where early voting for the Aug. 24 primary began. I pity my Republican neighbors, who must choose between the guy with no lip and the guy with no eyebrows (or hair) as their candidate for governor. This video, produced by Democrat Alex Sink’s team, shows the state of the GOP primary.
Meanwhile my gal, Sink, has rightfully profited in polling and fundraising from the rancor on the GOP side. Recent polls show her up over her Republican opponents, by how much varying upon which candidate she is paired with. Her lead seems wider over McCollum than Scott. And she has about $5.8 million in the bank, which she’ll need if she finds herself running against multimillionaire Scott. Bud Chiles, son of Democratic governor Lawton Chiles, is trailing in polls with about 15 percent. Chiles is in the race as an independent, so if he stays in, it will be a three-way contest.
Fact Checkers: Palin Caught Lying about Bush Tax Cuts – In Other News, Sun Rises in East
It’s my theory that Sarah Palin is just George Bush in a skirt and weird S&M librarian glasses. Like Bush, she is both meagerly gifted and proud of her ignorance and, like Bush, if her lips are moving, she’s lying — or, in Palin’s case, if it appears in her Facebook blog, you should assume it is GOP disinformation and spin.
So it shouldn’t be news that both the leading non-partisan news analyst organizations — Factcheck.org and Politifact — examined her statements about the Bush tax cuts and found that she was blatantly and unabashedly lying, just as Bush himself would do if he weren’t in exile.
The reason it is news when Palin lies is that the atrocities must be documented because, in the hands of a team of Karl Rove Svengalis, it is within the realm of possibilities that at least 51 percent of Americans could be convinced to vote for her for president. If that happens, the GOP will complete the job they started in 1994 of finishing off the American middle class, once and for all.
O’Reilly on Defense: Denies Race-Baiting on Fox – Maddow Rolls Tape, Proves He’s Wrong
If it’s true that, according to the Rove-Breitbart playbook, when your side is on defense you are losing, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly is losing the debate with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow about his network’s use of racism to inflame and agitate its predominantly elderly white Republican viewers.
According to Bill O’Reilly, highly rated shows can’t possibly be racist.
Maddow apparently got under O’Reilly’s skin last week when she did a story about race baiting on Fox that documented the network’s on-air personalities’ lies about Van Jones, ACORN, Shirley Sherrod, the New Black Panthers Party, illegal immigration and other racially charged stories.
The next night O’Reilly took to the airways in defense of his network. He rebutted the video evidence of his colleagues’ racially inflammatory comments with a succinct, “Nuh-UHH” — Fox can’t be racist, he suggested, because his ratings were higher than MSNBC’s, and everybody knows that highly rated shows can’t possibly feature racism.
This defense was the subject of much well-deserved derision the next day, which prompted O’Reilly to return to the air and resort to name-calling — Maddow is a “far left loon,” he said. He then repeated the much-derided defense that his network’s high ratings are irrefutably prima facie evidence that Fox is free of racism.
Maddow responded last night by noting that sharks must be more even less racist than Fox because “Shark Week” beat Fox in the ratings last week.
She followed up with a video retrospective of O’Reilly’s own on-air racist comments — which she offered as irrefutable proof that race baiting is what Fox does.
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Here’s a rough transcript of Maddow’s report — this was provided by MSNBC:
Politely But Firmly Boies Calls Anti-Gay Psycho Tony Perkins a Liar on Face the Nation
At around minute 2:50:
DAVID BOIES: It’s easy to sit around and debate and throw around opinions that appeal to people’s fear and prejudice — cite studies that either don’t exist or don’t say what you say they do. In a court of law, you’ve got to come and you’ve got to support those opinions. You’ve got to stand up, under oath and under cross-examination. And what we saw at trial is that it’s very easy for the people who want to deprive gay and lesbian citizens of the right to [marry] to make all sorts of statements in campaign literature — or in debate where they can’t be cross-examined, But when they come into court, and they have to defend those opinions under oath and under cross-examination, those opinions just melt away.
And that’s what happened here. There simply wasn’t any evidence. There weren’t any of those studies — there weren’t any empirical studies. That’s just made up. That’s junk science. And it’s easy to say that on television, but a witness stand is a lonely place to lie and when you come into court, you can’t do that.
And that’s what we proved. We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost.
