Casualties, financial costs, etc. Show your local neo-con these statistics when he starts saying it was worth it.
The War that has gone on for around half a decade has cost us much in blood and treasure, and popular opinion around the world. This war isn't just unjustifiable, it's fiscally irresponsible, morally wrong, and continually deepining the financial wounds in the American Economy, with a shower of salt upon them to add to the pain.
I want to get my mom’s brains out of hock from the right wing, and I’m not sure how I’m going to do it.
Explanation. I’m sort of this partially estranged daughter. I love my mom to pieces and in most ways I have great relationship with her, except one thing. She’s a Republican against her better nature and better judgment. I know that sounds terribly condescending, and it is. But that’s how I feel.
There's a lot more to this story - me and my mom - over the fold. But it's long and not for the harried...
A bunch of anti-Obama Republicans just zoomed down the street in front of The Big Tent at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. All four of them. Riding in their gas-guzzling Hummer, screaming unmentionables at the top of their lungs. I have o problem with protesters - it is all in the spirit of Freedom and Human Rights, although the concept of according freedom to all humans is becoming a strange thing to the typical right-winger these days.
I am here making public my previously private opinion that the 2008 John McCain is the most far right wing extremist (neoconservative) zealot that the Republican party has ever nominated for President.
Now, I admit as a progressive democrat I was going to vote for the democratic presidential candidate in 2008, but did they have to go and nominate this guy who moved to the right even of George W Bush? My gut and current evident suggests he might be less honest than Bush, if that's possible.
[math4barack's first diary since move!!!] I am shocking my old friends with my conversion to being a progressive democrat supporting Obama. I am met with much opposition. However, probably most of my classmates will be supportive.
One of the many things that puzzle me about American life is the notion that the rightwing is pro-business...more specifically, pro-small business. Groups like the Republican Party, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and their large corporate backers claim to fight for small business which is supposed to flourish under their version of free market economics.
As a bona fide independent contractor working in a small web design biz with a grand total of 3 employees (but with a somewhat larger number of associates and co-contractors), I am going to weigh in here from the point of view of a little guy.
I am always amazed when in the company of other progressives and liberals how truly regressive and unwilling to change we can be. Diary after diary, comments by the thousands about what? How we can't, how we shouldn't and how Obama is going wrong. Well Obama hasn't gone wrong, we've just stopped listening and started grinding the same old axes. We spend too much time bashing and not enough time listening, fear and ignorance is abundant on BOTH sides of the ideological divide. Follow me below the fold for hopefully some insight into how all the fears of your worst nightmares coming true are in fact the realization of your most heartfelt dreams for this country.
And brought to you by the New York Times (click on Glen McCoy), the sickest editorial cartoon I think I've ever seen.
Now, I know they don't check these on-line comics. They come automated from UClick through a contract or something. But this cartoon is really about as close to the edge of totally unacceptable as I have ever seen.
It also points to the vicious nature of the right wing mind, and their inability to see other sides of issues. If Obama thinks that he can work with these people he is nuts. Even Rick Warren stabbed Obama in the back, saying after the "interview" that no evangelical should ever vote fro a pro-choice candidate.
Summary: I found out via the occasionally useful Newsbusters that there's a rap song out there called, "Kill Bill O'Reilly".
To the "East Coast Avengers" who made this song...uh, guys, you're not helping.
Warning: I'm not going to censor the rather explicit lyrics to this song, so you shouldn't exactly read this where you're going to get in trouble for doing so.
Summary: Bill O'Reilly's main page has this advertisement:
Wednesday, August 13:
• Is George Clooney advising Barack Obama? Dennis Miller weighs in
• Plus, the Daily Kos strikes again — this time attacking American troops who fought in Iraq!
It's the latter that I want to get into, because it led to another of Mr. O'Reilly's "the Left is worse than the Right" arguments.
Sometimes, it's useful to revisit old tempests in teapots to get some perspective and see what the truth is, outside the media spin cycle.
On May 23, a rather - ahem - heated right wing web site, Little Green Footballs, decided to hyperventilate over Rachel Ray's choice of wardrobe for a Dunkin Donuts commercial. It seems that the kaffiyeh has been declared a symbol of Palestinian solidarity by the PLO back in the 1930's, so obviously Rachael Ray was supporting the Palestinians in some sort of crypto-fashionista sort of way.
What the hyperventilators failed to recognize was that the kaffiyeh - or shemgahs, as the British call them - are extremely useful garments in the climate of Arab nations. So useful, in fact, that our own troops wear them. Here's the picture proof.
One of the gains from the current political dispensation and sequel to the emergence of Sen. Obama as a concrete contender was the miniaturization of the campaign of calumny, denigration, melancholy, distortions and deceptions by candidates. In fact the wealth of modernization and the different approach to campaigning that Obama brought into the political landscape is better imagine than described as epitomized by his healthy, factual and transparent propagation of his ideologies, convictions and manifesto for the country.
You already know that Jerome Corsi is a lying douchebag about Barack Obama. You may know that he got kicked off the air at Fox News after his vile comments about Islam and Catholicism were revealed over at MediaMatters.
But did you know Corsi was auditioning for the 9/11 Truth gravy train early this year? He appeared on the right-wing, Ron-Paul-pushing radio show The Alex Jones Show earlier this year, and boy, was his brain a-thinking! He even gave Alex pointers on how best to present this 9/11 trash to get more suckers into the cash flow. (Of course, he used different words than this, but that's what it's all about.)
Summary: I'm not a political fanatic. Yes, I tend to agree with the Political Left on most issues, but it's not because I think the Left is always right, and the Right is always wrong.
So I don't buy into the idea I've frequently read on the Internet that the Political Right is incapable of telling a good joke on account of all of their policies being wrong. But this piece from the Weekly Standard ain't helping.
The fundamental flaw of the elite liberal intelligentsia is that its members believe that things make sense; that reason, logic, truth, analysis, and careful consideration of issues is the way the world works. And nothing could be further from the truth. Especially when it comes to politics.
I'm pleased to announce that I'm almost finished with the group of sculptures I'll be exhibiting in my first solo show. I'll be premiering the artwork here on the blog first (and in other cyberspace locales) before the "bricks and mortar" show at True World Gallery in Joshua Tree, CA.
On June 25th I went to see the new Batman movie, Dark Knight, and I was completely taken aback by the level of right-wing fascist propaganda it contained.
It was truly shocking. I had gone to see the movie expecting something completely different, more of a fantasy escapism, but I soon realized that I was in for a true study of modern propaganda.
Don't get me wrong; the movie is truly spectacular and I can see why it became a blockbuster.
So after realizing what was it I was watching, then I started to pay attention really carefully to "get the entire message."
It really hit all the points the contemporary right-wing propaganda machine would want people to get. I was actually wondering if the script may have been ghost-written by an intelligence operative working for the Bush administration.
