A question to stump your Republican friends:

(from MoveOn.org)

Meanwhile we wait for it all to trickle down. And we wait… any sign of the trickle down yet?

If It Wasn’t For Big Government (I picked this up while surfing blogs)

I liked this one. Made lots of sense.

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Just The Messenger

March 15, 2012, by fidlerten

If it wasn’t for Big Government – we would be driving on dirt roads and it would probably take us months to drive from the East Coast to the West Coast or vice versa. And, if we did decide to make a trip across the country, we had better bring a boat because we’ll need it to cross the many rivers that our country has.

If it wasn’t for Big Government – we would be probably still using outhouses or at least we’d all have our own septic tanks that we’d have to maintain because there would be no water treatment plants or sewage systems to carry our human waste away from our homes. We would also need to dig our own wells so that we could all get water.

If it wasn’t for Big Government – many of us wouldn’t be alive because we…

View original post 786 more words

How Obama Raised the Price of Gas (according to the Right)

We all know, as the Repiglicants have told us over and over, that the gas prices are going up because oil in the middle east costs more and Obama refuses to increase oil production here in the good ole USA.

What? That’s not true? You think Obama has actually allowed more oil drilling here than previous (read Repiglicant) administrations?

Well, here’s the facts:

Hmmm. Perhaps he’s keeping it all for himself.

Looking for something to read on a Sunday?

Here’s some cheerful education:

The Strange, Fascinating History of the Vibrator

The sex toy has its roots in the prude Victorian era — but its history tells us a lot about the current attack upon women’s sexuality.

Go HERE and have a great read.

What do you learn from Lunacy?

Exerpts from “The Case for Crazy: What the GOP Would Learn by Picking Rick Santorum“

by John Avlon in the Daily Beast

A cleansing bout of craziness in 2012 could be just what the GOP needs.

I’m talking about a nominee so far to the right that conservative populists get their fondest wish—and the Republican Party is forced to learn from the result.  Namely, that there is such a thing as too extreme.

…

If Mitt Romney does finally wrestle the nomination to the ground, and then loses to Obama, conservatives will blame the loss on his alleged moderation. The right wing take-away will be to try and nominate a true ideologue in 2016.

But if someone like Rick Santorum gets the nomination in an upset, the party faithful will get to experience the adrenalin rush of going off a cliff together, like Thelma and Louise—elation followed by an electoral thud.

…

Giving conservative activists everything they want in a presidential nominee would ultimately be clarifying for the Republican Party. It would break the fever that has afflicted American politics turning fellow citizens against one another. It would restore a sense of balance, recognizing that it is unwise to systemically ignore the 40% of American voters who identify themselves as independent or the 35% who are centrist. After all, a successful political party requires both wings to fly.

There’s nothing like losing 40 states to refocus the mind.

Education is a marvelous thing. Education by Experience can be devastating.

Quote of the Day: Michael J. Fox on Rush Limbaugh

Interviewed on the tube last night, Michael J. Fox commented on Rush Limbaugh‘s attacks on women (and reminded everyone that it was Limbaugh who declared Fox’s Parkinson’s Disease a fake):

“But the thing with Sandra Fluke, I am husband to a wife and a father to daughters, and a son to a mother, and a brother to sisters, and that was really offensive… I can yell and scream and wave my arms, ironically, or whatever about what he said, but let the free market decide, and all the things. I love there to be voices out there that I don’t agree with. I love people to say vile offensive things, because then I know who they are, and as a voter I know they are, and as a consumer, I know who they are, and then they have identified themselves, and all things being equal, the market will balance that out.

You know there’s this talk about Bill Maher. The difference with Bill Maher is that he is on HBO, and he doesn’t have advertisers. He was once in the public sector and made statements and advertisers bailed on him, and he was relegated to cable. So now, I find it much less egregious in a way, not the content of what he says, it may be offensive, but it’s a different thing than this giant corporate supported bully pulpit that this man has, and the way again, he did the same thing with Sandra Fluke that he did with me, but as I said more egregious I think with Sandra Fluke, because here was a private citizen expressing an opinion that she has a right to express that was sought out by people we’ve elected to represent the point of view the public, and she was knocked down brutally.”

How is it that Rush gets any sponsors at all?

Scott Walker is looking forward to making REAL money…

Wouldn’t you consider the $144,423 that Scott Walker makes as Governor of Wisconsin is a good salary? Gee… it would make MY life a lot easier. Walker, however, told right-wing radio host Charlie Sykes, that he was about to “make some real money” if he were to leave politics and enter the private sector:

And if we fail to win, it will take us down the path we see, failing, people like the people in Illinois, down in Springfield, and I for one don’t want that. Not because this job is that important to me, ‘cuz frankly my wife in some ways would love it if I’d go back to the private sector and make some real money.

So I guess he doesn’t care what happens in his upcoming recall election… and if that’s true, why doesn’t he just quit? Most of Wisconsin would be happy if we did.

 

And as long as we’re talking about Wisconsin I’d like to say “Hi” to my son in Milwaukee. Chin up, Bud!

Related articles

• “I saw a bald eagle flying over the [Wisconsin] Capitol.” (althouse.blogspot.com)
• Governor Walker’s Wisconsin Lost 3,900 Private-Sector Jobs In December, Nation Added Jobs That Month (dekerivers.wordpress.com)
• Governor Walker’s Wisconsin Lost 11,700 Private-Sector Jobs In November From October (dekerivers.wordpress.com)
• Union-Busting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker ‘Far Off Pace’ From Delivering On Job Creation Promises (thinkprogress.org)
• Why Can’t Gov. Scott Walker Stop the Job Losses in Wisconsin? (crooksandliars.com)
• Scott Walker Rallies Against Recall Efforts At CPAC 2012 (huffingtonpost.com)
• On and To Scott “the American Assad” Walker, the Godless, Soulless, Spineless, Bloodless, Heartless Governor of Wisconsin (spwg22.wordpress.com)

Someday I’d like to go to the TED Conference…

… but as things look now, both economically and physically, I’ll probably never get the chance.

For those not familiar with TED, here is their statement:

WHAT IS TED?

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design — three broad subject areas that are, collectively, shaping our future. And in fact, the event is broader still, showcasing ideas that matter in any discipline. The format is fast paced: 50+ talks over the course of four days (to say nothing of the morning and evening events). This immersive environment allows attendees and speakers from vastly different fields to cross-fertilize and draw inspiration from unlikely places. This is the magic of TED.

THREE CONFERENCES EACH YEAR AND TED LIVE

TED holds three yearly conferences: TED at Long Beach, California, TEDActive at Palm Springs, California (which runs concurrently with TED at Long Beach) and TEDGlobal in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Attending a TED conference is by application. There are several levels of conference membership, and attendance fees depend on which level and conference you choose. Become a TED Live member to watch both TED and TEDGlobal live in your home, school, or office.

Thankfully, the TED folks post the best lectures on YouTube and I get to enjoy them at no charge and get something important to think about.

For instance, from the recent conference in Long Beach, CA, is this talk by Adam Savage showing how great ideas come from very simple sources:

To find out more about TED, go to http://www.ted.comand be sure to take in some of the videos. You’ll find talks in many areas:

• technology
• entertainment
• design
• business
• science
• global issues

All things considered, Barack Obama is one of the Best Presidents we have had…

Mother Jones has printed an intro to an upcoming Washington Monthly commentary by Paul Glastris concerning the evaluation of Barack Obama’s first term. The cover story is called “The Incomplete Greatness of Barack Obama,” a headline almost guaranteed to set your teeth on edge.

The main text of the Glastris article refers to what Obama has accomplished as opposed to the criticism of what he hasn’t.

It turns out that damn few Presidents have accomplished as much in under four years.

From the Mother Jones commentary by Kevin Drum:

Obama deserves to be judged by ordinary human standards, not by standards of perfection. A sidebar to Glastris’ piece lists Obama’s top 50 accomplishments, and I think it was a mistake to create a list so long. It ends up looking like the usual boring laundry list that any president can trumpet. Better to pare it down to 10 really top achievements in order to highlight how many truly major accomplishments Obama has been responsible for. So I did. Except I couldn’t get there. I cut it down to 13 and got stuck. Here they are, in the same order as the original Washington Monthly list:

1. Passed Health Care Reform
2. Passed the Stimulus
3. Passed Wall Street Reform
4. Ended the War in Iraq
6. Eliminated Osama bin Laden
7. Turned Around US Auto Industry
9. Repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
12. Reversed Bush Torture Policies
14. Kicked Banks Out of Federal Student Loan Program
16. Boosted Fuel Efficiency Standards
18. Passed Mini Stimuli (July 22, 2010; December 17, 2010; December 23, 2011)
22. Created Conditions to Begin Closing Dirtiest Power Plants
27. Achieved New START Treaty

These are all big deals. Big fucking deals, to quote our vice president. Unless you’re just bound and determined to sulk in your tent while insisting that health care was a sellout and the stimulus was too small and Dodd-Frank was feeble and the mini stimuli were more like micro stimuli, there’s just no way around the fact that this is a historically colossal set of progressive accomplishments, especially in the face of a historically hostile political environment.

Remember, this was all during a term when Mitch McConnell went public saying he would make sure none of Obama’s desired legislation would get passed; when tea party members elected to the Congress spent more time criticizing the POTUS than promoting the better lives of the people.

Obama hasn’t done everything I wanted, either. I wish we were out of Afghanistan by now, and I wish we had single-payer health. Maybe someday these will happen. I do believe that no one is perfect… but some people currently in the presidential office are more perfect than others.

Major Quote of the Day – Do you want to get out of Afghanistan?

 This amazing solution is from Father Tyme on BlondSense:

You want to end this thing? Send every proponent who thought or thinks this American Military/Political/Business crusade justifiable; every Congress person who voted for this travesty along with their entire family; every Right Wingunt; every Pseudo-patriotic NASCAR sucking holier-than-thou Evangelical Right Wingunt Mother’s son and daughter; every Ted Nugent–Victoria Jackson–Patricia Heaton–Kelsey Grammer–Megyn Kelly-Money grubbing Rush Hudson Limbaugh-Bill O’Reilly-Glen Beck cocksucking bird brained “Let’s you and him fight, but not me” advocate; every unemployed Joe the Plumber who salutes the flag but hates anything non white; every media owner, media personality and political hack; every pajama-clad envelope stuffing/bake sale College Republican Chickenhawk; every money-loving bishop, priest, pastor, reverend who intentionally misinterpret and mouth beliefs different from a true Xtian gawd’s will (and any of their following sheep who thinks their religious leaders saints); every Fatherland Security Employee; every CEO, investor and banker’s child…send them all over there right now with the same equipment and unprepared training assholes like Rumsfeld, Powell, Bush etc. and now Obama thought and still think was and is acceptable…send them all over there – to Democratize and Americanize those heathens; to convert those infidels to American Business Dogma; to allow Americans their inalienable ability to suck all the oil they can suck; to make America safe for rapists, thieves and especially for increased business profits. While we’re at it send their aged, infirmed and invalid, handicapped or otherwise physically and/or mentally challenged parents as well.

 

I’d give it two days! They’ll all be home!

Send this to your Congress folks and Senators… send it to your local papers…pass it on all over the net. Someone has to get this travesty stopped!

Related articles

• Was it the Force of George Bush’s Ego that Led to NATION BUILDING in AFGHANISTAN? (goodolewoody.wordpress.com)
• Afghanistan’s Haditha: An Atrocity to End the War (alhittin.com)
• Fury Grows Over Afghan Killings (atwar.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Afghanistan: ‘Several drunk troops behind bloodbath, laughed on shooting-spree, burned corpses’ (redantliberationarmy.wordpress.com)
• Taliban Promise Revenge for Civilian Murders in Afghanistan (wrc559.com)
• Hundreds protest in Afghanistan over shooting of civilians (cnn.com)

If I were still living in New England, I’d be heading for the Kerouac Literary Festival…

…more precisely to the Merrimac Repertory Theatre in Kerouac’s hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, where Beat Generation, a three-act play rediscovered in a New Jersey warehouse in 2005, will be staged for the first time this October.

Kerouac in 1967

 

Kerouac is an author I have followed since reading On The Road when I was a teenager. Beat Generation was written around the same time as a commission from off-Broadway producer Leo Gavin, but it was never produced or published.

Kerouac tried to get Marlon Brando and several producers’ interest in a production, but failed. After that the script was shelved.

It was rediscovered in 2005 and Kerouac’s then agent, Sterling Lord commented:

“It conveys the mood of the time extraordinarily well, and also the characters are authentically drawn.”

The play was apparently written in one night in 1957 and draws on his own life and those of other Beat writers including Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg, who subsequently starred in the film Pull My Daisy, which was based in part on  Beat Generation.

The Merrimack Repertory Theatre and the University of Massachusetts Lowell will deliver the World Premiere as eight staged readings –  the centrepiece of this year’s Jack Kerouac Literary Festival.

If you’re a Kerouac fan and near Lowell, MA, in October, this is something to see.

Related articles

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• Jazz and Jack – Celebrating Jack Kerouac’s 90th Birthday (communicatingacrossboundariesblog.com)
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• Jack Kerouac, meet Kristen Stewart: ‘On the Road’ movie debuts trailer (insidemovies.ew.com)

GOP Destruction Of Middle Class And Unions Rages On

http://doubledippolitics.com/2012/03/10/gop-destruction-of-middle-class-and-unions-rages-on/

GOP Destruction Of Middle Class And Unions Rages On | Double Dip Politics… btw, Ye Olde Soapbox has been added to the Blogroll.

Andrew Breitbart had a tape, EE Eye EE Eye Oh…

…and on that tape he had some crap,  EE Eye EE Eye Oh…

With  Obama here, and students there

Here a speech, there a speech

everywhere a speech speech…

Andrew Breitbart had a tape,  EE Eye EE Eye Oh…

According to the Telegraph in the UK:

(A) video, pitted as Mr Obama’s coup de grace and the end of his 2012 re-election bid, promised to expose the president as a “racist radical” who had plotted to seize control of the White House with other “totalitarian freaks” for more than 20 years.

In reality the tape showed a college student campaigning for racial diversity at Harvard law School – not quite the fiery revelations right wing blogger Andrew Breitbart had pledged prior to his death.

Sean Hannity, though, tried to push the tape on Fox News as some kind of real revelation that would end Obama’s campaign. But his efforts were more or less silly with a lot of respondents outside of the Fox/Tea Party crowd having greater respect for the President and his support of a dedicated professor while he was Editor of the Harvard Law Review (I don’t think Hannity ever had that kind of status).

As to Breitbart, he died before he could create another phony attack on good people. Perhaps he is watching all this from Hell. 🙂

Related articles

• Breitbart’s Video of Obama at Harvard on Hannity Tonight! (fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com)
• Breitbart Video Shows Barack Obama Protesting at Harvard in 1991 (VIDEO) (blippitt.com)
• Breitbart Editors Preview Obama College Video With Hannity (mediaite.com)
• Andrew Breitbart Tapes To Be Released (webpronews.com)
• BREAKING: Years Old, Publicly Available Photo of Andrew Breitbart Hugging A Black Guy Found (thesuperficial.com)
• Why We’re Talking About Barack Obama and Derrick Bell Now [Andrew Breitbart] (gawker.com)
• ‘Mancow’ Muller: Breitbart Was Murdered (mountainrepublic.net)

Passing on a Disgusting Practice…

Here it goes again…  My cousin turned me on to this piece:

Seven Million Pounds of “Pink Slime” Beef Destined for National School Lunch Program

By Sarah B. Weir, Yahoo! blogger | Healthy Living – 6 hours ago

“Pink slime” burger? McDonald’s and Taco Bell have banned it, but now the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is buying 7 million pounds of beef containing ammonium hydroxide-treated ground connective tissue and meat scraps and serving it up to America’s school kids. If you thought cafeteria food was gross before….

Related: What You Need to Know About the New Meat and Poultry Labels

According to TheDaily.com, the term “pink slime” was coined by microbiologist Gerald Zirnstein, formerly of the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service. He first saw it being mixed into burger meat when he was touring a Beef Products Inc (BPI) facility in 2002 after an outbreak of salmonella. “Scientists in D.C. were pressured to approve this stuff with minimal safety approval,” Zirnstein told The Daily.

“Pink slime,” which is officially called “Lean Beef Trimmings,” is banned for human consumption in the United Kingdom. It is commonly used in dog and chicken food. Celebrity chef and safe food advocate Jamie Oliver featured the substance and called for its ban on the April 12, 2011 episode of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, which may have influenced McDonald’s to stop using beef patties containing the filler.

Reportedly, Zirnstein and his colleague Carl Custer studied the substance and classified it as a “high risk product.” Custer, who worked at the Food Safety Inspection service for 35 years, says, “We looked at the product and we objected to it because it used connective tissues instead of muscle. It was simply not nutritionally equivalent [to ground beef]. My main objection was that it was not meat.”

Another issue is the ammonium hydroxide, a chemical that is used to kill pathogens such as E. coli. The FDA considers it safe for human consumption but a 2009 expose by the New York Times questioned its safety and efficacy. Some food advocates are asking for meat containing “pink slime” to be labeled. It’s used in about 70% of ground beef in the US. “We don’t know which districts are receiving what meat, and this meat isn’t labeled to show pink slime. They don’t have to under federal law,” Bettina Siegal, a writer and mother of two who created TheLunchTray.com told NBC. Siegel has started a petition to demand the USDA stop using the product in the National School Lunch Program.

It’s hard to know what to say… Andrew Breitbart, enemy of most of us who support Obama and the Rational Left, is dead at 43.

From the LA Times:

The conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart, the polarizing website publisher who once helped edit the Drudge Report and found his way to tea-party stardom in recent years and exposed the story of the sexually explicit tweets of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), suddenly collapsed near his Westwood home early Thursday morning and died. He was 43.

Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center suspected his death was due to natural causes, Breitbart’s father-in-law, actor Orson Bean, told The Times.

“He was walking near the house somewhere…. He was taken by paramedics to UCLA and they couldn’t revive him,” said Bean, who spoke with his daughter, Susannah Bean Breitbart, about what happened.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office confirmed it will investigate the case, given how young Breitbart was.

Breitbart was a Hollywood-hating, mainstream-media-loathing conservative, and shot to stardom with two stories in recent years: breaking the story over the sexually charged tweets by Weiner, a scandal that led to his resignation; and posting a video of Shirley Sherrod, a black employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in which she appeared to make racially charged comments, leading to her firing and then a subsequent apology by the Obama administration when it was later revealed her comments were taken out of context.

This will certainly ease an element of the election situation this year.

It puts the thought in my head that maybe there IS a God. Or maybe Rush Limbaugh could go out and walk around his house, too.

Breitbart was no respecter of the maxim that one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead: After the death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in 2009, he spewed venom all over the liberal lion’s grave via Twitter, calling him a “special pile of human excrement,” a “villain” and other things we can’t reprint on a family website. So I don’t have any qualms about remembering Breitbart, who died suddenly Thursday at 43, as a closed-minded bully and blowhard who seemed to think he could win debates by shouting louder than his opponent rather than having a better argument, a casual liar who shamelessly destroyed reputations and an unfortunate new species of Internet parasite.

–Dan Turner, LA Times Staff

I guess  agree. I just don’t feel bad.

The Memorials the Oscars Left Out…

My pal Joe Bratcher turned me on to this in Facebook. As I looked at the list, I realized that there were some great… and important to our cultural history… actors and actresses left out of the Academy Award‘s “In Memoriam” segment.

Nicole Williamson? How could they?

A Quote on Gas Prices…

We’re hearing the primary campaigners accuse President Obama of personally seeing to it that gas prices have gone to extremes (I saw one station at 3.95 a gallon in Charles Town yesterday). Well, I think we should hear what the President has said on the subject:

“You can bet that since it’s an election year, they’re already dusting off their 3-point plan for $2 gas — and I’ll save you the suspense: Step one is to drill and step two is to drill. And then step three is to keep drilling. We heard the same line in 2007 when I was running for President. We hear the same thing every year. We’ve heard the same thing for 30 years. Well, the American people aren’t stupid. They know that’s not a plan, especially since we’re already drilling. That’s a bumper sticker. It’s not a strategy to solve our energy challenge. That’s a strategy to get politicians through an election.” -Barack Obama

Frankly, if any of those yo-yos (Newt, especially, who is left with not much else to push than this) could actually get gas down to $2.00 a gallon they have enough congressional support to do it now.

Have you wondered why they don’t?

Related articles

• Obama: “We can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices” (ecopolitology.org)
• President Obama: Republicans Are ‘Licking Their Chops’ Over Rising Gas Prices (mediaite.com)
• Gas Prices Are an Endogenous Variable (forbes.com)
• Let’s Have An Election That Hangs On Gas Prices (treehugger.com)
• Obama: ‘No quick fixes’ on gas prices (politico.com)
• Obama and Republican trade blame on gas prices in weekly addresses (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)
• President Obama and an ‘all-of-the-above’ approach to American energy (dailykos.com)
• POTUS quotes POLITICO as proof of gas price politicization (politico.com)
• The Truth About Political Attacks Over High Gas Prices (tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com)

Ever wonder why the majority of Mormons are Republican?

Here are some clips from the Salt Lake Tribune:

The founders of the Republican Party saw Mormons as their enemies.

And the first Mormon leaders didn’t have much nice to say about the GOP, either.

You would never know it now — one recent poll showed three-quarters of LDS faithful lean toward the GOP — but the two groups had an acrimonious start, fueled largely by the early Mormon practice of polygamy.

So how does this affect Mitt Romney as he runs for the Republican nomination?

As Mitt Romney presses his bid for the Republican nomination for president, lost on many Americans is how his Mormon faith played an important role as foil in the early days of the Grand Old Party — and how its first candidates catapulted to power in part by whipping up anti-Mormon sentiments.

“If you like irony, you’ve got to love history,” says Utah historian Will Bagley. “Polygamy made Mormons into a national punching bag during the 1850s.”

The Republican Party launched in 1854 as an anti-slavery party and quickly seized on growing concern with Mormons in the Utah Territory taking on multiple wives.

Early Republicans did not distinguish between slavery and polygamy and attacked Mormons in their first Party Platform in 1856. Republicans elected to Congress used their influence to wipe away Church control over the Utah Territory and backed a law that disincorporated the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

LDS Church leaders, for their part, harbored ill will toward the Republican Party, urging followers to back the Democrats.

“We call upon you to stand firm to the principles of our religion in the coming contest for president,” read a letter from LDS Church President Brigham Young and other leaders as published in the abolitionist newspaper, The National Era, on Nov. 20, 1856. “Our duty is plain. There are two principal parties in the country — one is for us, the other against us.”

That doesn’t mean that Democrats were pro-Mormon… they weren’t. Senator Steven Douglas was notably anti-Mormon and spread the fear that they would separate Utah from the country under Church government.

If rumors of Mormon troubles are true, then “the Mormon inhabitants of Utah, as a community, are outlaws and alien enemies, unfit to exercise the right of self-government,” Douglas said, according to a New York Times account of his speech at the time.

Lincoln’s winning the White House in 1860 and the Civil War ending slavery, left polygamy as the one concern that still resonated with Americans. P Republicans over the next several decades attacked the LDS Church over polygamy and suspicions that Mormons were attempting to form their own sovereign country in the Mountain West. Oddly enough, this fight was driven by the members of Congress from Vermont, the birthplace of Joseph Smith, founder of the LDS.

Vermont Rep. Luke P. Poland later amended that law to order that all civil and criminal cases in the Utah Territory be handled by the U.S. District Court and dismiss any other judiciary system in the state that he feared were simply church puppets.

Poland’s hope was that the federal courts would then go after polygamists, but it wasn’t until the 1887 Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act — sponsored by Republican George Franklin Edmunds— and the subsequent Edmunds-Tucker Act that Mormons with plural

Jailed Polygamists

wives were prosecuted. Around 1,300 men were eventually jailed under that act.

The law also was successful in disincorporating the LDS Church, forcing Mormons to take their battle to court. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled against the faith but Congress took a step back when Mormon leaders issued a proclamation in 1890 banning polygamy. That also was a turning point for the icy relationship between Mormons and the GOP.

What started the turn away from the Democrats was their inaction in the establishment of Utah as a state. The Republican Party of Utah was founded in 1891 and became the leading organization pushing for statehood, which happened in 1896.

It wasn’t until the 1970s however that social issues like abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment and gay marriage (all of which they were against) drew the Mormons to conservatism.

Church apostle Ezra Taft Benson, who supported the right-wing John Birch Society and served as Agriculture secretary under President Dwight Eisenhower, helped further push his fellow Mormons into the conservative camp.

A report by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in January showed that about 74 percent of Mormons lean toward the Republican Party and 66 percent of them call themselves conservative.

“Clearly, the Republican Party has taken the mantle of religious freedom and that bodes well for Mormons,” says Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican who converted to the Mormon faith and the GOP.

“Principles of the Republican Party align with what Mormons believe,” the congressman added, though he quickly noted that there are many Democrats who are also devout Mormons.

Mitt Romney now assures everyone that there will be no influence of the LDS Church over his policies if he becomes the nominee. It is hopefully the case.

Quote of the Weekend… did you hear Santorum on TV?

Commenting on the relationship between Church and State, Santorum said this while referencing John F. Kennedy’s famous 1960 speech:

“To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes me want to throw up. What kind of country do we live in where only people of non-faith can come in the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up. And that should make every American [throw up].

“I don’t believe in an America where the separation between church and state is absolute.”

That was not what Kennedy said or meant. Here’s JFK‘s statement:

“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials — and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”

According to Kennedy: “The Constitution is very clear” on the separation of Church and State.

If this doesn’t show why we should keep Santorum as far as possible from this office then nothing does.

The Daily Scoop: Better-educated Republicans doubt climate change; believe Obama’s Muslim

I’m really impressed by the concept “smart idiots effect” which turns up later in the article (when Mashed Potato Bulletin switches over to Salon.) I had always thought that educated Republicans were reachable about Climate Change, but now I find it questionable. What do you think?

Mashed Potato Bulletin

I can still remember when I first realized how naïve I was in thinking—hoping—that laying out the “facts” would suffice to change politicized minds, and especially Republicanones. It was a typically wonkish, liberal revelation: One based on statistics and data. Only this time, the data were showing, rather awkwardly, that people ignore data and evidence—and often, knowledge and education only make the problem worse.

Someone had sent me a 2008 Pew report documenting the intense partisan divide in the U.S. over the reality of global warming.^. It’s a divide that, maddeningly for scientists, has shown a paradoxical tendency to widen even as the basic facts about global warming have become more firmly established.
Read more…

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Cartoon(s) of the Week – and what a week it was!

A note before we look at this week’s selections.

I’ve been doing Cartoon(s) of the Week for over 5 years now, and I spend a great deal of time working on the selection. I review 40-75 cartoons every week, look for themes that are carried through them and pick the best artists and most significant captions. It’s a significant amount of work, and I know many of you look forward to it each week.

If you time that with the regular review of other blogs  to add to the significant blogroll I present for your interest and the editorials I research and write up, doing Under The LobsterScope is a considerably active unpaid job.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy working on this and have really liked hearing from hundreds of readers like you, both in comments and in e-mail and membership registrations. It is, however, an expense to keep going and I hope you will make a small contribution to keep it alive.

If you go HERE you can see the current thank you gift I send back for donations of $5.00 or more… a gift that I usually sell for 6 times that amount. Take a look and see if you can come in and join the folks who have helped keep this blog going.

Thanks,  Bill.

______________

Jim Morin in the Miami Herald:

Why aren’t they campaigning for what the people need?

-and –

Clay Bennett in the Chattanooga Times Free Press:

Are you wondering where political concerns are inserting themselves?

-and –

Matt Bors of United Features Syndicate:

Focus, focus, focus.

-and –

Rob Rogers in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette:

It’s great to see their relationship to foreign policy…

-and –

Mike Luckovich in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

…and what could be more local?

-and –

Drew Sheneman in the Newark Star-Ledger:

Keeping an eye on Birth Control…

Culture Wars…

We are entering another month of the ongoing political culture wars next week, without really looking at the concerns of jobs, economics, climate change or any of the other real problems that need to be addressed.

Tuesday will be the Michigan and Arizona primaries, so the TV pundits are focusing on those states and in so doing are revealing some new cultural phenomena. For instance, in Arizona they are considering a new law that bans college teachers from cursing but allows students to carry guns. Got that? Gun violence good, language violence bad? And then… what is a naughty enough word to get a teacher fired? Will they be listed in the law?

The biggest insertion of cultural conflict into the process is, of course, religion. Between candidates who have been spoken to by God and encouraged to run, to major religious groups protesting established birth control legislation but supporting the penetration of vaginas to discourage abortions, the promotion of religion over secular politics is frightening… and disgusting.

These politicians are ready to scrap what we know of the scientific proof for climate change in order to promote more industries that pollute the air (listen to the righties cheer) or to ignore what is necessary to reduce the unbelievable growth of population. Don’t they see what is going on here?

I turn to the world of intellectual comedy to backup my views of religion, science and atheism (a belief area that I belong to… but like most atheists don’t try to inflict my beliefs on other people using the replacement of secular law.) Here’s Eddie Izzard:

Even if you don’t agree with Eddie (or me), I hope you were at least entertained… and will think about how to get away from the culture wars and back to solving our real problems.

(BTW, Eddie Izzard will soon be appearing in a new version of Treasure Island playing Long John Silver. Can’t wait.)

Related articles

• Girl Scouts: The Culture Wars’ Tiniest Soldiers [Girl Scouts] (jezebel.com)
• Forget Jobs, 2012 Is About a Culture War and War With Iran (usnews.com)
• Leak Offers Glimpse of Campaign Against Climate Science (bfreenews.com)
• Culture War 2.0 or Same Old War? (atheistrev.com)
• Will Culture Wars be Focus of Tonight’s Debate? (politicalwire.com)
• Climate Change Hoax Has Apparently Become Part Of The Culture War (usapartisan.com)
• On the rise of culture war politics (shortformblog.tumblr.com)
• Contraceptives, religious freedom: Are we in a new culture war? (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)

Watch out for Lesbian Communist Girl Scouts…

Did you know that Girl Scouts were dangerous? According to Indiana state representative Bob Morris (Republican, natch), the Girls Scouts of America is a radical organization that promotes homosexuality and abortion, is a front for Planned Parenthood and is out to destroy American values.

Of course he is being roundly ridiculed for his position, even within his own party… but he won’t back down:

“My family and I took a view and we’re sticking by it. My girls are no longer Girl Scouts. They’re now going to join American Heritage Girls.”

Bob "Call Me Stupid" Morris

Morris said he made his discoveries after talking to some knowledgeable constituents and conducting “a small amount of Web-based research.” He concluded that the Girl Scouts encourage sexual activity endorse feminist, lesbian and Communist agendas. He pointed out that First Lady Michelle Obama is honorary president of the Girl Scouts of America  and that

“should give each of us reason to pause before our individual and collective endorsement of the organization.”

Planned Parenthood has released a statement denying any connection to the scouting group. The Girl Scouts of America did not address Morris’ individual claims, but said:

Michelle Obama with Girl Scouts

“Regarding Representative Morris, if the freshman representative wishes to discredit the contributions that hundreds of thousands of Indiana women and girls have made through the Girl Scouts program over the last 100 years, then he’s entitled to his opinion. Not only is Rep. Morris off the mark on his claims, it’s also unfortunate in his limited research that he failed to discover that since 1917, every First Lady has served as the honorary leader of Girl Scouts including Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush and Laura Bush.”

This is REALLY the year of the CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN FOLLIES… What do you think will come next?

Related articles

• Taking A Stand Against Girl Scouts of the Day (thedailywh.at)
• US: Girl Scouts Sexualising Recruits, Claims Republican Bob Morris (ibtimes.com)
• Lawmaker: Girl Scouts Promote Homosexuality (newsy.com)
• Some Homophobic Lawmaker From Indiana Sent This Letter About The Girl Scouts To His Republican Colleagues (buzzfeed.com)
• Indiana Legislator Refuses To Honor “Radical” Girl Scouts (buzzfeed.com)
• Radical Girl Scouts out to destroy American family values (dvorak.org)

Harold Kepnes still lives and I am thrilled…

Harold and I have been friends for over 50 years, now, and it’s that kind of friendship that goes on whether we see each other regularly or not. We can go several years without speaking with each other, then one of us will pick up the phone and it is like no time has passed. I’m sure everyone has at least one friend like that.

Harold and his Daughter Caroline (the Reel Girl on E!)

Harold and his wife Monica own a furniture store in Hyannis, MA (his big story is that he sold furniture to Teddy Kennedy). As young teens I spent half my Cape Cod summers over at Harold’s house where his parents treated me like another son. It was a great time.

Last year, however, Harold called me telling me he had cancer and was given about 18 months to live… meanwhile he was undergoing chemo and had lost weight (close to 100 lbs… and Harold started out as a chunky like me.)

Sunday, Harold called me to say he was 11 months into the chemo and was in partial remission. They were stopping the chemo because it was no longer working, but he was feeling pretty good. He’s pretty sure he’ll make it past the eighteen month point… I sure hope he does… and we had our regular phone call and discussion about families, basketball, the move Elly and I are making into “farming” (why does everyone say “Green Acres” to me when I talk about it?).

I don’t know what the situation will be the next time we talk, but I sure hope Harold continues to move ahead.

Happy Presidents Day… go out and buy a car.

Here’s an essay I did a while ago… it still applies. Sorry I’m being lazy on this holiday…

Presidents Day

This is the Holiday which, as far as I can tell, is designed for Car Dealers more than it is to revere the men who made our country great.

When I was growing up we had separate holidays for Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday. They first honored the man who was our first President and who led us through the military activities of the Revolution. We also remember every year that he voluntarily stepped down after two terms when he could easily have become a lifetime American King. The second holiday honored the man who kept our nation together, freed the slaves and suffered assassination.

These holidays were originally held on actual birthdates, no matter where in the week they fell (Washington on the 22nd, Lincoln on the 12th). Then, as holidays and long weekends became inextricably connected in order to satisfy labor demands, they were moved to nearest Mondays on a regular basis. When it became clear from our corporate citizens (as defined by the Supreme Court last month) that we had too many holidays throwing business off… and wanting to make room for a holiday for Martin Luther King (highly deserved, btw), the birthdays of the two Presidents were combined into President’s Day.

Without a particular focus on a particular President, the holiday was easily co-opted by automobile dealers as the big sale holiday designed to get folks to part with money in the bleak month of February, thus cleaning out inventories before the Spring announcement of new models for the coming year. And that seems to be where we have stayed.

So happy President’s Day. Take the kids who are out of school with you to run around the showrooms (that will act as necessary protective measure… salesmen will get to their price more quickly just to get the little devils out of their sales area) as you shop for new wheels.

Have a good time.

I’m getting ready for a solar energy presentation at Town Hall this evening. Actually, that’s a good way to celebrate Presidents Day… energy awareness makes the country better.

Related articles

• Happy President’s Day: Do You Know Why We Celebrate President’s Day, How it Happened or Who Invented It? (thehispanicblog.com)
• Presidents Day 2012: Fly your flag today (timpanogos.wordpress.com)
• Happy Presidents’ Day (geneveith.com)
• President’s Day 2012 (hamrodallas.com)
• Historic and Fun Couples’ Getaways for Presidents Day Weekend (redenvelope.com)
• Nixon, Reagan Libraries Mark Presidents Day Holiday With Special Events (losangeles.cbslocal.com)
• When Freedom’s Ring Isn’t a Cash Register’s (cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com)