Maggie Gallagher’s New Hate Group

10:00 am EST September 27th, 2011 | Conservative | 5 Comments

Conservative anti-gay marriage crusader Maggie Gallagher has a new group, and she talked to National Review about it.

Frank Turek is a man whose contract was terminated by a major corporation when human resources found out he had written a book opposing same-sex marriage. He is on the front lines of an emerging trend we are hearing about: people losing jobs or other economic opportunities because they have written, spoken, donated, or otherwise peacefully exercised their core civil rights on behalf of marriage as the union of husband and wife.

Frank’s day job is leadership seminars for Fortune 500 companies. He also runs a ministry and has written a book against same-sex marriage titled Correct, Not Politically Correct: How Same-sex Marriage Hurts Everyone.

For many years Frank Turek has done seminars for Cisco, among many other companies. A student who attended his class Googled his name, found out he opposed same-sex marriage and said “I’m going to get Frank fired because he doesn’t represent Cisco values.” And this student succeeded.

So, this guys contract was terminated and he doesn’t provide seminars any more to Cisco when it turned out he was preaching hatred. Gallagher has somehow morphed that into him being fired. So, in other words, Maggie Gallagher is still being a hateful liar.

Amanda Carpenter Blames Inhaler Issue On Obama, Lies When Caught

5:43 pm EST September 23rd, 2011 | Conservative | 19 Comments

So Demint aide and former Townhall contributor Amanda Carpenter was on Twitter blaming the impending end of over the counter asthma inhalers on President Obama:

One of the stories about the issue Carpenter linked to made this note:

The FDA finalized plans to phase out the products in 2008 and currently only Armstrong Pharmaceutical’s Primatene mist is available in the U.S. Other manufacturers have switched to an environmentally-friendly propellant called hydrofluoroalkane.

Now I, being a sentient human being, took notice of the fact that when the FDA made these plans in 2008, Barack Obama was not President of the United States. The President at the time was George W. Bush, someone who Carpenter was a big supporter of. When I pointed this out to her, her response was the following:

She acts now as if she wasn’t solely blaming Obama for this, as if she previously had said Obama is incorrectly enforcing a policy passed under Bush. But if you simply scroll down to a few minutes earlier, she’s very clearly blaming this policy on “Obama’s EPA” and claim that this is something the “Obama Admin wants to ban.”

EXCEPT THE BAN WAS AGREED TO UNDER BUSH.

This is how a liar operates. This is your modern conservative movement, in action.

(h/t to @toddgregory who is similarly appalled by this kind of blatant lying)

UPDATE: The Weekly Standard also blames this Bush administration decision on Obama, continuing proof that conservatives don’t or can’t read basic information.

After I posted about her lie, Amanda Carpenter has gone silent on this issue, and has not retracted her false allegation. Instead she went on to discuss relevant issues like the break-up of REM.

Conservatives Hit Panic Button After Debate Disaster

11:52 am EST September 23rd, 2011 | Conservative | 57 Comments

Wow, check out the Weekly Standard.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s official reaction to last night’s Republican presidential debate: Yikes.

Reading the reactions of thoughtful commentators after the stage emptied, talking with conservative policy types and GOP political operatives later last evening and this morning, we know we’re not alone. Most won’t express publicly just how horrified—or at least how demoralized—they are. After all, they still want to beat Obama—as do we. And they want to get along with the possible nominee and the other candidates and their supporters. They don’t want to rock the boat too much. But maybe the GOP presidential boat needs rocking.

The e-mails flooding into our inbox during the evening were less guarded. Early on, we received this missive from a bright young conservative: “I’m watching my first GOP debate…and WE SOUND LIKE CRAZY PEOPLE!!!!” As the evening went on, the craziness receded, and the demoralized comments we received stressed the mediocrity of the field rather than its wackiness. As one more experienced, and therefore more jaded, observer wrote: “I just thought maybe it’s always this bad…they’re only marginally worse than McCain and Bush.”

Now there are some legitimate excuses. With nine candidates on the stage, and answers restricted to one minute, it’s hard to really show your stuff. And two of the candidates—Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney—did provide respectable performances. But no front-runner in a presidential field has ever, we imagine, had as weak a showing as Rick Perry. It was close to a disqualifying two hours for him. And Mitt Romney remains, when all is said and done, a technocratic management consultant whose one term as governor produced Romneycare. He could rise to the occasion as president. Or not.

Kristol doesn’t even note the crowd booing a gay soldier. These debates are an excellent source of opposition research, that’s for sure.

Hey, “Occupy Wall Street”… Dress With Some Dignity

5:58 pm EST September 22nd, 2011 | Liberals | 43 Comments

A couple days ago I tweeted a link to this Reddit post that said the following:

You Want to Change the World? Dress with Some Fucking Dignity.
“Right here is some sincere guidance to US protesters: dress much better. I’m not kidding. You may possibly think you are paying homage to the peace-loving hippies, but the masses of America–the people whose help you’re going to need–fucking hate hippies. Take a lesson from the protesters of the 20s and 30s. Dress cleanly and neatly. Hell, wear a tie. Bear in mind, our great-grandparents have been the ones who effected true social change, e.g, the forty hour function week. Our pot-smoking mother and father failed in which our suit wearing excellent-grandparents succeeded.”–Some guy on Youtube

I present some pictures from the ongoing “Occupy Wall Street” protest:

Now, let us compare this to Civil Rights protesters in the 1960s, who actually accomplished something:

If you dress up like a dope-smoking hobo, expect to be treated like one and not be taken seriously. Get a haircut. Wear a nice shirt. Carry a sign with a message that makes some kind of sense to an average American.

It might work.

Anti-Vaxxers Kill Children In Montreal

1:17 pm EST September 22nd, 2011 | News | 13 Comments

There is a measles outbreak in Montreal.

For the first time since 2007 Quebec is dealing with a widescale measles outbreak.

More than 700 cases of the potentially deadly disease have been reported in the province this year, with the majority of people being infected between April and July, although new infections are still being reported.

Most of the people infected live in the Mauricie region of the province, but the most recent cases have been reported in the Eastern Townships.

12 percent of the infections have been so bad people needed to be hospitalized for treatment.

Children need to be vaccinated against these diseases. It is a public health issue. If you are supporting the cause of the anti-vaxxers, pushing their agenda, or as a news organization forwarding these views – you are helping to kill children. (via @ZieberKR)

Vincent Lowe, My Grandfather. 1921-2011

4:36 am EST September 20th, 2011 | Me | 27 Comments

My grandfather died Monday night, around 11pm in Georgia. My aunt and I were on our way to see him for the last time, but we were about half an hour too late.

My grandfather’s name is Vincent Lowe, but I know him as “Nice Daddy.”

My grandfather was born in Jamaica in 1921.

He has six children. Five girls and one son. In order, they are Shirley, Vilma, Lorna, Paulette (my mom), Angela, and Phillip.

For something like 40 years, my grandfather ran Lowe’s Woodworking on King Street in Kingston, Jamaica. He and his workmen built all manner of things, including furniture. This includes beds, shelves, mantles, etc. Anything with wood and they made it, the bulk of it designed by my grandfather on draft paper and with pencil.

In 1962 Jamaica gained independence from the British Empire. The first prime minister of the newly independent Jamaica, Alexander Bustamante, had his bed at the official residence built by my grandfather.

My grandfather had many of the traditional views of relations between men and women as someone from the era he was born in, but when it came to his daughters, he went against the tide. Not the greatest husband, he was an excellent father.

He had an amazing temper – I’ve seen it at full velocity in the woodshop – but when it came to his girls he was as soft as a down-filled teddy bear. My mother told me how he built a crib for her when she was born that was big enough where he could lie down next to her, and how he used to drive his girls to school every day, and hold their hands as he walked down the street – bear in mind this was in the 1950s and early ’60s when that kind of behavior wasn’t exactly the norm, even more so in a “machismo” country like Jamaica.

In 1982 my mom moved back to Jamaica with me (I was 3-4). My most vivid memory of my grandfather is this: One day we went to the woodworking shop, my mom helped him out from time to time with the accounting, and I did my usual thing and played with toys in the corner. Somehow the topic of toy guns came up and Nice Daddy asked me what kind of toy guns I had.

Well, my Mom didn’t believe in guns and so I didn’t have any. He was shocked, and angry — my grandfather is old school that way.

So he grabbed a piece of lumber and reached in his pocket for one of his pencils. He drew the outline of a gun on the wood, then walked with me in the back to the jigsaw where one of the workmen was.

He told the man to stop what he was doing and to right away cut out a gun for his grandson. He did, then Nice Daddy sanded it down and handed it to me as he muttered something about how his daughter was so smart but she was crazy not to have her son own a toy gun.

I have that wooden gun to this day, and it always goes with me wherever I live.

I love you, Nice Daddy.

Mary Landrieu, Oil Industry Puppet, Hurting Louisiana Citizens

10:41 am EST September 15th, 2011 | News | 22 Comments

Hey look, it’s “Democrat” Mary Landrieu, once again doing her best to fulfill the “how high” requirement when the oil industry commands her to jump. This time around it’s opposition to the jobs bill.

Some are unhappy about the specific types of companies, particularly the oil industry, that would lose tax benefits. “I have said for months that I am not supporting a repeal of tax cuts for the oil industry unless there are other industries that contribute,” said Senator Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana.

For Louisiana, the difference between this “Democrat” and a Republican in that seat is that a Republican doesn’t pretend to be on the side of the worker while doing the corporation’s dirty work.

Attack Watch: Latest Made Up Thing For Conservatives To Whine About

2:50 pm EST September 14th, 2011 | Conservative | 61 Comments

Conservatives seem pathologically incapable of attacking President Obama on real issues, even when they have legitimate gripes about him or his policies. Today’s example is the GOP bitchfest over the AttackWatch website.

The site is designed for Obama supporters to send in various pieces of misinformation, lies, etc. and then have them debunked. Obama ran a similar site in the 2008 campaign called Fight The Smears.

Simple, right?

Nooooo. Conservatives are now pretending as if this is an example of Big Brother. They now claim that a web form is on par with egregious violations of civil liberties. I mean, how dare Obama solicit links via e-mail????

Obama has been president for over 2.5 years now, and conservatives/Republicans have yet to attack him with anything that is actually real. Instead we’ve got one made-up thing after another, from “apology tour” to “death panel” to a supposed lack of exceptionalism from a President who regularly extols the exceptional values of America.

It’s all very childish and nonsensical of the right, but it is just what they do.

Judge Can’t Figure Out Why Deadbeat Dad Rep. Joe Walsh Won’t Appear In Court

2:28 pm EST September 14th, 2011 | Conservative | 6 Comments

Family values.

A judge in Chicago issued a preliminary ruling Wednesday against U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh in the Tea Party favorite’s child-support dispute with his ex-wife, ordering him to explain why he appears to be $100,000 behind on child-support payments, the Sun-Times is reporting.

Cook County Circuit Judge Raul Vega also wanted to know why Walsh wasn’t in court for the hearing — the McHenry Republican’s ex-wife, Laura Walsh was — and said he expects him to show up at the next hearing, in November.

Walsh’s new attorney, Janet Boyle, asked Vega “for what purpose” he wanted the congressman in court.

Vega gave her a puzzled look.

To which Boyle responded: “Mr. Walsh is a U.S. congressman.”

“Well, he’s no different than anyone else,” the judge said.

21st Century Progressive: How Do We Get There?

1:03 pm EST September 14th, 2011 | Liberals | 13 Comments

One of the things I admire about the modern conservative movement is that they have an internally coherent value system they use to gauge conservative politicians by. It doesn’t make sense outside of conservatism, but they have what they believe is a value system that conservatives should abide by. On the left, any such system is – at best – a haphazard hodgepodge. We need to change that.

But first, let’s go back and look at what worked and what hasn’t worked.

There are, for my purposes here, three distinct progressive movements in the last century worth looking at that had long-term effects.

The Original Progressive Movement. This movement, at the turn of the century and extending into the 1920s has a huge legacy – including but not limited to worker’s rights, environmental conservation, and most importantly women’s suffrage.

The Civil Rights Movement. The most successful progressive movement of the last century, this changed the face of America and the world.

The Vietnam War Protest Movement. In my view, this is the most problematic movement. It was undoubtedly a mass movement, but I believe its legacy is one of more failure than success. The popular conception is that people massed against the war and it ended. In fact, the war raged on for years while the protesters continually upped the ante. It didn’t work. The war didn’t end until casualties began to mount.

The perceived success of the Vietnam War protest movement has, I believe, hobbled a lot of progressive movement in the 20th and 21st century. People believe the idea that you a mass of people will simply convince those in power to concede. This doesn’t work in America.
While mass protest movements are unusual in the Middle East and had success, they are – as currently constructed – practically useless in America where corporate clients can just as easily assemble a “protest” as Code Pink. To the average American, they are “priced in.” Someone is always protesting about something and no matter the inherent value, the impact is negligible.

The protest movement faced a test in the war on Iraq and it failed, miserably so. The protests against the war did not change public opinion; they did not create a threat for elected officials to be afraid of. The protests against the Iraq war were a failure.

I don’t believe all mass protests are a lost cause; they just have to work differently. The protests in Wisconsin got national attention because they were not rote and they involved organized labor. It isn’t an everyday occurrence for people to occupy a state capital. That said, they didn’t break the back of Gov. Scott Walker’s assault on labor. Conservatives got the laws they wanted on the books.

We have to throw away the idea that simply protesting – the simple act of “getting out into the streets” without a real message or plan of action — will effect change or should be the central organizing activity in a progressive outreach effort. It doesn’t work, it probably never really work, and it won’t work.

We need to go back to what worked, the early progressive movement and the civil rights movement, and refine what did work and combine it with 21st century persuasion and engagement techniques.

There has to be a core idea, most important of all. I think the left has failed at this, partly because liberalism has often gone with what I deride as the “cumbaya” approach: the idea that if everyone has input, ideas can be rolled up together into something that can be sold.

That doesn’t work. There is a reason why past progressive movements solidified around leaders with defined ideas and goals. You had Mother Jones organizing labor and against child labor. You had Martin Luther King arguing for passage of the civil rights act. You even had the President, Theodore Roosevelt, agitating against the trusts and in favor of federalizing massive tracts of land in order to protect them.

There are some current progressive campaigns that have their hearts in the right places, but insist on asking everyone for input and produce a laundry list without a core.

We need goals, and we need targeted measures of success. It isn’t about what “feels right” or “feels good” but rather “what is accomplished?”

There is also the idea about what it is to be a progressive. I think it means we believe in forward thinking solutions that make life better for the most possible people. I don’t think it means being opposed to profit or personal enrichment, nor do I believe it is solely about one’s pet causes.

For myself, a Progressive America means one in which everyone has a decent shot at the American dream, that we can enrich ourselves and our communities without engaging in practices that suppress others or harm the world around us.

This seems to me an idea – with possible modifications — that a political movement could coalesce around and enact as a litmus test for leaders on multiple levels. I believe the way to get there is to integrate what has worked in the past, and bury what didn’t work – despite a collective belief otherwise – while constantly adding on new technologies and techniques as their success is proven.