World News Korner

Holy crap there is a lot of crazy packed into this 19 minutes. (Cruz starts at the 3:00 mark.)

Here is what Cruz laid out as the secret to future success with winning elections.

How do we win elections? In the contrast between corrupt Washington and the American people, we stand with the American people.

We stand with a straightforward and bold agenda to inspire everyone.

1. Defend the Constitution. All of it. The right to freedom of the press – The right to freedom of religion – not having the IRS ask citizens ‘tell me the content of your prayers’. Second Amendment, 4th and 5th amendment rights for privacy of every American.

2. We need to abolish the IRS. We need to adopt a simple flat tax that is fair so that every American can fill out their taxes on a post card.

3. We need to expand energy in this country and create high paying jobs all over America. President Obama talks about an increased minimum wage. The real minimum wage under Obama’s policies is $0 an hour.

4. We need to expand school choice. Every child deserves an opportunity to have an excellent education regardless of race, religion, creed, or where you come from. American dream.

5. We need to repeal Dodd Frank. Talk about a bill that you don’t need to read any further than the title to know nothing good can come from it.

6. We need to audit the Federal Reserve. Unaccountable power in Washington debasing our currency and driving up the price of fuel and gas is hurting every American.

7. We need to pass a strong balanced budget amendment. We need to stop bankrupting our country.

8. We need to repeal every single word of Obamacare. When millions of Americans stood up last fall and said stop this train wreck, this disaster that is Obamacare that is hurting millions of people, the Democrats said, the mainstream media said (but I repeat myself) just move on, you can’t do anything to stop this.

9. We need to stop the lawlessness. This president of the United States is the first we have ever had that believes he can choose which ones he’ll follow. If you have a president who is picking and choosing which laws to follow and which laws to ignore, you no longer have a president.

10. We need to end the corruption. We need to eliminate corporate welfare and crony capitalism. If you come to Washington and serve in Congress, there should be a lifetime ban on lobbying. And we need to pass a strong Constitutional amendment that puts into law term limits.

Much of that reads like it is taken right out of the crazed Right Wing e-mails that arrive in our grandmother's inbox.

Some of it actually makes sense but it is lost among suggestions such as repealing Obamacare, abolishing the IRS, and suggesting that the President is no longer the President.

The only way that will help to win elections in the future is if ballot boxes are only placed in mental hospitals and Tea Party gatherings. If indeed there is a difference.

Well so far this was the craziest speech I have heard at CPAC, but I understand that Palin is supposed to speak at some point so Cruz may lose his standing as head lunatic once that happens.

Source

Click picture to play video.

This was a great interview which focused on the new program that Rachel produced fro MSNBC, and that is playing this evening called "Why We Did It."

It claims to answer the questions as to exactly why we went into Iraq, and is a follow up to the brilliant documentary "Hubris."

I am very excited to watch this documentary tonight and have cleared my calendar of all other distractions.

Source

Courtesy of TPM:

Media Matters for America is releasing a sort of Wikipedia for conservative misinformation.

The site, Mythopedia, which was shared with TPM ahead of its release, is meant to be an online compendium of truths and lies peddled by conservatives. The website's unveiling comes a day before the Conservative Political Action Conference.

"The week of CPAC seemed like the most appropriate time to launch a fact-checking tool, like Mythopedia, as I’m sure we’re going to be confronted with both old and new right-wing lies during the conference," Media Matters president Bradley Beychok said in a statement.

Here's how the site works. The front page is bar where users type in a claim. Searching that claim then pulls up "lies" or "truths" with research backing up whether it's a truth or a lie. For instance a search of the Obama administration on Benghazi directs to a page with the the lie "The Obama administration covered up the Benghazi attack by pointing to an anti-Islam video" and the truth "A bipartisan Senate report connects the Benghazi attack to an anti-Islam video" as well as evidence backing up the truth.

The site is starting with 400 entries and will be updated regularly. The updated fact checks will be done in real time by Media Matters staff. Media Matters will start soliciting tips and feedback from audiences and could possibly start moving highly involved users of the site into a more involved role.

As a political blogger who sometimes does not have a great deal of time for research, this is going to be a invaluable.

Source

Oh you are going to love this.

So a couple of weeks ago I heard this rumor that Levi was thinking about taking a run at the Iron Dog. (This was before this last race took place.)

I thought at the time, well THAT would be a real kick in the ass, and it would certainly aggravate the crap out of a certain Wasilla/Scottsdale family that we all know.

However one rumor does not a story make, so I did not bother to post anything about it just in case it was BS.

Well now I know that it is absolutely NOT BS. Levi has been talking to a number of people in Wasilla about the plan and even has some potential sponsors and investors lined up.

Now here is where it gets really entertaining.

Apparently after this last disastrous Iron Dog run (They were the first team to scratch and did so only hours into the race.) Todd has been telling just about anyone who will listen that he is retiring and leaving the race to the younger guys.

THAT was until he got wind of Levi's plans. Apparently once he heard that, he had a change of heart and now is telling people that he has at least one more good race in him.

Yeah, okay.

I have to wonder if it is Todd's idea to stay in the race to defend the family honor against their arch nemesis, or if it he is simply doing what the lady who pays the bills tells him to do.

In my opinion there is no real win for Todd in this.

I doubt he has what it takes to win this race anymore, so if he does manage to come in before Levi, who would be novice, then a three time champion managed to beat a rookie, and you just know somebody is going to want to ask him questions about Levi.

However if Levi beats Todd, and trust me there will be MUCH more scrutiny by the press if he competes, then he gets to talk about what the Palins have done to his family and essentially becomes a media darling. Actually that is a conversation he gets to have regardless of where he places.

Essentially the soon to be 24 year old would be David to the Palin family Goliath.

I like it.

I am pretty sure that the Wasilla kitchen appliances are safe for now, but I am willing to bet that right now in Arizona there is a poor dented refrigerator cowering in fear.




Source

Courtesy of the YouTube page:

A young girl's life gets turned upside-down in this tragic second a day video. Could this ever happen in the UK? This is what war does to children.

What should disturb almost as much as these images is the realization that much of that kind of destruction, and the fear it inspires, is due to weapons deployed by US servicemen around the world.

As Pogo would say, "I have met the enemy, and he is us."

For more information you can go here.

Source

All quotes courtesy of Atheism and Me:

What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman… I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children. — Saint Augustine

Women should not be enlightened or educated in any way. They should, in fact, be segregated as they are the cause of hideous and involuntary erections in holy men. — Saint Augustine

Woman was merely man’s helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God. — Saint Augustine

As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power. — Saint Thomas Aquinas

Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison to his. Therefore she is unsure in herself. What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. And so, to put it briefly, one must be on one’s guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil. … Thus in evil and perverse doings woman is cleverer, that is, slyer, than man. Her feelings drive woman toward every evil, just as reason impels man toward all good. — St. Albertus Magnus

Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman. —Clement of Alexandria,Church father, venerated as a Saint until the 17th century

If [women] become tired or even die, that does not matter. Let them die in childbirth—that is why they are there. — Martin Luther

Woman was made for only one reason, to serve and obey man. — John Knox

Wife: Be content to be insignificant. What loss would it be to God or man had you never been born. — John Wesley

A wife should submit herself to the leadership of her husband. Leadership in the church should always be male. — Southern Baptist Convention (2000)

As I have said numerous times in the past, there are few things that confuse me more than the fact that so many women still have faith in a religion that has demonstrated nothing but disdain for them since its very inception.

Source

Courtesy of Arizona's own race baiting bomb thrower's Facebook page:

Obama’s Palling Around with Cop-Killer Advocate…

You know evil reigns when America’s “leader” gives full-throated support for a cop-killer advocate. Obama wants this guy to help run the Department of Justice.

(Law enforcement union leaders: are you still proud of your support for liberals?) And here I thought I’d seen it all with the way the administration coddled the racist DHS employee who advocated murder and violent hate speech on his website.

Friends, what we’re witnessing is a lost cause on the domestic and international fronts. So, what we do is hold on, pray hard, and oust the Obama administration’s agenda at the ballot box. Work hard, America, as you look forward to the end of the Obama era. It will be the end of an error.

- Sarah Palin

The thing that has Palin's white pointy hat all bent out of shape is the fact that President Obama's nominee to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, Debo P. Adegbile (Voted down by the Senate just today), was once employed by the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund.

The Defense Fund has a history of representing African Americans who have been convicted of various crimes, when there was a question as to whether they received a fair trial or not.

One such individual, Mumia Abu-Jamal, was convicted and sentenced to death. The NAACP took on his case, in which he had been convicted of killing a police officer, and got his death sentence tossed, well BEFORE Debo P. Adegbile began working there.

Here is what the Washington Post has said about his time there:

Adegbile, 47, spent more than a decade working for the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, where he served as the group’s in-house voting rights expert. The legal defense fund began its work on Abu-Jamal's behalf well before Adegbile began working for it, however he did contribute to the filing of a 2009 court brief that argued that Abu-Jamal faced a discriminatory jury -- an appeal later found to have merit by a judge.

In other words he did his job and helped to represent a client that an appeals court agreed did not receive justice during his initial trial. This happens time and time again in the US legal system and nobody usually holds the lawyers accountable for the supposed crimes of their clients.

However this is an African American nominee, who once represented an African American organization (That provided legal counsel for an African American convict), and who was chosen by an African American President.

I am trying my best to see this response by Sarah Palin and the Right Wing as anything but racist.

However I am failing to do so.

Source