Think about this conservative comment regarding our Constitutional rights:
"Any American can assert a right, great Americans give up their rights, to help those they share nothing else with, but a love for this country."-Peter Johnson Jr. Fox News
Do you want to be the one to "give up" your Constitutional rights, for the love of your country? I know it doesn't make any sense at all, and runs counter to what we assumed were guarantees, but this is a great example of conservative rationalization at its most bizarre.
But the campaign to turn the nation against building a mosque in N.Y. has worked. The supposed protectors and know-it-all scholars of the Constitution see our "rights" as more symbolic now, open to the will and whims of public sentiment. So if the public would like to ban hand guns, should "great Americans give up their rights?"
Fox News legal analyst Peter Johnson Jr. gave a sanctimonious lecture outside the proposed location of the Park51 Islamic community center - or, as he and the chyron referred to it repeatedly, the "Ground Zero Mosque." His speech was representative of many of the main arguments made by opponents of the center, relying on the well-worn talking point that this isn't "about the First Amendment," but instead about … calling for New York Muslims to "give up their rights" out of respect...
One simple truth about the opposition to the NY mosque:
The Constitution will only symbolize the intent of the founding fathers, leaving public opinion the final arbiter of whether our rights are protected, based on what is offensive or acceptable.
The conservatives have marginalized the Constitution, an amazing feat and the final stake through the heart of our grand experiment. If you can't count on the simplest meaning derived from the constitutional language, but defer instead to opinion polls about what is considered right or feels good, then there is no hope.
After ten years of waiting, my own small investments have not made up for the tech bubble losses, so why would anyone send their money to the Wall Street crooks?
Renewed economic uncertainty is testing Americans’ generation-long love affair with the stock market. Investors withdrew a staggering $33.12 billion from domestic stock market mutual funds in the first seven months of this year, according to the Investment Company Institute. Now many are choosing investments they deem safer, like bonds. Small investors are “losing their appetite for risk,” a Credit Suisse analyst, Doug Cliggott, said in a report to investors on Friday.
No shit! Again, duh.
One of the phenomena of the last several decades has been the rise of the individual investor. As Americans have become more responsible for their own retirement, they have poured money into stocks with such faith that half of the country’s households now own shares directly or through mutual funds, which are by far the most popular way Americans invest in stocks. So the turnabout is striking … Americans have become more guarded with their investments.
The notion that stocks tend to be safe and profitable investments over time seems to have been dented in much the same way that a decline in home values and in job stability the last few years has altered Americans’ sense of financial security. It may take many years before it is clear whether this becomes a long-term shift in psychology.
Another force at work is the aging of the baby-boomer generation. As they approach retirement, Americans are shifting some of their investments away from stocks to provide regular guaranteed income for the years when they are no longer working.
On Friday, Fidelity Investments reported that a record number of people took so-called hardship withdrawals from their retirement accounts in the second quarter. These are early withdrawals intended to pay for needs like medical expenses. A big beneficiary has been bond funds, which offer regular fixed interest payments.
Adam Serwer, of the American Prospect, just off handidly came up with an easy way for Democrats to counter the trumped up mosque at Ground Zero "controversy." If the First Amendment argument is too difficult for liberals to tear conservatives a new asshole, at least take Adam's advice and tell them government can't tell anyone where the mosque should be located. Other Republicans have also chimed in with their opposition. All included in the clip below.
Suhail Khan, of the Conservative Inclusion Coalition, is shockingly sane and offended. By the way, it's so strange to see the words conservative and inclusion in the same name, much less back to back.
I had this interesting audio clip from my old radio days and thought instantly of the tea party movement. Who would have thought Lawrence Welk would have been so outspoken and insanely conservative in one of his shows. For context, this was a Fourth of July themed edition.
The First Amendment protects religious freedom. It protects religion from government action to limit that freedom. Yet the disconnect that conservatives have, the same ones protecting our founding document by dressing up in three pointed hats, is stunning.
Sen. Candidate Ron Johnson is just fine with the government stepping in (shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise thereof) to stop the NY mosque from being built. You would also have to believe those Muslims are out to “poke a stick in our eye.”
Journal Times: It would be"incredibly unfortunate,"if a mosque was built in New York City blocks away from Ground Zero, the U.S. senate candidate Ron Johnson said Friday when asked at a Journal Times Editorial Board meeting.
Ron Johnson: "Those folks are trying to poke a stick in our eye," Johnson said. "I just hope the zoning officials and the city, the state revisit that, rezone that piece of property. If they don't do it I hope the construction workers in New York show their outrage and say we are not going to do that."
Sen. Russ Feingold:"I do not decide for Muslims where they want to buy property and have a religious facility any more than I do for Christians or anybody else,"Feingold told the editorial board Tuesday. "That clearly is not my role."
Ron Johnson in the unendorsed tea party favorite, a rag tag movement built on pocket constitutions and ineffectual “freedom and liberty” sloganeering.
So money doesn’t buy votes or influence politics? Huh, Connecticut voters are proving that Republican talking point is just a myth.
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) Former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon, a political newcomer, has spent more than $20 million flooding voters' TV sets and mailboxes with ads to boost her name recognition and secure the GOP nomination, and has said she'll spend as much as a total of $50 million of her own money on the race.
And Blumenthal has seen his lead over McMahon shrink in the polls. A Jan. 14 Quinnipiac University poll showed Blumenthal leading McMahon64 percent to 23 percent. By Aug. 4, that had narrowed to 50-40, with Blumenthal still hanging onto the lead.
Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s answer to Obama’s challenge is to divert attention away from corporate electioneering by saying Obama’s is diverting attention away from jobs.
Nothing says JOBS like repealing the Fourteenth Amendment to combat declining illegal immigration, fighting gay marriage, downsizing government, leaving Wall Street alone, repealing health care reform, stopping high speed rail and trying to stop the building of mosques in NY, Tennessee, California, Wisconsin and Georgia.
Come on Obama, we’re on to you:
(AP) - President Barack Obama says Republicans should join him in opposing a Supreme Court ruling that vastly increased how much corporations and unions can spend on campaign ads. Instead, the GOP wants to "keep the public in the dark" about who's behind the expenditures, Obama charged in his weekly radio and Internet address, released Saturday as he vacationed on Martha's Vineyard.
"You'd think that reducing corporate and even foreign influence over our elections wouldn't be a partisan issue," said Obama. "But the Republican leaders in Congress said no. In fact,they used their power to block the issue from even coming up for a vote. "This can only mean that the leaders of the other party want to keep the public in the dark," said the president. "They don't want you to know which interests are paying for the ads. The only people who don't want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., scoffed at the president's message. "Americans want us to focus on jobs, but by focusing on an election bill, Democrats are sending a clear message to the American people that their jobs aren't as important as the jobs of embattled Democrat politicians," McConnell said. "The president says this bill is about transparency. It's transparent all right. It's a transparent effort to rig the fall elections."
We would be rigging the fall elections by disclosing who’s paying what to influence those elections? Conversely, secret donations would put a stop to those who would try to “rig the fall elections?”
As we have all been told by Republicans, backed up by our own recusal adverse Wisconsin conservative activist Supreme Court Justices, that money does not buy influence. What was Obama thinking?
Think Progress was able to connect the dots and reveal the smoke and mirrors budgeting rhetoric by Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell over the use of Obama's (invisible) stimulus money. I’m sure few voters in the state will give a damn or feel one bit of outrage.
While most states are experiencing debilitating budget deficits, Virginia is “feeling flush” after turning a $1.8 billion deficit into a $403.2 million budget surplus at the close of the fiscal year. In a celebratory speech before the Virginia legislature Thursday, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) credited higher tax revenue, state agencies’ fiscal responsibility, and serious budget cuts for the state’s ability “to balance the books.”
MCDONNELL:"Well it took a lot of work and a lot of bipartisan support in both houses of the legislature butI think we took a very conservative, fiscal, practical approach to budget. You can’t spend what you don’t have."
According to a Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis report released this week, last year’s Recovery Act provided $2.5 billion in stimulus relief to “maintain crucial services for [Virginia] citizens” and “help close the state’s budget shortfall in 2010-2012.” Virginia legislators relied on $1.3 billion in enhanced Medicaid funding, $1 billion in funding for K-12 and higher education, $39 million for public safety, and $200 million in general support to reduce “what would otherwise have been a $5.4 billion budget hole.”
Two important points not mentioned in the story by Think Progress: In Wisconsin, the Democratic legislature balanced its budget with $4 billion of stimulus. Republicans here are calling that SPENDING, because the state didn’t cut spending and used the one time stimulus to plug the hole. In Virginia, it’s just the opposite, because there they used a “very conservative, fiscal, practical approach to budget.”
Second, Think Progress skipped over Gov. McDonnell’s advocacy of CORPORATE GOVERNMENT DEPENDENCE, while trying to wean actual people from getting assistance. Check it out;
MCDONNELL: Everybody knows … this is an unsustainable level of spending.What we need to do is incentivize the free enterprise systemwhich has been the strength of American democracy … And we can’t keep adding a trillion and a half dollars to the national debt every year with this deficit, you’ve got to be fiscally prudent and incentivize the free enterprise system so you don’t have more government bailouts and more dependence of people on government.
You can’t make it any clearer than that. Government needs to assist free enterprise, incentivized with tax cuts and hand outs, while reducing the dependence people have on government. Free enterprise needs help, people don’t. An incredible admission and insight into the conservative ideology of “freedom and liberty.”
Why would it figure that the biggest talkers about self-sufficiency, state cessation and small government, like half governor Sarah Palin, come from the state that gets the biggest government handouts?
NY Times: Backed by a blue row of saw-toothed mountain peaks, the Republican state lawmaker Carl Gatto (says) “I’ve introduced legislation to roll back the federal government. They don’t have solutions; they just have taxes. I’ll give the federal government credit: they sure give us a ton of money. For every $1 we give them in taxes for highways, they give us back $5.76.”
Alaskans tend to live with their contradictions in these recessionary times. No place benefits more from federal largess than this state, where the Republican governor decries “intrusive” federal policies, officials sue to overturn the health care legislation and Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, voted against the stimulus bill.
Although its unemployment rate sits at just 7.9 percent, about two percentage points below the national rate, Alaska has received $3,145 per capita in federal stimulus dollars, the most in the nation, according to figures compiled by Pro Publica, an investigative Web site.
Nevada, by contrast, has an unemployment rate north of 14 percent and has received $1,034 per capita in recovery aid. Florida’s jobless rate is 11.4 percent, and the state has obtained $914 per capita.
The state avoided the unemployment devastation visited on the Lower 48 in part because federal dollars support a third of Alaskan jobs, according to a university study. Not that this has assuaged antigovernment rancor. The Alaskan Representative Don Young, a Republican, denounced the stimulus as appalling, done under the cover of night and without full disclosure. He also promised Alaskans that “if there are earmarks, we will have our fingerprints on them.”
(Curiously, that pattern plays out in Louisiana, Wyoming and the Dakotas, states relatively low in unemployment but high in per capita stimulus aid and growling antigovernment animus.)
My family was informed that we needed to re-enroll for another year of benefits. The form clearly told us to go to the web site, "access.wi.gov." That site goes to "access.wisconsin.gov" instead, taking about 10 or 15 minutes to come up. Each page takes that long, and if you need to go back or the sign in word is incorrect, you'll never get through. I hate to think how long it would take someone with a slow internet connection. Oh, and if you walk away while waiting, there's a good chance you'll time out, forcing you to start all over again.
Try it for yourself. Imagine if you were about to lose your medical coverage in the middle of treatment.
Well, that's one way the state can save money and show a declining need for the state service.
UPDATE: I stayed up till about 3:30am, about 3 hours, renewing my Badgercare enrollment. Keep in mind, I had to go back and change something I missed in an earlier question, so your time might be slightly shorter. Note too that the "next button" sometimes does not advance the page, so browser refresh helps advance or unfreezes the page to allow you to again hit the next button. It does sound a little like hell, doesn't it.
After enduring endless claims that Bush bashers were un-American, opposing the war on terrorism was un-American, government rules and regulations was un-American, the New Deal was un-American, and liberal socialist Democrats were destroying our country, was definitely un-American, conservatives are now whining about being accused of being un-American for opposing religious freedom. If the name fit, guys.
The ability to project, “the unconscious act of denial of a person's own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world or to other people … Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have those feelings,” has been brought to new jaw dropping heights in this Wall Street Journal article by James Taranto:
We were only kidding last week when we headlined an item "Bring Back HUAC." The reference was to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, disbanded in 1975, and we were poking fun at the tendency of today's liberals to label anyone who disagrees with them "un-American."In the case of the Ground Zero mosque, that would mean the vast majority of Americans are un-American.”
Sure Nancy Pelosi wanted to know who's funding the opposition to the mosque, but is that really like HUAC? If anyone wants to bring it back, you would have to be talking about Republican governor candidate Rick Lazio?:
Because there is a First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom, with no mention of a test for “insensitivity or offensiveness,” Democrats are being challenged by “constitutional conservatives” through a propaganda campaign against its appropriateness. As they’re quick to tell us, “They have the right, sure, but it’s still wrong.” But when Democrats stand up for the constitutional freedom the First Amendment provides, it’s called “verbal abuse” and believe it or not, an “abstraction.”
Why is it a good idea to build a fancy new mosque just two blocks from the site of an act of mass murder that was committed in the name of Islam? Ask this question, andthe response is almost certain to be some combination of verbal abuse ("Bigot! Un-American!") and airy abstractions about freedom of religion.
Excuse me? The Constitutional guarantees are "abstractions" now? These abstraction are all we ever get from the tea party movement; restoring our freedoms and liberties and returning to the founding fathers original meaning of the Constitution. And that means what…? That’s not an abstraction?
Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker tries to offer one but fails spectacularly. Her column today begins:
Parker: “It is hard to imagine that anything has gone unsaid about the so-called Ground Zero mosque, but an important point seems to be missing … The mosque should be built precisely because we don't like the idea very much.”
She's just taking the airy-abstraction approach, Ã la President Obama, reciting First Amendment pieties without really thinking her argument through, and condescendingly dismissing critics as motivated by "emotion, which isn't necessarily bad, but it bears watching." But it's worse than that.
Parker:“Nobody ever said freedom would be easy … Ultimately, when sensitivity becomes a cudgel against lawful expressions of speech or religious belief--or disbelief--we all lose.”
It should be the presses place to inform its readers that Dr. Laura, and now Sarah Palin, are completely wrong about this being a First Amendment issue. It’s not. Both Schlessinger and Palin are showing a complete lack of understanding their constitutional rights, when what they’re really complaining about are the free speech rights of individuals and corporate “persons.”
At no time has the government tried to censor Schlessinger, the actual meaning of the First Amendment, making our right wing constitutional defenders look intellectually foolish.
Below is a Washington Post story that never corrects the misstatements by Schlessinger or Palin, even though it had a reporters obligation to set the record straight.
Private groups can say and do whatever they feel is in their best interest to protest objectionable speech, no matter what these constitutional bimbo’s claim in the press. And the press has an obligation to affirm their rights with the facts:
Talk host Dr. Laura Schlessinger decided to quit radio on Tuesday, after coming under fire for using the N-word repeatedly in a broadcast."The reason is, I want to regain my First Amendment rights.I want to be able to say what is on my mind," she told Larry King.
On Wednesday, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin picked up on the story, encouraging Dr. Laura.She wrote on Twitter: "Dr.Laura:don't retreat...reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence"isn't American,not fair")."Later she added, "Dr.Laura=even more powerful & effective w/out the shackles, so watch out Constitutional obstructionists. And b thankful 4 her voice,America!"
The issue after reading the above comments from these constitutional conservatives is; should we now call into questions the tea party movements one sided radical interpretations of the constitution, and their claims of protecting something they don’t fully understand?
Sorry Dr. Laura, groups and businesses have every right to disagree with you. It’s part of the conservative utopian theory of “the free market.”
All you're gettng from Schlessinger and Palin, "not fair."
What I like about Rachel Maddow is that she notices the little things that mean a whole lot, especially when it exposes the true intentions of the Republican Party and conservative meanings that lurk between the lines of our founding document.
From the article “From Paul Ryan, a plan that isn't,” by Matt Miller, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress:
Health care. Your road map would turn the federal contribution to health care into a voucher (which I don't view as a dirty word). But the vouchers it would offer, both via tax credits for younger Americans, and for seniors in a revamped Medicare, are at levels so far below current insurance premiums as to make it likely you'd be shifting costs to millions who can't afford them.
Your health tax credit of $5,700 per family, for example, won't go far for average Americans when the most popular preferred provider organization family plan enjoyed by Congress today runs about $14,000. Ditto for Medicare (which may be why you omitted the voucher amounts in your Post op-ed on the subject last week).
Will you acknowledge that the road map doesn't reduce national health costs, but just limits Uncle Sam's exposure? And that even if this step were sensible, it has little to do with the real challenge of re-engineering America's radically inefficient health sector?
See a whole lot more here, where Ryan triples the debt etc.
We’ve got another dumb as brick conservative; Dr. Laura. First Amendment free speech rights protect you from being silenced by the government, not “special interest groups” or corporate advertisers.
First things first. Freedom and liberty are now just the empty words of a conservative movement hell bent on redefining the meaning of the U.S. Constitution. Not only are they revealed to be phony defenders, by publically bullying the people who want to freely practice their religion by building a mosque in N.Y., Wisconsin, Tennessee, Georgia and California, but now conservative spokesperson Dr. Laura Schlessinger is getting out of radio because her First Amendment rights were violated by “special interest groups” and corporate sponsors. They objected to something she said on her show, and either boycotted her program or pulled their advertising.
But conservatives are now saying that people and companies don’t have the freedom to disagree and take their money elsewhere, a free market principal they conveniently forgot. All the while falsely referring to it as a First Amendment right. This has nothing to do with government censorship.
ABC News: Schlessinger said … she has decided "not to do radio anymore" so she can say the things she wants to say. "The reason is, I want to regain my First Amendment rights," she said."I want to be able to say what's on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent and attack affiliates, attack sponsors. I'm sort of done with that."
The great defenders of the free market and corporate power don’t like it when it comes back to bite them.
General Motors and Motel 6 have pulled their sponsorships from her radio program.
The new media source of news, encouraged and sadly promoted by the old media, is now found on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It’s our new “townhall.”
She told the AP that Schlessinger plans to devote time after the show to her website, books, podcasts and a YouTube channel.
Schlessinger should take responsibility for angering the public, and understand it’s the individual right of the people to disagree, and the corporate free market that can advertise elsewhere.
And I repeat, it has nothing to do with the constitution.
Judging by the success of the conservative party’s ability to change the national dialogue from the Great Recession and jobs, to the horrors of a mosque near Ground Zero, they will have no trouble inserting "coercion" into our constitution. In fact, they already have, which should send a shiver through every American. The force of public opinion will coerce individuals to act against their own constitutional rights and guarantees. When you can do that, you can kiss this nation goodbye.
AP: Republicans called it the "9/11 Mosque" and the "Ground Zero Mosque," falsely describing it as if a place of worship were being built in the crater left behind when the Twin Towers crumbled. From statehouses to state fairs on Tuesday, Republican incumbents and challengers unleashed an almost unified line of criticism against the president days after he forcefully defended the construction of a $100 million Islamic center two blocks from the site of the 2001 terror attacks.
The First Amendment should have prevented the mosque controversy from ever happening, and that’s why this is so frightening. It’s all about the mob mentality of the so called “Constitutional conservatives.” Their attitude: If you give up your rights for the greater good of public opinion, America will be grateful.
Republican candidates around the country seized on President Barack Obama's support for the right of Muslims to build a mosque near ground zero, assailing him as an elitist who is insensitive to the families of the Sept. 11 victims.
"He is thinking like a lawyer and not like an American, making declarations without America's best interest in mind," said Andrew Harris, a Republican running for Congress in Maryland.
Republican congressional candidate Jim Renacci, "Just because we may have the right to do something, doesn't necessarily make it right to do it."
“Well I think it's another example of him playing the role of law professor. ... We can have a great debate about the legal arguments. But it's not about that," Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said on Fox News.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott started running a TV ad in Florida that said: "Mr. President, ground zero is the wrong place for a mosque."
GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina told reporters that the issue was not about religious freedom. Rather, she says it is about being sensitive to those who suffered in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Republican Rob Portman, said it was about taste. "It's not a question of whether or not they have a right to build it," Portman said. "It's a question of whether or not they should."
In Illinois, Republican Rep. Mark Kirk said he respects religious freedom but suggested the Islamic center be built at a "less controversial site."
It appears we all have constitutional freedoms, just not the ones that might offend the great protectors of our founding document.
