Sleep well, or talk among yourselves as you like.
Time for Mormons to Come to Terms with Church History
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Election-year scrutiny sheds light on disaffiliation, controversy.
59 minutes ago
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Just doing the public's bidness
Golly, who knew longer cafeteria hours and lower tuition were aspects of the "radical homosexual agenda" sufficient to prompt an assistant attorney general of Michigan to launch a blog calling the gay Universtiy of Michigan student body president "Satan's representative" and to stand outside his house at 1:40 AM filming it?
The US drifts further and further behind
Eurostar has unveiled an order for new trains worth more than £700m.
The Channel Tunnel rail firm, which runs high-speed services from London to Paris and Brussels, is buying 10 trains from German firm Siemens and overhauling its existing fleet.
France had been pressing for the new trains to be built by French firm Alstom.
But Eurostar said the decision had been made in the best in interest of customers after a "rigorous" process.
The new Eurostar e320 trains would be able to carry more than 900 passengers and their luggage, and reach speeds of 320km per hour (200mph), the firm said.
The 28 existing Eurostar trains can carry up to 750 travellers at up to 300km/h.
Eurostar said the new fleet would be equipped with wi-fi and on-board services including real-time travel and destination information and interactive entertainment.
Bless their hearts, the Republicans just can't help themselves
A North Carolina gay rights group is fighting back after GOP Rep. Larry Brown wrote an email containing gay slurs.
The Davidson and Forsyth County representative sent an email to Minority Leader Paul Stam and sixty other Republicans in reaction to the legislative leadership award House Speaker Joe Hackney is set to receive from Equality NC during its gala in November. Rep. Brown's email said:
"I hope all the queers are thrilled to see him. I am sure there will be a couple legislative fruitloops there in the audience."
According to Equality NC, Rep. Brown has not apologized for using the derogatory words.
Straight, single teachers can mess around all they like in the DeMint School System
"Sen. DeMint believes that hiring decisions at local schools are a local school board issue, not a federal issue. He was making a point about how the media attacks people for holding a moral opinion."
"Don't confuse me with the facts."
Here's an interesting comparison of ideologically-drive cable news models:
MSNBC, as Sherman reports, is now courting a liberal audience. But (my opinion) you'll never have a liberal equivalent to Fox News that has anything like the same level of success. Conservatives believe that the mainstream news is fundamentally corrupt and untrustworthy. They want a fully closed information ecosystem in which every piece of data they consume is filtered through the perspective of the conservative movement. Very, very few liberals want that. They want their liberal opinion, but they also want straight news, or at the very least news that isn't overtly propagandistic like on Fox. MSNBC has slightly right-of-center programming in the morning with Joe Scarborough, straight news throughout the day, then liberal opinion at night.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
-like you're surprised to know this?
Contrary to the conventional wisdom that the tea party is secular libertarian movement that frightens the delicate egos of religious right leaders:
They are mostly social conservatives, not libertarians on social issues. Nearly two-thirds (63%) say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, and less than 1-in-5 (18%) support allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry.
His mind, apparently- at least in his mind- re-engaged after six long years
Image by Gage Skidmore via FlickrAt a 2004 debate, DeMint declared that openly gay people should not be teaching public school. "We need the folks that are teaching in schools to represent our values," he said. DeMint later added that he "would have given the same answer when asked if a single woman, who was pregnant and living with her boyfriend, should be hired to teach my third grade children."
At the time, the Senate candidate apologized: "[S]ometimes my heart disengages from my head and I say something I shouldn't - and that's what happened yesterday. I clearly said something as a dad that I just shouldn't have said. And I apologize." His campaign manager added that DeMint was raised by a single mother and was not opposed to unwed mothers teaching.
But last week, DeMint said that he had been privately encouraged by reaction to his words.
"[N]o one came to my defense," he said at at a rally. "But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn't back down. They don't want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion."
Jimmy LaSalvia of the gay Republican group GOProud told CBS Newsthat he saw DeMint's comment as a reaffirmation of his original statement -- that gays and unwed mothers should not be allowed to teach children. "I don't know anybody in 2010 who thinks that," he said.
Time to cast some spells
Bad news. Very bad news. Senator Jim DeMint's handpicked Delaware Mini-Me Satanist's anti-sex campaign isn't working.
Nice work if you can get it
Summing up some of the lions of the Senate (emphasis added):
Kerry, of Massachusetts, Graham, of South Carolina, and Lieberman, of Connecticut, had become known on Capitol Hill as the Three Amigos, for the Steve Martin comedy in which three unemployed actors stumble their way into defending a Mexican village from an armed gang. All had powerful personal motivations to make the initiative work. Kerry, who has been a senator for twenty-five years and has a long record of launching major investigations, had never written a landmark law. Lieberman, an Independent who had endorsed John McCain for President, had deeply irritated his liberal colleagues by helping the Republicans weaken Obama’s health-care bill. Graham, a Republican, had a reputation as a Senate maverick—but not one who actually got things done. This bill offered the chance for all three men to transform their reputations.Which means SC has two US Senators who pretty much just appear on TV, take up space, and draw a big paycheck.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Family values
A federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan apparently believes the law he imposed on others all these years doesn't apply to him.
Sure, they're not about regulating social issues in their vision of limited government
Image via WikipediaA new poll shows that half of those who consider themselves part of the tea party movement also identify as part of the religious right, reflecting the complex - and sometimes contradictory - blend of bedfellows in the American conservative movement.
Just wait till you see what the GOP plans if they get back in charge
On a day of policy wobbles in the Conservative high command, the prime minister acknowledged the decision – announced on Monday by the chancellor, George Osborne – had led to a storm of criticism from those claiming that axing child benefit had damaged the party's commitment to family values and undermined the universalist base of the welfare state, which he had promised to preserve in the election.
"We did not outline all those cuts, we did not know exactly the situation we were going to inherit," he told ITV news. "But I acknowledge this was not in our manifesto. Of course I am sorry about that."
In what was rapidly becoming a test of the Conservative leadership mettle at the party's conference in Birmingham, Osborne also rushed out a letter to all MPs explaining that a decision that seemed to punish its core aspirational support should not be seen in isolation.
Osborne wrote: "I know some have pointed out that this approach will leave households that do not contain a higher rate taxpayer, but whose joint income is above the higher-rate threshold, still in receipt of child benefit. The only way to assess these joint income families would be to create a new complex, costly and intrusive means test that would spread right up the income distribution."
Cameron made his comments in the face of growing unease on his own backbenches at the anomalies thrown up by the blanket withdrawal of child benefit from anyone earning more £43,875.
The cut will mean a loss of £1,055 a year for one-child families and almost £2,500 for those with three children.
The Jim DeMint School Sex-O-Meter
Senator Jim DeMint has re-embraced comments he apologized for in 2004. He wants a tiny, limited, government, yet one that is big enough to monitor the sexual activities of teachers- well, except the unmarried men, who can, apparently, do what they please.
So you've got Republicans arguing there's no place for gay teachers in the schools, and Republican policy that bullying students based on perceived- even if wrong- sexual orientation- should be legal.
In terms of socialization and school discipline, this is getting into Lord of the Flies territory.
Thus my question, again:
How many will be enough?
So you've got Republicans arguing there's no place for gay teachers in the schools, and Republican policy that bullying students based on perceived- even if wrong- sexual orientation- should be legal.
In terms of socialization and school discipline, this is getting into Lord of the Flies territory.
Thus my question, again:
How many will be enough?
As usual, South Carolina loses out
The New Yorker reports Senator Graham can get awfully prissy about legislation, especially when he's in a pissing match with his Uncle Grumpy over who's "the maverick."
"Waterloo"
Senator Lindsey Graham, John McCain's Mini-Me, is adopting Uncle Grumpy's primary strategy by tacking hard right and joining the "no on everything" caucus:
"I can tell you with certainty that we are going to grow our numbers in the House and the Senate, and the Obama agenda as you know it will be dead on arrival," he said.
She's rehearsing
Senator DeMint's Nevada Mini-Me abhors backroom deals but she's busy pimping her access to DeMint in return for another candidate dropping out of the race.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Republican beefcake. Somewhere, Vladimir Putin is telling aides, "Get me a dog."
Indiana governor Mitch Daniels' combover withstands all elements, including swimming pools:
An Emily Litella Moment
The LDS Church isn't sorry about its twenty year anti-gay campaign after all.
A genuflection to Charleston Daily Photo
Every night when I sit down after the news and review the sorry state of the blogdom, my bright spot is reading Charleston Daily Photo.
Joan Perry deserves a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. She seems to live for making the world a better place- from occasionally giving me joggling board photos to her endless hospital outreach programs to "church photos in lieu of attendance" shots to promoting a Charleston nonprofit that makes inexpensive but highly effective water filtration systems, dozens of which have been sent to Haiti.
Here's a link to her explaining the latter for a Mutual of Omaha ad series.
Perry's a Canadian who grew up in India and finally washed up in Charleston. She enriches the life of this state in more ways than probably any of us can imagine.
One of my grandfather's cousins was a potter the state of North Carolina declared a state treasure. South Carolina should do the same for Ms. Perry.It's the rare site you look up every day and know it's going to make you smile- without featuring kittens.
I hope one day to sit on a joggling board with her and have a long visit.
Joan Perry deserves a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. She seems to live for making the world a better place- from occasionally giving me joggling board photos to her endless hospital outreach programs to "church photos in lieu of attendance" shots to promoting a Charleston nonprofit that makes inexpensive but highly effective water filtration systems, dozens of which have been sent to Haiti.
Here's a link to her explaining the latter for a Mutual of Omaha ad series.
Perry's a Canadian who grew up in India and finally washed up in Charleston. She enriches the life of this state in more ways than probably any of us can imagine.
One of my grandfather's cousins was a potter the state of North Carolina declared a state treasure. South Carolina should do the same for Ms. Perry.It's the rare site you look up every day and know it's going to make you smile- without featuring kittens.
I hope one day to sit on a joggling board with her and have a long visit.
Hey, most of you voted for it
The Roberts court has championed corporations. The cases it has chosen for review this term suggest it will continue that trend. Of the 51 it has so far decided to hear, over 40 percent have a corporation on one side. The most far-reaching example of the Roberts court’s pro-business bias was Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. By a 5-to-4 vote, the conservative justices overturned a century of precedent to give corporations, along with labor unions, an unlimited right to spend money in politics.
Jim DeMint's bloody hands
Maggie Gallagher covers her ass on Tyler Clementi’s suicide:
I do not think the absence of gay marriage is the cause of these tragedies or its presence will resolve them. We can make this a symbol of all our other fights, or we can try to save all our kids, gay and straight, from this kind of ugly and mindless cruelty. My heart goes out to the family of the young man. God bless him and them.
Step 2: Degradation
World Net Daily columnist Vox Day:
[Tyler Clementi] killed himself because he could not live with the shame of knowing that everyone would be aware of his submission to what he apparently believed to be evil desires. While giving in to our desire for evil is something that we all do from time to time, it is also true that some desires happen to be more shameful or humiliating than others. For example, a man’s desire for his neighbor’s wife is sinful, but few consider it to be as appalling as his desire for his neighbor’s child.
Step 3: Damnation
An account of Senator Jim DeMint speaking at a Spartanburg church rally:
DeMint said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn’t be in the classroom.
Step 4: Repeat
Here’s what the right-wing Christianist (not Christian) message boils down to:
It’s not our fault that gay kids are killing themselves. They kill themselves because they feel naturally ashamed of their perversion. Also, they’re vile creatures who shouldn’t be around kids.
South Carolina Public Radio's village idiots' convention continues. When will somebody put this thing down?
SC ETV Radio's Alfred Turner, shilling for money, just featured two ten second clips of a Scott Simon interview with the famed drag artist Dame Edna Everage (you can listen to it here instead of sending Turner $175), then described her as a "puppet" and declared he couldn't remember who runs her.
Look for the strings in this video:
Look for the strings in this video:
He said it, then he said he shouldn't have said it, and now he's said it again.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) attempted to convince pastors that economic issues are moral issuesat the Greater Freedom Rally at a church in Spartanburg, South Carolina yesterday, imploring them to help conservatives retake Congress in November.
In addition to reiterating anti-choice talking points on abortion and backing "traditional marriage," according to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, the senator went further and "said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend -- she shouldn't be in the classroom."
Controversy over DeMint's position on this issue first arose in 2004 during a Senate debate, when he was asked whether he agreed with the state party's platform that said openly gay teachers should be barred from teaching public school.DeMint said he agreed with that position because government shouldn't be endorsing certain behaviors.
After significant criticism from LGBT groups, including the Log Cabin Republicans, DeMint apologized for saying "something as a dad that I just shouldn't have said."
Sunday, October 3, 2010
How many?
The Rutgers Symphony left a chair in the violin section empty last night to remember its new member, Tyler Clementi.
Clementi is the fifth teen to commit suicide in the last month over anti-gay harassment and schools looking the other way.
South Carolina leaders have gone out of their way to avoid anti-bullying legislation because it might somehow start a slippery slope towards gay marriage. Or even recognizing that there are gay people in this state.
It's a biennial standby for their consultant/bloggers.
Here's a question: how many suicides will be enough?
How many?
Clementi is the fifth teen to commit suicide in the last month over anti-gay harassment and schools looking the other way.
South Carolina leaders have gone out of their way to avoid anti-bullying legislation because it might somehow start a slippery slope towards gay marriage. Or even recognizing that there are gay people in this state.
It's a biennial standby for their consultant/bloggers.
Here's a question: how many suicides will be enough?
How many?
Village idiocy
Glenn Beck, the conservative television and radio host, is an amateur historian. Very amateur.
One day, he rhetorically asked his Fox News viewers: "Why did we buy Alaska in the 1950s?" A good question -- because "we" purchased Alaska in 1867. Another day, he gave his version of European history: "We have the Age of Enlightenment, 1620 to 1871, uh, 1781. This was a time when people said, 'Wait a minute, wait a minute, we can think out of the box.' This is coming out of the Dark Ages." That was thinking outside of the box, because the Dark Ages ended in about 1000 AD, six centuries earlier than Beck claimed.
Beck has created an online "Beck University" to spread his unique views of the past and has hosted "Founders' Fridays" on his television show, devoted to rewriting the nation's early history as that of a fundamentalist state.
When the subject turns, as it usually does, to President Obama, Beck again sees lessons from history. In particular, he has seized upon two individuals who he believes provide excellent historical parallels to the 44th commander in chief: Woodrow Wilson and Adolf Hitler.
Hypocrisy becomes a conservative value
Senator Jim DeMint's PAC is going to air TV ads like this against his Senate colleagues who aren't pure enough to suit the conservative mack daddy:
The new ad slated for Colorado takes a direct shot at Bennet’s claim that he is an outsider who brings a fresh approach to Washington.
“What’s happened to Michael Bennet?” asks the ad’s narrator. “After only 18 months in Washington he acts like he’s been there forever.”This is rich, coming from a man who's been there twelve years and wants to make it 18, and wants term limits imposed, just not yet.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
A National Review lunatic has died. In today's NR, he'd be a god.
He wrote often on the Constitution as well, and as he underwent a slow conversion to anarchism beginning in the late 1980s, he arrived at the conclusion, based on his reading of the 10th Amendment, that virtually every act of the federal government since the Civil War was illegal.
Meatballs. Not the movie.
Senator Jim DeMint's hand-picked Delaware Mini-Me Satanist also dabbled in Buddhism and Hare Krishna but became a Catholic because she likes meat too much.
Where does he find these people. Recruiting in asylums?
UPDATE: NYT has a profile of her clown car family, including her dad, who played Bozo.
Where does he find these people. Recruiting in asylums?
UPDATE: NYT has a profile of her clown car family, including her dad, who played Bozo.
Secret Muslim law cloud passing over America, Sharron Angle says
Senator Jim DeMint's hysterical Nevada Mini-Me believes Sharia law is somehow metastasizing into the US legal system.
This carries absurdity to the level of lunacy.
It ain't happening. Laws are enacted by legislative bodies. They don't just float in like a cloud.Honestly, you gotta wonder if DeMint backs these people because they are so incredibly stupid he can order them about in the Senate like zombies.
Conservative principles, my ass.
This carries absurdity to the level of lunacy.
It ain't happening. Laws are enacted by legislative bodies. They don't just float in like a cloud.Honestly, you gotta wonder if DeMint backs these people because they are so incredibly stupid he can order them about in the Senate like zombies.
Conservative principles, my ass.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Caribou paranoia
Mrs Palin thinks the new White House chief of staff has been orchestrating a campaign against her for years.
The real GOP leader
The ostensible Senate Majority Leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, is staying mum about Senator Jim DeMint's announcement that he will now be dictator of the body.
Curious.
Next best thing to colonic irrigation, as radio goes
The peddlers on SC ETV Radio are now claiming "The William Tell Overture" should motivate you to send them money, and that listening to NPR "cleanses your spirit", and that listening to "Car Talk" is good for understanding human relationships. Oh, and if you give them $50 somebody will go out and plant 100 trees. Somewhere. Sometime. Can you get one named for you? This, they say, makes SC ETV a green network.
If only they'd devote themselves to producing programs.
Now it's the grand procession from "Aida." They must have a book called "100 Greatest Classical Music Cliches For Fundraising Week."
"Our programming is very unique."
God help us. Alfred Turner just called an interview segment "reveltory."
If only they'd devote themselves to producing programs.
Now it's the grand procession from "Aida." They must have a book called "100 Greatest Classical Music Cliches For Fundraising Week."
"Our programming is very unique."
God help us. Alfred Turner just called an interview segment "reveltory."
Now they send out their Toby to peddle hate for them
The Family Research Council may have take down their bigwig Peter Sprigg's desire to "export" gays but they are coming at it from another direction:
But while many Catholic and other religious organizations support immigration reform, some argue they cannot support a bill with gay rights measures. “That would be a deal-breaker,” J. Kenneth Blackwell, a senior fellow at the evangelical Family Research Council, told the New York Times in July when asked about including same-sex family reunification in an immigration bill.
Write your own headline
Image via WikipediaPromising "to stir the pot," cookbook author Nathalie Dupree of Charleston said Thursday that she'll launch a write-in campaign for the U.S. Senate.
Dupree, who also has written about food for The Post and Courier, said she decided to run because she doesn't think anyone in the race poses a threat to Republican incumbent Sen. Jim DeMint.
Nathalie Dupree: 'I have one goal in this campaign: to cook Jim DeMint's goose.'
"I have one goal in this campaign: to cook Jim DeMint's goose," she said.
SC researchers rebut Rent-Boy Rekers
The idea that gay couples who are married or have children qualify as “families” has rapidly become the majority view in the U.S., and researchers credit public discussions about gay marriage—by supporters as well as vehement opponents—for the unexpectedly fast pace of change. That’s the surprising conclusion of the Constructing the Family Surveys, which monitor Americans’ opinions about what makes a family. The surveys were launched in 2003 by researchers at Indiana University; the University of California, Irvine; the University of Utah; and the University of South Carolina. A detailed analysis of the results are included in the new book Counted Out: Same-Sex Relations and Americans’ Definitions of Family.
Fred, get me another mint julep
Ms Floyd and Massa Dawson say all this talk is just pootin' under the covers:
COLUMBIA -- Cracks in Republican support for GOP gubernatorial nominee Nikki Haley surfaced for the first time Thursday.
What Haley does in the next month to respond is critically important.
Socially conservative Republican leader Cyndi Mosteller of Charleston and GOP strategist and Clemson University professor Dave Woodard came forth publicly to demand answers from Haley.
Haley
Specifically, they said they want her to speak up about allegations that she was unfaithful to her husband, along with addressing ethical questions about her job at the Lexington Medical Center Foundation and her late payment of income taxes.
They said Haley has dodged the issues too long and that it could come back to hurt the party.
"Truth is always good politics," Woodard said. "Nikki wants votes. We want answers."
Their comments have done something to push back against Haley's campaign that Democrats haven't been able to do: bring the extramarital allegations and Haley's dirty laundry to the forefront again. She faces Democrat Vincent Sheheen on Nov. 2. Sheheen's campaign did not immediately react.
But state Republican Party Chairwoman Karen Floyd and former state party Chairman Katon Dawson said the issues have been put to rest by Haley.
"The status quo is scared and it's simply lashing back," Floyd said. She took the microphone after Mosteller and Woodard's news conference in the Statehouse lobby, flanked by Republican representatives from the tri-county area, among others conservatives.
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