The Daily Aneurysm at jabartlett.com

This isn’t about reforming Social Security at all–it’s about destroying it, which has been an extremist Republican goal practically since the program’s inception.

Getting rid of Social Security. Getting rid of the United Nations. Government through tribalism and fear of “the other.” Triumphalist Christianity. No more “activist judges.” Traditional family values. None of this is new stuff. It’s all been simmering on the right since the days of FDR. Only in the last 25 years has it moved from the loony precincts to the respectable ones. But it’s still the same agenda, only in a more expensive suit.

There’s a plausible argument that the South actually won the Civil War, only it took 130 years to claim its victory. Perhaps there’s an equally plausible argument that maybe, 40 or 50 years later than it expected, the John Birch Society is going to win its war against modernity, too.

Inaugural05.com :: Presidential Inauguration – Donor Information

$13,460,000 as of 12/31/04 including:

Exxon Mobil Corporation $250,000
Nuclear Energy Institute $100,000
Occidental Petroleum Corporation $250,000
CheveronTexaco $250,000
General Motors $100,000
Ford Motor Company $250,000
Microsoft Corporation $100,000

AND

Time Warner $250,000

Hell, Time made lots more than $250K putting Duhbya on the cover. mjh

Careful Not to Get Too Much Education…Or You Could Turn Liberal by Dr. Teresa Whitehurst

[T]he Southern Baptist Convention recently considered a proposal to urge all parents to pull their children out of public schools to prevent their exposure to “non-biblical ideas” which, as it happens, run rampant in fields like medicine, physics, archeology, literature, philosophy, history, astronomy, psychology, theology-in short, everything.

What will happen to that innovative American spirit if radical “conservatives” have their way with our educational system? How will the US fare in the global marketplace when certain ideas, or entire fields, become off-limits to students who’ve been indoctrinated to consult their ministers before learning new information?

What will happen to medical research, for instance, if this movement proceeds to its logical conclusion: outlawing the scientific method, a method notorious for not relying on biblical principles?

I fear men like [David] Horowitz because uncensored education is essential to our democracy, our people’s well-being and the nation’s long-term survival. The “conservative” movement that he’s spearheading reminds me of the news reports coming out of Iran in the months just prior to the conservative religious takeover of that country when its professors were warned to present the “correct” views in class.

This movement pretends to be about “balancing” liberal with conservative views, but the reality is a lot uglier than that. As the conversation I overheard suggests, this movement isn’t about balance, it’s about censorship-or even better, self-censorship that’s easily achieved by frightening students with social rejection, hellfire or both. Either way, scholarship is degraded in the process. …

Whether through self-censorship or junk education, our country’s children are paying the price for the political aggression of the far right. Robert Frost once wrote, “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper.”

Tempers are short in today’s radical “conservative” America, and the emboldened radical right is in no mood to listen to anyone.

Evangelical Leader Threatens to Use His Political Muscle Against Some Democrats By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

COLORADO SPRINGS – James C. Dobson, the nation’s most influential evangelical leader, is threatening to put six potentially vulnerable Democratic senators “in the ‘bull’s-eye’ ” if they block conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.

In a letter his aides say is being sent to more than one million of his supporters, Dr. Dobson, the child psychologist and founder of the evangelical organization Focus on the Family, promises “a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea” if President Bush fails to appoint “strict constructionist” jurists or if Democrats filibuster to block conservative nominees. …

In an interview in his office in Colorado Springs, Dr. Dobson acknowledged that his plunge into partisan politics had irrevocably changed his public image. “I can’t go back, nor do I want to,” he said. “I will probably endorse more candidates. This is a new day. I just feel a real need to make use of this visibility.” …

Dr. Dobson said he was prepared for some disappointments from Mr. Bush. For example, he said, when the president says the country is not ready to overturn the Supreme Court precedents supporting abortion rights, “it bothers me a lot.” …

He said of Mr. Bush, “He does not take the bully pulpit and use it effectively.”

People For the American Way – Focus on the Family
Founder: Dr. James C. Dobson
President: Don Hodel
Established: 1977
Finances: $128.8 million, 2000 budget
Staff: approximately 1,300 employees
Publications: 2.3 million subscribers to their ten monthly magazines.

KNOW YOUR ENEMIES

Virulent pro-theocracy, pro-censorship group. Promotes censorship of a wide range of media and subjects including rock music, info on birth control and sex ed, and even feminist material.

AlterNet: MediaCulture: The 2004 Falsies Awards
By Laura Miller, AlterNet. Posted December 30, 2004.

Remembering the people and players responsible for polluting our information environment.

This year marks the beginning of a new tradition for the Center for Media and Democracy. To remember the people and players responsible for polluting our information environment, we are issuing a new year-end prize that we call the “Falsies Awards.”

New York Press
PRAVDA, IZVESTIA, TIME
On the “Person of the Year” issue.
By Matt Taibbi

The “Person of the Year” issue has always been a symphonic tribute to the heroic possibilities of pompous sycophancy, but the pomposity of this year’s issue bests by a factor of at least two or three the pomposity of any previous issue. From the Rushmorean cover portrait of Bush (which over the headline “An American Revolutionary” was such a brazen and transparent effort to recall George Washington that it was embarrassing) to the “Why We Fight” black-and-white portraiture of the aggrieved president sitting somberly at the bedside of the war-wounded, this issue is positively hysterical in its iconolatry. One even senses that this avalanche of overwrought power worship is inspired by the very fact of George Bush’s being such an obviously unworthy receptacle for such attentions. From beginning to end, the magazine behaves like a man who knocks himself out making an extravagant six-course candlelit dinner for a blow-up doll, in an effort to convince himself he’s really in love.