Category Archives: NADA – New American Dark Ages

New American Dark Ages

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Only Other Conservatives Can Deal with Lush Limbaugh

ThinkProgress » Fox News’ Chris Wallace: You Don’t Have to Call Everyone ‘Socialists’ or ‘Fascists’

A debate over tone, though a small-scale one, does seem to be emerging on the right. Wallace, in pleading for a more agreeable tone, may have been responding to Rush Limbaugh — who attacked Wallace and Charles Krauthammer this week for praising Obama’s speech in Tuscon. “They were slobbering over it for the predictable reasons,” Limbaugh said. “It was smart, it was articulate, it was oratorical. It was, it was all the things the educated, ruling class wants their members to be and sound like.”

Fox News actually played the clip for Krauthammer yesterday, and Krauthammer joined Wallace in gently pushing back against Limbaugh’s vitriol: “As one of the three slobberers…I find it interesting that only the ruling class wants a president who is smart articulate and oratorical in delivering a funeral oration,” he said.

ThinkProgress » Fox News’ Chris Wallace: You Don’t Have to Call Everyone ‘Socialists’ or ‘Fascists’

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Maybe those ATVers are all gun-totin’ left-wing progressives

The Right whines that the Left is “just as bad” when it comes to threats of violence. OK: Send me a link to a story in which a right-wing group is “wanted dead or alive.” Or, show me that ATVers are leftists and wilderness advocates are right-wingers.

The Durango Herald 01/08/2011 | ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ posters target local conservation group

Under a skull and crossbones are the words: “Wanted Dead or Alive.” Beneath, in larger type, it reads: “Members of Great Old Broads for Wilderness are not allowed in San Juan County Utah.”

“We’ve run into hostility before but never so overtly,” Ronni Egan, executive director of the group, said Friday. …

The apparent reason: their involvement in trying to restore an area rich in archaeological treasures that has been invaded by off-road vehicles.

The Durango Herald 01/08/2011 | ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ posters target local conservation group

media, NADA - New American Dark Ages, WTF?!

As a Constitutional Scholar, Harrison Schmitt is a Bang-up Engineer

New Mexicans should read Tom Cole’s quotations from Harrison Schmitt, Martinez’s proposed head of the state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department. I’ll start with the end of Cole’s column.

ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: Harrison Schmitt: in His Words

In one posting, he says a "philosophical wedge" has been driven between the government and its citizens, creating a divide that is wider than at any other time since just before the Civil War.

        It seems to me that Schmitt has been doing some of the hammering on that wedge.

ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: Harrison Schmitt: in His Words

Schmitt on Anthropogenic Global Climate Change:

"There exists no true concern … about the true effects of climate change — only a poorly concealed, ideologically driven attempt to use conjured up threats of catastrophic consequences as a lever to gain authoritarian control of society."

Classic conservative paranoia: It’s all part of the totalitarian movement of the Left. (Just like the “Patriot” Act and DOMA.) I think Climate Change Deniers are part of a power grab by corporations that will destroy anything and everything for profit. Schmitt also supports endless corporate welfare in the form of “Cold War II” with China.

One more quote from Schmitt, who believes the Minimum Wage and Social Security numbers are unconstitutional:

"The Government violates constitutional equal protection most generally by restricting the land-related economic and recreational activities of residents of Western States when no comparable restrictions are possible in most Eastern States. …”

Yup, Western wilderness is unconstitutional because there aren’t comparable Eastern wildernesses. Apparently, engineers make lousy constitutional scholars. (BTW: I’m all for creating equally large wildernesses in the East. It’s only fair.)

A tangent regarding the endless ways in which abqjournal.com frustrates its users. When you select text to quote from the site, text is appended to that quote, such as this:

Read more: ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: Harrison Schmitt: in His Words http://www.abqjournal.com/upfront/12215407746upfront01-12-11.htm#ixzz1AphNqDcA
Subscribe Now Albuquerque Journal

Kudos to the Web designer who is so clueless about interface yet able to hack some JavaScript. Now, I know that some media sources object to the common practice among bloggers of quoting from those sources, even though every media source quotes other media sources – somehow, it’s wrong when bloggers do it. Like almost every blogger, I cite the sites I quote from. Still, abqjournal.com insists on tacking on this ugly bit of code. (Note the hideous URL.) I’ll bet this got the coder a pat on the head.

Dump Saruh

Eugene Robinson – Guns and responsibility

No doubt, Robinson will receive death threats from freedom-loving patriots defending themselves against the violent rhetoric of the Left. Giant sarcastic air-quotes around each of those words.

Eugene Robinson – Guns and responsibility

By Eugene Robinson

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

We may not be sure that the bloodbath in Tucson had anything to do with politics, but we know it had everything to do with our nation’s insane refusal to impose reasonable controls on guns.

Specifically, the rampage had everything to do with a 9mm semiautomatic Glock pistol – a sleek, efficient killing machine that our lax gun laws allowed an unstable young man to purchase, carry anywhere and ultimately use to shoot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in the head. The weapon also was used to shoot 19 bystanders, killing six of them, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl. …

We do know, however, that Loughner reportedly had a history of drug use and bizarre behavior. Students and a teacher at a community college that Loughner briefly attended found him so erratic, confused, menacing and potentially violent that they persuaded college authorities to bar him from campus pending a psychiatric exam.

Yet on Nov. 30, he was able to walk into Sportsman’s Warehouse in Tucson and purchase the weapon that authorities allege was used in Saturday’s rampage. He apparently also bought extra magazines loaded with ammunition.

To buy the gun, Loughner was required to pass a federal background check – and he did, a store manager told reporters. It is against federal law to sell a gun to someone who is mentally ill, but there is no indication that Loughner was ever officially deemed to suffer from mental illness. Even if he had been, there is a good chance that his name would not have been properly entered in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. …

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign, said in a statement that "if Congress had not allowed the ‘Assault Weapons Ban’ to expire in 2004, the shooter [Loughner] would only have been able to get off 10 rounds without reloading. Instead, he was able to fire at least 20 rounds from his 30-round clip."

Eugene Robinson – Guns and responsibility

media, NADA - New American Dark Ages

Death to Death Panel Bullshit

The Albuquerque Journal is lucky to have a writer of the calibre of Winthrop Quigley. Quigley has a knack for stepping through a logical process with dispassion. I’m thankful he takes on Calcified Cal Thomas’ resurrection of the death panels, a coldly calculated effort to frighten the townfolk into raising their pitchforks at the start of the new Congress.

ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: Doctor Discussion Hardly a Death Panel

By Winthrop Quigley
Journal Staff Writer

          It was probably too much to expect that we might enjoy at least a brief respite, now that the elections are over, from much of the nonsense that passes for public discourse. We managed to get only to the second day of the new year before Cal Thomas revived the death panel canard in his syndicated column, which the Journal publishes.

        The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as required by the health care law passed last year, has started paying medical professionals about $111 to spend time discussing with their Medicare-eligible patients anything on their minds. CMS has issued a rule saying that these so-called wellness visits, available annually, can cover the care the patients would like to receive at the end of their lives, if that’s what they want to talk about. Patients have the discussion only if they ask for it. …

Self-described conservatives like Thomas argue in other contexts that given enough information individuals make the best choices for themselves. …

When patients’ desires aren’t known, the health care system has an incentive to provide excessive care and run up expense unnecessarily, if only to avoid a lawsuit. …

In the world of death panel fabulism, it’s better your doctor not know what your preferences are. It’s better that you not know your options. It is a world where personal freedom is threatened by information and achieved through ignorance.

ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: Doctor Discussion Hardly a Death Panel

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Net Neutrality

The FCC took steps toward assuring everyone’s equal access to the Internet. And the puppets of the Chamberpot of Commerce, windbags like Lush Limbaugh, are braying that it is just the opposite. Liars and fools, filling their pockets with money from people who believe money equals access and, therefore, those with more money *deserve* more access in all things in life. Truth is what you pay these guys to say it is.