Category Archives: NADA – New American Dark Ages

New American Dark Ages

NADA - New American Dark Ages, other voices

Repeating the Lie

Conservatives have come a long way. Back in John Birch’s glory days, they didn’t care whether they were the majority or not – their self-righteousness was all they needed to keep going. Barry Goldwater made extremism noble. However, ever since conservative marketers twisted “The Silent Majority” into something specifically conservative to sell us Tricky Dick Nixon and Spiro Agnew (the epitome of Mad Hatters and Angry White Men) conservatives have congratulated themselves time and again that they are the majority. Wrong. If there is a majority in America, they are apathetic, uninterested, or cynical, too busy or too lazy to get involved. Those who care enough about the country to vote are a minority. Those who care enough to do anything more than vote are an extreme minority. Ask yourself: Who is served by apathy.

Below, Paul Keaton trots out an un-cited statistic and twists 40 percent into majority rule. Then, he declares that any rule he doesn’t agree with is a coup. Time and again, the Radical Wrong practices the same adage: When you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/GUEST_COLUMNS: Tea-Partiers Favor Mid-Road Values
By Paul W. Keaton
Santa Fe resident

It was never the goal of the Tea Party to put the Republicans back in power. We have tried to explain that to both Democrats and Republicans many times. Do you hear us now? [mjh: Hear? Yes. Believe, no.]

One might ask, "So, are the tea-partiers winning the hearts and minds of Americans?" But that is the wrong question. Tea-partiers are the hearts and minds of mainstream Americans. 

        For instance, polls show that the ratio of conservatives-to-independents-to-liberals in the United States is about 40 percent to 30 percent to 20 percent, respectively. Any political pundit who calls himself a pragmatist should know this and understand that mainstream America is represented best by moderate-to-right policies. Anything else can only be called a coup.

        And now, for the first time in many decades, we are awakened – no – alarmed and energized.

        One goal is to place in both parties, politicians with mainstream values so no matter which party wins, untested extremists— left or right — can’t destroy the country.

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/GUEST_COLUMNS: Tea-Partiers Favor Mid-Road Values

It’s rather arrogant to declare yourself the majority. At least I have the sense and honesty to know I’m not in the majority – never have been, never will be, don’t need it or want it. I don’t think there is any meaningful majority in AmeriCo anymore. The Tea Party represents the ultimate Balkanization of Amerika.

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: Letters To the Editor

Throw Bozos Out of Washington
        ISN’T IT IRONIC that none of the bozos that want to be re-elected has said one single word about what their platform is?

        They’re good at bashing their opponents; however, all liberals are good at that. … [mjh: Seriously, Ron? Do you think conservatives don’t ever bash their opponents. Look in the mirror.]

        Something these bozos don’t seem to understand: They work for us, not the other way around! I don’t want the government making my health care choices, I don’t want the government controlling my utilities; and mark my words, they want to control every single aspect of our lives! [mjh: Ron, et ilk, is actually saying he doesn’t want government to work at all – something conservatives demand and accomplish every chance they get.]

        It won’t be long and all our rights will be out the window. … I don’t want the government interfering with my life any more than they do already. I really hope the people wake up to what they’re trying to do to us. Let’s go green, and recycle Washington!
        RON ROSS
        Albuquerque

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: Letters To the Editor

One thing the Right gets wrong stems from raging paranoia. The fearful Right is certain to the core that “they” want to control “us” and take freedom and everything else away from “us.” Oh, except for conservative candidates, somehow. Yeah, right. The most dangerously paranoid think there are no exceptions to the rule. They want anarchy but don’t have the brains to realize that’s what they’re calling for or the balls to go for it.

When the loud and angry mob gets me down, I return to Sherman Alexie’s optimistic view.

07/18/2003: An Interview with Sherman Alexie By Steven Robert Allen (alibi . july 17 – 23, 2003)

Alibi: [O]ver the last couple decades conservatism seems to have been in the ascendance. Do you still feel like the world is getting better, or do you feel like we’re drifting back into a dark ages?

Alexie: Well, conservatism hasn’t ascended. It wasn’t conservatives who got civil rights in place. All these things that are still happening are still very liberal. We can’t view a 20-year span or a 10-year span or Dubya’s administration in micro terms. If he does, and I don’t know yet, represent radical change, it’s still tiny compared to two centuries worth of this country’s history.

Alibi: The overall trajectory is liberal?

Alexie: Yeah, and the thing is people in this country continue, with every generation, to be more educated, more progressive, more diversely minded, more tolerant and more loving. At one point I say it in the book, about the average 20-something, graveyard-shift worker today being smarter than an opera-goer in New York in 1876. And it’s true. Health-wise we’re so much better off. Education-wise we’re better off. I mean, people say there’s an education crisis in the country, but go back a hundred years, go back 50 years, you know. Things were much worse. That doesn’t mean there aren’t problems we need to deal with, but there’s no need to run around screaming that the world is ending either. Dubya is a conservative, and he’s a Christian conservative. But he’s not as far right as many past presidents.

mjh’s Weblog Entry – 07/18/2003: "An Interview with Sherman Alexie"

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Follow the Money: Conservative Media is Antidemocratic

Think Progress » ThinkFast: October 4, 2010

USA/

Outside interest groups are spending five times as much on this year’s elections as they did on the last midterms, and they are more secretive than ever about their donors, thanks in part to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. Of the $80 million spent thus far, conservative groups are outspending progressive ones 7 to 1.

Think Progress » ThinkFast: October 4, 2010

Think Progress » ThinkFast: October 1, 2010

Murdoch2

Following its $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association, News Corporation — the parent company of Fox News — has donated $1 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the heaviest anti-Democratic advertisers in this year’s elections. Spokesmen for News Corp. and Fox declined to comment.

Think Progress » ThinkFast: October 1, 2010

dangerousmeta!

CJR: Seeing FOX for What It Is.

”Wringing one’s hands at the decline of ‘objective’ journalism misses the point, because Fox can and will continue to do what it wants. What’s important, if only for the sake of simple accuracy, is simply that Fox comes to be seen for what it is.” Nothing more than a lazy mouthpiece, an echo chamber.

dangerousmeta!

NADA - New American Dark Ages, WTF?!

This Week’s WTF?!

2 Comments

Think Progress » Tennessee County’s Subscription-Based Firefighters Watch As Family Home Burns Down

[In Obion County, Tennessee], Gene Cranick’s home caught on fire. As the Cranicks fled their home, their neighbors alerted the county’s firefighters, who soon arrived at the scene. Yet when the firefighters arrived, they refused to put out the fire, saying that the family failed to pay the annual subscription fee to the fire department. Because the county’s fire services for rural residences is based on household subscription fees, the firefighters, fully equipped to help the Cranicks, stood by and watched as the home burned to the ground:

Imagine your home catches fire but the local fire department won’t respond, then watches it burn. That’s exactly what happened to a local family tonight. A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground.

The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn’t do anything to stop his house from burning. Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay. The mayor said if homeowners don’t pay, they’re out of luck. […]

We asked the mayor of South Fulton if the chief could have made an exception. “Anybody that’s not in the city of South Fulton, it’s a service we offer, either they accept it or they don’t,” Mayor David Crocker said.

The fire reportedly continued for hours “because garden hoses just wouldn’t put it out. It wasn’t until that fire spread to a neighbor’s property, that anyone would respond” — only because the neighbor had paid the fee.

A local newspaper further pressed Mayor Crocker about the city’s policy, which has been in place since 1990. Crocker, a Republican who was elected in 2008 and serves with a county commission where every seat is also filled by a Republican, likened the policy to buying auto insurance. [mjh: Except that the police don’t let you die trapped in your car because you don’t have auto insurance – yet.] The paper said he told them that, after all, “if an auto owner allowed their vehicle insurance to lapse, they would not expect an insurance company to pay for an unprotected vehicle after it was wrecked.”

Ironically, in the county commission’s latest report on its fire services, which outlines which parts of the municipal area will receive fire services only through subscriptions, the commissioners and fire service officials brag that the county is “very progressive.” [mjh: Double-plus good newspeak!]

Think Progress » Tennessee County’s Subscription-Based Firefighters Watch As Family Home Burns Down

loco, NADA - New American Dark Ages

Democrats Don’t Vote and New Mexicans are the Worst

Do you know the difference between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans *always* vote. When they’re up, they vote out of pride and when they’re down, they vote out of anger. They’re plenty pissed off this year. Democrats don’t vote. Democrats assume their vote doesn’t matter, either because other Democrats will vote enough or Republicans will vote too much – why bother.

Get out and vote. Ask everyone you know if they have registered and if they plan to vote. Take a friend or neighbor to the early voting site or the polls the day of. It’s not too late, but it could be soon. Negative forces are counting on your failure.

New Mexico Politics: New Mexico FBIHOP:: Tuesday is the last day to register to vote

by: Matt Wed Sep 29, 2010 at 13:32:31 PM MDT

If you, or someone you know, isn’t registered to vote yet, you don’t have much more time to procrastinate; to be eligible to vote in November’s elections, one must be registered to vote by next Tuesday.

The Secretary of State’s office says if you still need to register to vote you can call your county clerk’s office for more information. If you are not sure about your status, you can check VoterView to search for your voter registration information.

Remember, if you aren’t registered to vote by Tuesday [10/5/10] you will not be able to vote in November’s elections. This includes all races from your local state Representative races all the way up to the Congressional and federal races.

Other important dates for the upcoming election include October 16, when early in-person voting begins in alternate sites and October 30, when early and absentee voting ends. And, of course, election day is November 2. 

New Mexico Politics: New Mexico FBIHOP:: Tuesday is the last day to register to vote

Do you want the Gingrinch back in power?

Think Progress » TenMillionVoters.Com: Newt Launches Tea Party Campaign To Stop ‘Radical, Secular Socialist Machine’

TenMillionVoters.Com: Newt Launches Tea Party Campaign To Stop ‘Radical, Secular Socialist Machine’

With the incendiary claim that the Obama presidency is the greatest threat the American people have ever faced, Newt Gingrich has launched a massively funded effort to mobilize ten million conservative voters this November. In an online video promoting the “Power of 10” campaign by his American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF) 527 group, Gingrich rails against the “genuinely radical, secular socialist machine” of the “Obama-Pelosi-Reid team” who “simply run over the beliefs and values of the American people.” Images of Tea Party rallies and the right-wing enemies list — Michael Moore, Sean Penn, and Katie Couric — scroll by as Gingrich pleads for “we the American people” to “go all out”:

You know, I don’t remember any time in American history where we had such a threat to our basic way of life: A genuinely radical, secular socialist machine ramming things through with no regard for American values or the beliefs of the American people.

Think Progress » TenMillionVoters.Com: Newt Launches Tea Party Campaign To Stop ‘Radical, Secular Socialist Machine’

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Feel Safer Standing In Line to Take Off Your Shoes?

I’ve always hated the way we responded to 9/11. It’s a bunch of nonsense and, like searching student lockers in high school, conditions us all to be sheep in order to “stay safe.” This is DUHbya and BushCo’s enduring legacy, along with two wars that have killed many times more than 9/11 did. Idiots.

Fahreed Zakaria: Why America Overreacted to 9/11 – Newsweek 9/4/10

Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has created or reconfigured at least 263 organizations to tackle some aspect of the war on terror. The amount of money spent on intelligence has risen by 250 percent, to $75 billion (and that’s the public number, which is a gross underestimate). That’s more than the rest of the world spends put together. Thirty-three new building complexes have been built for intelligence bureaucracies alone, occupying 17 million square feet—the equivalent of 22 U.S. Capitols or three Pentagons. Five miles southeast of the White House, the largest government site in 50 years is being built—at a cost of $3.4 billion—to house the largest bureaucracy after the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs: the Department of Homeland Security, which has a workforce of 230,000 people.

This new system produces 50,000 reports a year—136 a day!—which of course means few ever get read. Those senior officials who have read them describe most as banal; one tells me, “Many could be produced in an hour using Google.” Fifty-one separate bureaucracies operating in 15 states track the flow of money to and from terrorist organizations, with little information-sharing.

Zakaria: Why America Overreacted to 9/11 – Newsweek

See mjh’s blog — There is no end to our misdirection

Ted Koppel: Nine years after 9/11, let’s stop playing into bin Laden’s hands

By Ted Koppel

Sunday, September 12, 2010

NADA - New American Dark Ages

The Contract on America Renewed

They gotta get this Pledge to fit on a baseball cap if they really want to reach Joe the Plumber.

Think Progress » GOP ‘Pledge’ Embraces Radical ‘Tenther’ View of Constitution

Today’s release of the Republican “Pledge to America,” however, eliminates any doubt regarding the GOP’s stance on tentherism.  As two passages from the Pledge make clear, the constitutional lunatics are now in charge of the GOP’s asylum.  The first passage is a pledge to read the Constitution as a tenther document:

We pledge to honor the Constitution as constructed by its framers and honor the original intent of those precepts that have been consistently ignored – particularly the Tenth Amendment, which grants that all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

This notion that the framers had some special understanding of the Tenth Amendment which is being “consistently ignored” is classic tentherism.

Think Progress » GOP ‘Pledge’ Embraces Radical ‘Tenther’ View of Constitution

Here, I don’t just tip my hat, I doff it and say ‘bravo’ to Garrett:

dangerousmeta!

”An arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites makes decisions, issues mandates, and enacts laws without accepting or requesting the input of the many.” Are they talking about Congress during the Bush years?  If they’re apologizing, I’m listening.

dangerousmeta!

Think Progress » GOP’s Lobbyist-Authored ‘Pledge To America’ Drops Prior Pledge To Impose Earmarks Moratorium

As the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein reports, the GOP’s new “Pledge to America” was directed by a staffer named Brian Wild, who until early this year, was a lobbyist at a prominent DC firm that lobbied on behalf of corporate giants like Exxon. Moreover, the insurance industry is the leading contributor to Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the Republican who led the effort. Consistent with its desire to placate lobbyists, the 21-page “Pledge” omits any mention of a key Republican mantra: a ban on earmarks.

Think Progress » GOP’s Lobbyist-Authored ‘Pledge To America’ Drops Prior Pledge To Impose Earmarks Moratorium

Eugene Robinson – The GOP’s Hooey to America

By Eugene Robinson

Friday, September 24, 2010

The Republicans were doing pretty well as the Party of No. So why did they decide to rebrand themselves as the Party of Nonsense?

All right, I’m being slightly disingenuous. Inquiring minds demanded to know just what the GOP proposed to do if voters entrusted it with control of one or both houses of Congress. But if the "Pledge to America" unveiled Thursday is the best that House Republicans can come up with, they’d have been better off continuing to froth and foam about "creeping socialism" while stonewalling on specifics.

The problem with the pledge is that the numbers don’t remotely add up. The document is such a jumble of contradictions that it’s hard to imagine how it could possibly pass muster with anyone who survived eighth-grade arithmetic — unless, perhaps, the Republicans have something in mind that they’re not prepared to talk about quite yet.

Eugene Robinson – The GOP’s Hooey to America