Category Archives: NADA – New American Dark Ages

New American Dark Ages

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

NADA - New American Dark Ages

“Taxes are what we pay for civilized society,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes

Of course, society isn’t very civilized anymore.

Op-Ed Columnist – The Angry Rich and Taxes – NYTimes.com

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 19, 2010

[A]mong the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it’s their money, and they have the right to keep it. “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes — but that was a long time ago.

The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world’s luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way. Never mind the $700 billion price tag for extending the high-end tax breaks: virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are rushing to the aid of the oppressed affluent.

You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. …

And when the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they’ll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrifices.

But when they say “we,” they mean “you.” Sacrifice is for the little people.

Op-Ed Columnist – The Angry Rich and Taxes – NYTimes.com

President Obama to Hedge Fund Manager: Taxing You More Like Your Secretary is Not Anti-Business | Video Cafe

After showing a quote from Newsweek where Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman had the nerve to say this:

"It’s a war," Schwarzman said on the struggle with the administration over increasing taxes on private-equity firms. "It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939."

Obama responded.

Well I don’t know where that comes from. That’s my point… I guess. It is a two way street. …

[T]he notion that somehow me saying maybe you should be taxed more like your secretary when you’re pulling home a billion dollars or a hundred million dollars a year, I don’t think is me being extremist or being anti-business. [mjh: Or Hitlerian.]

President Obama to Hedge Fund Manager: Taxing You More Like Your Secretary is Not Anti-Business | Video Cafe

Election, NADA - New American Dark Ages

O’Donnell Continues to Fascinate Me…

More precisely, the fact that anyone voted for O’Donnell dismays me.

Think Progress » The Old Adventures Of New Christine

“There’s only truth and not truth. You’re either very good or evil. I went back to my dorm and asked myself what I was. If your principles aren’t grounded in absolute truth, you don’t know what to think.” [Wilmington News-Journal, 11/12/06] [mjh: Therefore, she is evil.]

Think Progress » The Old Adventures Of New Christine

E.J. Dionne Jr. – Mike Castle’s defeat — and the end of moderate Republicanism

Castle’s defeat at the hands of Christine O’Donnell, a perennial candidate who may be the least qualified Senate nominee anywhere in the country, does indeed mark the collapse of the Republican Party not only of Nelson Rockefeller and Tom Dewey but also of Bob Dole and Howard Baker.

E.J. Dionne Jr. – Mike Castle’s defeat — and the end of moderate Republicanism

Op-Ed Columnist – Horror in the Hedges – NYTimes.com

O’Donnell is a marketing consultant whose clients included the movie “The Passion of the Christ” and a Vatican portrait-painter. One of the most notable things on her political résumé is her well-publicized position against masturbation. (“The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can’t masturbate without lust.”)

… O’Donnell has had a series of financial problems, and her disclosure form says she earned only $5,800 last year, although she claims she had other income that didn’t require disclosing. She said for years that she was a 1993 graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University, but it turns out she actually got her degree … last week. And a conservative radio host was compelled to correct her when she claimed that she had won two counties in a 2008 race against Senator Joe Biden. That would have been quite a trick, given that Delaware has only three counties and she lost the election by 65 percent to 35 percent.

“I meant tied,” she said, forcing the host to point out: “You didn’t tie him either.”

Op-Ed Columnist – Horror in the Hedges – NYTimes.com

PostPartisan – Why Christine O’Donnell’s victory is scary

Republican members of Congress look at races such as those in Utah, Alaska and now Delaware and think: There but for the grace of the Tea Party go I. They will be that much more watchful of protecting their right flank against a primary challenge. They will be that much less likely to take a political risk in the direction of bipartisanship. In this sense, it matters less whether O’Donnell will win the general election — that doesn’t seem likely — than that she won the primary.

The Delaware result might be good news for both Tea Partyers and Democrats. It is not good news for the cause of good government.

PostPartisan – Why Christine O’Donnell’s victory is scary

NADA - New American Dark Ages

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

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, succeeded far beyond anything Osama bin Laden could possibly have envisioned. This is not just because they resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths, nor only because they struck at the heart of American financial and military power. Those outcomes were only the bait; it would remain for the United States to spring the trap.

The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another. …

Through the initial spending of a few hundred thousand dollars, training and then sacrificing 19 of his foot soldiers, bin Laden has watched his relatively tiny and all but anonymous organization of a few hundred zealots turn into the most recognized international franchise since McDonald’s. Could any enemy of the United States have achieved more with less?

Could bin Laden, in his wildest imaginings, have hoped to provoke greater chaos? It is past time to reflect on what our enemy sought, and still seeks, to accomplish — and how we have accommodated him.

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

See mjh’s blog — Feel Safer Standing In Line to Take Off Your Shoes?

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

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Just as much, if not more, evidence supporting Christine O’Donnell should never set foot in the Senate

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Think Progress » O’Donnell On Creationism: ‘Too Many People Are Blindly Accepting Evolution As Fact’

The Tea Party’s victorious upstart Christine O’Donnell has paraded some “biblical” viewpoints in her pursuit of public office, equating a lack of school prayer with weekly school shootings and masturbation with adultery.

“Well, creationism, in essence, is believing that the world began as the Bible in Genesis says, that God created the Earth in six days, six 24-hour periods. And there is just as much, if not more, evidence supporting that [as there is for evolution].”

Think Progress » O’Donnell On Creationism: ‘Too Many People Are Blindly Accepting Evolution As Fact’

Really? Evidence?

NADA - New American Dark Ages

Dishonest Cowards Out of Touch

Back when DUHbya was the best and brightest Republican, Conservatives crowed about being “The Party of Ideas,” as well as, Deep Thinkers. Now, they’re all scared shitless and mad as hell about everything. It’s time to tune these rude loonies out and get on with living. Don’t let the assholes wear you down. Vote for a positive future in November.

First Read – GOP watch: Boehner’s tight circle

In a National Review Online interview (via the New York Daily News, [the adulterous Newty Gingrinch] said: "This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president. I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating — none of which was true," Gingrich said. "He was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve…He was authentically dishonest."

At a Wasilla, Alaska, 9/11 Remembrance Rally, which Sarah Palin and Senate candidate Joe Miller attended, a Baptist pastor said this: "We have cowards in the White House. We’re afraid to say anymore that we’re a Christian nation. Islam has stated they want to rule the world, and they are taking over." …

Mike Pence at the Washington rally: “We’ve lost respect in the world. We are going broke. The American dream is dying and our social and cultural fabric is unraveling. People are scared. If we do not succeed in November, all that once was good and great about this country could someday be gone."

First Read – GOP watch: Boehner’s tight circle

Clearly, dishonest cowards out of touch sums up the conservative bowel movement today. “People are scared”? Because Conservatives do everything they can to keep them scared. Is this a cynical setup for the next Ronnie Raygun’s Morning in AmeriCo: It’s OK to feel good about AmeriCo again, now that a white guy is in charge? Or are they merely content to rake in big bucks from the frightened masses for more bobblehead dolls?