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Generous Jeffry

The Albuquerque Tribune: Columnists

Jeffry Gardner: Poor, miserly liberals

Ah, those socially and economically advanced blue-region inhabitants – enlightened, wealthy and miserly. There isn’t a blue state in the top ten [on the Catalogue for Philanthropy’s Generosity Index]. …

There are genuine cultural and values differences between blue state progressives and red state conservatives. The Generosity Index details them in black and white.

Great values like feeling superiour and smug?

Anyone who has read just a little of Jeffry Gardner has to wonder what he knows of “generosity.” To say the man is a pitbull maligns that species. Gardner is a tiny representative of the foaming-at-the-mouth Rabid Right.

Come on, Jeffry, show us your canceled check! Everything is a competition-to-the-death for these punks. Thanks to his ilk, we must all *prove* our worth to those who judge us constantly. Show your flag, show your ribbons, show your stamped papers, prove you are a citizen-of-worth! Expect ridicule and abuse if you don’t conform. Jawohl. Christ himself would punch this guy.

Quick question: just how liberal was Ebenezer Scrooge? Was Bob Cratchet a red-stater? Come on, Jeff, let’s start judging and dividing everything. Another great uniter bringing the world together. mjh

Props to sister Pika for standing first against this Limbaugh-wannabe.

Quirky Burque: Jeffry Gardner’s Gross Inaccuracies

I, for one, refuse to accept your notion that being American means being afraid. I refute your idea that Red and Blue don’t mix. That Red & Blue can’t be friends or lovers or coworkers. To me, and to so many others, the fertile dialogue of PURPLE is exactly what America is all about. And your belligerent scribblings only aim to destroy the day-to-day unity that keeps the real America — a PURPLE America — harmonious. Purple is beautiful, purple is proud, purple is the REAL and feisty America.

Now get off my back, Jeffry Gardner….

Theirs

Personal cellphone booth

Personal cellphone booth – Engadget – www.engadget.com

photo of min-boothIf you just can’t keep your yapping to a respectable sound level, then do the rest of us a favor and hook yourself up with this portable personal phone booth to isolate yourself from the world while talking. Created by Nick Rodrigues, the booth is foldable and can quickly be slid by the user over their head. We can’t wait until it becomes popular on airplanes.

Note this is NOT from the Onion, but from a great gadget site. Now that I see it, I think I’ll start carrying a cardboard box around to put over the heads of some.

Mer has the good idea of making them inflatable and cheap enough to give away. mjh

Dump Duhbya

This isn’t about reforming Social Security at all–it’s about destroying it

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.

Dump Duhbya

You Could Turn Liberal

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.

Dump Duhbya

Beware Dr Dobson

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.

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams