Lindsey Graham: It’s Hard Out Here For A Southern White Guy

4:15 pm EST October 6th, 2011 | News | 10 Comments

Who will stand up for the southern white man? WHO???

RIP Steve Jobs

8:40 pm EST October 5th, 2011 | News | 3 Comments

He fits right in with this crew:

Fred Shuttlesworth, Hero, Dies

2:32 pm EST October 5th, 2011 | History | 7 Comments

Just an amazing group of people fought for our rights.

It was in Birmingham in the spring of 1963 that Mr. Shuttlesworth, an important ally of Dr. King, organized two tumultuous weeks of daily demonstrations by black children, students, clergymen and adults against a rigidly segregated society.

Graphic scenes of helmeted police officers and firefighters under the direction of Eugene “Bull” Connor, Birmingham’s intransigent public safety commissioner, scattering peaceful marchers with fire hoses, police dogs and rattling nightsticks, provoked a national outcry.

The brutality helped galvanize the nation’s conscience, as did the Ku Klux Klan bombing of a black Birmingham church that summer that killed four girls attending Sunday school. The events led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, after the historic protest march in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, organized in part by Mr. Shuttlesworth, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The measures were the keystones of civil rights legislation.

Thanks to the work of Fred Shuttlesworth, America overcame.

PHOTO: Russell Crowe Is Jor-El

2:24 pm EST October 5th, 2011 | Comic Books, Movies | 1 Comment

He’s certainly a good actor, that’s for sure.

Topic: Superman

Yet Another Big Lie From Breitbart’s Big Journalism

11:29 pm EST October 2nd, 2011 | Conservative | 13 Comments

I know this will shock some of you, but Andrew Breitbart and his team at Big Journalism (and Big Government, and Big Peace, and Big Hollywood, etc.) often make up stories. They just out and out lie. This explains their success within the bastardized world of conservative “journalism” where the truth is the inconvenient bit.

Add this one to the “Big Lie” pile. Here’s Ron Futrell, trying to make the case that the media is responsible for creating the image of Obama attempting to unite the country:

Here’s just one example of the story line from 2007 with this little bit from the Washington Post about Obama, “he has the capacity … to unify the country and move it out of what he called “ideological gridlock.” Wow, good thing we don’t have gridlock and we hired the guy for the job who could stop it with a beer summit or the wave of his magic cigarette.

Whenever I see conservatives use ellipses, a warning bell goes off indicating that there’s trouble afoot. So, here is the text from the story Futrell links. I will highlight what he chose to excerpt and you can read for yourself what he left out on purpose.

Drawing a sharp contrast with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, his main rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama said in an interview that he has the capacity she may lack to unify the country and move it out of what he called “ideological gridlock.”

To make that really clear, Futrell has taken Dan Balz’s reporting on what Obama said about himself and magically attributed it to The Washington Post’s expressed opinion. I’m not fan of a lot of what the Post does, but they didn’t express an opinion here. They reported the words of a candidate for office. You know, reporting?

Futrell does this because he knows 99.9% of the people on the right who will read what he wrote will never click through, but even for someone in the Breitbart stable this is mighty dishonest.

On purpose.

Greek Austerity Misses Deficit Target

8:42 pm EST October 2nd, 2011 | News | 10 Comments

Hey, look, the drive to austerity hasn’t helped the Greeks meet their deficit targets. Guess what? It won’t happen here either. All it does, especially here, is squeeze those who are already being squeezed while the robber barons get to fleece us yet again.

It’s almost as if “starve the beast” policies are designed to keep those with wealth flush in cash while the middle and lower classes languish.

Almost.

Obama Administration Hasn’t Been Silent On Nadarkhani Case In Iran

4:46 pm EST September 29th, 2011 | Foreign Policy | No Comments

Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani has been sentenced to death in Iran in retaliation for his conversion to Christianity. Some conservatives seem to be making an attempt to say the Obama administration hasn’t spoken out on this issue. Here is Sen. Marco Rubio writing in National Review:

In recent years, there has been a very troubling increase in religious persecution in Iran. This is true for anti-Christian efforts, but it has also been evident in the repression of non-Shiite Muslims. While there has been some good documentation of this by a few in the media and in the human rights arena, there has unfortunately been a cowardly silence by the United Nations and most of the international community in this case and others.

Our own State Department should call for his immediate release. These are the moments when the government of this great nation must not be silent, and must be a voice for freedom for those who are defenseless.

In fact, the U.S. State Department has addressed this issue a few times.

State Department Spokesperson Victoria Nuland, July 6:

We are dismayed over reports that the Iranian courts are requiring Youcef Nadarkhani to recant his Christian faith or face the death penalty for apostasy – a charge based on his religious beliefs. If carried out, it would be the first execution for apostasy in Iran since 1990.

He is just one of thousands who face persecution for their religious beliefs in Iran, including the seven leaders of the Baha’i community whose imprisonment was increased to 20 years for practicing their faith and hundreds of Sufis who have been flogged in public because of their beliefs.

While Iran’s leaders hypocritically claim to promote tolerance, they continue to detain, imprison, harass, and abuse those who simply wish to worship the faith of their choosing.

We join the international community in continuing to call on the Iranian government to respect the fundamental rights of all its citizens and uphold its international commitments to protect them.

Michael H. Posner, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. May 11:

Particularly troubling is the deepening persecution of religious minorities. On May 1, the Revolutionary Court in the northern city of Bandar Anzali tried 11 members of the Church of Iran, including Pastor Abdolreza Ali-Haghnejad and Zainab Bahremend, the 62-year-old grandmother of two other defendants, on charges of “acting against national security.” On September 22, 2010, Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani was given a death sentence for apostasy although, according to human rights groups, this sentence is against Iranian law. Another pastor could be sentenced to death later this year. In March, over 200 Gonabadi Sufis were summoned to courts around the country based on allegations that they were insulting Iranian authorities. In April, eight other Sufis were re-arrested on charges of disrupting public order – charges for which they had been punished with flogging and imprisonment.

Iran’s leaders continue to signal to their citizens that criticism will not be tolerated, while selectively applauding protestors in other countries in the region. As the country’s economic situation deteriorates, workers are arrested when they protest for back wages, only to have authorities deny that strikes are taking place. At the same time the Iranian government was claiming influence in shaping popular unrest in the Arab world last month, its security forces arrested over 200 of its own people and three protestors died at the hands of authorities. While it decries crackdowns against protesters in Bahrain, it defends and assists the Syrian government’s repression of protesters in Syria. Though Iranian leaders continue trying to portray regional events as inspired by the 1979 Islamic revolution, we are confident that the people of the Arab world will recognize those statements for the opportunistic falsehoods they are.

FBI Arrests Alleged Terrorist

3:53 pm EST September 28th, 2011 | News | 44 Comments

Rezwan Ferdaus: Man Charged With Plotting Terrorist Attack Vs. Pentagon, U.S. Capitol

The Department Of Justice announced today that Rezwan Ferdaus of Ashland, Massachusetts has been charged in a plot to attack the Pentagon and US Capitol. Ferdaus reportedly tried to detonate a remote controlled plane filled with C-4 explosives.

VIDEO: The Upside Of Tyler Perry’s Minstrelsy (From Conan)

11:30 am EST September 28th, 2011 | Humor | 6 Comments

Oh, I didn’t get that number right the first time.

Maggie Gallagher’s New Hate Group

10:00 am EST September 27th, 2011 | Conservative | 66 Comments

Conservative anti-gay marriage crusader Maggie Gallagher has a new group, and she talked to National Review about it.

Frank Turek is a man whose contract was terminated by a major corporation when human resources found out he had written a book opposing same-sex marriage. He is on the front lines of an emerging trend we are hearing about: people losing jobs or other economic opportunities because they have written, spoken, donated, or otherwise peacefully exercised their core civil rights on behalf of marriage as the union of husband and wife.

Frank’s day job is leadership seminars for Fortune 500 companies. He also runs a ministry and has written a book against same-sex marriage titled Correct, Not Politically Correct: How Same-sex Marriage Hurts Everyone.

For many years Frank Turek has done seminars for Cisco, among many other companies. A student who attended his class Googled his name, found out he opposed same-sex marriage and said “I’m going to get Frank fired because he doesn’t represent Cisco values.” And this student succeeded.

So, this guys contract was terminated and he doesn’t provide seminars any more to Cisco when it turned out he was preaching hatred. Gallagher has somehow morphed that into him being fired. So, in other words, Maggie Gallagher is still being a hateful liar.