MINO vs CINO | Do you believe everyone who claims to be a Muslim is, in fact, a Muslim?

Do you believe everyone who claims to be a Muslim is, in fact, a Muslim?

How about this: Do you believe everyone who claims to be a Christian is, in fact, a Christian?

How about these guys, the Church of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan?

What do we believe in our Church? We believe in the Bible before liberals translated it. We of the White Race came from Adam and Eve, not monkeys. The Bible clearly shows we are of one lineage, and makes reference to Beasts who walked on two legs. It also spoke of the wrongs of sleeping with these beasts. So we believe that blacks are not our Brothers and Sisters, but are beasts of burden.  To accept evolution fully, is to say that we are equal with these animals, which history shows that we are not equal to, and in fact are superior to.  While the Supreme Court has accepted animals to Vote and Marry with our race, we have not and never will accept this.

They are a 501(C)(3) tax exempt religious organization. Do you think they represent the mainstream of Christian faith? Do you think they represent Jesus? Or do you think they may be Christians in name only?

Going out on a limb here to propose that most Christians would not agree to have the Church of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan speak for them in matters of faith and practice — is it any further out on a limb to imagine there are Muslims who abhor and reject the hatred and violence of people who are Muslims in name only?

Occupy | If You See Something, Say Something

— Department of Homeland Security Secretary
Janet Napolitano, August 17, 2011

If you see something, say something.

This is what citizens who identify with the Occupy movement in a thousand cities and towns across the U.S. are doing. They see suspicious behavior in the financial sector — acts that look fraud, bribery, confidence games, conspiracy and looting. And like the good citizens they are, the Occupiers are saying what they see.

The Occupiers point at smoke rising from the ruins of the real economy and say, "We think someone set this fire by negligence, if not on purpose; and we think it's probably the ones who devised ways to make mad sums without regard for consequences — including burning it down and collecting insurance after the fact in the form of bets laid against their own clients."

Occupiers would like to know if anyone is looking into this, because it's unclear that anyone is, while it's become quite clear there are serial offenders who will be happy to pay hundreds of millions in out-of-court settlements as long as that leaves open the option to take in billions committing the same infractions again and again.

citizen journalism | cell phone captures remarkable Fox News interview

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Humble Beast

I've been listening to the thoughtful artists on Humble Beast records a lot lately...

Newt Gingrich's Confession | A Rewrite by Lawrence O'Donnell

This, I think, is the kind of thing the young man in the post called Unlinked is reacting to...

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E.B. White | 1952 | This is Bad

We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. This is bad. I think the most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witchhunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a communist.

—E.B. White, April 27, 1952, Letters of E.B. White,  p 328

Second Thoughts about the National Football League + the Triumph of Socialism

Lawrence O'Donnell takes a do-over on the public funding of professional sports.

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Barack Obama in Tucson | the video 01.12.11

Quite a few friends appreciated easy access to the transcript of President Obama's remarks at yesterday's memorial gathering in Tucson, AZ. Here's the video.

Barack Obama in Tucson | full text of speech 01.12.11

Remarks by the President at a Memorial Service for the Victims of the Shooting in Tucson, Arizona

McKale Memorial Center

University of Arizona

Tucson, Arizona

6:43 P.M. MST

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  (Applause.)  Thank you very much.  Please, please be seated.  (Applause.)

To the families of those we’ve lost; to all who called them friends; to the students of this university, the public servants who are gathered here, the people of Tucson and the people of Arizona:  I have come here tonight as an American who, like all Americans, kneels to pray with you today and will stand by you tomorrow.  (Applause.)

There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts.  But know this:  The hopes of a nation are here tonight.  We mourn with you for the fallen.  We join you in your grief.  And we add our faith to yours that Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other living victims of this tragedy will pull through.  (Applause.)

Scripture tells us:

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,

the holy place where the Most High dwells.

God is within her, she will not fall;

God will help her at break of day.

Thomas Jefferson on Constitutions + Founders

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. It is this preposterous idea which has lately deluged Europe in blood. Their monarchs, instead of wisely yielding to the gradual change of circumstances, of favoring progressive accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady habits, and obliged their subjects to seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous innovations, which, had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put into acceptable and salutary forms. Let us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs. 

— Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Samuel Kercheval Monticello, July 12, 1816, The Letters of Thomas Jefferson: 1743-1826, http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl246.htm

Finally! RACE IN AMERICA PART 3: NEWSMASTERS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFo_E3U0meQ

Jon Stewart + Rachel Maddow

Justice: Colbert Dragged Before Congress

Listen all the way to the end of the questions (please).

Uncle Sam Wants YOU...

This today via Andrew Leonard from an unidentified artist who really deserves to be identified — and thanked.

"...somebody to make it all better. Now."

The nation demands the impossible: quick, painless solutions to long-term, structural problems. While they're running for office, politicians of both parties encourage this kind of magical thinking. When they get into office, they're forced to try to explain that things aren't quite so simple -- that restructuring our economy, renewing the nation's increasingly rickety infrastructure, reforming an unsustainable system of entitlements, redefining America's position in the world and all the other massive challenges that face the country are going to require years of effort. But the American people don't want to hear any of this. They want somebody to make it all better. Now. 

Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post 

 photo by BabyDinosaur

Wanting it Both Ways

Here's part of what American citizens have to look straight in the eye — or look the other way on — as we vote in November. It's 13 minutes long (13 agonizing minutes for Rachel Maddow haters), but I believe it has to be reckoned-with.

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I ♥ TARGET | I ♥ REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY

An amusing (and pointed) bit of street theater...

Jon Stewart | Extremist Makeover - Homeland Edition

Guilt by Association on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Extremist Makeover - Homeland Edition
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Passionate But Not Careful

The other day a friend of a friend informed me matter-of-factly:

The fact is most of The presidents cabinet has no clue how to fix the problems they are worsening. Interesting fact, only 8% of the presidents cabinet members were previously employed in the private sector. That is the lowest amount of any president ever. Eisenhower had 57%, Reagan had 53%, and W Bush had 51%.

Setting aside issues of who does what in government, this 8% of cabinet members previously employed in the private sector struck me as just the sort of thing that's easy to check these days.

8% of 20 first-term cabinet members comes to just 1.6 individuals this person claims were previously employed in the private sector.

Susan Rice and the recently-resigned Peter Orszag were both consultants for McKinsey & Company — so we're already at 10%.

Facebook + Economic Discourse II: In which we pick up the thread wall-to-wall

#1 at 9:28pm yesterday

Are you still supportive of the next bailout? It just seems really expensive to me, compared to the impact it will have on the economy. I looked at that article you linked for me. There is no doubt there are good things included in the package, but we can't afford it, and all I hear from Obama is that we can't afford not to do it. What am I missing?

#4 at 8:33am

Let's begin by reframing the question and dropping the term 'bailout' for the moment. Under the circumstances it seems moralistic and not particularly helpful for this reason: There's been a bus crash and the lives of children are in danger. The person who drove them off the road is a bad driver and possibly a bad man. He should be held responsible for his failure. Perhaps upon investigation it will turn out the driver was an honest man, trying to keep a badly designed and dangerously broken bus on the roadway — maybe the bus company is the bad actor. But the 911 call from a motorist who saw the bus leave the pavement and disappear over the embankment came hours ago. The children are exposed and injured and the sun is going down and the temperature is dropping. We know how this ends. It's not a bailout for the children. It's a rescue. We'll deal with responsibility for the crash later; right now the rescue must be undertaken with energy and imagination and at any cost. more later...