Humorless freakout

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: President Barack Obama from President Barack Obama

Why do Republicans and other wingnuts hate President Obama's viral Funny or Die video with Zach Galifianakis? I mean, other than their simple hatred of the President...

This video is reaching young people, and scaring them into not signing up for Obamacare is one way the health-free and die crowd now hope to kill universal health insurance.

Why conservatives think liberals found a messiah in Barack Obama

Psychological projection. A messiah is what fundie wingnuts want, and they assume we reason as badly as they do about how the world should be.



Michele Bachmann has the overwhelming narcissism to think that God wants her to be President. Because her husband says so. Oy vey.

Enough to remember

Is it enough to remember those who have given their lives in service?  Is that enough?

How many new war dead before Memorial Day 2012 do we need to accomplish our geopolitical goals?  Do we have enough to remember?

The completion of a decade at war is coming in September or in March, depending how you date the beginning. Is memory enough, or should someone in power be bringing peace?

Andrew Bacevich asks...

Why truth is more important than civility

Republicans can only win if they lie. But they can only lie successfully if no one names them liars.

When one side breaks the social contract, and the other side makes a virtue of never calling them out on it, the liar always wins. When it becomes "uncivil" to call out liars, lying becomes free.

Al Franken knows this, and he knows the wrath of the wingnuts when resisted by truth, especially truth told by mocking the hero of the right-wing lie, large or small, Rush Limbaugh.

I have been telling friends for more than a decade that we Democrats must destroy the credibility of Republicans ourselves. The media is too cowed - and bought off - to do it. After twenty-five years, we should have learned that.

The only way for Democrats to win is for us to say bluntly and consistently when confronted with a lie: That's a lie and you're a liar if you repeat that.

And we need to follow up by connecting the dots:

You can't trust Republicans to tell you the true facts. You can't trust Republicans to interpret facts in good faith. You can't trust Republicans to have your interests at heart. The Republican Party exists for the purpose of fooling you into helping the wealthy take an ever-larger slice of the pie, while telling you how lucky you are to be getting the stale crumbs.

Over and over and over and over again until the message sinks into members of a culture besotted by bullshit.

Disinfectant

If the Republicans are still protecting Duhbya from full revelation of the lawlessness of his regime (h/t Tom at Inverse Square), if John Cornyn and other authoritarians still favor torture, if the Senate might hold up confirmation to the OLC of lawyers who don't believe in electing kings, make them filibuster under klieg lights while cameras record them.

As yet, Obama has not restored the Constitution as the fundamental law of the land. Instead, we have a patchwork of law and the naked power that the Bushists were so fond of rationalizing like power-corrupted rulers from the Nazis to the Soviets to Saddam Hussein. (No, I'm not saying that Duhbya was as bad as these guys, just that he used one universal technique of despots - the legalistic rationalization of crimes.)

Now that we've stopped torturing, it's time to end tortured logic in support of torture. A strategic leak would be welcome and an act of true patriotism.