Lyall’s Law

The most important leg of a three-legged stool is the one that’s missing.

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Mr. Bean's War On Christmas: Nativity Battle Division

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Mukasey's New Office a Big Splash

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Simple Answers To Unasked Questions

Of course waterboarding is "repugnant"

And that’s why they like it.

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The Face and Reality of "Compassionate Conservatism"

And there’s one more point that should not be forgotten: ultimately, this isn’t about the Frost parents. It’s about Graeme Frost and his sister.

Song For Graeme Frost
(from Corrente Boldy shrill....)

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Meanies And Hypocrites
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, October 12, 2007; Page A17

From the article:

Conservatives claim to be in favor of stable families, small businesses, hard work, private schools, investment and homeownership. So why in the world are so many on the right attacking the family of Graeme Frost? ----- Most conservatives favor government-supported vouchers that would help Graeme attend his private school, but here they turn around and criticize him for . . . attending a private school. Federal money for private schools but not for health insurance? What's the logic here? Conservatives endlessly praise risk-taking by entrepreneurs and would give big tax cuts to those who are most successful. But if a small-business person is struggling, he shouldn't even think about applying for SCHIP. Conservatives who want to repeal the estate tax on large fortunes have cited stories -- most of them don't check out -- about farmers having to sell their farms to pay inheritance taxes. But the implication of these attacks on the Frosts is that they are expected to sell their investment property to pay for health care. Why? Oh, yes, and conservatives tell us how much they love homeownership, and then assail the Frosts for having the nerve to own a home. I suppose they should have to sell that, too. ----- All the conservative attacks on a boy from Baltimore who dared to speak out will not make this issue go away. (read the entire article)

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Op-Ed Columnist
Sliming Graeme Frost
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 12, 2007

From the article:

All in all, the Graeme Frost case is a perfect illustration of the modern right-wing political machine at work, and in particular its routine reliance on character assassination in place of honest debate. If service members oppose a Republican war, they’re “phony soldiers”; if Michael J. Fox opposes Bush policy on stem cells, he’s faking his Parkinson’s symptoms; if an injured 12-year-old child makes the case for a government health insurance program, he’s a fraud. Meanwhile, leading conservative politicians, far from trying to distance themselves from these smears, rush to embrace them. And some people in the news media are still willing to be used as patsies. (read the entire article)

Adobe Acrobat copy of Meanies And Hypocrites and Sliming Graeme Frost

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NASCAR is even involved in this

Sons of Confederate Veterans Membership Tanking Since White-Supremacist Takeover

Xan's blog on Corrente (Boldly shrill...)

The headline on this article may suprise some, who were under the impression that the Sons of Confederate Veterans always were a group of racist loons. Well, they weren’t. Up until about five years ago at least, when a decades-long campaign by right-wingers came to a head…if any of this sequence sounds vaguely familiar, read on. Short version: since the takeover membership in the SCV has fallen off a cliff. In the last year alone, according to the just-released Intelligence Report Fall ’07 from the superb Southern Poverty Law Center, dues-paying membership has fallen from around 30,000 to 18,600. The people I defended all those years, the ones who lived up to the motto “Heritage Not Hate,” were derided as “Grannies” by the neofascists one too many times and walked away. And the guy who orchestrated this takeover, while remaining as far back in the shadows as he could manage, one Kirk Lyons, is now finding that the charming folks he recruited into the SCV are the ones attacking him from the right. Heeee hee hee hee hee…. NASCAR is even involved in this. It’s a little complicated but the SPLC link above does a great job of summing up the Recent Unpleasantness. I am playing the world’s tiniest violin in the direction of Black Mountain, NC.

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Can You Find The Phony Soldiers?

Click here for original post and more images on Corrente (Boldly shrill...)

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Who’s responsible?

Senate Republicans get to do whatever the fuck they want because House Democrats don't understand the concept of payback

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His Kid...Your Kid

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A Simple Question

How does turning a hemmed-in secular dictatorship into a hotbed and of — and recruiting cause for — anti-Western religious-fundamentalist terrorism make us safer?

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Next Up: The Seed Corn

With thanks to Corrente (Not Your Typical Mealy-Mouthed Ad) for posting this.

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Purity Trolls and Baby Sausage Trolls

Progressive Strategy, Illustrated: The Pincer Movement, from Corrente (Boldy shrill...).

Maybe I wrote this because I just finished reading A History of Warfare (h/t Bird), or maybe because I just like making diagrams. The pincer movement or double envelopment is a basic element of military strategy which has been used, to some extent, in nearly every war. The flanks of the opponent are attacked simultaneously in a pinching motion after the opponent has advanced towards the center of an army which is responding by moving its outside forces to the enemy’s flanks, in order to surround it. The Key Word is Simultaneously Over the past years, I’ve heard the argument that Democratic electoral victory must happen first, and only after that can Progressives really push for better policy. Everything that has taken place since the 2006 elections proves that this strategy is wrong. (read the entire article)

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Fisking the "War on Terror"

With a tip o' the Tilley to Corrente (boldy shrill) for this:

"Told by Juan Cole in words and pictures so simple even a Christianist or a Conservative could understand, assuming nobody was paying them to stay stupid."

Fisking the "War on Terror" Informed Comment Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute ---------- In the US, the Christian Right adopted the Mujahideen as their favorite project. They even sent around a "biblical checklist" for grading US congressman as to how close they were to the "Christian" political line. If a congressman didn't support the radical Muslim Muj, he or she was downgraded by the evangelicals and fundamentalists. ---------- By giving the Muj weaponry like the stinger shoulderheld missile, which could destroy advanced Soviet arms like their helicopter gunships, Reagan demonstrated to the radical Muslims that they could defeat a super power. ---------- The American Right, having created the Mujahideen and having mightily contributed to the creation of al-Qaeda, abruptly announced that there was something deeply wrong with Islam, that it kept producing terrorists. (read the entire article)

Adobe Acrobat copy of Fisking the "War on Terror"

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How Idiotic Arguments Enter the Political Mainstream...

The Overton Window, Illustrated, from Corrente (Boldy shrill...) and other sources.

Or: How extremists play a role in setting public policy.

(click on image for larger view)
As the Overton Window shifts along the spectrum, a specific policy (a notch in the graph) goes through the following phases of public acceptance:

• Unthinkable


• Radical


• Acceptable


• Sensible


• Popular


• Policy

"The Overton Window, in my opinion, is basically the key to the Republicans' success over the past twenty years--and it comes straight from the Republican think tanks. "...the GOP knows that the middle DOES matter. They know that by playing to their base in very well-crafted ways, they can shift the very definition of what the middle is. By introducing radicalism into the public discourse (and taking initial heat for it), whatever used to be radical within this context becomes moderate by comparison." Why the Right-Wing Gets It--and Why Dems Don't by thereisnospoon

This cartoon (© Tom Tomorrow) says it all:

(click on image for larger view)

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Says It All ...

From Corrente (Boldy shrill...), a bumper sticker from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area which "Says It All..."

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