*facepalm* Just… *facepalm* PhoboQuotable – Andrew Breitbart. As Dan Savage put it, just how many freaking planes have the “gay activist left” hijacked? Or people have they beheaded? I mean, really.
“I am not endorsing gay marriage, I’m not endorsing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. I will be the harshest critic of the activist gay left, who I fear more than al-Qaida. […]”
*boggle* Did I miss the new T-shirt?
I am most proud to reside in one of the “most defiant” states!!
Gonna be nice to see those pink and purple colors spread. (Accidental choice of colors? Oh, I’m sure). I’m still trying to make out the rationale for the whole rainbox & ark thing — maybe to “reclaim” the rainbow? It really makes it look like a children’s coloring book that escaped onto the internet. h/t JMG.
Well, I wonder why? Non-Conservatives Distrust of Fox Up Sharply From Last Year. It is kinda curious as to what exactly happened in 2010 (as opposed to 2008, 2009…) to cause this shift. The link just gives the data without speculating on why. A tipping point was reached? Wikileaks having more of an effect than thought? What? I’d like the trend to continue, dammit. Just look at these numbers: 
More on stochastic terrorism: Experts: Violent Rhetoric Can Spark Violent Behavior.
A thoughtful article in the aftermath of the Arizona shootings: Media Matters: Changing The Tone, Or Changing Our Understanding?
That’s where the power to affect positive change in the discourse lies. This week America saw the overheated rhetoric of the right for what it is: misleading, incendiary, and false. But the conservative media aren’t going to pack up their chalkboards and golden microphones anytime soon, so it’s up to the mainstream press to continue being as aggressive in challenging those distortions as the right is in promulgating them.
Of course, as the author says, the moment of clarity may soon pass. (The article contains a great quote summarizing the difference between left and right punditry y’all should go off & read.)
More on the jobless recovery. We have in fact been losing jobs since about 2001. The Phantom 15 Million.
This we do know: The U.S. economy created fewer and fewer jobs as the 2000s wore on. Turnover in the job market slowed as workers clung to the positions they held. Job destruction spiked in each of the decade’s two recessions. In contrast to the pattern of past recessions, when many employers recalled laid-off workers after growth picked up again, this time very few of those jobs came back.
We don’t know exactly why, though many theories abound.
This is a long piece, with a good number of graphs and covering a lot of ground. But I think this is a key part (of course, since I’m a raving anti-corporatist 
)
One baffling aspect of the current recovery is why U.S. companies continue to sideline nearly $2 trillion in cash instead of using it to buy equipment or hire workers. That hoarding turns out to be a piece of a decades-long investment puzzle. American corporate spending on nonresidential plant equipment—factories and equipment, not houses or shopping malls—has fallen to its lowest rate as a share of the economy in
40 years. Businesses aren’t investing in American workers, either. The major productivity gains of the fledgling recovery, and in the 2000s in general, came largely from companies producing more with fewer employees.The simple truth is that American firms are either returning the spoils of globalization and technology to their shareholders, spending them on new projects abroad, or both. “Globalization isn’t the problem,” says Howard F. Rosen, a labor economist and visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute. “U.S. companies are investing in plants and equipment, just not in our borders.… They are privatizing the gains of globalization. That’s really it. They’re our gains!”
Greed. Hyperrich consolidating those gains for themselves. What I keep wondering is what happens another couple of decades from now. Nothing these people do is sustainable, and I suspect this plundering falls in the same category.
Greenwald missed one in this otherwise lengthy compilation: Bipartisan praise for Joe Lieberman. I’m thinking of this, of course: Joe Lieberman on Rape Victims’ Reproductive Rights. So while I will acknowledge his helpful role in last month’s DADT proceedings, I am still absolutely ecstatic to see him exit politics. Bye, Joe. Don’t let the damned door hit you on the way out.
*Sigh* Verizon Loves Net Neutrality to Death
Eugene Robinson of Truthout calls it: It’s Repeal That’s Ailing
Wednesday’s vote to repeal President Obama’s health insurance reform law was supposed to be a crowning triumph. We heard confident GOP predictions that cowed Democrats would defect in droves, generating unstoppable momentum that forced the Senate to obey “the will of the people” and follow suit. The Democrats’ biggest domestic accomplishment would be in ruins and Obama’s political standing would be damaged, perhaps irreparably.
What actually happened, though, is that the Republican majority managed to win the votes of just three Democrats — all of them Blue Dogs who have been consistent opponents of the reform package anyway. In terms of actual defectors, meaning Democrats who changed sides on the issue, there were none. This is momentum?
Yes. For all the bluster and demogaguery, I haven’t seen much actual force behind this whole stupid repeal HCR issue. It benefits too many people, and the Republicans are being too demonstrably shrill and dishonest in their speaking points.
By the way (h/t Dan Savage), did you know that Congress Passe[d] Socialized Medicine and Mandates Health Insurance — In 1798? As Savage says, “Guess who didn’t think federal health care mandates—the Feds requiring you to buy health insurance—were unconstitutional: the guys who wrote the fucking constitution, that’s who”.
You know, it’s not at all what these men make it out to be: Abortion As The New Slavery. I actually already expressed it yesterday, and I’ll reproduce it here:
Of course these are all complex moral decisions. But taking the decision out of the hands of the woman whose body is at the center of the discussion is to take away her autonomy, to tell her that she is incapable of making that moral decision for herself (and that different women will reach different, perfectly legitimate conclusions for themselves and their circumstance); reducing her to being a slave to YOUR moral compass.
No one likes to think about that, especially as we will all make different moral choices in our lives. But that’s the crux of this entire argument. Either all women are given the capacity to make this moral decision for themselves, or really, we’re all just living on the sufferance of someone else’s morality play.
That’s the real slavery inherent in the “abortion discussion.” Slavery is the lack of autonomy over your own body. The rest of this discussion is really about who has the bigger muscles to “win” their side of the argument — and to enslave women with any proposed restrictions. So comparing pro-choice to “slavery” is just… so wrongheaded I can’t even begin to address that approach.
