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One News Now, the daily ezine that's sent out by a far-right organization called the American Family News Network, reports that even Ron Paul is not wingnut enough for certain elements of its readership demographic.
In an article called "Tea Party Fave in Spotlight for 'Gay' Stance" we discover that one
Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center of Military Readiness, says however that Paul supported President Barack Obama and homosexual activists with his vote during last year's lame-duck session of the 111th Congress to repeal "don't ask, don't tell" -- the law excluding homosexuals from serving openly in the U.S. military.
"People should know that Ron Paul voted for gays in the military in 2010," Donnelly states. "I think he should be held accountable for that vote. Certainly anyone who supports the military should question his support of the armed forces with that vote on his record."
Hands up all those who've before now never heard of the Center of Military Readiness. And hands up all those who sniggered in puerile fashion at the juxtaposition of Donnelly's subject matter with the name of the organization she represents.
And most of all hands up anyone who failed to recognize the astonishing level of irrationality behind that non sequitur in Donnelly's last reported sentence.
+++++
As an aside, I think the American Family News Network is the
No We Can't
Apr. 17th, 2011 04:58 pmThere's a post over at Daily Kos, written by the blogger called just Hunter, that deserves as wide a readership as possible for its calling of "time" on the overwhelmingly negative, extraordinarily destructive faux-patriotism that's everywhere on the march these days, as everything that's great about the United States of America is subjected to relentless attack by those who claim, falsely, to be the country's loyal supporters. The post begins thus:
One of the more striking characteristics of the "new" Republican agenda (or the agenda of the conservative movement, or Tea Party movement, or whatever they prefer to call themselves) is how unrelentingly negative it is. Depressingly, ploddingly negative; America is simultaneously the best and greatest country in the world, as blanket assertion, and a nation on a slow death march towards insolvency and irrelevance. America must make sacrifices, goes the refrain, but every one of the sacrifices seems to involve retracting a past long-term success; America must not (something), is the defining chant, where (something) is any number of things that other countries can successfully do and have done, but America cannot, or an even larger list of somethings that America used to do, and quite competently, but America can do no longer.
Other industrialized nations can provide their citizens with better access to healthcare; we simply cannot, and you are a fool for even bringing it up. Other nations can, say, establish warning systems for tsunamis, or volcanoes, or hurricanes; America must tighten its belt, and that meager, economically trivial ounce of prevention is considered fat that should obviously be trimmed, so that America-the-entity can get back to its fighting weight. Past-America could provide at least some modest layer of security to prevent its citizens from descending into destitution in old age; we in this day cannot. Past-America could pursue scientific discoveries as a matter of national pride, even land mankind on an entirely other world; we cannot. Past-America was a haven of invention and technology that shook the world and changed the course of history countless times: whatever attributes made it such a place we cannot quite determine now, much less replicate. Public art is decadent. Public education is an infringement. Public works are for other times, never now.
America of the past could build highways and railroads and a robust electrical grid. We cannot even keep them running. Of course we cannot keep them running: that was past-America. That past America had a magic that we modern Americans cannot match. Perhaps it was beholden to Satan, or to socialism, or merely to some grandiose vision of a better future, one with flying cars or diseases that could actually be cured, with proper application of effort. Whatever the case, past-America was wrong and stupid, and we know better.
It is not even that these things are debatable, mind you: they are certainties. It is a certainty that (1) none of these past tasks of government can be competently done, (2) none of these things should be competently done, and (3) any past success at actually doing them and paying for them is nothing but a random fluke of history. That was past-America; future-America is a profoundly less capable place. And, again, you are a fool or a communist for not recognizing it yourself.
We are at a time of record unemployment, of unemployment that was considered an apocalyptic worst-case only a few short years ago, but we no longer even talk about doing anything about it. Instead we continue to look for more goals to be stripped, more jobs to be removed, and more tasks to be abandoned. And it is all perfectly obvious, yes?
Other industrialized nations can provide their citizens with better access to healthcare; we simply cannot, and you are a fool for even bringing it up. Other nations can, say, establish warning systems for tsunamis, or volcanoes, or hurricanes; America must tighten its belt, and that meager, economically trivial ounce of prevention is considered fat that should obviously be trimmed, so that America-the-entity can get back to its fighting weight. Past-America could provide at least some modest layer of security to prevent its citizens from descending into destitution in old age; we in this day cannot. Past-America could pursue scientific discoveries as a matter of national pride, even land mankind on an entirely other world; we cannot. Past-America was a haven of invention and technology that shook the world and changed the course of history countless times: whatever attributes made it such a place we cannot quite determine now, much less replicate. Public art is decadent. Public education is an infringement. Public works are for other times, never now.
America of the past could build highways and railroads and a robust electrical grid. We cannot even keep them running. Of course we cannot keep them running: that was past-America. That past America had a magic that we modern Americans cannot match. Perhaps it was beholden to Satan, or to socialism, or merely to some grandiose vision of a better future, one with flying cars or diseases that could actually be cured, with proper application of effort. Whatever the case, past-America was wrong and stupid, and we know better.
It is not even that these things are debatable, mind you: they are certainties. It is a certainty that (1) none of these past tasks of government can be competently done, (2) none of these things should be competently done, and (3) any past success at actually doing them and paying for them is nothing but a random fluke of history. That was past-America; future-America is a profoundly less capable place. And, again, you are a fool or a communist for not recognizing it yourself.
We are at a time of record unemployment, of unemployment that was considered an apocalyptic worst-case only a few short years ago, but we no longer even talk about doing anything about it. Instead we continue to look for more goals to be stripped, more jobs to be removed, and more tasks to be abandoned. And it is all perfectly obvious, yes?
Called "No We Can't", it's a longish piece, but I'd suggest quite an important one, and certainly worth reading in its entirety. Please pass it on.
Rich riposte
Aug. 23rd, 2010 08:34 pmThere's an extraordinarily good opinion piece by Frank Rich in yesterday's New York Times about the nontroversy over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque.
The fact that the site isn't at Ground Zero and the building isn't going to be a mosque is a clue to the integrity of the wingnuts who're stirring this issue up and marketing Islamophobia in the selfish hope of gaining themselves some political capital -- the Goebbels trick, in other words. But what Rich points out is something beyond that. Our troops, he says, and specifically Gen David Petraeus, are trying to win a war in Afghanistan/Pakistan and, in essence, in the Arab world as a whole. The anti-Islam hatemongering the wingnuts have taken it upon themselves to purvey is a very large obstacle placed in Petraeus's way.
You have to ask yourself, Which side are these people on: America's or Osama bin Laden's? To be honest, you don't have to ask yourself all that hard: the answer's pretty obvious. They're on their own side . . . and if that involves selling out the American people and giving succor to al-Quaeda, they don't care.
Here's the start of Rich's article. I strongly urge you to follow this link to the rest of it.
How Fox Betrayed Petraeus
THE “ground zero mosque,” as you may well know by now, is not at ground zero. It’s not a mosque but an Islamic cultural center containing a prayer room. It’s not going to determine President Obama’s political future or the elections of 2010 or 2012. Still, the battle that has broken out over this project in Lower Manhattan — on the “hallowed ground” of a shuttered Burlington Coat Factory store one block from the New York Dolls Gentlemen’s Club — will prove eventful all the same. And the consequences will be far more profound than any midterm election results or any of the grand debates now raging 24/7 over the parameters of tolerance, religious freedom, and the real estate gospel of location, location, location.
Here’s what’s been lost in all the screaming. The prime movers in the campaign against the “ground zero mosque” just happen to be among the last cheerleaders for America’s nine-year war in Afghanistan. The wrecking ball they’re wielding is not merely pounding Park51, as the project is known, but is demolishing America’s already frail support for that war, which is dedicated to nation-building in a nation whose most conspicuous asset besides opium is actual mosques.
So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right — abetted by the useful idiocy of the Anti-Defamation League, Harry Reid and other cowed Democrats — that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus’s last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative. How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?
Our pals at Nutsmax.com have dug up a searing tale to startle even mashed potatoes right off their couch:
Palin Taken Aback by Obama 'Superpower' Remark
Sunday, 18 Apr 2010 07:55 AM
Sarah Palin criticized President Barack Obama on Saturday for saying America is a military superpower "whether we like it or not," saying she was taken aback by his comment.
"I would hope that our leaders in Washington, D.C., understand we like to be a dominant superpower," the former Alaska governor said.
It would be news if our former vice-presidential candidate took the time to contribute something to our public discourse and hence to the welfare of the country she professes to love. That she persists in uttering this kind of vapid, destructive tripe is not, however -- whatever Nutsmax.com might care to pretend -- news: it is just more noise.
