KOCH Whores.

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:02:00 -0500

KOCH Whores: (noun) Public servants and media figures who insist on increasing the gap between rich and poor in America, generally by increasing tax cuts to the detriment of local, state, and federal governments.

Koch Whore
Posted by Murphy On February - 23 - 2011

http://www.buffalobeast.com/?p=5045

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker answers his master’s call

“David Koch”: We’ll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker: You know, well, the only problem with that—because we thought about that…

Feel free to list your favorites here.

Remembering Reagan

Mon, 7 Feb 2011 01:02:00 -0500

Remembering Reagan...

[h/t to Doug, at Eschaton...]

"Meet RINO Reagan:

This weekend, Republicans marked the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan with speeches celebrating his small government philosophy, anti-tax fervor and hard-line foreign policy. But if Reagan was a GOP candidate today, he would doubtless fall victim to violations of his own 11th Commandment, "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican." Because despite all of the right-wing hagiography, Ronald Reagan ballooned the national debt, repeatedly raised taxes, signed abortion rights legislation and negotiated with terrorists in Iran. For those and so many other perceived offenses, the GOP rank and file - and especially its purity-demanding Tea Partiers - would today brand a reanimated Ronald Reagan a Republican in Name Only..."

http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/meet-rino-reagan

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I'm a fighting liberal - Steve Gilliard

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 22:12:00 -0500

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

I'm a fighting liberal

You know, I've studied history, I've read about America and you know something, if it weren't for liberals, we'd be living in a dark, evil country, far worse than anything Bush could conjure up. A world where children were told to piss on the side of the road because they weren't fit to pee in a white outhouse, where women had to get back alley abortions and where rape was a joke, unless the alleged criminal was black, whereupon he was hung from a tree and castrated.

What has conservatism given America? A stable social order? A peaceful homelife? Respect for law and order? No. Hell, no. It hasn't given us anything we didn't have and it wants to take away our freedoms.

The Founding Fathers, as flawed as they were, slaveowners and pornographers, smugglers and terrorists, understood one thing, a man's path to God needed no help from the state. Is the religion of these conservatives so fragile that they need the state to prop it up, to tell us how to pray and think? Is that what they stand for? Is that their America?

Conservatism plays on fear and thrives on lies and dishonesty. I grew up with honest, decent conservatives and those people have been replaced by the party of greed. It is one thing to want less government interference and smaller, fiscally responsible government. It is another thing entirely to be a corporate whore, selling out to the highest bidder because the CEO fattens your campaign chest. They are building an America which cannot be sustained. One based on the benefit of the few at the cost of the many. The indifferent boss who hires too few people and works them to death or until they break down sick. Cheap labor capitalism has replaced common sense. "Globalism" which is really guise for exploitation, replaced fair trade, which is nothing like fair for the trapped semi-slaves of the maquliadoras. In the Texas border towns, hundreds of these women have been used as sex slaves and then apparently killed,the FBI powerless to do anything as the criminals sit in Mexico untouched by law.

For the better part of a decade, the conservatives made liberal a dirty word. Well, it isn't. It represents the best and most noble nature of what America stands for: equitable government services, old age pensions, health care, education, fair trials and humane imprisonment. It is the heart and soul of what made American different and better than other countries. Not only an escape from oppression, but the opportunity to thrive in land free of tradition and the repression that can bring. We offered a democracy which didn't enshrine the rich and made them feel they had an obligation to their workers.

Bush and the people around him disdain that. They think, by accident of birth and circumstance, they were meant to rule the world and those who did not agree would suffer.

Liberal does not and has not meant weak until the conservatives said it did. Was Martin Luther King weak? Bobby Kennedy? Gene McCarthy? It was the liberals who remade this country and ended legal segregation and legal sexism. Not the conservatives, who wanted to hold on to the old ways.

It's time to regain the spirit of FDR and Truman and the people around them. People who believed in the public good over private gain. It is time to stop apologizing for being a liberal and be proud to fight for your beliefs. No more shying away or being defined by other people. Liberals believe in a strong defense and punishment for crime. But not preemption and pointless jail sentences. We believe no American should be turned away from a hospital because they are too poor or lack a proper legal defense. We believe that people should make enough from one job to live on, to spend time on raising their family. We believe that individuals and not the state should dictate who gets married and why. The best way to defend marriage is to expand, not restrict it.

It was the liberals who opposed the Nazis while the conservatives were plotting to get their brown shirts or fund Hitler. It was the liberals who warned about Spain and fought there, who joined the RAF to fight the Germans, who brought democracy to Germany and Japan. Let us not forget it was the conservatives who opposed defending America until the Germans sank our ships. They would have done nothing as Britain came under Nazi control. It was they who supported Joe McCarthy and his baseless, drink fueled claims.

Without liberals, there would be no modern America, just a Nazi satellite state. Liberals weak on defense? Liberals created America's defense. The conservatives only need vets at election time.

It is time to stop looking for an accommodation with the right. They want none for us. They want to win, at any price. So, you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2003/12/im-fighting-liberal-you-know-ive.html

Still missing you, Steve.

Note: By the way - I'm Eric. The great blogger Steve Gilliard, who passed away in 2007, wrote this piece in 2003 - I just try to make sure it stays in circulation every year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Gilliard

~~~

Craig Ferguson explains "Doctor Who"

Fri, 3 Dec 2010 10:12:00 -0500

Pajiba: Intellect and romance triumphs over brute force and cynicism.

Craig Ferguson explains "Doctor Who":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9P4SxtphJ4

I just needed to see it written out.

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il Prete Rosso

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 11:11:00 -0500

Just rediscovered this - my favorite since I was 18:

Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 3 No. 6 (RV 356)

Antonio Vivaldi

From L'Estro Armonico ('Harmonic Inspiration', a set of 12 concerti published by Vivaldi as his Opus 3.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SIqYp6Ehzo

Interesting thought - since this was first published in 1711, it may well have been first performed by an all-female ensemble!:

"Many of his compositions were written for the female music ensemble of the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage for poor and illegitimate children where Vivaldi worked between 1703 and 1740."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Vivaldi
~~~

Meander61's Open Salon Blog

KOCH Whores.

Remembering Reagan

I'm a fighting liberal - Steve Gilliard

Craig Ferguson explains "Doctor Who"

il Prete Rosso