And argued to allow new territories to include slavery. He was not the Douglass who born a slave, escaped to New York and then became an abolitionist leader.

But they hosts insist they have read the debates. Sure. I haven’t read the full debates. I doubt they even know what topics they covered.  Small historical irony–Stephen Douglass used Frederick Douglass’ approving comments of Lincoln against Lincoln.

I’m starting to like Steve Sauerberg even if I’ll never endorse him. The Illinois Review continues its attacks on his campaign staffer because the staffer is gay.

Mr. Barron’s history as the former National Political Director of Log Cabin Republicans concerned us a few weeks ago, and we wrote about it on Illinois Review. Dr. Sauerberg was aware of the controversy, and chose to back Mr. Barron despite his political baggage problematic to conservatives.

Mr. Barron was obviously emboldened by his boss’ loyalty and evidently now has time to spend promoting himself online as a Republican gay political consultant. Must be nice work, if you can get it.

Sauerberg is ignoring calls to fire Barron because Barron is gay. Good for him.

Both are very upset about Steve Sauerberg hiring Teh GAY!

One suspects there is another thing at play though when this is said:

The LCR ad was designed to embarrass Bush by purposely pitting the President’s position in support of the marriage amendment directly against his VP Dick Cheney’s 2000 debate comments . . .

Now, Petey is pretty much against all things teh Gay, but there is one major thing worse than being gay, it’s embarrassing the child king.

She labels the following hate speech:

The question is what is hateful about the sermon. It isn’t attacking anyone in the clip above (he does attack Bill Clinton personally in another part of the sermon and that was out of line).  He’s pointing out that there is a rich white culture that is dominant and that African-Americans feel the racism that comes from that structure uniquely.  I’m no thrilled with the notion of one minority (African-American) being more oppresed than another (women), but only because those lines cross a lot and individual experiences make such comparisons difficult and somewhat fruitless.

But what is controversial about pointing out that an African-American man feels the impact of a rich white culture that historically discriminates against African-Americans?

One can guess it isn’t what Wright said, but that the method of him saying it and the color of his skin frightens a whole lot of people.

Lying twice wasn’t enough over at Illinois Review, they pulled in Phyllis Schlafly to lie a third time about the ERA and Social Security.

The passage Eaton and Schlafly are lying about is on page 206 in Sex Bias in the U.S. Code

Here is what they claim supports them on page 206:

“Congress and the President should direct their attention to the concept that pervades the Code: that the adult world is (and should be) divided into two classes - independent men, whose primary responsibility is to win bread for a family, and dependent women, whose primary responsibility is to care for children and household. This concept must be eliminated from the code if it is to reflect the equality principle.”

This, of course, is out of context given directly following this passage is:

Underlying the recommendations made in this report is the fundamental point that allocation of responsibilities within the family is a matter properly determined solely by the individuals involved.  Government should not steer individual decisions concerning household or breadwinning roles by casting the law’s weight on the side of (or against) a particular method of ordering private relationships.  Rather, a policy of strict neutrality should be pursued.  That policy should accomodate both traditional and innovative patterns.  At the same time, it should assure removal of artificial constraints so that women and men willing to explore their full potential as human beings may create new traditions by their actions.

I also cited page 45 and since Eaton and Schlafly continue their lie, let’s cut and paste pages 45 and 46 of the report.

1. Revise social security law to provide father’s benefits in all cases where mother’s benefits are provided under present law;

2. Eliminate the dependency requirement for husband’s or widower’s benefits;

3. Provide derivative social security benefits to divorced husbands;

4. Make the age 62 computation point applicable for men born prior to 1913;

5. Eliminate the 20-of-4O quarter work test required now to qualify for disability
benefits;

6. Establish an occupational definition of disability for workers 55 years and older;

7. Make eligibility for benefits available all disabled widows and disabled surviving divorced wives regardless of age, and make the benefits not subject to actuarial
reduction;

8. Provide benefits to disabled spouses of beneficiaries;

9. Define dependents to include relatives live in the home;

10. Reduce the duration of marriage requirement from 20 to 5 or 10 years for a divorced spouse to qualify for benefits on the basis of the wage-earner spouse’s earnings record, and remove the requirement of consecutive years of marriage. In the alternative, divorced wife’s right to receive benefits should be based on the economic relationship between the parties and not the length marriage;

11. Allow additional dropout years to relate benefits more to current earnings;

 12. Compute primary benefits and spoused benefits to increase the primary benefits for workers by approximately one-eighth, and reduce the spouse’s proportion from one-half to one-third, maintaining thereby the current total benefit of 15 percent for a couple while at the same time improving the protection for single workers, working couples, and surviving spouses; and

13. Amend the Social Security Act to eliminate separate references to men and women.

Phyllis Schlafley is lying and doing it badly.  When the report (it wasn’t a book by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it was a report to The United States Commission on Civil Rights) was issued men did not receive the same survivor benefits women did.  That was changed not long after the report actually and as such, the lie at the center of this scare tactic was made moot nearly 30 years ago.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg wasn’t arguing that survivor and spouse benefits should be eliminated to make individuals more equal, she was arguing that men should receive the same benefits in the same situation.  The reason for this is that families should decide upon the proper roles within the family, not the government. The point was to increase liberty while still providing the same level of benefits–which is what the system has done over this time.

That Eaton and Schlafly would so boldly lie isn’t terribly surprising.  Schlafly is still touting unisex bathrooms. The issue is why does anyone give them any attention or space to print this crap other than on wingnut blogs.  Eaton took her lie to the Southtown Star and got it pubished presumably because it was an opinion piece. It was an opinion piece, it just had several facts supporting the claims wrong.  And not just wrong, but the opposite of her claims.

For those who were around when this blog started, the blogosphere was a very different place where liberal and conservative blogs tended to talk amongst each other and link accordingly.  That changed as the wingnutosphere went batshit insane.

One of those early bloggers who I remember having relatively interesting exchanges with is Bill Hobbs. Now the press guy for the Tennessee Republican Party who just attacked Barack HUSSEIN Obama.

He tries to defend himself on two points:

One of Obama’s foreign policy advisers, Robert Malley, is anti-Israel and pro-Hamas. Hamas is an Iranian-funded Islamist terror organization dedicated to the eradication of Israel. Malley thinks we should do support Hamas. Malley is advising Obama on Middle East policy.

Did the media cover that? Ask about that? No. They fixated on Obama’s middle name. Apparently, a story post at NashvillePost.com sparked the calls. The story is headlinedMcCain apology raises questions about state GOP, but NashvillePost.com didn’t bother to actually pose those questions to the Tennessee Republican Party. No, they went and interviewed Democrats.

What makes one pro-Hamas?  Thinking that there might have to be some sort of diplomacy with them.  Yeah.  Friggen genius.

Then he tries to defend the use of the Obama’s middle name by saying:

 Silly, of course. Run a Lexis-Nexis search for the number of times the media has used Hillary Rodham Clinton’s middle name, often to underscore her feminist leanings and independence from her husband. Do a search for how many times during the 1988 and 1992 campaigns the media called the first George Bush “George Herbert Walker Bush,” to underscore the media’s protrayal of Bush as a preppie elitist. Ditto the media’s reference to Dan Quayle as “J. Danforth Quayle.”

Actually dumbass, her middle name is Diane.  Rodham is her maiden name.

Not satisfied with being sort of a dumbass, he approvingly links to Josh Marshall’s satirical piece on Obama and Libya as if Josh were serious.

Eaton tries to lie herself out yesterday’s lie. She claims the below proves that Ginsburg thought the ERA would eliminate survivor benefits for women who choose to stay home.

“Congress and the President should direct their attention to the concept that pervades the Code: that the adult world is (and should be) divided into two classes - independent men, whose primary responsibility is to win bread for a family, and dependent women, whose primary responsibility is to care for children and household. This concept must be eliminated from the code if it is to reflect the equality principle.”

Of course, this is directly contradicted by the text of page 45 in which the recommendations for Social Security changes include making the language gender neutral so that men and women have equal access to survivor benefits regardless who who works and who might stay at home.

But what is even more telling is how she uses the quote above that doesn’t even make the argument she claims it makes.  It talks about making the code gender neutral, not eliminating benefits for women who didn’t work outside the home.

What Fran cannot do is cite the next paragraph that demonstrates just how much of a liar Fran is:

Underlying the recommendations made in this report is the fundamental point that allocation of responsibilities within the family is a matter properly determined solely by the individuals involved.  Government should not steer individual decisions concerning household or breadwinning roles by casting the law’s weight on the side of (or against) a particular method of ordering private relationships.  Rather, a policy of strict neutrality should be pursued.  That policy should accomodate both traditional and innovative patterns.  At the same time, it should assure removal of artificial constraints so that women and men willing to explore their full potential as human beings may create new traditions by their actions.

Combine this with the recommendations on page 45 and what is clear is that Ginsburg argued for expanding benefits to widowers as well as widows, not to eliminate benefits to widows.

Why Eaton feels the need to lie about the report is beyond me, but she clearly did.  And the Southtown Star helped her in that endeavor.

“Some are inspired geniuses mindful only of the greater good; some are connivers mindful only of personal good; most are wondering what’s for lunch.”

-Ken Herman of the Austin American Statesman as quoted by Molly Ivins.

Entertainingly Silly 

Earth to Ted, Caroline, Patrick and others who are marketing Sen. Barack Obama as the new JFK.  Kennedy family, get over yourselves.  If you really think Sen. Barack Obama is the new JFK, then maybe you didn’t know the record of the real JFK from 1947 to 1963. Let’s review the bidding.

If you live in Illinois and voted for JFK or Nixon in the 1960 election, I am sorry to be the one to do the math but even if that was your first vote you have at least passed your 68th birthday and are on your way to the “gettin up there” stage of life. So what? So that’s a very long time to hold on to a myth that was never real to start with and expect that it will impress people whose only knowledge of JFK comes from fawning historians and aging journalists.

During 1962, Jack Kennedy was alive and well. Everyone called him Jack.  No one ever called him “John Fitzgerald” in that mournful patter until after he was murdered by a communist in 1963.  If you still doubt that and are an honest person, read Gerald Posner’s book, Case Closed, and set aside your doubts for all time.

Yes, the Kennedy family doesn’t know anything about the history of their own family.  But Illinois Review will correct that for them.  And throw in a Assassination Conspiracy theory to boot.

WTF:

After the event, he mused about her chief rival, Sen. Barack Obama.

“The fact that he’s African American is a big deal. I do expect and hope that Hillary is the nominee of the party. But I hope he’s used in some way. If he happens to be the nominee of the party and ends up being president, I think his capacity to influence in a positive way . . . the behavior of a lot of underperforming black youth today is very important, and he’s the only one who can reach them.”

Kerrey continued: “It’s probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There’s a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal.”

He returned to Clinton: “She does inspire my confidence. She can do the job. In my view, she’s the complete package.”

Now, Kerrey says dumb things all the time, but what’s really weird out of this quote:

Kerrey continued: “It’s probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There’s a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal.”

Not something that appeals to him? WTF?

Laesch and his people attack the Planned Parenthood endorsement of Bill Foster:

Down the thread:

The endorsement that we worked hardest for was the AFL-CIO’s and that means a lot to our campaign.

Additionally, I did have words with PP in 2006 that dated back to a 2004 race.

When I worked for Dr. David Gill in 2004, Planned Parenthood endorsed, but was nowhere to be seen when it came to real support.

I couldn’t believe that they didn’t want to fight to get a progressive, single-payer Doc who actually volunteered for Planned Parenthood elected.  During my first run, I didn’t feel the need to chase an empty PP endorsement.

Beltway thinking will get you beltway results.  Main Street thinking and campaigning will get you results that benefit Main St.

John

But let’s remember this quote:

Laesch is making his own campaign more difficult by depriving it of some of its traditional channels of support. Even though Laesch says he is pro-abortion rights, he refuses to accept donations from pro-abortion rights political action committees.

“It’s too divisive,” he said.

Errr…pissing on someone’s leg and telling them it’s rainiing….

Just make it stop:

John Laesch, of Yorkville, said he supports the carbon-free and nuclear-free plan put forth by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research at www.ieer.org. He said that while he is in agreement with Foster on several points, he disagrees that money should go to more research. Laesch believes the technology for environmentally conscious energy is already available.

Instead, he said, consumers should be given incentives to buy electric and hybrid cars, solar panels and wind turbines, or to hook up to public power grids. And Laesch said the government could easily afford such subsidies by reordering some priorities.

The ‘plan’ he links to is absurd.
1.  This bans corn based ethanol.  A position I agree with, but I’m not running in the 14th District.

2.  This would require the retrofitting of all houses with gas heating and cooking.

Let me make this very simple.  While we need to reduce the amount of CO2 emissions, we do not need no CO2 emissions.  In fact, any reasonable energy plan will incorporate cleaner fuels like natural gas, especially since it is an accessible source for fuel cell hydrogen.

3 and Oh My God is John Laesch a fucking moron:

Adopt vigorous research, development, and pilot plant construction programs for technologies that could accelerate the elimination of CO, such as direct solar
hydrogen production (photosynthetic, photoelectrochemical, and other approaches), hot rock geothermal power, and integrated gasification combined cycle plants using biomass with a capacity to sequester the CO

The plan John likes so  much includes more money for research because the technology is not developed.

Nice newspaper ethical standards 

Agents of Paul Krugman are spreading the word in journalistic circles that he has scandalous information about his principal opponent in the profession , Bob Novak, but has decided not to use it. The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed.

This word-of-mouth among journalists makes Novak look vulnerable and Krugman look prudent. It comes during a dip for Krugman after he refused to take a stand on the Time’s editorial policy.

Experienced journalistic operatives believe Krugman wants to avoid a repetition of 2004, when attacks on each other by journalists Hunter Thompson and Judy Miller were mutually destructive and facilitated  Fox News’ rise.

I hear Novak likes to eat puppies.  What are you hearing? Feel free to be as outlandish as you like.  Put it in comments and I’ll then forward the rumors to the Sun Times which presented that piece of garbage column in their paper.  And have allowed him to out CIA agents in a story of no value, perhaps someone will start to think about, you know, editing him.

Micky Kaus rumors are encouraged to. It would be irresponsible not to after all.

And, of course, time for a blogger ethics panel!

Finally, the HRC campaign might think about it’s habit of using right wing mouthpieces like Matt Drudge. It makes their denials sound like crocodile tears.  And even if true in this case, why shouldn’t Obama react as if it’s true given the history?

Fun with the YouTubes

Wingnut law professor wine vlogs about her hair color.

Treason in the Defense of Slavery Yankee is calling for a boycott of The New Republican because it is published Scott Beauchamp:

We know The New Republic attempted to stonewall their way through obvious, blatant, and grievous breaches of journalistic ethics. In so doing, they have attacked the service, integrity, and honor of an entire company of American soldiers serving in a combat zone to avoid taking responsibility for their own editorial and ethical failures.

I’ve never quite understood the big deal over the Beauchamp story–at worst it told the story of some people stuck in the middle of a civil war being cruel to a dog in the street.  Other than by Michael Vick rules of dogs are the most holy thing ever, is that shocking.  Anyway, Treason in the Defense of Slavery Yankee is claiming it is stabbing troops in the back and even left a classic over at Yglesias’ place.

The knives are being swung at the back of our soldiers comes from the hand of Franklin Foer.

It is unclear to just about everyone, but Treason in Defense of Slavery Yankee why a pro-war magazine that continues to cheerlead the Iraqi War and a publisher who is all a twitter at the thought of attacking Iran would want to undercut the troops, but a guy who calls himself Treason in Defense of Slavery Yankee is short a few marbles for pretty obvious reasons.

Anyway, he wants to boycott the TNR’s advertisers.  Yeah, for those who have actually read TNR, that’s pretty funny. Here’s a sample of the advertisers:

TiDoSY wants to boycott pharmaceutical companies, think tanks, academic presses, and interest groups.  Even in the cases of Ford and GM or Chevron and BP their advertising in TNR is oriented towards issues or corporate reputation more than actually selling products.  Oh, and insurance companies….like Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

There are virtually no products to boycott unless one is an academic.  Most of the advertisers aren’t there to sell things so much as to reach a very particular audience about issues.

But the comments are the best:

tilting at windmills…

the advertisers are there because they’re interested in giving money to a liberal magazine and because they’re interested in the readers.

So….American Gas Station, Chevron, BP, the American Petroleum Institute, the Farging Hoover Institution,  FLAME, the Bleeping Nuclear Energy Institute, US Telecom, and Big Pharma are all interested in giving money to a liberal magazine.  Of course.

Never mind that the New Republic is not the New Republic of old, but pretty much a neo-con publication on foreign policy and DLC on domestic policy.  But whatever, these conservative stalwarts are backing the TNR because it is a ‘liberal’ magazine?

TNR, probably far less than it used to be, is a place to reach very specific policy audience with ideas, not sell televisions or cars and that is why this is probably the dumbest consumer boycott ever.