Listening

Casey has responded to the previous post. Please read his thoughts. They're important.

Mom! Tell Her to Stop Making Me Look Like a Bigot!

Newt Gingrich speaking to Bill O'Reilly:

Look, I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use us violence, to use harrassment—uh—I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it—uh—I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion.

It's the ol' we-don't-respect-them-so-we-should-be-allowed-to-oppress-them argument. And all while he's unwilling to accept that the votes and values of a growing culture should count for anything. What kind of family did he grow up in? Why, its the same family that his sister grew up in.

And it turns out Candace Gingrich has a few words for her big brother at The Huffington Post.

[W]e've seen these tactics before. We know how much the right likes to play political and cultural hardball, and then turn around and accuse us of lashing out first. You give a pass to a religious group -- one that looks down upon minorities and women -- when they use their money and membership roles to roll back the rights of others, and then you label us "fascists" when we fight back.

And she adds

You should be more afraid of the new political climate in America, because, there is no place for you in it.

Lovely.

Pinker on Palin (no, not like that)

Steven Pinker discusses Sarah Palin in a NY Times piece.

The concerns raised by the Couric interviews — that Ms. Palin memorizes talking points rather than grasping issues — should not be allayed by her performance in the forgiving format of a debate.

"It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag."

Stop by Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone article: Mad Dog Palin. It's a fine rant.

He expresses his disgust with the current administrative ploy:

After eight years of unprecedented corruption, incompetence, waste and greed, the party of Karl Rove understood that 50 million Americans would not demand solutions to any of these problems so long as they were given a new, new thing to beat their meat over.

Then he laments the idiocy of American voters as illuminated by Palin:

The truly disgusting thing about Sarah Palin isn't that she's totally unqualified, or a religious zealot, or married to a secessionist, or unable to educate her own daughter about sex, or a fake conservative who raised taxes and horked up earmark millions every chance she got. No, the most disgusting thing about her is what she says about us: that you can ram us in the ass for eight solid years, and we'll not only thank you for your trouble, we'll sign you up for eight more years, if only you promise to stroke us in the right spot for a few hours around election time.

He gets sloppy, at times losing control of his tone and the facts; choosing vitriol over substance, and occasionally quoting Palin inaccurately. But I share his dismay.

Point by Point

← This image comes The Greenbelt. Specifically from an ongoing series of simple reports about John McCain from various sources. Sometimes the sources provide analysis sometimes just the facts. The Ridger doesn't give much comment on these snippets because of the obvious implications.

Look for the What's Important titles. Each one in the series is numbered. The mcbush label brings up most of them along with a few other posts that are of course worth reading.

But Blogger labels are limited in the number of posts they gather. Another trick is to play with the URL.

Starting with

http://thegreenbelt.blogspot.com/2008/05/whats-important.html

and

http://thegreenbelt.blogspot.com/2008/05/whats-important-2.html

just play with the month (/2008/5 through /2008/9) and the numbered post title (whats-important-[#].html) and you can find the whole series up to the most recent, #49.