“We are on the right side of history! We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties and, dammit, we will reclaim the civil rights moment. We will take that movement — because we were the people who did it in the first place.”

Glenn Beck -  May 26, 2010

As you probably know, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent, Michelle Bachmann,  and thousands of People of Tea will be gathering on the steps of the Lincoln Monument (on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech) in Washington this weekend to restore honor or something.

According to Beck, the rally isn’t political, it’s all about supporting the troops. Which is odd, if Palin and Bachmann are to appear. It’s even more odd you listen to the words of some of the People of Tea who plan to attend the event:

People are upset with the direction of the country,” says Patti Weaver, head of the Pittsburgh Tea Party…(the rally will) continue to unite people who are upset with our government. … We can take our country back.

“It’s time for Americans to let themselves be heard instead of being spoken to or spoken for by people who don’t represent us,” says Dan Baltes of Salt Lake City…Baltes, who runs a group called Americans Against Immigration Amnesty, says “the government has a deaf ear to our best interests.”

Thelma Taormina of Houston, who has organized two busloads from Texas, says she’s concerned that the Obama administration and Congress are passing legislation that strips Americans of their rights. The sweeping new health-care law means people are going to “lose our human rights in one fell swoop” and new credit-card legislation aimed at protecting consumers’ rights “means they can go into your personal bank accounts and get information,” she says.

So apparently, it really is a typical People of Tea rally – aggrieved white people who seem to feel victimized because we have a Democratic President. Apparently, they only feel like government represents them if their preferred candidate wins elections. If Democrats win, the government is composed of illegitimate, Nazi, Communist no-goodnicks who want to kill grandma.

But the most galling part of the march really is that Beck and his minions somehow believe that it’s their place to reclaim the Civil Rights Movement from the people who actually lived it and who still struggle for King’s dream to be reached. It appears that these poor oppressed Tea-baggers are all in favor of civil rights for all people, unless they happen to be Muslim, Latino, gay, Democrats, or members of any other group that does not believe the same things they believe.

In any event, this event should be a classic, as the People of Tea never cease to entertain.

Extreme tea baggers are afraid of a lot of things, but two things that really cause them to cower in fear are illegal aliens and terrorism.

On the illegal immigration thing, they’re convinced that rather than securing the border and reforming immigration policy, the best way to end illegal immigration is to ask police officers to detain anyone who they think might be in this country illegally, consequences-be-damned.

On terrorism, they’re even more of a mess. For some reason they think that building an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan is somehow an attack on the victims of the terror attacks of 9/11. And out of that fear, they’re willing to put forth all kinds of ideas that undermine American values (i.e. repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment).

So, I don’t know why I”m surprised that they’ve combined two of their biggest fears into a new, more ominous threat: terror babies!

Texas State Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, was on CNN last night talking about a plot involving pregnant women from other countries traveling to America as tourists to give birth, and then raising the babies as terrorists.

It’s not clear whether the terror babies are Latino or Muslim, but the message is clear: be very afraid of illegal immigrants who, besides taking all your money when they go to the hospital, are now planning to use their anchor babies to kill you.

Sometimes, the stupidity just hurts.

This is way too silly for words:

Days after announcing another split with fiance Bristol Palin, Levi Johnston has declared his intention to run for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

Sarah Palin, Bristol’s mother, was Wasilla’s mayor for six years before becoming Alaska’s governor.

Variety magazine reports that Mr Johnston’s talent agency is pitching a reality show based on his campaign.

A pilot for the show, tentatively titled “Loving Levi: The Road to the Mayor’s Office”, is in production.

Mr Johnston, who has not yet finished high school, told Variety that he “wasn’t thrilled” about the prospect of running for mayor at first, but now says it is “something I want to do”.

He is hoping the show will help clear up misperceptions about him.

But now that I think about it, it’s hard to imagine Levi being less qualified for the job of mayor than Sarah is to be president of the United States.

From Yahoo! News:

Students practise sword-fighting at a kung fu school in Hefei, east China’s Anhui province August 9, 2006…

It’s an old pic, but a beautiful one.

Nice:

“The bill for establishing religious freedom, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that it’s protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read “a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.” The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it’s protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.” (Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:67)

So what I hear from Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Glen Beck, and their fundamentalist ilk is that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and that the Christian Bible trumps the constitution of the United States. I know that they don’t like facts or even objective history, but there it is in Jefferson’s writings about the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

No wonder the fundies seem to hate Jefferson.

Did you know that Charles Darwin is responsible for Nazi Germany, the eugenics movement, and abortion?

Me neither.

So that’s why I had to chuckle about this piece of American Family Association spam that hit my inbox:

There have always been mad-men, but the 20th century was the bloodiest century in human history. Why? What changed? Why did the world suddenly find itself murdering millions of innocent people?

Is it possible that one specific idea influenced or provided a justification for the atrocities we know as Nazi Germany, the eugenics movement and abortion?

Is it possible that idea was Darwinian evolution?

Charles Darwin loved his wife and children. He paid his taxes and he never kicked his dog. But Charles Darwin had a big idea, and ideas have consequences.

Can we thank the advocates of natural selection for the deaths of millions of people? Or were their ideas twisted and misapplied? Dr. John West, Dr. Richard Weikart and Dr. David Berlinski present the evidence that seeks to resolve the question,

“What hath Darwin wrought?”

See, the reason that the 20th century was so bloody had nothing to do with advances in technology that made it easier for armies to kill people. It was a bloody century because Charles Darwin (who never kicked his dog!) put forth the idea of evolution.

Ugh.

Sometimes, the stupid just hurts.

Do Republicans really want to repeal the 14th Amendment?

The crazy continues to reveal itself.

I recently traveled to Venezuela where I stayed with some friends who are completely opposed to the government of Hugo Chavez.

Before I departed, they told me how crime-ridden their country is these days. I was advised to not speak to people on the flight to Caracas and that upon arrival, I was to pray to God that someone I knew would meet me at the airport.

I wasn’t robbed – and I really never felt unsafe while in Venezuela. I found it to be something of a typical Latin American country where people seemed to go about their daily lives without much trouble, despite the wide gulf between the poor and the rich.

That being said, I did see Hugo Chavez’ face most everywhere I went. But I wrote that off as creepy, but tolerable.

Shortly after I returned to the US, I learned that Chavez has exhumed the bones of Simon Bolivar and had taken one the hands of Bolivar to use for his own purposes. Who knows why? Santeria? Ancestor worship? Patriotism? I don’t know.

So given that background, I was pleased to read this article by Christopher Hitchens in Slate:

Chávez, in other words, is very close to the climactic moment when he will announce that he is a poached egg and that he requires a very large piece of buttered toast so that he can lie down and take a soothing nap. Even his macabre foraging in the coffin of Simón Bolívar was initially prompted by his theory that an autopsy would prove that The Liberator had been poisoned—most probably by dastardly Colombians. This would perhaps provide a posthumous license for Venezuela’s continuing hospitality to the narco-criminal gang FARC, a cross-border activity that does little to foster regional brotherhood.

I hope that Venezuela can continue to exist as something of a prosperous nation guided by the rule of law, but given Chavez’ crazy, I’m not sure if that’s possible.

Great article from David Corn of Mother Jones about GOP Representative Bob Inglis and his experience as a conservative Republican running for re-election being destroyed by the Tea Party people:

It was the middle of a tough primary contest, and Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) had convened a small meeting with donors who had contributed thousands of dollars to his previous campaigns. But this year, as Inglis faced a challenge from tea party-backed Republican candidates claiming Inglis wasn’t sufficiently conservative, these donors hadn’t ponied up. Inglis’ task: Get them back on the team. “They were upset with me,” Inglis recalls. “They are all Glenn Beck watchers.” About 90 minutes into the meeting, as he remembers it, “They say, ‘Bob, what don’t you get? Barack Obama is a socialist, communist Marxist who wants to destroy the American economy so he can take over as dictator. Health care is part of that. And he wants to open up the Mexican border and turn [the US] into a Muslim nation.’” Inglis didn’t know how to respond.

Snip

“It’s a dangerous strategy,” he contends, “to build conservatism on information and policies that are not credible.”

And that gets to the crux of the issue. How are Democrats supposed to work with an opposition party that cares not for facts? There used to be principled conservatives with whom I could disagree, but whose arguments were based on a set of agreed upon facts.

If only that were the case now. The GOP has become unhinged by people who are mired in conspiracy theories and “facts” they learned from e-mail forwards from their Aunt Tillies.

We need a serious opposition party in the US.