CBS 5 - KPHO

Oooh, look out, people. The United Nations is coming to destroy your freedoms and take away your way of life.

Fortunately, we have the far-right Republicans of the Arizona Legislature out there on the front lines protecting us.

The same woman -- Republican Sen. Judy Burges, R-Hateful Old People (aka Sun City West) -- who sponsored Arizona's notorious birther law is back this session with SB 1403, a bill that would prevent Arizona from participating in any kind of legislation that would support the eeeeevil UN "Agenda 21" plan to destroy America through environmental laws.

As Laurie Roberts at the Arizona Republic reports:

“I appear before you to address a United Nations program that is designed to change our way of life, our heritage and our liberties as outlined and protected by our most precious Constitution,” she announced. “I testify to you against the seductive evils contained in the United Nations’ agenda for the 21st Century and more easily stated, Agenda 21.”

The Sun City West Republican has often been on the front lines during her eight years at the Capitol, battling conspiracies of both a global and national nature. So it is no surprise that she is back again this year with Senate Bill 1403, a proposal that appears to undo decades of environmental protections, limit citizen access to information about hazardous materials and in general leave people – the ones who don’t embrace tin foil for its millinery properties — scratching their heads.

Burges’ bill, simply put, would bar state or local government from abiding by any of the principles set forth in the United Nations Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.

Agenda 21, as it’s called, is a non binding agreement approved in 1992 during a UN conference in Rio de Janeiro. Basically, it’s a list of principles detailing how communities can better conserve natural resources.

But if you’re Burgess, it’s a plot to destroy America.

“The truth contained within this United Nations program depicts something sinister and dark,” she told her fellow lawmakers. “The plan calls for government to take control of all land use and not leave any decisions in the hands of private property owners. It is assumed by the backers of Agenda 21 that people are not good stewards of the land and the government will do a better job if it’s in control. Individual rights are to be given away to the global community as determined by a global governing body, not by local elected representatives … and folks, not even your state Legislature. Furthermore, the contents of the United Nations program reveal that people should be rounded up off their own land and relocated to human settlements close to employment centers and transportation hubs.”

Burges has trotted out this bill previously. As before, this bill would effectively preempt the state from enforcing any water-quality, air-quality, or other environmental laws. Which is just peachy, as far as today's Republicans are concerned. Even Richard Nixon would be rolling in his grave.

The right-wing noise machine has attempted to make the contraception argument about who "pays" for birth control, and Rush Limbaugh and commenters on Fox have gone so far as to claim that contraception advocates "want me to pay for them to have sex."

The debate was instigated by concerns at Georgetown University, a Catholic institution that does not provide contraception through their student health insurance program.

It is shocking to discover, then, that undergraduate students pay over $1800 per year for health insurance.

Until we get single payer, taxpayer-funded insurance for all, health insurance will continue to be a product that is bought and sold in the marketplace. Health insurance reform breaks up monopolies in that area and also regulates abuses from the sale of that insurance product. It is not out of line to compare the health insurance product to the car insurance product. (Except for the little inconvenient fact that people without health insurance are not as healthy and are more likely to die due to lack of medical care.) If I buy a car and insurance for it, I'm going to buy collision insurance. I'm not going to buy a policy that doesn't have collision insurance attached to it, and by the way insurance LAW says I can't anyway. I have to have that coverage. Now, because I have a womb and ovaries, the healthcare reform law says I have to have health coverage for those organs, and that insurance companies and employers can't separate them out from the total person and not cover them because any person who uses those organs outside of a specific religious dictum is a "slut." Sorry, boys, "sluts" who pay for their health insurance get covered same as anybody.

Couples of family-bearing age and yes, young women who are FERTILE, use birth control for family planning. Even in an unregulated market, husbands and wives, men and the women who love them, are not going to buy an insurance policy that does not cover that medicine. And now the laws regulating health insurance says that that medicine has to be covered, because NOT covering it is discriminating against women simply because they have reproductive organs that get them pregnant.

Finally, this is a non-issue. Blue Cross covers birth control pills, diaphragms, hormone implants, the whole shebang because it's good business.

Continue reading »

Facing South: Lessons from the Civil Right era

Balloon Juice: what will he say this year...

Mario Piperni: Scary stupid in Arizona

Liberal Values: The blurred line between between mainstream conservatism and far right extremismnn

First Draft: Making an ass out of yourself on television

The Progressive Puppy: Where will right-wing anger lead?

Capital Eye: Health Care tools to help you follow the money

2 Political Junkies: Your body is a battleground

Mother Jones: Chart of the Day

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: Babbling Brooks...Sensible centrism...Michael Savage has to apologize!...D.C. Conventional Wisdom...Say any-damn-thing...Unarmed, this time...Nevermind public opinion...Rock bottom...Ink shortage...Our Miss Brooks...Douthanasia...Schizoid in Barbieland...Graphic evidence...Terrified Dems & Media...

I apparently missed the largest flash mob in American history today, and it took place just a few blocks from my house. Michelle Malkin and the redstaters have been abuzz about how there were more than two million people marching on Washington today, (that would make it bigger than even the inauguration) but all anyone who wasn't a right-winger saw today was 30,000 to 60,000 right-wingers bused in from around the country.

Here's what the organizers themselves told us to expect. Dick Armey told the right-wing Newsmax that they're generating hundreds of responses in interest to the 9/12 March. The tea party patriots told us that they were expecting as many as one million to turn out and that they had permits for a one million man march on Washington.

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Our friend Max Blumenthal has a great new book out titled Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party that explores the toxic effects that the religious right has had not just on the national discourse, but on movement conservatism itself.

Max discussed some of this in New York Times op-ed. Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now! has a terrific interview with Max that explores the matter in some depth:

Blumenthal: [James] Dobson is a fascinating figure, because although he’s leading what is widely considered a religious movement, he’s not a religious leader. He has no theological credentials. He’s not a preacher. What is he? He’s a child psychologist. And the way that he’s won so many followers is by, you know, doing radio shows about common, mundane problems, like bedwetting, for example, or dealing with a child that has, you know, issues with their sexuality, something like that. And he has a correspondence department in Focus on the Family that’s so large it occupies an entire zip code in Colorado Springs. People write in with their personal problems. He sends them—his workers send them Dobson-approved advice. After they get into the database that Dobson maintains, he bombards them with political mailings and slowly cultivates them into Republican shock troops. So Dobson has, you know, turned personal crisis into political resentment.

Where did Dobson’s fortune come from? How did he erect this empire? It came mainly from one book, which I quote from extensively in my book, Republican Gomorrah—Dare to Discipline, which is essentially a manual for corporal punishment, for beating your child. In this book, he says pain is a marvelous purifier that a child should be—that pain goes a long way with a child, that pain should be dispensed sufficiently enough to make a child cry, but then the child will crumple to your breast, and you should welcome the child with warm, open arms. This is a recipe for sadomasochism. And sadomasochism, as I discovered in—

JUAN GONZALEZ: And he saw himself originally as the antithesis to Benjamin—Dr. Benjamin Spock.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Dr. Benjamin Spock, who tells you to basically pick your child up and cradle it. And, you know, I mean, I was—you know, for whatever it’s worth, I was raised along those guidelines. When your child’s crying, you pick up the child.

By creating a belt-wielding army of millions, Dobson created the next generation of Republican shock troops, who are more radical than before. And sadomasochism—I know this sounds a little strange—is what defines the essential character, you know, that—this is what—at least what I’ve discovered—of the Republican follower of today. They’re sadistic in that they want to lash out at deviants, at people who are weaker than them, homosexuals, immigrants, foreigners, socialists. At the same time, they’re masochistic. They are followers of a higher cause, of a strong leader, a magic helper like Dobson or George W. Bush or the macho Jesus archetype that they worship. And this is what defines this movement.

So many of the people that Dobson has been able to get close to and work with in the Republican Congress and in American culture have been viciously abused as children. And he understood that by advocating violence against children, deliberate violence, he was creating this sensibility, which would produce a radical generation of political followers.

Be sure to get your copy. It's a fascinating and enlightening read.

Dr. George Tiller of Women's Health Care Services clinic in Wichita, Kansas was gunned down outside his church yesterday. Tiller had long been a top target of the anti-abortion movement because he performed medically necessary late-term abortions.

He faced down decades of harassment, threats and vandalism and went back to work after being shot in both arms by a radical “pro-life” activist in 1993. Just last month his clinic was severely damaged by vandals. Tiller probably suffered more than anyone else in recent decades to defend reproductive rights.

After news of the shooting broke, his antagonists came out to dance on his grave: Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, led protests against George Tiller's late-term abortion clinic in Wichita in 1991. Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue states,

"George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.

"Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches."

Other radical “pro-lifers” took to Twitter to gloat:

UPDATE... Doctor George Tiller was aborted today in his 204th trimester - aren't paybacks a bitch - Punch

oh HAPPY DAY! Tiller the baby killer is DEAD! - Samantha Pelch

George Tiller the baby killer was shot dead this morning. God bless the gunmen who hopefully won't be caught. - readnwatchchris, Creedmor. NC

And Frank Pavone of the so-called Priests for Life tried to muddy the waters and deflect blame for the killing:

I am saddened to hear of the killing of George Tiller. At this point, we do not know the motives of this act, or who is behind it, whether an angry post-abortive man or woman, or a misguided activist, or an enemy within the abortion industry, or a political enemy frustrated with the way Tiller has escaped prosecution. We should not jump to conclusions or rush to judgment.

Let us all remember that this tragedy comes just one month after O’Reilly, Beck, Limbaugh, and gang went ballistic over a Homeland Security report concerning the potential for violence by right-wing extremists.

I never really know what to do with stories about messed-up white-supremacist parents who force their kids into their lifestyle and all that it contains, like the "Prussian Blue" Gaede twins. My first impulse is to keep the kids out of the discussion, even though their parents have dragged them into it.

But damn. This is just sad:

HOLLAND TWP. | In a living room decorated with war books, German combat knives and swastikas, a 2-year-old boy, blond and blue-eyed, played with a plastic dinner set.

The boy, asked his name, put down a tiny plate and ran behind his father's leg. He flashed a shy smile but wouldn't answer. Heath Campbell, 35, the boy's father, encouraged him.

"Say Adolf," said Campbell, a Holocaust denier who has three children named for Nazism.

Again, the boy wouldn't answer. It wasn't the first time the name caused hesitation.

Adolf Hitler Campbell -- it's indeed the name on his birth certificate -- turns 3 today, and the Campbell family believes the boy has been mistreated. A local supermarket refused to make a birthday cake with "Adolf Hitler" on it.

Yes, the Campbells are raising a stink because the local Shop Rite won't make a birthday cake with little Adolph's name on it. And to be honest, I'm not sure the store's rationale is viable. But on the other hand, you have to wonder about any parent who would do this to their kids -- not only name them "Adolf Hitler" and "Aryan Nations" but then make public political causes celebre of them.

Especially a mother who can rationalize it to herself thus:

"I just figured that they're just names," Deborah Campbell said. "They're just kids. They're not going to hurt anybody."

Heath Campbell said some people like the names but others are shocked to hear them. "They say, 'He (Hitler) killed all those people.' I say, 'You're living in the wrong decade. That Hitler's gone,'" he said.

"They're just names, you know," he said. "Yeah, they (Nazis) were bad people back then. But my kids are little. They're not going to grow up like that."

Sorry, lady, but "Adolf Hitler" is not just a name. It's the name of the man directly responsible for the murders of 6 million Jews and millions more in other liquidations and his wars. It's a name that signifies real, living evil to many millions of people still living. And you pay homage to him by naming a child after him.

And don't get me started on "Aryan Nations".

I just hope young Adolf and Aryan have the inner strength to grow up normal, which some of these kids actually manage to do. And that's probably the sweetest comeuppance for their parents of all.

[H/t to Susie.]

Even some of the denizens of the far Right are beginning to work out that the Russians aren't afraid of their bark and may just bite back in return. Witness manly man Mark Hemingway writing at The Corner on NRO:

(T)his should be a big story:

Russia has informed Norway that it plans to suspend all military ties with NATO, Norway's Defense Ministry said Wednesday, a day after the military alliance urged Moscow to withdraw its forces from Georgia.

... the NATO-Russia Council which has been active and productive for a number of years now. Russia severing ties with NATO is a significant step, and not necessarily for the better.

No, really? Could you explain it to the White House, where Bush is still trying to bluff on a busted flush? Today he told Russia they must leave Georgia "now" and the Russians basically replied "Gonna make us? You and which army?" And then there's this:

It was unclear if there would be any impact on a crucial aspect of NATO-Russian cooperation: the deal under which Moscow allows aircraft supplying the NATO-led force in Afghanistan to fly through Russian airspace.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was "not going to shut the doors" on cooperation with NATO, but he pointedly raised the issue of Afghanistan transit.

"After the famous NATO meeting (when the alliance froze contacts with Russia), some leading alliance officials were whispering in my ears: 'You are not going to halt the Afghanistan transit, are you?,"' he said.

As I say, busted flush.

Ah your "librul" media at work.

Zappatero at SquareState.net noted this article at the Denver Post.

The Denver Post, while finding an astonishing fact about Big Oil Bob Schaffer, proceeds to muddy up the comparison between Schaffer the extremist and the eminently reasonable Mark Udall.

One analysis of Schaffer's three-term congressional record places him as the 14th most conservative out of more than 3,400 lawmakers to go to Washington since 1937. Udall, though less extreme, falls squarely within his party's liberal wing — and based on his votes is more liberal than Clinton and Obama.

Less extreme? Schaffer was ranked the 14th most conservative out of more than 3,400 lawmakers. Udall was ranked 509th, although that number doesn't show up in the article. 14th (R) = 509th (D). It's fair and balanced! And according to the Post article, both need to work on coming to the middle.

The Post continues to compare Apple Pie to Oranges:

Those voting records present significant problems for the early strategies of both campaigns, which depend on repositioning their candidates to appeal to the moderate and independent voters who most experts say will decide the race.

That would be ok if it was true. Unfortunately, for all of us Denver Post readers, and the candidates and the voters, it's not. Here are some stats on how voters now trust Democrats overwhelmingly on the issues

There's more...the update looks at the data and finds that if you look at the data for the current crop of politicians (the data used for the Post study goes back to 1932), the numbers become even more stark and surprise, surprise! Schaffer is on the far right extreme and Udall is basically right there in the middle as he claimed.