Obama on the Debt Ceiling "negotiations:" A tax by any other name...

Ah, the irony. The sweet, sweet, unintended irony!

I've said this a bunch of times out loud and in print, but had despaired of ever seeing anyone important and well-connected saying something like this out loud. This is one of the great shared secrets of power. Not all taxation is called taxation.

Remarks by the President on the Status of Debt Ceiling Negotiations | The White House:

"Keep in mind, if we don’t do that, if we don’t come to an agreement, we could lose our country’s AAA credit rating, not because we didn’t have the capacity to pay our bills -- we do -- but because we didn’t have a AAA political system to match our AAA credit rating.

And make no mistake -– for those who say they oppose tax increases on anyone, a lower credit rating would result potentially in a tax increase on everyone in the form of higher interest rates on their mortgages, their car loans, their credit cards. And that’s inexcusable."

The way I'd put it is that a "tax" is an additional fee, charge, expense or transactional cost that you cannot avoid and must pay in order to conduct the ordinary business of life.

And this is absolutely a tax. Worse yet, it's a tax that rewards nobody but banks - it essentially will create a condition where you - and you and you and you - will have to pay more for everything, and none of that additional money will achieve a single damn thing.

Which, from the viewpoint of a middleman, is the perfect tax. Getting an extra share of something in return for nothing at all.

Now do please realize that the people that brought us to this passage are the people who say, loudly and insistantly, that "all taxation is theft."

But rather than eliminate taxation, they've figured out how to privatize it - by compelling the government to mandate theft.

This compellingly illustrates the compound idiocy of the Tea-Party caucus, for I regret to say, for the majority of them, there isn't a shred of nudge-nudge wink-wink. They aren't actually trying to "put one over" on the American People. They really think that there is a difference between having to pay Peter and having no choice but to pay Paul.

And they think it's "freedom" when you have to pay Paul twice as much to do what Peter did before, for results that are at best half as good.

The sole task of good government is to do those things that cannot be done cost-effectively in bits and pieces, here and there; to determine standards and provide for the common security and defense.

Well, tanking the economy would be a brilliant stroke of economic warfare, if it were done by an actual enemy of the state. It will do more harm over a longer span of time than, say, popping a nuke over Washington.

So perhaps it might be prudent, at this juncture, to consider that anyone damn fool enough to think that risking the entire economy over a re-election strategy is, in fact, an enemy of the state. In a very real, non-rhetorical, this isn't politics you morons sort of way.

Al Frankin Focuses on Focus on the Family.

You see, this is why Focus on the Family hates those "lie-buh-ral edumacators" and "critical thinkers" and people who actually look stuff up.

They unfairly use these tactics to embarrass "Real Uhmurikins."

Never Let Amateurs do Parody

This is the original, unintended self-parody.



This is the actual parody.



Rarely has Poe's Law bitten so hard, or with such sharp little teeth. Thank Ghu for Miss Vermont, the "winking smiley."

Bob's Correlation: Pretty people don't have to be smart.  People who are happy with being judged on their looks should not be graded on their ability to answer "Gotcha" questions, like, say, "Should it be illegal to divide by zero" or "Where and why did Paul Revere ride."

Bob's Even More Obvious Correlation: Never confuse pretty with smart.

Let Them Stand In All Their Awesome Majesty

Courtesy Derp.com

I just noticed I hadn't posted here for several days. It's not because I haven't been blogging; I've been writing at Politicususa. It's a very liberal blog and I'm trying to be the moderately profane voice of reason.

Aside from that, I'm still recovering from a move and that always leaves me flatter than a pancake for several weeks. But I have been paying attention to the news, and a number of things have struck me as being worth making a record of, as timeless indicators of our time. In other words, if I need to explain the following links, I'm not sure it would be worth the time it would take me to write, or you to read.

So Let These Stand In All Their Awesome Majesty

Radicals behaving radically...

"UNBELIEVABLE - Don't you people understand this is just what everyone expected and were waiting to happen!!!," one upset tea partier commented to Cucci's post. "Now everything we have fought so hard to accomplish will be wiped out by one headline 'Tea Party in Maine Eats It's Own'"

None dare call it "Jesuetical."

A Catholic "scholar" attempts to create an algebraic proof of the inferiority of homosexual marriage. 

E=MC² is a liberal conspiracy to promote "relativism", according to a Conservapedia entry.

In the entry, "Counterexamples to Relativity," the authors (including Schlafly) write:

The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.[1]

To what does that reference lead? Why, a note by Schlafly:

See, e.g., historian Paul Johnson's book about the 20th century, and the article written by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe as allegedly assisted by Barack Obama. Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible, a book that outsells New York Times bestsellers by a hundred-fold

Meanwhile, somewhere on the Road To Damascus...

"How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy." Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, "Four Deformations of the Apocalypse."

Bob Inglis Regrets the strategy now...

GOP Politician Confirms What Was Long Suspected: Republicans Intentionally Feed the Racism, Anger, and Paranoia of the Far Right

And then there was the digg censorship scandal and the increasing drumbeats for war against Iran, against all common sense and military wisdom.

I picked these links more or less at random, from things I'd dugg and stumbled. They all go to illustrate why for a while, the very idea of writing a coherent post on why any or several of these things are Bad just makes me Too Tired.

Glenn Beck, Goldline, Fools and their Money

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

The title is derived from lines from

two earlier films. In Poppy (1936),

he tells his daughter, "If we

should ever separate, my little plum,

I want to give you just one bit

of fatherly advice:

Never give a sucker an even break!"

In You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939),

 he tells a customer that his

grandfather's last words,

"just before they sprung the trap" were,

"You can't cheat an honest man;

never give a sucker an even break,

or smarten up a chump."

"Never give a sucker an even break." may well have been my father's motto, and it evidently is Glenn Beck's. It strikes me as odd how much the two of them resemble each other - and W.C. Fields.


The infographic below gives a simple and brutal explanation of how Beck's confidence game works. It's one of the oldest scams on the books, and I learned it at my father's knee.

• Convince the audience that there's an urgent need or crisis they were unaware of. 
• Assure them that only they are lucky or smart enough to hear of this dread condition, that is is being concealed, suppressed by means of conspiracy or ignored by "the ignorant and easily led."
• Produce some glossy hype that shows, beyond doubt, how this particular nostrum will grow your hair, clean your oven, boost your libido and attract a mate, all without needing to wear gloves! You don't even need to think about it, the benefits are so obvious!
• Convince the mark that the matter is so urgent and the need so great that they cannot afford to wait, they must call that number right now.
• Try to find an "intangible" value that a court can not convict you of misrepresenting. That is to say, it would be fraud to sell 100 dollars worth of gold for 300 dollars as a good investment. But "investment grade collector's coins" have an intangible value that is defined as what the buyer is willing to pay.

Infographic by The Big Picture

That's a point brutally made in the infographic - and it's a point authorities seem willing to debate in front of a judge.

"Goldline International is under investigation by the Santa Monica City Attorney’s office, jointly with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, as well as being the subject of a separate investigation by Congress into the possible criminal practices. The firm has been the subject of an ABC Nightline News Exposé, as well as an investigation by NY Congressman Weiner).

Goldline is not selling gold bullion. It's selling gold coins with some (debatable) collector's value, at a mark-up that would make an ordinary coin dealer gape in envy.

When the Zombie Apocalypse comes and you need to barter gold for food and shotgun shells - nobody will give a damn about the collector's value of your gold coins. They will want to know what it's purity is. And for that, dear people, you want to buy Canadian Maple Leaves or Credit Suisse bars at an reputable gold brokerage, assuming, of course, you credit the idea that an ounce of gold is likely to be worth as much as a case of whiskey or a box of shotgun shells.

Me, I'd hedge my investments with a solar power rig and a "ethanol fuel distillation apparatus," if you take my meaning. After the Zombie Apocalypse - well, the BATF will probably have it's hands full.

Mind you, I really have little sympathy for those making investment decisions on the advice of a known and famous liar.

W.C. Fields was right as far as he went, but my father was of the opinion that sheering such a flock was almost a civic duty; that it was the only way to "smarten up a chump."

But he married a chump, and she never did. She would just move on to the next confidence man, thinking each one in turn would have the Instant Answer To Everything. And were she alive today... she'd be telling me all about how I should be buying gold, to hedge against the inevitable decline of the communistic fools paradise I live in.

I think it wiser to vote for "someone smart."

Does Steven Harper gets his ideas from Glenn Beck?

How to annoy Glenn Beck in five minutes or less

Want to annoy Fox News' Glenn Beck in five minutes or less while simultaneously making sure your community gets its fair share of federal money? Fill out and return the 2010 U.S. Census questionnaire when it arrives in your mailbox.

Few other issues seem to whip media conservatives into a frenzy of misinformation and half-baked conspiracy theories like the decennial count of Americans.

You see, for the world of "conservative journalism," the census is a manifestation of everything they fear. Put yourself in their shoes: Obama's administration is hell-bent on imposing a socialist-fascist-communist-totalitarian-Marxist police state, and now he's sending us all mail! Even worse, Obama's thugs may show up at your door to get a more accurate count.

Why wait for the third installment of the Twilight franchise when you've got these scary bloodsuckers wanting to ... gulp ... count you?

To hear Beck tell it, the Census is just part of the "modern day slave state." Hardly surprising for a man who has called President Obama a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people" and claimed Obama's policies in general are driven by little more than "reparations" and a desire to "settle old racial scores."

Now, if this seems familiar - perhaps by reading comment threads - you also have a fair idea of where such ideas are coming from, and more to the point, to what demographic they are intended to pander.


Against the idea of the census? It's not just stupid, it's Glenn Beck Stupid. 

Sara Palin's House, as seen from Taiwan

"Ah wad some power the giftie gie us

To see ourselves as others see us."

— Robert (the stupid, it) Burns

Your Unfriendly Neighbourhood Conservative Movement

This should give you an insight into why the protection of free speech is so broad and sweeping in the US and Canada.

If speech like this were illegal, you wouldn't know what sort of ideas people like this supported - and you might not realize that such people were being courted and pandered to by less indiscreet conservatives. Hell, you might just think such people who say they are Christians and Conservatives actually knew what those words mean.

Dude, I'll take your word for it...

Tea Party Patriots sell racist shirts at Independence Day celebration

 

'Yup, I'm a racist' t-shirts sold at Lexington's July 4th Festival

The folks in front of the Fayette County Courthouse in Lexington, Kentucky took pimping patriotism a disturbing step farther. Not only were they promoting themselves as defenders of the Constitution, they openly fueled the right-wing paranoia that inches ever closer to violence.

I apologize for the quality of the video. I held the camera in open view at chest level in order to look the people I was speaking to in the eye. The conversations were revealing, some of the video a bit shaky.

Video by Kilgore Trout, blogging at LGF. I applaud this sort of intelligence gathering, but clearly, there was none to be found.  

Conservatives, disgusted with Conservatives

Passed on to me, and since TPM is being freaking crushed by the traffic... I'm copying in toto. (so you have somewhere else to point people too. Hey, I'm on blogspot... I don't pay bandwidth... )

Let me just add that I wish, I wish, I'd been able to put this together. Now, when the traffic abates a bit, I want you to to the highlighted link and thumb it, stumble  it, tweet it, send it to all your flyover state inbred cousins and generally make a big fat hairy fuss. Because, as Josh says... 

You MUST check out Russell King's "Open Letter to Conservatives" posted on his Talking Points Memo Blog. As MeMeMeMeMe said, it is "the most effective smackdown of rightwing lunacy in the history of the internets."

I concur.

An open letter to conservatives

March 22, 2010, 3:16PM

Dear Conservative Americans,

The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home, so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now.  You've lost me and you've lost most of America.  Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I'd like to give you some advice and an invitation.

First, the invitation:  Come back to us.

Now the advice.  You're going to have to come up with a platform that isn't built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more.  But you have work to do even before you take on that task.

Your party -- the GOP -- and the conservative end of the American political spectrum has become irresponsible and irrational.  Worse, it's tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred.  Let me provide some expamples -- by no means an exhaustive list -- of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.

If you're going to regain your stature as a party of rational, responsible people, you'll have to start by draining this swamp:

Hypocrisy

You can't flip out -- and threaten impeachment - when Dems use a prlimentary procedure (deem and pass) that you used repeatedly (more than 35 times in just one session and more than 100 times in all!), that's centuries old and which the courts have supported. Especially when your leaders admit it all.

You can't vote and scream against the stimulus package and then take credit for the good it's done in your own district (happily handing out enormous checks representing money that you voted against, is especially ugly) --  114 of you (at last count) did just that -- and it's even worse when you secretly beg for more.

You can't fight against your own ideas just because the Dem president endorses your proposal.

You can't call for a pay-as-you-go policy, and then vote against your own ideas.

Are they "unlawful enemy combatants" or are they "prisoners of war" at Gitmo? You can't have it both ways.

You can't carry on about the evils of government spending when your family has accepted more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts.

You can't refuse to go to a scheduled meeting, to which you were invited, and then blame the Dems because they didn't meet with you.

You can't rail against using teleprompters while using teleprompters. Repeatedly.

You can't rail against the bank bailouts when you supported them as they were happening.

You can't be for immigration reform, then against it .

You can't enjoy socialized medicine while condemning it.

You can't flip out when the black president puts his feet on the presidential desk when you were silent about white presidents doing the same.  Bush.  Ford.

You can't complain that the president hasn't closed Gitmo yet when you've campaigned to keep Gitmo open.

You can't flip out when the black president bows to foreign dignitaries, as appropriate for their culture, when you were silent when the white presidents did the same. Bush.  Nixon. Ike. You didn't even make a peep when Bush held hands and kissed (on the mouth) leaders of countries that are not on "kissing terms" with the US.

You can't complain that the undies bomber was read his Miranda rights under Obama when the shoe bomber was read his Miranda rights under Bush and you remained silent.  (And, no, Newt -- the shoe bomber was not a US citizen either, so there is no difference.)

You can't attack the Dem president for not personally* publicly condemning a terrorist event for 72 hourswhen you said nothing about the Rep president waiting 6 days in an eerily similar incident (and, even then, he didn't issue any condemnation).  *Obama administration did the day of the event.

You can't throw a hissy fit, sound alarms and cry that Obama freed Gitmo prisoners who later helped plan the Christmas Day undie bombing, when -- in fact -- only one former Gitmo detainee, released by Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, helped to plan the failed attack.

You can't condemn blaming the Republican president for an attempted terror attack on his watch, then blame the Dem president for an attemted terror attack on his.

You can't mount a boycott against singers who say they're ashamed of the president for starting a war, but remain silent when another singer says he's ashamed of the president and falsely calls him a Moaist who makes him want to throw up and says he ought to be in jail.

You can't cry that the health care bill is too long, then cry that it's too short.

You can't support the individual mandate for health insurance, then call it unconstitutional when Dems propose it and campaign against your own ideas.

You can't demand television coverage, then whine about it when you get it.  Repeatedly.

You can't praise criminal trials in US courts for terror suspects under a Rep president, then call it "treasonous" under a Dem president.

You can't propose ideas to create jobs, and then work against them when the Dems put your ideas in a bill.

You can't be both pro-choice and anti-choice.

You can't damn someone for failing to pay $900 in taxes when you've paid nearly $20,000 in IRS fines.

You can't condemn critizising the president when US troops are in harms way, then attack the president when US troops are in harms way , the only difference being the president's party affiliation (and, by the way, armed conflict does NOT remove our right and our duty as Americans to speak up).

You can't be both for cap-and-trade policy and against it.

You can't vote to block debate on a bill, then bemoan the lack of  'open debate'.

If you push anti-gay legislation and make anti-gay speeches, you should probably take a pass on having gay sex, regardless of whether it's 2004 or 2010.  This is true, too, if you're taking GOP money and giving anti-gay rants on CNN.  Taking right-wing money and GOP favors to write anti-gay stories for news sites while working as a gay prostitute, doubles down on both the hypocrisy and the prostitution.  This is especially true if you claim your anti-gay stand is God's stand, too.

When you chair the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, you can't send sexy emails to 16-year-old boys (illegal anyway, but you made it hypocritical as well).

You can't criticize Dems for not doing something you didn't do while you held power over the past 16 years, especially when the Dems have done more in one year than you did in 16.

You can't decry "name calling" when you've been the most consistent and outrageous at it. And the most vile.

You can't spend more than 40 years hating, cutting and trying to kill Medicare, and then pretend to be the defenders of Medicare

You can't praise the Congressional Budget Office when it's analysis produces numbers that fit your political agenda, then claim it's unreliable when it comes up with numbers that don't.

You can't vote for X under a Republican president, then vote against X under a Democratic president.  Either you support X or you don't. And it makes it worse when you change your position merely for the sake obstructionism.

You can't call a reconcilliation out of bounds when you used it repeatedly.

You can't spend tax-payer money on ads against spending tax-payer money.

You can't condemn individual health insurance mandates in a Dem bill, when the madates were your idea.

You can't demand everyone listen to the generals when they say what fits your agenda, and then ignore them when they don't.

You can't whine that it's unfair when people accuse you of exploiting racism for political gain, when your party's former leader admits you've been doing it for decades.

You can't portray yourself as fighting terrorists when you openly and passionately support terrorists.

You can't complain about a lack of bipartisanship when you've routinely obstructed for the sake of political gain -- threatening to filibuster at least 100 pieces of legislation in one session, far more than any other since the procedural tactic was invented -- and admitted it.  Some admissions are unintentional, others are made proudly. This is especially true when the bill is the result of decades of compromise between the two parties and is filled with your own ideas.

You can't question the loyalty of Department of Justice lawyers when you didn't object when your own Republican president appointed them.

You can't preach and try to legislate "Family Values" when you: take nude hot tub dips with teenagers (and pay them hush money); cheat on your wife with a secret lover and lie about it to the world; cheat with a staffer's wife (and pay them off with a new job); pay hookers for sex while wearing a diaper and cheatingon your wife; or just enjoying an old fashioned non-kinky cheating on your wife; try to have gay sex in a public toilet; authorize the rape of children in Iraqi prisons to coherce their parents into providing information; seek, look at or have sex with children; replace a guy who cheats on his wife with a guy who cheats on his pregnant wife with his wife's mother;

Hyperbole

You really need to dissassociate with those among you who:

·         assert that people making a quarter-million dollars a year can barely make ends meet or that $1 million "isn't a lot of money";

·         say that "Comrade" Obama is a "Bolshevik" who is "taking cues from Lenin";

·         ignore the many times your buddies use a term that offends you and complain only when a Dem says it;

·         liken political opponents to murderers, rapists, and "this Muslim guy" that "offed his wife's head" or call then "un-American";

·         say Obama "wants his plan to fail...so that he can make the case for bank nationalization and vindicate his dream of a socialist economy";

·         equate putting the good of the people ahead of your personal fortunes with terrorism;

·         smear an entire major religion with the actions of a few fanatics;

·         say that the president wants to "annihilate us";

·         compare health care reform with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a Bolshevik plot the attack on 9/11,or reviving the ghosts of communist dictators (update: it's also not Armageddon);

·         equate our disease-fighting stem cell research with "what the Nazis did";

·         call a bill passed by the majority of both houses of Congress, by members of Congress each elected by a majority in their districts, an unconscionable abuse of power, a violation of the presidential oath or "the end of representative government";

·         shout "baby killer" at a member of Congress on the floor of the House, especially one who so fought against abortion rights that he nearly killed health care reform (in fact, a little decorum, a little respect for our national institutions and the people and the values they represent, would be refreshing -- cut out the shouting, the swearing and the obscenities);

·         prove your machismo by claiming your going to "crash a party" to which you're officially invited;

·         claim that Obama is pushing America's "submission to Shariah";

·         question the patriotism of people upholding cherished American values and the rule of law;

·         claim the president is making us less safe without a hint of evidence;

·         call a majority vote the "tyranny of the minority," even if you meant to call it tyranny of the majority -- it's democracy, not tyranny;

·         call the president's support of a criminal trial for a terror suspect "treasonous" (especially when you supported the same thing when the president shared your party);

·         call the Pope the anti-Christ;

·         assert that the constitutionally mandated census is an attempt to enslave us;

·         accuse opponents of being backed by Arab slave-drivers, drunk and suicidal;

·         equate family planing with eugenics or Nazism;

·         accuse the president of changing the missile defense program's logo to match his campaign logo and reflect what you say is his secret Muslim identity;

·         accuse political opponents of being totalitarians, socialists, communists, fascists, Marxists;  terrorist sympathizers, McCarthy-like, Nazis or drug pushers; and

·         advocate a traitors act like seccession, violent revolution , military coup or civil war (just so we're clear: sedition is a bad thing).

History

If you're going to use words like socialism, communism and fascism, you must have at least a basic understanding of what those words mean (hint: they're NOT synonymous!)

You can't cut a leading Founding Father out the history books because you've decided you don't like his ideas.

You cant repeatedly assert that the president refuses to say the word "terrorism" or say we're at war with terror when we have an awful lot of videotape showing him repeatedly assailing terrorism and using those exact words.

If you're going to invoke the names of historical figures, it does not serve you well to whitewash them. Especially this one.

You can't just pretend historical events didn't happen in an effort to make a political opponent look dishonest or to make your side look better. Especially these events. (And, no, repeating it doesn't make it better.)

You can't say things that are simply and demonstrably false: health care reform will not push people out of their private insurance and into a government-run program ; health care reform (which contains a good many of your ideas and very few from the Left) is a long way from "socialist utopia"; health care reform is not "reparations"; nor does health care reform create "death panels".

Hatred

You have to condemn those among you who:

·         call members of Congress n*gger and f*ggot;

·         elected leaders who say "I'm a proud racist";

·         state that America has been built by white people;

·         say that poor people are poor because they're rotten people, call them "parasitic garbage" or say they shouldn't be allowed to vote;

·         call women bitches and prostitutes just because you don't like their politics     ( re - pea -ted - ly );

·         assert that the women who are serving our nation in uniform are hookers;

·         mock and celebrate the death of a grandmother because you disagree with her son's politics;

·         declare that those who disagree with you are shown by that disagreement to be not just "Marxist radicals" but also monsters and a deadly disease killing the nation (this would fit in the hyperbole and history categories, too);

·         joke about blindness;

·         advocate euthanizing the wife of your political opponent;

·         taunt people with incurable, life-threatening diseases -- especially if you do it on a syndicated broadcast;

·         equate gay love with bestiality -- involving  horses or dogs or turtles or ducks -- or polygamy, child molestation, pedophilia;

·         casually assume that only white males look "like a real American";

·         assert presidential power to authorize torture,  torture a child by having his testacles crushed in front of his parents to get them to talk, order the massacre of a civilian village  and launch a nuclear attack without the consent of Congress;

·         attack children whose mothers have died;

·         call people racists without producing a shred of evidence that they've said or done something that would even smell like racism -- same for invoking racially charged "dog whistle" words (repeatedly);

·         condemn the one thing that every major religion agrees on;

·         complain that we no longer employ the tactics we once used to disenfranchise millions of Americansbecause of their race;

·         blame the victims of natural disasters and terrorist attacks for their suffering and losses;

·         celebrate violence , joke about violence, prepare for violence or use violent imagery, "fun" politicalviolence, hints of violence, threats of violence (this one is rather explicit), suggestions of violence oractual violence (and, really, suggesting anal rape wth a hot piece of metal is beyond the pale); and

·         incite insurrection telling people to get their guns ready for a "bloody battle" with the president of the United States.

Oh, and I'm not alone:  One of your most respected and decorated leaders agrees with me.

So, dear conservatives, get to work.  Drain the swamp of the conspiracy nuts, the bold-faced liars undeterred by demonstrable facts, the overt hypocrisy and the hatred.  Then offer us a calm, responsible, grownup agenda based on your values and your vision for America.  We may or may not agree with your values and vision, but we'll certainly welcome you back to the American mainstream with open arms.  We need you.

(Anticipating your initial response:  No there is nothing that even comes close to this level of wingnuttery on the American Left.)

Written by Russell King

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/a/m/americandad/2010/03/an-open-letter-to-conservative.php?ref=recdc