United Kingdom Pardons Alan Turing

"Values Voters" Laugh About Nazi Camps

Ted Cruz Brings Nazis Into the Obamacare Debate

From Talking Points Memo:  

"If you go to the 1940s, Nazi Germany," Cruz said. "Look, we saw in Britain, Neville Chamberlain, who told the British people, 'Accept the Nazis. Yes, they'll dominate the continent of Europe but that's not our problem. Let's appease them. Why? Because it can't be done. We can't possibly stand against them.'"

"And in America there were voices that listened to that," he continued. "I suspect those same pundits who say it can't be done, if it had been in the 1940s we would have been listening to them. Then they would have made television. They would have gotten beyond carrier pigeons and beyond letters and they would have been on tv and they would have been saying, 'You cannot defeat the Germans.'"

First problem: Cruz is wrong on the history. When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, it triggered a British (and french) declaration of war against Germany. Appeasement was over before the 40's even began. Before anyone says he probably just misspoke, keep in mind that these were prepared remarks said on the Senate floor, not something said off the cuff on a Sunday morning show.

Second problem: Cruz is still living in a fantasy world. He lives in a world where he thinks a piece of legislation commonly called "Obamacare" can be defunded or repealed while a man named "Obama" is in the White House. He lives in a world where he thinks he can achieve success in getting rid of Obamacare can be done with less than 67 votes in the Senate, and the fact of the matter is that 67 is the number of votes he needs in the Senate. He needs to face reality. Even if the Senate sends President Obama a version of the Continuing Resolution in question that does not fund the Affordable Care Act, he WILL veto it. If the Senate cannot muster 67 votes to override this presidential veto - and it cannot - then the government will shutdown, and all sign are pointing to congressional Republicans getting the blame when this shutdown negatively affects the government.

Usually when people bring Nazis into a political argument, it means that they have no more valid arguments to make...if they had any at all to begin with that is. many people consider this jumping the shark. As if cruz had not done this enough already, he has done it again. I doubt any one, at least anyone with their wits about them, will fall for this hyperbole.

Why Johnny Weir Should NOT Be a Gay Spokesman

From America Blog:

...Weir started by talking about how important Jesse Owens’ victory was at the 1936 Nazi Olympics in Berlin. We’ve discussed that argument a few times:

1) Jesse Owens won and the Nazis still killed millions afterwards. 

2) You can’t have a Jesse Owens moment at Sochi if it’s against the law for gay athletes to be out and the IOC tells gay athletes to stay in the closet. 

3) Jesse Owens was treated like garbage when he got back to the US after his “victory.” If his victory didn’t change minds in America, I’m wondering how many it changed in Nazi Germany. 

4) While other gay Olympians like New Zealand speed skater Blake Skjellerup have promised to wear a rainbow pin during his competition at Sochi, Weir has made no such promise were he to make the American team. Why hasn’t he?

Weir then went on to say that “it’s not good for anybody” if gays get arrested at Sochi and the world learns how bad the Russian regime really is on gay and trans issues. Yes, we wouldn’t want the world to learn that lesson, would we...

Words of Wisdom From Thomas Jefferson

Conservatives Once Ridiculed Ayn Rand

From Salon: 

The late Gore Vidal would not have been surprised by the former Republican vice-presidential candidate’s choice of a patron saint. After all, it was Vidal who observed, in a 1961 article for Esquire:

She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the ‘welfare’ state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts. For them, she has an enticing prescription: altruism is the root of all evil, self-interest is the only good, and if you’re dumb or incompetent that’s your lookout.

Vidal might be dismissed as a biased leftist. But the late William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of post-1945 conservatism who engaged in a famous televised spat with Vidal during the 1968 Democratic convention, shared Vidal’s contempt for Ayn Rand. After her death in 1982, Buckley wrote in the New York Daily News: “She was an eloquent and persuasive anti-statist, and if only she had left it at that, but no. She had to declare that God did not exist, that altruism was despicable, that only self-interest was good and noble.” In 2003, Buckley described his encounter with Rand’s interminable propaganda novel “Atlas Shrugged”: “I had to flog myself to read it.”

For once, conservatives going back to the "good ol' days" wouldn't be such a bad idea.

Fighting For Glass-Steagall

Little Known Facts About Independence Day

The Declaration of Independence

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776 

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged 

by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the 

Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of

 our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

New Hampshire:

Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:

John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:

Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:

Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:

William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:

Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:

Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:

Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:

Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:

George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:

William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:

Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:

Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Happy 237th Birthday America!!!

RWNJ's Whining Over Marriage Equality

Trailer: The Lavender Scare

The Last Veterans of World War I

From The Daily Beast: 

Richard Rubin’s The Last of the Doughboys is a brilliant and unexpected delight. Interviewing the last surviving American veterans of World War I, all of them of course well beyond a hundred years old, is the kind of idea which would make any nonfiction writer clap his (or her) hand to the forehead and say: “Why didn’t I think of that?” 

His subtitle on the other hand is a little strange for a European to assimilate: “The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War,” is not only cumbersome, but also puzzling. In Britain and Europe, no event is less forgotten than World War I, or “The Great War,” as it was called until 1939. Speaking as somebody who is half English and half Hungarian, World War I still seems to me a familiar and seismic event, as if it had only just ended. My father fought on the side of the Central Powers, as a soldier in the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Army, my maternal grandfather fought in the British Army, on different sides, and both were so traumatized by the experience that they never talked about it. 

The war left its mark on every part of British life, no town too small not to have a war memorial, with a long list of the dead carved in stone, no college, school or public building without a plaque inside the door bearing an endless list of names of those who were killed in Flanders, on the Somme or elsewhere, no poetry more often recited than that of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. To this day, I, like many in Britain, still wear a poppy on Nov. 11. 

The war left its mark on history too, erasing empires, replacing Austro-Hungary with a dangerous brood of Eastern European and Balkan mini-nations, carving up the Ottoman Empire into colonies, soon to become statelets, with artificial frontiers containing populations of different ethnic and religious backgrounds who hated each other, and bringing about the birth of Fascism, Communism, and Nazism—for the Second World War, awful as it was, was merely a reprise of the First with some minor switching of smaller powers, and the addition of a war in the Pacific to that in Europe. The years 1914-1918 were, and will perhaps always remain, our mental image of Armageddon: the mud, the trenches, the barbed wire, the squalor, the millions of dead for no good purpose...

Diary of Anne Frank is "Pornographic"

What Started the Sexual Revolution?

Pagan Roots & the Real War on Christmas

Terminology: Bachmann

Bachmann (noun)

1) A gross misquotation, an extremely incorrect citation, or an extreme misinterpretation of an historical event.

Example: "I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbears who worked tirelessly -- men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country." John Quincy Adams was not a founding father (his father John Adams was), nor did John Quincy Adams oversee the abolition of slavery (Adams' presidency ended in 1829, the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863). This is technically a "double-Bachmann."

Also known as "pulling a Bachmann."

Who Are The Real Nazis Again?

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association

It seems as though the number of times that social conservatives compare society's movement towards equality for the LGBT community to the rise of Nazis in Germany is infinite. Some of these social conservatives, especially Bryan Fischer (president of the so-called American Family Association, a designated hate-group) have taken to using the term “homo-fascist.” Statements like this show an utter ignorance of history, so let us have a little history lesson.

Family Research Council Pres. Tony Perkins

Nazi Germany passed a succession of laws targeting (primarily) the Jewish community, restricting their rights, telling them what they could or could not do, not allowing them to live their own lives as they saw fit. Their ability to own property was severely limited. The professions which they could practice were increasingly restricted (beginning in 1933). Their right to serve in the military was eliminated (1935). Their sexual activities were also in some instances regulated (1935). Their right to marry the person they love were in many cases abolished (1935). These restrictions are just the tip of a very large iceberg.

Of course there were the Concentration Camps. They speak for themselves.

N.O.M Co-Founder Bryan Brown

Fast forward to the present. A litany of laws have been passed restricting the rights of the LGBT community, and these laws have been championed by social conservatives. An Ohio school tried to suppress the freedom of speech of some students who were wearing gay-supportive T-shirts. A host of conservative leaders have said gay people should be restricted from teaching in schools, playing in professional sports leagues such as the National Football League, and from various other professions. Social conservatives want to roll back the clock on Don't Ask Don't Tell, which would restrict the rights of gay and lesbian service members to serve openly while protecting this country. Governor Bob McDonnell (R-VA) has given the okay for adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples. Governor Sam Brownback (R-KS) refused to repeal the state's anti-sodomy law despite the Lawrence vs. Texas Supreme Court decision in 2003 (which stated that anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional) which supersedes it. More than 30 states have restricted the rights of same-sex couples to marry under the law whether by statutes or by state constitutional amendments. Even same-sex couples from the 9 states and Washington D.C. which have marriage equality at the state level are still restricted by the so-called Defense of Marriage Act. Many conservatives want to go even farther with a constitutional amendment banning same-sex unions altogether.

Liberty Council's Matt Barber

Peter Sprigg of the so-called Family Research Council, another designated hate-group, is on record as saying homosexuality should be criminalized. A North Carolina pastor's claim that gays and lesbians should be imprisoned behind electrified fences until they die went viral and made national news. His conservative parishioners supported his claim.

Those who oppose equality for all people would do well to think twice before hurling hyperbolic insults against those with whom they disagree. When you set the two sides of this battle against the historical record, there is in fact one side which bares a far more factual resemblance to the Third Reich than the other, based on their own statements and the policies they have supported. The evidence is crystal clear as to which side that is.

P.S.: The Nazis lost, which is something the anti-equality forces would do well to keep in mind.

History of the Republican Party

History of the Democratic Party