Sometimes I repost blog entries on the Daily Kos website. I like to try to get a lot of comments and recommendations that might help in promoting my blog. I get nervous waiting for comments over there but I like the rush no matter what the response is. However, I really wasn’t prepared for the comments after posting my entry about the Steubenville Ohio rape case. The comments showed how ingrained the rape culture is in this country as even some liberals play into it.
If you don’t know Daily Kos is a big blog that tends to express and support liberal political views. It also allows members to post blogs called diaries that are listed on the front page. Members who read the posts can comment and recommend the article. If enough people recommend a post it will be promoted as a featured post on the front page of the site. That is a goal of mine when I post entries there.
It amazes me some of the crap people believe even when facts and the truth prove them wrong on a regular basis. I’m use to such “thinking” having been involved in the atheist/humanism/freethought movement for more than 15 years. I’m use to religious believers being stubborn but I have to slap my head when usually smart people believe stupid crap. Republicans seem to have a corner on that freaky behavior.
Markos at Daily Kos posts samples of the hate mail he gets being the founder of a major liberal blog. Here is a comment sent to him and his response:
“just a comment
I just recently discovered all this “interesting” information on your website and I have concluded one thing……..it is YOU and people like you that are responsible for my ripping up my DEMO-NUT card and becoming a PROUDREPUBLICAN! There is nothing more dangerous to America than a rabid left wing liberal. Well maybe a crazy jihadist with a bomb strapped to his chest; but you haven’t figured that out yet and probably you never will. Idiot.“
Dude, where have you been? A crazy jihadist might be able to kill some people, but liberals would provide (true) universal single-payer healthcare, work toward peace on earth, spread tolerance and equality of opportunity, hold greedy corporations accountable for their looting of America, work to replace fossil fuels with clean renewal energy, create a fair and sane immigration policy, and even the negotiating playing field between workers and big business.
Some Republicans get spoon fed the wacko idea that LIBERALS are destroying the country when the facts and the truth show that we would be so much better off as a nation if the liberals ran the government. Those pesky facts would also show that it was the work of the GOP in Congress and their corporate lords that brought us the 2008 economic collapse and helped make the Gulf oil spill worse that it needed to be.
Just look at the actual history of this country and you will see liberals and progressives leading the country forward and conservatives bring us down.
“I’m speaking totally for myself and I’m not speaking for the Republican Party and I’m not speaking for anybody in the House of Representatives but myself, but I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it’s a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown. In this case, a $20 billion shakedown with the Attorney General of the United States who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the interests of the American people participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund that’s unprecedented in our nation’s history that’s got no legal standing and what I think sets a terrible precedent for the future,” said Barton.
“I’m only speaking for myself. I’m not speaking for anybody else, but I apologize. I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong and is subject to some sort of political pressure that is, again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize,” he said.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) on June 17th 2010 hearing about BP Oil spill
And it isn’t just Joe Barton saying this about the escrow fund:
The fact is BP didn’t have to set the money aside. They could’ve waited until any legal cases were resolved or any other foot dragging methods a large company employs to keep from having to pay damages.
The GOP also ignores polling showing they are on the wrong team on this issue:
68 percent of respondents want more regulation of the oil industry;
72 percent favor “Barack Obama’s proposals to develop alternative sources of energy and reduce the amount of oil and other fossil fuels that are produced and used in this country”;
69 percent believe such plans will increase jobs.
According to the poll, opposition to increased offshore drilling has grown 10 points since May and is now twice as high as it was in 2008. Fifty-eight percent of those questioned support a six-month moratorium on new drilling in the Gulf and other offshore sites; 68 percent favor increased regulation of the oil industry in this country.
“There is a gender and generation gap on offshore oil drilling – women and younger Americans are less likely to support drilling offshore and more likely to support a moratorium,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
Measures that directly target BP are also popular – 63 percent favor lifting the liability cap on BP and 53 percent would support criminal charges against some BP employees or executives.
Then we have the deficit hawks who show up around election time to whine about money being spent. It’s different this time because we are still in financial trouble and if these hawks get their way we might end up in another economic collapse. As Economist Paul Krugman wrote recently:
Many economists, myself included, regard this turn to austerity as a huge mistake. It raises memories of 1937, when F.D.R.’s premature attempt to balance the budget helped plunge a recovering economy back into severe recession.
In America, many self-described deficit hawks are hypocrites, pure and simple: They’re eager to slash benefits for those in need, but their concerns about red ink vanish when it comes to tax breaks for the wealthy. Thus, Senator Ben Nelson, who sanctimoniously declared that we can’t afford $77 billion in aid to the unemployed, was instrumental in passing the first Bush tax cut, which cost a cool $1.3 trillion.
The major drag on the economy is still health care costs since the reform that was passed was only a start and the major parts haven’t taken effect yet. Blogger digby wrote:
Any deficit scold who doesn’t put reducing health care costs at the very top of the agenda is just a demagogic crank doing the dirty work for the aristocratic overlords.
The other day it was reported that Congressman Dennis Kucinich had said he would vote no on the Senate version of the Health Care Reform bill. It’s the version that more than likely will be passed if a vote is taken. On the MSNBC show “Countdown” the founder of the Daily Kos blog Markos Moulitsas called out Kucinich for his principled stand and even suggested he be challenged in the next election for suggesting the bad Senate bill be killed. One can not like the man, disagree with his views, but don’t be a dick about it. Markos is being a dick about it.
The attack continued on Moulitsas’ twitter feed calling Kucinich ineffective and his supporters – robots. He asked for one piece of legislation Kucinich had sponsored that passed and when one was pointed out (H.J. 26) Markos dismissed it out of hand.
Then today in his regular posting on Daily Kos he wrote:
No ambiguity — MoveOn members want to pass the bill. We spent the last several months fighting to make it better, and we did. It’s not great, but it’s better. And as Howard Dean wrote yesterday, the fight for better health care reform isn’t over.
Dennis Kucinich may rather make common cause with the GOP and Rush Limbaugh, but sane progressives have to realize that this is a step forward. And once the foot is in the door, tweaks can always be made. But our foot must be in the door, and that’s why the GOP and insurance companies are fighting this with all their might.
He basically is calling anyone who shares Kucinich view on the bill insane including progressives who agree with the congressman – like me.
What is ironic is that as late as December Moulitsas held the same view of the Senate bill and also called for it to be killed.
My take is that it’s unconscionable to force people to buy a product from a private insurer that enjoys sanctioned monopoly status. It’d be like forcing everyone to attend baseball games, but instead of watching the Yankees, they were forced to watch the Kansas City Royals. Or Washington Nationals. It would effectively be a tax — and a huge one — paid directly to a private industry.
Without any mechanisms to control costs, this is yet another bailout for yet another reviled industry. Subsidies? Insurance companies are free to raise their rates to absorb that cash. More money for subsidies? More rate increases, as well as more national debt. Don’t expect Lieberman and his ilk to care. They’re in it for their industry pals.
…
Strip out the mandate, and the rest of the bill is palatable.
The mandate is still in the bill and Markos now is towing the party line that the bill has to be passed since it is better for the party than nothing.
Normally I agree 90% with the views of Markos and Daily Kos but the people who gave up on getting a better bill to pass the crap Senate version just so they can claim “victory” leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I understand that Moulitsas personally doesn’t like Dennis Kucinich but he doesn’t need to be a douche about it and let it cloud his public comments about the man especially someone who hasn’t changed their mind all of a sudden like Markos seemed to have done.
