Republican Youth Organization a “Hate Group”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom as hate group.

The chapter earned this distinction “because of their ’13 point agenda’ that includes the elimination of minority student organizations, the creation of a white council, promoting anti-gay beliefs and hunting down and deporting illegal immigrants in the Lansing area.”

Attorney General Mike Cox, Secretary of State Terri Land, Rep. Candice Miller, Rep. Mike Rogers, GOP chair Saul Anuzis, and failed gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos are among Michigan’s notable Republicans who have ties to the group or to its leader, Kyle Bristow.

It’s official. The Republican Party is the party of hate.

But She Interviewed John Bolton! TWICE!

Join me now in a moment of silence in loving memory of Atlas Shrugs, the video blog of Pamela Geller Oshry, aka Word Salad Pam to that part of her fan base that wasn’t made up of racist nutbars.   Seems that somebody at YouTube, upon getting a couple of complaints about her, um, productions, actually watched some of it and promptly had it yanked.  This horrid act of censorship has led Ms. Oshry to forsake the vile censors of YouTube for some other online video purveyor.

My goodness.  The forces of evil are ascendant.  Next, somebody’s going to sign up with YouTube and flag some of Ann Althouse’s vlog entries as inappropriate!

Here’s a Surprise

As in “Surprising, not.”

Many potential jurors for the Jose Padilla trial have said they aren’t sure who was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks because they don’t trust the news media or the federal government.

Gee, I wonder why not?

Your Republican Lawmakers At Work

John Aravosis on how John Conyers and his fellow House Democrats showed that — once again — the Republicans never argue in good faith:

Steny Hoyer and John Conyers just pulled a fast one on the GOP. The GOP has been refusing to support the hate crimes bill because it doesn’t include members of the US Armed Forces and senior citizens. Conyers just rose and basically said, okay, I’ll add them. The Republicans’ response? Uh, no.

The Republicans have been railing for days about how this legislation doesn’t cover our Armed Forces and senior citizens, and now that the Dems offer to put our Armed Forces and seniors in this legislation, the Republicans said no and affirmatively stopped the Democrats from doing it anyway.

That means the Republicans had no intent on helping our Armed Forces and seniors, on protecting them. It was just a stunt. The GOP leaders in Congress just got up and used our Armed Forces and seniors as political fodder when they had no intent on actually doing anything to help our Armed Forces and seniors.

Know Your GOP Presidential Candidates!

Here’s the place to start.

Why I Call It The GOP/Media Complex

Reason #1: Because they take their orders both from the GOP and from the corporations that fund the GOP.

Example (from Bill Moyers by way of Atrios):

WALTER ISAACSON: We’d put it on the air and by nature of a 24 hour TV network, it was replaying over and over again. So, you would get phone calls. You would get advertisers. You would get the Administration.

BILL MOYERS: You said pressure from advertisers?

WALTER ISAACSON: Not direct pressure from advertisers, but big people in corporations were calling up and saying, ‘You’re being anti-American here.’

“Anti-American” of course meaning “anti-Bush” or “anti-Republican”. No big advertisers ever called up CNN to complain about attacks on Bill Clinton or other Democratic politicians.

The three little pigs got it wrong. Build with straw

…or hemp, according to Patrick Johnson of the BBC:

Production of concrete, that staple of modern building, alone accounts for up to 10% of man-made greenhouse gas, US scientists believe.

Then there is the energy spent on shipping the materials, and finally the power needs of the finished buildings.

Yet with a bit of clever substitution and sourcing, and some deft adjustments to the existing housing stock, environmentalists believe that CO2 emissions could be reduced anywhere in the world.

There are other great ideas, too:

Unido [UN Industrial Development Org.] promotes Indian portable brick factories as one answer to cheap construction materials. Another project, now under discussion with Namibia, is a Russian technique for manufacturing building blocks out of sand and seawater. …

One example of Unido’s hi-tech thinking about sourcing local materials is in Botswana, where the agency has proposed melting locally available basalt as a replacement for expensive imported steel rods in concrete buildings.

It’s Failure Of Conservatism Day!

Today is Failure of Conservatism Day!

The fine folk over at the American Prospect and the Campaign for America’s Future are holding a conference to mark this auspicious occasion.  Check it out.   See all the ways in which conservatism has failed over the years.