Me and Cleon

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Saturday September 19, 2009 · 3:50 AM PDT

2009/09/19 · 03:50

Everyone knows that Mormons are Republicans, but it's worse than that.

I grew up in Utah in the 70s. My Mom votes Democratic. She told me that my grandparents had been called "Jack Mormons" because they voted for John F. Kennedy.

True Mormons, I guess, voted against Kennedy.

In high school, some of my friends, neighbors, and even some family members started discussing the Rothschilds family and a conspiracy to take over the world. It sounded kooky -- incoherent rambling about bankers and communism -- and I ignored it. I wondered where the ideas came from. Recently, part of the same kind of kookiness, La Verkin, Utah outlawed the United Nations.

After reading a recent Salon article that described how Cleon Skousen had become Glenn Beck's inspiration, I started putting the pieces together.

After reading more, I now believe that over the past 50 years, Cleon Skousen has been the greatest corrupting influence on Mormonism.

Timpanogus

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Friday September 11, 2009 · 8:20 PM PDT

2009/09/11 · 20:20

So I travel a lot (it sucks), and I've learned not to try and talk to the person next to you until near the end of the flight. On the first leg of a one-stop, I put my work down as the plane was approaching the runway and asked the guy next to me where he's going.

Answer -- to DC to join a march about health care reform.

We talk about other things for awhile, and I find out he's a Pentecostal preacher. Then I begin to suspect he's a Tea Bagger, so I say, "I hope you're going to march for health care reform."

He says, "We want health care reform. We don't want socialized medicine."

So I say, "Even though most of the countries in the world who have socialized medicine have better health care than us."

Timpanogus

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Wednesday September 09, 2009 · 9:27 PM PDT

2009/09/09 · 21:27

A diarist says that there is no 11th dimension for Obama. It's a solid argument, but it applies to the Republicans, too. August was bad for health care reform, but the Republicans don't get to be Buckaroo Banzai zooming across the 8th dimension, either. Their strategy was intellectually dishonest and it leaves them vulnerable.

Their position now is really very weak. I'm not saying that Obama's been playing a rope-a-dope strategy, but I do think our opponents have already thrown their best punches, including low blows and sucker punches. The bad guys showed us that they can't beat health care reform by telling the truth. To defeat health care reform, they have to lie.

Now we know that, and now they've lied. They've got nothing left.

If we tell the truth, we win.

It's time to come out swinging. It's time to bash. It's time to set the record straight.

Reagonomics failed. The Republicans' party is over. Their ideas put this country in a gigantic mess, and it's time to clean it up. It's time to end the lie that all big government is bad. Size is not the issue.

We need good government.

We need health care reform.

Poll

40 votes Show Results

The Republican Party

40 votes Vote Now!

The Republican Party

has been weakened by the lying and whining

3 votes

is over and the they've all got hangovers

1 vote

is a bunch of rich guys punking Christians

2 votes

is the official party of the KKK

3 votes

has failed

1 vote

all of the above

30 votes

No Christians, just 'publicans

Timpanogus

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Tuesday September 01, 2009 · 10:35 PM PDT

2009/09/01 · 22:35

I'm an atheist, but apparently I can read the Bible better than the Christians in this country who still call themselves Republicans. Let me start with 1 Corinthians 13:6

If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

and follow up with James 1:27

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

And if you want to go old school, how about Exodus 20:16

Thou shalt not bear false witness.

I've been listening to the hate-filled rhetoric and the lies coming from the Republicans today, not to mention the past 30 years. Using the Bible as my field guide to identifying Christians, it's pretty clear to me that the Republican party is anti-Christian.

Let me say it clearly. If you're Christian and Republican, you're in the wrong party. You've completely lost your way. You're just like the publican hypocrites that Jesus talked about. They're the Reborn-Publicans. Hell, let's just shorten the party name so you'll see them for what they are. The 'publicans.

Timpanogus

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Wednesday August 12, 2009 · 9:12 PM PDT

2009/08/12 · 21:12

I thought it would be a nuke. Imagine my surprise when it was nothing like Red Dawn. No Russian invasion. Just nucular stoopidity.

What snapped?

Yesterday, a La Rouche supporter had an Obama poster with a painted-on Hitler mustache. He placed it in the middle of the crosswalk outside the Farragut West Metro to block foot traffic. So I caught his eye and I said, "I want you to know that I find that poster offensive." He started to respond, so I interrupted him and said, "I don't want to talk. I just want you to know that I find that poster offensive." Then I walked off.

I felt sort of bad for the fly-by, but I was once ambushed by a La Rouche supporter. I learned a valuable lesson -- don't engage. In this case, why expect a sensible conversation from someone who likes comparing a great president to a genocidal maniac?

I wish I had let it go completely, but stoopidity has covered the land with blank stares and an angry-but-ultimately-empty arguments. It's spreading faster than swine flu. La Rouche supporters, dittoheads, Tea Baggers, Republican Congressmen. The country's anti-intellectual streak has new Kudzu-like tentacles reaching into homes and turning people into anti-intellectual Zombies.

We're finally conquering the land we had always claimed, our manifest density.

Timpanogus

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Tuesday July 28, 2009 · 2:55 AM PDT

2009/07/28 · 02:55

Health is one of those things we're always gambling on. Any day, you could find out you have a health condition -- a very expensive one at that. The solution is to spread the risk by paying into a system. Some of us pay more than we'll ever take out. There is, in short, a need to have health insurance.

Insurance companies in the USA, however, are the spawn of the markets and of a market philosophy. No one should be confused into thinking that a "health insurance" is interested in your health. They are gigantic corporations with an interest in making money.

So when Baucus or anyone sends a bill out of committee that depends on insurance companies to get it right, I think they're just being duped.

I'm not saying that I don't have any faith in the insurance companies. I'm saying that I do have faith in the insurance companies. They can be counted on to look out for themselves. I expect them to be fully selfish and try to game the system. I expect them to work for their success, and if that means our failure, it's not their problem.

If these organizations were individuals, we'd call them sociopaths. Hey, don't blame them. No one ever said a corporation had to have a conscience.

Making the sociopaths play by the rules is the role of government.

Poll

50 votes Show Results

Do you have faith in insurance companies?

50 votes Vote Now!

Do you have faith in insurance companies?

I believe they care about my health

1 vote

I believe they care about their bottom line

49 votes

Help me help health care reform

Timpanogus

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Monday June 15, 2009 · 9:01 PM PDT

2009/06/15 · 21:01

This is a stupid diary. I'm sorry. Now, please help answer my question.

I want to do something now for health care. I want a strong public option.

I don't know what to do.

How do I do effective activism for health care reform?

Timpanogus

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Monday April 27, 2009 · 9:42 PM PDT

2009/04/27 · 21:42

In 1918, a flu pandemic swept the world. No one really knows how many people died of flu in 1918, but scientists estimate that it was somewhere between twenty and one-hundred million people. The numbers feel sterile, so here's a more poetic view.

Grandmother Speaks of the Old Country

Lola Haskins

That year there were many deaths in the village.
Germs flew like angels from one house to the next
and every family gave up its own. Mothers
died at their mending. Children fell at school.
Of three hundred twenty, there were eleven left.
Then, quietly, the sun set on a day when no one
died. And the angels whispered among themselves.
And that evening, as he sat on the stone steps,
your grandfather felt a small wind on his neck
when all the trees were still. And he would tell us
always, how he had felt that night, on the skin
of his own neck, the angels, passing.

from Desire Lines: New and Selected Poems, BOA Editions, 2004

I've enjoyed some of the flu diaries. As a student of flu for the past 12 years, I offer some of my own perspective on the history, epidemiology after the fold.

Timpanogus

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Wednesday April 15, 2009 · 10:51 PM PDT

2009/04/15 · 22:51

I'm sick of tea and fake grass. I drink espresso. I wanna be astro billbug.

Here's the problem.

We're talking about it. We're laughing at the fringe right. We're quoting Glenn Beck. Maybe they got no ideas, but they must have some good material 'cause we're watching the circus.

Meanwhile, a solid national policy agenda established during an awesome Democratic primary got hijacked by a financial crisis, the final F you from Bush & Co. OK, some of it was just Bush-league policy that happened between the Bushes when Bill Clinton sided with the right and sowed the seeds of this financial crisis.

I find it a little scary to read some of the quotes from the right, but it looks like there's been a real sea change. It's possible that we're looking at Permanent Democractic Majorities.

I remember hearing the Republicans talk like that before they completely blew it.

Maybe it's time to ask a different question.

Quo vadis?

Poll

5 votes Show Results

You're a critic of democracy, but would you take the hemlock?

5 votes Vote Now!

You're a critic of democracy, but would you take the hemlock?

Dear Captain Concern Troll. Please get some help.

2 votes

I'd rather vote about a TV show

0 votes

Show me the money!

0 votes

I want Ronald's ray gun

0 votes

Stop picking on my Lions!

1 vote

I love slow food.

1 vote

Skinny chicken meat!

1 vote

Malaria, Progress Report

Timpanogus

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Friday November 21, 2008 · 9:41 AM PST

2008/11/21 · 09:41

This diary provides an update for liberals and progressives on the state of the world in malaria. I'll provide some background and commentary on two recent and very important developments. The first is a vote at the Global Fund on the Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria (AMFm). The second is a summary of an article published this week in the Lancet, a team of researchers published a paper in The Lancet that takes a hard look at the current state of malaria control in Africa.

Why should liberals and progressives care about malaria? Here's my short list:

*Malaria causes about 500 million clinical episodes each year.

*About 1 million of our fellow humans die of it each year. About 90% of the victims live in Africa, and about 90% of those victims are children.

*Malaria in pregnancy contributes to low birth weights, which are a risk factor for infant mortality.

*US Leadership in malaria control would help to restore our tarnished image abroad.

For more information and background, also see the diary by UN Dispatcher (that was rescued by taylormattd). Follow me after the fold.

Timpanogus

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Friday October 31, 2008 · 2:53 PM PDT

2008/10/31 · 14:53

I don't know any undecided voters, so I don't know why they haven't made up their minds yet. But I'd like to propose my top ten reasons to vote for Barack Obama, for someone who is still undecided.

I'd like to hear every good reason that anyone can think of. Let's make it a contest, then call up your undecided friends.

Timpanogus

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Tuesday October 21, 2008 · 8:09 PM PDT

2008/10/21 · 20:09

This diary is short and conspiratorial. But it's about Rove, so conspiratorial is appropriate.

We all know that Rove recommended Palin to McCain (see DemFromCT's diary), but I've been wondering what Rove was up to.

Start with:

Rove doesn't like McCain.

The Republican brand was worth a wet cigarette butt.

and you get

McCain was bound to lose,

and Rove wouldn't mind.

(sort of an idea palindrome about Rove's Palin drone).

Why bring up Palin? The future. He knows Palin's inexperienced, but he thinks she could be a female Ronald Reagan, so he bets on the future of the Republicans. Bring her out now, shake all the dirt out of the rug, and then she can run again the next time and claim (like Hillary did) that people have been through her trash. Next time around, you can't claim she lacks experience.

If she falls flat, so what? She was a gamble anyway.

I think they were hoping to set her up for 2012. Maybe they still hope she'll rise from the ashes of this election.

Poll below the fold.

Poll

140 votes Show Results

I prefer to believe that...

140 votes Vote Now!

I prefer to believe that...

OJ was framed by the government because he acted in the movie Capricorn One and helped to expose the fake moon landing.

20 votes

bigfoot lives!

10 votes

aliens really did land in Roswell

40 votes

The meaning of life is 42!

52 votes

Bush cares about the economy!

18 votes

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Me and Cleon

Invasion of the Teabaggers

Buckaroo Banzai: the 8th dimension

No Christians, just 'publicans

Manifest Density

I Have Faith in the Insurance Companies

Help me help health care reform

FLU

Permanent Majorities: Quo vadis?

Malaria, Progress Report

Tell your kids, "I voted for Barack Obama!"

Why did Rove choose Palin