Paul calls for his supporters to be civil

post from DemConWatch on 19 August 2012 09:30:31 PM. © DemConWatch

This is not what we're looking from the GOP convention:

On two private conference calls scheduled for next week, Ron Paul will stress to supporters that he wants them to respect decorum and act with civility during the Republican National Convention in Tampa.
The Texas congressman’s campaign says it has identified 373 delegates and alternates who support Paul, even if some are legally required to vote for another candidate on the first ballot. -Politico

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http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com/diary/5458/paul-calls-for-his-supporters
-to-be-civil

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Republican Missouri Rep. Todd Akin Says
Legitimate Rape Not Likely To Lead To PregnancyHere In Texas, State-Mandated Rape Is The Law Of The Land

post from Texas Liberal on 19 August 2012 09:00:58 PM. © Texas Liberal

Republican U.S. Senate nominee Todd Akin of Missouri has said that women who experience a “legitimate rape” are unlikely to get pregnant. Mr. Akin is a current U.S. House member who is running against incumbent Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill. Mr. Akin has been leading in the polls against Senator McCaskill. (Above–Todd Akin) Mr. Akin made [...]

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http://texasliberal.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/republican-missouri-rep-todd-akin-sa
ys-legitimate-rape-not-likely-to-lead-to-pregnancy-here-in-texas-state-mandated-rape-is-the-law-of-the-land/

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Take Two

post from Talking Points Memo on 19 August 2012 09:00:54 PM. © Talking Points Memo

Akin issues second attempt at statement/apology/whatever, says "all of us understand that rape can result in pregnancy."That is, all of us beside Todd Akin as of 48 hours ago. [...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/prRdYDBdOms/take_two_5.php

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This crazy notion that the Family Research
Council is NOT a hate group -- it's some kind of nutty joke, right

post from DownWithTyranny! on 19 August 2012 09:00:29 PM. © DownWithTyranny!

Rob Rogers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
by Ken

I started writing a diatribe about the perversion of truth by the American Right, and especially the American Christian Right, and then abandoned it. I suppose I can always come back to it.

I'm concerned at the moment at the prospect that one of the nation's vilest hate-mongers, Tony Perkins, commandant of the Family "Research" Council (FRC), may succeed in damaging the reputation of one of the country's most indispensable forces for decency and humanity, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has certified the FRC as a hate group based on careful research into a mountain of evidence that comes right out of the FRC.

And when I say "research," I mean actual research, where you go out and actively search for the truth, not the kind practiced by the lying phonies of the Right, like the FRC, which has the temerity to use the word "research" in its name when it has never for the tiniest microsecond engaged in any such activity. The FRC's "researchers" troll the swamps of their imaginations for any factoid that can be twisted into incendiary accusations against its enemies, which is to say people who are concerned with the truth. FRC hates the truth, and indeed there is by now a mountain of evidence that most of what it does is the knowing fabrication of lies to be used for hate-mongering propaganda purposes.

Yesterday America Blog's John Aravosis put up a desperately important post, "Why the Family Research Council is a hate group." He answers the question directly:

Because they lie.

And they know they lie.

And they don't care.

And they've been doing it for twenty years.

And when I say "lie," I don't mean the standard Washington, DC version of a "lie," which is basically calling a lie anything you disagree with (aka, your facts hurt me so I'm simply going to call you a liar). I mean, an organization that decided early on that "the gay menace" was such a threat to American life that if it had to deceive the American people in order to convince them that gays were the anti-Christ, then so be it.

John was driven into action by the assertion of the Washington Post's Dana Milbank, whom he insists he respects and likes, that the FRC is simply a "mainstream conservative" group. "I happen to like Dana Milbank," he says, "but I suspect he hasn't done what I've done," which is to say actual "research on the anti-gay literature that the Family Research Council publishes, and the anti-gay pseudo-science that FRC 'cites' on TV."

At one point, I had the Congressional Research Service send me a copy of every single document the Family Research Council had written about gays, and then I had CRS get me every single document listed in the FRC doc's footnotes. I.e., all the "original sources" for the Family Research Council's anti-gay claims.

And there were a lot of them. At the time, FRC's list of footnotes could be nearly as long as the written part of the document itself.

What did I find when I went through the original sources cited in the footnotes? I found that nearly every single footnote was a lie. Not a lie in the conventional sense - meaning, they didn't make up a source that didn't exist. Rather, they did things like quoting a damning opinion from a judge in a court case without mention that the judge was in the minority, that the gays had actually won the case they were citing.

Or they'd quote a study with a hideous conclusion about gays and lesbians, only for you to realize later that the actual quote in the study was rather benign - instead, FRC "forgot" to put and end-quotation mark on the quote, added an ellipse, and then put their own damning conclusion. Let me give you a made-up example of a quote about gays to who you how the family research council did this.
"This study looked at 45 gay men, and 35 lesbians. It was clear from the subjects that gay men and lesbians face greater societal pressures in their day to day lives... which makes gays and lesbians much more likely to rip the heads off small bunnies.

Wow, rip the heads off small bunnies - that's pretty bad. But hey, it's a real study in a real journal, so it has to be true. Except of course that the real quote from the actual study ends at the ellipse, while the FRC added its own opinion after the ellipse, while "forgetting" to put the end quote, so it looks like the FRC's opinion is part of the official quote from the reputable study.

Gosh, I wonder how that happened?

It went on and on like this, through hundreds of footnotes. I went through the original research of the various studies they cited and found that the study reached no such conclusion like the FRC claimed it did. And on and on and on.

These are not honest people simply expressing a contrarian view of politics, like Democrats and Republicans do every day in Washington.

I can't begin to do justice to John's post here, and won't even try. The quantity and range of damning information he has gathered is, well, damning. It spans the history of the FRC, and allows for no possibility that the history of incendiary falsification has been accidental. Its cadre of professional liars has had their lies pointed out to them repeatedly, with no effect, since after all they're the ones who made up the lies -- why would they have any problem with those lies' naked and vicious dishonesty.

Anyone who doesn't understand who and what the FRC is -- and apparently that number includes most of our infotainment noozers -- needs to read John's post and check out his links, which unlike FRC's patented reams of phony footnotes, actually bring you to information.

I'd just like to quote John's conclusion:

Look, I'm sorry that some nut tried to go on a shooting rampage at FRC's headquarters - violence is never the answer, even if you are an officially designated hate group that routinely defames millions of Americans in order to further the discrimination and suffering they face daily. But one shooter's insanity doesn't change who you are, what you've said, and what you've done for over two decades.

Contrary to what FRC likes to claim, we don't think they're a hate group because they're Christians. We think they're a hate group because of how un-Christian they really are.

#

Read The Full Article:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2012/08/this-crazy-notion-that-family-researc
h.html

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NOMs Brian Brown Has Trouble Defending Family
Research Council Lies

post from Firedoglake on 19 August 2012 09:00:21 PM. © Firedoglake

What does it say about the Family Research Council's lies when even NOM's Brian Brown can't defend the group's statements without sounding like Porky Pig?[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/ytVd4OvDGkA/

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Giuliani: 'Serious Questions' About Biden's
'Mental Capacity'

post from Crooks and Liars on 19 August 2012 09:00:04 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Giuliani: 'Serious Questions' About Biden's 'Mental Capacity'

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Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is doubling down on the charge that Vice President Joe Biden might not have the "mental capacity" and "balance" to take over the presidency if he needed to.

Speaking to CNBC last week, Giuliani said that a series of gaffes showed that Biden was not very "bright."

"I mean, there?s a real fear if, God forbid, he ever had to be entrusted with the presidency, whether he really has the mental capacity to handle it," the former mayor opined.

On Sunday, CBS host Bob Schieffer seemed shocked by Giuliani's remarks.

"I really said it," Giuliani admitted. "Not knowing what state he was in, not knowing what century he was in within 24 hours, and making what I would consider to be an absolutely disgusting appeal to racial sentiment -- I said, I wonder if he's got the mental capacity to be the president of the United States."

"Is that just campaign talk or do you really think he's nuts?" Schieffer wondered.

"Oh, no, I don't think he's nuts," Giuliani replied. "I'm just saying, I wonder if he's got the kind of balance -- probably what I should have said was, you know, the balance to be president of the United States. This guy is like one gaffe after another. He's a joke on late night television. I think they've also locked him in his room for the rest of the campaign. The president scolded him."

At a campaign event in Virginia last week, Biden had told a group, including many African Americans, that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's pro-Wall Street policies would ?put y?all back in chains.?

"I know that sometimes Republican come across as looking like we feel sorry for ourselves," Giuliani explained on Sunday. "I think we feel if this were [former Vice President Dick] Cheney or [former Alaska Gov.] Sarah Palin or [former Vice President] Dan Quayle, my goodness, all you guys on television would be going crazy about how could he say this and what's wrong with him? So, maybe I was just trying to even up the score a little bit."

"I do think there are some serious questions," he concluded.

Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum also claimed on Sunday that Biden and President Barack Obama were ?dividing this country? by playing the race card and using words like ?y?all.?

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http://crooksandliars.com/david/giuliani-serious-questions-about-bidens-ment

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Pique the Geek 20120819: Nitrogen, without Life

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 19 August 2012 08:59:23 PM. © Docudharma - Front Page

I took a week off from blogging last week for a number of reasons. One was that I was having trouble getting my mind around topics. Another was being in sort of a strange set of moods that have made concentration rather difficult. Yet[...]

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http://www.docudharma.com/diary/30645/pique-the-geek-20120819-nitrogen-without-li
fe

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In Picking Ryan, Romney Makes an All-In Move

The past five Republican vice-presidential candidates have all been quite conservative. But the four who preceded Ryan also had other strengths - and they were usually chosen in the hope of balancing out some perceived deficiency at the top of the ticket.

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http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/in-picking-ryan-romney-makes-
an-all-in-move/

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Akin Comments Could Swing Missouri Senate Race

Based on some loose historical precedents, the remarks that the Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri made about pregnancy and rape could be enough to swing the polls to the incumbent, Claire McCaskill.

Read The Full Article:
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/akin-comments-could-swing-mis
souri-senate-race/

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