First Door on the Left

We’ve been talking about wingnuts a bit lately, so when this popped up on my monitor this morning I knew I had to share it with you.

Somehow or other, I ended up on the mailing list of The Washington Times. For those who may not be familiar with this rag, it is about as right wing as right wing gets. It’s rather entertaining to see the stuff they come up with from day to day.

This morning they took a trip deep, deep into the Land of Wingnuttia. Hollywood “actor” Jon Voight has proven himself to be almost as wingnutty as it is possible for a person to be. The problem is, folks on the right really adore this nut. It is ample illustration of just how far off the deep end they have dived.

So, without further ado…

Voight: Is Obama creating a civil war in America?

Jon Voight

A Hollywood conservative has headed East. It’s “Freedom Concert” time for Jon Voight. The Academy Award winner will join Sean Hannity in Cincinnati and Atlanta this weekend to honor fallen soldiers and present college scholarships to surviving children. Mr. Voight — a warrior himself in many ways — has been cogitating about the state of America, meanwhile.

“There’s a real question at stake now. Is President Obama creating a civil war in our own country?” Mr. Voight tells Inside the Beltway.

“We are witnessing a slow, steady takeover of our true freedoms. We are becoming a socialist nation, and whoever can’t see this is probably hoping it isn’t true. If we permit Mr. Obama to take over all our industries, if we permit him to raise our taxes to support unconstitutional causes, then we will be in default. This great America will become a paralyzed nation.”

The fallen soldiers and college scholarships part is actually quite good, but the article takes a nosedive from there. (Did you know that Voight is Angelina Jolie’s father? Neither here nor there, but I honestly did not know that. It’s not mentioned in this article. I just came across it as I was doing a bit a reading up on the guy. I wonder how he and Brad Pitt are getting along.)

Should, for some reason, you feel inclined to read the rest of the column, clicking on it’s title will take you to it. (Read some of the comments people have left while you are there. Downright scary.)

That’s some crazy stuff right there, isn’t it? And the Republicans wonder why nobody is taking the seriously anymore. (Really?)

It seems to be time once again for Friday Night Cartoons. Each week, your most humble and intensely dedicated editor searches the intertubes for the best editorial and political cartoons published during that week. On Friday afternoon/early evening, we present them here. What you see below are called thumbnails. They are miniaturized representations of the actual cartoons. To view the actual cartoons, the trick is to click on the thumbnails. You may also view the entire set of cartoons in a manually controlled slide show by clicking on the icons that will magically appear at the bottom of your browser window. Please raise your hand and wait to be called on if you have any questions. And, remember, your mileage may vary. Enjoy.

As always, our thanks go to the talented and observant cartoonists who, each week, help us smile through the pain.

Bonus Video: Jon Stewart’s interview with the woman who started the “death panels” myth…

Part two…

Update: “McCaughey loses board seat.”

Saturday additions:

Friday Night Cartoons won’t show up until 5:00 this afternoon (Central Time), but I had to “prime the pump” with this one. David Horsey is a genius. He sure hit gold with this one…

(I told you I was having difficulty letting this go, didn’t I?)
 

Yesterday we touched on Barney Frank’s town hall meeting in which he gave the wingnuts a little taste of their own medicine. I’m not quite ready to let it go. Not just yet. Sorry. It was just too good.

Here’s America’s most trusted newsman’s [*] (<- there's a link in there) take on the "incident..."

I’m enjoying this way, way too much.

The first time I watched this segment, I thought the “Fox News guy” was a member of Jon’s staff. He wasn’t. He was actually a Fox News guy.

At some point, I’m going to have to let this go. Just not tonight. Okay?

P.S. This may be the segment of video that the Fox News guy wanted to show…

I find it absolutely hilarious that the people who show up at these town hall meetings for the sole purpose of screaming, shouting and preventing rational dialog complain about being “put down.” Come on…

Priceless. (I have to wonder who’s paying for her daily Lipitor fix. I’ll bet it ain’t her.)

People in Massachusetts get Barney Frank to represent them. I get Pete Sessions. I’m telling you, life is not fair.

UPDATE:

Rep. Barney Frank schooled his fellow Democrats last night in the way to properly handle wingnuts who persist in disrupting town hall meetings. If they insist on acting like ill-mannered, uneducated children, you treat them like ill-mannered, uneducated children…

I hope Democrats everywhere were paying close attention. A dose of their own medicine is sometimes the best thing you can possible give them. Though it is extremely unlikely, there is always a chance that they may actually walk away just a little wiser.

The looks on the faces of these people are absolutely priceless. Talk about deer in headlights. They seem to be absolutely amazed and confounded that a lowly Democratic Congressman would dare stand up to them. Talk about coming to a war of wits unarmed. Way to go, Rep. Frank!

UPDATE, and a warning: The following video (audio) is a blatant display of right wing ignorance, stupidity and bigotry (a.k.a. Rush Limbaugh). Watch (listen) at your own risk…

Related: “Wingnuts Gone Wild!“
 

More and more guns are beginning to show up at events where President Barack Obama is appearing. Today, in Phoenix, Arizona, about a dozen people were spotted carrying weapons outside the convention center where the President spoke. “Second Amendment” rights be damned, there is no acceptable reason for a person in the United States of America to be carrying a loaded gun at a political event… especially one where the President is present. (At an event where George W. Bush was present, you could be escorted out or forced to stand in a fenced-in “free speech zone” for carrying a sign or wearing a t-shirt with the wrong message on it. Apparently, it is alright to carry loaded assault rifles at events where Barack Obama is present. Something is not right.)

Brady Campaign’s President Paul Helmke issued the following statement today:

“Bringing loaded firearms to any Presidential event endangers all in attendance. Even though our weak national and state gun laws may allow this dangerous behavior, we should use a little common sense. Individuals carrying loaded weapons at these events require constant attention from police and Secret Service officers, thus stretching their protective efforts even thinner. The possibility that these weapons might be grabbed or stolen or accidentally mishandled increases the risks of serious injury or death to all in attendance.

“The National Rifle Association and other ‘gun rights’ groups need to send a message about ‘gun responsibilities’ to their members and all gun owners. Loaded weapons at political forums endanger all involved, distract law enforcement, and end up stifling debate. Presidential protesters need to leave their firearms at home — no exceptions.”

I agree 110%. Leave your guns at home, people. Just because you can does not mean you should.

Something bad is going to happen. Mark my words.

UPDATE: This video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Aug. 17, 2009…

UPDATE #2: The whole thing was a “publicity stunt.”

UPDATE #3:

President Barack Obama has an op-ed column in today’s New York Times. It’s your Sunday morning reading assignment…

Why We Need Health Care Reform

by Barack Obama

OUR nation is now engaged in a great debate about the future of health care in America. And over the past few weeks, much of the media attention has been focused on the loudest voices. What we haven’t heard are the voices of the millions upon millions of Americans who quietly struggle every day with a system that often works better for the health-insurance companies than it does for them.

These are people like Lori Hitchcock, whom I met in New Hampshire last week. Lori is currently self-employed and trying to start a business, but because she has hepatitis C, she cannot find an insurance company that will cover her. Another woman testified that an insurance company would not cover illnesses related to her internal organs because of an accident she had when she was 5 years old. A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn’t known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died.

I hear more and more stories like these every single day, and it is why we are acting so urgently to pass health-insurance reform this year. I don’t have to explain to the nearly 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance how important this is. But it’s just as important for Americans who do have health insurance.

There are four main ways the reform we’re proposing will provide more stability and security to every American.

[snip]

In the coming weeks, the cynics and the naysayers will continue to exploit fear and concerns for political gain. But for all the scare tactics out there, what’s truly scary — truly risky — is the prospect of doing nothing. If we maintain the status quo, we will continue to see 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day. Premiums will continue to skyrocket. Our deficit will continue to grow. And insurance companies will continue to profit by discriminating against sick people.

That is not a future I want for my children, or for yours. And that is not a future I want for the United States of America.

In the end, this isn’t about politics. This is about people’s lives and livelihoods. This is about people’s businesses. This is about America’s future, and whether we will be able to look back years from now and say that this was the moment when we made the changes we needed, and gave our children a better life. I believe we can, and I believe we will.

Click on the column’s title to read it in its entirety.

Video: Health care town hall meeting in Belgrade, Montana on August 14, 2009…

(Transcript available on White House website.)
 

From the White House weblog:

The President talks about how the chatter and ruckus around health insurance reform on television obscures the reality of what’s happening in America. He discusses how in most towns people and Members of Congress are having constructive conversations, and how people are learning how reform will help them and their families with the real problems they have faced with the insurance system.

“But now’s the hard part. Because the history is clear – every time we come close to passing health insurance reform, the special interests with a stake in the status quo use their influence and political allies to scare and mislead the American people.

“As an example, let’s look at one of the scarier-sounding and more ridiculous rumors out there – that so-called “death panels” would decide whether senior citizens get to live or die. That rumor began with the distortion of one idea in a Congressional bill that would allow Medicare to cover voluntary visits with your doctor to discuss your end-of-life care – if and only if you decide to have those visits. It had nothing to do with putting government in control of your decisions; in fact, it would give you all the information you need – if you want it – to put you in control of your decisions.”

Watch the video of the President’s address below or read the full text, as prepared for delivery, after the break.

Click below to listen to the audio only:

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[I couldn't be bothered to come up with a decent introduction to this week's Friday Night Cartoons, so I'm just going to copy and paste one from this past April. Hope you don't mind. It's as relevant now as it was then.]

Though our conservative friends may disagree (they do have a tendency to disagree with just about everything), it is Friday evening once again. That means that it is once again time to post Friday Night Cartoons, a collection of the best, in this blogger’s opinion, political and editorial cartoons published during the week just ending. If you have been here before, you know the drill. If not, just click on the cartoons to make them bigger or to start a manually-controlled slide show (pay attention to the icons that will appear at the bottom of your browser window). Enjoy.

As always, our thanks go to the talented and observant cartoonists who, each week, help us smile through the pain.

Bonus video:

Saturday additions:

Just a few minutes ago I finished watching the live stream of President Obama’s town hall meeting in Bozeman, Montana. (A lovely town, by the way… been there several times myself.) I think it went rather well. I’ll be posting the transcript and hopefully a video of the event as soon as they become available.

In the meantime, I’d like you to read Paul Krugman’s column in today’s New York Times. I’m with him right up until the last couple of paragraphs. You’ll just have to read it to see what I mean. Let me get you started…

Republican Death Trip

“I am in this race because I don’t want to see us spend the next year re-fighting the Washington battles of the 1990s. I don’t want to pit Blue America against Red America; I want to lead a United States of America.” So declared Barack Obama in November 2007, making the case that Democrats should nominate him, rather than one of his rivals, because he could free the nation from the bitter partisanship of the past.

Some of us were skeptical. A couple of months after Mr. Obama gave that speech, I warned that his vision of a “different kind of politics” was a vain hope, that any Democrat who made it to the White House would face “an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can’t bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false.”

So, how’s it going?

Sure enough, President Obama is now facing the same kind of opposition that President Bill Clinton had to deal with: an enraged right that denies the legitimacy of his presidency, that eagerly seizes on every wild rumor manufactured by the right-wing media complex.

This opposition cannot be appeased. Some pundits claim that Mr. Obama has polarized the country by following too liberal an agenda. But the truth is that the attacks on the president have no relationship to anything he is actually doing or proposing.

Click on the title of the column to continue reading.