Category: Awards

"Government should treat all citizens impartially, without regard to wealth, race, ethnicity, disability, religion, sex, political affiliation or national origin. We oppose all forms of invidious discrimination. Sexual orientation is not an appropriate category," – an open declaration of the need for the government to discriminate against its gay citizens, in North Carolina's GOP party platform.

You are already free to fire someone just because they are gay in North Carolina. But the active embrace of such discrimination, just like the recent constitutional amendment, rubs it in with twice the rawness.

"At least Hayes had the courage to offer a sincere-sounding apology, though I'm certainly not alone with my suspicion that he truly believes everything he said, and everything his co-religionists in the cult of anti-Americanism said alongside him to besmirch our soldiers — living, dead, and fallen — on this Memorial Day weekend. Our soldiers take an oath to defend America against enemies foreign and domestic. Clearly, domestic enemies are in MSNBC studios, though I don't suggest they be punished or harmed. They have every right to be idiots, though one would prefer that they at least recognize who is risking life and limb to protect that right. While I understand the temptation to waterboard Chris Hayes, the right answer is to understand that he represents today's Democratic Party. The proper punishment for Mr. Hayes and his ilk is to make sure their TV ratings are as low as possible (which may already be the case when it comes to Mr. Hayes' show) and to vote against Democratic candidates, other than those who (unlike John Kerry) have served with honor, at every opportunity," – Ross Kaminsky, American Spectator. 

The most revealing thing about this rant is its understanding of waterboarding. It is, in Kaminsky's eyes, an instrument of punishment. Every now and again, the far right shows its hand. The adoption of torture was as much about revenge and payback as it was a misguided, illegal, desperate attempt to get intelligence by methods never designed (by totalitarians) to get intelligence.

"Why would a president who gave America vast unemployment, soaring inflation, a moribund economy, record deficits, and a manically ill-conceived energy policy be coasting toward re-election?" – Tim Cavanaugh, Reason.

Lets unpack this claptrap for a second. Obama "gave" the US "vast unemployment"? The month before he took office, the US lost 900,000 jobs in the worst recession, caused by a financial crash. No month has been as bad since and within a year, the US was gaining jobs again. Unemployment remains too high, but it is slowly retreating, as is often the case after a financial panic-caused recession. "Soaring inflation?":

He just made that one up. A "moribund economy"? If so, it's been that way for a long time:

Record deficits? Yes, they've been big because of the recession and the collapse in revenues since the Bush tax cuts and the stimulus. But the record is held by George W. Bush, whose final fiscal year clocked in at $1,413 billion, after eight years of astounding fiscal recklessness. This coming fiscal year, the deficit is projected to be $1,300 billion. I'd like Obama to commit more emphatically to a Simpson-Bowles type-deal. But without any Republican give on taxes, that's impossible. And his actual record on spending is, as usual, better than his Republican predecessor's.

"A manically ill-conceived energy policy"? That's an opinion, not a fact, so I can't rebut it. But the rest is rhetoric, not reality, a desire to project onto Obama everything the right wants to believe about him. The same sentence, after all, would be more accurate if it had been written in 1979 about Jimmy Carter. Tim Cavanaugh's jerking knee seems to come from the same period.