Letter to the Editor of the day.

The Stranger is the lucky recipient...

Dear Editor,

Only when every richly powerful and powerfully rich person on this earth is living in constant and abject fear of being cooked and eaten alive will there be peace in our world.

Sincerely Yours,

Leland Mellott

Mount Vernon, Washington

A reminder...

...via Robert's Daily Dose.

I support President Obama…

…because of some things and in spite of some others. Among the latter is the continued exploitation of American insecurity for a distressing assault on civil liberties and basic standards of Constitutional justice. While there are no death panels in the health care act, there apparently are death panels within the folds of the National Security Council.

We're a long way down a path that's been traveled before. Jason Kuznicki finds uncomfortable analogies to the present in the history of tyranny, but offers a glimmer of hope...

We already have our Bastille and our Inquisition. This is our Star Chamber. So they’re all quite small, you say? Almost inconsequential? Great. All the easier to get rid of them. Perhaps in our case it won’t take a revolution.

Perhaps.

It won't be easy though. The fact, I'm afraid, is that most people will trade most of their liberty, and all of yours, for a mere pittance of (mostly false) security, which means that a genuine commitment to liberty and justice for all is an almost certain electoral loser at this moment in American history. Neither party gives a damn about liberty. Hell, the Libertarians don't really give a damn about liberty.

They won't, either, until we recognize that the price of fear is too high.

No city is safe!

I'll wrap up Map of the Day Week with a blast from the past...

(It clicks bigger.)

Ah, the wonderful world of my youth...

When he's right, he's right.

Very far right, in fact, but just the same, credit where it's due to Rep. Steve King (R-IA)...

"They can't help themselves; it's in their DNA. These people are Leftists," King said of Democrats. "They don't see this country the way that we do. Their idea of American Exceptionalism is yet to come."

I imagine he managed to vocally capitalize leftist when he said it, too, but he reveals an important truth, just the same. My idea, and I think most Democrats' idea, of American Exceptionalism is, and will always be, an idea of something "yet to come."

Democrats believe that if we pull together, we can continue to make progress toward that more perfect union. We can have more justice, more tranquility at home and security in the world, more prosperity and greater liberty if we work together as We The People. We believe that part of the brilliance of the founders was the creation of a system of government that would not only allow, but encourage that progress.

Republicans, on the other hand, see things differently. As related by Rep. King, their message is that that we've come as far as we can come, done all we can do, are all we can be. Things are as good as they're going to get, even if they're worse than they were. It's time to hunker down, cut your losses, conserve your resources and plan your escape route. They're afraid to imagine, let alone confront, what might be "yet to come."

Just another reason...

Truth.

Literally. Glen Greenwald...

This is literally true: the Right's reaction to [the New York terror trials] announcement -- we're too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country -- is the textbook definition of "surrendering to terrorists."

Across the Cascade Curtain…

…the current occupant of Tom Foley's seat polishes up her wingnut credentials...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Surrounded by a group of parents clutching pictures of their special needs children, two Republican members of Congress stood in front of the Capitol on Tuesday and warned that President Obama's proposed health care system will lead to a rationing of care for children with disabilities.

Yep, that was Cathy McMorris-Rodgers up there with Arizona's Trent Franks, playing the Palin card, and like Palin, they lied…

McMorris-Rodgers could not point to any specific language in the legislation currently before Congress that would deny health care to disabled children, but she said she and the families were worried that a government-run health insurance plan would give power to a government bureaucrat who would be able to decide whether or not "certain procedures or certain devices" would be covered for individuals.

The independent fact-checker PolitiFact wrote last month that there "is no panel in any version of the health care bills in Congress that judges a person's 'level of productivity in society' to determine whether they are 'worthy' of health care."

McMorris-Rodgers not only joins Palin in politically exploiting her own Downs Syndrome child, but like her apparent new role model from the north, she does it with a lie made up out of whole cloth.

McMorris-Rodgers likes to project a moderate image, but this move puts her squarely in the ranks of the tactical extremists in her party who will say or do anything to obstruct progress and to instill and exploit the climate of fear that their radical, fundamentally un-American ideology requires for survival.

Hat tip to Steve Benen.

It's time for...

The kind of difference...

...that demands a decision. Where It Stands…



Haven't we heard more than enough about the monster under the bed over the last seven years? Time to turn the lights on and get about our business, isn't it?

Quote of the day…

…a number of days ago.

If one candidate's trying to scare you and the other one's trying to get you to think, if one candidate's appealing to your fears and the other one's appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope."

Bill Clinton, about another race, at another time.

Excuse me, I think the phone's ringing...

Hat tip to Andy at The Political Realm.

Boo!

Senator Clinton…

"We have people who are plotting against us right now, getting ready to repeat the atrocity of Sept 11. We know it, I see the intelligence reports."

Hat tip to PSoTD.

It's true.

Krugman...

[T]here isn’t actually any such thing as Islamofascism.

Nope, there isn't.

The whole piece is true. Read, and fear not.