“The high-level state Government has no fucking right to drive down my fucking property values, especially with local authorities opposed.”

-Site Commenter Miles SG

There’s an interesting discussion going on in the comments section at Matthew Yglesias’ site. It concern the establishment of a Tea Party organized group called “The Campaign for Liberty” that was founded in opposition to a state law restricting localities ability to place land use restrictions on private property. What the law says, essentially, is that localities must designate areas where medium-density and mixed use contruction is permitted. Basically what we’re talking about here are apartment buildings and light commecial real-estate, such as a 7-11 or a dentist’s office. But this law has some local residents up in arms, worried that letting another man do what he wants with his own property will negatively affect someone else’s property values. Yglesias notes the odd contradictions in play:

This is a country where the free market position is that for-profit colleges should have a right to unrestricted government subsidies. So why shouldn’t “liberty” mean the liberty of rich suburbanites to ban medium-density construction? Here’s a group of people being forced to do something they don’t like and they don’t like being forced to accept urbanization any more than conservatives like being forced to let gay couples get married or the conservatives of yore liked being forced to integrate the Montgomery bus system. Change feels coercive to people.

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So this small alternative paper, the WashingtonCity paper, runs a story by sports writer Dave McKenna. It’s all about how awful a person Redskins team owner Dan Snyder really is. Apparently he’s all into defiling federally protected lands, telemarketing, charging fans admission for team workouts, hiring bad people, firing good people, pitching certain kinds of tickets to lobbysists as a way of skirting congressional gift limits, etc. etc. etc.

It was all good and well, until the Washington City paper decided to hire illustrator Brooke Hatfield to create an illustration for the article. And Hatfield went waaaay overboard, creating a representation of the Jewish Snyder so over-the-top and blatant in its use of anti-semitic imagery that Snyder is threatening to sue and has enlisted the help of the Simon Weisenthal center, which is itself demanding an apology from the newpaper, insisting that:

…it is inappropriate and unacceptable when a symbol like this–associated with virulent anti-Semitism going back to the Middle Ages, deployed by the genocidal Nazi regime, by Soviet propagandists and even in 2011 by those who still seek to demonize Jews today–is used on the front cover of a publication in our Nation’s Capital against a member of the Jewish community.

Because the image in question is so objectionable, so virulently hateful, so outrageously out of bounds, dear Stinquer, I have deliberately chosen to hide it from casual view beyond the break. Click the link to see the rest of this article, as well as the gruesome defamatory pap that passes for “illustration” these days:

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 Rememeber the last two of years when Dick Army’s Tea Party engineered massive astroturf rallies against the Obama Administration by scaring seniors into believing that the President was going to implement large funding cuts to Medicare? The nation saw scenes of seniors on electric scooters attending anti-government TEA party rallies terrified by the prospect that the Obama administration was threatening their access to a Socialist, government run health insurance program.

The juxtaposition was incongruous, to be sure. But nonetheless, there they were with their government supplied scooters and their signs, proving that in politics it is far more effective to scare people with lies than try to convince them of the superiority of your actual policy positions by explaining the intricacies and nuances of your plan. Read more »

Does it surprise anyone that Fox News has decided to launch a salvo against the latest call for political civility –the suggestion that Democrats and Republicans sit side by side at the State of the Union address– by making a mocking, sardonic reference to the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement? (Click the image at left to expand the headline that reads “‘Kumbaya Seating’ at State Of the Union a Distraction?”)

Two years ago, a Republican congressman from South Carolina enthralled the Tea Party faithful by shouting out the words “you lie” as our nation’s first African American president delivered the traditional State of The Union message to Congress. For showing such infantile disrespect to president Obama, congressman Joe Wilson was hailed as a hero, and came to embody and give voice to the hateful bigotry of those who cannot accept that our nation, the world around them and the times, have changed.

I have little doubt that many of those who question Barack Obama’s citizenship and country of birth do so because they see in their fanciful conspiracy theories a vain hope of clearing America of the “stain” of having been governed by a black president. If Obama is illegitimate, then he never was president in the first palce, and America’s history governance by white males remains unbroken.

Kumbaya, people.

The Huffington Post linked to this informative UK Channel 4 interview with the surgeon who treated Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. I think it’s worth re-posting here to update the Stinque crowd on Giffords’ condition (good considering) and long-term prognosis (too soon to tell).

[ Flash video not available. ]

(VIA: Huffington Post)

A Texas judge has sentenced former GOP majority leader Tom DeLay to three years in prison for his role in a scheme to launder corporate money to Texas candidates in contravention to state law.

AUSTIN, Texas —Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader, was sentenced to three years in prison on Monday after convictions for money laundering and conspiracy stemming from his role in a scheme to channel corporate contributions to Texas state races in 2002.
…
After listening to Mr. DeLay say he felt he had done nothing wrong, Judge Pat Priest sentenced him to three years in prison for the conspiracy count and 10 years’ probation for the money laundering count. The judge rejected arguments from Mr. DeLay that the trial had been a politically motivated vendetta mounted by an overzealous Democratic District Attorney.

“Before there were Republicans and Democrats, there was America, and what America is about is the rule of law,” the judge said just before pronouncing the sentence.

Amen!

Oh yeah, Fox News is running a story on this event, too. I’ll give you one chance to guess what word does not appear once in the article… Read more »

… because the Supreme Court has just denied another appeal by lawyer-dentist, real-estate agent, Birther Queen, Orly Taitz.