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As if anyone needed further proof that the far-right suffers from a severe case of delusional disorder, this comes out of Texas.

The Texas Board of Education has been meeting this week to revise its social studies curriculum. During the past three days, “the board’s far-right faction wielded their power to shape lessons on the civil rights movement, the U.S. free enterprise system and hundreds of other topics”:

– To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex and gender as social constructs.”

– The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

– The Board refused to require that “students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.”

One board member left the meeting in disgust with this…

“They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”

These people will not stop until every child in America believes that the earth is 6000 years old and every American is forced to carry a gun and a Bible.  As one reader so eloquently put it, “Intellect just had its Alamo.”

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Later than I thought…forgot to move the clock ahead.

I have no idea who the talking heads will be this morning but I’ll take a wild guess and say that health care will be the topic of discussion.

Another Kristofferson classic…Happy Sunday.

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Climate change is the perfect example of what happens when every issue becomes politicized.  The latest Gallop poll reveals the following discouraging graph.

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The New Republic asks why the change in public perception.

So why the rise in skepticism? Was it those Climategate e-mails? All those news stories harping on a few small errors in the IPCC’s report? Sure, it’s possible that both episodes could’ve affected public opinion, even if neither was significant on the merits. Still, it’s interesting to look at the crosstabs of the poll, as Josh Nelson does, and note that skepticism about global warming is almost exclusively on the rise among political conservatives. Two years ago, for instance, 50 percent of conservatives believed climate change was already happening—that’s now down to 30 percent.

I’d guess it’s just as likely that political dynamics are a big driver here, as opposed to, say, a handful of e-mails from East Anglia. After all, climate change has become increasingly identified as a Democratic cause—in no small part because it’s one of Barack Obama’s main agenda items. And, on the flip side, you have key Republicans like John McCain and Charlie Crist facing primary challenges and edging away from what was once a signature issue for them. Energy issues have become far more partisan of late, which could explain the sharp uptick in skepticism over the past year and a half.

There are two main observations to be drawn from this.  One is, as noted above, that climate change is identified as a liberal cause.  Republicans have been successful in poisoning the minds of their followers to the point where any issue which has a liberal or Democratic backing is perceived to be wrong and perverted by conservatives.  No facts are necessary to back up their claims.  Simply state a lie enough times and shout it out from the highest mountain and the sheep will follow.  We’ve seen the same type of ploy being used in the health care debate.

The second observation to be made is that industry lobbyists (i.e. Exxon) have the necessary money and resources to skew any topic just enough to plant a seed of doubt in the minds of many.  The tobacco industry did the same in the 70s when they downplayed the harm caused by nicotine.  We see it in the power of the religious right who have lambasted science to the point where half the population discounts evolution.

Republican’s mentor of propaganda, Nazi Joseph Goebbels said is so well.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

This technique has become the Republican trademark.  It was used effectively during the Bush years to sell the Iraq invasion and it is equally effective now in their role as minority party.

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If all goes as planned, a health care bill will be signed into law by Saturday March 20, albeit without a public option.

As soon as Thursday or Friday, the House would pass the health care bill approved by the Senate in December. The House would immediately approve a package of changes in a separate bill, using a procedure known as budget reconciliation, to avoid the threat of a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

Mr. Obama would sign the Senate health care bill, making it the law of the land. The budget reconciliation bill would go to the Senate, where Republicans intend to offer dozens of amendments and points of order in an effort to alter or stop it. Assuming they are able to fend off the Republican blocking efforts, Democrats could pass the reconciliation package with a simple majority vote, amending the health bill in a way that makes it acceptable to Democrats in the House and the Senate and to Mr. Obama. The president would then sign the reconciliation bill, completing the process.

And voila!, it’s done. While Republicans will cry out in protest that it is being done via the reconciliation process, what they neglect to point out is that health care bills have already been passed in both the House and Senate.  It is the Senate bill which the House will vote on which will be signed by the President.  Reconciliation will only come into play once the bill is signed and it will only affect the House amendments.  So the process has not been circumvented despite what Republicans claim.

As for the public option…

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Thursday that she would not include a public option in a health care reconciliation package that the House will send to the Senate.

“We’re talking about something that is not going to be part of the legislation,” Pelosi said, noting “with sadness” that the public insurance option won’t be part of legislation. “I’m quite sad that the public option is not in there,” she said.

Fear not. They’ll take care of it in Obama’s second term.  What we do know for sure is that the entire right-wing noise machine will be blasting away all of next week propagating every lie they can imagine.  This week, the death panels nonsense resurfaced with a vengeance.  When you don’t have a decent argument to make, lying is your best friend.

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Just when you think it’s dead and buried, it makes a resurgence.

The public option letter in the Senate has more than 40 signatories now. That would seem to push it well beyond the point of viability. But with Nancy Pelosi saying that the Senate doesn’t have the votes and “it’s not in the reconciliation,” it’s not exhibiting many signs of life.

As far as I can tell, the story of the public option’s resurgence has been a mixture of smart organizing and Senate cowardice. Few senators wanted to stand against the thing. But nor did they want to bring it back into play. So a number of them signed the letter under pressure, waiting and hoping that someone else — maybe the leadership or the White House — would figure this out for them. The White House and Pelosi have attempted a version of that. They’re not coming out against the public option push; they’re just saying the votes don’t exist. And maybe they don”t. The letter has 41 senators signed on, which is still fewer than 50.

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Bill Maher obviously disagrees with the last post.

“I think [Obama's] biggest mistake that he has made in his first year was to put bipartisanship ahead of fixing the country. He spent all his political capital on getting three damned votes for that stimulus bill, instead of coming in with all the energy from the election and saying, you know what, we‘re in a crisis mode; I won this election by a sizable mandate; here‘s what we‘re going to do; if you don‘t like it, Republicans, you can suck on it.”

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Here is something to consider the next time your faith in the President begins to waver. From a DailyDish reader.

Don’t forget the President is still following the script from Doris Kearns-Goodwin’s A Team of Rivals, along with all his other readings on Lincoln.  President Lincoln calmly, deliberately, and with a lot of mistakes and few successes for several years led us to victory in the Civil War.  Oftentimes he was at odds with his own party, at least the “Radical Republican” wing.  Lincoln, and much of the North, even believed he would lose the election for a second term until Sherman took Atlanta. That’s the model Obama is following with regard to the Republican insurgency, slow, steady, smart, and ultimately, successful (we still hope).

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Interested in knowing what kind of liberal or conservative you are?  I came across one of those silly quizzes which categorizes you based on how you answer a series of questions.  If nothing else, the questions are entertaining.

Example from “What kind of liberal are you?”

Question 1: Which bumper sticker would you most likely put on your car?

Save the Earth—It’s the Only Planet With Chocolate

Democrats: Cleaning Up Republican Messes Since 1933

Canoe Naked

Insurance Companies Are Republican Death Panels

Evolution Is Just a Theory . . . Kind of Like Gravity

May the Fetus You Save Be Gay

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Question 4: If the Founding Fathers were alive today, they would be most appalled by which of the following?

That hemp is illegal. Come on, what wasn’t clear about the “pursuit of happiness”?

The fact that Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat was lost to a truck-driving nudist who tried to auction off his daughters on TV

The military-industrial-evangelical complex

That the Bush-packed Supreme Court thinks corporations are people too

That 60 million people punched a ballot with Sarah Palin’s name on it in ‘08

From the “What kind of conservative are you?”

Question 1: Which bumper sticker would you most likely put on your car?

If You’re Gonna Burn Our Flag, Wrap Yourself in It First

In Case of Rapture, This Car Will Be Unmanned

Honk if I’m Paying Your Mortgage

Another Former Fetus for Life

I’ll Keep My Guns, Freedom and Money. You Can Keep the “Change.”

I’d Rather Be Waterboarding

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Question 4: A second civil war has just broken out in America. Who is to blame?

Barack Obama — for accidentally nuking Texas after misreading his TelePrompter

Bible-bashing secularists—for trying to ban God and for provoking His wrath

Tax-and-spend liberals—for taking the “free” out of the free market and the “capital” out of capitalism

The PC Police — for expanding their War on Christmas to wars on Easter, Valentine’s Day, and the 4th of July

Liberal socialists — for attempting to create a government of, by, and for gay Marxist Muslim illegal immigrants

Liberal terrorist appeasers — for letting America’s guard down and responding to the next terror attack with a strongly worded letter

Witty stuff.  Here’s what they classified me as. Not sure about the elite part but hey,  I’m not contesting the results.

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My Liberal Identity

You are a Reality-Based Intellectualist, also known as the liberal elite. You are a proud member of what’s known as the reality-based community, where science, reason, and non-Jesus-based thought reign supreme.

Take the quiz at
About.com Political Humor

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