Wholly Baloney

Talk about your fear mongering... Bill Bennett is at it again.

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If Facebook had been around then

For a day that started out with “You’re going to die,” this was turning out all right

Mike Celezik, news reporter and sports columnist for MSNBC, a contributor to the Today Show, and one of the right wing's despised "lame stream media," died today following a year-long battle with T-cell lymphoma. Mike was a true journalist, striving mightily to be objective in reporting the news, all the while recognizing the irony and wishing to interject some reason. 

Somewhat over a year ago, when first diagnosed, Mike did what most any hard core journalist would do. He reported on it. On August 19th, Mike made his last entry. It is worth reading.

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UPDATE: It appears that Mike was a fan of PZ Myers.
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Sunday Funnies

Predatory banking

A neighbor owns a credit card issued by Chase. She never uses it. Doesn't even carry the card with her. Without ever using it, she has gotten into the habit of never opening the bill. She just tosses it.

Mistake.

Apparently a couple months back Chase instituted a new fee. They call it a minimum interest charge. This is a charge that is supposed to be added if there is any small balance on the account that would not incur at least the minimum interest, but my neighbor never used the card and there was no balance.

But they charged her $1.00 anyway. Probably a mistake, but possibly not.

The end result, since my neighbor knew she had no balance and therefore tossed the bill... was a service charge of $35.00 for a late payment.

She is still fighting it.

These are the guys our tax money bailed out.
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Idiot

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The Tea Party: Not just for breakfast anymore

Tea party candidate: “Hitler invented separation of church and state”

Delaware is fielding some interesting tea party Republicans this election. Businessman Glen Urquhart of Rehoboth Beach narrowly defeated the endorsed Republican candidate, Michele Rollins, to secure the GOP nomination for Congress by roughly 550 votes out of more than 50,000 cast. Why do I call him interesting? Watch the video and you shall see.

Hitler instead of Jefferson, eh? Well why don’t we take a look at what Thomas Jefferson actually wrote to the Danbury Baptists.

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

And what exactly does Hitler say that would give Mr. Urquhart the idea that the reviled German Chancellor was the origin of the quote, and where did Urquhart get such an idea anyway? I suspect it may have come from right wingnut Bryan Fischer. Fischer is talk-radio DJ, former executive director of the Idaho Values Alliance, racist, homophobe, bigot, and white supremacist.

It was January two years ago that Fischer published a piece on the Teabagger Renew America site, titled Separation of Church and State: Straight from the Mind of Hitler. In this piece, Fischer quotes Hitler as stating, "Politics do not belong in the Church," and "The Church must be separate from the State."

So I suppose we could give Urquhart points for being technically accurate, because Jefferson says “separation between church and state” and not “separation of church and state,” but even if we were to allow that technicality, it still does not detract from the asininity of the sentiment, and even if Fischer could be trusted to accurately quote Hitler, those quotes are technically incorrect as well.

Perhaps Mr. Urquhart should spend a bit of time actually studying history. I bet the history teacher in the audience would quite happily tutor him.

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