News Roundup for 7/23/09

Domestic enemy, shown laughing at American Christians

-Headline of the day-
"Domestic 'enemies' worry GOP hopeful."

No surprise there; if you don't crap your pants over terr'ists at least twice a day, you aren't a good Republican. But it isn't terr'ists who have Arkansas US Senate candidate Conrad Reynolds, it's them damn socialists -- like that Obama fella.

"When I joined the military I took an oath to defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic," Reynolds said. "I never thought it would be domestic, but in today's world I do believe we have enemies here. It's time for people to stand up. It's time for us to speak out."

"We need to change if we want to stop the way America is going toward socialism," he told a group of Young Republicans. "We need someone to stand up to Barack Obama and his policies. We must protect our culture, our Christian identity."

Yeah... Turns out that "Christian Identity" isn't really the best choice of words. That's the name of one of them there domestic terr'ist groups. At the same time, Reynolds seems to suggest that he doesn't think Obama's a Christian. Using the name of a violent racist movement at the same time that you're suggesting that the first black president isn't really a Christian might be described by the picky as "boneheaded."

Here's the fun part, though. According to the report, "After his speech, Reynolds said before an interview that he would be careful with his answers."

Man, that ship has sailed... (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, are Mommy and Daddy keeping you up all night with their worrying and fighting? Don't worry, it's not about you, it's about your health insurance...


Click for animation

Remember, your parents love you very much... The insurance industry, not so much. (MarkFiore.com)


-The poet speaks-
Sen. Chuck Grassley has taken a break from writing stream-of-consciousness Twitter poems. Surprisingly, when he's not trying to cram a freakin' essay into 140 characters, he seems to actually speak English fairly well. Even more surprisingly, he shows evidence of higher reasoning.

In a conference call with Iowa reporters, Grassley said that the Republican political strategy of obstructing health care reform was dumb and he proved it. According to the report, "He referred to a poll showing voters would assign blame 30 percent to the health industry, 22 to Republicans, 11 percent to Democrats and only 4 percent to Obama."

Yeah, that's what you call "math" and it doesn't really look good for the GOP. If they sink reform, Obama will walk away smelling like a rose, while Republicans will smell like the rotten vegetables that will be thrown at them.

"So it seems to me that we have a responsibility to the Republican Party not to be seen as destroying or at least not talking about things that people believe are wrong with the present health-care system," Chuck said.

Of course, the rest of the party is out there on the Island of Wishful Thinking, while the Twitter-poet resides in reality.

Ironic. (Think Progress)