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It's really a shame this speech was not made in prime time, because he really said what many others said, but in a way that you felt as though you should fly when he was done. It was healing to hear him talk about how the cynics have tried to kill hope, while calling for hope to be our main motivator. Here's the text from that part, which is at about 4:00 or so.

There's something essential in the human spirit that always searches for hope. We are driven by hope. President Barack Obama has been lampooned for speaking of hope. Hope for a better America.

I want to encourage our President and all of us to continue to hope for an America that remembers, recognizes and federally protects its greatness. Yes, Mr. President, hope on. Continue to hope, Mr. President. No matter what, Mr. President, you keep on hoping! When everything is gone, you continue to hope.

As long as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob sits on the throne of grace, Mr. President, hope on! Hope on!

[...]

Mr. President, we want you to speak of hope to the American people because it is impossible for hope to overdraw its account in God's bank. The tough times our nation faced may have caused us great pain but they must not and will not cause us to lose our hope.

The C-SPAN video doesn't do justice to the reaction of the crowd at that point. It was deafening and electric. Everyone was on their feet, reaching for something besides criticism and bitterness.

And they had a reason. It isn't like there hasn't been change over the past four years, which Cleaver listed in the opening moments of his speech when he declared it was just fine to "color me liberal; color me Democrat." He, like most of the speakers at the convention, wrapped themselves around the too-long demonized term "liberal" and wore it like a robe.

Now for those of you out there who might be saying, "Hope, meh" I suggest you watch this video and especially watch the faces of the people hearing Cleaver.

Cleaver's call to "march on" recalls the civil rights era, and rightly so. Reminding everyone of Republicans' current rush to suppress the vote, Cleaver reminds that everyone has to get out and vote, and get everyone out to vote.

It was difficult to settle down after his speech and overall, it was one of the convention highlights for me. It wasn't that the themes were new. They're age-old. But he didn't simply speak those words, he drove them into everyone there as if he was inoculating them against the coming hate onslaught. His words of inclusion and unity were a message everyone needed to hear, there and across the nation.

Out of many, one. March on.

Baltimore Raven's linebacker Brandon Ayanbadejo recently caught the ire of State Rep Emmett C. Burns, Jr for having the temerity to speak out in favor of Maryland's ballot initiative for marriage equality. Rep. Burns even wrote a letter to his boss, the team owner Steve Bisciotti requesting that, and I quote, "I am requesting that you take the necessary action ... to inhibit such expressions from your employee."

Minnesota punter Chris Kluwe heard about this and wrote his own hilarious, profanity-filled letter back to Mr Burns in response. The complete letter (via Deadspin) is below the fold, but here is a snippet:

I can assure you that gay people getting married will have zero effect on your life. They won't come into your house and steal your children. They won't magically turn you into a lustful cockmonster. They won't even overthrow the government in an orgy of hedonistic debauchery because all of a sudden they have the same legal rights as the other 90 percent of our population—rights like Social Security benefits, child care tax credits, Family and Medical Leave to take care of loved ones, and COBRA healthcare for spouses and children. You know what having these rights will make gays? Full-fledged American citizens just like everyone else, with the freedom to pursue happiness and all that entails. Do the civil-rights struggles of the past 200 years mean absolutely nothing to you?

Kluwe went on The Ed Show tonight to explain why he wrote the letter. Kluwe had also spoken out recently against a marriage amendment in Minnesota which will be on the ballot in November.

Continue reading »

I think we're well past the time where we can talk about stopping global warming, and we're at the "how are we going to adapt to the new normal" phase:

The rate of Arctic Sea ice melt has caught scientists by surprise, leaving them to describe the current record low levels as "amazing," "a Goliath" and "unprecedented." While a record low was recorded on Aug. 26, the ice level continues to fall, and the National Snow and Ice Data Center reports that there is still a week left in the melting season.

The speed of the Arctic ice melt is astounding, scientists say. "It is a greater change than we could even imagine 20 years ago, even 10 years ago," Dr. Kim Holmen, international director of the Norwegian Polar Institute told the BBC. "And it has taken us by surprise and we must adjust our understanding of the system and we must adjust our science and we must adjust our feelings for the nature around us."

"This year's melting season is a Goliath," also notes geophysicist Marco Tedesco, director of the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory at City University of New York, the Wall Street Journal reports. "The ice is being lost at a very strong pace."

These scientists' opinions are no anomalies.

Weather Underground co-founder Dr. Jeff Masters writes that "Every major scientific institution that tracks Arctic sea ice agrees that new records for low ice area, extent, and volume have been set. These organizations include the University of Washington Polar Science Center (a new record for low ice volume), the Nansen Environmental & Remote Sensing Center in Norway, and the University of Illinois Cryosphere Today."

As we've come to see all too often, MSMers who are supposed to be the gatekeepers of the truth in reporting instead print misleading headlines to drive traffic to their stories that in the end only contradict their own story. Case in point: GOP VP candidate Rep. Paul Ryan told so many distortions in his speech in Tampa that it forced fact checkers to be a bigger event than the speech itself.

And yet, less than four weeks since being introduced as Mitt Romney's running mate, Ryan has given rise to a furious fact-check revolution, with analysts warning his claims -- about everything from Health Care reform to his best marathon time -- could imperil what many had painted as his cardinal virtue: Honesty.

Bill Clinton gave a rousing speech Wednesday night that was met with high acclaim by many pundits, bloggers, ordinary people and the Commentariat. Conservatives quickly played the backlash politics game that they created decades ago and charged liberal bias, complaining that the MSM didn't bother to fact-check BIll Clinton like they did Ryan. And then the fact-checkers replied that Clinton's claims about the GOP rang true.

On Thursday night President Obama took to the stage in North Carolina to accept the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party and to deliver his speech. It was a good speech, not his best certainly, but still, the early polls indicate he has received an approval bounce, while Mitt Romney's numbers remained flat.

Conservative fact checkers were laying in wait for Obama, just hoping to catch him in some Ryanesque storytelling so they could play the equivalency game. Now we come to Reuters. Let's look at their front page headline read all day Friday:

Did Obama's speech play fast and loose with the facts?

The headline slyly refers to the fast and furious scandal that Republicans have been ginning up for months now. Was that just an editing decision on what they thought sounded good or was it purposefully used to influence people leaning right or who wouldn't even read the article?

Here's the first paragraph of the article.

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama delivered a 40-minute, 4,458-word speech at the Democratic National Convention, and a fact check shows that most of his references were accurate. But there were a few caveats.

Say, what? Reuters hinted, prodded and slanted this headline to make it appear that President Obama was indeed playing a deadly game of mendacity in his big speech that rivaled Republicans mounted attack on the FBI, but lo and behold, he was HONEST!

I think Reuters needs to explain itself on this editorial choice. Was it based on conservative criticism and a major right-wing talking point that could be levied against President Obama? I want to know.

Christine O'Donnell appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher this Friday evening during the segment immediately following his opening monologue and blamed her witch ad debacle on her advisers and wanted to get into it with Maher over whether it's fair or not to continue to blame Bush for the troubles with the economy we're still having today. Thankfully, her time was cut short since she was not a member of the panel on the show - or at least she wasn't until the Internet only Overtime segment.

As with all of his shows, Bill Maher always brings all of the guests back in for the on-line version only end of his show and listening to the stupidity that came out of Christine O'Donnell's mouth during this segment was just truly astounding. She was asked how she rectified her supposed "small government conservatism" with the intrusion into people's lives with her social beliefs, and she pretty much spent the entire rest of the segment tying herself in knots, not being able to explain the differences between or need for states' rights and when the federal government needs to step in, revising history, and just making crap up when it suited her.

The other guests who were uselessly trying to reason with her, which was pretty much impossible since you can't reason with someone who's head is thick as a brick, mainly looked like they were all just ready to bang their own heads on the desk by the time this thing was over.

I can honestly say I pity David Simon, Steve Schmidt, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Jim VandeHei, well, maybe not VandeHei, but the rest of them for having to sit through this debacle and try to argue with this know nothing teabagger.

September 08, 2012 07:00 AM

How To Tell If Your Religious Liberty Is Being Repressed