Barack Obama's retrospective job approval rating is 63%.

Courtesy of Gallup: 

Barack Obama's legacy appears to be on the right track, as 63% of Americans in hindsight say they approve of the way he handled his job. Gallup's first measure of Obama's retrospective job approval rating places him behind only John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan among the 10 most recent presidents. Richard Nixon is rated worst today for how he handled his job, with 28% approving.

Actually whoever typed this up made a mistake as George H. Bush is also rated higher than Obama by a point, which I find unacceptable.

I am also not pleased to see Jimmy Carter so far down the list, and Reagan at the top, as I do not believe this factually represents their contributions to this country.

I will say I fully expect that Obama's rating will only rise in the years to come, and that I would not be surprised if at some point he gave Ronnie a run for his money.

While accepting a Profile in Courage award, Barack Obama calls on the American people to "stand up to hate."

Courtesy of NBC News:  

"For many Americans, I know that this feels like an uncertain and perilous time," Obama — accompanied by his wife, Michelle Obama, and former Vice President Joe Biden — said in accepting the annual Profile in Courage award at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

"Our politics remains filled with division and discord," Obama said just days after House Republicans won passage of a bill that would dismantle much of his signature health care law."At such moments, courage is necessary," he said. 

"At such moments, we need courage to stand up to hate, not just in others, but in ourselves. At such moments, we need courage to stand up to dogma, not just in others, but in ourselves. ... 

"Courage means not doing what is simply politically expedient but doing what [people] believe in their hearts is right," he said. "And this kind of courage is required of all of us."

Here is video of Obama's entire speech.

I would like the last man whom I recognize as my President to know that I try everyday to follow this advice.

I try everyday to not allow my anger to get the better of me.

I try everyday to remain optimistic.

I try everyday to be a good example to others.

But it is harder now than it has ever been before.

Which I guess is why we need to find the courage to keep moving forward, to keep fighting for progress, to keep fighting for equality, and to keep fighting for a peaceful world.

I will just continue to keep in mind that if Barack Obama could remain positive through eight years of the most aggressive disrespect we have ever seen directed at a sitting President, and still keep fighting for all of us without caring that it would only attract even more anger and vitriol, then how could I do any less?

Ted unleashes on Donald Trump after Trump accused his father of being involved in the JFK assassination.

Courtesy of CNN:  

Ted Cruz on Tuesday unloaded on Donald Trump, accusing him during a news conference of being a "pathological liar," "utterly amoral," "a narcissist at a level I don't think this country's ever seen" and "a serial philanderer." 

"He is proud of being a serial philanderer ... he describes his own battles with venereal diseases as his own personal Vietnam," Cruz said, citing a decades-old Trump appearance on "The Howard Stern Show." 

"This man is a pathological liar, he doesn't know the difference between truth and lies ... in a pattern that is straight out of a psychology text book, he accuses everyone of lying," Cruz said as Indiana voters headed to cast their ballots. 

"Whatever lie he's telling, at that minute he believes it ... the man is utterly amoral," Cruz told reporters. "Donald is a bully ... bullies don't come from strength they come from weakness." 

Of course Cruz's rant came in response to these words from Donald Trump earlier:

“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald's being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump said Tuesday during a phone interview with Fox News. “What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don't even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.” 

“I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?” Trump continued. “It’s horrible.” 

Charges of helping to assassinate JFK, talk of venereal disease, and both sides calling the other "pathological liars?"

Okay seriously how did Alice get back up through the rabbit hole again? 

Update: Well Cruz just dropped out.

As Trump would say, "Another one bites the dust."

Are there more Bill O'Reilly lies to uncover? Why yes there are.

"Wait, another one?"

Courtesy of the Guardian:  

Former colleagues of Bill O’Reilly, the Fox News host whose tales of past reporting exploits are facing renewed scrutiny, have disputed his account of surviving a bombardment of bricks and rocks while covering the 1992 riots in Los Angeles. 

Six people who covered the riots with O’Reilly in California for Inside Edition told the Guardian they did not recall an incident in which, as O’Reilly has claimed, “concrete was raining down on us” and “we were attacked by protesters”. 

Several members of the team suggested that O’Reilly may instead be overstating a fracas involving one disgruntled Los Angeles resident, who smashed one of their cameras with a piece of rubble.

Here is what O'Reilly's former co-workers had to report on the incident:

Inside Edition colleagues from the time who were in Los Angeles with O’Reilly – reporters Bonnie Strauss, Tony Cox and Rick Kirkham, and crew members Theresa McKeown, Bob McCall and Neil Antin – told the Guardian that they did not recall such an incident. 

Kirkham, the show’s lead reporter on the riots, was adamant that it did not take place. “It didn’t happen,” he said. “If it did, how come none of the rest of us remember it?” 

Tonya Freeman, the head of the show’s library at the time, said: “I honestly don’t recall watching or hearing about that. I believe I probably would have remembered something like that.” Another librarian from the time also said she did not recall the incident. A spokeswoman for Inside Edition declined to comment. 

Several other senior Inside Edition staffers from the time declined to comment when asked if they recalled O’Reilly’s version of events. Several members of the team, however, recalled that one afternoon in the days following the peak of the riots, which began on 29 April, the angry resident attacked a camera while O’Reilly was being filmed near the intersection of Fairfax Avenue and Pico Boulevard. “It was one person with one rock,” said McCall, the sound man. “Nobody was hit.” 

“A man came out of his home,” said Antin, who was operating the camera that was struck. “He picked up a chunk of concrete, and threw it at the camera.” Told of O’Reilly’s description of a bombardment, Antin said: “I don’t think that’s really … No, I mean no, not where we were.” 

“There was no concrete,” said McKeown. “There was a single brick”. Kirkham’s response was: “Oh my God. That is a completely fictitious story. Nothing ever rained down on us”. 

Here is my favorite part of this article:  

O’Reilly is said to have shouted at the man and asked him: “Don’t you know who I am?

Gee who does that sound like?

Okay let's see if we have this straight now.

Bill O'Reilly was NOT actually on the ground covering the Falklands War.

He never saw any nuns get shot in the back of the head in El Salvador.

He was NOT standing outside the door when George de Mohrenschildt committed suicide.

And now he did not even have concrete thrown at him while covering riots in 1992.

Is that finally enough for Fox News to be embarrassed enough by his bullshit to send him packing?

It's Wednesday so time for more Bill O'Reilly lies.

Okay you all can stop digging for lies now.

In his 2012 best-selling non-fiction book Killing Kennedy, O'Reilly writes on page 300 that as a "reporter knocked on the door of de Mohrenschildt's daughter's home, he heard the shotgun blast that marked the suicide of the Russian ... that reporter's name is Bill O'Reilly."

 Guess what, yep you're right, this never happened.

More courtesy of Media Matters:

George de Mohrenschildt was a Russian emigre who befriended Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and testified before the Warren Commission investigating the Kennedy assassination. On March 29, 1977, the same day he was contacted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, he committed suicide at his daughter's home in Florida. At the time, O'Reilly was a reporter for Dallas' WFAA-TV who regularly reported on stories related to the Kennedy assassination. 

O'Reilly has bizarrely inserted himself into de Mohrenschildt's story, claiming in books and on Fox News that he was outside the house seeking to interview de Mohrenschiltd at the time of his death. O'Reilly is under heavy criticism and scrutiny for his false claims about his 1982 Falklands War reporting. 

O'Reilly's implausible tale was first flagged by Jefferson Morley in a 2013 post for his website JFKFacts.org. Morley has worked as an editor for The Washington Post, Salon.com, and Arms Control Today, and is a visiting professor at the University of California, Washington Center. 

New interviews with former O'Reilly colleagues who say he wasn't in Florida on the day of de Mohrenschildt's suicide and documents obtained by Media Matters bolster Morley's reporting.

Wait. so O'Reilly just made that entire incident up? Shocked, that's what I am, shocked!

So now, much like the Brian Williams incident, we are seeing a "journalist" who constantly puts himself into the story, in order to aggrandize himself. 

Here is more from Mediaite: 

In a series of audio tapes made by investigator Gaeton Fonzi, who Morley identified as O’Reilly’s “most reliable source on the JFK story,” O’Reilly can be heard saying he is going to travel from his office in Texas to Florida to look into the suicide after it happened. So there is no way he could have heard the “shotgun blast” with his own ears. 

“O’Reilly’s utterances prove that he was not knocking on George Mohrenschildt’s doorstep as he now melodramatically claims,” Morley wrote. “The truth is more prosaic. O’Reilly got a tip on a hot story, worked his sources to confirm it, and rushed to the scene. In making up this story for Killing Kennedy, he slighted the truth of his own professionalism.”

Media Matters has now launched a petition to "Hold Bill O'Reilly Accountable." Which I think all of us should sign.

And it is important that we continue to hold Billo's feet to the fire becasue there are a lot of people now trying to give O'Reilly a pass either because some of these incidents were in the past, or because it is well known that Bill O'Reilly is full of shit.

And that is kind of the problem.

You see the Right can go viciously attack the mainstream media whenever they get even the tiniest fact wrong, but if their side gets shit wrong, and they do that almost every single day, they simply shrug their shoulders and go "Well it's Fox News, what did you expect?"

That double standard only exists because WE let it.

So let's stop doing that shall we?

Apparently this Carnival Cruise Superbowl commercial is irritating the crap out of the Fundamentalists.

Gee I..I wonder why.

Here was Creationist Ken Ham's take on the commercial:  

So the Carnival Cruise Corporation decided to use the voice of John F. Kennedy from his speech to be the voiceover for stunning images to entice people to take one of their cruises. 

The advertisement is being called the “Come Back to the Sea” spot, as the Carnival Corporation wants to supposedly “create a personal connection with consumers.” 

Don’t you just feel this “personal connection?” After all, your ancestor came out of the sea and evolved by natural processes to produce you. Don’t you feel the connection? Don’t you just want to go on one of their cruises so you can stand on the deck of a big cruise ship, look at the sea, and contemplate your accidental beginnings—and perhaps worship the sea, because it gave birth to you! 

Oh—and really, you can spend a lot of money on such a cruise, but because you evolved from the sea and are just an evolved animal, and when you die you won’t even know you existed—so you won’t even remember the cruise—so what’s the point anyway? You just evolved to have an ultimately meaningless existence! 

So we have Neil deGrasse Tyson in his cosmos series telling us we are all stardust—we are children of the stars. 

And the Carnival Cruise Corporation telling us we all came from the sea. 

So—worship the stars and worship the sea! That’s the increasing state of our culture as it abandons the truth of God’s Word.

Sounds reasonable to me. 

You know I have always wondered why Christians believe that subjugating themselves to a god who may or may not exist, in the hopes of gaining access to an afterlife that may or may not exist,  gives their life any particular meaning.

I mean if you live this life trembling in the shadow of a brutal, omniscient, dictator who is sizing you up to see if you deserve to earn an eternal life after this one, or suffer eternal torture, what is the meaning that this provides?

Is it not better to find your own meaning in life, and to live your life in such a way as to make your parents happy they raised you, your friends happy to know you, and your children happy you love them?

Is not one life more than enough for anybody?

And if it isn't, doesn't THAT sort of indicate who is living a life without meaning?

JFK's speech warning us about the Right Wing that a bullet kept him from delivering 50 years ago. Update!

This is an excerpt from the speech that John F. Kennedy had prepared to deliver in Dallas, the breeding ground for the Tea Party of today, but was struck down by an assassin's bullet before he could speak its words out loud:  

In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America's leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason -- or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem. 

There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternative, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable. 

But today other voices are heard in the land -- voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality, wholly unsuited to the sixties, doctrines which apparently assume that words will suffice without weapons, that vituperation is as good as victory and that peace is a sign of weakness. At a time when the national debt is steadily being reduced in terms of its burden on our economy, they see that debt as the single greatest threat to our security. At a time when we are steadily reducing the number of Federal employees serving every thousand citizens, they fear those supposed hordes of civil servants far more than the actual hordes of opposing armies. 

We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will "talk sense to the American people." But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this Nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but just plain nonsense.

Clearly that is a speech which could be delivered today, and its meaning would not be lost. In fact today a speech like that may be needed more than ever. 

That speech could be talking about Rush Lumbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and just about ANY of those who fear monger over at Fox News or on Right Wing radio.

It could also be addressing the Teabaggers who enter politics simply to sabotage from within.

In fact Tom Brokaw remembered the reaction from the conservatives of the time to the news of JFK's death, and related it on MSNBC on Friday: 

Recounting his experiences from that day, he said that the reaction to JFK’s assassination, “mostly in conservative states,” was encapsulated by his interaction with one man who expressed satisfaction over the president’s killing. 

“This was unusual but it was not unheard of,” Brokaw told the MSNBC hosts, prefacing a conservative’s reaction to JFK’s killing. “As I came running out of the announce booth, the chief engineer, with whom I didn’t get along very well – he’s a really curmudgeonly guy, old, kind of a gnarly guy – said ‘What happened?’” 

“‘Kennedy was shot,’” Brokaw recalled telling the engineer. “He said, ‘About time somebody shot that SOB’” 

“That was heard in other places, mostly in conservative states,” Brokaw concluded. “That was reflecting his real feeling for him and they had to peel me away from him.”

Are there any among us who do not believe that the reaction to news of President Obama's assassination would not be virtually identical among the Right Wing of today?

We need to remember as we document and discuss the sabotage and obstructionism practiced by the conservatives of today, that if they feel backed into a corner there is no telling to what lengths they will go to survive.

(H/T to Rolling Stone.)

Update: Well right on cue here come the Teabaggers to help me make my point.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

An apparent threat made against President Barack Obama’s life posted on Facebook has caught the attention of the Secret Service. 

Agents declined to comment on the post, which has been removed but was preserved in screen captures by Social News Daily, made Tuesday by Everest Wilhelmen, leader of the Christian American Patriots Militia. 

“We now have authority to shoot Obama, i.e., to kill him,” Wilhelmsen posted on his Facebook page. “His willful violations and alienation of our Constitution, constant disregard for our peaceful protests and corruption of all the three branches of government, (i.e., rogue and illegitimate government), reveal the dictator that he is. Obama and his co-conspirators disrespect our Constitution (constitutional rule of law) and abuse the American people.” 

The post was made the same day as a gathering of right-wing cranks, conspiracy theorists and gun advocates met at a park across from the White House demanding that Obama voluntarily leave office.

When the Right Wing cannot get their way through elections, or political maneuverings, then their only fallback is to start the killing.

And this is why we want stronger gun control laws in this country. As far as I am concerned nobody who posts something like this should be able to even touch a weapon for the rest of their life. And that goes for the little one between their legs as well, no sense in letting these idiots procreate.

Five great men, and one buffoon, all agree that Secular Education must be protected.

I have a very hard time understanding why ALL Americans, whether religious or non, cannot recognize why this is important.

Bill Maher's New Rules from Friday night.

Rude, crude, and totally bipartisan, last night's New Rules skewered targets both on the Left and the Right.

However Maher saved his best smackdown for those who worship at the alter of Ronald Reagan.

In response to Sarah Palin's statement that there are no Ronald Reagan's around today for her to put her faith in, Maher said "When Reagan was elected, Sarah Palin was barely sixteen, probably pregnant, but still in third grade."

Then Maher goes on to unfavorably compare the Rooster Cogburn image of Ronald Reagan to the Don Draper image of JFK.  Yeah, THAT should win him more fans with the Reagan sycophants that populate the GOP.

And speaking of Reagan sycophants here is Palin behind the scenes as she sits in preparation for her interview with Chris Wallace, in which she will pimp her book and bitch about the Martin Bashir comments, to be broadcast tomorrow on Fox.

As you can see she has her personal flotation devices firmly attached just in case she gets in over her head and starts floundering.

P.S. Just in case HBO decides to be a party pooper you can still find the video by clicking here. 

Small group of 2nd Amendment protestors, complete with AR 15's slung on their shoulders, hold protest at site where President Kennedy was murdered with a rifle 50 years ago.

Courtesy of Dallas News: 

About a dozen people carrying rifles protested in Dallas Saturday morning at the sight of one of the most infamous gun crimes in United States history. 

The crowd carried AR-15s, old military rifles and one Texas flag with the “Don’t tread on me” slogan at Dealey Plaza, where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated 50 years ago . They said they were there to peacefully show that carrying firearms is legal in Texas and that the people who do it aren’t dangerous. 

“We are law abiding citizens exercising our rights,” said Brad McClain, one of the organizers of the event. 

McClain said he understood the significance of the site where they were protesting, but said they mostly picked the location because it was high-profile. 

“It’s visible, it’s historical and the landscape is perfect for photo ops,” he said.

Seriously why don't these assholes just by a t-shirt that reads "I am a douchbag?"

Their lack of sensitivity alone makes me thing they should not have access to weapons. I mean clearly they do not respect the memories of those who died at the hands of gun violence, nor do they consider the feelings of the normal people who have to watch them strut around with their metal penis extenders hanging around their necks in public.

In a completely unrelated story, a two year old girl celebrated her parents 2nd Amendment rights by shooting herself to death with their unsecured handgun:

A two-year-old girl has died after accidentally shooting herself with a handgun she found lying around her home. 

The toddler - named by neighbors as Coco - got hold of the 'unsecured' loaded weapon at the home in North Carolina, police said. 

Hey, it's all about freedom right?

Bill Maher believes that President Obama keeps his policies "centrist" due to fear of assassination.

What follows is part of a conversation between Maher and Chris Matthews on the Overtime portion of last Friday's Real Time. The transcript is courtesy of Real Clear Politics:

BILL MAHER: It seems like the people like that, Kennedy, they just seem to always, at the end of the day, somehow get cut out of the picture -- violently, or otherwise -- and maybe that is why Barack Obama is a little more of a centrist than we want him to be. 

CHRIS MATTHEWS: You think that? 

MAHER: Well, I think he knows that if he goes a little too far to the left -- 

MATTHEWS: Really? 

MAHER: Well, yeah. 

MATTHEWS: I'm just really curious that you think that. 

MAHER: Well, if I were Barack -- 

MATTHEWS: That's an extraordinary statement. 

MAHER: What? You don't think -- 

MATTHEWS: I'm just saying that's an extraordinary statement. I'm amazed -- I'm impressed you think that. 

MAHER: Think what? 

MATTHEWS: That his policies are driven by fear of assassination. 

MAHER: Well, not by fear of assassination. 

JAMES GLASSMAN: Is that what you said? 

MATTHEWS: Then by what? 

MAHER: Well, I'm saying that yeah -- 

MATTHEWS: I thought you just said that. 

MAHER: I didn't say it in those words. 

MATTHEWS: Well, I would try and clarify. 

MAHER: Well, I'm saying that, yeah, I think that's something that probably [Obama] thinks about at night, yeah. Wouldn't you? 

MATTHEWS: That he has to change his policies for that reason? 

MAHER: No! But I think that he is a centrist. I think people saw him as what they wanted to see him. They saw a liberal, and he was never really that much of a liberal. And to call him a socialist, is completely -- 

CAROL ROTH, CNBC: I don't think that anybody who is in the center or at the right would think that he is a centrist. You might think that, but everybody else doesn't think that. 

MAHER: I don't think that is an insult to say to somebody that he may modulate his policies because he is afraid of all the hate that he sees. 

MATTHEWS: He probably gets reports constantly about threats, though. That must unnerve him. 

Now you might dismiss this as simply Maher being provocative, except there was also this recent post from Andrew Sullivan:

I’ve been doing some reading about John Kennedy, and what I find startling, and even surprising, is how absolutely Wanted_for_treasonconsistent and unchanged the ideology of the extreme American right has been over the past fifty years, from father to son and now, presumably, on to son from father again. The real analogue to today’s unhinged right wing in America is yesterday’s unhinged right wing in America. This really is your grandfather’s right, if not, to be sure, your grandfather’s Republican Party. … 

Reading through the literature on the hysterias of 1963, the continuity of beliefs is plain: Now, as then, there is said to be a conspiracy in the highest places to end American Constitutional rule and replace it with a Marxist dictatorship, evidenced by a plan in which your family doctor will be replaced by a federal bureaucrat—mostly for unnamable purposes, but somehow involving the gleeful killing off of the aged. There is also the conviction, in both eras, that only a handful of Congressmen and polemicists (then mostly in newspapers; now on TV) stand between honest Americans and the apocalypse, and that the man presiding over that plan is not just a dupe but personally depraved, an active collaborator with our enemies, a secret something or other, and any necessary means to bring about the end of his reign are justified and appropriate. And fifty years ago, as today, groups with these beliefs, far from being banished to the fringe of political life, were closely entangled and intertwined with Senators and Congressmen and right-wing multi-millionaires.

A famous handbill circulated on November 21, 1963 In Dallas, Texas. One day before the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Yes I would love to dismiss what Bill Maher says as mere hyperbole, but just this week we have seen protesters fighting with police right outside the White House while claiming that our President is illegitimate, a Muslim, and a danger to our country.

 Yes I would like to dismiss the words of Bill Maher. I just can't.

Gabby Giffords receives Profile in Courage award.

Courtesy of Politico:

Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords received the 2013 Profile in Courage award at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston on Sunday in recognition of the political, personal, and physical courage she has demonstrated in her fearless public advocacy for policy reforms aimed at reducing gun violence. 

Giffords, who was seriously wounded in a 2011 shooting when a lone gunman opened fire as she met with constituents in a Tucson, Ariz., shopping mall, and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, have been lobbying for more gun control legislation. 

This year, on the second anniversary of the January shooting, the couple started Americans for Responsible Gun Ownership, an organization that “supports the right to bear arms and responsible public policy on guns and gun ownership.” 

Caroline Kennedy, President of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, presented the award to Giffords. 

Alluding to her disappointment in Congress’ failure to pass gun control legislation last week, Giffords called for courage from lawmakers. 

“I believe we all have courage inside,” she said. “I just wish there was more courage in Congress.” 

“It’s been a hard two years for me,” Giffords said, “but I want to make the world a better place more than ever.” 

"I want to make the world a better place more than ever.” And she already has, by demonstrating the kind of courage that puts virtually EVERY member of Congress to shame.

Now if only some of her incredible reservoir of courage can somehow rub off on  a certain group of people in Washington.

Two year old quotes Presidents with unerring accuracy.

I think my favorite one is the George W. Bush quote, though I think this little guy actually made it make more sense than it did originally.

(H/T to HuffPo)

Why I'm a Liberal.

Courtesy of Rick Perlstein of the Nation:

In the 1930s, a congressman named Maury Maverick defined liberalism in three words: “Freedom plus groceries.” That’s how I define it, too. Liberalism is a both/and philosophy. There is no freedom without groceries. There are no groceries without freedom. What people call “capitalism” and “socialism” are actually one and inseparable. It’s a virtuous circle. 

Consider healthcare. We all of us—libertarians, conservatives and liberals—want a growing economy. And we all agree that a growing economy requires entrepreneurial dynamism. 

So ask yourself this: In a country in which health insurance isn’t guaranteed, how many millions of Americans with great ideas find it impossible to become entrepreneurs because they’re terrified to leave their job, because then they would lose their health insurance and ruin their lives if they get sick? 

Now, in response to something like that, you’ll hear my fellow debaters repeat a curious fallacy, a crushing intellectual failure. They’ll act like only governments have the power to deprive citizens of freedom. 

Consider, however, a corporation like Walmart, which had $447 billion in revenue this year, bigger than the gross domestic product of all but seventeen of the world’s nations. But according to libertarianism and conservatism, Walmart can only produce liberty. It can never curtail it. Even if they fire you for no reason at all—and by law there’s nothing you can do about it. 

Conservatives and libertarians somehow believe that you are freer if an entity bigger than the economies of Austria, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates is simply left alone to act against you in whatever way it wishes. Only liberals know how to make you freer on the job, which is where most of us suffer the gravest indignities in our lives. 

Liberals, in fact, make you freer everywhere. Look at liberty’s greatest historic advances: ending slavery. Giving women the vote. Outlawing legal segregation. 

Each and every time, the people at the forefront of advancing those reforms—often putting their lives on the line—called themselves liberals. 

Each and every time, people who called themselves conservatives announced that those reforms would unravel civilization. 

Then—each and every time—once the reform was achieved and taken for granted, and civilization didn’t collapse, conservatives claimed to have always been for it, even holding themselves up as the best people to preserve it. 

It happens with economic reforms too.

Well said.

You know personally I despise labels, I have never felt that I was a good fit for ANY of them.

I always have to alter the existing ones in some way in order to make them fit.

The jock who refuses to play on a sports team.

The intellectual who lifts weights while reading Socrates.

The tough guy who tears up during Kleenex commercials.

The eternal round peg constantly being forced into a square hole. It gets tiresome constantly disappointing people who think they have me figured out.

However when it comes to being a liberal I feel pretty comfortable wearing that insignia. (You know, if we had one of those.) And I did so even when the conservatives were trying to turn the word "liberal" into a label of shame.

I am absolutely in support of freedom for all,  equality among the sexes, and judging others by the quality of their character rather than the color of their skin. I want the playing field to be even, I believe in sharing the wealth, and I think the education of our children should take precedence over EVERYTHING!

However fiscally I am quite conservative, owning just the one credit card, which I use only occasionally and then always pay off immediately.

I do not partake in recreational drugs of ANY kind, not even pot, and drink one glass of wine about two or three time a week.

And I was quite traditional in how I raised my child as well, as evidenced by this graphic my daughter posted on Facebook earlier today.

I raised my child to always respect authority, take responsibility for her actions, and to earn her own way in life.  And today she does just that.

So am I proud to be MY version of a liberal? Why yes I am!

Just as I am proud to have handed down my values to my daughter, who today is also a liberal.

Well HER version of one at least.

Good morning my friends.

I thought this would be a good way to start the day.

Many president's had tried, but this President succeeded.

And NOTHING the Right Wing can do will ever change that.

Before there was a President Obama the Right Wing whipping boy was a certain President Kennedy.

Below you will see pages from a vintage coloring book that a TPM visitor found in their deceased mother's belongings.

Apparently the coloring book originally belonged to this person's grandmother.

Take a moment to notice how eerily similar the attacks on JFK, back in the early sixties, are to what Obama is facing today.

Much like the blowback against the Affordable Care Act, JFK's attempts to create Medicare were also met with ridicule and charges of socialism.

The Right Wing also drummed up suspicion concerning JFK's Ivy League advisers. Today they are referred to as the "intellectual elite." Apparently to this group of people intelligence is always suspect.

Being anti-elite also meant being anti-education, and JFK's Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Abraham Ribicoff, was also vilified.

It would appear that this book was published some time after the Cuban Missile Crisis, since Fidel Castro is included. However rather than give JFK any credit for protecting America from a potential nuclear missile strike, the conservatives chided him for failing to capture or kill Castro, and for taking on Big Business.

I have to say that the similarities in how both President Obama and President Kennedy were attacked by the Right Wing are rather startling. My gut instinct is to conclude that the attacks against Obama today are more filled with vitriol and unvarnished hatred, but then I remember the fate of our 35th President and realize the dishonesty of that statement.

And it also makes my blood run cold to realize that all of this, even this child's coloring book, was creating a bogeyman that was easier to hate, and to think of as the "other," before somebody became agitated enough to put a bullet through his head.