Conservative activist and Christian minister David Barton told listeners of his radio show on Tuesday that net neutrality violates the Biblical principle of free markets. “This is what the Pilgrims brought in, the Puritans brought in, this is free market mentality. Net neutrality sounds really good, but it is socialism on the Internet.” Barton was so distraught about net neutrality that he had to choke back tears and obscenities. “This is really, I’m going to use the word wicked stuff, and I don’t use that word very often, but this is wicked stuff. This is redistribution of wealth through the Internet and it really is redistribution. This is socialism on the Internet.”—-
• President Obama last night spoke at fundraiser in San Francisco and took the opportunity to remind people of the climate change that is still happening despite that other “change” coming along. “There are climate change deniers in Congress and when the economy gets tough, sometimes environmental issues drop from people’s radar screens,” Obama told about 200 guests.
• Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) was booed at one of his town hall meetings in southern Wisconsin after defending his plan to extend tax breaks for the wealthy and phase out Medicare. One of the 14 people at the meeting called Ryan out on his bullshit.
CONSTITUENT: You have to lower spending. But it’s a matter of there’s nothing wrong with taxing the top because it does not trickle down.
RYAN: We do tax the top. (Audience boos). Let’s remember, most of our jobs come from successful small businesses. Two-thirds of our jobs do. You got to remember, businesses pay taxes individually. So when you raise their tax rates to 44.8 percent, which is what the president is proposing, I would just fundamentally disagree. That is going to hurt job creation.
Oh man, those boos are so much better if you watch the video, which you can see here.
• Ready for more David Barton? “I guarantee you [your kids] are getting homosexual indoctrination,” Barton said back in January. “I don’t care whether you’re in a rural area or not, because this is so much a part of textbooks, so much a part of curricular stuff, so much a part of what goes on with other kids,” the social conservative “historian” added.
Conservative crazies like Barton have been banging on like that in recent weeks in the lead up to the April 15 “Day of Silence,” a yearly campaign by LGBT students to raise awareness about bullying by taking a vow of silence for the day. But some asshats have proposed a “Day of Silence Walkout.” Randy Thomasson, fearless and thoughtless leader of the gay-hating group Save California, says his group is a frontline pro-family organization standing strong for moral virtues for the common good,” that aims, among other things like being pro-not gay, “to challenge liberal forces wherever they attack moral virtue.” Thomasson said “Day of Silence” is “another day of brainwashing for children. To have an entire academic day to be hijacked and disrupted is just a wasted school day.”
Reports from yesterday say that the Koch brothers told their employees who to vote for and were responsible for financing all kinds of election propaganda for the 2010 midterms. Employees were told if the chosen candidates lost, “the overwhelming majority of the American people will be much worse off if government overspending is allowed to bankrupt the country.” Those candidates were nearly all Republicans that the company believed would “advance policies supporting economic freedom.” Telling people who to vote for is just wicked stuff!
This article appears in Apr 20-26, 2011.