The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Conor Freidersdorf, guest blogging on the Daily Dish is writing about chains stores and local stores – in this case restaurants.

I do wonder is how it will shape the preferences of young people who grow up choosing restaurants via iPhone. When they are older will they look to chains or peer networking as signals of guaranteed minimal acceptable quality?

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

I’m fortunate to live in NYC where there are few chain restaurants except in the major tourist locations (Times Square mostly) and thousands of local places ranging from the coffee or halal cart on the corners to the finest dining in the world. (I know that many top restaurants are owned by corporations that replicate them around the country, but these can’t be considered chains in the same way that say Houston’s is.)

OTOH, Houston’s and it’s lesser brethren (Chiles, Olive Garden and even the fast food giants, MacDonald's and so forth) do have one thing to offer the weary traveler; comfort and certainty. You know what you’re going to get.

You don’t need Yelp to find a great restaurant in NYC. But what about Colorado Springs? It’s a big city with a narrow range of dining opportunities. What I’ve tried there is good, but how does a visitor find out.

Chains can help in these circumstances.

But I’d suggest searching triple D the next time you travel.

Who's left on the left?

Just thinking about Teddy and the Kennedy's all day. JFK was the first President I was involved in. I remember Ike, and even Truman a bit, but JFK was my inspiration. Needless to say, his murder was devastating; starting my period of disillusionment with our country. Bobby's race for President in '68 brought back the positive feelings (with a help from McCarthy) after MLK assasination only to be dashed again, almost before my eyes as I'd seen him that day in LA, by yet another shooting.

Teddy became the spokesman for the rational liberal perspective. It took him a while, and I didn't support his run in 1980, I supported and worked for Jimmy Carter, but what a speech he gave and what a leader he was.

So I've been thinking...

We Defeated Socialism! INSUROCORP!

Let's privatize everything.

We Defeated Socialism! INSUROCORP!

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Seriously though. This video is a corollary of my basic argument with many libertarians. I'm usually serious, even pedantic - or is that furious?

Maybe being funny would work better?

Wonkette : A Children’s Treasury Of Insane Old People That Zeke Emanuel Should Euthanize, In Dallas

Wonkette : A Children’s Treasury Of Insane Old People That Zeke Emanuel Should Euthanize, In Dallas

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I don't think this goes far enough. This is a start:

At this point, we want to pressure Obama and Congress to incorporate as much rationing and Death Paneling as possible into a final health care bill, with very loose criteria. You’re eligible for Medicare, human? KILL.

I suggest the rule only apply to blue states or perhaps those who publicly vote red. (BTW, I love that the Republicans, those reprobate anti-communists, are perceived as Red. Nixon would role over in his grave.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan: "The Evidence Mounts Still Further"

Kudos to Andrew. Even on vacation he needs to enunciate a the reality of the Bush administration's criminality and the support of that criminality by Republicans, the right wing and the acquiescence of the MSM and even many Democrats.

Bravo.

I Can’t Read This Crap

I can’t continue to read the constant coverage of the hate filled right wing extremist mobs who are disrupting town meetings and demonstrating the behaviors that made the brown shirts of Weimar, Germany so infamous.

Whether it’s the pseudo-neutrality of the MSM, the outrage of Keith Olberman or  the reasoned argument of Rachel Maddow or the stories on Daily Dish or TPM, it all makes me sick.

I’ll keep it simple: Stop treating these people as though they’re exercising their rights to protest. They’re not. They’re a mob, incited by the hate slingers, from Rush to Boehner, of the right. (And regardless of the crap they preach; fascism is a right wing movement. Always has been. Always will be.)

Write to the editors of any news outlet that treats anything coming from these folks as anything but anti-democratic, anti-American, disturbers of the peace, potential rioters and insurgents and demand that they be covered as such. If the media outlet still treats them as having any validity, boycott it and let everyone else know you’re doing so and why.

Don’t encourage these people. They, the Republican Party and their fellow travelers,  not Obama and the Democrats, are continuing the Bush era disgracing of the USA and need to be driven from the marketplace of ideas. They don’t have ideas. They only have hatred.

Quote: What The Far Right Said About JFK

The link is from Andrew Sullivan, but I’ve been saying this since Obama was elected, and actually even when Clinton was President and the right wingers were going after him.

What The Far Right Said About JFK

Here's an interesting flashback to the kind of rhetoric we are now hearing in parts of America about Barack Obama. It's a flyer distributed in Texas. Part of its text:

Wanted for TREASON ... He has consistently appointed Anti-Christians to Federal Office. Upholds the Supreme Court in their Anti-Christian rulings.

Plus ca change. It was distributed in Dallas in November 1963.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

It's my calling

I've found my calling. Now I just need some one to pick up the phone.

I don't know about you, but when I see certain spokespersons from the right on TV I find myself shouting at the set.

I was so angered by the current astro-turf provocateurs that in my fuming found my calling. I need to be hired to travel with the road tour pushing pro-health care and other Obama agenda items. (To keep it simple: all Obama, Democratic and ultimately progressive items will be called Obama, even if he may not want to take ownership. ) My job? Why, to get in the faces of and shout down these wrongful paid agents of the right.

Why not? I need the money. I could use the travel. I have long since had it up to here with letting these people have any credence in our culture. Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow and Air America can't do it on their own. We need progressives, liberals, lefties and so forth who are or can act at least as crazy and Anne Coulter, Bill O'Reilly (well Keith handles that, I guess), Pat Buchannan and that strange woman whom nominee McCain assured that Obama wasn't Muslim or that fellow who told Denny Hoyer he was lying to him.

After all, when I hear most of the Republican Congressional Leadership speak I shout Liar! Liar! That's a lie! Lie! Ass hole! Liar! at the TV.

Hey out there! I'm here! I need the money. Give it a try. Be a change to actually be as angry at the right wing nuts who want to destroy America in their obsessive quest, in their limited, bigoted, delusional fantasy of what America is and what it means to be American.