Thursday, March 20, 2014

The Idiots R Us


One of the things you'll discover in the following paragraphs is that many of our so-called leaders or wannabe leaders really believe in the ancient religious mythologies. This is especially scary because to believe in these things means you have given up thinking rationally and have become detached from reality.

When such people get elected and put in charge of running our country, our states, our cities, we no longer have much chance of dealing viably with the problems that confront us.

Consider the problem of global warming. In spite of the deniers, every reputable scientist in the world agrees it is a fact, it is to some degree caused by humans, and it is a major threat to the continuation of civilization on earth. Or, consider how the fundamentalist/conservatives have made evolution a problem. Evolution is not a problem. It is the theory upon which all of biology and most other scientific endeavors are based upon. It is as real as the theory of gravity! Consider environmental protection which is an absolute necessity if we are to survive. But conservatives/fundamentalists don't see it as a problem because as one senator from Oklahoma said, god would never allow his creation to be undermined. I guess this gentleman forgot the mythical Biblical tale of Noah.

Reviewing various news sources over the past few days has turned up many wingnuts screwing with  our nation and the world; fools who prance about while mouthing inane and insane predictions and predilections.


Phil Jensen is one of these fools; a Republican Senator from South Dakota. He thinks it is a good thing to allow for-profit businesses to be able to deny service to LBGT persons and/or blacks. It's all about the "free market." To this dipshit, the free-market is the most important thing. But he's so unhinged that in 2011 he tried to amend South Dakota's "justifiable homicide" laws to allow for the murder of doctors who perform abortions. This is what it means to be "pro-life" in his pathetic, sick mind.


Several states, including Florida, mandate drug testing for welfare recipients. Of course, in Florida, the governor (at least originally) had ties to the company that would do the testing. Republicans in several state legislatures around the country are excited about the possibilities of drug testing in their states even though studies have shown that it is basically a waste of money. Very few people have tested positive.  Florida has tossed hundreds of thousands of tax-payer dollars down the toilet pursuing this nonsense.

If we're going to test welfare recipients, then lets test them all.  We should drug test all governors and state legislators because every single one of them depend upon the federal government for money to run their states.  Texas actually gets back more money from the feds than they send to Washington in taxes.  Governors and state legislators are big-time "welfare recipients"!


Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, has bashed and broken the unions in his state and has crippled the state's public education system and would like nothing more than to deplete the state pension fund because public employees, everyone knows, are free-loaders who don't deserve a pension.  This is the man who knew nothing about that recent infamous bridge closure.  Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!


Forty-five percent of uninsured Republicans say they'd rather pay a fine than buy health care under the Affordable Care Act.  Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.  But Republicans these days have reached a level of stupidity that is mind-boggling.


Since 2007, the number of homeless students in this country has increased by 72%.  As Paul Ryan would say, "No big deal.  Their parents are lazy and don't want to work."


In the past five years, the number of Republicans who believe in evolution has declined by 26%.  In other words, these Republicans deny the basic facts as to how life was created on earth in favor of some ancient mythologies devised by ignorant desert nomads 3,000 years ago!


The NSA had a "terrorist" list which involved 17,836 phone lines which were monitored daily from 2006 to 2009.  Eleven percent of those lines met the agency's "reasonable ... suspicion of terrorism."   The NSA can't even follow its own rules!  Just know that all of your emails and most of your phone calls are being scanned by Big Brother!


Ted Cruz, the religious fundamentalist ultra-conservative myth-believing moron from Texas has been in Iowa recently testing the waters for a possible presidential run in 2016.  And to think that when I first read about this guy, I thought he was such a loser that not even Texans would vote for him.


It appears Florida's governor, Rick Scott, might be fined $82 million for violating campaign finance law.  He's also under fire for a $500,000 check he received from the huge sugar company Florida Crystals.  Wait, it appears there was no such check although it was was reported in 2013.  It has gone missing from state records.   Now ain't that something?


Fourteen billion years ago the universe was formed in an explosion known as the Big Bang.  What came immediately after that has been a mystery to astronomers until now.  They have discovered evidence "that a split-second later [after the Big Bang], the expansion of the cosmos began with a powerful jump-start."

"It's just amazing," said Lawrence Krauss (a theoretical physicist) from Arizona State University.  "You can see back to the beginning of time."


Meanwhile, Ken Ham, of the Creation Museum, insists, "No, no, no.  My piddly-ass little god did it all in six days 6,000 years ago.  The answers are all in Genesis.  In fact, god got so tired creating the universe that he had to rest on the 7th day after he started!  


Much of Europe and Asia are using high-speed trains that travel about 350km an hour.  We are using trains that move at the same speed they did in 1950.  Slow.


Talk about spoiling your own nest.  Research indicates that 77% of the world's fish stocks have either disappeared or are in trouble.  More troubling, perhaps, is the fact that 90% of our large fish have been removed from the oceans.  It's not just that we're overfishing, we also waste fish.  One-quarter of our yearly marine catch is thrown overboard, dead!


CNN - Don Lemon suggested that maybe God had something to do with the missing Malaysian Airlines flight.  Which god, I wonder.  Might have been Zeus?


Wage theft at Amazon.  Amazon is increasing coming under fire for not being a very nice company.  Workers are claiming that they are forced to "work" an extra 25 minutes per day in order to go through a screening process for which they are not paid.  They've sued and the case is heading to the Supreme Court (the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the workers).  This case might end up involving some 500,000 people working in 50 Amazon warehouses.


Paul Ryan, that intellectual giant from Wisconsin, said that "inner city" men are too lazy to work.  It's the "culture," he explained - not their race.  Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!


Pat Robertson.  Just when you think this old SOB is dead, he pops up to spout more creepy nonsense.  Horror movies, says Robertson, can lead to demon possession.  What does that even mean?  What demons?  And all this, claims Pat, is because folks involved in the entertainment biz are "very susceptible to Satanic influences."

Oh, the myth of it all.   


Jim Brown.  He's running for Congress from Arizona, the state where the heat shrinks the brains of Republicans down to the size of a wrinkled little pea!  "Basically," says Brown, "slave owners took pretty good care of their slaves and livestock and this kept business rolling along."

Yeah, slavery was good for the poor blacks.  Plus even god approves of slavery.  It's in the Bible!  And if it was good for bizness, the Republicans love it. 


Austin Ruse, who headed up the conservative Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, said that "the hard left [whatever that is], human-hating people that run modern universities, should all be taken out and shot."  What?  Yep.  I do believe he's since lost his job.  Shoot!


Eddy Lepp grew marijuana in northern California which he handed out to anyone who needed it.  He was arrested and given a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison.  He is currently serving that sentence in the federal prison in Colorado where the sale of marijuana is legal.  Oh, the irony of it all!


Israel's Supreme Court says movie theaters must close on Shabbat.  Israel is a "free" country, but it is under the thumb of the ultra -orthodox in many instances.


Billy Graham's daughter, Anne Graham Lotz (not known for her powers of perception) has possibly solved the mystery of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.  It is, thinks Ms. Lotz, just a preview of what we might expect of the "Rapture."  Yep.  The Rapture, when millions of Christians will just disappear from the world.

There's some inconsistencies here.  Why would god make this flight disappear?  Were all the people on board fundamentalist Christians?  Oh, the mythology of it all.  Actually, it's eerie to think that there are people like Ms. Lotz out there teaching other people how to think.


Dr. Jim Garrow.  I don't know who this clown is but he is convinced that Obama plans to destroy the world before he leaves office.  It's part of Obama's muslim identify thing and is his "jihad."  Why Obama would want to destroy the world is not clear, but Garrow is certain that Obama blew up the Malaysian plane as part of his evil plan.


I've save the best for last.  Or the craziest.  Susanne Atanus.  From Illinois.  She's an Illinois congressional candidate and even though more sane Republicans were calling on her to withdraw, she won the primary!

Here's what she said in a recent interview:

"'I'm a conservative Republican and I believe in God first.'  She said she believes God controls the weather and has put tornadoes and diseases such as autism and dementia on earth as punishment for gay rights and legalized abortions.

"'God is angry.  We are provoking him with abortions and same-sex marriage and civil unions.  Same-sex activity is going to increase AIDS.  If it's in our military it will weaken our military.  We need to respect God.'"


Considering the number of fools in our political system, it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry.  But too soon, I'm afraid, we'll be on the verge of tears as these numbskulls and their god drive us further from reality and real solutions to our problems.

  


Monday, March 17, 2014

Bill Maher's take on a new movie about the Biblical character, Noah

[Note:  Photo from the Washington Times]


Bill Maher, in a video clip from his show, said this about the new Noah movie:

Although the movie has been condemned by both Christians and Muslims, so it must be doing something right.  And they say it also may lose a fortune for the studio, which would put it in hot water with the Jews too.  (audience laughter and applause)

Now, I don't know about the elephants on Noah's Ark, but the elephant in the room in 2014 is that we are now a full four centuries removed from the scientific revolution.  Four centuries after Copernicus, after the time humans realized that through science, we could actually get a real answer to almost every question about our world, like where does the sun go at night?  And why does disease spread so quickly on a cruise ship?  (audience laughter)

And speaking of cruise ships, you know I don't mind that the Noah story is impossibly childish.  OK, I do mind.  What am I saying?  I mind very much.  I mean, seriously people?  You believe a man Noah lived to be 900 years old — that's what the Bible says — and when he was 500, he decided to have three kids, just like Clint Eastwood.  (audience laughter)

And when he was 600, he and his three 100-year-old sons built a boat onto which in one day, they loaded over 3 million animals, all of which were apparently indigenous to within 5 miles of the boat. (audience laughter)

But get this.  What the Christians who are now protesting this movie are upset about is that it doesn't take the Biblical story literally enough.  They're mad because this made up story doesn't stay true to their made up story.

But the thing that's really disturbing about Noah isn't the silly.  It's that's it's immoral.  It's about a psychotic mass murderer who gets away with it, and his name is God.  Genesis says God was so angry with himself for screwing up when he made mankind so flawed — rrrrr — that he sent the flood to kill everyone!  Everyone!  Men, women, children, babies.  What kind of tyrant punishes everyone just to get back at the few he's mad at?  I mean, besides Chris Christie.  (audience laughter and applause)

Hey God, you know you're kind of a dick when you're in a movie with Russell Crowe, and you're the one with anger issues.  (audience laughter)

You know, conservatives are always going on about how Americans are losing their values and their morality.  Well, maybe it's because you worship a guy who drowns babies!    (nervous audience laughter)  And then, God's genius plan after he kills everyone is to repopulate the world with a new crop of the same assholes who pissed him off the first time!  With predictable results.  He kills millions more.

If we were a dog, and God owned us, the cops would come and take us away.

Why are we getting our morals out of this book?  Why do people follow any of it?  You know, I'm reminded as we've just started Lent that conservatives are always complaining about too much restraining regulation and how they love freedom, but they're the religious ones who voluntarily invent restrictions for themselves.

On a hot summer day, Orthodox Jews wear black wool.  On a cold winter night, Mormons can't drink a hot chocolate.  Isn't life hard enough without making shit up out of thin air to fuck with yourself?(audience cheering and applause)

Don't we have enough rules to follow and enough asses we have to kiss in reality?  Your boss, your spouse, the tax man, your parole officer, your horny cellmate?  Without fabricating made up new ones?  Jews can't eat ham.  Jehovah's Witnesses can't buy Girl Scout cookies.  The Amish can't drive cars.  Catholics can't masturbate.  Scientologists can't go to therapy.  Baptists can't dance.  Sikhs can't shave.  And Lord knows, Muslims can't take a joke.  (audience laughter)

An open letter to the people who hate Obama more than they love America

By Jesse LaGreca

 

I meet you all the time. You hate Obama. You hate gay people. You hate black people, immigrants, Muslims, labor unions, women who want the right to make choices concerning their bodies, you hate em all. You hate being called racist. You hate being called a bigot. Maybe if you talked about creating jobs more than you talk about why you hate gay people we wouldn't call you bigots. Maybe if you talked about black people without automatically assuming they are on food stamps while demanding their birth certificates we wouldn't call you racist. You hate socialism and social justice. You hate regulations and taxes and spending and the Government. You hate.

You like war. You like torture. You like Jesus. I don't know how in the hell any of that is compatible, but no one ever accused you haters of being over-committed to ideological consistency. You like people who look like you or at least hate most of the things that you hate. You hate everything else.

Now, I know you profess to love our country and the founding fathers (unless you are reminded that they believed in the separation of church and state), but I need to remind you that America is NOT what Fox News says it is. America is a melting pot, it always has been. We are a multi-cultural amalgamation of all kinds of people, and yet you still demonize everyone who is not a rich, white, heterosexual christian male or his submissive and obedient wife.

You hate liberals, moderates, hell, anyone who disagrees with Conservative dogma as espoused by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. You hate em.

Well, here are the facts, Jack. If you hate the Government then you are unqualified to manage it. If you hate gay people more than you love America than you should take your own advice and get the hell out. There are several countries that are openly hostile to gay people, but they are full of brown people and you don't like them much either from what I understand. It looks like you are screwed, but that's not what I am here to tell you.

Now that you have thrown everything and the kitchen sink at President Obama and it still hasn't worked you are panicking. Obama's approval ratings are still near 50% despite your best efforts to undermine the economy and America's recovery at every step you can.

You tried to hold the American economy hostage to force America into default on its' debts, debts that YOU rang up under Bush, so you could blame it on Obama and it failed. You've used the filibuster more than any other Congress ever, going so far as to vote against providing health care access to 9/11 first responders. You remember 9/11, don't you, it's that thing you used to lie us into a war in Iraq, and then when Obama killed Bin Laden and ended the war in Iraq you told people that he hates America and wants the troops to fail. You monsters. You hate Obama with a passion, despite the fact that he is a tax cutting, deficit reducing war President who undermines civil rights and delivers corporate friendly watered down reforms that benefit special interests just like a Republican. You call him a Kenyan. You call him a socialist. You dance with your hatred singing it proudly in the rain like it was a 1950's musical.
 
Frankly, you disgust me. Your hatred nauseates me. Your bigotry offends me. Your racism revolts me. Dear haters, I am openly questioning your patriotism.

I think you hate gays, Obama, black people, poor people, all of us, women, atheists and agnostics, Latinos, Muslims, Liberals, all of us, I think you hate every one who isn't exactly like you, and I think you hate us more than you love your country.

I think you hate gay soldiers more than you want America to win its wars.

I don't even think you want America to win wars, you just want America to have wars, never ending wars and the war profiteering it generates. You love that kind of spending, you love spending on faith based initiatives and abstinence based sex education (George Carlin would have loved that one), you love spending on subsidies for profitable oil corporations, you spend like drunken sailors when you are in the White House, but if it is a Democrat then suddenly you cheer when America doesn't get the Olympics because it might make the black President look bad. 

But oooh you love your country, you say, and you want it back. Well listen here skippy, it isn't your country, you don't own it, it is our country, and America is NOT the religiously extremist Foxbots who hate science, elitist professors and having a vibrant and meaningful sex life with someone we love if Rick Santorum doesn't approve of it. Rick Santorum isn't running for America's fucking high school dance chaperone, he should probably just shut the hell up about sex, but he can't because he has nothing else to run on.

Republicans can NOT win on the issues. They've got NOTHING. All they have is a divide and conquer class war that pits ignorant racist and bigoted people against the rest of us in a meaningless battle of wedge issues and the already proven to fail George W. Bush agenda again of tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, privatization and war profiteering and nothing else, so all they can do is blame black people, gays the government, anybody and everyone else for their own failings. The party of personal responsibility, my ass.

But they love multi-national corporations, just ask a gay hating and racist religious extremist if they think Corporations are people and they will gladly agree, but if you ask them if gay people are people they aren't so sure.

Dear haters, you are the cruel, heartless misinformed assholes who would sell America out to Haliburton in a heartbeat, you would rather pay ZERO taxes than you would see a newly born baby get access to quality health care, you cheer when we discuss denying health care to young people with preventable diseases, and you boo when we discuss the First Ladies plan to cut back on childhood obesity. 

You are a cross to carry and a flag to wrap yourself in away from being the people who Sinclair Lewis warned us about, but I guarantee that if Fox News told you to dress that way you would, because you are the same blind, ignorant and closed minded dunces who drove this country into a civil war years ago because you are bound to the notion that some men are more equal than others. In short, the reason I proudly wear my union army hat is because of seditious sell outs like you who constantly fuck over working class Americans so a foreign entrepreneur like Rupert Murdoch can get a bigger tax break. If corporations are people, they are neither American patriots nor capable of love. Just like you.

So stop wearing your hate with pride. Stop celebrating your anti-science, anti-math ignorance. Stop using code words to mask your bigotry like "family values", especially when you hate my family and when you stand on the same stage as a guy who has had three marriages or if you share a seat in the Senate with a guy who cheated on his wife with hookers while wearing diapers. 

You should be ashamed. I know that you are just doing this to motivate your misinformed hate cult base because if they actually knew that your ideas will make them poorer than they are now, they would never vote for you. You are doing your best to impoverish your countrymen so rich people can get bigger tax breaks and you can keep on delivering corporate welfare to the special interests who have bribed you, and I am disgusted by the way you gleefully parade your hatred with aplomb. I don't think you do love America. At least, not as much as you hate everyone in America who isn't exactly like you.

You should think about that, and maybe get some help.

And for the record, I do not hate you. I am embarrassed by you and nauseated by your cruel and thoughtless behavior and your all consuming greed, but I do not hate you. I forgive you and I hope you can change someday, but I don't hate you. You have enough hate in you for the rest of us as it is.


You can follow me on twitter @JesseLaGreca

Originally posted to MinistryOfTruth on Mon Jan 09, 2012 at 01:57 PM PST.This piece was used with permission of the author. 

This piece was used by permission of the author.