Please click on cartoon to embiggen.
Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa, and Obama is a Muslim
It shouldn't matter. The Constitution of the United States is very specific - there shall be no religious test for public office.
But it seems to matter to some - to the morons and christianist dominionists and the stupids in our country and especially to the 18 percent who believe that President Obama is a Muslim.
Eighteen percent! And generally speaking, these are the same morons who are opposed, on principle, to anything he says or does. And just like their main disinformation source, FAUX News, Obama could bring about the Second Coming of the legendary Jesus, and these people would complain that his robes weren't white enough!
It's depressing. We have 1/5th of our population so goddamn dumb or mentally challenged that they are unable to recognize (or care) about evidence, facts, truth, or reality. Some of them are so off the wall that if Rush Limbaargher told them cowshit was good to eat, they'd fry it up for dinner!
Consider Dan Maes of Colorado, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Sarah Palin of fame and fortune, Rand Paul of Kentucky (or perhaps another planet entirely), Sharron Angle of Nevada, just about any representative from Texas or Oklahoma ... etc., etc. -- put them all together and you still wouldn't get one fully-functioning brain!
This does not bode well for the future of the US of A.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Jon Stewart - Internet Exploiter
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Internet Exploiter | ||||
| ||||
Jim Hightower, in his July 2010 Lowdown, has an excellent article on how a cabal of big, "bullying, arrogant ... telecom conglomerates" are aiming a broadside, not only on "common" folks who use the Internet, "but more broadly at America's democratic values."
"The whole idea of the internet," says Hightower, "is that it's a wide-open, wildly-democratic place where anyone and everyone can 'meet' to exchange viewpoints, ideas, facts, ideologies, theories, videos, opinions, stories, visions--and, yes, propaganda, nonsense, ugliness, and outright lies. The internet's beauty is in its free-flowing, uncensored, uncontrolled nature."
Unfortunately, "corporate autocracy," namely in the form of the four telecom giants who have the internet in their "firm grasp" -- AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon -- "is now asserting its market dominance and political muscle in an autocratic effort to impose corporate censorship over what information the public will be allowed to get via the internet."
This is a very important article, for this telecom cabal, pretending to desire internet "neutrality," is working for exactly the opposite. They are flooding Congress with lobbyists and money in order to get their way. And, of course, the billionaire Koch brothers are there with buckets of money, "specializing in doublespeak, distortions, manipulations, histrionics, stunts and tricks, deceit, huffery and pufferey, and lies."
Watch the video, read Hightower's entire article here, send it to your friends! The American people are about to get reamed by the robber barons once again! All for our own good, of course!
Who really owns FAUX News?
[Image of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal from here.]
Rupert Murdoch, who owns the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, also happens to be one of the owners of the faux news network known as Fox News. As everyone is aware, Fox News is not a real news company but rather the propaganda wing of the Repugnican Party. And because of that fact, it comes as no surprise to learn that Murdoch just gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association.
What is surprising, however, is the fact that "News Corp.'s [Fox News parent company] second-largest shareholder, after the Murdoch family, is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal ... the nephew of Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, and one of the world's richest men."
This info comes from an article at AlterNet which derived from Speakeasy, and which first appeared at Hullabaloo. You can read it in its entirety here.
Contradicting myself, perhaps this is not all that surprising, either. The Republican leadership has been in bed with the Saudis for the past several decades. Our Iraqi wars, perpetrated by the two Bushes, had nothing to do with WMDs or freedom or democracy but had everything to do with oil - who owns it, who gets it, who refines it, who makes billions from it. From the Saudi point of view, old Saddam had gotten out of hand; he had become a threat to the Saudis and the American oil people who lusted after the black gold in Iraq and needed to be taken out.
Furthermore, our Republican politicos and the corporate honchos they work for, knew they couldn't make an enemy of the Saudis or their wealth would decline precipitously. Thus, the U.S. has for years given a pass to old King Abdullah and the imams, assiduously avoiding any critique of Saudi involvement in the funding of terrorism and its fondness for Sharia law, which allows no religious freedom, no freedom of speech, no honest intellectual endeavor, and crushes the rights of women into the desert sand.
"Saudi Arabia ... is ... an authoritarian petro-monarchy that actually is governed by Sharia law and is known as one of the top global sponsors of terrorism."
The irony is almost too much. As Digby says, "I doubt all those Fox news patriots know that the same News Corp that's owned by a Wahhabist Saudi prince just donated a million dollars to the Republican party. Of course they'll never find out because the only network they watch is the same terrorist funded network that's doing it."
And then, with a slicing slam against the wingnuts crying over the so-called "ground zero mosque," Digby suggests that it is insensitive to expect that some people who really hate Muslims should continue to watch a network that is owned in part by one or vote for a party that's funded by Muslims.
"I'm not saying that Murdoch should be forced to stop donating millions to Republicans or partnering with Saudi princes who believe in Sharia law. I just think it's common sense that he wouldn't do it in the first place."
Rupert Murdoch, who owns the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, also happens to be one of the owners of the faux news network known as Fox News. As everyone is aware, Fox News is not a real news company but rather the propaganda wing of the Repugnican Party. And because of that fact, it comes as no surprise to learn that Murdoch just gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association.
What is surprising, however, is the fact that "News Corp.'s [Fox News parent company] second-largest shareholder, after the Murdoch family, is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal ... the nephew of Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, and one of the world's richest men."
This info comes from an article at AlterNet which derived from Speakeasy, and which first appeared at Hullabaloo. You can read it in its entirety here.
Contradicting myself, perhaps this is not all that surprising, either. The Republican leadership has been in bed with the Saudis for the past several decades. Our Iraqi wars, perpetrated by the two Bushes, had nothing to do with WMDs or freedom or democracy but had everything to do with oil - who owns it, who gets it, who refines it, who makes billions from it. From the Saudi point of view, old Saddam had gotten out of hand; he had become a threat to the Saudis and the American oil people who lusted after the black gold in Iraq and needed to be taken out.
Furthermore, our Republican politicos and the corporate honchos they work for, knew they couldn't make an enemy of the Saudis or their wealth would decline precipitously. Thus, the U.S. has for years given a pass to old King Abdullah and the imams, assiduously avoiding any critique of Saudi involvement in the funding of terrorism and its fondness for Sharia law, which allows no religious freedom, no freedom of speech, no honest intellectual endeavor, and crushes the rights of women into the desert sand.
"Saudi Arabia ... is ... an authoritarian petro-monarchy that actually is governed by Sharia law and is known as one of the top global sponsors of terrorism."
The irony is almost too much. As Digby says, "I doubt all those Fox news patriots know that the same News Corp that's owned by a Wahhabist Saudi prince just donated a million dollars to the Republican party. Of course they'll never find out because the only network they watch is the same terrorist funded network that's doing it."
And then, with a slicing slam against the wingnuts crying over the so-called "ground zero mosque," Digby suggests that it is insensitive to expect that some people who really hate Muslims should continue to watch a network that is owned in part by one or vote for a party that's funded by Muslims.
"I'm not saying that Murdoch should be forced to stop donating millions to Republicans or partnering with Saudi princes who believe in Sharia law. I just think it's common sense that he wouldn't do it in the first place."
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Keith Olbermann: There is no 'Ground Zero Mosque'
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
From Crooks & Liars:
Keith's Special Comment on the "inaccurately described ground zero mosque" where he started things off by reading from Pastor Martin Niemöller's "First They Came..." statement.
"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."
I'm sure all the right wing blogs will be going crazy accusing Olbermann of being over the top here but he explained why he thought Niemöller's comments were relevant today. From the Wikipedia page quoted above a little background on Niemöller:
Martin Niemöller was a German pastor and theologian born in Lippstadt, Germany, in 1892. Niemöller was an anti-Communist and supported Hitler's rise to power at first. But when Hitler insisted on the supremacy of the state over religion, Niemöller became disillusioned. He became the leader of a group of German clergymen opposed to Hitler. Unlike Niemöller, they gave in to the Nazis' threats. Hitler personally detested Niemöller and in 1937 had him arrested and eventually confined in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps. Niemöller was released in 1945 by the Allies. He continued his career in Germany as a clergyman and as a leading voice of penance and reconciliation for the German people after World War II. His statement, sometimes presented as a poem, is well-known, frequently quoted, and is a popular model for describing the dangers of political apathy, as it often begins with specific and targeted fear and hatred which soon escalates out of control.
Given the over the top rhetoric coming from the Republicans and Fox News whether it be race-baiting of African Americans or illegal immigrants or Muslims along with the terrible state our economy is in right now, I would agree with Keith that it is not out of bounds to remind the public of just how dangerous that kind of fear mongering can be. It might be different if we didn't have one television network along with right wing radio devoted to beating that drum 24/7 reaching millions of Americans with their propaganda day after day.
Partial transcript below the fold and h/t to StuHunter at DailyKOS for part of it.
Olbermann: Niemöller survived the death camps. In quoting him I make no direct comparison between the attempts to supress the building of a Muslim religious center in downtown Manhattan and the unimaginable nightmare of the Holocaust. Such a comparison is ludicrous, at least it is now, but Niemöller was not warning of the Holocaust. He was warning of a seeming rational society to condone the gradual stoking of enmity towards an ethnic or religious group, or more than one, warning that the building up of a collective pool of national fear and hate, warning of the moment in which the need to purge out strips even the parameters of the original scapegoating, when new victims are needed because a country has begun to run on a horrible fuel of hatred; magnified, amplified and multiplied by politicians and zealots within government and without.
Niemöller was not warning of the Holocaust. He was warning of the thousand steps before a Holocaust became inevitable. If we are merely at the first of those steps again today here it is one step too close.
Yet in a country dedicated to freedom, forces have gathered to blow out of all proportion the construction of a minor community center to transform it into a training ground for terrorists and an insult to the victims of 9-11 and a tribute to Medieval Muslims' subjugation of the west.
There is no training ground for terrorists. There is no insult to the victims of 9-11. There is no tribute to Medieval subjugation of the west. There is in fact NO GROUND ZERO MOSQUE.
[...]
What was that about Iraq? Why did we go into Iraq? To free the world, and especially Iraq's citizens of the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. That's its supporters defense of the Iraq invasion of this hour. Well who lives in Iraq? Muslims. I hate to reveal this to anybody on the right who doesn't know this but when they say Iraq is 65% Shia and 32% Sunni you do know that Shia and Sunni are forms of the Muslim religion, right?
We sacrificed 4,415 of our military personnel in Iraq to save Muslims, and there are thousands of us still there tonight to protect Muslims, but we don't want Muslims to open a combination culinary school and prayer space in Manhattan.
From the beginning of this nation we have fought prejudice and religious intolerance and our greatest enemy stupidity exploited by rapacious politicians. It is only 50 years now, this month since Americans publicly and urgently warned their countryman not to support a presidential candidate because he was Roman Catholic. He would bow to the will not of the American people, but of the Pope. He would be a papist. He would be the agent of a foreign state. His name was John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Despite the nobility of our founding and the indefatigable efforts of all of our generations, there have always been those who would happily sacrifice our freedoms, our principals to ward off the latest unprecedented threat, the latest unbeatable "outsiders". But once again at 45 Park Place, we are being told to sell our birth right. To feed the maw of xenophobia and vengeance and mob rule.
The terrorists who destroyed the buildings from which you could only see 45 Park Place as a dot on the ground, wanted to force us to change our country, to become more like the ones (they) knew. What better way could we honor the dead at the World Trade Center than to do the terrorists heavy lifting for them.
Do you think 45 Park Place is where it ends? The moment this monstrous betrayal of our America gained the slightest traction, the next goal was unveiled. "No more building permits for any Mosques in this country" brayed the man from the euphemistically named American Families Association. Of course, he said maybe the permits could be granted if the congregation was "willing to publicly denounce the Koran."
They came first for the building permits....
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
Cindy Jacobs, "prophetic" minister, calls for prayer
[Photo of Cindy Jacobs from here.]We've written about Cindy Jacobs before. She's not a "prophetic" minister, she's merely pathetic and just another christianist con artist!
Adrienne Gaines, in a Charisma magazine article, tells how Jacobs, "co-founder of the Texas-based Generals International," got a divine "word" or sign on July 17 (that was a Saturday in case you were wondering) telling her "the U.S. economy was teetering."
Isn't that funny? Where has she been? The U.S. economy's been teetering since Reagan's devotion to tax cuts for the rich and his trickle-down stupidity. Of course Georgi W. Bushski didn't help matters when he got us bogged down in two illegal wars costing the U.S. taxpayers about $1 trillion so far and possibly as much as $3 trillion before the proverbial fat lady sings.
But halting U.S. warmongering, raising taxes on the rich, closing loopholes on the corporations so at least a few of them pay taxes - none of these things play a part in Ms. Jacobs' revelation from her god.
Nope! "She ... saw a vision of the economy on a justice scale and says her god told her that Christians must fast and pray for solutions that balance righteousness and justice to avoid another Great Depression."
Aha! Fast and pray! Oh, and send money so she can flit around the world telling other people to fast and pray and send her money.
But an important question arises: What doth Ms. Jacobs mean when she talks about "righteousness and justice"? It ain't what the biblical prophets spoke of and it has no resemblance to anything the legendary Jesus was supposed to have said!
Nope, according to Jacobs, our economic health depends on voting for the "right" people in the next election, our "returning to biblical values" and "continuing to support Israel." Such actions "will cause the U.S. economy to stabilize and strengthen. If we do them God will send "supernatural solutions ... that our natural minds could never reason, nor grasp and they will heal the land."
Hmmm...it seems these Christianist wingnuts have been flailing about praying for years, causing all kinds of hell in legislatures everywhere, marching and chanting, piously panting their hope that their god will love the good ol' U.S. of A. more than any other country like he always used to do! So what happened? Wasn't god listening?
Listen to this claptrap: "If we do not heed His word in this hour, there will be a tumbling of our economy and dark days will come such that our nation might never fully recover and have the greatness that God has favored us with for generations."
Oh, my goodness. The poor woman doesn't have a clue. What kind of god would favor the U.S. over other countries in the first place? And there is no "supernatural solution." There's no daddy in the sky that needs our prayers to entice him to do the right thing. There's no Republican god up there who hates gays and liberals and progressives and Keith Olbermann and especially Rachel Maddow! There's no conservative god sitting on his golden throne waiting for good christianist nutcases to vote for candidates authorized by fools like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin before he will make American great again!
But the daffy Ms. Jacobs thinks there is. Of course she does. And by preaching this crap she gets richer and richer because suckers all over the world, ignorant and naive, keep sending her money!
Ms. Jacobs is careful to continue the facade and pretend she knows what she's talking about. So she's going to "lead a 40-day fast beginning Sept. 24 and ending on Election Day, Nov. 2."
We've got to elect "pro-biblical values" candidates, she whines. Not! Those are the creeps that got us into this mess and will destroy the nation and perhaps the world before they're done!
Some of the clerics and other nutjobs who are supporting Ms. Jacobs in this endeavor include the imbecilic Lou Engle (supporter of the law in Uganda that would execute gays in that country); Charles Colson, ultra rightwing fundamentalist christianist and former crook who made a killing imposing his religious views on captive audiences in our prisons; and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist persuasion, perhaps one of the most moribund old nasties in christendom today; among others.
Engle, being loud and brash and never one to worry about looking hateful and stupid, said "We're saying it's not enough to pray, we must act. We must stand for the foundations of the sanctity of life, of marriage and religious freedom, but that's not enough. We must act. We must live a lifestyle of justice to the poor."
Ho, ho, ho.
All of this is so sad considering the fact that our nation and our world is indeed in dire straits. First of all, these religionists claim to know for a fact there is a god, and to know the mind of that god, who, of course, believes exactly as they do. Their pretensions are bullshit but they are able to convince a lot people, including many clowns inhabiting the hallowed halls of Congress!
Secondly, they think their god is going to destroy their beloved country if their beloved country doesn't force everybody to believe the way they do.
Thirdly, their god is very narrow-minded, concerned with the same old issues all the time: gay marriage, abortion, prayer in the public schools, blah, blah, blah. If their god really wanted those things and had any power at all, he'd just click his fingers and it would be done. He could do some supernatural magic. But this god in which they believe is weak and powerless and also fickle and very vain - he will do nothing unless people fast and pray and vote for "righteousness"!
The really sad part comes when we realize we are indeed facing an unhappy and uncertain future if we don't take action on certain issues now. But they are not the issues the christianist kooks crab about.
The issues that threaten our well-being include climate change caused by global warming. And in spite of those noted scientific minds, Beck and Limbahger, climate change is no longer debatable. It's happening now, big time, and is a massive threat to millions of people the world over.
This means we must immediately stage a huge effort to find alternative sources of energy. Time is of the essence.
But what climate change doesn't destroy, our human proclivity for continuous war just might! Guess which side these fundy christianists are on: the god of war's side. Which means they ache for Israel to bomb Iran to set off a conflict to bring about their moronic longing for Armageddon which is nothing more than the nightmare of a tortured 2nd century screwball. Jesus ain't coming back. And this roar for war will bring only the blackness of death over the planet.
It is also sad that these screwball christianists don't give a rat's ass about the jobless, those without health care, the erasing of our middle class, the corruption that swaddles Congress and politicians everywhere on both sides of the aisle, and the destruction of our environment, among other things.
Their god is a joke. Cindy Jacobs is a joke. The trouble is, the joke's on us. We've got too many "righteous" in places of power now! Georgi W. Bushski is a good example of what happens when a "righteous" man takes over the government and thinks he is doing his god's will. The result is death and destruction, poverty and homelessness, a nation in which the rich are becoming wealthy beyond belief while the middle class disappears and the poor get poorer and millions of families live on the street and do not get enough to eat.
If you believe in prayer and feel the need to pray, it might be wise to pray that all those things Jacobs and her entourage are praying for are negated and struck down.
Of course if there really were a omnipotent and omnibenevolent god, he or she would have put all the Jacobs of the world in their place a long time ago; perhaps on a small island in the South Pacific where they could crack open coconuts and preach to the empty shells!
If you want to read Ms. Gaines article along with news about other christianist fruitcakes, click here.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Sharron Angle - Government is idolatry!
From Crooks & Liars:
Nevada scribe Jon Ralston captured these rather explicit comments made by senate candidate Sharron Angle from an interview back in April with TruNews Christian Radio's Rick Wiles. The audio and transcript is from that link.
Angle tends to be even less-guarded when she does interviews with Christian media (if that's possible), especialy about her faith and the role it plays in her politics. As she makes plain here, her faith is her politics. Government is a false idol to be resisted. Democrats are against the First Commandment.
"And these programs that you mentioned -- that Obama has going with Reid and Pelosi pushing them forward -- are all entitlement programs built to make government our God. And that's really what's happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We're supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government."
As Ralston writes: "This mindset will further reinforce to some that religion infuses everything Angle believes but also might explain her hostility to government programs, believing essentially they are produced by a false God."
"And I knew that all along when I started praying over a year ago over it. And this just seemed to be the battle that I needed to go to war with. And I need warriors to stand beside me. You know, this is a war of ideology, a war of thoughts and of faith. And we need people to really stand for faith and trust, not hope and change."
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Dan Maes and Teapot Crackpots
[Photo of Dan Maes taken from his website which you can look up for yourself if you like pain.]I've been around a long time and I'm getting old. Maybe that's why it's hard for me to understand what is happening in the good ol' US of A.
In my youth I was taught to believe in my country because of its inherent concern for truth and justice and its devotion to democracy - the whole notion of government of the people, by the people, for the people. Americans, my elders said, stuck together, cared for each other, and tried to ensure everyone got a fair shake.
Hah! As any historian knows, that is bullshit. Those things may have been the ideals upon which the country was based, but it has never lived up to them. From the very beginning it has been a fight to keep the elitists, the rich, the corporatists and the religionists from taking control and turning the nation into their own fiefdom!
But, and this is important, Americans, in the past, often pretended to want to do the right thing. Few politicians anywhere would dare step into the public eye to say he or she didn't care about the poor or the unemployed. Even fewer would stand on a soap box and brag about being wholly owned by various corporations. And with the exception of certain southerners, members of Congress were generally quite careful when it came to making racist statements.
Today, that reticence has all changed, particularly on the Republican side of the aisle. The Republican Party has, for the past couple of decades, bared its soul and there's nothing there! It is bereft of character and its innards are rotting in a core of hate and spite wrapped up in a boiling brew of religious idiocy and racism that will, if the GOP has its way, bring our president and country down. The Republican Party has become, in its current incarnation, quite similar to the Afghanistan Taliban. Read the platform of the Texas Republicans. Or read this.
Which brings me to the Teapot Crackpots, most of whom are so damn dumb they have no idea they are being supported, sponsored and manipulated by the billionaire Koch brothers who want nothing more than to destroy President Obama! (For more on Charles and David Koch, go to Jim Hightower's website here.)
(The following comes from Think Progress, via AlterNet.)
Denver, Colorado has, since 1992, been a member of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, "an ... association that promotes sustainable development and has attracted the membership of more than 1,200 communities, 600 of which are in the United States."
That's the first part of the story. The second part has to do with Denver's mayor, John Hickenlooper. Hickenlooper is a Democrat and is running for governor of Colorado. A few months ago, Hickenlooper started a bike sharing program which has been a big success. One would think he would earn some plaudits for his efforts, even from those who are mentally challenged.
But no! A Repugnican by name of Dan Maes (also running for governor) thinks the bike program is part of a sinister plot to turn "Denver into a United Nations community." It's a hidden conspiracy which "will be exposed," says Maes. Yessiree. Hickenlooper is part of a dastardly UN plot to destroy our beloved country!
Now, not only is Maes probably insane, but he may be crooked as a shepherd's staff, too. The resume posted on his website seems to be "inaccurate," or as he says, "out of date." In other words, it's full of lies. See more on that here.
Not surprisingly, Maes is a darling of the Tea Party crackpots. Soulless and stupid, Maes epitomizes the Repugnican Party in 2010.
And here is a group of rightwing freaks, scary as all hell, who are endorsing Maes for governor.
You might want to run for cover!
The Colbert Report - Laura Ingraham
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Laura Ingraham | ||||
| ||||
A few nights ago, wandering through a Barnes & Noble, I espied a "new" book by the hateful, far-right lover of god, Ms. Weirdness, Laura Ingraham. The book? Oh, yes, it's called The Obama Diaries. Needless, to say, but I will anyway, it is all fiction, and consists of the mindless meanderings of Ms. Ingraham's overtaxed brain, mindless meanderings, often racist in character, which she attributes to our president.
It continually amazes me how these christianist creepos (Ingraham is a "devout" Catholic, which could mean most anything these days!) who claim to be all for Jesus and God's rule in our country simply ignore most everything their legendary Jesus said and did as recorded in the fictional Gospels.
One big no-no which would sink Ingraham at the Pearly Gates is the instruction not to bear false witness. Oops. Obviously, she doesn't believe in hell. If she did she would not write malicious attacks on the president of the United States.
Matthew 19:18 - "Do not murder; do not commit adultery; do not steal; do not give false evidence; etc..."
Go to hell, Ms. Ingraham!
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
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