The sacrifice of George W. Bush

We all recall when George W. Bush was president and devoted to the welfare of our fighting men and women (well, except when he forgot to get them combat gear - that was something of a problem) ...

But, as I was saying, old George W. was so concerned about having to put America's military into harm's way that he decided he would subject hisself to an incredible sacrifice - you know, to show solidarity with our young men and wimmen in uniform. He would not play golf 'til the troops came home. And he didn't. Play golf. For probably two whole months.

True golfers know how hard abstinence is. Golf is seductive, a siren, like a foxy dame who knows all the ways to please.

So nobody was too hard on George.


Now, I know George is a regular citizen again (well, except for the millions of dollars he scammed before he became prez), and he's hanging out at his new mansion in Dallas and his old ranchero down the road and sometimes he even goes to the local cafe to shake hands while his wife...huh, Mildred? ... no, no, her name's Laura ... sips coffee at a little table off to the side, smiling demurely at her virile husband dressed up in his flight suit.

But, it would seem to me that an ex-president, even if he was the worst president in history, should have some feelings for the common folks who are getting the shit beat out of them by the recession/depression and it would seem to me that an ex-president like Bush (who was the worst president in history) might want to sacrifice something on behalf of the common folks who were so stupid as to elect him president in the first place which is why the common folks are in this goddamn mess in the second place.

So, I figure Bush ought to give up golf again. He could even double his sacrifice if he also gave up cutting brush, too, although I've heard that he hasn't cut up brush much since the media ain't following him around no more.

Give it up George! Sacrifice. Think of all the benefits! No more crawling out of bed before the sun's up to make an early tee-time. No more sneaking a few beers with your buddies at the 19th hole. No more worrying about your ball getting lost in the woods or drowned in the lake.

Sleep in. Relax. Sacrifice!

Matt Taibbi tells the truth about Limbaugh

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone reporter and author, does not hesitate to tell it like it is, and so he eviscerates the big, fat, blowhard that is Rush Limbaargh.

Thanks to Video Cafe.

Consider this (Guest Post by Bob Poris)

The New York Times carried a headline today reading thusly:

"Job Losses Hint at Vast Remaking of Economy."

The article, written by Peter S. Goodman and Jack Healey, noted 651,000 additional jobs went kaput in February and they're not coming back. Some key industries hurting badly are manufacturing, financial services and retail. "There are going to be fewer stores, fewer factories, fewer financial services operations."

Old solutions will no longer work, say Goodman and Healey. Now the government can't get by with merely handing out temporary unemployment checks. "This time, the government needs to place a greater emphasis on retraining workers for other careers..."

Furthermore, the situation isn't going to change anytime soon.

Here's what Bob Poris has to say, deriving from a lifetime of personal and business experience.

"The article re future jobs and industries is probably correct. You younger fellows should consider it when thinking of careers.

"In the meantime, the tax structure will remain the same for another year, at least, so the free market can keep more of any money they can earn. That will allow the trickle down from profits to continue at least another year.

"If trickle down works, we should be fine soon as it will be coupled with Obama’s stimulus package. If trickle down doesn’t work, we still have the Obama method with whatever adjustments he makes as time flits by. Sometime in the near future I suspect that the auto companies will be allowed to go under along with the financial sector, assuming the banks that are solvent can pick up some of the slack in lending that the “too big to fail” guys cannot do.

"We will still be left with huge deficits in any event and eventual tax increases to pay the bills Obama inherited plus the new ones he will have to create in order to keep the poor and the near poor from starving in the streets. I also assume many young, poor people will enlist in order to take advantage of the incentives being offered now and in the future, so we can rebuild our military quickly. The next step will have to be a draft, which will get more young people off the streets and allow us to wind down any current military adventures. We might also need a rebuilt military to handle Iran and North Korea, both of which will get more desperate unless the worldwide economy improves.

"The free market has failed due to the lack of regulations and the ability of a small number of adventurous people to screw up the entire world seeking profit from dumb business practices.

"We will also see more government involvement in almost all fields, also due to the failure of the free, unregulated markets to provide for health care, education, infrastructure, etc.

"You young people will live in a very different world than you have become used to. I am not sure it will be better than my time, even with a World War and a serious Great Depression. It will be up to the current generation to resolve the problems of the world and not fall prey to dictatorial leaders on the right or left.

"We allowed Bush/Cheney to weaken many of our safeguards, like checks and balances we allowed Bush/Cheney to expand the president's executive power which either overruled or stretched the Constitution. We will not know unless someone investigates it and makes decisions as to how to govern from now on.

Save this and review it in a few months.

Vitter and the Xtn Right Fight against Planned Parenthood

Go to any Christian Right site. Choose one at random. Chances are great that you will find a rant against Planned Parenthood.

The Christian Right (which includes the Catholic Right) hate Planned Parenthood with a passion that exceeds any lust they might have for gaining converts or any desire still left in their demented souls to follow their mythical Jesus.

The Christian Right has been bragging as to how their minions drove Planned Parenthood out of the Panhandle area of Florida.

That small victory gave them a taste of blood and they're back for more.


The fight against PP went to the Senate carried by the family values man hisself - David Vitter from the 19th century state of Louisiana. Vitter, the lover of prostitutes and Jesus, has attempted to remove all federal funding for Planned Parenthood from the 2009 omnibus appropriations bill which is currently under consideration in the Senate.

One wonders what the hell is wrong with these wacko Christian freaks who think it is Christ-like to deny women across the country much-needed health services. According to Lynn Harris, writing at Salon.com, Vitter, representing the wingnuts of the Christian Right, is upset because, even though federal monies don't pay for abortions directly, they do, through Planned Parenthood, support the abortion "industry."

Harris says "no one should have to explain why it'd be a particularly bad moment to make the full range of Planned Parenthood services (including breast and cervical cancer screening) less accessible to low-income and uninsured patients. In fact, as Feministing notes, US News has reported that in these tough times, more and more women (and men) are visiting Planned Parenthood, many as their source of primary healthcare. Yet since the anti-reproductive rights movement sees Planned Parenthood as the veritable Death Star of abortion, it will always be a major, if symbolic, target."


So far as I can tell, Vitter's amendment did not make it to the floor. But Harris notes that the recalcitrant anti-Christ from South Carolina, Jim DeMint, has "filed an amendment (No. 649) to 'strike provisions relating to the Medicaid drug rebate program and prevent the implementation of a funding earmark for the Planned Parenthood Federation of ?America.' His goal: to remove from the appropriations bill a long-needed, much-discussed, technical -- and no-cost -- correction that would restore the ability of pharmaceutical companies to offer nominally priced drugs to college and university health cllinics and family planning health centers without penalty."

Even weirder is that fact that "There is no federal funding in this provision." As Harris suggests, perhaps we should "ask Sen. DeMint exactly how it constitutes an 'earmark.'"


How do these creeps keep getting elected to Congress?


Read Harris' entire article here.

Find out more about Planned Parenthood here.

Science and Fiction

Religion in the White House

Why do we need any faith-based nonsense in the government?

We don't. In fact, because the entire faith-based operation involves the transfer of public money to religious institutions, it would seem that such an operation is in clear violation of our Constitution! No taxpayer dollars should go to any religious institution for any reason!

Unfortunately, President Obama doesn't seem to agree with me. Thus, he has moved to reshape and increase the size scope of a governmental faith-based structure.

According to Liliana Segura at AlterNet, Obama issued "an executive order that, rather than doing anything to dismantle Bush's faith-based initiatives, bolstered them with a new 'advisory council on faith.'"

But it gets worse. According to a U.S. News and World Report article, "(Obama's) public rallies are opening with invocations that have been commissioned and vetted by the White House." Prayers "commission and vetted by the White House"? Please say it ain't so!

This is, as they say, "unprecedented."


With regard to the faith-based business, Obama has created an Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. He did this via an executive order. The Council is to "be composed of not more than 25 members appointed by the president from among individuals who are not officers or employees of the federal government."

John DuBois, a 26-year old former Pentecostal pastor is heading up the faith-based office.

Not good. "However well-intentioned it sounded, the American Civil Liberties Union was quick to voice its alarm over the president's order, pointing out that the mission of the religious advisory council will also be 'to advise the president and the White House faith-based office on how to distribute federal dollars, and also advise on a range of other issues, such as AIDS and women's reproductive health care' -- areas where religious views present nothing if not a conflict of interest."


Mr. Obama needs to rethink all of this. First of all, it is unnecessary. If religious groups want to do good work in the community, that's fine. But they can do it with their own funds, not with taxpayer money.

I shall repeat myself: To give federal monies to religious groups for any purpose is in direct violation of the Constitution.

Give it up, President Obama!


Ms. Segura has much more to say about this issue and you can read her entire article here.

Another interesting article here (which is where I found the photo above showing then Senator Obama's interest in faith-based work).

Confess only "real" sins ... like masturbation, or eating meat during Lent, or not taking Communion

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Catholic prelates going to hell

Sometimes we kinda wish there really was a hell.

Tana Ganeva, writing at AlterNet, tells this story:

"A 9-year old girl in Brazil was impregnated with twins after being repeatedly raped by her stepfather. Doctors decided the child's uterus was too small to safely carry a baby, let alone two, and with the mother's permission performed an abortion. The Catholic Church not only tried to stop the procedure, but announced today [March 5] that all the adults involved in terminating the pregnancy will be excommunicated from the Church -- including the doctors and the girls mother."

According to the BBC, "The Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, told Brazil's TV Globo that the law of God was above any human law."


Well, that's all bullshit. The archbishop of Olinda wouldn't know God's law from a turtle. Any pissant pious prelates from any religious organization who would expect this child to carry twins to term and probably die in the process deserves to go to the hell created by the god of their perverted imaginations!


Read the entire article here.

Delusions are inherited

Jon Stewart helps us understand CNBC (And Rick Santelli)

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

h/t to Video Cafe

Criminals and dictators in high places - Bush's secret memos

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and many others within the Bush administration are criminals. Bush, in particular, violated his oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States on numerous occasions.

This is not a matter of opinion.


The Obama administration has released seven memos (9 legal opinions) from the Bush Justice Department. Marjorie Cohn has put together an excellent article summarizing how these memos effectively allowed Bush and cronies to shred the Constitution and provide for an imperial presidency with unlimited power - answerable to no one!

"The memos provide 'legal' rationales for the President to suspend freedom of speech and press; order warrantless searches and seizures, including wiretaps of U.S. citizens; lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely in the United States without criminal charges; send suspected terrorists to other countries where they will likely be tortured; and unilaterally abrogate treaties. According to the reasoning in the memos, Congress has no role to check and balance the executive. That is the definition of a police state. [Emphasis mine.]

The memos were written for the most part by John Yoo and Jay Bybee, "authors of the so-called 'torture memos' that redefined torture much more narrowly than the U.S. definition of torture, and counseled the President how to torture and get away with it."

These memos were later withdrawn when they became public, but the damage had been done. "...they remained in effect long enough to authorize the torture and abuse of many prisoners in U.S. custody."


Steven Benen at the Washington Monthly noted that "Yoo, Bybee & Co. believed the 'war on terror' trumped the Fourth Amendment. What's more, the First Amendment 'may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.' Posee Comitatus isn't mandatory. Congress has no authority to address federal detention policies. FISA doesn't necessarily apply to national security considerations."


During the Bush administration, the terrorists, for all practical purposes won the battle. The Constitution was ignored or more aptly, shredded. Bush continued to talk about "democracy," and how we were fighting to bring "democracy" to Iraq. That was all bullshit, for he was destroying the very fibers of democracy at home!

Because he broke his oath to uphold the Constitution, George W. Bush should be tried for treason in a court of law, by a jury of his peers. Being president does not mean he is above the law.

Additionally, John Yoo, who is still on the faculty of the Berkeley Law School and currently a visiting professor at Chapman University SChool of Law in Orange County, California, as well as Jay Bybee, a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, should be, as Ms. Cohn suggests, "investigated, prosecuted, and disbarred. Yoo should be fired and Bybee impeached."


Read Marjorie Cohn's entire article here.

You can read the memos here.

Cost of universal health care less than bailouts

Joe Byrne, writing at The Raw Story, tells the story:

A study by the Institute for Health and Socio-economic Policy indicates that "The transformation of America's current health care system into a single-payer 'Medicare for all' sysem could cost six times less than the bank bailouts."

Most people in this country, minus the disgruntled and the insane (such as Rushbo), are aware that our health care system is in dire straits. Compared to the health care provided by other nations for their citizens, we're way down the list. France, is number one!

Mr. Byrne notes that according to ABC, "the US spends twice as much on health care than the average developed nation, most of which work with universal health care. Critics of the current system point to the government treating health care as if it was a commodity, not a social service; because of the demands of the market, insurance companies have a motivation to avoid unprofitable patients."

And, I might add, unprofitable doctors. It isn't unusual for a retired person to go through HMO's as fast as Bush went through reasons to invade Iraq. If a doctor is conscientious, operates from a preventative point of view, he/she is likely to get bounced by an HMO because he/she, by seeing patients more often and ordering important tests to check for problems, is going to cost the HMO money. So, the retired person, if he/she wants to keep the same doctor, has to seek out a new HMO.

According to Mr. Bryne, Obama's plan "will cost $634 billion out of the new overall budget. In addition, $175 billion that was to be payment to private insurers for the coverage of 10 million Medicare patients will be re-allocated over the next ten years for health care reform."

Today, President Obama is meeting with newly-appointed Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebellius and other honchos to hash over the problem and look at ways to reform our system so it works for all Americans, not just members of Congress and the rich people. This gathering being called "a nonpartisan health care summit at the White House."

Good luck with that. I think the president and his administration will again have to go it alone, again, because all the Repugnicans can offer to any discussion on meeting the needs of our people is "No, no, no, no!"


Here's how this could work:

"Single-payer national health insurance is a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health financing, but delivery of care remains largely private." According to an analysis of the proposal for a single-payer universal health care system by the Institute for Health and Socio-economic Policy, it was found that "'full medicare benefits for all' would have these immediate effects:

* $317 billion in increased business and public revenues throughout the US economy.

* 2,613,495 new permanent jobs, at an average of $38,262 per year.

* $100 billion in additional employee compensation.

* $44 billion in increased tax revenue."


But there's more. It would appear that a lot of folks would be saved from debilitating or fatal illnesses; and millions more would be spared from unnecessary pain as well as financial catastrophe.

The question before the nation is whether or not it is worth the cost of the bank bailouts to provide universal health coverage; to actually put together a system that benefits the poor and middle-class.

Or, to put it another way, the financial price tag of the war in Iraq is headed toward the $1.3 trillion mark. Is universal health care for the American people worth half of that?

Get an afterlife!

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Bibles for Politcos in Pennsylvania

The Pennsylvania State Assembly recently purchased "220 Bibles and other holy books for legislators as they took the oath of office last month."

Members of the House got to select their Bibles from more than a dozen choices. Prices ranged from $30 to $90 each!

In addition, legislators who desired to have their names embossed on their Bibles could do so. That cost an extra $15 per, of course.

The total tab for this nonsense came to about $13,700!


Will someone please explain why in hell the taxpayers of the State of Pennsylvania are paying for Christian Bibles to be given to their state legislators? Is this not in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution?

If these Pennsylvania lawmakers are so pious they must have a Bible with them when they do their legislative duty, let them buy their own damn Bible! It is, of course, oxymoronic to speak of lawmakers and piety in the same sentence.


It isn't the money. The amount of money is a drop in Pennsylvania's budget. It's the principle of the thing.

I'd like to know who came up with this deranged idea.

And we should also recognize the moral strength of the seven (out of 203) legislators who refused this exercise in public religiosity.

h/t to the Friendly Atheist

The perfect Repugnican ticket in 2012

h/t to Cat in the Bag

What if God disappeared?

h/t to God Is For Suckers

Suzie Smartypants explains the Evolution

This is just priceless! Thanks to PZ Myers at Pharyngula!

Why there are no real Christians

Jon Stewart helps us under Rushbo

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

A Party in Limbaugh

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Rush Limbaugh naked - courtesty of Media Matters

Rush Limbaugh, now touted as the de facto leader of the Loser Repugnicans, is a scumbag. Limbaugh, the fat, drug-addicted radio "personality," is not a nice man.

Media Matters has done everyone a favor by collecting some of Limbaugh's nastiest comments down through the years.

Here are some samples:

Jan. 22, 2009: On Faux News Hannity, "Limbaugh said of media coverage of Obama: 'We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black, because this is the first black president."

Jun. 2008: Limbaargh said Obama's "'only chance of winning' the Oval Office 'is that he's black.'"

May 14, 2008: Limbaargh whined that "If Obama were Caucasian, they would have taken this guy out on the basis of pure ignorance long ago."

During the 2008 campaign, Limbaargh protested that Obama was "an affirmative action candidate."

Whatever else you derive from such pronouncements, it's blatantly clear that Rushbo is a racist of the worst sort!


Here are a few other snippets:

"Limbaugh has repeated invoked right-wing conspiracy theories that the Clintons were involved in the death of then-deputy White House counsel Vince Foster, whose body was found in Northern Virginia's Fort March Park on July 20, 1993, despite multiple investigations that determined Foster committed suicide."

"In September 2007, Limbaugh characterized service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq 'phony soldiers.'" This from a fat slob who rakes in $40 million a year and who has never served in uniform!

In August of 2007, Limbaargh suggested that liberals and Democrats want the U.S. to get out of Iraq, but "go to Darfur" because the people in Darfur are black. The reason, said Limbaargh, is that going to Darfur would send a signal to blacks in this country to keep voting the Democratic ticket.

On Feb. 5, 2007, referring to a study by the Univ. of Chicago that found "a majority of young blacks feel alienated from today's government," Limbaargh said "Why would that be? The government's been taking care of them their whole lives."


Limbaargh is not only racist, but a misogynist. When Nancy Pelosi was elected as Speaker of the House, he said "[L]ook at Ms. Pelosi. Why, she can multitask. She can breastfeed, she can clip her toenails, she can direct the House, all while the kids are sitting on her lap at the same time."

Limbaargh often refers to feminists as "feminazis."

On Jan. 10, 2006, Rusbo "suggested that some women 'would love to be hired as eye candy.'"


Rush Limbaugh also likes to attack the disabled. In October, 2006, he "accused actor Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson's disease, of 'exaggerating the effects of the disease' in a campaign advertisement for Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), who was then a Senate candidate." Limbaargh said "...it's purely an act. .. this is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn't take his medication or he's acting, one of the two."


Well, there's much more. It all adds up to the fact that Limbaargh is a diseased person, a drug-addicted, drug-addled racist and hate-monger. Some say Limbaargh is "entertainment," and that "it's all a show."

Sorry, that won't wash. Racism and hate are not "entertainment." Inciting hatred and violence among the American people is not funny.

Limbaugh shows us just how low some people will got to make a buck; the depths of depravity.

And this is the man the Republican Party has walked to the altar and married.

Aargh!


Please read the entire Media Matters article here.