Rachel Maddow - GOP declares war on own promises (apparently)

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The commentary which follows is from Crooks & Liars:

Republicans are off to a rough start after taking control of the House of RepresentativeWednesday.  MSNBC's Rachel Maddow noted Thursday that the party had only beenpower for some 33 hours when they had already made, by her count, at least eight serious missteps.

"Their initial pledges to the American people have turned out to be kind of a mess," she said.

As one of their first acts, Republicans decided to read the Constitution on the House floor Thursday, but purposefully left out some of the more embarrassing passages.

For example, the three-fifths compromise that counted slaves as part of a person was nullified by the 13th Amendment, and so it wasn't included in the reading. The 18th Amendment, which imposed prohibition on alcohol, was omitted.

In addition, Article 4 Section 4 was accidentally left out of the reading because pages in a three-ring binder "simply stuck together."

In their "Pledge to America," Republicans said they would cut $100 billion from the budget in the first year, but have recently backed away from that number. Homeland Security Committee chair Peter King (R-NY) is looking at cutting $50 billion, and a GOP aide told The Huffington Post's Howard Fineman that the bottom line is more like $30 billion.

While the Democrats were in power, Republicans complained that the open rules process -- allowing unlimited amendments and debate -- wasn't used. Politico observed Thursday that "[n]one of the bills that will be brought to the floor this week will be brought under open rules."

Republicans adopted a new rule called cut-as-you-go that requires all legislation that will increase the deficit to be offset with spending cuts. The Congressional Budget Office has said that one of the Republicans' first initiatives, repealing health care reform, would add $230 billion to the to the national debt over ten years.

Party leadership has solved this problem by exempting repeal of health care reform from the rules.

The GOP promised that all committee attendance would be publicly posted. They reversed that rule Tuesday.

In their Pledge to America, Republicans promised that all bills would be justified with a citation of the Constitution.

"The three bills that Republicans plan to introduce this week — one to cut the congressional budget, one to repeal the health care bill and another to instruct House committees to present new health care legislation — were posted on the Rules Committee website with plenty of time for review, but none had the constitutional citation for similar review," Politico reported.

"The Republican Party has wrapped itself in the Constitution at every turn for political purposes," Maddow continued. "They've outdone themselves on this matter."

Two House Republicans skipped out on the swearing-in ceremony on the House floor Wednesday. The Huffington Post reported that Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) and Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA) decided to attend a fundraiser instead.

The two tried to claim they had been properly sworn in because they had raised their hands while watching the swearing in on television. Sessions and Fitzpatrick went on to cast votes in the House. Sessions even presided over the Rules Committee.

"Dude, you can't get sworn in by a TV," Maddow explained. "You have to be there in person. If you could become a congressman by raising your hand at the TV, everyone simultaneously watching C-SPAN yesterday and reaching for something on a high shelf or waving to a friend would be a congressman right now."

"These are self-inflicted things," she added. "Republicans carefully laid out these rakes on the floor inside the front door. They've been stepping on them one after the other since they got in."

Referendum on the Nature of the Tea Party

The following is a guest post from Waylon Fairbanks. Waylon writes on international politics and modern culture. He is a guest blogger for My Dog Ate My Blog and writes on accredited online colleges for Guide to Online Schools.


The emergence of the right-wing, populist movement known as the Tea Party has drawn analysis and interpretation from every corner of the political spectrum. With interpretations ranging from the saviors of liberty to the Sturmabteilung, everyone with an opinion and a pen has weighed in. And with the Republican takeover of the 112th Congress, finally, a verdict on the Tea Party's true nature is about to be reached.

Between Fox News and other mainstream promoters of right-wing ideology openly promoting and supporting the Tea Party, and liberal pundits like Keith Olbermann denouncing it as "racist" and Christopher Hitchens characterizing it as a deep, Caucasian fear of becoming a minority, the stunning lack of consensus has dismantled any chance at an objective understanding of the Tea Party. Yet like many historical populist movements, the ambiguity lies in the fact that as the major ideological opposition to the governing party, remaining vague is key. The Tea Party's success as a movement lies in its ability to remain ill-defined, and thus attract diverse legions of disgruntled Americans. Fortunately, for us proud liberals and democratic-socialists, the party is over. On January 5th when the new Congressional session began, the truth about the Tea Party will begin to appear, in all its ugly glory.

The position the Tea Party decides to take on a series of legislative escapades led by the Republican House will quickly force the Tea Party to define itself as either the independent and deficit-minded protectors of America, or the bigoted wing of the Republican establishment. Yet already in the lame duck session, the Tea Party's silence on the large, Obama tax compromise has proven the first hypocrisy in a projected likelihood of many. Both major aspects of the compromise, one would reason, contradict the politics of the movement: the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts will add 561 billion dollars to the federal deficit, and the Keynesian, demand-sided elements of the compromise are contradictory to the so-called laissez-faire Tea Party economic ideology. So then, why did we not see Glenn Beck leading a march on Washington? Surely, if the Republicans would have unanimously opposed the legislation, the Tea Party would have been up in arms (excuse the pun) and rallying, as they have been during other major Democratic legislative victories. Regardless of whether the Tea Party views itself as an independent movement, not one voice was raised when the Republican Party stance was in contrast to the Tea Party's.

Unlike the coalition comprising the Democratic Party, which is made of a plurality of varied interests, the Republican Party is essentially the product of two factions: the pro-business and the social conservative. A shrewd Republican businessman will often throw a bone to the social conservatives in the woodwork and denounce abortion or stem cell research, and the social conservatives will embrace an economic ideology they are not intellectually fit to understand. Since the election of Reagan, this mutualistic symbiosis has worked excellently. Yet because social conservatives tend to rely on populism, and the business community on elitism, any attempt to reconcile the Tea Party with the Boehner establishment will only reveal rift in the Republican Party. This leaves the glorified Tea Party only two options: they can either become subservient to the business interests of the Republicans in the House and thus fade into ambiguity, or they can depart from the Republican agenda when the House prefers its business interests to making Christian fundamentalism the state religion. However, it is likely this decision has already been made, and the Left can sit back and witness the crumbling of one our most hated allies – the Republican Party, or the Tea Party. Anyone for tea?

 * * * *

Please check out My Dog Ate My Blog for more excellent essays.

His eye is on the sparrow - a really fishy story!

The synoptic Gospels are essentially collections of various materials attributed to a first-century Jewish itinerant by name of Jeshua, or Joshua, or more commonly known as Jesus.  It is very unlikely that this Jesus was an historical figure, but was created by one or more writers to satisfy the need of the early church to put flesh and blood on their savior, the Christ.

Cf. Earl Doherty's "Jesus: Neither God nor Man."

This becomes quite clear if one reads the Gospel of Luke, chapters 9 through 18. In this section, the Jesus figure wanders about meeting various people and groups and issuing a variety of proclamations and judgments, many of which make no sense at all.

For example, in Luke 12:4-5, the itinerant is quoted as saying (with no context): "To you who are my friends I say: Do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more they can do. I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Believe me, he is the one to fear."

What could that possibly mean? Is he referring to Yahweh, the god of Hebrew tradition? Yahweh certainly killed enough people in his heyday!

But the ensuing verse is the one I'm focusing on in this essay. It seems the Jesus figure is still talking to "his friends" and he says "Are not sparrows five for twopence? And yet not one of them is overlooked by God. More than that, even the hairs of your head have all been counted. Have no fear; you are worth more that any number of sparrows."

It goes without saying that this is a silly saying; especially to someone who has gone bald. Which hairs are numbered, the ones lost or the ones still clinging to the scalp? And the implication that God gives a flip about sparrows and takes care of sparrows is ludicrous.

In Arkansas over the past few days, "3,000 birds mysteriously dropped dead from the sky."

Not only so, but "An estimated 100,000 dead drum fish are floating along a 20-mile stretch of the Arkansas River and washing up on the river's banks near the town of Ozark..."


The fact that pious Christians continue to praise their god in the face of incontrovertible evidence he/she/it just doesn't give a damn is quite mind-boggling.

This god does not care about sparrows, nor fish, nor humans. Every day, millions of humans die horrible deaths from disease, hunger, medical malpractice, accident, etc. and no god intervenes to save them or ease their suffering.

Yet, Christians (and Jews and Muslims) prattle on in their houses of worship about how god's "eye is on the sparrow," so how much more he cares for you. Not true. And to hold such convictions in spite of all the evidence to the contrary reinforces the truth that no one is as blind as the one who refuses to see.

The idea that there is a personal god who cares about you and me and the rest of the world is one of the biggest religious hoaxes ever perpetrated on the human race!

His eye is not on the sparrow; nor the drum fish in Arkansas; nor you or me.

So enjoy your life and do the best you can.  As the song goes, "Imagine there's no heaven..." and live your life to the fullest.

Conservatives don't give a damn about the Constitution

There are a bunch of so-called "conservatives" in the U.S. House who are planning to "teach" the Constitution of the United States. This is really funny, because they don't give a damn about the Constitution. They care only about their perverted ideological views which hold, first and foremost, that this is a nation ordained by their god, and that it should be run under their interpretation of biblical law.

A second notion derived from their ideology is that Democrats and progressives are bad and President Obama is one of the worst. Thus, their goal for the next two years is not to help govern the nation in an intelligent and helpful manner, but to do everything they can to screw things up and then lay the blame on Obama: they want the presidency back in Repugnican hands; they want Obama to go down to defeat in 2012!

The intellectual scope of this group is laughable. Consider the fact that the Minnesota moron, Michele Bachmann, is one of its leaders. But they are still dangerous because the majority of people in the United States are woefully ignorant of the history and the government of the nation and thus susceptible to the Bachmann's of the world who lie without shame about both.

Case in point: You may recall that President Obama visited Indonesia a couple of months ago. David Gibson noted that "In his speech in Indonesia, Obama used the phrase 'E pluribus unum' to underscore that in Indonesia, as in America, 'hundreds of millions who hold different beliefs can be united in freedom under one flag.'"

That, of course, is not true today in the United States, if it ever was. Religionists of various stripes are doing everything in their power to gain control and force the rest of the nation to follow their beliefs. Racists have unified under various banners to push their causes, one of which is to get rid of Obama; another has to do with revising the truth as to the cause of the Civil War.

Nevertheless, Obama held out to the Indonesians the "truth" as we would like it to be and as our Constitution envisioned it.

Now "'E pluribus unum' [from many, one] was adopted by Congress in 1782 and was considered the nation's unofficial motto, appearing on coins and banknotes since 1795. In 1956, at the height of the Cold War, Congress passed a law establishing "In God We Trust" as the official national motto, just as Congress had added the phrase 'under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954."

Conservatives in Congress always want to nod to their god, even though the Constitution is quite clear that the nation has no god nor does the nation rely on any god. So, when the Soviet threat loomed, frightened conservatives played the god-card, thinking, I presume, that their god would be so impressed by their fealty, he or she or it would protect them from the Russian menace!

Stupid, yes, but typical of Repugnican conservatives in our national (and state) legislatures (along with a few "blue doggy" Dems).


Back to Obama in Indonesia. Because Obama did not use the phrase "In God We Trust" in his speech, 41 moronic Repugs and one dumbass Dem (members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus) penned a note to Obama wanting to know why he said "E Pluribus Unum" was our national motto instead of "In God We Trust."

This bunch of bozos from the Prayer Caucus also questioned Obama's failure to include the word, "creator" when "citing the second line of the Declaration of Independence."

Now, this is the kind of stuff Conservatives worry about. They don't worry about a president of their own ilk and of their own religious bent who lied over and over again (along with his appointees) in order to instigate an illegal war which isn't over yet, causing the deaths of 4,000 plus Americans, untold suffering and thousands upon thousands of Iraqi deaths at a cost of over $1 trillion!

The conservatives don't worry about climate change which threatens millions of lives worldwide at this very moment. They don't worry about the deregulation of corporate rules which has created one of the worst economic depressions in our history!

They worry about religion in government. They worry that the president of the United States might not be religious enough in their view to effectively govern the country.


Their stupidity is exceeded only by their ignorance. Even worse, the fact that they were elected by the American people gives rise to the belief that ignorance and stupidity rules throughout the land.

On the issue of religion, the Constitution and our founding fathers were quite clear (in spite of Beck and Barton's pompous and pious lies) that we are a secular nation ruled by secular law!

As to religion and politics: Article VI of the Constitution says:

"...no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any office or public Trust under the United States."

So, it doesn't matter if Obama is a Christian, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, an agnostic or an atheist or anything else! The Constitution can't be clearer than that; which proves that conservatives don't give a damn about the Constitution!

Furthermore, the First Amendment to the Constitution is very specific: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ... "

What the conservatives don't get is that "the free exercise thereof" does not mean they have the right to impose their religious views on the rest of us, including the President of the United States!


They don't get it because they don't want to get it. They are ideologically driven and to hell with anything that gets in the way of their ideology!

And no matter that they establish a group to study the Constitution, no matter how loudly they protest their love for, and adherence of, the Constitution, the fact is they don't give a damn about the Constitution!

Truck stop

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

For the uninformed, all of the gods mentioned were born on December 25 (many of a virgin)...

Former senator Alan Simpson calls seniors the Greediest Generation

Photo from the CS Monitor (Credit to Larry Downing/Reuters)  Alan Simpson on left.

The following essay was sent to me by a friend who thought it was worth sharing. I agree wholeheartedly. The essay is said to have been written by a man living in Montana.

Are "seniors" the greediest generation? Or are the greedy ones really Alan Simpson and his creepy Repugnican cohorts?  It is the latter people who, through their mismanagment and ideological nonsense, have brought this country to its economic knees, not American "seniors"!


The essay follows:

Hey Alan, let's get a few thing straight...

1. As a career politician, you have been on the public dole for FIFTY YEARS...

2. I have been paying Social Security taxes for 48 YEARS (since I was 15 years old. I am now 63)...

3. My Social Security payments, and those of millions of other Americans, were safely tucked away in an interest bearing account for decades until you political pukes decided to raid the account and give OUR money to a bunch of zero ambition losers in return for votes, thus bankrupting the system and turning Social Security into a Ponzi scheme that would have made Bernie Madoff proud...

4. Recently, just like Lucy & Charlie Brown, you and your ilk pulled the proverbial football away from millions of American seniors nearing retirement and moved the goalposts for full retirement from age 65 to age 67. NOW, you and your shill commission is proposing to moved the goalposts YET AGAIN...

5. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying into Medicare from Day One, and now you morons propose to change the rules of the game. Why? Because you idiots mismanaged other parts of the economy to such an extent that you need to steal money from Medicare to pay the bills...

6. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying income taxes our entire lives, and now you propose to increase our taxes yet again. Why? Because you incompetent bastards spent our money so profligately that you just kept on spending even after you ran out of money. Now, you come to the American taxpayers and say you need more to pay off YOUR debt...

To add insult to injury, you label us "greedy" for calling "bullshit" on your incompetence. Well, Captain Bullshit, I have a few questions for YOU...

1. How much money have you earned from the American taxpayers during your pathetic 50-year political career?

2. At what age did you retire from your pathetic political career, and how much are you receiving in annual retirement benefits from the American taxpayers?

3. How much do you pay for YOUR government provided health insurance?

4. What cuts in YOUR retirement and healthcare benefits are you proposing in your disgusting deficit reduction proposal, or, as usual, have you exempted yourself and your political cronies?

It is you, Captain Bullshit, and your poliltical co-conspirators who are "greedy." It is you and they who have bankrupted America and stolen the American dream from millions of loyal, patriotic taxpayers. And for what? Votes. That's right, sir. You and yours have bankrupted America for the sole purpose of advancing your pathetic political careers.

You know, we know it, and you know that we know it. And you can take that to the bank, you miserable son of a bitch.

Christ, what a party!

The perfect Xmas present for Jews

It seems some Christians are caught up in confusion as to what, if any, kind of Christmas present to get for their Jewish friends.

Katie Halper, in a recent AlterNet article, believes she has the perfect solution.

She mentions that, while there is still a certain amount of controversy about who killed Jesus, there is no controversy about who gave him birth:  Mary, the little Jewish girl, did the deed.

"Yes," says Halper, "she did so with the help of God, but it was Mary who schlepped from inn to inn before settling on a perfectly acceptable no-frills manger (a real find.) And it was her zaftig, child-bearing hips which really delivered the goods."

The perfect Xmas present for Gentiles to give their Jewish friends, therefore, is: A simple thank-you note!

Read Katie's very funny article here.

Killjoy was here

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Europe and the U.S. - a comparison

We've written on occasion about how the United States, supposedly the "richest" country in the world, allows so many of its most vulnerable people fall through the cracks causing them incredible pain and suffering, and even death.

The Republican Party with its allies - FAUX News, Rush Limbaarger, the Washington Times and numerous other far-right pundits and organizations - has taken over and controlled the conversation about taxes, so-called "entitlement" programs, the deficit, government expenditures, etc. With the additional power that the GOP will garner with the new Congress, we can expect a growing gaggle of voices parroting the "conservative" line which includes no new taxes, additional tax breaks for the rich and the powerful and their corporations, less regulation of just about everything, reducing entitlement benefits, turning over Social Security to private entrepreneurs so they can bankrupt the program to further feather their own nest, and much more.

It appears that some Europeans think that Americans have collectively gone insane. From the European point of view, it is incomprehensible that people who talk so much about God act so much like the devil.

Democrats Ramshield is an American expat who lives in Europe. Here is some of what Ramshield wrote in a recent article:

Although the EU has a bigger economy than does the U.S., is spends only 9% of its GNP on medical care while the U.S. spends between 13-16% on the same. Not only so, but "the EU pretty much insures 100 percent of its population."

The Repugs and rednecks and Jesus-lovers in our country don't like to hear that but it's true.

"The U.S. has 59 million people medically uninsured; 132 million without dental insurance; 60 million without paid sick leave; 40 million on food stamps. Everybody in the European Union has cradle-to-grave access to universal medical and dental plan by law. The law also requires paid sick leave; paid annual leave; paid maternity leave."


Maybe the U.S. is just spoiled rotten. We've had no major wars fought on this continent in a couple of centuries (other than our own Civil War, and that's what it was - a civil war fought over the issue of slavery, not a war that the South instigated to ensure "states' rights"!); we have had little exposure to terrorism and except for 9/11 most of our terrorism was home-grown, e.g. the Oklahoma City bombing).

With the exception of a small portion or our population, we don't have first-hand knowledge of what it's like to live under a Hitler or a Mussolini. Thus Ramshield refers to the fact that "Some social scientists think that making sure large-scale crime or fascism never takes root in Europe again requires a taxpayer investment in a strong social safety net."

And he asks, "Can we learn from Europe? Isn't it better to invest in a social safety net than in a large criminal justice system? (In America over 2 million people are incarcerated.)"


Ramshield tells us about Germany. "Unlike here, in Germany jobless benefits never run out. Not only that -- as part of their social safety net, all job seekers continue to be medically insured, as are their families.

"In the German jobless benefit system, when 'jobless benefit 1' runs out, 'jobless benefit 2,' also known as HartzIV, kicks in. That one never gets cut off. The jobless also have contributions made for their pensions. They receive other types of insurance coverage from the state. As you can imagine, the estimated 2 million unemployed Americans who almost had no benefits this Christmas [because of Republican nastiness] (my insertion) seems a particular horror show to Europeans, made worse by the fact that the U.S. government does not provide any medical insurance to American unemployment recipients. Europeans routinely recoil at that in disbelief and disgust."


The problem is, as too few of us are aware, that the corporations run our government, routinely buying and selling our legislators. And that's true in both parties. The legislators owe their jobs and their tenure to those sitting in plush offices in high towers in the major cities of our land and they gladly do their bidding which most often includes a reduction in the tax bite for corporate entities, protection against what the corporate entities feel are onerous regulations, reduction of benefits to the poor and needy to further enrich the corporate coffers, etc.

For example, Republicans are moving in to head up Congressional committees. That will have dire consequences for everything from education to environmental protections. Lee Fang, writing at Think Progress, notes that "incoming Agriculture Chairman Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK) announced the hire of Ryan McKee as the senior staffer to oversee the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. McKee is currently a lobbyist working for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's division dedicated to deregulating complex derivatives products. In her new role working for Lucas, McKee will be liaising with regulators in charge of implementing new rules under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law to overhaul the over-the-counter derivatives market."

And this is just one relatively minor instance of how the Republicans will now be able to increase their ability to stick it to the middle- and lower-classes in this country!


Which is very unfortunate. Ramshield would like the U.S. to do better; to emulate the European Union's social safety net, but it is not going to happen until the American people realize that the Republican Party and it's Tea Party adherents are not their friends; that, in fact, the Republicans and the Tea Party crackpots are working against the best interests of the American people. It's not going to happen until the American people realize the the Republican Party and the Tea Party crackpots, in spite of their religious rhetoric, are amoral and immoral; that they will continue to use their strength and power, not only to deny any further increase in the current social safety net in this country, but to dismantle and derail what little is left of it


You can read of of Ramshield's article here.

Kimmel Kartoon - Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer shot by Sarah Palin

Buck Owens - Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy

Thanks to Crooks & Liars from which this video was "borrowed."

The Christmas Story - a partial look

H/T to the Pensito Review, which has a very informative article relative to this video here.

The Christmas Play

Rachel Maddow on Newt Gingrich's money-raising scams

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The True Story of Christmas

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

What to sing at Christmas if you don't believe in the myth

I'm going to reference a funny, on-the-spot essay by Greta Christina titled, "10 Best Christmas Songs for Atheists."

She begins by noting that not all atheists hate Christmas. "Lots of atheists like Christmas," she says. "Heck, even Richard Dawkins likes Christmas." And then, in a fine snarky way, she notes "...we find our own ways to adapt/create/subvert the holiday traditions to our own godless ends."  And that's what this essay is all about!

Most atheists, she says, would like the government to get out of sponsoring any kind of religious displays at any time of year, especially "with the whole 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion' thing."

But I really love this part: "And some of us do rather resent the cultural hegemony of one particular religious tradition being crammed down everybody's throat, in a grotesque, mutant mating of homogenized consumerism and saccharine piety."  (My emphasis.  See photo above!)

Yes! Things have changed a lot over the past 40-50 years. Back then, many claiming to be Christians bemoaned the commercialism that had taken over the Christmas holidays. Today, have made capitalism part of the Christian creed, they love the commercialism or as Christina puts it, "the homogenized consumerism and saccharine piety." 

What they don't like is people snubbing their commercialized Jesus.  They don't like that some folks actually dare say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." They don't like the fact that there are millions of people in this country who don't give a damn about Christianity but really enjoy having a good time during the winter solstice! And what's even more weird is that it is the most amoral, un-Christian, anti-everything Jesus taught people who get most upset, such as Rush Limbaarger and Bill O'Reilly and Ms. Coulter.

Ms. Christina, like so many of us, is "very fond of Christmas. Some atheists even like Christmas carols." Well, not so much the carols anymore with their "angels and magic stars and the miracle of the virgin birth." It's pretty hard to sing about any of that anymore.

So, Ms. Christina has come up with a list of "Christmas songs that atheists can love unreservedly." Or agnostics. Or those who go to church just once a year but don't believe much of anything.

She sets some parameters, such as the "Songs cannot have any mention of God, Jesus, angels, saints, or miracles," and that the "Songs must be reasonably well-known."

Ultimately, she ends up with 10 oldies but goodies, No. 10 being "White Christmas," which is "an entirely secular Christmas classic written by a Jewish agnostic..."

I'm not going to name the rest of them. You'll have to read her essay to find out.  And you can do that here.  I think you'll like her selections.  If not, just substitute your own list.  Nobody's going to claim you're starting a war on Christmas!

Home Alone

To enlarge, please click on the cartoon.

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Wikileaks, Glenn Greenwald and Michael Moore

[Photo of Julian Assange from AP/Kristy Wigglesworth at CTV.ca]

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, has been released on bail from prison in London.  Meeting with the press, he thanked his supporters, then mentioned his experience in solitary confinement and suggested that there are many people being held in a similar manner in prisons around the world for no good reason, without recourse to law or lawyers, and it behooves all freedom-loving people to remember them and try to find ways to assist them in their time of need.

Meanwhile, back in the "freedom-loving" U.S. of A., politicians of various stripes are falling over themselves loudly berating Mr. Assange as a criminal mastermind who should be captured by any means possible and incarcerated, preferably forever.  At least one American politico has called for his assassination.  Many of these freedom-loving folks call themselves followers of Jesus.

Bah, humbug!  If Jesus returned today, they'd be the first to hang him on the nearest cross.

Amy Goodman talked with Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional scholar and lawyer, about Assange and WikiLeaks.  Greenwald said:

"Whatever you think of WikiLeaks, they have not been charged with a crime, let alone indicted or convicted.  Yet look what has happened to them.  They have been removed from [the] Internet ... their funds have been frozen ... media figures and politicians have called for their assassination and to be labeled a terrorist organization."

Then Greenwald hits the proverbial nail on the head:  "What is really going on here is a war over control of the Internet, and whether or not the Internet can actually serve its ultimate purpose--which is to allow citizens to band together and democratize the checks on the world's most powerful factions."

Ms. Goodman's entire article is here.

Down through the years I have been involved in leadership roles in a number of organizations.  One of the things I've learned about organizations (political and otherwise), groups, committees, boards of directors, etc., is that they do not like controversy or disruption.  They do not like anything that threatens the status quo.  And when faced with disruption or controversy, they will call all their resources to put such disturbance down as quickly and quietly as possible.  They will do this even if it means they end up hurting their organization or themselves.  

This is why so many people in the U.S. have become so anti-government and anti-tax as part of that, or anti-healthcare, or pro-war, or anti-WikiLeaks.  Their level of comfort has been attacked.  They've know they've been sold a bill of goods but they don't know by whom or why.  I would guess, for example, that most tea party participants are unaware that theirs is not a grass-roots movement, but a well-organized and well-planned operation funded by extreme anti-government rightwing billionaires!  Their status quo (even if it is based on mainly imaginary scenarios) has been disrupted.  Thus, they act and vote against their own best interests! 

We are a supposedly a democratic society, which means our government of the people, by the people and for the people is supposed to operate in the open, and NOT in secret.  The people are supposed to be informed as to what their government is doing so the people can make good decisions as to the direction in which the country should go by electing the right people to keep the country on the right track.

Sounds like pie-in-the-sky and I suppose it is, for the United States has not operated like a truly democratic society in years.  Perhaps it has never done so.  But that doesn't mean it shouldn't!

Michael Moore, one of our favorite agitators against a government run amok, put up $20,000 dollars toward Mr. Assange's bond.  In an article posted December 14 on his website, MichaelMoore.com, he tells why and discusses other steps he has taken to help Mr. Assange:  "... I am publicly offering the assistance of my website, my servers, my domain names and anything else I can do to keep WikiLeaks alive and thriving as it continues to work to expose the crimes that were concocted in secret and carried out in our name and with our tax dollars."

Moore says that if WikiLeaks had been around in 2002, Bush and his cabal might not have been able to lie us into a war in Iraq.  "The only reason they thought they could get away with it was because they had a guaranteed cloak of secrecy."

That, of course, is why WikiLeaks is under attack.  WikiLeaks has "outed and embarrassed those who have covered up the truth."

 Moore references a photo of George Bush being handed a "secret" document.  The date was August 6, 2001:  The document heading read:  "'Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US.'  And on those pages it said the FBI had discovered 'patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings.'  Mr. Bush decided to ignore it and went fishing for the next four weeks.

"But if that document had been leaked, how would you and I have reacted?  What would Congress or the FAA have done?  Was their not a greater chance that someone, somewhere would have done something if all of us knew about bin Laden's impending attack using hijacked planes?"

Moore insists, rightly in my opinion, that secrets are deadly; that secrets led to the death of over 4,000 soldiers in Iraq and at least 100,000 Iraqis; that secrets were partially responsible for the 58,000 American dead (and 2 million Vietnamese) in Vietnam.

"Openness, transparency -- these are among the few weapons the citizenry has to protect itself from the powerful and the corrupt," which pretty well describes our Congress, the Pentagon, most government agencies, and even our Supreme Court these days!

Moore has much more to say, all of it pertinent and important.  And one of those things is "Please -- never, ever believe the 'official story.'"  I'd agree with that and add that we also can no longer believe the "story" given out by the mainstream media for it is owned by the same corrupt masters that control the government.

What we must never forget is that WikiLeaks is not the problem.  Julian Assange is not the criminal.  The criminals have other names:  George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, just to name a few.  Those are the ones our DOJ should be looking to indict!

Please read Mr. Moore's entire article here.

 

  

The Colbert Report and the war on the war on Christmas or something like that

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And no heaven

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The Rachel Maddow Show - Porn, pedophiles and the GOP's poison pills

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Just when you think the Republican scum in Congress can't sink any lower...

'Tis the season

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If Jesus was a conservative

h/t to Starman at Le Reve Francais.

Just more paperwork

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Oh, you devil, you!

[Image from here]

Science vs. superstition.  Reason vs. Roman Catholic theology.  The battle continues.

There are not enough exorcists in the Roman church, so the RC bishops are in process of conducting a two-day "how-to" workshop in Baltimore on the rite of exorcism.

At the end of the second decade of the second millennium, there remain people all over the world who believe in "demons," and demon-possession. They further believe that these demons who might decide to "possess" certain humans, can be exorcised through a series of magical words and actions.

But you must be properly trained so that you can identify a real demon possession as opposed to say, just plain craziness. You also need to learn the exact magic words and when to say them as well as the proper magic actions, such as blowing into the victims face and making the sign of the cross.

It is essentially a problem of evil - spiritual evil, saith the good prelates of Romanism.


Unfortunately for the bishops, science has failed to demonstrate the reality of "demons" or demon possession. Magical words and magical actions remain just that - magic, and thus silly and stupid, no matter what the words or the actions.

Evil is certainly a reality if evil be defined as that which reduces the value of a human life or that which increases unhappiness and pain. Psychology has known for years that some people seem to lack a conscience or any feeling of empathy for their fellow humans and act accordingly. Others may have a conscience and thus know the difference between what most of us agree is right and wrong but simply don't give a damn.

Then there is institutional evil as expressed today in a world where capitalism has run amok as corporatism, where everything not contributing to the bottom line is suppressed and/or eliminated.

Governments can also be evil if they exist only to perpetuate themselves and their power. Thus, the clear statements of today's Republican leaders in which they have promised that for the next two years they will work only for the political demise of Barack Obama in 2012 can only be classified as evil.

And religion - perhaps the greatest source of evil in the history of the human race! Religion - the cause of more war, misery, pain, hatred, destruction, and just plain evil than any other source.

Consider the institution with which we started - the Roman Catholic Church which is worried about non-existent demons and magical rites to exorcise said non-existent demons while 1) continuing evil practices to the detriment of millions of lives around the world, e.g. disallowed condoms which could prevent the spread of AIDS; berating homosexuals and disavowing gay rights while the Roman church itself is comprised of 25-50% gay priests; denying women a rightful place in the church because of misguided, indeed false legends regarding priesthood in the early church, among many other things, and 2) failing to deal adequately with the problem of pedophilia amongst the leaders of the Roman church by refusing to even discuss the widespread parameters of the problem or discipline properly those pedophiles who have ruined thousands of lives down through the years.

Pedophilia in the Roman church is an unspeakable evil; incomprehensible; undeniable.  It is so evil that it effectively destroys forever the Roman Church as any kind of moral voice in the world.  Anything the Roman church says about right and wrong can no longer be taken with any seriousness.  The Roman church is forever tainted by institutional evil, which continues even now.


If there were an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent god who was also a loving god by human standards, he or she would have struck down the Roman church and turned it into a heap of burning rubble before it got started. He or she would never have allowed it to continue for over 2,000 years as one of the world's major repositories of evil, and continue today to obscure and avoid the real evil within its walls by pointing at fantastical and mythological demons and carrying out the pretense of casting out these "demons" with magical chants and signs and actions.

Don't tread on me, I'm off to drown in the sea!

[Image - Wikimedia Commons]

The teapot crackpots in the State of Virginia want a new license plate to hang on their vehicles. Said license plate would bear the slogan, "Don't Tread on Me!"

This would be funny or merely silly if, in fact, the teapot crackpots were not a real and present danger to our democratic form of government and its Constitutional underpinnings.

The person responsible for this bit of stupidity is, of course, a Repugnican, a delegate by name of John O'Bannon. But, says O'Bannon, he's not trying to make a political statement.

Why do so many teapot crackpots speak Orwellian?


To be a teapot crackpot, you've got to be, first of all, ignorant. You have to be one of those folks who drifted off during your American history class, and political science class, and civics class. You really never learned much of anything about anything and graduated from high school with the good fortune of barely knowing how to read (at the 8th-grade level) or write.

To be a teapot crackpot, you've also got to be easily conned. The teapot movement is not a grass-roots thing at all. It didn't start because a bunch of knowledgeable folks got together to try to change the government to make it function better to serve their needs. Many, if not all, teapot dreamers thinks that's the way it went, but they are sadly mistaken, for they have been taken.

The teapot crackpot movement, better known as the Tea Party movement, is the birthchild of the ultra-right-wing billionaire Koch brothers and their many affiliated front groups, along with other monied sources such as Rupert Murdoch. It was organized by lobbyists for huge right-wing corporate entities who give not a damn for our country or the people of the country but only for their bottom line.

FAUX News, of course, played a huge role, publicizing and sponsoring tea party rallies around the country, and providing teapot crackpots a national pulpit to spew their nonsense amongst the rabble who ate it up.

And the irony is, the teapot crackpots have grown from a pesky gnat on the backside of an elephant to a huge canker sore the size of Alaska on the nose of the Republic. All because millions of people were completely duped into voting against their own interests in favor of the corporations who will swindle them out of what little they have left and destroy the environment which gives them life.


Now a teapot asshat in Virginia wants his state to offer a license plate with the teapot crackpot motto, "Don't Tread on Me." The meaning here, to a teapot crackpot, is clear: Big, bad government, don't put me down any more!"

The common people, the middle-classes, have been subjected to so much moronic rhetoric for so long they've come to believe it. Teapot crackpots supposedly believe in limited government, fiscal austerity, and less taxation.

That may have made some sense 230 years ago when the population hovered around 4 million people. At 300 million, it makes no sense at all. And actually, the teapot crackpots don't believe in any of this. Limited government means many different things. Some of the Religious Right kooks, the Reconstructionists (of whom we have several now in Congress), want the government to be reconstructed according to their interpretation of God's law. Democracy is a no-no! Old Testament law is in. But most teapot crackpots want a government limited to doing what they want it to do, that is to say, give bigger tax breaks to the rich, deregulate corporations so they can do whatever they wish, ban all gun restrictions, ban all abortions, allow prayer in public schools, or better yet, get rid of all public schools, etc. They most definitely don't want the government to help the unfortunate, the sick, the elderly.

Fiscal austerity means nothing more than the process of redistributing the wealth upward. In recent days several right-wingers have appeared on television bemoaning the fact that the poor rich people need more tax breaks. Everyone should be treated the same; we're all in this together; the rich are just like everyone else; they need their tax breaks, even if said tax breaks increase the budget deficit.

Less taxation is another phony issue. Because teapot crackpots are ignorant and get their "news" from FAUX News or Limbaarger or other crackpot sources, they are unaware that they paid less taxes last year under the Obama administration than they did the year before under Georgi W. Buski.


But the real kicker in all of this is that the teapot crackpots with "Don't Tread on Me" license plates have absolutely no solid proposals to make relative to their notions of limited government, fiscal austerity, or less taxation other than to give more to the rich and less to the middle and lower classes. Thus we find proposals  to privatize Social Security appearing once again (in spite of the fact that Social Security is NOT in trouble and would have been devastated if Bush had had his way a few years ago!) The teapot mantra is enrich the rich and take away from the poor.

When asked what government programs should be cut, most teapot crackpots go into a kind of daze and their eyes glaze over.

In other words, the Tea Party teapot crackpots are empty shells. The Tea Party functions as an arm of very rich corporate honchos, serving their needs. They have nothing to offer the country other than slogans devoid of meaning. "Don't Tread on Me" is profoundly stupid. The government is not "treading on them," their corporate masters are, and they are too ignorant to know the difference! They need the government. The government provides them with the services the NEED to survive. And taxes are not evil, but that which makes government services available. What is evil is when the very rich do not pay their fair share or when, due to their buying of Congress people, they are exempted from paying anything, as is the case with many large corporations today!


Don't tread on me. And in Virginia, as the teapot crackpots line up to buy these sloganized license plates one cannot help but be reminded of how the lemmings gather together to march off the cliff to their collective demise in the sea!

The Daily Show - Jon Stewart:: The Decider Returns

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McConnell a liar? So, what's new?

Evidence of the fact that Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, is a liar, should be of no surprise to anyone, but some people, even in his own state, have never gotten the word.

The Louisville Courier-Journal has taken Mr. McConnell to task for being his usual duplicitous self.  It seems that back in 2006, while McConnell was blasting Congressional Democrats for asking Bush to reduce troop levels in Iraq, he was doing the same thing privately!

McConnell declared piously that the Dems, by pulling some of our soldiers out of the country, would endanger the poor people of Iraq, leaving them to the evil schemes of al-Qaeda!  

It gets worse.  Not only was McConnell completely hypocritical in such an assertion, but the reason was purely political. By removing some troops from Iraq, saith McConnell to Bush, the Republican Party might very well receive a boost in the 2006 elections.

The Louisville Courier-Journal, in a desperate way-too-late move to become a real newspaper and do what a newspaper is supposed to do, wants McConnell to explain how he could be such a hypocrite, but more importantly, how he could put the fate of the Republican Party over the well-being of the country.

Well, duh! That is how today's Republican Party, comprised of ignorant, backward, corporate-owned, Christian Reconstructionists, teapot crackpots, and other assorted no-goodniks, operates!

McConnell is only one miserable example.

Any Given Sunday

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Minnesota Teapot Crackpot knows not the Constitution

[Photo of U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D. Minn.]

Judson Philips, said to be the founder of the Tea Party Nation, doesn't believe Muslims should be able to hold political office in the United States.

Mr. Philips sent out a letter in which he urged his followers to support the Republican candidate for the seat in the U.S. House of Representatives currently held by Keith Ellison, who is a Muslim.

One of the reasons people should not vote for Mr. Ellison saith Mr. Philips is because of his religion - his Muslim faith.


Ellison was elected by the people of Minnesota to the U.S. House in 2007. And he is a Muslim. In the time since he was first send to Washington, he has not destroyed the Congress, the presidency, the Pentagon, the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial. You wonder what the hell he's been doing there!


Philips, however, is an ignoramus. Echoing the cries of other teapot crackpots and morons like Newt Gingrich (who is not an ignoramus, but a dangerous lying dirtbag) Philips proves he is unfamiliar with our Constitution which specifically states there shall be no religious test for office.

Either that (he's an ignoramus) or he doesn't care what the Constitution says, which is worse, I suppose, because that would make Philips and his cohorts subversives engaged in treason.

But what else other than mindless demagoguery can one expect from members of the Teapot Crackpot Tea Party?

Muslims are a great danger in Oklahoma

Some of Oklahoma's politicians are just plain weird.  The tend to be Very Conservative, Jesus-loving folks, which means they think God created everything that exists in six days, that they love guns and big bizness, and that they don't want no damn guv'mint to tell 'em what to do!

A few of Oklahoma's politicos are not very bright, either.  Tom Coburn, who got hisself elected to the U.S. Senate, don't believe in global warming.  No sirree, he calls global warming stuff a "pile of crap."  I guess he would know a lot about crap 'cause every time he open his mouth more of it comes out to pollute our good earth!

In the state legislature, you'll find lots of wanna-be Coburns. And some have a good chance of attaining that goal - they are dumb enuf!

For example, back in June, the legislature, by an overwhelming majority, passed a law banning the use of Sharia law by Oklahoma judges and/or courts. This law will be voted on by the state's constituents next Tuesday. And it has the endorsement of none other than Newt Gingrich, that bastion of adulterous knowledge and common sense. Oh, stop laughing!

The danger of Sharia law being used in Oklahoma has the state's politicos' shorts tied in a knot. They probably don't sleep at night worrying about this problem. What they should be worried about, of course, is global warming!


I've got to admit it is funny. According to Harper's Magazine, Oklahoma's population is 0.81 Muslim!  I recently drove through western Oklahoma.  You can go 100 miles and not see anyone, much less a Muslim! 

Such is the state of American politics today.  Wacko!

The Great Predicament Facing Obama - by Jan Frel and Lawrence Goodwyn

This is a must-read for Democrats, democrats, and progressives of whatever stripe.

The article, "The Great Predicament Facing Obama," by Jan Frel and Lawrence Goodwyn, is a superb summary of what democracy in America means, what the GOP stands for, criminal bankers, the corporate threat to our well-being and the potential of President Obama.

Goodwyn, a noted historian, takes the "long view":  "In my opinion, the energy among the democratic faithful to make the journey is still there.  While ordinary folks have been put through a lot, do not underestimate the resolve that remains for the long haul.  Unanticipated poverty is an enormous energizer -- and most of all for people who understand their fate to be utterly undeserved.  In due course they will see through the sleight of hand and empty content embedded in corporate sound bites."

It appears Goodwyn is basing this "long view" on the notion that you can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.   Thus, "...it will become increasing transparent in the coming year that the politics of the GOP is absolutely incoherent.  Much of the Republican tent is simply flapping in the breeze behind a cascade of public lies."

To the Democrats, Goodwyn says "buck up!"  "[...] long-term despair is unwarranted for Democrats.  They need to harness their poise and undertake to be politically creative not just right now but for the next six years."


Goodwyn takes on the bankers and their industry.  He underestimated, he says, "the capacity for sheer greed that drives American banking."  In the banking industry there is no sense "of the cornerstone of [the] American democratic experience itself: the sense that a majority of us have had -- have always had -- that we are in this together.

"Bankers are not with the rest of us on this.  Perhaps they have never been.  All exceptions freely conceded, but the general reality still holds: they are killing the promise of this republic."


Obama has the very difficult task of trying to deal with the residue of the GOP's massive corruption resulting from their betrothal to their corporate masters.  Those people Goodwn calls the "movers and shakers" want it all and believe "that they and they alone shall brandish the keys" to running the country.  But, there's a problem.  They "have way too much blood on their hands.  The GOP can't be specific about it, of course, because it is their blood, too.  So we have a national campaign that is now fully in place and fully operational.  It is also fully fraudulent."

The blood on the hands of the GOP derives most recently from the years of Bush II - the destruction of a "balanced budget" to give the rich a trillion-dollar tax cut; the phony war in Iraq based upon Cheney's lies which cost another trillion; the prescription drug benefit (which benefited the drug companies) costing "more trillions"; and financial deregulation which fed the greed and avarice of the financial/banking industry.

And now "The entire country is ... experiencing the GOP's nationwide cover-up in the form of a suffocating blanket of television commercials that warps recent history ... "

Goodwyn reminds us of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, "the most radical single judicial decision in American history."  This decision ushers in "a new form of American political propaganda, anonymous in origin, corporate-financed, and delivered with blanketing determination to every corner of the nation.  In size and substance it is a campaign of deception that is without comparison since the creation of the republic."

The good news, says Goodwyn, is that "it probably dooms the Republican Party by yoking the GOP to a permanent defense of financial deregulation and the liberation of central banks from a connecting relationship to the surrounding national economy.  It says goodbye to the unemployed millions.  It says goodbye to 'we're in this thing together.'"


But Goodwyn sees light at the end of the tunnel.  He offers a way out by walking us through some American history, by providing fascinating insights on our great American personages such as Thomas Jefferson,
Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and by helping us understand the promise and potential of Barack Obama's presidency.

You can read it all here.

For more on Mr. Goodwyn, click here.

Keith Olbermann - Special Comment: If the Tea Party wins, America loses

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - Indecision 2010

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Bundle of Joy

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