Florida, once a paradise, is becoming hell on earth!

Hell on earth!  Florida.

What is wrong with the people who voted for the criminal, Rick Scott, to be the governor of the State of Florida?  He told them what he would do.  He promised them pain and misery!  He warned that he would screw the middle-class and the poor and make the rich richer!

How could the people vote him into office, knowing full well that if justice had been served Scott would be in jail for perpetrating the biggest Medicare fraud in history!

I'm hearing a lot of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from those same folks who put their X's by Scott's name!  Hindsight won't fix things though.


People used to flock to Florida because it held out the promise of a semblance, at least, of paradise:  Warm weather, low-cost housing, good medical care, excellent universities and passable schools, surrounded (almost) by blue water, and a gazillion golf courses, plus Disney World.  How could you go wrong?

Well, it's a hot place, and in the summer you may get run over by a hurricane or smashed into the earth by a tornado, but people living in Florida have been willing to take their chances as it is arguably better than trying to survive in the frigid north in the winter, especially in places like New Jersey!

But now, thanks to our criminal governor and his Repugnican conspirators in the legislature, Florida is rapidly becoming one of the worst places to live - especially if you're old, or sick, or homeless, or unemployed, or in need of an education!


For example...

1)  From the St. Petersburg Times:  "Out-of-work Floridians would receive fewer state benefits while businesses pay less tax under a controversial proposal approved Friday [May 6] by a divided legislature."

Unemployment benefits are cut 11.5 % and the number of weeks to receive benefits was cut from 26 to 23.

Not only so, but "The change also cuts by 10 percent the business tax that pays for unemployment benefits.

Not only so, but "The bill also makes it easier for a business to show employees were fired for cause, preventing them from receiving benefits.


2)  The teaching of evolution is also under attack in Florida (as in many other states).  Senate Bill 1854 necessitates a "thorough presentation and critical analysis of the scientific theory of evolution" in Florida's public schools.

This is a typical creationist ploy to create controversy and doubt relative to evolution and thus introduce the alternative religious view of creationism, which is an ongoing dream of the Christianist theocrats in our midst.

Unfortunately, it makes for stupid students in Florida!


3)  Scott and his Repugnican cohorts in the Florida Legislature are busy undermining laws protecting Florida's environment.  Leslie Kaufman, writing in the New York Times, says that "Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, has proposed eliminating millions of dollars in annual outlays for land conservation as well as cutting to $17 million the $50 million allocated in last year's budget for the restoration of the dwindling Everglades."

Kaufman quoted David Guest, "the managing attorney for the Florida office of Earthjustice, a national environmental law firm," who said "...Scott's budget was 'the most radical anti-environmental budget' he had seen in two decades of environmental work..."

Scott "has asked to cut staff members  to 40 from 358 at the Department of Community Affairs, which regulates land use and was created to be a control on unchecked urban sprawl."

And some people actually thought he was about creating jobs and not eliminating them!!!

According to the Miami Herald, "the Florida House passed a bill to ban implementation of water quality standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Administration.  Gov. Rick Scott ... asked the agency to rescind a January 2009 determination that the federal rules are necessary for Florida."

In other words, let the polluters destroy our waterways.  Florida Repugnicans certainly wouldn't want to make it more difficult for polluters to do their damage!  And who cares about clean water to drink and swim in anyway?


4)  In Florida, education is taking a huge hit while the rich are getting their taxes reduced!  Teachers are under assault.  Promises bonuses are not being paid.  Annual and step pay raises have been abandoned.  Teachers must now pay 3% of their meager salary toward their pensions - which is something new and may force many teachers living on the edge already out of the profession!

Class sizes will grow and classes will become more unmanageable.  Unions are losing their clout to protect teachers from the ravages of ideology-driven legislators and meddlers.

All of this is part of the national effort underway in state legislatures to destroy public education and replace it with private schools and vouchers paid for by the tax-payers.  The money behind this effort comes from far right-wing christianists!  We can be sure Florida is a major target with a pathetic but sympathetic governor and christianist-dominated legislature.


5)  This is from Erika Wood, Deputy Director, Democracy Program, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU -

March 10, 2011:  "In less than an hour yesterday, Florida Governor Rick Scott denied the right to vote to hundreds of thousands, maybe as many as a million Florida citizens, turning back the clock decades and making Florida the most punitive state in the country when it comes to disenfranchising people with criminal convictions in their past."

[The irony here is that the governor should have been convicted of fraud and sent to jail but instead worked a deal where he left the company with $300 million, about $70 million of which he used to buy the governorship of Florida!]

"The Florida constitution denies the right to vote for life to anyone with a felony conviction, unless he is granted clemency by the governor.  Essentially it gives the governor, an elected official, the power to decide who will (or won't) be allowed to vote in the next election.

"The new clemency rules not only roll back reforms passed by former Governor Charlie Crist, they are far more restrictive than those in place under former Governor Jeb Bush."  Suffice it to say that these rules will effectively disenfranchise mostly African-Americans which is a Repugnican delight as African-Americans tend to vote Democratic."

Welcome to the "good ol' days," when Jim Crow ruled in Florida.  And "Florida's law is now the most restrictive in the country."


6)  From The Associated Press and Ocala.com -

April 24, 2011.  "The Florida Legislature is poised to cut the popular Bright Futures scholarship program, meaning thousands of college students and their parents will by paying higher costs and less affluent families may have to take out loans, seek other financial aid, get jobs, or maybe even go on a low-cost diet.

"Cuts to the merit-based scholarship program would come as the Legislature is also raising tuition at public colleges and universities."

So, once again, the Florida budget will be balanced on the backs of those least able to afford it.


7)  Citizens Property Insurance is a state-run company for those people who are unable to obtain insurance from other carriers.  It is a life-saver for millions of Floridians.

From Ocala.com, April 23, 2011:  "Gov. Rick Scott has secretly pushed to kill Citizens Property Insurance before his first term ends ... "

Even some insurance folks think Scott has gone too far.  "The industry lobbyists protested that Florida carriers could not absorb all of Citizen's business ... The gap would force many Florida property owners to turn to the unregulated surplus lines market, where rates are unchecked and policies are not backed by a state guarantee fund."

A word of warning:  If you plan to come to Florida and buy a house anywhere near the ocean and cannot afford exorbitant hurricane insurance, be prepared to let your house blow away when a hurricane comes.  Nobody in Tallahassee, including the governor, gives a damn!


8)  Also from Ocala.com, April 24, 2011:  Florida is a haven for scam artists who prey on the young and old alike.  Always has been!  It is reported that "the state's main consumer hotline registers more than 40,000 complaints annually."  And it is more than likely that this is a small fraction of the number of people who have been ripped off by unscrupulous individuals or businesses.

Most Repugnicans don't like any regulations on business.  As Rep. Dorothy Hukill, R-Port Orange, said:  "Our concern is - number one - getting out of the way of business."  Let the buyer beware!  [Sheeet!  I thought it was about creating jobs?]  And so the Florida House passed a bill, sponsored by Rep. Hukill, which reduces "business licensing requirements."  It's such a bad deal that even some Repugs are against it!

A word to the wise:  If you live in Florida or plan to visit Florida in the future, watch your back.  Folks doing business in the state will have a free hand to rip you off seven ways from Sunday!


Here's one last comment from Rachel Maddow:

Florida Republicans have also decided to start mandatory drug testing of Florida residents receiving public benefits -- not people who are suspected of drug abuse, but everybody forced drug testing by the government.

And the state will have to pay for those forced drug tests for the folks who aren`t, you know, on drugs. Or they will reimburse those forced drug tests. The bill also says you actually have to front the money for your forced drug test. You have to front the money for your forced drug test.

Just paying for those forced drug tests could cost the state of Florida $1 million to nearly $8 million. If you -- you have to front the money to pay for your forced drug test. And then if you turn up clean, they`ll reimburse you the money. So, the state is then paying for it. If you don`t turn up clean, then you`re the one who has paid for the test. That`s their new small government system.

So, Florida is slowing down their own economy in a way that doesn`t help the deficit, in a way that hurts the worse-off people among them, in a way that spends a bunch of money in order to expand the government to a never-before-seen size. So, the government in Florida, it will now be big enough that it can seize your bodily fluids even if you are not suspected of anything amiss with those fluids.

This is the world according to the Republican Party in the state of Florida, which is now as always the great Petri dish of American politics.

Watch Maddow's program here.

I would add to this that according to my information, the proposed drug testing will be performed at offices of Solantic, which is a company co-owned by Gov. Scott.  When he took office he transferred his shares to his wife.  Although he claimed he had no interest in the company some time ago, he sold his interest just a few days ago (May 13, I believe).

Someone told me the other day that he wasn't too worried about Scott because he said at some point Scott will do something so overtly illegal and criminal he will be forced to leave office.  I hope my friend is right.  And it can't happen soon enough!

Koch Brothers Exposed

Thanks to The Brave New Foundation.

Bin Laden murdered! Joy to the world!

First of all, let's set the record straight:  Georgi W. Buski did little or nothing to locate and eliminate Osama bin Laden.  If Bush had taken action when he learned in the summer of 2001 that bin Laden through al Qaeda planned to fly planes into American buildings, it is likely that 9/11 would never have happened.  Much of the blame for 9/11 must be laid at the foot of ex-president G. W. Bush who was too busy lying to the American people about his plans to send troops into Iraq to do anything to locate terrorism planned by bin Laden and afoot in the U.S!

Furthermore, in the months and years following 9/11, Bush made a conscious decision to let bin Laden and troupe hide without harassment for he had more important things to do, namely invade a country that posed no threat to the United States.  Bush lied over and over again about his reasons for said invasion but it was obvious to much of the world that it was all about capturing Iraq's oil fields for his "pals" in the energy cartel.

So, when Elliot Abrams, a foreign policy advisor for G. W. Bush, whines that Obama is deliberately hogging too much of the spotlight and the credit for the killing of bin Laden, Abrams is blowing smoke.  Abrams said that Obama should have given much of the credit to the Connecticut cowboy because "this work [of seeking and destroying bin Laden] began under President Bush."

The fact is that any effort to find and slay the bin Laden dragon by the Bush administration was weak and cursory.  In fact Bush himself said he wasn't much worried about bin Laden and wasn't going to waste time and money looking for him.  As we have learned to our sorrow, Bush had other things to worry about and spend BORROWED money on - Iraq and Afghanistan, two ongoing disasters which still threaten to bring our country down!

Now, lots of Repubs have commented about the murder of bin Laden.  Most don't bother to mention President Obama at all.  Some hinted that Obama might have had something to do with it, but it was really Bush's victory.  Eric Cantor (R-VA), in his snide, sneering manner, said something about Obama carrying on Georgi's "vigilance ... in bringing Bin Laden to justice."  What a bunch of asshats!


Finally, does it bother anyone else that when these Repugnican clowns talk about "justice," they are referring to a cold-blooded murder?  Bin Laden was a bad guy, a "terrorist," and we seem to "know" he did lots of bad things - indeed he admitted doing them.  Perhaps even worse is the fact that he was an Islamist and not an American.  That in itself seems to be the criteria in this country now for committing murder.

Before I go further, I must say that deep down in the murky depths of my own heart, I am glad that the son-of-a-bitch is dead!

But I still must ask, does our Constitution and our legal system not apply to people we hate?  If we hate someone enough, and if they are, in our eyes, bad enough, then do we set aside all the constitutional guarantees of which we claim to be so proud?  Furthermore, there's the moral question.  Is not murder something we shun, not celebrate?  Is not murder a no-no according to the Ten Commandments which most of our leadership and much of our military hold in high esteem?  Or have we slid down that slippery slope where the ends always justify the means?

We can whoop and holler and sing our national anthem or "God Bless America" 'til the cows come home, but that does not alter the fact that Americans under the orders of our president, committed a cold-blooded murder.

Perhaps that why our leaders like the term, "War on terror," for war "justifies" many atrocities and less-than-legal procedures.  And we've been torturing our "enemies" for years (thanks to G. W. Bush for that, too) so what the hell's another murder?


Please understand that I'm conflicted about this.  As I said, I'm glad bin Laden is dead and buried at sea.  I think.  There may be some horrendous repercussions arising out of this for us in the future and that's a bit scary 'cause we're not very good at guerrilla warfare which is the MO of the Islamist terrorists.

But it also bothers me more than just a little that I haven't heard of one single American in a leadership position question the manner in which bin Laden's demise came about.  Murder, under any other name, is still murder.

And the main thing sticking in my craw is that our actions resemble too closely those of our so-called "enemies."  To many Islamists, Obama is doubtless considered a terrorist, a terrible person who leads a country that commits terrible crimes against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and no doubt these Islamists believe it would be a great victory to murder Obama in the White House.

How, exactly, do we differ from the Islamists?

I'll close with a quote from an article by David Sirota, titled "'USA!  USA!' is the wrong response," at Salon:

"For decades, we [Americans] have held in contempt those who actively celebrate death.  When we've seen video footage of foreigners cheering terrorist attacks against America, we have ignored their insistence that they are celebrating merely because we have occupied their nations and killed their people.  Instead, we have been rightly disgusted -- not only because they are lauding the death of our innocents, but because, more fundamentally, they are celebrating death itself.  That latter part had been anathema to a nation built on the presumption that life is an 'unalienable right.'

"...in the years since 9/11, we have begun vaguely mimicking those we say we despise, sometimes celebrating bloodshed against those we see as Bad Guys just as vigorously as our enemies celebrate bloodshed against innocent Americans they (wrongly) deem as Bad Guys.  Indeed, an America that once carefully refrained from flaunting gruesome pictures of our victims for fear of engaging in ugly death euphoria now ogles pictures of Uday and Qusay's corpses, rejoices over images of Saddam Hussein's hanging and throws a party at news that bin Laden was shot in the head."


So, perhaps yelling "Hallelujah" and shouting "USA, USA!" is a problematic response which might also be very much premature.  Maybe sober reflection rather than celebration would be a better way to deal with the murder of Osama bin Laden.

God of the gaps

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

EPA in Danger from Unwarranted Criticism

[Photo from The Huffington Post]

[The following is a guest post by Nick Scott.]

The recent budget cuts have provided plenty of debate about a number of different issues.  While the debate has involved programs geared to help the poor and elderly, much of it has focused on the Environmental Protection Agency and EPA regulations.

The federal budget compromise a few weeks back may have kept the government afloat, but it damaged some governmental agencies, including the EPA, by significantly cutting their budgets.

In the case of the EPA, $1.6 billion or about 16 percent of its 2010 budget was slashed!  As 2010 drew to a close and through the first months of 2011 Congressional Republicans have worked hard to destroy the ability of the EPA to do its job of protecting our environment.

Specifically, GOP representatives have been highly critical of the Clean Air Act and the EPA's sanction to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.  These Republicans base their criticism on the notion that the EPA is exerting too much power and thereby has a negative effect on revenue, gas prices and employment growth.

The Republicans are blowing smoke.  Not only do EPA officials strongly deny such charges, they call them inaccurate and misleading.  In fact, EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, responded by saying "The standards that we set to protect our health are so often and so inaccurately blamed for increasing prices and economic challenges."

Because the Reublicans have had some success in their mission to gut the EPA by slicing the EPA's budget, it's likely they will explore further cuts into the 2012 year.  Because the 16 percent cuts have little effect on the regulations they claim are "causing a loss of revenue" the GOP will likely carry on their criticism of the EPA until their goal is reached.

Unfortunately, if they are successful, the health of the American people is put at risk!  If the EPA is subjected to additional budgetary cuts it will be unable to do its job which will certainly lead to dangerous repercussions in the future.  Human ailments related to environmental toxins, for example, are likely to increase dramatically!

Increased health problems caused by dismantling the Clean Air Act are also likely to occur.  If our corporate polluters are given the green light in terms of emitting greenhouse gases, that will impact not only global warming but air pollution will grow exponentially throughout the United States.  Childhood asthma is already a huge and growing problem, and many of our cities are inimical to health because of dangerous levels of toxins in the air.  To allow corporations the privilege of blowing their deadly smoke into the air is monumentally stupid and respiratory problems are likely to skyrocket!

The EPA is also very much involved in dealing with health problems related to asbestos removal.  By so doing, the EPA has helped to reduce the rate of mesothelioma cases in this country.  The EPA works on an ongoing basis to clear older buildings and structures of asbestos!  This effort has produced tremendous benefits for our citizens.  Because the disease is so deadly (mesothelioma life expectancy is usually only eight to 14 months) asbestos removal becomes a major factor in reducing the number of cases.  And asbestos removal is just one example of the many programs in the EPA portfolio aimed at cutting the number of environmentally-related health problems.  To further slice the EPA's budget is simply irresponsible and foolhardy and puts the American people in jeopardy.

Looking to the future and considering the Republican penchant to destroy the EPA by cutting its budget to the bone, we have a serious problem.  The continuing, unwarranted attacks by Congressional Republicans and business leaders on the EPA and the work of the EPA are taking a toll.  Because the EPA is vital to the well-being of our nation and our people, we need to fight back against these attacks by creating greater awareness among our citizens as to the role the EPA plays with regard to our national well-being.  We also need to vote out those representatives who would destroy the EPA to increase corporate profits; those who care little for the health and welfare of the people of the United States!

The wheels on the bus go round and around...

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Jesus says he does not know Franklin Graham

[Photo from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association]

I talked to Jesus today and he told me he'd never heard of Franklin Graham!

Well, that's what the legendary Jesus would say if there really had been a Jesus or a Christ or a son of a god who was also his father and  his holy spirit all rolled into one like a piece of salt water taffy.

The Jesus figure who walked the earth for a few years 2,000 years ago neglected to write down what he really believed or didn't believe and whether he was really the bastard son of a teenage Jewess named Mary.  In fact, he didn't write anything whatsoever, which means he also failed to instruct his disciples about what to do when he died, rose again and went whoosh up to heaven.  The whooshing is understandable, of course, but because there isn't any "up" he couldn't have whooshed "up."  He must have whooshed "out" which would have to be considered a miracle as that is very hard to do unless you're on jet skis.

Anyway, there were lots of wandering, itinerant preachers, healers, magicians, philosophers and other assorted crackpots traveling the highways and byways of the Roman Empire back in those days and some 30-40 years after Saul/Paul had his vision of a Christ figure who lived in the 7th heaven, a few believers decided they needed to put together something of a background for the guy.  So, a fellow we know as Mark picked up a copy of some material another author had written, and along with a lot of common fables put it all together in a "gospel."  Some years later folks we know as Matthew and Luke came along and used Mark as the basis for their own story.  Unfortunately, they had a hard time getting things straight and then they made up  stuff like the birth stories, and that was confusing to the Christ followers.  Some other Christ followers wrote their own "gospels," creating more entertaining tales of a Jesus figure.  In fact, we know of over 200 different gospels.

Sometime in the 2nd century, long after Jesus was supposed to have hustled around Palestine in his sandals, a guy who was given the name of John wrote another gospel which was nothing like the others.  In John's gospel, the Jesus figure has now actually become god and lives in "heaven," wherever that is and is a spiritual being who saves people who believe in him.  In the other three gospels of our modern bibles, Jesus was quite concerned about behavior.  People who failed to behave properly toward other people who have a tough time being accepted into paradise.  And rich people?  Forget it.  They had literally no chance at all!  John's Jesus doesn't care about how you behave.  Just believe!


We've got a lot of christianist fruitcakes wandering our highways and byways today who actually believe that all this mythical nonsense is literally true.  The biggest group of fanatics comprise the Roman Catholic Church but the so-called fundamentalist Christians are right behind the Catholics in nuttery.

Franklin Graham is one of the latter, a fundy christianist who typically believes he can tell big, bold lies if he does it for a good reason.  The notion that the end justifies the means is in the marching orders of fundy christianists.  That's why such weirdos as Graham and the Baptist preacher, Huckabee, and the rotten papiest, Gingrich, can cast aspersions on President Obama by pretending he has not produced his birth certificate!

Franklin Graham, being very ignorant of the bible he pretends to revere, believes not only that this Jesus actually lived on earth but that he rose again in bodily form after he died and, as we have seen, was whooshed up into heaven, and will somehow "return" to earth to swoop up all true believers and take them all with him to heaven and send all the rest of us to a terrible fiery eternal punishment.

Graham, being a really nasty person, claims on the one hand, that his make-believe Jesus said no one knew, knows or will know anything about the end of time or the coming of the son of man which Graham thinks is the 2nd coming of his Jesus.  But this Jesus warned about wars and rumors of wars, blah, blah, blah and we've certainly got those and so Graham thinks that probably means the 2nd coming is going to happen any minute or not.

In other words, Graham is full of crap!

What is really beyond belief is that Christiane Amanpour of ABC felt the need to interview this clown!  What's the point?  Who cares what Franklin Graham thinks about anything?

It is a funny interview, though.  Graham says the Bible says that everyone on earth will see the 2nd Coming.  So, how will that happen?  Well, it may be through our social media.  "How is the whole world going to see him all at one time?" asked Graham.  Then he answers his own question:  "I don't know unless all of a sudden everybody is taking pictures and it's on the media worldwide.  Social media could have a big part in that."

And Jesus wept!  That's in one of the gospels.

Good god, Graham is a goofball!  His god and his Jesus are so inept and powerless they have to rely on our means of communication to ensure that everyone sees the 2nd coming at the same time!  Whoa!  That may be why it's been so long coming, this 2nd coming.  God, being very dumb, had to wait until some smart young Jewish guy invented Facebook!

Is this great, or what?


But Graham wasn't done with his plaintive prognostications so he decided he'd take a swipe at our Constitution and form of government.  Graham, being a christiainst, doesn't like democracy partly because it includes freedom of religion.  He thinks our government should be a christianist government and christianists should rule!

And the damn government shouldn't be involved in helping people.  Graham says it's the government's fault that the churches don't do more to help the poor and needy.  The churches quit taking care of people because the government took over the job!

Not only so, but the antichrist is everywhere.  Secularism is the antichrist.  "I look at the world in which we live today and the secularism is antichrist.  It's every bit antichrist.  We can't talk about Jesus in our schools.  God has been kicked out of our government."



All of that is plain and simple bullshit, of course.  I wish god had been kicked out of our government.  Unfortunately, we've got so many christianist nutcases in Congress trying to impose their god's law on the rest of us Congress is beginning to resemble the Afghanistan Taliban!  And one can talk about Jesus at length in our public schools.  One cannot, however, say that you have to believe in Jesus in order to avoid an eternity of hell.  That's what Graham is really bitching about.  He wants our public schools to be outlets for evangelical christianity!

Finally, this strange freak of a christianist again implied that Obama may not be legitimate as he might not have been born in this country and has not produced his birth certificate.  Now, for anyone who claims to be a christian to say that is just despicable!  Obama's birth certificate has been produced, verified and authenticated.

Graham should be ashamed of himself and get out of the god business.  We have way too many of these goofy, lying, amoral christianist evangelicals in our country the way it is!

Oh, one final thing:  Frankie thinks that Donald Trump might just be the right guy for the presidency of these United States!  Ugh!

You can watch the aforementioned interview here.

The Supply-Siders' Debt - How "Voodoo Economics" Cost Us $9.2 Trillion

h/t to my old friend, Bob Poris

Wasting time at work

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

The Republican Party and the Destruction of the World

(Psst...Hey, George, we're finally gonna do it.  We're gonna destroy the world!)

The Republican Party is trying to destroy the world.

Why would they do that?  It's all about money.  It's always about money with the Republicans.  It's about short-term profits, the bottom line!  Republicans are, by and large, lobbyists for the corporatists.  In fact, if the corporations were smarter, they would fire their current crop of lobbyists.  The lobbyists are no longer needed for the Republicans are bought and paid for by the corporations; there is no differentiation between the corporations and the Republicans.  They live and breathe the same air and have the same goals.  When the checks are passed out the corporations include instructions to their surrogates in our legislative houses (said surrogates being overwhelmingly Republican) and voila!, the dirty deeds get done.

During the last election cycle the Republicans said they were going to destroy the world.  They were very clear about that.  They also said they would destroy the world in order to bless their corporate benefactors with even greater profits at the expense of the rest of us.  They would do this by destroying our environment - the air we breathe and the water we drink.  They said they intended to destroy whatever consumer protections were in place in this country.  Consumer protections, you understand, from the corporate point of view are unnecessary and make it more difficult to increase the bottom line.  The Republicans further said they were going to destroy our health care, our social security, our wetlands and our parklands.  Anything that stood in the way of the rich becoming richer was fair game.

The Republicans told us exactly what they were going to do!

The sad part is that the people believed them.  When the Republicans said Social Security was broke (which was a big lie), the people panicked and said it must be fixed and the Republicans smiled and set about to destroy the system and replace it with another system geared, not to help the people, but the rich get richer!  When the Republicans said business regulations were bad because the poor corporations couldn't create jobs with all these restrictions, the people believed them.  Soon, however, the people will discover they cannot trust the drugs they take, the food they eat, the water they drink, the cars they drive, the gas they put into their cars, the insulation in their houses, the pesticides on their lawns, or the air they breathe!  And because the Republicans have officially denied modern science, some Americans are going to find their homes underwater within their lifetime.

The Republicans told us exactly what they were going to do and now they're doing it!

When the Republicans said that our budget deficit was destroying our country, the people believed them, not realizing that the deficit was doing no such thing, and that the Republicans said that in order to destroy so-called "entitlement" programs such as Social Security and Medicare.  The people never did understand that if the Republicans were really concerned about the deficit they would get our military the hell out of the Middle East, and cut the most bloated part of the budget - defense spending - and increase taxes on the rich.  So the people voted in those who would destroy their world!


Global warming, about which there is conclusive scientific consensus, is officially denied by Republicans.  That denial notwithstanding, people are already feeling its effect in terms of colder winters, hotter summers and weird weather patterns around the world.  Seas are rising as polar ice caps melt.  According to Sierra magazine, arctic summer sea ice may disappear completely by 2030 which will mean the end of the polar bear, yet because of Republican pressure the Obama administration has decided polar bears do not deserve endangered species status.

The U.S. House of Representatives, controlled by the Republicans, has voted to take away the EPA's authority to regulate carbon dioxide which is the major cause of global warming.  Newt Gingrich, one of the nastiest Republicans and perhaps one of the nastiest politicians in history, wants to abolish the EPA!

Again, from Sierra magazine:  "A study in the journal NATURE suggests that global warming could tip the U.S. SOUTHWEST INTO A 'MEGA DROUGHT,' lasting as long as 1,000 years."

Some Republicans, claiming to be christians or some such, decry such studies, insisting there is a god somewhere in the sky who promised a mythological person living in the middle east thousands of years ago that the earth would never be destroyed.

Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, has penned an article, "Deadly Nostalgia," in the latest issue of Sierra magazine.  He takes us back to the "good old days" to which the Republicans want to return.  The Republican leadership, says Brune, misses "the America without a Clean Water Act, the one where Ohio's Cuyahoga River caught fire.  The one without a Clean Air Act, where choking smog made it impossible for New Yorkers to see 400 yards across the Hudson River."

Even though air pollution remains a huge problem in this country, "Congressional Republicans want to prevent the EPA from updating Clean Air Act standards."  And although "millions of Americans are sickened by contaminated water every year ... the GOP wants to slash this year's budget for state clean-water projects by $947 million."

Brune notes that "Asthma is epidemic among our kids.  The list of potentially cancer-causing chemicals in our drinking water keeps getting longer.  Lead, mercury, arsenic, and other toxic heavy metals are building up in our bodies...

"But guess what?  Commonsense citizens are not the ones calling the shots in Congress.  Instead, polluter-funded politicians are doing their paymasters' bidding.  For example, the largest donors to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee are oil billionaires David and Charles Koch, whose many polluting businesses are regulated by the EPA.  Accordingly, a top goal of the committee is to restrict the EPA's power; 9 out of 12 Republicans on the committee have signed a Koch-sponsored pledge to prevent the EPA from limiting greenhouse-gas pollution."


A recent article by the New York Times describes how the Republicans are continuing to destroy the world on the state level.

1.  Paul LePage, governor of Maine, has a 63-point plan to gut environmental regulations.  This "great" plan would open up 3 million acres of woods for development and suspend a law that monitors toxic chemicals that might potentially show up in children's products.

That's not really a people plan.  It's a corporatists wet dream!

2.  North Carolina's Republicans put together a budget with a provision to cut by 22 % the state's environmental and natural resource department.

Not really a people plan.  A corporatists wet dream!

3.  New Jersey's Gov. Christie, "has said that the Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act, which preserves more than 800,000 acres of open land that supplies drinking water to more than half of New Jersey's residents, is an infringement on property rights.  Mr. Christie has moved to shift power from planning boards and government agencies to administrative judges, political appointees who, environmentalists says, tend to rule more often in favor of developers' interests."

Not really a people plan.  A corporatists wet dream!

4.  And then there's Florida, where the people elected a criminal, a modern-day fraud of monumental proportions to be governor.  The Department of Community Affairs in Florida is in charge of regulating the use of land.  It was established "to be a control on unchecked urban sprawl."  Gov. Scott wants to fire 40 of the 358 people who work there.

Also in what has become known as the weirdest state in the nation, Florida Republicans under the leadership of their criminal governor are in process of deregulating a variety of consumer protection laws.  Scott, the criminal, thinks such regulations are stifling job creation.  The people believed such nonsense and voted for him.  Actually, such regulations stifle the ability of the corporatists to increase their bottom line at the expense of the people!

Not really a people plan, but a corporatists wet dream!


The Republican Party's goal is to destroy our worlds - our physical world, the earth, and the safety nets which protect our own private worlds and allow us to live and move and have our being.  

Will the people ever wake up and realize that voting Republican is to vote for their own demise?

Sen. Bernie Sanders' Guide to Corporate Freeloaders

Thanks to Moveon.org.

Jesus Does Standup

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Liberty University, a federally funded institution!

Several articles around the net have noted that while Jerry Falwell is dead via a heart attack from God, his nasty legacy lives on in the form of an ultra-fundamentalist christianist "university" named Liberty, located in Lynchburg, Virginia, now being run by his son, Chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr.

And would you believe it is the "largest," the "biggest," the "fastest-growing" christianist school in the world?  Well, it is.  With the help of U.S. government money!

Hypocrisy abounds in the christianist fundamentalist world, which was one of the things the fabled Yeshua of the Gospels was said to despise, which makes it even more fun to point out and laugh at in the 21st century.  Falwell had little use for our Constitution or our government, as does his son, yet they reach out with their greedy little paws to grasp taxpayer dollars to keep their miserable enterprise afloat.

If you read Liberty's promo material on the Net, one would think they are the cat's meow, so to speak.  One would think that since day one in 1971 Liberty "university" has been a financial wunderkind!  One would think that people all over the world, infected with the Liberty virus, have consistently donated monies to keep the "university" in the black so it could continue to train mindless and ignorant christianists to go out in the world and proclaim the same nonsense they were taught, like, for example, that there is a god who created everything that exists in six days because the Bible says so and every little thing in the Bible is the word of god to be taken literally and without question.  And if one has a problem understanding something in the Bible, like, say, why god ordered parents to stone their children to death for not observing the Sabbath, they should consult with their spiritual advisors to get the "truth" as to the meaning of the passage.

Unfortunately, the truth is different.  Liberty "university" has had financial problems for years.  Evidently people don't donate as much money as is needed to keep the operation afloat.  In fact, according to Time magazine, Liberty has been "between $20 million and $25 million in debt until this year.  But when God called Jerry Falwell home last May, it turned out that he had a $34 million insurance policy.  It was used to bail out his school."

Which raises another question:  What insurance company would be so stupid as to a give an obese fathead a $34 million insurance policy?  I dunno.  I have a hard enough time getting decent car insurance and I haven't had a wreck ever or a ticket in over 50 years!


Alex Pareene, writing at Salon. com, notes that Liberty "university" "received $445 million in federal financial aid last year.  The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the way, received $420 million from the federal government."

The federal money was for Pell grants.  "The school is the No. 1 recipient of Pell grant money in the state of Virginia."  So the money went to students to pay for "tuition, room and board and other expenses."  That makes it justifiable in the eyes of Liberty officials.

But why do the christianist Repugnicans in Congress, and all the teapot crackpots want to defund NPR and Planned Parenthood, both of which provide a real service which is available to all Americans, and not defund a right-wing, christianist fundamentalist school that teaches nonsense about the Bible, science and history?

What has happened, of course, is that the aforementioned representatives in our Congress do not understand nor do they care about the values that undergird and protect freedom in this country.  They are driven, not by what might benefit the American people or by a sense of commonality or even by common sense, but by a religious and racial agenda that fuels meanness and hatred!  Thus, they go after the weak and the powerless for they are the most vulnerable among us.  And in that way they repay the corporations who own them body and soul and without whose resources they would not have been elected.


The funding of Liberty "university" by the federal government is symbolic of one of the things very wrong in our country.  On Liberty's part, it is hypocrisy in spades.  It makes the "christianity" promoted by Liberty laughable.

You will note I've consistently not capitalized the word, "university," in this diatribe.  Liberty does not deserve to be called by that name.  It is not a university in any sense.  It is a mill that churns out christianist clones.

Please read Mr. Pareene's article here.

Easter - the other meaning

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons!

The crucifixion that never happened and the nails that never were

The following is based on an article by Linda Gradstein at AOL News.

He's a journalist who makes documentary movies, this Simcha Jacobovici. His latest effort, "The Nails of the Cross," pretends it is possible that Jacobovici has found two the of nails that were used in the crucifixion of Jesus.

Please laugh heartily and loudly.

Unfortunately, many ignorant folks and others who are deliberately moronic will believe this journalist who makes documentaries. But they should not.

Here's the background: Twenty one years ago or so, archaeologists in Israel claimed to have found the tomb of Caiaphas. One Caiaphas, according to the Gospel tradition, was a high priest involved in Jesus' crucifixion.

Jacobovici located two nails at Tel Aviv University. He asserts these nails were found in the aforementioned tomb. But he has no proof this is so.

Now, Jacobovici is not stupid, so he doesn't say definitively these are the nails used to crucify Jesus. Just that such a scenario is "possible."

Okay, continue laughing. But Jacobovici will probably make a bundle on this pretend "documentary" about nails.


There are numerous problems with this story. First of all, scholars are generally agreed that at the time Jesus supposedly lived, the Romans did not normally nail people to a cross. That would be futile as the weight of the body would cause it to slide down the upright portion of the cross, ripping the hands or wrists free of the nails and foiling death, if only temporarily. But it would be a mess trying to nail the person back on the cross! The Romans crucified people by tying them to the cross with straps. As their bodies fell victim to gravity, their hands held and they slowly suffocated to death. This could take several hours, or longer.

Now, that in itself pretty much blows Jacobovici's theory out of the water!

Secondly, there is no evidence that these nails came from the tomb of this Caiaphas. And even if there were such evidence, there is nothing to indicate this Caiaphas was the high priest at the time of Jesus' supposed crucifixion.

Thirdly, assuming the story is true (which it isn't), the Jews of the time did NOT crucify Jesus! It is inconceivable that the high priest would have someone seek out and bring him the nails used in the crucifixion of a minor criminal, a nuisance but not really a threat to the Jewish establishment. Furthermore, the Jewish method of capital punishment was stoning. If the high priest had ordered Jesus killed, the temple minions would have stoned him to death!

Crucifixion was the method used by the Romans! Furthermore, we know the Romans crucified thousands of Jews. During the seige of Jerusalem (c. 70 CE), as many as 1200 Jews were crucified on a daily basis. One would expect to find the land littered with nails, in and out of tombs, if in fact, the Romans nailed people to crosses! Leather straps would, of course, have rotted away long ago.


Unfortunately for Jacobovici, the entire story of Jesus and his crucifixion is a fabrication, created from a single story and then elaborated upon by several different writers in the late 1st century and early 2nd century (in order to put flesh and bones on Paul's heavenly "Christ," the one spoken of in the prelude to the Gospel of John as the Word, or God himself).

The crucifixion is one aspect of that overall story. What we can say about the crucifixion of Yeshua (Jesus) is that it never happened. There is absolutely no evidence in any record found anywhere in the world for such a thing to have occurred. And because the Romans kept meticulous records of the ordering of their empire, such a crucifixion would have been noted somewhere, especially in light of the fact that Pontius Pilate (the Roman procurator in Palestine) was under suspicion and being observed carefully by his superiors in Rome at the time the crucifixion is set in history.


Maybe Mr. Jacobovici should make "documentaries" about George Washington never telling a lie or chopping down a cherry tree, or better yet, how our founding fathers were rabid evangelical Christians!


Oh yes: Happy Easter!

A President's Prayer

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

We can't afford anything but war in the good ol' US of A

[Image from here.]

Social Security is in trouble "they" tell us. It isn't, but "they" (meaning Repugnicans, mostly) lie as a matter of course. Repugs also call Social Security an "entitlement" program which is another bald-faced lie. It is no such thing.

Medicare, these nogoodniks claim, is also in trouble. And we sure as hell can't afford decent government-sponsored health care like our politicians get. We don't have enough money for our schools, for our teachers, cops, firemen. We can't afford to fix our ailing infrastructure.

The word is out that those of us who receive Social Security should not expect a cost-of-living increase again this year. In spite of the fact that prices are rising quite rapidly...that a few groceries set me back $200 today and to fill my gas tank cost $53, the government (which supposedly is "my" government) has no money to fulfill its promises to me or "we, the people"!


But we've got enough money to wage war. We've got plenty of money to spend if it's about killing people we don't like.

And any talk about Afghanistan or Libya or Iraq having to do with our "security" has long lost its validity. It's all bullshit. We're not in any of those places because we care about the people or because we care about democracy or because we want to help the poor souls who live under Middle Eastern or any other dictators.

If any of that were true, we would have attacked Saudi Arabia long before we sent in troops to destroy Iraq or to bring regime change in Afghanistan. We would have blown up Yemen and Egypt and Iran, not to mention China, Cuba, Venezuela years ago!

In fact, historically, we have cared about nothing except to ensure that our corporate overlords were able to continue to rape and plunder the earth for their own profit, whether it involve bananas or oil or anything else.


And I'm pissed. The idea of America has gone to hell.  What America is supposed to stand for is a joke!  We've got a Congress filled with rich morons (about 300 members of Congress are millionaires, and a majority of the Repugs in Congress think global warming is a hoax and evolution is false) who are wedded body and soul to the corporations that have bought and paid for them and their services!

Many of our representatives in Congress and our state legislatures believe in the legendary Jesus as their personal savior. That, they think, gives them the right to lord it over women and women's bodies. Thus, over 300 anti-abortion laws are currently in process in the various states!

And these Jesus lovers, wherever they are found, evidently see nothing wrong with murdering folks if those folks happen to live in a foreign country and follow a different religion!


But right now, at this moment, reading of our freaking stupidity in Libya, I'm angry as hell!

Pauline Jelinek in an AOL article, describes how the Pentagon has spent $550 million "extra" dollars in Libya. But this, of course, does not begin to describe the real costs. One official believes that the Libyan operation will cost us another $40 million "over the next three weeks" and then the costs will settle in at $40 million a month.

Jelinek says one "lawmaker" "... estimated last week that Libya could be a $1 billion campaign."

Hah! Anyone in their right mind knows that the military lies routinely when it comes to operations and expenditures. The likely cost will be millions more!

We've already spent over a trillion dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan and those costs just keep on coming. And for what? And why do we give a damn about Libya?

It's oil. It's always about oil. It's always been about oil!


So don't listen to those sons-of-bitches who say the U.S. is broke; who whine about the deficit; who blithely claim we can't afford a cost of living increase for our elderly! They all lie. Big time.

If we can afford $1 billion to kill people in Libya and $1 trillion plus to kill people in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can afford a cost of living increase for our Social Security recipients!


A final observation: It doesn't occur to Repugnicans because they don't seem to have to worry about how they're going to make a mortgage payment or buy groceries, but there's something wrong in this country when many corporations pay little or no taxes on their income.

There's something hugely wrong when a company like General Electric can post a profit of $23 billion plus and pay ZERO taxes!!!!


You can read the entire article by Ms. Jelinek here.

The fair weather friend

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Maddow: It's Not About the Budge...

Rachel Maddow took a whack at the hypocritical Republicans in Wisconsin and the Republican governors across the country who will spare no expense when it comes to taking care of their own -- especially big business and their wealthy campaign donors -- and at the same time are willing to raise taxes on the poor and the middle class.
Case in point, we have Stephen Fitzgerald, the father of Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald and State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald. The elder Fitzgerald, who after losing his election for Dodge County sheriff by a 2-to-1 margin, somehow got appointed as the head of the State Patrol.
And as Rachel noted, in the midst of the potential recall of a number of Wisconsin Senators, there is "another patronage scandal blossoming today."
Senator's girlfriend had help getting job:

Even though the state is supposedly broke, top officials in Gov. Scott Walker's team were able to scrape together enough money to give a state job to the woman identified as Sen. Randy Hopper's girlfriend.
Anything for a political ally.
Valerie Cass, a former Republican legislative staffer, was hired Feb. 7 as a communications specialist with the state Department of Regulation and Licensing. She is being paid $20.35 per hour. The job is considered a temporary post.
Cass previously had worked in the state Senate and for the GOP campaign consulting firm Persuasion Partners in Madison. She also was paid for campaign work for the state Republican Party and U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner before that.
"Ms. Cass' name was among many forwarded to DRL by the Governor's Transition Team as potential candidates for positions with the department," said David Carlson, the agency's spokesman. Read on...

Rachel summed this up rather nicely.

MADDOW: But apart from the awkwardness for the State Senator here, there's also the awkwardness of whether or not Wisconsin state government is so broke because of all those greedy state employees, right? I mean for the Senator already facing the likely prospect of recall, this is not a positive development. But is also really handy as a reminder about the whole nature of this fight in Wisconsin, and why it is resonating nationally.
The Republican justification for the union stripping business in Wisconsin is that it was all about the budget, right? But then something like this comes along and we're all reminded that if it were all about the budget, people hired by the state would not be getting $12,000 raises, whether or not they were State Senators' girlfriends.

She wrapped it up with letting her viewers know about some of Think Progress' Wonk Room reporting on the GOP governors out there and their willingness to raise taxes on the working class while giving their wealthy campaign donors a break -- REPORT: In 12 States, GOP Plans To Slash Corporate Taxes While Increasing Burden on Working Families:

ThinkProgress has been documenting conservative efforts to shift the burden of record budget shortfalls onto middle-class Americans, while simultaneously doling out tax cuts to corporations. While progressive governors have proposed raising revenue from those who can afford it, alongside painful cuts to programs, Republican governors have unveiled budgets that cut taxes for corporations and raise them on the middle-class and working poor. In this report, ThinkProgress evaluates the priorities conservatives have set in twelve states:

NEW JERSEY: Last year, Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) budget raised taxes on the working poor and middle-class by cutting the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit and homestead rebates — yet still found money for lucrative corporate tax cuts. This year, Christie’s budget calls for $200 million in business tax cuts, while cutting mental health services, $540 million from Medicaid, and witholding property tax rebates for seniors until public workers give up many of their health and pension benefits. Many New Jerseyans have said they prefer a tax on millionaires to Christie’s draconian cuts.
MICHIGAN: Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) budget would make Michigan’s already regressive tax system even more unfair for the state’s poorest residents. The plan cuts taxes on business by more than 86 percent while slashing $1.2 billion in funding for “schools, universities, local governments and other areas.” Snyder also wants to raise personal taxes by 30 percent — an increase that will fall disproportionately on Michigan’s lowest income residents.
GEORGIA: Last week, the Georgia House passed an austerity budget that will increase health insurance costs by more than 20 percent for state workers, teachers and retirees and cut funding for state universities by $75 million. The House has already gutted the state’s HOPE scholarship program, and is now considering implementing a regressive new tax system that would lower income taxes for the rich while raising the sales tax on basic necessities. House Majority Leader Larry O’Neal (R), meanwhile, has introduced a bill that would implement a flat income tax rate and cut corporate taxes by 33 percent.
FLORIDA: At a Tea Party rally last month, Gov. Rick Scott (R) unveiled his budget, telling supporters he would make the state the most “fiscally conservative” in the nation. The budget would slash corporate income and property taxes, lay off 6,700 state employees, cut education funding by $4.8 billion, and cut Medicaid by almost $4 billion.
OHIO: Gov. John Kasich (R) has proposed cutting 25 percent of schools’ budgets, $1 million from food banks, $12 million from children’s hospitals, and $15.9 million from an adoption program for children with special needs. A Kasich staffer revealed yesterday that these cuts are more about politics then budget-balancing, telling the Cincinnati Dispatch that “even if there weren’t an $8 billion deficit, we’d probably be proposing many of the same things.” The plan includes tax cuts for oil companies, a repeal of the estate tax and an income tax cut for the rich that former Gov. Ted Strickland (D) halted last year because of the state’s fiscal crisis.
IOWA: Gov. Tom Branstad (R) began this year proposing a budget that included a $200 million tax cut on commercial property taxes and corporate income but would freeze spending on schools, cut $42 million to state universities and lay off “hundreds” of state workers. Since then, the Governor has already begun laying off state nursing home workers and frozen funding for mental health services. The budget is now moving through the politically divided legislature, where Republican-controlled House committees have gone even further, approving tax refunds for upper-income Iowans while cancelling infrastructure investments, eliminating preschool for 4-year-olds, closing Iowa workforce development offices, and making even deeper cuts to public universities.
PENNSYLVANIA: Gov. Tom Corbett (R) presented a budget last week that would cut taxes for corporations, while freezing teacher salaries, cutting dental care for Medicaid recipients, and eliminating more than half of the state’s universities. Yet the state has lots of revenue potential in northern Pennsylvania, where out-of-state energy companies’ “fracking” of natural gas has reaped them hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. Corbett has refused to tax these companies, many of which helped fund his gubernatorial campaign, and has instead opted to lay of more than 1,500 state workers.
MAINE: Despite calling for “shared sacrifice” Tea Party Gov. Paul LePage’s (R) budget would cut income taxes for Maine’s wealthiest one percent, while actually raising property taxes for the state’s middle class. This so-called “jobs budget” freezes healthcare funding for working parents, cuts money for schools and infrastructure and raises the retirement age for public workers. Yet LePage was still able to find more than $200 million in tax cuts for large estates, business and the rich.
WISCONSIN: The tax cuts Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed earlier this year worsened his state’s fiscal condition, so now Walker is planning to raise taxes on the poor, eliminate $26 million in tax credits for seniors and single mothers and cancel property tax rebates for low-income Wisconsinites making less than $24,000 a year.
SOUTH CAROLINA: Gov. Nikki Haley (R) has proposed ending the state’s corporate income tax, even while she calls for cutting physical education, K-12 schools, and Medicaid. Haley has received pushback from Republican colleagues: last week the legislature rejected her plan to force state employees to pay more for health insurance.
KANSAS: Facing a $493 million budget shortfall, Gov. Sam Brownback (R) has called for eliminating the corporate income tax while proposing a $50 million cut to education. With majorities in both Houses, Republicans have proposed a cut to the federal Earned Income Tax Credit that would push 6,500 families below the poverty line.
ARIZONA: Last October, as she ignored 26 other possible funding solutions, Gov. Jan Brewer (R) implemented painful cuts to the state’s Medicaid program, which resulted in 2 deaths and left 98 Arizonians waiting for transplant funding. After months of protests, Brewer finally agreed to set aside $151 million in an “uncompensated-care pool to pay health-care providers for ‘life-saving’ procedures, including transplants.” However, House Republicans refused to restore funding for organ transplants because, as House Appropriations Committee chair Jon Kavanagh (R) said, “not enough lives would be saved to warrant restoring millions in budget cuts.” Then, while peoples’ lives were in danger, Brewer eagerly signed tax cuts for businesses that will cost the state $538 million.

As they noted, I'm not sure how that's anyone's idea of "shared sacrifice" when the only ones being asked to sacrifice are the working class.
If anyone here is a regular reader of Think Progress' site, and you don't check into the research being done at their sister site, The Wonk Room, you''re missing a whole lot of great information that their site posts daily and that doesn't always get front paged.

[Many thanks to Crooks & Liars.  The entire article and video from here.]

You'll shoot your eyes out

We're screwed!

 It's no longer a matter of whether you view a glass as half-empty or half-full.  There's almost nothing left in the glass! We're screwed!


Item: American warplanes and warships are bombing Libya. With Obama's approval. What happened to Obama? And we're still killing people in Afghanistan. Ten years of killing. American troops remain in Iraq.

Think about Libya for a moment. Obama spoke some pastry-filled words to justify our military intervention. It's all bullshit. If we gave a damn about dictators beating up on their people we'd be intervening in most of the countries of the Middle East and a bunch more in other parts of the world. We love dictators. Always have. We'll even help them beat up on their own people so long as they do what we say and give us what we want, whether that's bananas or oil.

Obama spoke bullshit. If what he said were true we would have intervened in China a long time ago. Can you imagine any scenario where the United States would intervene in China to help the Chinese overthrow their government? Of course not. China is big and powerful.

Libya on the other hand is perceived (maybe falsely) as being small and relatively weak. Listen to our gung-ho military leaders: Libya won't be a problem; this is short-term action; Gaddafi will be gone in a few days. Hah!

If Obama's words contained even a smidgen of the truth we would have sent warplanes to bomb the Saudi king and his minions years ago. We would have bombed Yemen. We'd have invaded Egypt long before the current protestors were even born!

What happened to our president? Where's the man we elected in 2008?

President Obama is a Christian. He is like most other so-called Christians who neither believe in nor act on the most important teachings of their legendary leader: Teachings such as the admonition to not seek revenge; to turn the other cheek; to forgive 70 times 7; or that a rich person will find it impossible to recognize or share in the kingdom of God; etc.

So Christian leaders in the United States, proud of their religious heritage, continue to kill other people in the name of what - democracy? Freedom? Hah! In the name of OIL!


Item:  Moving on but sticking with Libya. Supposedly, the US of A is saddled with a huge debt, a monstrous deficit, a morass of fiscal ill-health that will doom us as a nation. If you don't believe that just listen to Republicans everywhere (and not a few Dems). Our first priority, these folks claim, is to reduce the debt. Otherwise, as said one Congresswoman the other day, we'll have no country left to leave our children and grandchildren.

Omigod! This is terrible. What shall we do? The Republicans (and not a few Dems) have an answer for that, too.  Because over 300 members of Congress are millionaires, however, it is unlikely that any of them would vote to increase the taxes of the wealthiest of our citizens or of those corporations who routinely hide their profits in off-shore banks/scams and pay no taxes whatsoever.

Republicans (and not a few Dems) cannot imagine taxing the rich. That's why they insist we must balance the budget, rid ourself of the deficit, dig us out of the hole, by burying our middle-class. [The poor are given no consideration and don't have a chance in hell of surviving!]

Thus Republicans and their minions in the media lie routinely about Social Security (which is NOT going broke by any stretch of the imagination!), Medicare, Medicaid, NPR, school lunch programs, health-care, etc., in order to justify their assault on people of lesser means than themselves!

If, however, as others have asked, we cannot fund our schools or our teachers, put enough police on our payrolls, repair our decaying infrastructure, help people be all they can be without getting killed in some godforsaken war in some godforsaken country in the middle of nowhere, how in hell can we afford another goddamn war in the Mediterranean?

Where are we getting this money? Are we borrowing from China? The Mafia? The Vatican?

I copied what follows from Crooks & Liars. It was, I believe, written by Heather:

"I guess now that we've decided we can afford to help with air strikes against another country that has a lot of oil that we might be concerned about, we can continue to tell the tax payers that we're broke and cannot afford to pay for these horrible entitlement programs that you working slugs were expecting like your Social Security and your Medicaid programs. And never mind raising taxes on the 'job creators' because their needs must be met at all times whether they're creating jobs overseas for slave wages or anywhere for that matter. If you're a corporation that does business in the United States, you must be coddled to.

"And you stinking low life union thugs must STFU if you don't like any of this, because you of course are the source of all our problems and draining the taxpayers in America of their hard earned money. And if you're a dirty f-king hippie organization like NPR, you must be defunded because we can't have our taxpayer dollars being spent on any evil liberal ideology being spread around to the rural areas of the country. ...

"Deep Thought - U.S. fires 110 tomahawk missiles, each costs $569,000. That's more than 5 years of NPR federal funding in less than an hour.  [My emphasis]

"We've got to have our priorities, don't you know."


Item:  Stupidity and ignorance reign. From The Nation: "Of the more than 40 million retirees and survivors who receive Social Security benefit payments every year, a whopping 44.1 percent responded in a government survey that they had 'not used a government social program.' For other programs, the numbers are even higher. Of the 35 million taking advantage of the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction, 60 percent were unaware that it is a government-sponsored program. Even programs like Pell Grants (43.1 percent), Medicaid (27.8 percent) and food stamps (25.4 percent) have high rates of misrecognition."

There's more: "In February 2009, President Obama passed tax credits worth $288 billion. But a year later, only 12 percent of those polled believed theyr were paying lower taxes."


Item: Our state governments are run by mental midgets and hateful monsters. We're all familiar with Gov. Walker of Wisconsin. Many of us are waiting with bated breath to hear that he's been recalled or indicted for his illegal action in getting his union-busting bill through the state legislature; an action which proves without a doubt that the bill had not one whit to do with the state's deficit!

And other Republican governors are trying the same thing. As stated in an AlterNet article, these governors "have proposed placing the brunt of deficit reduction onto the backs of their state's public employees, students, and middle-class taxpayers, while simultaneously trying to enact corporate tax cuts and giveaways. Govs. Rick Scott (R-FL), Tom Corbett (R-PA), and Jan Brewer (R-AZ) have all gone down this road."

But it gets even worse in Michigan! The Republican governor of that state "has proposed ending his state's Earned Income Tax Credit, cutting a $600 per child tax credit, and reducing credits for seniors, while also cutting funding for school districts by eight to ten percent. At the same time, as the Michigan League for Human Services found, the state's business taxes would be reduced by nearly $2 billion, or 86 percent, under Snyder's plan."


Item: I'm not sure of the number, but many of the Republican governors in this country have jumped on a legal action intended to halt health-care reform in its tracks!

Well, guess what? Every single one of them is a major hypocrite. This from Harper's magazine: All 50 states have applied for funding under the 2010 Affordable Care Act!


Item: We're screwed. But we're not screwed as badly as the young men and women serving and getting killed and maimed in our armed forces for no good reason whatsoever. And they are well aware of that fact! It is taking a toll. Again from Harper's: Last year, 455 American soldiers died in combat. The minimum number who committed suicide was 407!


Item: We're screwed because we have legally insane people serving in our state legislatures. From The Nation: "In South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa, legislators have proposed bills that would arguably permit a pregnant woman's mate or relatives (or maybe just anyone) to murder her abortion provider to protect her fetus."

This is so beyond the pale, it's absolutely incomprehensible. But I'll betcha every legislator supporting these proposals is a follower of Jesus the Christ!


Item: From The Nation. "Bills restricting abortion are [...] underway in Pennsylvania, Kansas, Virginia, Florida, Indiana, Texas, Oklahoma and Ohio."


Item: When openly-avowed Christians openly lie about whatever they wish we're screwed. Mike Huckabee, Southern Baptist preacher, speaker of trash for FAUX News and would-be prez of these United States, said recently that Obama had been raised in Kenya and thus "sympathized with the 'anticolonialism' of the Mau Mau rebellion." (Time magazine, March 21, 2011, p. 25)

Then the lying Christian preacher said that he just "meant to imply that Obama had a "'different worldview,' having been raised in Indonesia. 'Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings, and our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrasahs.'"

Well, the lying Christian preacher is not only without an ethical or moral bone is his body he's also ignorant as hell. As Time points out, "Obama was raised in neither Kenya nor Indonesia (where he did spend four years) but in Hawaii, by his Kansas Republican grandparents. He was a Boy Scout. And he didn't attend a madrasah. There are a multitude of Rotary Clubs in both Indonesia and Hawaii."

Jesus Christ! Huckabee's a scummy character!


Item: Congress extended the Patriot Act's "surveillance authorizations--which permit spying on groups and individuals and make a mockery of Fourth Amendment privacy protections." While Obama wanted a 3-year extension, Congress opted for a 3-month extension.

Republicans, as you know, crow a lot about their admiration and devotion to our Constitution. We also know, however, that is simply a lot of rhetoric. Or, as Frank Barone would say, it is "holy crap"!

When Democrats attempted a motion to make certain that surveillance would be done strictly in accordance with the Constitution, Republicans jumped to oppose it. The motion lost 234 to 186. ALL the "NO" votes came from Republicans. And one of those was none other than that lover of the Constitution, that leading light of Republican nonsense and mendacity, Michele Bachmann!


We're screwed!

The ugliest dog in town

Thanks to Atheistic Cartoons.

Glenn Beck - Yahweh's insane spokesman on earth

Disaster strikes.  Spokespersons for Yahweh, the god of the legendary Jesus, begin chanting "God hates humans!  God wreaks his punishments on humans.  Humans are bad and doing bad things and god is punishing them."

To claim to be a spokesperson for the almighty pretty much defines one as insane.  Glenn Beck, for example, is clearly insane.  He not only believes he can speak for Yahweh in matters of disaster but can also decode what god is so pissed about.

Insane people can be very coy, however; very artful, very crafty.  Beck's brain may be addled from cocaine and god knows how many other mind-bending drugs, but he can be coy, artful and crafty all at once.  Thus Glenn, the master of stupid, is capable of clever!  He thinks god may have caused the earthquake that created the tsunami that devastated Japan.  (Plate tectonics are evidently beyond Beck's area of expertise.)

Ah, but ol' crazy Beck doesn't come right out and say that.  Beck says he's "not saying God is causing earthquakes" ... but then said he's "not not saying that, either."

But ol' Beck the nutcase isn't done.  "Whether you call it Gaia, or whether you call it Jesus, there's a message being sent and that is, 'hey, you know that stuff we're doing?  Not really working out real well.'  Maybe we should stop doing some of it."

Hmmm.  Guess for Beck it doesn't matter what you call your god.  You can even call him Jesus.  How about Mohammed, Glenn?  Or Krishna?  Or Ronald Reagan?

Whatever you call him or her or it, Beck knows what he, she or it is thinking:  We humans have been bad people, flirting with liberalism, Marxism, Islamo-fascism, welfare statism, socialism, communism, among other things, and god is pissed.  So pissed he/she/it might invade the natural course of things to ram two tectonic plates together and cause a massive earthquake which would result in thousands of humans dying horrible deaths, as well as destroying homes and schools and temples and businesses and the hopes and dreams of millions of people who did not even know they were evil!

Why do you suppose this monstrous deity ala Beck chose to exercise his wrath on Japan?  Was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki insufficient relative to Japan's deserved punishment?

If anything, ol' crazy Beck ought to be publicly pulling his hair because this time his crazy god overlooked the sins of the people of the United States of America.

Media Matters has provided a copy of Beck's rant.  It would be funny, except that what happened in Japan is way too far from funny, and way too many millions of people listen to Beck who entices them, using their ignorance and culpability, down into his vile pit of insanity!




More from Media Matters here.

That Explains It

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.