Bradlee Dean, christianist weirdo, friend of Michele Bachmann, gives prayer in the Minnesota legislature

From Crooks & Liars:

Bradlee Dean, an evangelist preacher and death metal drummer who is known for his anti-gay rhetoric, was invited by Minnesota Republicans to deliver an opening prayer in the state House chamber Friday.

Praying before the Minnesota legislature in a track suit, Dean suggested that President Barack Obama wasn't a Christian.

"I end with this," he said. "I know this is a non-denominational prayer in this Chamber and it's not about the Baptists and it's not about the Catholics alone or the Lutherans or the Wesleyans. Or the Presbyterians the evangelicals or any other denomination but rather the head of the denomination and his name is Jesus. As every President up until 2008 has acknowledged. And we pray it. In Jesus' name."

The Minnesota Independent noted that Dean has a history of controversial remarks, "including advocating the incarceration of gays and lesbians, that the LGBT community is trying to usher in Sharia law in Minnesota, that gay men molest an average of 117 children “before they get caught,” and that Muslim nations that execute gays are more moral than American Christians."

Republicans were forced to call in the chaplain to redo the prayer after Dean left.

Republican House Speaker Kurt Zellers later apologized in a floor speech.

"I denounce him, his actions and his words," Zeller said.

The prayer came as Minnesota lawmakers were considering a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage.

Dean is known to be close with Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Why the hell can't we get rid of christianists praying in our state legislatures and national Congress?  I know there is historical precedent for this, but precedent be damned.  There was historical precedent for slavery.  That doesn't make it right.  

Religious leaders of whatever persuasion or cult have no place promoting their god in our political houses.  Let them pray in their own damnable houses!  

Michele Bachmann has some very strange and nasty friends.  You can read all about that and her special relationship with Bradlee Dean here at Mother Jones.

Noah has landed on the taxpayers in Kentucky!

There was no great flood.  There was no Noah's Ark.  There was no Tower of Babel.

These stories drifted down through centuries of mythological waters and ended up in the Hebrew Bible.  They are not factual.  They are, and always have been, myths promoted by ancient people to try to better understand the world in which they lived or their god who made life so damn miserable!

In the 21st century, millions of people all over the world continue to cling to the notion that these biblical tales represent real events from away back when.  And in the USA such ignorance is endemic to fundamentalist Christian culture.  Especially in the south.  Some southerners, usually fundy christianists, still can't get over the fact they lost the Civil War.  They can't even grasp the fundamental concept that the Civil War was about the enslavement of human beings.  And the Civil War happened a mere 150 years ago.  Thus, to believe in mythologies that go back about three or four thousand years, is no problem whatsoever.

In the US of A, you can believe such silliness if you so desire.  You have that right.  Neither the government nor any other human agency can force you to give up your beliefs no matter how stupid or unrelated to reality they are.

But it's unfortunate that so many live in an intellectual and historical void where darkness and ignorance reign.  These are the same people who refuse to accept the scientific theory of evolution even though all of science is built upon it.  These are the same people who disavow global warming even though the earth is already feeling its effects.  As one woman from Tennessee told me, people in Tennessee don't like Al Gore!  Why?  Because he's stirring up a lot of unnecessary trouble complaining about global warming.  Plus, he's a "librul."


It is no secret that our state legislatures are infested with christianist fundamentalists who think evolution is of the "devil," who refuse to accept the fact of global warming, who want to toss our Constitution and allow christianist prayers in public schools and the right to post their religious beliefs on courthouse walls and disallow abortions and stem-cell research because their christianist god, they think, opposes such things.  These are the people who trample our Constitution giving away taxpayer monies to various religious groups including parochial schools.

Most unfortunate is that the state of Kentucky has succumbed big time to their influence.  A group of christianist fundamentalists got together awhile back and decided they could make a lot of money by building an amusement park featuring "a full-size 500-foot-by-75 foot reproduction of Noah's Ark, a Tower of Babel, and other biblical exhibits on a 800-acre campus outside of Williamstown, KY.

They floated this idea around and suggested it would be much easier to do if the state of Kentucky gave them some financial incentives.

The state of Kentucky should have told them to go to hell!

But, noooo.  The state of Kentucky, rife with christianist fundamentalists who hold very weird beliefs, and actually think there was a great big ark a long time ago on which a guy named Noah collected two of each species so that life would be preserved while a loving god who was thoroughly pissed off at his creation went about the process of destroying most every person and critter on earth in order to get revenge on the people who had failed to heed his warnings about how to live, whatever they were.  Why all the animals had to die, too, was not explained.  I mean, really, what the hell did they do wrong?

The guv of Tennessee, Steve Beshear, who happens to be a Democrat (damn it!) thinks this biblical amusement park is a great idea.  The reason for that is because he believes the park will create a few jobs for which he can take credit.  Needless to say, he sees no constitutional issues whatsoever in the use of taxpayer money to help fund the park.


So on May 19, the State of Kentucky approved $43 million in tax credits for the park.  Not only so, but it is likely the people of Kentucky will also have to pony up another $11 million to "improve a highway interchange near the site."

The people of Kentucky are getting screwed!  Alex Seitz-Wald, writing at Think Progress, says that these "tax breaks for an amusement park come at a time when state leaders are asking residents to sacrifice as they cut important social programs.  'The state has gone through eight rounds of budget cuts over the past three years, [including cuts] to "education at all levels" and a pay freeze for all teachers and state workers."

Not only so, but Kentucky has cut funding for Medicaid by sending recipients to managed care plans which creates a bigger bureaucracy and makes it more difficult to obtain care and which will also increase costs by some 20 percent.


Many leaders in the scientific community are dismayed.  Dan Phelps, a geologist, said Gov. Beshear's support of this park "embarrassing for the state."  Americans United for the Separation of Church and State is threatening to sue Kentucky.  The Rev. Barry Lynn, who heads up Americans United says, rightly, that "The state of Kentucky should not be promoting the spread of fundamentalist Christianity or any other religious viewpoint.  Let these folks build their fundamentalist Disneyland without government help."

And all the smart people said "Amen"!

At the amusement park

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Florida - sinking in a swamp of greed under Rick Scott

[Rick Scott cartoon from here.]

Rick Scott is known for shady dealings.  Most people are aware of the fact that he should be in jail for his involvement in the most massive Medicare fraud in history.  Most of us are also aware that he used a portion of his ill-gotten gains ($73 million) to buy the governor's office in the state of Florida.

It is likely, I believe, that at some point this nogoodnik will overreach and the short arm of the law will catch up to him and he'll be indicted and convicted and impeached.

Another option would be a recall petition, but there is currently no mechanism to achieve this.  One of Florida's Democratic legislators has introduced a bill that would allow elected officials to be recalled but whether this will ever become law is problematic what with a Repugnican-controlled state house.

His amorality, however, as I suggest above, may ultimately prove his undoing.  One of his pet projects is to have all state employees and welfare beneficiaries in the state of Florida tested for illegal drug use.  One can't help but wonder why this suddenly has become an issue.  The reason is clear.  Scott was co-owner of Solantic, a company involved in drug-testing, among other things.  But when two conflict-of-interest complaints were lodged against him, he transferred his stake in Solantic to his wife's revocable trust and finally sold his interest.  Of interest, though, is that the Florida Ethics Commission threw out the two complaints saying there was not enough evidence against him.

There is a pattern here.  It appears he frequently operates on the edge of legality.  He claims authority that less worthy people lack.  He personifies the amoral corporate mindset in which profit is god and that the end justifies the means.


How many of the common folk of Florida are able to devote money and time to lobby the state legislature for laws favorable to their interests?  I don't know, but it doesn't take a genius to conclude that the number would be very few.

The corporations, however, along with the rich and powerful, spend big bucks to lobby the state legislature.  Kathleen Haughney and Aaran Deslatte, writing for OrlandoSentinel.com, note that "Florida utilities, casino operators, local governments and a host of other interests spent more than $55.1 million to lobby Tallahassee lawmakers and the governor during the first three months of the year [2011]..."

Specifically, $1.28 million of that total was spent by AT&T.  "For the past several years, the company has pushed for a bill that would deregulate land-line telephones, meaning AT&T and other telecoms that offer land lines could raise their rates without approval from the state.

"This year the bill passed."  Read that again.  And again.  Here's what the Florida legislature is telling us common folks:  "Screw you!  We don't give a damn about you!  You can't help us stay in office where we will become rich!"

The efforts of another lobbying group, this one dedicated to establishing Vegas-style casinos in Florida, came up short but they'll be back!

As we shall see, the Florida legislature is all about ensuring the rich get richer and the middle-class and poor  in Florida get screwed!  Jeb Bush was bad enough.  Rick Scott is a disaster!


If you are old and unwell in the state of Florida, the state legislature has made certain that your life will become a living hell!  Scott Maxwell, also writing for OrlandoSentinel.com, says "Florida is stepping back into the dark ages when it comes to nursing-home abuse and neglect.

"The industry is facing fewer regulations.  Staffing requirements are being lowered.  The watchdog program is being neutered.  The state is even trying to muzzle the watchdogs who dare speak up for the elderly.  And all of this is happening while cases of horrid abuse - the likes of which you would barely believe in a Stephen King novel - are on the rise.

Maxwell gives several examples such as the case of  a 71-year old South Florida "man with schizophrenia [who] died from burns he received in a bathtub.  At the same [nursing] home, staff failed to stop residents beating one another with 2-by-4s."

Maxwell notes that "Homes throughout the state are regularly caught using illegal restraints" and the elderly are "actually dying at a rate of nearly once [sic] a month as a result of abuse and neglect."

Since Scott took office, he threw out Brian Lee who led the state's watch-dog program who had also pissed-off the nursing home industry!

It's an incredible mess led by Scott and the Repugnicans!  Why?  To increase the profits of the nursing-home industry.  Anything goes in the name of the corporate god:  profit!


The above relates to what the St. Petersburg Times calls "Devaluing the lives of poor, elderly."  The Florida legislature passed "four bills that would it harder to bring personal injury cases and cap the damages that courts can award."  This means that "lawmakers have closed or curtailed access to the courts for thousands of injured Floridians ... [and] makes it far more likely that the cost of catastrophic injuries due to medical malpractice or a faulty vehicle design will shift to taxpayers."

The bad guys, in other words, get a pass and the rest of us get screwed!

Furthermore...the poorest among us will "no longer have their injuries due to medical malpractice compensated to the same extent as others."  In addition a cap of $300,000 on "pain-and-suffering damages" means that few attorneys will be willing to take malpractice cases as they are very expensive to litigate!

Another piece of stupidity is a bill (SB 1676) which gives "medical faculty at the University of Miami the same 'sovereign immunity' - or protection from major malpractice judgements - when teaching at Miami's public Jackson Memorial Health System."  The University of Miami, though, is a private institution and should not be shielded in such a manner.


The bozos in Tallahassee also passed a law that would, according to TBO.com (Tampa Bay Online), write "taxpayer-funded religious discrimination into our state constitution by incorporating an exemption to anti-discrimination laws ... for example, a house of worship hiring a cook for a taxpayer-funded shelter could advertise 'Catholics, Jews, Protestants or Muslims Need Not Apply.'"

Even scarier, under Joint Resolution 1471, "Florida could not bar funding to a religious group based on its anti-Semitic, racist or other extreme religious views.  Why?  Because 1471's affirmative language provides the unfettered constitutional rights to taxpayer dollars for all religious groups, including religious extremists, of which there is no shortage in Florida."

This Joint Resolution has not yet become law.  But it is part and parcel of a larger attempt, funded largely by ultra extremist right-wing christianists.  One of their dreams is to destroy public education and bills that they have written and underwritten are finding their way into state legislatures around the country, often reading the same, word-for-word.  We can expect a huge assault on our traditional values by these christianist extremists who are working day and night to get Creationism taught in our classrooms instead of real science; to push for  christianist prayer at public school events; and to press for an expansion of the "voucher" system would be a wonderful boon for all the wacky christianist fundamentalist schools in our state.  They could continue their nefarious education with taxpayer money!


Here's how things are already working out.  In November, thanks to the christianist fundamentalists in the Florida legislature and Rick Scott, "Voters will have a chance to repeal Florida's ban on state aid to churches and other religious organizations. ...

"The proposal would lift the threat of legal challenges to voucher programs that send disabled and low-income children to parochial and other private schools at taxpayer expense.

As to Medicaid, the elderly got screwed again.  Big time!  HB 7109 "makes major changes to the Medicaid program, putting the care of nearly 3 million beneficiaries into the hands of private companies and hospital networks."  If anyone should know how to screw the people and the government at the same time, it's Rick Scott.  He's had lots of experience.  HB 7109 is in the pipeline in spite of the fact that a pilot program was determined to provide "providers with big profits by scrimping on patient care."

Hello?  Is anybody listening?  Are the people of Florida going to rise up and throw these christianist bastards out of office?


The unemployed got hit hard.  Their maximum state benefits were cut from 26 to 23 weeks.

The teachers really got screwed.  Teacher pay would be based on "merit."  Hah.  As a former teacher I know from experience there is no way to do this!  Every classroom is different.  Every subject is different.  Most administrators know very little about what makes a good teacher.  This is a horrible assault on the teaching profession.

Not only so, but the tenure system has been abolished for new hires.  Well, good luck with that.  Anyone agreeing to teach in the state of Florida without some sense of security has got to be crazy.  Teachers are constantly under the gun by people who know nothing about education and if it wasn't for teacher unions and the tenure system our educational system would be even worse than it is now!

The Senate's budget cut $1 billion from our schools!  In Marion County, Florida, the superintendent is "demanding" a 4-day week under the threat of teacher layoffs.

Teachers and other public employees, for the first time, must pay three percent of their wages into their retirement fund.  What is so nasty about this is that public employees "gave up pay raises decades ago in exchange for full public funding of the [pension] plan.  Also, state workers now are going into a fifth straight year without an across-the-board pay raise."

Scott is pushing for more charter schools, even though there is no evidence these are in any way superior to the regular school system and some evidence they are worse!

Did you know that Eric Smith, Florida's education commissioner has resigned.  Scott has not found the time to meet with him.


The legislature did a reverse and over-rode former Governor Charlie Crist's veto to pass a law allowing our "legislative leaders to raise unlimited special-interest money and funnel it to the campaigns of their hand-picked candidates."

The legislature also made it much harder for women to have an abortion.

The gave cops the authority to ask for a person's "immigration documents" if the cop suspected he or she was in the country illegally!

A rather large deregulation bill was reworked because of consumer complaints, but it still deregulates moving companies and auto mechanics.  Another example of exactly how your elected officials work for - no, not you - their corporate owners!


Let's see how Gov. Scott and the legislature did on job creation.  You will remember that Scott ran for office saying he would see that Florida created a massive number of jobs.

He was lying.  Again.

What he's done is cut jobs!  Twenty-nine people are being let go in the Florida Department of Community Affairs.

According to Newsherald.com (Panama City, Florida), 650,000 state employees will find their paychecks cut in order to balance the budget.  The legislature didn't raise taxes.  They cut employees and wages.  In other words the people got screwed again!

"The budget will eliminate nearly 4,500 state positions, about 2,000 of which are vacant, while 1,700 jobs are in prisons slated to be privatized.  Schools districts also are anticipating layoffs and furloughs due to state spending cuts.

"Some private sector employees who depend on state funding, such as road builders and nursing home workers, also may get the ax."

Now, listen to this.  Corporate taxes were cut!!!  Also, "...lawmakers ... found enough money to cut taxes by $308 million -- mostly at the expense of water management districts - and pay for dozens of their pet projects.


Another bill, HB "7207 would make sweeping changes to the state's 25-year-old management system, substantially reducing state oversight of local land use decisions.  The bill shifts the burden of proof to citizens who file legal challenges and lift requirements that developers pay for needed roads and schools."

Scott, you understand, thinks regulations are bad because they keep companies from creating jobs.  It's a laughable position, and tragic, for it has been debunked over and over ever since Reagan the clown started our country on the road to financial ruin!

But for Scott, it's all a game.  The people are the pawns and the corporations manipulate them through their fully-funded legislators!  You see, "Scott threatened to veto the entire budget if lawmakers failed to cut Florida's corporate income tax."  They finally agreed on a $30 million cut, which Scott said was a "first step."


Perhaps Brad Ashwell, a spokesman for the consumer group, PIRG, said it best:  "The majority party, emboldened by a two-thirds majority, aggressively went after the courts, voters, labor groups, trial lawyers and anyone else they deemed a threat to their power.  Middle class Floridians will see higher insurance rates, higher phone rates, more sprawl, and more obstacles to having a voice in their elections."

Which reminds me we haven't even begun to discuss our return to the days of Jim Crow in Florida when it comes to voting.  But that's another article.

Evidence for an invisible sky friend

I

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Harold Camping is crazy and the world is not going to end on May 21!

[Photo of Harold Camping from here.]

If our media would refuse to give free publicity to the assholes in our midst, we'd all be a lot better off.

There's an ignorant and stupid old man by name of Harold Camping who resides in California and promotes his peculiar christianist nonsense and ignorance over the radio to a variety of poor souls who know even less than he does!

He considers himself a student of the Bible which is wildly inaccurate.  He has no clue what the Bible is all about.  Nevertheless, he has written a bunch of books on the so-called "Rapture," one of which predicted it would happen about the middle of September in 1994.

Obviously, his Jesus did not return to earth and there was no Rapture, and he is a failed prophet.  But that didn't stop the old fool from promising that now it will take place on May 21 of this year.  Yup, and you'd better believe it, 'cause it's gonna happen.  He won't brook any questions as to the authenticity of his prediction - "...God is not playing games," says this moldy old coot, as if he has a pipeline to some deity!

All of this crapola is based upon Camping's campy interpretations of obscure biblical passages which are almost impossible for anyone to decipher - even real biblical scholars - but none of them have anything to say about our time.

The Bible was written by men who were even more ignorant than 89-year old Camping; men who knew very little about the world, almost nothing about medicine, philosophy, the human mind, or the universe, and were  throwing sacrifices to their god(s) in order to influence these deities to be benevolent toward them because they believed their fate rested in the hands of what were inscrutable, horrible, and arbitrary gods living above the firmament which they "knew" to be a hard place high in the sky!

If you believe that there really was a Jesus such as reported in the Synoptic Gospels, then you ought to know enough to keep your damn mouth shut about when the world is going to end.  This Jesus is reported to have said that no one knows.  He didn't even know.  And he's the son of man.  Of course, in the Gospel of John he's God hisself!  So even God doesn't know when the end is coming.

But Camping does?

This is all really too silly.  Yet our newspapers pretend that Camping is saying something that people need to know about.  He's interviewed by our magazines.  Other christianist goofballs like Tim LaHaye are consulted as to whether they think Camping is onto something.


What a world we live in!  There is no evidence whatsoever for the old biblical tales of Abraham and Moses, etc.  The men who wrote the Bible lacked any scientific understanding of the world and the stories they concocted reflect that lack.  How can anyone still believe a great fish swallowed a man and then spewed him up to go preach to sinners in this day and age?  How can anyone believe in talking serpents?  How can anyone believe that a virgin had a baby after being impregnated by a spirit!  These kinds of things happen only in the realm of mythology.

Unfortunately, people who believe in all this nonsense and more are running our country.  The problem of Harold Camping goes far beyond Harold Camping.  Camping is not any crazier than most of our leaders, religious and otherwise.  He's just a different kind of crazy.  The Mormons believe the unbelievable and one of them wants to be president.  Catholics think that little cracker actually becomes the flesh of the mythical Christ (a spiritual being to begin with!) when the priest says the magic words!

But it might help if our media representatives didn't scratch and claw to best one another with an ever more sensational story.

Let Harold Camping and others of his ilk sulk in the cave of their ignorance.  Let the rest of us ignore them!

Now, if I had heeded my own admonition, I wouldn't have written this rant.  But I had to write the rant.  Someone needed to say these things!

Mike Huckabee's "friend," Janet Porter, and why you should never vote for old Huck

This is from an article by Tim Murphy at Mother Jones.

We've got some really weird Repugnicans running about this country:  Newt Gingrich, who doesn't seem to know what he believes but every time he opens his mouth vileness spews forth; Mitt Romney, a seemingly "nice" guy who believes all that Mormon religious crap; Michele Bachmann who gives stupidity a good name; Sarah Palin the quitter who loves money and god, and Mike Huckabee, among others.

Most of the above want to become president and actually believe they could handle the job.  Most of them can't handle folding the laundry!

Mike Huckabee had the presidential itch and he scratched it up until a couple of days ago when he said he would not be a Repugnican candidate in 2012.  (I think he's making too much money and having too much fun being a FAUX News 'celebrity!)

Huckabee is a Baptist preacher would ought to immediately disqualify him in the minds of most people even if it doesn't disqualify him so far as our Constitution goes.  But his religious views are so extreme, so strange, so other-worldly that to see him in the Oval Office is mind-boggling!

I've written about the religious kook, Janet Porter, before.  It turns out that Janet Porter is a close friend and confidant and adviser to Mike Huckabee!  At one time she was "co-chair of Huckabee's Faith and Values Coalition."   Old Huck calls her "his 'prophetic voice.'"

Here's a few or the things this "prophetic voice" has said, according to Tim Murphy:

1)  "Obama represents an 'inhumane, sick, and sinister evil."

2)  "...she has warned that Democrats want to throw Christians in jail merely for practicing their faith.

3)  "She's attributed Haiti's high poverty rate to the fact that the country is 'dedicated to Satan.'"

4)  "...she suggested that gay marriage caused Noah's Flood."

5)  "And there's this:  In a 2009 column for conservative news site WorldNetDaily, Porter asserted that President Barack Obama is a Soviet secret agent, groomed since birth to destroy the United States from within."

Where the hell do these fruitcakes come from?  How do they get so crazy?

There's more.  According to Murphy, Porter doesn't much like the people who she saw as Huckabee's competition for the 2012 Repugnican nomination.

"She publicly suggested that former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson might be the anit-Christ."  Now I think Thompson is a scumbag but the anti-Christ?  Please!

In a TV ad, Porter has attacked Mitt Romney and John McCain.

More recently, Porter seems to have outdone herself.  "Last summer, she lost her syndicated radio show after organizing a rally at the Lincoln Memorial to urge Christians to take over the United States government.  And this spring, she made headlines by summoning a fetus to testify on behalf of an Ohio measure banning abortions after a heartbeat has become detectable."

Huckabee, according to Murphy, endorsed that bill!


It's fortunate that Huckabee has declined to run for the office of president of the United States.  He's so utterly ill-equipped to handle the job.  Having a Janet Porter as an adviser should, in a just world, disqualify him immediately!

It's unfortunate that many of the current "candidates" are just as bad or worse than Huckabee.

He's got you covered

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Texas, God and Insanity

[Photo of the clown, Gov. Rick Perry]

The Texas governor believes in a god.  Not one of the ancient gods; his god is only a few thousand years old. The Texas governor is a clown.  Or one could say that his actions give reason to question his sanity.  One could say the same thing about the Repugnicans in the Texas legislature.

Bill McKibben, in an article at AlterNet, notes that Texas governor Rick Perry has called for the people of Texas to pray to his god that the deity might ease the drought that is of historic proportions; worse, even, "than at the height of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s."

McKibben says the drought is no "great mystery."  We've got trouble all over the world because "We're heating the planet:  the CO2 we've poured into the atmosphere means that we now trap about 3/4 of a watt extra solar energy on each square meter of the earth's surface.  That's enough to throw our planet out of balance.  The science is simple:  as a NASA team put it three years ago, above 350 parts per million CO2 we can't have a planet 'similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.'  And right now that number is 390 and rising two parts per million per year, simply because we're burning so much coal and gas and oil.

"A lot of that fossil fuel gets burned in Texas.  In fact, its carbon emissions are higher than the next two states (California and Pennsylvania) combined."  One might think this would make the guv of Texas and his Repugnican cohorts take a closer look at the situation, but Perry, being an "evangelical" christian of the fundamentalist ilk, thinks global warming is a laughing matter.  God wouldn't let us destroy the earth and all this global warming talk is liberal goofiness.  Ha, ha, ha!

When Perry took office "he signed legislation to try and speed construction of 11 new coal plants for the state.  As recently as January--in the middle of the drought--his attorney general argued in federal court against even the most modest EPA restrictions on greenhouse gases.  Perry's GOP holds 23 of Texas's House seats, and 22 of those Representatives voted earlier this month [April 2011] to deny the fact of global warming (the 23rd abstained)."

To deny something for which there is incontrovertible scientific evidence is further evidence of insanity!

So, Perry, not caring to understand why this terrible drought, tells his people to pray.  But he did not specify which god.  Doubtless it was his god of fundy christian understanding but it ultimately doesn't matter.  They could pray to Zeus or Buddha - no one's listening!  And even if there was a god who had his hearing aids in, he or she is paying no attention.

As we've noted on several previous occasions, scientists and clergy have studied the problem of prayer and have found it does not work.  In fact, sick people who were prayed over and knew they were the subject of prayer became sicker!

That won't stop the stoopids in Texas.  And the drought will continue.  And things will get worse.


When the Repugnicans get control, the world goes to hell.  Always has and always will!  

There is no hell!

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

Stephen Hawking and really weird news!

AOL, in its inimitable manner, has a home page section called "Weird News."

Yesterday, in that section, appeared an article about the theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking.  Evidently, Hawking has said that there is no god and no heaven or afterlife and AOL, in its inimitable manner, thinks this is "weird."

In Hawking's view, the human brain is a computer and when it breaks down it's all over!  The notion of a heaven or afterlife is "a fairy tale for people afraid of the dark."

What's weird about that?

What IS really weird, which AOL neglected to mention, is the fact there are billions of people around the world who believe in heavenly fairy tales!  Many are so convinced that these fairy tales are true they discount this life in the hope that the next one will be better.  Some fundamentalist christianists are further convinced that only those people who have "accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior" will go to heaven or experience an afterlife.  

It doesn't get much weirder than that, because there is absolutely NO evidence of any kind to justify believing in any kind of afterlife or heaven.  NO EVIDENCE!  NONE!

Hawking isn't weird, it's belief in heavenly nonsense that's weird!

Little Ahmed

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

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!