An open letter to the people who hate Obama more than they love America

By Jesse LaGreca

 

I meet you all the time. You hate Obama. You hate gay people. You hate black people, immigrants, Muslims, labor unions, women who want the right to make choices concerning their bodies, you hate em all. You hate being called racist. You hate being called a bigot. Maybe if you talked about creating jobs more than you talk about why you hate gay people we wouldn't call you bigots. Maybe if you talked about black people without automatically assuming they are on food stamps while demanding their birth certificates we wouldn't call you racist. You hate socialism and social justice. You hate regulations and taxes and spending and the Government. You hate.

You like war. You like torture. You like Jesus. I don't know how in the hell any of that is compatible, but no one ever accused you haters of being over-committed to ideological consistency. You like people who look like you or at least hate most of the things that you hate. You hate everything else.

Now, I know you profess to love our country and the founding fathers (unless you are reminded that they believed in the separation of church and state), but I need to remind you that America is NOT what Fox News says it is. America is a melting pot, it always has been. We are a multi-cultural amalgamation of all kinds of people, and yet you still demonize everyone who is not a rich, white, heterosexual christian male or his submissive and obedient wife.

You hate liberals, moderates, hell, anyone who disagrees with Conservative dogma as espoused by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. You hate em.

Well, here are the facts, Jack. If you hate the Government then you are unqualified to manage it. If you hate gay people more than you love America than you should take your own advice and get the hell out. There are several countries that are openly hostile to gay people, but they are full of brown people and you don't like them much either from what I understand. It looks like you are screwed, but that's not what I am here to tell you.

Now that you have thrown everything and the kitchen sink at President Obama and it still hasn't worked you are panicking. Obama's approval ratings are still near 50% despite your best efforts to undermine the economy and America's recovery at every step you can.

You tried to hold the American economy hostage to force America into default on its' debts, debts that YOU rang up under Bush, so you could blame it on Obama and it failed. You've used the filibuster more than any other Congress ever, going so far as to vote against providing health care access to 9/11 first responders. You remember 9/11, don't you, it's that thing you used to lie us into a war in Iraq, and then when Obama killed Bin Laden and ended the war in Iraq you told people that he hates America and wants the troops to fail. You monsters. You hate Obama with a passion, despite the fact that he is a tax cutting, deficit reducing war President who undermines civil rights and delivers corporate friendly watered down reforms that benefit special interests just like a Republican. You call him a Kenyan. You call him a socialist. You dance with your hatred singing it proudly in the rain like it was a 1950's musical.
 
Frankly, you disgust me. Your hatred nauseates me. Your bigotry offends me. Your racism revolts me. Dear haters, I am openly questioning your patriotism.

I think you hate gays, Obama, black people, poor people, all of us, women, atheists and agnostics, Latinos, Muslims, Liberals, all of us, I think you hate every one who isn't exactly like you, and I think you hate us more than you love your country.

I think you hate gay soldiers more than you want America to win its wars.

I don't even think you want America to win wars, you just want America to have wars, never ending wars and the war profiteering it generates. You love that kind of spending, you love spending on faith based initiatives and abstinence based sex education (George Carlin would have loved that one), you love spending on subsidies for profitable oil corporations, you spend like drunken sailors when you are in the White House, but if it is a Democrat then suddenly you cheer when America doesn't get the Olympics because it might make the black President look bad. 

But oooh you love your country, you say, and you want it back. Well listen here skippy, it isn't your country, you don't own it, it is our country, and America is NOT the religiously extremist Foxbots who hate science, elitist professors and having a vibrant and meaningful sex life with someone we love if Rick Santorum doesn't approve of it. Rick Santorum isn't running for America's fucking high school dance chaperone, he should probably just shut the hell up about sex, but he can't because he has nothing else to run on.

Republicans can NOT win on the issues. They've got NOTHING. All they have is a divide and conquer class war that pits ignorant racist and bigoted people against the rest of us in a meaningless battle of wedge issues and the already proven to fail George W. Bush agenda again of tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, privatization and war profiteering and nothing else, so all they can do is blame black people, gays the government, anybody and everyone else for their own failings. The party of personal responsibility, my ass.

But they love multi-national corporations, just ask a gay hating and racist religious extremist if they think Corporations are people and they will gladly agree, but if you ask them if gay people are people they aren't so sure.

Dear haters, you are the cruel, heartless misinformed assholes who would sell America out to Haliburton in a heartbeat, you would rather pay ZERO taxes than you would see a newly born baby get access to quality health care, you cheer when we discuss denying health care to young people with preventable diseases, and you boo when we discuss the First Ladies plan to cut back on childhood obesity. 

You are a cross to carry and a flag to wrap yourself in away from being the people who Sinclair Lewis warned us about, but I guarantee that if Fox News told you to dress that way you would, because you are the same blind, ignorant and closed minded dunces who drove this country into a civil war years ago because you are bound to the notion that some men are more equal than others. In short, the reason I proudly wear my union army hat is because of seditious sell outs like you who constantly fuck over working class Americans so a foreign entrepreneur like Rupert Murdoch can get a bigger tax break. If corporations are people, they are neither American patriots nor capable of love. Just like you.

So stop wearing your hate with pride. Stop celebrating your anti-science, anti-math ignorance. Stop using code words to mask your bigotry like "family values", especially when you hate my family and when you stand on the same stage as a guy who has had three marriages or if you share a seat in the Senate with a guy who cheated on his wife with hookers while wearing diapers. 

You should be ashamed. I know that you are just doing this to motivate your misinformed hate cult base because if they actually knew that your ideas will make them poorer than they are now, they would never vote for you. You are doing your best to impoverish your countrymen so rich people can get bigger tax breaks and you can keep on delivering corporate welfare to the special interests who have bribed you, and I am disgusted by the way you gleefully parade your hatred with aplomb. I don't think you do love America. At least, not as much as you hate everyone in America who isn't exactly like you.

You should think about that, and maybe get some help.

And for the record, I do not hate you. I am embarrassed by you and nauseated by your cruel and thoughtless behavior and your all consuming greed, but I do not hate you. I forgive you and I hope you can change someday, but I don't hate you. You have enough hate in you for the rest of us as it is.


You can follow me on twitter @JesseLaGreca

Originally posted to MinistryOfTruth on Mon Jan 09, 2012 at 01:57 PM PST.This piece was used with permission of the author. 

This piece was used by permission of the author.

The strange world in which we live - Part II

Today a Russian court convicted eight people for participating in an anti-Putin protest in 2012 on the eve of his inauguration for a 3rd term as president.  So far as I know their sentences have not yet been decided.  Following that event in 2012, Mr. Putin set up stiffer laws regarding protests in the new, "democratic" Russia.

It looks as though that kindly Russian bear we see at Sochi has a big bite!


What I learned from reading a golf instruction book:   Adam Scott, the wonder golfer from Australia, wrote that one must keep the head level during the swing.  Then he noted "Hovering the clubhead prevents jerks."  Oh, if only it were that easy.  I've tried keeping my head level, almost missed the ball, and some jerks standing nearby starting laughing.


On to Miley Cyrus.  What to do about Ms. Raunchy?  She's currently on her Bangerz tour and she does some fairly raunchy things in her act.  Pay your money and you can watch her "straddle a flying hot dog, stuff a thong in her mouth and simulate oral sex on a Bill Clinton impersonator while accompanied by mom and dad."

Some parents find this vulgar and upsetting and unsettling and want the Bangerz tour to go away - permanently.  Said parents and other protestors have caused some U.S. arenas to consider dropping Bangerz and Ms. Miley on her pert, little backside.

But, hey, if you don't like her show, don't go.  Lock your kids up at home.  Ms. Cyrus does nothing for me.  I think she's a sad little person who's probably in over her head and perhaps not too sure of her singing talent which is why she includes the raunchy stuff, but I don't have the need to shut her down.  If enough people don't attend her shows, she'll have to shut down on her own.  But I don't think that's going to happen no matter how many pious parents piss on her.


John McCain.  You may remember him.  He's the guy who flew a plane over North Vietnam although ordered not to do so, got shot down and spent five years or so in a North Vietnamese prison camp where, although he was treated pretty well, somehow came back a "hero" and parlayed that old "wounded hero" bit into one hell of a long political career.

There are two other notable things about Sen. McCain.  One is his involvement in the old Savings & Loan scandal.  Although deeply involved he came out of that smelling like a rose, too.  Well, a damp, wilted rose, but a rose nonetheless.  The other is his failed candidacy for the presidency known mainly for his monumentally stupid decision to cast Sarah Palin in the role of his running mate.

McCain down through the years has been on the wrong side of history over and over again which isn't surprising since he is a Republican.  He championed our disastrous adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He thought we should have sent boots into Syria.  He's agitating for U.S. military action in Syria.

This week he also called Mr. Obama "the most naive president in history."  McCain was unhappy with the way Mr. Obama treated Mr. Putin and because Mr. Obama has used restraint in reacting to the crisis in the Ukraine.

McCain really has no itch to scratch.  Obama shut down the war in Iraq and brought (most of) the troops home.  It's complicated, thanks to the bunch of morons who ran the country from 2000 to 2008.  Obama is also in process of extracting our troops from Afghanistan.  Mr. Obama, contrary to Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain, does not find it necessary to engage our military wherever in the world a violent conflagration pops up.

Mr. McCain sits on his hands and complains.  And if ain't one thing, it's another.  It doesn't matter what our President does, McCain will not like it.  But what can we expect?  You can't make a statesman out of someone who lacks the character and intelligence of a statesman.  Remember he's the guy who signed on Sarah Palin.  Ha!


I read yesterday that according to a Gallup Poll, North Dakota is our happiest state?  What?  North Dakota?  The state with the climate that makes Alaska look positively balmy?  Gallup based its assessment on "work environments, health and access to food and water."

At first I thought this was a crock.  I thought Florida has to be the happiest state.  But then I remembered that Florida is inundated with grumpy old retired folks who hate cold weather and complain about the heat, go out to eat every night jamming up the restaurants, drive like ignorant maniacs and leave a dollar tip for a $50 meal.

But it is sunny here.  That's why they call Florida the Sunshine State.  I'd like to see the sun shining on the rear ends of a lot of these folks heading back north - to North Dakota, maybe.


My grandmother lived on a farm in northern Minnesota.  The house had no indoor plumbing.  When we went to visit her we had to do our business in a stinky, old wooden outhouse across a driveway from the main building.  And yes, the only toilet paper available was most often pages torn from a Sears Roebuck catalog.  It was a crappy situation.

But we've come a long way since those primitive days.  There's a new company starting up in New York city which will offer members luxury toilet facilities.  These facilities are very fancy schmancy with private privys, showers and even a special room for mothers with young children.  Members will pay $6.00 and up per day for the privilege of doing their business like the One Percenters.


Boeing, you may recall, is a big airline company.  It's been manufacturing airplanes in the Pacific Northwest (Washington State) for many years.  But Boeing thinks it does not need to pay its way because, I suppose, it provides a number of jobs for people in that area.

Boeing, however, is a taker not a giver.  It gets a huge number of federal contracts every year.  In fact, 4.4% of ALL federal contracts go to Boeing.  Last year the company made $5.9 billion in pretax profits, which is pretty good considering Boeing paid NO federal income tax.  It had a federal tax rate of -1.4%.

Not only so, but Washington State, which believes Boeing to be a great asset to the community, has given the company $8.7 billion in tax breaks through 2040 to get the company to build a new manufacturing plant in Washington.  That was after Boeing threatened to build elsewhere and then went on to break the back of the union.


Pakistan has a lot of trained monkeys who entertain people in public or private places by doing tricks while held on a leash.  When I first read that story I thought immediately of the U.S. House of Representatives and how much fun it would be to find out whose leash was holding whom!


If you see an ad that promises to show you a special trick which in a few easy lessons will add 20 yards to your golf shots, don't believe it!


If you see an ad that promises to save your soul, especially if it comes from a religious institution, don't believe that, either.


Meanwhile, keep smiling and watch out for the jerks.

The strange world in which we live

So many things have changed in the past 40-50 years. Some changes have been good, others not so much. In certain instances, we seem to be moving backward to a more uncertain, dangerous and unscientific time.

Who would have thought after Roe v. Wade that we'd still be fighting abortion?  Who could have foreseen that contraception would again become an issue and that some medieval minds would argue that a fetus is a person? The teaching of evolution, which was widely accepted, is now being attacked by religious zealots who care nothing for science and truth but only for the writings of ancient desert munchkins who adapted wild tales about a deity creating everything in six days and then becoming so tired he had to rest; or a deity who regretted creating humans at all, so arranged for a genocidal flood saving only certain animals and a degenerate old fool named Noah, who immediately following the flood proceeded to fire up the wrath of his god friend.  There are ignorant folks today still looking for the mythical ark on a mythical mountain.


I've always thought it a bit strange that we legalize alcohol but put people in jail for most of their lives for the mere possession of a few grams of a weed called marijuana. Alcohol causes more death and depravity in one year that marijuana has caused since the beginning of time.

But the light has dawned in certain of our states who have legalized or intend to legalize the sale and consumption of marijuana. Colorado is one such state and it turns out that the tax monies received from marijuana sales have exceeded all expectations to the delight of those who worry about budget deficits.

But certain politicians just cannot leave people alone and continue to attempt to regulate all kinds of personal behavior. I'm no fan of tobacco because of the fact it can cause so many medical problems, but we need to allow people to live their lives and make their own decisions about such things. The abolition of alcohol did not work, nor will the abolition of tobacco.

A step toward the abolition of tobacco has been taken by the States of Colorado and Utah. They are getting ready to raise the smoking age to 21. One not too bright Utah person by name of Marla Breenum said, "By raising the age limit, it puts them [young people] in a situation where they're not going to pick it up until a much later age." Can anyone really be this stupid?

As mentioned, I've got nothing good to say about smoking. But I've nothing good to say about a lot of things, like religion, the Republican Party, Utah in general, rutabaga, George W. Bush, or brandy.

I do find it interesting, though, that certain pathetic patrons of pious nonsense feel they have the right to limit the freedom of other people - especially those powerless to resist, such as teenagers.  Why the hell can't our so-called legislators leave our personal behavior alone and get busy passing laws that ban discrimination rather than allow it; that protect the 99% from the predatory 1%, that instigate job creation rather than boosting the wealth of the already rich?

Along those lines: Several states have attempted to pass laws protecting business owners who wish to use religion as a shield behind which to discriminate against people they don't like or with whom they disagree: Gays, for instance. Idaho, Kansas, South Dakota and Tennessee have tried to do this without success. Arizona, however, has actually passed such a law. And it's very likely Arizona's dim-witted governor will sign it.

It seems to me a better idea, if we have to pass such laws, to enact a statute to allow the rest of us to discriminate against asshat legislators who write and vote for anti-gay laws or anyone else we dislike on "religious" grounds.  If I owned a business, I might be emboldened to discriminate by not allowing anyone into my establishment who was a politician, or carried a gun, or wore a cross around his/her neck, or sported a crew-cut, or had a visible tattoo on his/her body, or drove a Ford, or had a connection with the so-called Tea Party.


Is it just me, or do other people find the winter Olympics mostly boring? I mean, really, if you've seen one skier, you've seen them all. If you've seen one bobsled run, you've seen them all. The same goes for figure skating, cross-country skiing, luge contests, snow-boarding, Russian presidents and NBC hosts.

And who would conduct a winter Olympics where the temperature in February is warmer than it is in Central Florida? And who would put together a winter Olympics that cost his country $50 billion? Fifty billion dollars!!!


Texas is always fun to write about because so many crazies live there and so many crazy things go on there. Guess who's down in Texas these days trying to help certain Republican politicians win their political races? Ted Nugent! Who is Ted Nugent? If you don't know, that's probably for the best. Think of the south end of a horse traveling north that has diarrhea.

Ted Nugent is the lowest of the low. He's a musician and his latest stunt to gain more notoriety was to call President Obama a "subhuman mongrel." Why couldn't the press ignore him? We have enough fools we have to suffer. Nugent isn't one of them. Being a heavy-duty supporter of the NRA, Nugent probably carries a gun in his guitar. Maybe one of these days he'll play the wrong string and put himself out of our misery!


Alaska is a lot like Texas in that the people there, probably due to brain-freeze, elect really weird politicians. For example, once upon a time the people elected a governor who made a lot of noise, blew a lot of the peoples' money like she had done when merely a mayor of a piddly little town in the hinterland, and who failed to finish out her term.

It seems she desired a TV career and money more than serving the public. But it turned out nobody who mattered cared much about her. An empty head, even if blessed with bouffant hair, only goes so far. But Ms. Palin is not going quietly into the night. She can't go anywhere quietly. Nope. She's got a new Teevee reality show called "Palin's a Pumkinhead." Nah, I'm just kidding. Almost as strange, though, is the real title: "Amazing America with Sarah Palin."

This is really true! It's perfect, though, 'cause no one, absolutely no one, knows as much about 'Murica" as does Ms. Palin. So "Prepare to be amazed," warns Ms. Palin, the invincible preppy pinhead who used to live in a northern state where she shot unsuspecting and innocent wolves from helicopters.


More stuff from the strange world in which we live tomorrow. Stay tuned.

On rights, freedom and military heroes

[According to Snopes, the story told below is essentially true.  The email by which it is being disseminated in recent days was taken from a 2007 speech by Mike Huckabee at a conference of right-wing conservatives.  Some students who were present in the classroom back in 2005 state that there were not as many veterans as indicated in the story and they were not in uniform.  It seems the teacher has a mission to honor our veterans for their service, which is not an unworthy goal.  But...]


Here's the story sent to me by a friend.

It's about a high school teacher in Arkansas who, in 2005, with permission from the powers-that-be, removed all the desks from her classroom on the first day of school.  Her students were understandably confused and concerned and questioned the disappearance of their work sites.

The teacher explained they couldn't have their desks back until they could tell her how they "earned" the "right" to sit in them.  They responded with a number of possible answers, such as good grades, good behavior, etc., but the teacher rejected each and everyone.

Finally, as the day drew to a close, and when the last period kids had taken places on the floor, the teacher said she would tell them what they had done to earn the right to sit at a desk in her classroom.

She went to the door, opened it and 27 military vets, in uniform, walked in, each one carrying a desk.  These vets set down the desks, then went and stood against a wall.

The teacher told the students "You didn't earn the right to sit at these desks.  These heroes did it for you. ... They went halfway around the world, giving up their education and interrupting their careers and families so that you could have the freedom you have."

She went on to blather about their responsibilities to be "good citizens" and "good students" because these vets "paid the price so that you could have the freedom to get an education."


Well, not so.  Rather than be applauded the teacher should have been rapped on the knuckes and sent back to college to study American history and the Constitution!

First of all, let's dispense with all this hero nonsense.  For some time now, I've noticed that every one in a uniform is considered a "hero."  That is not true.  A hero is someone who goes out of his/her way at great risk to himself or herself to help others in need.  Enlisting in the military doth not a hero make.  Wearing a uniform is not the mark of a hero.

In fact, these days many of our military personnel are on the bottom of the goodness scale.  That's probably always been true, and we've heard of terrible atrocities committed by our troops during WWII; we know what happened at My Lai in Vietnam; and the horrible things our military (and the CIA) did to those confined to the Abu Gbraih prison in Iraq (sexual assault, sodomy, murder) are still fresh in our mind.

Other of our so-called heroes have been behaving despicably by attacking other so-called heroes within the military itself.  The Department of Defense reports that in 2013, there were 19,000 cases of sexual assault.  In 2014 sexual assault remains a huge problem and it seems the military establishment is having a difficult time stopping it.

The suicide rate among our military and our veterans is also a problem.  Some statistics report that 22 veterans take their lives every day.  This is very sad, but if nothing else, it indicates severe problems among our so-called "heroes."

To call everyone in uniform a hero diminishes those who have served and continue to serve heroically!


Secondly, the military does not provide for our freedoms.  Military service or military might or military action does not guarantee that high school kids can have a desk in a classroom or get an education.  Our misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have nothing to do with our freedoms.  In fact, because of the hornet's nest these military actions have created among the more radical groups in the Middle East, the U.S. is at a higher risk for terrorist attacks.

Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan represented or represent a threat to our freedoms.

World War II was the last time that we sent our military to war where freedom in any sense was involved.  Our military fought to defeat totalitarian dictators and states which had as their goal the conquest of our country which would have doubtless resulted in the loss of our freedoms.  That was not true in Korea, Grenada (the Gipper's little war), Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.


Our freedoms are given to us by the Constitution of the United States.  That is the foundation of our country, the bedrock upon which our freedoms rest.  So, unless there is a threat to undo our Constitution which might require a military response, these "heroes" carrying desks into the classroom had nothing to do with our freedom!

And this is where the teacher really goes off the rails.  The laws of our land and our states provide for a free public education through the 12th grade.  Nobody has to "earn" that; nobody can "earn" that.  It is a right given to every child and it is free.  Nobody has "paid the price" so that our children can get an education.

It's as much of a "right" as the right of free speech!


Perhaps the teacher's heart was in the right place.  But the road to hell is paved, I've heard, with good intentions.  As a veteran and as a retired teacher, I get tired of reading this kind of sentimental nonsense which indicates not just a lack of common sense, but a serious lack of learning.  It would be interesting to know what other misguided lessons she has imposed on her students.

No loaded guns at gun show

h/t to Crooks & Liars.

Sarah Silverman talks to Jesus

MLK: Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence (Full)

The Republican Party Rape Advisory Chart

 Thanks to Daily Kos. This is by brainwrap. View the original here.

President Obama's Proclamation on Religious Freedom Day - January 16, 2014

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM DAY, 2014
 
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

In 1786, the Virginia General Assembly affirmed an ideal that has long been central to the American journey. The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, penned by Thomas Jefferson, declared religious liberty a natural right and any attempt to subvert it "a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either."

The Statute inspired religious liberty protections in the First Amendment, which has stood for almost two and a quarter centuries.

Today, America embraces people of all faiths and of no faith. We are Christians and Jews, Muslims and Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, atheists and agnostics. Our religious diversity enriches our cultural fabric and reminds us that what binds us as one is not the tenets of our faiths, the colors of our skin, or the origins of our names. What makes us American is our adherence to shared ideals -- freedom, equality, justice, and our right as a people to set our own course.

America proudly stands with people of every nation who seek to think, believe, and practice their faiths as they choose. In the years to come, my Administration will remain committed to promoting religious freedom, both at home and across the globe.

We urge every country to recognize religious freedom as both a universal right and a key to a stable, prosperous, and peaceful future.

As we observe this day, let us celebrate America' s legacy of religious liberty, embrace diversity in our own communities, and resolve once more to advance religious freedom in our time.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 16, 2014, as Religious Freedom Day. I call on all Americans to commemorate this day with events and activities that teach us about this critical foundation of our Nation's liberty, and show us how we can protect it for future generations at home and around the world.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have here unto set my hand this fifteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand fourteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty - eighth.

BARACK OBAMA

Rachel Maddow and Christie (Not Julie)

The Fakirs of Duck Dynasty

The language is pretty raw but the message is important.

House Republicans "12 Days of Congress"

This video courtesy of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee

Ethnic cleansing in the Middle East

Every once in awhile you might hear an ignorant person complain that Israel is guilty of "ethnic cleansing" in the Middle East.

Not so.  Over 1.5 million Arabs live in Israel.  Compare that with the number of Jews living in other countries shown on the map above.

Note:  Click on the map to enlarge it.


h/t to my friend, Bob Poris

Musings during the holiday season

     1.  Have you ever seen a real estate ad that said a house for sale was in a bad or
          deteriorating neighborhood?

2. I've seen lots of articles lately about how stress can really mess you up. All those articles have created a lot of stress in my life!
   

3. Why is it that Republicans in Congress are suddenly deeply concerned about the deficit when we heard nary a word from them when George W. Bush was waging wars with China's money?
   

4. Did you ever notice that “gourmet” restaurants serve smaller portions of food that doesn't taste very good?
   

5. Why is Ted Yoho (R-Fla) sponsoring a gun safety event instead of helping to create jobs in our county? And on the anniversary of the Newtown tragedy yet.
   

6. Who are the Kardashians and why should we care?
   

7. Could we please send Sarah Palin off into the woods where nobody would have to listen to her inane blather?
   

8. Isn't it interesting that the “bipartisan” budget deal is built on the backs of the poor?
   

9. Just read about a Ted Cruz coloring book. Some stupid people are buying it. I would buy it just for fun but I don't know which colors represent reprehensible, mean, greedy, unChristian, nasty, hateful, spiteful, and snobbish behavior.
   

10. This morning an old man driving a hybrid car dashed into a parking space at the supermarket going the wrong way just as I was entering the space going the right way. He wouldn't move back to his proper space. Just because you're old doesn't mean you get a pass so you can be stupid and onery! [By the way, he spent most of his time in the store buying lottery tickets.]
    

11. Some folks in my town want to build a baseball stadium to entice a minor-minor (NY Yankees) league team to relocate from another town in this state. The county commission thinks the county/city should pay for the stadium, i.e., the taxpayers. It will involve a half-cent tax. The New York Yankees have more money than god. Why should taxpayers build that flourishing enterprise a stadium? If day follows night, the team will leave in a year or two to another, more promising city and we'll be stuck with a monstrosity that sits vacant most of the time.
    

12. Re the previous item: It's possible that the taxpayers will approve this half-cent tax for a baseball stadium. What would be the reaction if the politicos proposed a half-cent tax for new schools or to help pay teacher's salaries? As Santa would say, “Ho, ho, ho! No, no, no!”
    

13. Please NEVER call my social security or Medicare an “entitlement.” That implies I did not earn it nor deserve it! Mitt Romney's paycheck can be called an entitlement for most of what he has comes from his family and the avoidance of taxes.

14. We have another “battle of the cross.” In San Diego. On a hill at a veteran's memorial. Why do some people insist on flaunting their religious beliefs in the face of the rest of us? There's nothing wrong with a veteran's memorial but a cross remains a Christian symbol and disparages all non-Christian veterans. We have enough pagan religious icons in this country. A judge said “take it down.” Sort of. His decision will be appealed and Justice Scalia implied that if it hits the Supremes all will be well and the Christian symbol can stay on the hill. This is a Christian country, right?
    

15. The Hawaii state health official who released President Obama's birth certificate was killed in a plane crash on Wednesday. She was the only one killed in the crash. Her name was Loretta Fuddy. A tragedy. Donald Trump, however, showing how much he cares about real people and those who loved Ms. Fuddy, implied that Obama's birth certificate was a fake and that Ms. Fuddy was implicated in forging the certificate and was killed to ensure her silence about the matter. Would it be too much to ask that the media not publish anything that comes from the sick mind of Mr. Trump?
    

16. The city of Detroit has received judicial permission to move forward and cut the pensions of city retirees. The city of Detroit, while cutting pensions, plans to spend $444 million dollars to build a new hockey arena.  Is there a way to lock up the brainless turds that despoil our country?
    

17. Some of our media people are really stupid. Many of those folks work for FAUX News. Not all, though. Just watch NBC and CNN, especially. One of the stupidest is Megyn Kelley of FAUX News. A woman wrote her that Santa did not have to have white skin. Well, Ms. Kelley knows damn well that Santa was white. And, for that matter, so was the other mythical guy, Jesus. Perhaps Ms. Kelley has been so indoctrinated at FAUX News that she thinks people can't have faith in a person of color. I mean, FAUX News constantly points out that President Obama, a man of color, is not worthy of praise or worship or even respect.  And it's too bad he should get a decent night's sleep!
    

18. In Bullock County, Georgia, teachers were told they could not promote their Christian beliefs in the classroom or in their lessons or on their computers. A right-wing legal group complained that this violated the first-amendment rights of the teachers. Why do Christians insist on promoting their religion in the public sphere? A ban on such behavior does not deny anyone their first-amendment rights! Teachers who try to make little Christians out of their students are violating the United States Constitution. What's so hard to understand about that?
    

19. Why do people driving cars with little Jesus fish attached drive 20 miles over the speed limit on the highways? Doing so makes them criminals.
    

20. Finally, some tidbits from the latest issue of Harper's Magazine.
    

• 942,000 U.S. fast-food workers receive federal and state aid.
  
• The cost of this aid is more than $7,000,000,000.
  
• 71 percent of Tea Party crackpots think Obama is destroying the country.
  
• Cancer prevention gets a mere 11% of the NFL's pink breast-cancer awareness merchandise sales.
  

Merry Holidays!

The Republicans and Nelson Mandella - Once again on the wrong side of history

This, from the Huffington Post.

1986.  Congress put together a Comprehensive Anti-apartheid Act which was designed to show U.S. disapproval of apartheid in South Africa.  It had teeth which involved sanctions, among other things.

The bill passed Congress with bipartisan support.  The Republican Party, however, opposed the act, and it was vetoed by President Ronnie Reagan, the B-grade movie actor who somehow stumbled his way into the presidency.

Congress overrode the veto.

One of those who voted against the act was none other than Dick Cheney, then a Wyoming congressman.  Today, he maintains he did the right thing, that the African National Congress was a terrorist organization and Nelson Mandella was a terrorist.

In 2004, John Nichols, a Cheney historian, spoke to Mandella about Cheney's "record and worldview."  Nichols summed up Mandella's response this way:

He’s very blunt about it he says one of the many reasons why he fears Dick Cheney’s power in the United States, and Mandela does say, he understands that Cheney is effectively the President of the United States, he says, one of the many reasons that he fears Dick Cheney’s power is that in the late 1980’s when even prominent Republicans like Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich were acknowledging the crime of Apartheid, Dick Cheney maintained the lie that the ANC was a terrorist organization and a fantasy that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist leader who deserved to be in jail. Frankly it begs very powerful question. If Dick Cheney’s judgment was that bad in the late 1980’s, why would we believe that it’s gotten any better in the early 21st century?


As we have discovered over the past several decades, Cheney's bad judgment and bad attitude and downright nastiness never has changed.  He's still the sniveling, creepy war criminal who should by all rights, be behind bars!


And the Republican Party continues it's long trek through time on the wrong side of history!

[Read the entire article at the Huffington Post, here.]

Those Were The Nights (of Chanukah) - The Yeshiva Boys Choir

A rousing, rollicking celebration of Chanukah!

Do the right "Christ" thing this Christmas!

Bill Maher zings Repugs who talk about "their" Kennedy

Bill Maher had a few words for the Republicans who still "get a lump in their throat" for "their Kennedy" Ronald Reagan during his New Rules segment this Friday night.

MAHER: Now, I don't know if all politics is local, but I do think all politics is tribal and just as some people are dog people and others are cat people, some have a chip in their brain to be Democrats and others to be Republicans. We have Kennedy, you have Reagan. We have marijuana, you have Metamucil.

We want gays in the military. You want them in the airport restroom. [...]

The one reason we looked uglier in the '80's, is because we were uglier. It was when the baby boomers, the generation that was supposed to be different, just gave up and sold out completely. Kennedy's time was the time of "Ask not what your country can do for you." Reagan's was the time of "Greed is good."

JFK was far from perfect, but he was a true wit and a sex machine and he knew how to wear a pair of shades. Reagan was an amiable square in a cowboy hat who had sex with a woman he called mommie.

Kennedy was James Bond. Reagan was Matlock.

Love him or hate him, we win. Republicans can call Reagan their Kennedy all they want, but it's like calling Miller High Life 'the champagne of beer. It's why calling someone your Kennedy will never really cut it, because our Kennedy, is Kennedy.

Thanks to Heather at Crooks & Liars.

A Letter to William Hague, British Foreign Secretary

I don't know whether or not William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, is an anti-Semite.  Anti-Semitism, however, is alive and just as sick as ever, all over the world.  Unfortunately, it is growing in many European countries, particularly in Sweden and Norway where Jews are feeling both official and unofficial oppression.

If Mr. Hague is not an anti-Semite, he plays right into their hands by choosing Hamas over Israel.  Mr. Hague recently warned "Israel that if it sent troops into Gaza to confront Hamas" [even though Hamas has been sending death-by-rockets to Israel for years], Israel would risk "losing the sympathy of the international community."

I can't help but wonder what "international community" he's talking about.  Does he include Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Iraq, or Yemen, or Syria, or Lebanon, or the United States?  It is interesting to note that although Mr. Hague has visited many countries around the world - from Japan to South Africa to Somolia to Syria - I can find no record of him visiting Israel.  Maybe he has stopped in Tel Aviv, but such a visit has not been publicized in the past several months.

Mr. Hague's statement about Israel losing the international community's "sympathy" did, however, raise the ire of a Jewish woman living in Britain.  On November 19, Mindy Wiesenberger, sent the following letter in response.  The letter has been published in many newspapers, including the "Times of Israel."

I'm proud to reprint it here for Ms. Wiesenberger speaks the truth which needs to be disseminated to as large an audience as possible.


Dear Mr. Hague,

You have stated that if Israel tries to defend its population through a ground offensive in Gaza, "it risks losing the sympathy of the international community."

Let me tell you something about the sympathy of the international community Mr. Hague.  My father was liberated from [the] Buchenwald concentration camp  in 1945, having lost his entire family but gaining the sympathy of the international community at the time.  After 6 million Jews had been annihilated at the hands of the Nazi regime, the international community had plenty of sympathy for the Jewish people.  There is always plenty of sympathy for victims.

Israel doesn't need the sympathy of the international community.  What it needs is to defend its citizens.

When, as a tiny country it gained its independence in 1948, it had to absorb 800,000 Jews who were thrown out of Arab lands in the Middle East, and it did so without fuss and with dignity giving them shelter and a place of security in which their children could grow up to become productive citizens.  When Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria tried to destroy Israel in 1948 and again in 1967 they took in hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs, but did they give them dignity or shelter?  No, they left them to rot in refugee camps in order to maintain a symbol of grievance against Israel and use them as a political tool against the Jewish state.  What has arisen in those camps is a complicated situation, but it is what has led to Gaza today.

So don't lecture Israel on international sympathy Mr. Hague.  Not when Israel has just sent 120 truck loads of food into Gaza to feed the Palestinian people there, because their own leadership is more interested in using its population as human shields, launching rockets against Israel from within major civilian centers.

Don't lecture Israel on international sympathy Mr. Hague.  Not when the Palestinian media deliberately uses images of victims of the Syrian civil war and presents them as casualties in Gaza to gain international sympathy.

Go read your history books Mr. Hague, go see that since the beginning of the twentieth century all the Arabs wanted to do was destroy Israel.  Go look at the country of Israel now since the Jews have established a state there.  Go read what advances in science, medicine, biotechnology, agriculture and high-tech Israel has developed, and dedicated that knowledge to making the world a better place for humanity.  Can you imagine any other country that after 60 years of continuously being under attack could have achieved so much?

So Mr. Hague don't lecture Israel on international sympathy.  Israel will do whatever it takes to defend itself from outright attacks on its citizens, where it be from Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran or any other country or terrorist group that attacks it.

And if it loses the sympathy of the international community so be it.  We don't need the international community's sympathy.  We don't need another 6 million victims.

Rick Perry - An Empty Head

Thought you might want to see what an empty head looks like.  With hair.  Lots of hair. 

Thanksgiving Socialists

h/t Crooks & Liars

At least we have health care!

Canada may not be perfect in every way and the citizens of Toronto have been deeply embarrassed by their mayor, but, dammit, at least they have health care!

Photo from Crooks & Liars.

Sarah Palin's description of the Tea Party healthcare plan

"The plan is to allow those things that had been proposed over many years to reform a health care system in America that certainly does need more help so that there's more competition, there's less tort reform threat, there's less trajectory of the cost increases? And those plans have been proposed over and over again. And what thwarts those plans? It's the far left. It's President Obama and his supporters who will not allow the Republicans to usher in free market, patient-centered, doctor-patient relationship links to reform health care!"

(From an interview with Matt Lauer as reported by the Huffington Post)

And yes, she really is that stupid!

Republican In Name Only

Rachel Maddow catches Rand Paul plagiarizing!

The Shutdown Costs - brought to you by people who worry about the national debt

If you like this kind of thing, thank the Congressional Republicans, in particular Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.

And remember these folks who fuss and fume about our country's deficit have no problem finding money for war but not for the needs of our people.  While they continue to affirm tax cuts/breaks for the rich and their corporate friends, they work to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the poor and the infirm.  If they get their way, Social Security will be cut and privatized and Medicare will be but a dream, for the insurance companies will have free reign over our health care!

h/t to Bob Poris who had this to say:

Does anyone care? They made their point and the contributions rushed in. 24 billion dollars wasted is ok, unless Democrats do it.

President Obama's act of grace after Sandy Hook

[Photo from The Journey to Rediscover]


What follows has been, until just recently, relatively unknown.  President Obama, in secret, went to Sandy Hook to meet with the parents whose lives were shattered beyond repair.

At the memorial service, he met with them, hugged them, talked to them, offered what words of comfort he could and he prayed with them.

From an article by Joshua Dubois here.

"I went downstairs to greet President Obama when he arrived, and I provided an overview of the situation. “Two families per classroom . . . The first is . . . and their child was . . . The second is . . . and their child was . . . We’ll tell you the rest as you go.”

The president took a deep breath and steeled himself, and went into the first classroom. And what happened next I’ll never forget.

Person after person received an engulfing hug from our commander in chief. He’d say, “Tell me about your son. . . . Tell me about your daughter,” and then hold pictures of the lost beloved as their parents described favorite foods, television shows, and the sound of their laughter. For the younger siblings of those who had passed away—many of them two, three, or four years old, too young to understand it all—the president would grab them and toss them, laughing, up into the air, and then hand them a box of White House M&M’s, which were always kept close at hand. In each room, I saw his eyes water, but he did not break.

And then the entire scene would repeat—for hours. Over and over and over again, through well over a hundred relatives of the fallen, each one equally broken, wrecked by the loss. After each classroom, we would go back into those fluorescent hallways and walk through the names of the coming families, and then the president would dive back in, like a soldier returning to a tour of duty in a worthy but wearing war.

We spent what felt like a lifetime in those classrooms, and every single person received the same tender treatment. The same hugs. The same looks, directly in their eyes. The same sincere offer of support and prayer."


The President does not talk about this.


Two things:

1)  I cannot imagine any Republican candidates for president in recent years doing the same thing and not advertising it for all the world's acclaim.

2)  Unfortunately, the hate that fills the minds of those on the right will see this as a callous attempt to divert attention from their delusion he is a Marxist/Muslim/Antichrist.

Dick Cheney, war criminal with a bad heart whines Obama didn't get bin Laden the right way - Cheney's way

The former Vice-President of the United States, went on a conservative radio talk show, puffed up his chest, within which is located a bad heart, and said that if he had been running things when the bin Laden operation was undertaken it would have been undertaken in a different way.  Nobody would have danced around and the details would remain hidden.

Is this funny or what?  The Bush-Cheney cabal couldn't have caught bin Laden if his head was handed to them on a plate!  They had 8 years to do it.  They didn't come close.  And now he has the gall to suggest that he could have and would have done it better.

Even funnier is Cheney whining that he and Bush never got credit for their part in the "puzzle."  They did the intel for many years and that's what allowed Obama to send in the troops and take credit for the kill instead of pointing to Bush and Cheney and saying "These two wonderful guys made it all happen!"


Cheney is one of those folks who know how to use the "Big Lie":   Just keep repeating the lie over and over again and eventually people will start believing it.  Just keep saying we did it right.  Iraq was necessary.  We had to kill Saddam Hussein.  We were forced to make a regime change.  We did it for the Iraqis' own good.  We went after the bad guys responsible for 9/11.  Hussein  had WMDs so we had no choice.

Maybe Cheney actually believes these things even if they have no connection with the truth, but I doubt that.  Bush and Cheney screwed up this country so badly that we've still not recovered and may never recover for they set in motion dark forces which spawned, among other things, an anti-government attitude which filtered down to the hoi polloi and, in my opinion, played a part in the emergence of the Tea Party teapot crackpots as well as the resurgence of the neo-Nazi and other anti-government militarists around the country.  They also put in place a tax structure that basically takes the rich out of the picture while the rest of us carry the burden on our backs.


Cheney is a little paranoid.  He says that lately he's been fearful that terrorists could kill him through an electrical device pointed at his heart.  That's just silly.  Cheney was and is one of the best friends the terrorists ever had.  His shenanigans as Vice President -  attacking the wrong people for 9/11 which basically destroyed the country of Iraq - brought renewed hope and strength to the Islamist terrorists.  Through the farcical Homeland Security Act, the terrorists reached one of their major goals which was to strike such a feeling of fear among our people we would gladly give up our freedoms to be "safe."  Witness the number of cameras on our street corners and the police departments outfitted in military regalia, all paid for by Homeland Security, and then re-read George Orwell's book, "1984."

Finally, Cheney is a war criminal.  He was part of that triumvirate which lied us into the war in Iraq.  Over 4,000 of our young men and women died as a result of their lies.  Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died.  Our Iraq/Afghanistan veterans are committing suicide at a terrible rate and many thousands more sit in wheelchairs or hospital beds crippled for life.   

AND ALL OF THIS WAS TOTALLY UNNECESSARY AS IRAQ AND SADDAM HUSSEIN HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ATTACK BY SAUDI ARABIAN MEN ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001!!!!

Cheney and Bush and Rumsfeld, along with several others, should have been tried for war crimes by an international tribunal.  Not only did they start an unnecessary war in preemptive fashion based upon facts they knew to be false, but they authorized, in violation of the Geneva Convention, the use of torture.


It is time, I think, that the media decline to interview or publish what this despicable man, with blood dripping from his hands and lies slithering through his lips, has to say about anything.

Saudi Arabia, the UN, and John McCain

Saudi Arabia, a monarchial dictatorship, a country with a legal system based upon Islam and the Quran, where freedom is just another word for whatever the royal family desires, has rejected a seat on the UN's Security Council, supposedly because the royals are frustrated that the UN and the US did not put an end to the war in Syria and has not yet bombed Iran.

By and large, the Gulf Arab states have backed the Saudi decision. Our Secretary of State, John Kerry, has met with the Saudi leadership to try to smooth things over, emphasizing the wonderful relationship between the two countries, blah, blah, blah. He did not mention that we buy barrels and barrels of Saudi oil and that the Saudi royals allow us to have a military base on their soil.

He also didn't mention that Saudi Arabia is the country that gave birth to all but one of the 9/11 bombers, and that Osama bin Laden was a favorite son among a whole family of bin Ladens and that the U.S. leadership has been in bed with the Saudi leadership for many years, large because some of our leaders, notably the Bush family has made several fortunes due to their ties with the Saudis.

Secretary Perry further failed to note that Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship where women are treated like chattel and where freedom of speech does not exist, and where torture is commonly used to punish those who disobey the Islamic moral code such as a female showing too much skin or merely being in a room with males unrelated to her.

It has been said by some that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and all the other clowns who made up that cartel of war in 2003, attacked the wrong country. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Saddam Hussein was a secular ruler who didn't give a damn about Islam or the Muslim religion. He was a dictator, true, but for many years he had been our dictator and received favors from the U.S. government for bowing to our foreign policy in the Middle East. Unfortunately, he did not have as much oil as the Saudis and the oil that he did have was desired by certain politicians, namely Bush and Cheney.

Actually, they didn't want the oil so much as they wanted to do the bidding of the Saudi royals who had been bribing them for years and the Saudis wanted the U.S. to do whatever was necessary so that Iraq's oil did not fall into the "wrong" hands, e.g. Iran. The closeness of the relationship between certain U.S. leaders and the Saudis was seen by the fact that one of George W. Bush's immediate actions following 9/11 was to order U.S. aircraft to pickup and fly home Saudi Arabian citizens from various places in our country!

Shortly thereafter George W. Bush preemptively declared war on Iraq, even though he did not have that right. He should have asked Congress to declare war on Saudi Arabia. The Saudi dictatorship was every bit as violent and merciless as Hussein's. But not only was oil involved. Bush needed to "right" the wrong that had been dealt daddy. He had some unfinished business in Iraq and so he made up stories about non-existent WMD's and the Cheney-Rumsfeld gang, up to their ears in this bloody endeavor, began to talk about regime change and how the people of Iraq would be throwing themselves at the feet of our armies in joy because we were bringing freedom and democracy to their benighted land.

It was all wrong, of course. None of it was true. Darker and more sinister forces were at work which were known at the time but our media is corporate-owned and dares not to tell the truth because they, too, have been compromised with threats of exclusion from the seats of power.

Now Saudi Arabia, in some kind of fit of piety, has refused a seat on the UN's Security Council. John McCain, who knows everything about everything, and is especially astute when it comes to war-mongering and walking in two piles of crap at the same time, says the Saudi pique is all Obama's fault. Well, isn't everything?  And our media, which never seems to get enough of this veteran non-hero, publishes whatever comes out of his mouth.

Do we really need the Saudis represented on the Security Council?  Saudi Arabia is an Arab dictatorship, run by a royal family which generally follows Islamic law and where freedom as we understand it, does not exist. Is Saudi Arabia really our friend when it comes to the Middle East? How many Jews, for example, live and work in Saudi Arabia? Perhaps it is time to rethink our relationship with this dictatorial country which raised the men who formed an al Qaeda group and brought to fruition the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001!


My good friend, Bob Poris, has some thoughts on this subject which I believe are most appropriate and make me wish he was walking the halls of power in this country instead of the numbnuts currently in Congress!

"I believe Obama should tell the Saudis to do whatever they think is in their best interest, as we should also do. We should remove our troops ASAP [from Saudi Arabia] and shift them to Israel and any other country that is willing to join us. The Saudis have a well-equipped army and air force [with planes and other equipment we have sold to them], as do other Arab nations.

If they are so concerned about Syria and other local problems in their area, they are free to do something about it. The U.S. is rarely welcome on Arab soil as soon as the major problem is resolved. This is a local problem, aggravated by a hatred of the Infidel nations' armed forces. If the Arab nations are not willing to handle it, we should not either.

We have an alternative. If Israel and other nations are willing to supply troops, money and influence - as Turkey has done on occasion - then, if military action is needed and in OUR interest, we can join with our true allies to achieve our objectives. I see no value in risking American lives when Arabs are available to resolve an internal problem.  When Arabs are killing each other over religious differences, the situation is only made worse when Infidels interfere.

As re the oil situation: We have sources of oil, other than Saudi Arabia, for our own use. We can stop exporting as much oil as we do. Israel and Africa now produce oil which is available to us. We could use our oil in Alaska for our own nation's needs, rather than exporting it elsewhere. We cannot be dependent on others forever! Perhaps now is the time to handle our own needs."

Jon Stewart blasts Rove & McCain for the Tea Party Repubs

Maybe Texas shouldn't secede...it's not all bad

[Photo of Wendy Davis, Democratic candidate for governor of Texas]


Generally speaking, the news out of Texas makes one's skin crawl and creates a great deal of nausea among educated, intelligent, moral and ethical people.  But there have been several indications which indicate that not everyone in Texas is an ignorant moron.

[The most obvious exceptions to this observation, of course, include the governor - some clown named Rick or Perry - and the Republicans in the state legislature and the Republican party as a whole and the teapot crackpots who are willing to lay down our lives for the sake of Mr. Cruz and his "sacred" mission of shutting down the United States government.]

Some, including Mr. Rick or Mr. Perry, have insinuated that Texas would be better off if it seceded from the Union and established itself as an independent country.  Considering the state of the State of Texas, I tend to think that isn't a bad idea.  It would be great fun to see these non-rocket scientists try to run a whole country when they can't even run the state!  The first thing they'd probably do is ask for "foreign aid" from the U.S. government to maintain their highways and their schools.  Texas, you see, gets about twice as much federal money as it sends to Washington in the form of taxes  or other revenue and has come to expect handouts from the federal government even as they whine about the federal government's deficit!

Furthermore, the country of Texas would undoubtedly be a real drag on the rest of the world.  The educational system is in tatters, its health care is dragging along the bottom rung, women are considered inferior and denied their basic human rights, and it is likely that those in power would demand that Texas be a "Christian" country.

You know what would happen then.  Uprising and revolt.  People accustomed to freedom in the U.S. of A. would be demonstrating, demanding their rights; they'd clamor for a new secular constitution.  They'd want schools that would teach their children something useful and not send them off to wander about the mountains of west Texas looking for Noah's ark!  They'd want their pharmacies to sell contraceptives because they wouldn't be able to feed their 12 children and some would demand that Roe v. Wade be adjudged the law of the land of Texas because women throughout the country were being butchered by back-alley abortionists.

All of these things would be denied by Ted Cruz who would have been anointed king by his father, Rafael and a Christian Zionist from San Antonio.  Before long the whole country would be in the toilet and we'd have to send Peace Corp workers and health care personnel  and legal beagles and bankers and philosophers and non-Christian psychiatrists, and just about every kind of resource available.  Hell, we might even have to send the Army to keep the Christians from slaughtering the rest of the folks!


So maybe Texas shouldn't secede.  There have been a couple of positive signs leaking out of the Lone Star State in recent days.

The word on the street is that publishers of science textbooks being considered for Texas public schools will not include the teaching of Creationism or its morbid cousin, Intelligent Design.  They will, instead, include material to help students understand the evolutionary process which is the bedrock of all science!

There are, of course, ways and means that the unevolved can use to try to get Creationism and Intelligent Design into the schools, but this refusal to include such crap in science textbooks is a good and hopeful sign.

The second positive sign has to do with a Republican judge from San Antonio who put out the word that he was resigning his position and leaving the Republican Party.  He plans to run for re-election as a Democrat because "he can no longer be part of a political party whose identity is based on hate, bigotry and destroying people's lives."

His name is Carlo R. Key.  He doesn't much like Ted Cruz or other politicians who further "their agenda or career by harming others."

Part of his resignation speech went like this:

"I cannot tolerate a political party that demeans Texans on their sexual orientation, the color of their skin or their economic status.  I will not be a member of a party in which hate speech elevates candidates for higher office rather than disqualifying them.  I cannot place my name of the ballot for a political party that is proud to destroy the lives of 100s or 1000s of federal workers over the vain attempt to repeal a law that will provide health care to millions of people throughout our country."

And finally, there's another positive sign:  Wendy Davis is running for governor of the State of Texas.  Ms. Davis is a Democrat, a state senator from Fort Worth and is not afraid to take on the nutcases in the state legislature.  She will, she says, "represent the working class and improve public education, economic development and health care [... in] Texas."  She especially wants to restore the $5 billion the Republicans in Austin cut from the public school budget!

You may remember that Senator Davis was the one who, in a 13-hour filibuster, fought against new restrictive abortion legislation.  In Texas, that took a lot of courage.  A lot. of. courage!


There may be hope for Texas yet.  Maybe.  

The Colbert Report - End of the Government Shutdown

How to make a FAUX News "expert" look really stupid!

The Ten Commandments - the basis of our laws and morals

Another gem from the NonStampCollector

Eid_al-Adha

Somehow, probably because I am not a Muslim and know little about the religion, I missed the holiday of Eid_al-Adha, which occurred on Oct. 15.

But I'm no longer totally ignorant thanks to my friend at the blog, Dwindling in Unbelief.

He explains that Eid al_Adha is when Muslims all over the world gather to celebrate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to Allah.  Part of this celebration involves the slaughter of animals. 

On this day, millions of animals around the world will have their throats slit to make Allah happy.

It is amazing, says my friend, that religion can create so much evil to please an imaginary god.

The Afforable Care Act and Hypocritical Republicans

Marco Rubio, a member of the U.S. Senate, elected to that august body by ignorant and angry Floridians, has publicly stated that he did not support the recent government shutdown, that he never wanted to shut down the government, that he was merely opposed to the Affordable Care Act.

Marco Rubio is a liar and a hypocrite!  On several well-documented occasions, Senator Rubio stated explicitly that he would vote to shut down the government in order to defund the ACA.  The Huffington Post has him cold:

"Rubio, along with Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rand Paul (R-Ky), led the Senate-side GOP push for the government shutdown strategy.  Over the summer, Rubio refused to back any funding package for the federal government that would allow the health care law to go into effect.  Absent a funding bill, the government would be forced to shut down.

"'On this issue we're willing to fight no matter what the consequences, politically or otherwise [are].  If the issue is not Obamacare, I can't understand what issue it would be.  Rubio told conservative radio host Mark Levin in August,' "You cannot say you are against Obamacare if you are willing to vote for a law that funds it."'"

Rubio is one of several Republicans who have attempted to paint their perfidy in a color other than the blood red of suffering people who were hurt by the shutdown.


We have noted many times on this blog how lies and hypocrisy define the current GOP.  The ACA  set the stage for a whole new troupe of liars and hypocrites to act out their nonsense.

The June 24/July1, 2013 issue of The Nation tells the story by noting first that from the very beginning, even prior to Obama's signing of the Affordable Care Act, Republicans swore they would repeal it. 

The reason had to do with polls indicating the American people thought the health care law was a good thing and that they would become even more receptive to it when they "found out that the plan denounced as a 'monstrosity' by the National Republican Senatorial Committee would not trample on their liberties so much as help protect their health."

And that's why the Republicans of the U.S. House of Representatives have voted over and over again, nearly 40 times, to repeal Obamacare.  Well, it also had to do with the fact Obama is half-white.


So, these hypocritical Republicans have been hard at work in the darkness from day one!  They don't really believe the ACA is bad [I mean, c'mon, it was originally a Republican plan!], but they know they're dead meat if it works and they don't like our half-black president!

The Nation reports that "letters produced by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that many of these same anti-Obamacare Republicans have solicited grants from the very program they claim to despise."

Paul Ryan is one anti-Obamacare hypocrite who, though he fought to have the ACA repealed, "sent a letter requesting ACA money for health clinics in his district..."  Kristi Noem, a right-wing Republican from South Dakota as well as Rob Portman (R-Ohio) also asked for ACA funds for their areas.  And both of them campaigned against the act and have worked hard to have it repealed.

"Though notably less transparent, the behavior of these GOP lawmakers parallels that of GOP governors like Arizona's Jan Brewer, who blast the president's health reform package while embracing the millions in Medicaid funds that it provides."

Here are some more names of people who have arduously worked for repeal of the ACA and spoken against it in public while at the same time asked for ACA monies for one reason or another:

Rep. David Valadao (R-CA), Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA), Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tx), Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tx), Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxy Chambliss, Republicans from Georgia, along with Mark Kirk of Illinois and Thad Cochran of Mississippi. 

There's also Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Il) who "congratulated a local non-profit for winning a Community Transformation grant, noting that the program will give 'people the tools to live healthier and longer lives.'"

Jerry Moran, the chair of the NRSC, "has hailed programs that exist because of it [the ACA)."  It's rather humorous, if sad, that "A picture posted on [his] official Facebook page shows the senator in a suit with a food on a shovel to break ground for the health clinic [the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas]."

Kristi Postai, CEO of the CHC-SEK clinics said that the clinic's funding came from the ACA and Moran voted "No!"   

"Some of the letters obtained by The Nation are from lawmakers who are no longer in office," but whose hypocrisy spilled from the printed page, including Jerry Lewis, Bobby Schilling, Kay Baily Hutchinson and Robert Dold."

Then there is one Hal Rogers, a Republican congressman, who calls the ACA socialistic, but "wrote a letter asking for an Obamacare health clinic grant almost as soon as the money became available."

And finally, Bill Cassidy (R-La), has been in the forefront of the attempt to derail the ACA, but was happy to pose "at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for three school-based health centers" which received a $500,000 grant from the ACA.

My guess is there are many more Republicans in our Congress who have vociferously and poignantly claimed the Affordable Care Act would bring about the end of the world, while at the same time have tried to obtain benefits from the act which would benefit their constituents thus giving them credit when none was due.


Republican hypocrisy knows no bounds.  Republican legislators have learned well that they can tell big, bold lies over and over again because the mainstream media gives them a pass every time.  

Michele Bachmann - Lest we forget...

Michele Bachmann is not running for re-election.  Whether that has to do with the recent ethics complaint/investigation or not is irrelevant.  She's going to be gone.  Oh, happy day!

But while she may be the dumbest member of the House of Representatives, there are many others who follow in her footsteps.

It is possible that Ms. Bachmann will attempt to return to the political stage.  Any success she might have in such an endeavor would be a tragedy.

Lest we forget how ignorant and incompetent and unethical she is, we need, every so often, to review her past actions and statements.

A scientist visits a Creationist Museum

Another question to ask is why this Creationist joke of a "museum" was built partly with public monies.

Check it out here.

Where was Ted Cruz born?

"I was born in Canada, I swear!  Or maybe the U.S.  Okay it could have been the USSR."

In recent days, I have seen a lot of discussion on the Internet and other political blogs about the place of Ted Cruz's birth and whether or not he is a citizen of the United States.  We know he was, up until recently at least, a Canadian citizen because someone said he was born in Canada.  Hah!

Questions related to Cruz's birth and eligibility to become president of the United States are very important because they are very important.  Just ask President Obama. 

Let me tell you, though, there's more to the Ted Cruz story than meets the eye.  Or the foot, for that matter.  After giving the matter a great deal of thought, I wrote the following to a friend of mine to help him understand the problem we have with Mr. Cruz:
 

I have some evidence (locked safely away in a ... well, a safe) that Cruz was born, not in Canada as claimed, but in the Soviet Union and is really an alien.  His father, Rafael, was born in Cuba.  Ted says his mother was born in the U.S., but we really can't trust him because it's obvious his allegiance is with his Cuban father.  While it's true Rafael does not say much about Cuba, that's probably because he's secretly a close friend of Fidel and he doesn't want to rock the boat when Ted runs for president. 

I know that Ted has released his birth certificate, but I've found numerous errors on it and it just doesn't look like a real birth certificate.  I've also seen a birth certificate showing he was born in the Soviet Union, but that has somehow disappeared.  I'm pretty sure he's an alien.  You can tell because of his big head and the fact his eyes look very squeamish, and he jumps around a lot and waves his hands and he gets real nervous when people ask him about his father's relationship with Fidel and Raul. 

Has anyone seen his mother's birth certificate?  How do we know his mother wasn't Jewish?  It looks very much like she was a Russian Jewess.  Which helps us to understand why Rafael, who claims to be a Christianist fundy pastor, likes to run around with Jewish garments on and wearing a yarmulke.  Plus, I've seen him standing next to a huge menorah, and I know he plays the shofar.  Does that sound like a fundy protestant to you?  Furthermore, if he was born in Cuba he should have been a Roman Catholic but the only things he likes about the pope are the pope's views on abortion and gay marriage.  It's all very confusing but makes Ted's story much more suspicious.

I think it's becoming clearer every day that Ted is actually Protestant/Catholic/Jew [and maybe Muslim - we're checking that out!] and is working undercover for the Castro regime in order to become president of the U.S. and establish a Communist Christian/Jewish government with a Cuban constitution!  This is what the Dominionist movement is all about.  And after Ted becomes president he will be crowned King of the World.  Hallelujah!  Amen.  Hail to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.  Allah be praised.  Yea Vishnu.