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. 

Fear and Loathing and the Future of Government

The Hollywood ideologue and right-wing conservative, "B" grade movie actor turned politician, known in some circles as "The Gipper," and elsewhere as Ronnie Reagan, liked to promote the notion that "government is not the solution, government is the problem."

Of course Reagan soon learned that he was wrong and the opposite was true! Government was not the problem but rather provided solutions for a number of problems we faced.  And because he also came to understand that taxes were necessary for government to function Reagan increased taxes big-time to the dismay of the hard-core right who to this day don't believe it!

And so they continue to verbalize that the government is the "problem," which, if true, means the best thing to do is either shut down the government or cut it off at the knees by denying it the funds to operate.  The Tea Party teapot crackpots who led the recent attempt at severing the government's ambulatory possibilities were doing nothing more than following the mantra of Lord Ronnie.  Who cares about fiscal responsibility?  The government wastes too much money as it is!  Who cares about the government meeting its financial obligations?  The deficit is too large and we must cut "entitlements" to force a reduction in the long-term deficit even if it means putting millions of our sick and elderly out in the mean streets.


The November 2013 issue of Harper's Magazine proffers an article, "The Anti-Economist - The Future Progressive," by Jeff Madrick, which argues that the current crop of Republicans and some Democrats "seek to prevent Washington from responding to change" as a way of shutting down the progressive philosophy that "change is a way of life, that society must work to ensure this change is for the better, and that government is the most important means of doing so."

[A disclaimer:  There are those huddling in the far right-wing of non-reality, such as Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz, who have no dog in the fight of progressive vs. regressive, change vs. the status quo.  The reason for that is they believe in a special and very personal interpretation of their holy book - a revelation - that Jesus is coming back very soon and all will be well, and/or that God will help them take dominion of the entire earth at which time all the wealth of the sinful will be transferred to the righteous.  In fact, Sarah and Ted have both been "anointed" as "Kings" to receive this transfer of wealth.]  The full story here.

Mr. Madrick is not speaking about these religious fundamentalists for they live in an alternate reality which makes sense only to themselves.  He's speaking of the majority of the Republican Party who understand change to be a bad thing and thus signed Grover Norquist's infamous "Taxpayer Protection Pledge."  They pledged never to increase taxes for any reason!  Madrick notes that "218 of 233 Republicans in the House and thirty-nine of forty-five in the Senate have signed the pledge, which means that nearly half of our federal legislators have actively chosen to limit their own options in responding to the nation's changing needs."

Why would they do that?  If the recent government shutdown has taught us anything it has taught us that the current crop of Republican naysayers care more about retaining their seats in the domain of power than about the country they have sworn an oath to preserve and protect.  Norquist, for some reason which I cannot fathom, seems to have the power of non-return.  Those who defy Mr. Norquist are likely to lose their next election.

And that raises the question as to who is really running this country?  But Norquist represents only one aspect of this problem.  The Tea Party, a minority in terms of numbers, also has the power of non-return.  Defy the Tea Party and you're going to be back on the farm, punching cows and chasing chickens!


But change is inevitable.  Change makes "ancient good uncouth," as says the old hymn.  Again from Mr. Madrick:  "Neither the federal government nor the state governments could have known in 1789, the year the Constitution was ratified, that they would one day finance canals and railroads, build schools and medical-research facilities, subsidize land-grant universities, develop vast municipal water systems, create a network of interstate highways, and provide a public pension system for the elderly and a safety net for the unemployed."

Republican conservatives either cannot understand this or refuse to understand it.  They speak of the Constitution as if it was never amended to meet changing conditions and new understandings.  Not only so, but because they deny the importance of government, they have also come to believe that the best way to meet the challenge of change is to leave the challenge in the hands of individuals, often referencing the "pioneers," who they claim struck out on their own and made their own way as if the government did not provide loans and land grants and railroads and mail service and armies to protect them. 

Madrick mentions President Obama's remark that "The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation."  [2011 State of the Union address].  Mr. Obama was correct and we can name many worthy American innovations developed over the past century.  But, as Madrick notes, "Our national reflex is to assume that most technological breakthroughs come from entrepreneurial giants and venture capitalists."  "I did it myself," is another Conservative mantra.  Re-read some of Mitt Romney's campaign speeches from the last presidential election if you doubt this.

Milton Friedman, say Madrick, has become for many Americans, the all-knowing economist.  In his book, Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman said "The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government."


Not so!  It's BS and Madrick tells us why:  "[...] the federal government--not merely through financial grants to private industry but through government research, vision, and risk-taking--has been the prime mover of innovation in America since World War II."

And speaking of the innovative push of government, Mariana Mazzucato, an economist from the University of Sussex, notes that government will take on risks that private concerns will not.  She says this is especially true as "to what are known as general-purpose technologies (GPTs), which include aviation and space transport, the Internet and telecomunnications, and certain types of mass-production systems."

Madrick expands on this theme.  Private industry hesitates to get involved in risky operations because "the funds needed are unusually large and the payoffs highly uncertain."  It takes the government.  "Organizations such as the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (an early contributor to the development of the Internet), and the Small Business Research Program are indispensable to the advances---in green technology, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals, among many others---on which our economy relies."

I would add in another factor.  Private entities are generally profit-oriented.  Their concern is going to always be the almighty dollar.  We know how companies compromise themselves when that happens.  We know why we cannot (although we are because of financial cutbacks) allow the chicken industry to police itself.  To do so, is to put the entire population at risk.  The same is true in education and in the prison industry.  Today's anti-government conservatives are outsourcing our schools and our prisons.  And things are a mess in both cases as money continues to trump integrity and ethics.

This is precisely why proposals such as those coming from Bowles-Simpson, which would limit federal spending, are so "self-destructive."  The challenges of the future, indeed the challenges we face right now, especially in terms of climate change, are immense and to deal with them will require vast amounts of money.  Madrick quotes Mazzucato again:  "We live in an era in which the State is being cut back.  Public services are being outsourced, State budgets are being slashed, and fear rather than courage is determining many national strategies."


Here's the way it plays out:

Jesus is not coming back.  There is never going to be a "Rapture."  The transfer of wealth to the Kings who will reign over the Seven Dominions (a notion promoted by Pastor Rafael Cruz and his son, Ted) will not occur!  

The challenges are ours to face.  But we cannot even determine their magnitude by ourselves.  The fact is we are dependent upon government-funded research to define and then deal with these challenges.  Our hope is not found in some mythical religious nonsense, nor in a mythical Tea Party argument against "big government," but in a progressive move forward to do whatever it takes, which will invariably include providing the government with the necessary funds to assist in the development of technologies and resources.

One of the most immediate and important changes on the horizon has to do with the planet's warming climate.  The latest projections as to what is going to happen to the earth very soon are dire!  Many millions around the world will be permanently displaced as cities gradually sink under the rising waters.  It's "goodbye" New York, Miami, and hundreds of other coastal metropolises.  This catastrophe currently in the making is one example where we desperately need the government and all of its resources involved! 


[Read the entire article by Jeff Madrick in the November 2013 issue of Harper's Magazine, pp. 13-15.]

Rachel Maddow - Pork in the Senate Budget Bill!

The Debt Limit Explained

h/t to my friend, Jeff G. 

Bil Maher on wingnuts Bachmann and Scalia

[Our thanks to Crooks & Liars.  The commentary below is by Heather.]

Bill Maher had a few words for wingnut Michele Bachmann and her counterpart on the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia during his New Rules segment on Real Time this Friday evening, and I particularly enjoyed this bit on Bachmann:

And finally, New Rule, I know we can't establish a religious test for office, but if you believe we're living in the end times, like Michele Bachmann does, we get to take away the car keys. Yes, let Jesus take the wheel.

If you think the world is about to end, that's your right, but you don't get to vote on next year's budget, because it doesn't concern you!

Don't we wish. She's finally going to scurry out of office now that she's under investigation and might not have been reelected anyway, but not before she's got a chance to inflict more damage on the American public.

He wrapped things up by going after Scalia and his remarks about the devil being "a real person running around, getting people not to believe in god." As Maher noted, a lot of "reasonable people" see Bachmann as a "total lune, but Scalia as a serious intellectual, when actually, they're the exact same idiot." Maher cited some of Scalia's idiocy about the devil making pigs run off of cliffs before letting him have it.

MAHER: Pigs running off cliffs? Hey, leave the debt ceiling deniers out of this. And what is Justice Scalia's theory as to why we don't see the devil anymore? Is it the logical answer that fictions like the devil are in the Bible because it was written before the age of science, when humans didn't know where the sun went at night, and is obviously a reflection of mankind's thinking in his intellectual infancy?

Of course not! That makes sense. What Scalia said about the devil is, “He used to be all over the New Testament... What happened to him?... He got wilier.”

Motherf**ker! Of course! Wilier. He may be evil, but he's always looking to improve himself. Antonin Scalia once said that people like him, who adhere to a traditional belief, were “regarded as simple minded.” We are, he said, fools for Christ.

You know, whether you're fools for Christ, or coo coo for Cocoa Puffs, I really don't care why someone acts like a fool, just that they do and when they do, we keep them away from decision making.

It would be one thing if Mr. Scalia sold pizza for a living, but this is a man we go to to interpret our laws. It's like smelling a gas leak and calling an exorcist. Antonin Scalia put George Bush in the White House and he believes the devil went down to Georgia.  He gets to decide when life begins and he thinks evil is a person, you know, like a corporation.

Here's the problem with believing the devil exists. It means you see the world divided into teams of good and evil and suspect the wily one, may be on the side of them, and when you start seeing compromising with your opponent as a compromise with evil, well, there's your tea party.

God's Amazing Forgiveness - or Not (by the NonStampCollector)

Priests and pastors as civilian contractors in our military

The United States Senate, under pressure from religious groups and true believers, has authorized a bill to allow military chaplains to work during the government shutdown.

Isn't this amazing?  We've got millions of families struggling to put food on the table, and these clowns worry about religious services being held in military units.  Let people starve, but don't keep our soldiers and sailors and flyboys from bowing to their particular gods!

Not only so, but did you know that the military also hires clergy as civilian contractors to serve the troops?

In direct violation of our Constitution, our military pays civilian religious types - priests and pastors - to do their thing with our military personnel.  We've long had chaplains who have served as military officers after being vetted by their religious group and the military, but since when did we hire Catholic priests and/or Protestant ministers as civilian contractors?

Actually, to create a Chaplain's Corps made up of commissioned officers in any military service is unconstitutional.  It cracks wide open the wall of separation of church and state.  (Worse yet, these days the military has become an arm of fundamentalist Christianity!  Check out the work of Mickey Weinstein here.)  Why should taxpayers fund religion in the military? 

Chaplains are unnecessary in any branch of the military service.  Military personnel can worship in any church anywhere in the world (there must be a gadzillion churches, temples, mosques available).  If personnel need to talk to a counselor, train regular officers in psychology or psychiatry or family counseling, or whatever.  Many military units (if not all) already have some sort of "morale" officer.

I was not aware that the military hired priests and pastors as civilian contractors to serve a particular military unit or station.  What a total waste of taxpayer's money!  And now one of them, a priest named Ray Leonard, has sued the government in order to provide Catholic services to people working at the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia.  Ft. Leonard was furloughed by the shutdown and he's not happy about that.  Why, he'd even volunteer his time but was told if he tried to provide masses he would be arrested.

Kings Bay, Georgia is located along Georgia's southeast coast - just north of Florida.  If it's like other places in Georgia, there must be 10,000 churches of various stripes within a 30-minute drive of the base.

So, two questions:  Why do they need a civilian contractor priest or any other clergy?  Let the personnel find a church to their liking in the area and worship to their heart's content.  Secondly, why does the base not have a regular chaplain present?  Military chaplains are supposed to be able to minister to ALL the personnel not just those of their own denomination.

Finally, remember, you and I pay for this nonsense!

[Read more about Army chaplains here).

Tea Party Teapot Crackpots and other Idiots

(Photo from the Boston Tea Party Historical Society)

Once upon a time a group of colonists dressed up as Native Americans dumped crates of tea into Boston Harbor. This was an act of vandalism pure and simple.

Today's Tea Party Teapot Crackpots, showing their lack of knowledge of American history, want to believe the tea dumping was an act of patriotism against high taxes.  Not so.

Another explanation would have us believe the tea dumping was a patriotic act to protest the fact that although the colonists paid taxes to the British Crown, they were not represented in Parliament. So they sang the old song, "No taxation without representation." Not so much.

It was on December 16, 1773, when these colonists/vandals desecrated English tea by tossing it into the dark waters. The tea belonged to the British East India Company, so by stealing and destroying the tea, the best that can be said of them is they were criminals/felons and quite stupid.

But wait, the Tea Act, which was supposedly the focus of the colonists anger, lowered the duty/tariff on British tea imported to the colonies.  So, the colonists couldn't have been angry about paying higher taxes and the old saw about "No taxation without representation" doesn't make a lot of sense.

What were they upset about?

Leland Gregory, in his book, Stupid American History, explains:

"Because once British tea was affordable, it would ruin America's lucrative trade in black-market tea, because three-fourths of the tea sold in America was smuggled in by John Hancock. Now the whole idea of dressing up like Indians makes sense, doesn't it?"


Today in these United States, the people pay lower taxes than most every other country in the world.  Many of our corporations and our very wealthy pay almost no taxes, and some, in fact, do pay no taxes.  They hide their profits in off-shore accounts or like General Electric, they hire hundreds of lawyers to do nothing except look for loopholes that the company can use to evade paying its fair share of taxes.

The Tea Party was hijacked early on by corporate interests, some funded and supported by the Koch brothers, although you wouldn't know that by their names.  For example, Americans for Prosperity has a "patriotic-sounding" name but is actually a well-funded Koch brothers enterprise which sows seeds of untruths and dissension in the country, especially when it comes to the Affordable Care Act.

Partly because so many folks attracted to the Tea Party are not highly educated and easily swayed by the waving of flags and by those racists who will never accept a half-white man in the White House, and by men in suits suggesting that the president may not have been born in the United States and is probably a secret Muslim, etc., and by such demagogues as Ted Cruz (probably one of the most dangerous men to surface in this country since Joe McCarthy), the Tea Party has been able to gain the allegiance of a surprising number of people in and out of government.

The name, Tea Party, is certainly misleading however.  Like the first tea party crackpots, they're not concerned so much with taxes (except to ensure that the rich pay as little as possible for they might also become rich some day) as it is to hijack the government to remold it into their fascist, totalitarian system which, from the rhetoric spewed by the likes of Sarah Palin, will be run according to faux Christian standards and be characterized by wars of vengeance and regime change.

 

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - "Taker" states

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - Medicant

Teaching Fundamentalist Christianity in Public Schools

The teaching of fundamentalist Christianity in public schools is being promoted all over the United States. Funded by wealthy religious-right groups, fundy Christianists are angling to get their primitive and non-scientific agenda accepted in our public schools. Where they are unable to do that, they insist on setting up charter schools or private schools funded with public monies to accomplish their purposes. (Check out Louisiana, one of the most backward states in the nation, where this kind of thing has gained a lot of traction with the blessing of the governor and his minions in the legislature!)

One of the latest of these scams has come to fruition in another backward state, Kansas. According to Right Wing Watch, a group called Citizens for Objective Public Education has filed suit "contesting science standards in Kansas schools, arguing that lessons on evolution represent an unconstitutional establishment of religion."

Notice the Brave New World language: "Citizens for Objective Public Education." We have reached the time, foretold not so many years ago, when words come to mean the opposite of their traditional meaning; when language no longer clarifies but muddies the waters. These are not "citizens" involved so much as fundy Christianist groups with a lot of money and their agenda has nothing to do with "objective public education." Indeed, it is the opposite. The want the right to impose their particular religious views on every school child in the state of Kansas.

 As a former teacher, this is hard to believe. Evolution is no longer in question except by people who continue to hang on to old Semitic mythologies created by ancient ignorant desert tribesman. But even those tribesmen were not so ignorant as to take the creation stories literally. These were seen as paeans to the creator of the world, not scientific descriptions of how things came to be. They wouldn't know science from a kitchen appliance.

The people involved in this anti-education effort are fundamentalist Christians and that's an important point. Fundamentalists of any group are a danger and represent the most retrograde thinking. But millions of Christians have no problem with evolution. The Roman Catholic Church has no problem with evolution. Evolution, say these Christians, is simply God's way of creating life.

Evolution has been established for years; it is the foundation of all the sciences. It is the ONLY explanation that can be proven as to the origins of the earth. When scientists speak of the "theory" of evolution, they do not mean that it is not established or that it has yet to the shown to be true, but that it remains, as do all scientific endeavors, susceptible to change as we learn new things. It is based in reality not in theological fantasies!

It angers me that fundamentalist Christians become the benchmark for Christianity. Thus a conservative talk show host can say it's nuts to think public schools can teach evolution to Christian students. The only ones with a problem are fundamentalist Christianist activists who want the right to impose their religious nonsense to all students in the public schools. Most students from Christian homes have no problem with learning evolution.

And once again these right-wing nutcases twist language and its meaning. They argue that the state is teaching "religion" by teaching evolution and Christian students should not be indoctrinated by a state religion. Christian parents have the right "to direct the religious education of their children and a state interferes with that right when it seeks to promote an atheistic worldview."

What a load of crap. Evolution is not an atheistic worldview! But Creationism is an unreal, nonsensical, meaningless view of how things came to be; a crazy religious worldview! Fundy parents can teach such nonsense within the confines of their homes and their churches, but not in our public schools!

The group in Kansas is pushing for the courts to "at least enjoin the teaching of origin science in the primary school grades from kindergarten through the 8th grade."  

Hah! "Origin science" is code for Creationism which is not science, but religious mumbo-jumbo. From previous court cases this suit doesn't stand a chance in hell. We hope! We have enough stupids in the world and in our legislatures!

The "Esteemed" Ben Carson

The news item used the word, "esteemed," when referring to Ben Carson, M.D.  And it was an article on the Huffington Post yet.

Ben Carson is a neurosurgeon.  He's "retired" now but reportedly was an "excellent" neurosurgeon.  I have no reason to doubt that characterization.  However, as we have long known, medical doctors can be great at their jobs and know very little about anything else.  In fact, they can be really stupid about the real world!


[Consider the crackpot MD, Paul Broun (R-Ga), who said just recently and knowingly, "I'm a medical doctor" and Obamacare will "destroy everything we know."  Of course it will.  Healthcare always destroys "everything we know."  Everyone knows that!

Broun also told a church group that everything he had been taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang theory were "all lies straight from the pit of hell" and were intended to "keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding they need a savior."  (Broun "sits on a key congressional science advisory committee.") And you wonder why our Congress is so screwed up!]


Back to Dr. Carson.  At the 2013 Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. (can you imagine a group less concerned with "values" that the people involved in this summit who would rather see people lose their jobs and starve and even die in the case of a pregnant woman who needed an abortion than provide them health care, or believe that gays and lesbians should be killed because the Bible says so, than the right-wing nutcases huddled together in this so-called "summit" ?), Carson said this:

"You know Obamacare is really I think the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.  And it is in a way, it is slavery in a way, because it is making all of us subservient to the government, and it was never about health care.  It was about control."

In April of 2013, Carson also said that white liberals are "the most racist people there are."

It should also be noted that this "esteemed" doctor, in an appearance on FAUX News on March 26, "compared the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to bestiality and pedophilia."


Carson is a fundamentalist Christian.  Actually, his religion is even further off the wall than that; he belongs to the strange sect called Seventh-Day Adventism.  In this sect, the Bible is taken literally.  (Not really, they pick and choose like everyone else).  They worship on Saturday because God said to do that.  The leadership of the Adventists has, on several occasions, announced the end of the world.  But, darn, it didn't happen and all those good Adventists who sold their stuff and went to stand on a hill to wait for their "savior" were left in the lurch and had to start over.  But most of them just went on believing!

Now Carson may be a good neurosurgeon.  But he should not be "esteemed."  For one thing he was recently put on the payroll of FAUX News as a "contributor."  That's enough to disqualify the "esteemed" label.

Secondly, he's a liar.  Obamacare is all about health care!  It's about providing health care to millions of people in this country who have not been able to obtain insurance as well as leveling the playing field for millions of other people.  It's about stopping insurance companies from not insuring people with pre-existing conditions.

It's not perfect, but it sure as hell is NOT the "worst thing that's happened in this nation since slavery."  What idiot would make a statement like that?  Carson is not unintelligent, obviously, so we must assume that he knows that statement is blatantly false!  There must be other factors at work here.   And I know no "white liberals" that are racist. 

Carson may claim to be a Christian, but these comments disqualify him from that label, too, assuming that Christians wish to emulate the Jesus of the New Testament.  One cannot tell horrendous falsehoods about the president of the United States and millions of other people who care deeply for this country and still be acclaimed as "esteemed."  Nor can such a person claim the name of Jesus.

Carson has befouled his Christ and has joined the troop of people who passed by the beggar at the gate.  And you remember what Jesus had to say about their fate! 

The things that made the things for which there is no known maker

From the wonderful mind of the famous NonStampCollector.

Poor Rich People- New from Move On and Ed Asner

Thanks to my good friend, Tommy Korioth at Basket of Puppies for this video!

Jon Stewart - The Shutdown Blame Game

Alan Grayson cites poll - dog poop rates higher than Congress

Crazies in our midst

This post is about craziness and crazy people.  Please note the picture of the political badges made available at a Republican gathering in California.  Are these Republicans crazy?  Have they no shame?  
 

I know that one should not casually call another person crazy.  Crazy means insane and that's a rather serious label to slap on someone without the authorization of the American Psychiatric Association, or the National Association of Pathological Psychologists.  

So, I won't do it.  The people mentioned below are crazy and I'm not saying that in a casual sense. I'm going to speak in a causal sense - they're crazy because they really are insane.

First off, Glenn Beck.  Mr. Beck may have been demoted from the FAUX Network to a gig as a "conservative radio host" but he's still a cocaine-addled nitwit.  He's just as crazy/insane as ever.  One of the signs of insanity is that facts and reality never impinge upon the worldview or opinions of the insane person.  Thus Beck goes off on a crazy rampage to try to prove that President Obama is a Muslim at the same time Mr. Obama is in church praying to Jesus for the salvation of Beck's soul.  Another of Beck's causes involves creating "factoids" that "prove" our founders founded a Christian nation, in spite of the fact that most of them were not Christians in any traditional sense and, except for a brief nod to the deity, they specifically avoided any mention of God, Christianity, Jesus or Billy Graham in our founding documents.

Beck's latest rampage, though, is a bit off-the-wall even for this former druggie.  You may have heard about the brouhaha at the WWII Memorial.  It was shut down because of the government shutdown.  Aha, said Beck, this is a sign and proves that Obama is getting ready to set up mass killings across the country.  Yes, it is a sign that Obama will lead a communist revolution which will leave millions dead.

Beck is crazy!


Rafael Cruz is the father of Ted so it isn't a big surprise to hear crazy talk coming out of his mouth.  Not so long ago, at a GOP rally in Colorado, Rafael (a right-wing fundy Christianist clergy), warned his listeners about the president.  "So Barack Obama said, 'If the winds shift, I will side with the Muslims.'"

Of course, Obama said no such thing, but reality is irrelevant to these crazy folk.   But Cruz went on creating factoids, much as does Mr. Beck.  He said that "55 million babies have been murdered by abortion since 1973.  At the other end, Obamacare, with denying care to the elderly, with care being rationed, with care being postponed for 12 to 18 months, with care being controlled by a group of bureaucrats, that on the basis of cost/benefit where you get a medical procedure or not, they're destroying our end of life.  As a matter of fact, one of the things in Obamacare is that the elderly, every five years you must have end-of-life counseling.  Translation:  suicide counseling!"

None of that is true and by telling these outrageous lies and for comparing Obama to Fidel Castro Rafael has denied his Lord and publicly rejected his faith and should resign any position in any Christian organization!

Rafael is crazy!


Rep. William O'Brien (R-NH) is about as unhinged as they come for he had the indecency to compare Obamacare "to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made it illegal not to return runaway slaves to their owners."

How could he say something like that?  Well, he's batshit crazy and facts mean nothing to him.  Batshit crazy people make up historical facts.  Thus from the mouth of this nutcase:  "Just as the Fugitive Slave Act was an overreach by the federal government, so too we understand that Obamacare is an assault on the rights of individuals."

Where does stuff like this come from?  Inside the head of a crazy person.

William O'Brien is crazy!


Brenda Barton - Republican legislator from Arizona is also crazy.  Mr. Obama, she thinks, is like Hitler because he had the national parks shut down during the government shutdown.  "Someone," said Barton, "is paying the National Park Service thugs overtime for their efforts to carry out the order of De Fuhrer...where are our Constitutional Sheriffs who can revoke the Park Service Rangers authority to arrest???  Do we have any Sheriffs with a pair?"


Ms. Barton wrote on a Facebook post that she was "FURIOUS" when she heard the memorials in Washington, DC, were closed.  She said Obama held the country "in contempt" and charged that the president kept his "excessive staff" while hurting Americans.

In her own words:  "While the POTUS continues to punish the American people; he keeps open his golf course, he keeps open Camp David, and he retains his and his wife's excessive staff and stable of Czars!  I'll bet he has kept in service his 3 food tasters!!!"

Wow, a whole stable of Czars!

Brenda Barton is crazy!


Ted Yoho (R-FL) came out of nowhere to win election to the U.S. House of Representatives.  He is a veterinarian and represents the worst of the teapot crackpots.  He's crazy as a loon and stupid as well.  When asked about not raising the debt ceiling, Yoho said no problem.  If America defaults it would "bring stability to financial markets."  Not so, you yahoo!  What it will do is cause a terrible disruption in the financial markets.  But the crazy yahoo Yoho has no intention to vote to raise the debt limit.

Ted Yoho is crazy!


Steve King (R-Ia) is another batshit crazy wingnut who is noted for his wingnuttery.  About the shutdown, King said this:  "Even if there is a political price to pay ... we'll recover.  But we'll never recover from 'Obamacare.'"

What we may not recover from are people like Steve King.

Steve King is crazy!


Todd Rokita (R-IN) crawled out from the woodwork this week to sound off on the government shutdown.  He merely wants to be of assistance to his fellow Americans says he.  "We just want to help the American people to get through one of the most insidious laws created by man, that is Obamacare."

Insidious law, my ass!  Insuring 30 million Americans who currently have no health care is "insidious"?  Republicans like Rokita know they have nothing.  They haven't passed one significant piece of legislation in the past several years.  They have NO healthcare plan.  The Affordable Care Act offers some hope to the American people.  And either Rokita does not know that or he does know that and doesn't care.

I'd guess it's the latter.

Todd Rokita is crazy!


Rick Joyner, "Christian" Television host.  He's not a lawmaker, but Joyner pulls a lot of weight with the fundamentalist crazies in our country.  He believes that now is the time for a revolution of sorts.  It's time for the imposition of martial law in this country!

There is no hope for this country, says Joyner, because of all the dirty deeds done by the Muslim-in-chief, President Obama.  Democracy is "doomed" and because tyranny is upon us and "the Kingdom of God is coming" we need the Lord to impose marital law.  A god-led Christian coup is the answer!

I'm be writing more about this kook in the future, but for now, I'll just say:

Rick Joyner is crazy!


Michele Backmann (R-MN)  I've saved the worst for last, the craziest for the end.  When asked about the government shutdown Bachmann said she and the other Republicans in the House were "very excited."

"It's exactly what we wanted and we got it.!

In spite of the fact that 70% of the American people oppose the shutdown and blame Republicans like Bachmann for it, Bachmann thinks its a wonderful thing and that ultimately folks in the hinterland will see the light and correctly blame the Democrats and Mr. Obama and God will work a miracle and Obamacare will disappear.

But with Bachmann it always gets crazier.  She is feeling absolutely giddy because we are living in the "end times."  The proof she cites is to be found in the president's decision to support the rebels in Syria.  Bachmann believes the rebels are al-Qaeda terrorists.

"This happened," explained Ms. Goofy to Jan Markel, radio host of "Understanding the Times," "and as of today the United States is willingly, knowingly, intentionally sending arms to terrorists, now what this says to me, I'm a believer in Jesus Christ, as I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God's end times history.

"Rather than see this as a negative, we need to rejoice, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, His day is at hand.  And so when we see up is down and right is called wrong, when this is happening, we were told this:  that these days would be as the days of Noah.  We are seeing that in our time.  Yes it gives us fear in some respects because we want the retirement that our parents enjoyed.  Well they will, if they know Jesus Christ."

If you've had first-hand experience with Christian fundies like Bachmann, you know how they can just prattle on and on and make absolutely no sense.  It doesn't matter, though, because it's rather like speaking in tongues:  you can't understand it but so long as the "right" words come out along with some Biblical references, it must mean something.

It doesn't mean anything other than these are ignorant fools who know nothing of scripture or what the scriptures are all about.  Bachmann uses the Bible to bolster her crazy beliefs rather than the other way around and while that's true of a lot of Christians, it's true of all fundamentalists.


Michele Bachmann is crazy!


These crazies are just the tip of the iceberg; ones that have been in the news the past few weeks.  Unfortunately, there are thousands more in charge of our governments.  We haven't even mentioned Ted Cruz or James Inhofe or Louis Gohmert or Rick Santorum or Sarah Palin, or just about everybody connected with FAUX News or Bill O'Reilly, or Rush Limbaugh, or David Vitter or ... well, fill in the blank with the name of any Republican or religious right nutcase.

Insanity rules!

No nursing home for me, I'm going to the Holiday Inn!

With the cost for nursing home care averaging about $188 per day, there is, it seems, a better way to live when we get old and feeble.

Call your local Holiday Inn.  By combining a long-term stay discount with a senior discount, the cost comes to $59.23 a night for two people.  Breakfast is included and if you're lucky you'll find a Holiday Inn that offers a "happy hour" in the afternoon.  That leaves $128.77 a day for lunch and dinner in any restaurant you wish, for room service, laundry, gratuities or special TV movies.

Not only so, but Holiday Inn provides a spa, a swimming pool, a workout room, a lounge and a washer-dryer, etc.

Most Holiday Inns offer free toothpaste and razors and hair dryers, and all have free soap and shampoo.  Five dollars in tips a day will have the entire staff scrambling to help you.

They'll treat you like a customer or guest, not like a patient.

Out front is a city bus stop and seniors ride free.  A handicap bus will also pick you up (if you fake a decent limp).  To meet other nice people, call for a church bus on Sundays.

If you desire a change of scenery, take the airport shuttle and eat at one of the restaurants there.  While you're at the airport, fly somewhere.  (Otherwise, the cash keeps building up!)

It takes months to get into a decent nursing home.  Holiday Inn will take your reservation today!  And you're not stuck in one place forever - you can move from Inn to Inn, from city to city.  Want to see Hawaii?  You'll find Holiday Inns there, too!

TV broken?  Light bulbs need changing  Need a mattress replaced?  No problem.  They fix everything and apologize for the inconvenience.

The Inn has a night security person and daily room service.  The maid checks to see if you are okay.  If not, they'll call an ambulance ... or the undertaker.  If you fall and break a hip, Medicare will be happy to pay for the hip and Holiday Inn will upgrade you to a suite for the rest of your life.

And you don't need to worry about what to do if your family comes to visit.  Holiday Inn is a great place for a family mini-vacation and the grandkids can use the pool and other facilities.

What else could one ask for?

Now, if I could only find their number...



h/t to my friend, Sylvia, for this entertaining essay.

Colbert on how the shutdown is just a game