Republicans going down!

[Hatch on left; Cornyn on right]

It appears that Senate Democrats might utilize the reconciliation provision to pass health care. What the hell is that? you ask.

The Booman Tribune explains: It is "[A] little understood parliamentary trick called 'budget reconciliation' [which allows] the majority party in the Senate to pass legislation with a mere 50 votes (plus the tie-breaking vote of the vice-president). Basically, there is a rule limiting debate on the budget which means that the budget cannot be filibustered. Bill Clinton used budget reconciliation to pass his tax hikes in 1993 and George W. Bush used the process to pass his tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.

"Technically, you are not supposed to use the procedure to piggy-back controversial legislation onto the budget in order to get around the filibuster. There's even a thing called the Byrd Rule which is supposed to prevent this from happening.

"If the Democrats include a health care bill as part of the budget reconciliation process the the bill will be subject to a point of order that it is in violation of the Byrd Rule. Then it will be up to the parliamentarian to decide whether the Byrd Rule has been violated. If the answer is 'yes', then it takes 60 votes to waive the rule."


Okay. The Repugs are worried that the Dems are going to utilize the reconciliation provision to pass health care! Omigod!

Hey, wait a minute. Didn't Bush use this provision? Oh yeah, but that doesn't matter. Only Repugs get to use rules to get around rules! That's in the consitution somewhere!

Anyway, two nogoodniks, Sen. John Cornyn, the neanderthal from Texas and Orrin Hatch, the guy who can't sing, another neanderthal from Utah, are threatening the Dems that if they do this nefarious thing of which they themselves are guilty, they will shut down the goddamn Senate! Yes, sir. They'll show these Democrats who want to provide health care for Americans a thing or two!

Here's how they might go about it, according to David Drucker (Roll Call) who "quotes a former GOP senate leadership aid (sic) as saying:

"The GOP might first go after White House nominations. Republicans could require each appointee to get a separate hearing and a separate roll call vote. They could stop attending committee meetings, and decline to provide 'unanimous consent' to move forward on even the most benign issues or routine Senate business. Republicans could also demand that the text of the bills, which are often hundreds of pages long, be read aloud."

Or, as the PoliGazette noted: "In other words, Republicans are preparing to lock down the Senate if Democrats push through reconciliation."


Heh. Heh. Let 'em try it! Two things:

1. First every one of the Repugnican nogoodniks in the Senate need to remember (perhaps someone should inscribe these words on their nogoodnik foreheads - what goes around comes around - and if, God forbid, the situation in the Senate should be reversed some day, the Dems will have a powerful precedent to follow when another Bush tries to pull a similar stunt!.

2. Secondly, if the Dems institute the reconciliation provision and get health care passed, it will be a great day for America. The majority of the American people will be overjoyed! How will it play on Main Street when the Republicans throw a tantrum about giving their fellow citizens health care, and shut down the government in response?

That should pretty well doom the reprehensible Repugs in 2010 and 2012 and many years beyond that into the future.

Would serve them right, too!


Read the entire Booman Tribune article here.

Keith Olbermann on a roll!

Rachel Maddow discusses Cheney's chicanery

John Boehner and King Coal's factories of death

[James Hansen photo from here.]

John Boehner thinks global warming is a laughing matter. CO2? Ha, ha, says ol' John. No problem. Why we emit all kinds of CO2 into the atmosphere just by breathing in and out.

My God, the man's an intellectual giant! Why haven't all the world's scientists figured that out before. We can save the planet just by killing off all the world's heavy breathers...you know, people like Boehner and Steele and Limbaargh.


The Age of Coal and global warming

From Sierra Magazine, May/June 2009:

"The age of coal isn't over yet. More than 8,000 plants in the United States still pump billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year, and they aren't going away any time soon. King Coal has taken a legal licking [thanks to environmentalists like the Sierra Club], but his armies of attorneys are still working overtime."

There is a ray of hope, however.

"In the last days of the Bush administration, his EPA administrator, Stephen Johnson, tried an end run around the appeals board, issuing a 'midnight memo' ruling out CO2 controls on new power plants ..."

That ruling was challenged as soon as Obama took office (the Sierra Club was involved).

"In February, newly appointed EPA administrator Lisa Jackson announced that the agency would reconsider Johnson's order, effectively killing it. Jackson also signaled that--finally--the EPA planned to use the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases."

In fact, shortly after Obama took office, the EPA "officially" found that global warming is a danger to the public. That was a first!


James Hansen, climatologist, has been sounding off about global warming for years. Hansen should know something about it, as he heads up NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies which "monitors temperatures at thousands of sites around the world and has documented an average increase of more than one degree since 1970."

Facts like that, of course, do not interfere with the thinking of such scientific brainiacs as John Boehner, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and others. The Bush administration was so threatened by Hansen they told him to shut up.

Bush, thank God, is gone. So, in December, Hansen and his wife, Anniek, appealed to President Obama to work toward a worldwide moratorium on burning coal. Sierra magazine printed the following adaptation of the Hansen's letter:

"There are a long list of things people can do to mitigate climate change. But the sine qua non for solving the problem is to stop burning coal. Coal is responsible for as much atmospheric carbon dioxide as all other fossil fuels combined, and is even more of a long-term threat given the earth's enormous coal reserves. (Oil, the second-greatest contributor to atmospheric carbon dioxide, is already substantially depleted.) The safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2 is 350 parts per million. We are currently at 385 ppm. Continued reliance on coal-fired plants will raise atmospheric carbon dioxide to nearly 500 ppm. At that level, a conservative estimate for the number of species that would be exterminated is one million. Coal plants are factories of death.

"The world must end coal emissions rapidly, through a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants and a phaseout of those that do not capture and store carbon dioxide (no commercial plants do at present). This is a great challenge but one with enormous side benefits, including reduced local pollution and a sharp decrease in the toxic mercury (a byproduct of coal-fired power plants) that is now accumulating in fish stocks throughout the oceans. If coal emissions are promptly phased out, other actions--for example, improved agricultural and forestry practices--could bring the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide out of the dangerous range and save the planet we know--the planet of stable climate in which civilizations developed."


Who could possible be against saving the plant other than coal-plant owners and operators? The Republican Party, of course!

And the religious right. Jesus is coming back soon, so who the hell cares?


Read more here - a fascinating and informative article.

Cheney lining up his ducks - is he in trouble?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

One of the great fantasies for true American patriots is to see this criminal sitting behind bars in a federal prison.

Olbermann calls Hannity's bluff

Do you think the asshat Hannity will take up Olbermann's offer? Nah. He's just another cowardly blowhard who cowers under the cover afforded by being a member of the FAUX News team.

Keith Olbermann on Rick "Secession" Perry

I missed this about a week ago...it's very much worth watching!

Privatizing your food-borne illnesses

Jim Hightower, in the latest issue of the Hightower Lowdown, writes about how the government has failed the people relative to food safety.

Deluded as we are, we tend to believe that our representatives in government really care more for our well-being than for the corporations who pay to put them in office. Silly us! Nothing could be further from the truth!

Hightower explains:

"In March 2008, the official inspector's report unequivocally concluded, 'The overall food safety level of this facility was considered to be: SUPERIOR.'

"The facility in question was the Peanut Corporation of America's processing plant in Georgia -- the very one that then shipped salmonella-contaminated products all across American last year, killing nine people and sickening more than 22,000.

"How could that inspector not see that a factory was alive with deadly salmonella?"


Aha. The inspection system didn't work. Here are a few of the reasons.

* Corporation honchos were told ahead of time that an inspector was coming, an inspector was coming!

* The inspector had just "one day to check a plant that handles millions of pounds of peanuts a month."

* The inspector knew nothing about peanuts. He was a fresh produce guy.

* The inspector didn't know that peanuts could contain salmonella.

* The inspector's job did not including testing for salmonella.


But...there's another problem, as Hightower points out. "...[T]he inspector doesn't work for the public. Instead, he works for a private food safety audit firm. He gets his inspection gigs by soliciting food processors directly, and the processors pay his salary. Cozy, no?"

It get worse! "More than 200 companies are in business doing safety audits for food processors. Because Washington has privatized government work and slashed federal inspection budgets, these for-profit companies now perform the bulk of America's food-safety inspections--essentially letting the processors buy a phony seal of approval."


All of this, of course, courtesy of the faith-based administration of George W. Bush and Dickie Cheney who operated at all times under the mantra that's what good for the corporate nogoodnikes who put them in office is good for the country. Who gives a damn whether a few people die?

Privatizing has been a pivot point of Repugnican platforms for a long time. They "believe" (so much of what Repugnicans do is based upon "belief" rather than reality) that private firms can do a better job than government agencies. That's the song they sing when it comes to government-provided health care (even though many of them revel in their own government-provided health care which seems to work just fine, thank you.)

Now that these snake-oil salesman have gone (at least some of them), it's time for Obama and company to make some changes.

Before more people die.


For more information, go to the Hightower Lowdown here.

The Third Wave - You ain't seen nothin' yet!

Bruce Wilson writing for Religion Dispatches tells the story and it begins with Wilson asking the question:

What is happening to Christianity?

"In 1996 a team from Ted Haggard's New Life Church flew to Mali and began furtively anointing entire towns with cooking oil." This was the beginning of "a missionary wave that has washed over the world since the early 1990s, bringing that Holvast [Rene Holvast, a Dutch missionary] calls 'a new paradigm.'"

Seems this new paradigm, like all bad things religious, emerged in Colorado Springs. "From its early days, New Life Church's members worked to map out all the territorial demon spirits inhabiting Colorado Springs. At some point in the process, they fed the mapping information into a computer database. Methodically -- street by street, block by block -- they used prayer-warfare to expel the demons from their city. And they maintained a 24/7 prayer shield over Colorado Springs to prevent demon re-infestations. As with inner-city cockroaches, the price of demon-free living was constant vigilance."


This new paradigm is what Alix Spiegel, a radio journalist who actually went to Colorado Springs to do a story on New Life Church, calls "medieval." Demons? Prayer warfare?

Nevertheless, it has spread all over the world and is known as the Third Wave of Christianity; a new, virulent form of the religion with no connection to historic Christianity that has grown so rapidly that by 2000 it claimed 385 million followers. And there are many millions more now.

"Within two decades," says Wilson, Third Wave Christianity encompassed over four percent of humanity. It is a seismic change."


Based upon the medieval notion that demons cause most, if not all, human problems, and that prayer can conquer these demons, this "new paradigm" has its followers all over the world involved in "prayer walks" in order to identify and confront the demons.

Sarah Palin is a member of the Third Wave. Thus, her church in Wasilla brought in the Kenyan witch doctor, Thomas Muthee, who blieves that "Christians can create a utopia on Earth by driving out territorial demon spirits and alleged witches with the power of massed prayer." You may recall how on August 16, 2005 at the Wasilla Assembly of God, Muthee blessed "Sarah Palin against 'every spirit of witchcraft.' Several days later after that 2005 ceremony, Palin launched her campaign for the Alaska governor's seat."

" ... World Christian Trends calls the Third Wave a 'new and disturbingly different kind of Christian renewal.' One very distinctive characteristic of Third Wave Christianity is its emphasis that average Christians can perform the same magnitude of healing miracles described in the New Testament to have been performed by Jesus Christ -- including raising the dead."


For normal people, who strive to live according to a modicum of common sense and reason, this is all ludicrous. Unfortunately, there seem to be fewer and fewer "normal" people out there. Which makes this medieval movement so dangerous. When the governor of Alaska adheres to doctrines that demons cause human suffering and that Christians can cast out demons via prayer, and can heal sickness and raise the dead, we've got a problem Houston!

I think the term, Third Wave, is misguided. It should be termed "Neopaganism."

A serious problem. Almost half of those who went to the polls last November voted for this caricature of a human being!


Read all of Wilson's article here. Mr. Wilson has done extensive research on the Third Wave phenomenon and that research is available at Talk2Action.

Mercy

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.

GOP honcho is just really upset. Really!

[Photo from here.]

Yup. Michael, the man of Steele, is just beside hisself! Really, he is! I mean, he's the big cheese at the GOP factory of cheeseheads for Christ's sake, and nobody gives a damn. Nobody listens to him. Nobody cares what he says. And if he criticizes Limbaargh, he has to apologize!

Poor Steele. Respect he hath not.

But, he's trying. His puny little brain is working full-time these days on how to get the GOP cheeseheads to respect him. His puny little brain is telling him that because the GOP base is comprised of religious nutcases, extremistist rednecks, a few neo-Nazis starting to become a crowd, a bunch who never made it through high school, and Rush Limbaargh, he should pander to the pitful and thus, he has done so.

Yup. Michael, the man of Steele, is telling President Obama to withdraw the nomination of Kathleen Sebelius as Health and Human Services secretary until she answers just a few more questions on abortion.

Would someone please explain to this bozo that the Repugs lost the election and his demands with regard to what the president should do cut no ice with anyone?

And, it's always about abortion. Methinks Steele may have a plate in his head pressing on parts of the brain it shouldn't be pressing. Methinks Steele has been wandering around the halls of Focus on the Family too long and has lost touch with reality. Methinks Steele is trying so hard to hang on to his job he'll say or do just about anything.

Last I heard, 54% of Americans are in favor of a woman's right to choose, have no problem with Roe v. Wade, and don't really give a flying fart what Steele or anyone in the Repugnican party thinks about anything.


Now, for the typically humorous Repugnican encore: Steele hisself endorsed the right of women to choose last year in a magazine interview, saying that so far as he was concerned abortion was "an individual choice."

Well, what did you expect? Honesty? Forthrightness? Decency? Truth? Courage?

This is a Repugnican we're talking about!

Hillary eviscerates Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind)

I stole this from Grandpa Eddie. Thanks, GE!

Balzeimers disease kata Jon Stewart

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Balzheimers Disease
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

PK's kids in Paraguay

[Photo from latinamericanmusings.wordpress.com]

Used to be, back when I was growing up, that PK's were often teased relative to their familial relationship. PK's were preacher's kids and often they just couldn't win. If they were pious, they got a lot of flack for being so damn religious, and if they were, ah, like everyone else, they got a lot of flack for being too worldly, thereby bringing shame upon their father.

What brought all this to mind was reading about those poor PK's down in Paraguay. Only in Paraguay, they're not preacher's kids, they are priest's kids. I guess you could even call them BK's for bishop's kids.

Turns out that a former Roman Catholic bishop who is now president of Paraguay has fathered not just one child, but three! One kid is 16 months, one is 2 years and one is 6 years old.

This was one horny bishop! Which is fine, except for a couple of major problems: he took a vow of chastity and a vow of celibacy. Priests/bishops are not supposed to screw around and end up having a passel of little priesties and bishopricks.

Fernando Lugo was allowed to resign from the priesthood last summer/fall and thus was "relieved" of his vows.

I really don't care about any of this and I don't think it means he won't be a good president. But I sure feel sorry for those kids coming up. I can hear it now: "Shut up, you dirty son of a bishop!"

Oh, oh! Orrin Hatch gets punked!

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Who's Riding My Coattails Now? - Blown Away by the USA
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Gay Marriage Commercial

Art reflects life?

I found this at Adult Christianity. "Yes, this is an actual logo designed in 1973 for the Catholic Church's Archdiocesan Youth Commission. It even won an award from the Art Directors Club of Los Angeles.

"Design Archives AIGA

"From AfroJacks via Cynical-C."

Torture and American Nazis

[The rack. Photo from here.]

If you had told me fifty years ago - hell, if you had told me ten years ago - that we would be having a discussion in this country as to whether it is legitimate for Americans to torture their enemies, and that American leaders, including a former attorney general and CIA director would be defending the use of torture, I would not have believed you. I would have considered such talk irresponsible and stupid.

Growing up in these United States, I knew we didn't torture our enemies. My God, that's one of the standards by which we differentiated ourselves from the bad guys. Oh, I had heard stories about how sometimes in certain wartime situations, Americans had gotten carried away and done some horrendous things, but those were aberrations and were considered reprehensible and indefensible by almost everyone.

Americans did not torture, period!


Thus, the Bush administration memos "authorizing" and "justifying" torture take my breath away.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky has a piece at AlterNet dealing with this subject. Schakowsky notes that the torture used by Americans against suspected terrorists included "'walling,' (repeatedly smashing a detainee against a wall), stress positions (hanging a person from the ceiling with feet barely touching the floor -- including a one-legged man), sleep deprivation for as long as 11 days, cramped confinement (put in a casket-sized box or smaller -- insects option), and that medieval favorite, waterboarding."

How the hell did they forget the rack?

These are the thing that former Attorney General Michael Mukasy and former CIA Director Michael Hayden defended in an April 17 article in the Wall Street Journal. Torture works, they said; it keeps us safe, they said; and then they implied the lack of torture led to 9/11, a result of "weakened intelligence gathering ... that we came to sorely regret," they said. If only we had tortured people before 9/11!

Huh? The attacks of 9/11 had nothing to do with our refusal to torture our enemies. It had to do with George W. Bush not giving a damn, not being able to read and understand anything, having a fixation on getting the man who gave his daddy the finger so many years before, wanting to spend most of his presidency on vacation and not paying any attention to the August 6, 2001 briefing which was entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S."


Schakowsky has much more. But there are a couple of lessons to be derived from this mess that should not be downplayed. First of all, many folks much smarter than I am have noted that by not dealing with those involved in establishing the American torture academy; without bringing those criminals to justice, even if it means putting a former president and vice president in jail, we are telling the world we are hypocrites who, for all our talk, don't really care about the rule of law; and we are setting a precedent for every other administration that follows: We are saying, "Go ahead, ignore the constitution, do whatever the hell you want to, there will be no consequences."

I agree we must go after and deal with the lawbreakers according to the law. No matter who they are.

But there's something else. A question that has rattled around in the back of my head for years is this: How could so many "normal," god-fearing, cultured, "nice" Germans not only support Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime, but actually work to help the Nazis accomplish their goals? Germany was much more a "Christian" nation than the United States has ever been. Hitler was a Roman Catholic as were a number of his top aides. (None of which were ever called to account by the Roman Church nor were they excommunicated).

I've answered that question with trepidation because what I've come to believe as true is that anyone of us can become a "Nazi"! A Nazi is a person who blindly follows a leader or an administration to the gates of hell. A Nazi is one who is able to twist reason and language to support the most horrendous of causes. A Nazi is a person who will "forget" his or her moral codes and ethical underpinnings to stay linked to power or to justify behavior that he/she would normally consider abominable.

Never before in my lifetime have we come so close to the brink; to losing it all as we did under the Bush/Cheney regime. Hordes of people like Mukasey and Hayden suddenly draped themselves in the flag of oppression and walked lock-step with those whose actions flagrantly defied our founding documents and our traditions.

And it ain't over yet! Nogoodniks and ignoramuses across the nation who don't know the difference between a tax hike and a tax cut, or between pedantry and intelligence, or between tact and belligerence, or between patriotism and jingoism are screaming "fascism" at the very people who would save them from it!

The line between sanity and insanity is very thin at times. This is one of those times.

Anyone can become a Nazi.


Read Schakowky's article here. There's more here.

More insanity in Texas

[Photo of Vicki Truitt]

Governor Rick Perry has fallen into a pit of political insanity.

But he's the Repugnican governor of Texas, so, as you might expect, other Repugnican poohbahs in Texas are jumping into the pit right behind him.

Legislators in Austin, are, according to the Star-Telegram, "considering issuing a 'cease and desist' order to the federal government."

No, really. I'm not making this up. They call it "House Concurrent Resolution 50."

One of the morons involved and a co-sponsor of the resolution, is Rep. Vicki Truitt, a Repugnican, of course, from Keller, Texas. "We prefer," she pontificates, "that federal government limit the amount of federal mandates it forces upon the people of Texas."

Another co-sponsor is wingnut Brandon Creighton, a Repugnican, of course, from Conroe, Texas, who is concerned that the feds may be "overstepping" their boundaries. Here's what he had to say:

"From restrictions on gun and ammunition sales, to freedom-of-choice issues, to the Real ID Act, the federal government [that's 'guv'mint' in Texan] is passing laws that limit a state's ability to govern itself. Texas simply wants to send the message that we want to govern ourselves and decide for ourselves how our money is to be spent."

Heh. Heh.

"Under this resolution, the 81st Legislature "hereby claim[s] sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States."

[For those who can't remember, here's the Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.]


Does anyone smell "secession"? Does this minor stink in Texas indicate that these dumb asses forgot they lost the Civil War? Are they so damn ignorant they do not know this issue was decided long ago; that a state may disagree, but a state may not order the federal government to "cease and desist" and insist it's gonna rule itself?

Actually, as we've suggested before, perhaps the best thing to do is call them on their self-centered insanity.

Thus, the United States shall immediately halt all federal funding of any kind within the borders of the state of Texas. That means no money for roads, schools, hospitals, courts, police and fire departments, prisons, parks, Medicaid, etc. No federal agencies will provide any services for Texas as of now. Texas can come up with its own FAA (The TAA?) to keep airplanes from crashing into each other and the ground. And when planes crash, Texas can establish its own investigative units. When a hurricane knocks out most of Houston, Texas may not call on FEMA or any other federal agency for assistance! Furthermore, all federal buildings and facilities, including military bases, will be abandoned forthwith. Texas can provide for its own defense. And there will be absolutely no federal money for university and/or scientific research.

We could go on and on, but that's a pretty good start. It would surely provide a ton of much-needed money for the rest of the states.


And all the wingnuts in the Texas Legislature, who believe in God but not evolution, and in corporations but not people, can stew in their own juices, which will soon smell pretty rank! I'd guess it wouldn't be long before the people of Texas would rise up and run them all out of town.

Well, maybe not. Hell, the people of Texas voted these wingnuts into office in the first place!


The Star-Telegram is here.

Telephone poles, war, lynchings and Christians

[Image from iheartvector.com]

There really was a "war" on telephone poles, and Eula Biss, in her article, "The War on Telephone Poles" (Harper's, Feb. 2009, pp. 19 - 22) tells all about it.

Ms. Biss, with facts and humor, describes this war, which was first reported in 1889 by the New York Times.

"Whenever telephone companies erected poles, homeowners and business owners were sawing them down, or defending their sidewalks with rifles. Property owners in Red Bank, New Jersey, threatened to tar and feather the workers putting up telephone poles."


But there was a darker side to telephone poles.

"In 1898, in Lake Cormorant, Mississippi, a black man was hanged from a telephone pole. And in Weir City, Kansas. And in Brookhaven, Mississippi. And in Holdenville, Oklahoma, where the hanged man was 'riddled with bullets.' In Danville, Illinois, a black man was hanged from a telephone pole, cut down, burned, shot, and stoned with bricks. A black man was hung from a telephone pole in Belleville, Illinois, where a fire was set at the base of the pole and the man was cut down half alive, covered in coal oil and burned. While his body was burning, the mob beat it with clubs and cut it to pieces."

There's more, much more.

"In Shreveport, Louisiana, a black man charged with attacking a white girl was hanged from a telephone pole. 'A knife was left sticking in the body.' In Cumming, Georgia, a black man accused of assaulting a white girl was shot repeatedly, then strung up from a telephone pole.

"A postcard was made from a photo of a burned man hanging from a telephone pole in Texas, his legs broken off below the knee and his arms curled up and blackened. Postcards of lynchings were sent out as greetings and warnings until 1908, when the postmaster general declared them unmailable. 'This is the barbecue we had last night,' reads one."

Moving right along.

"In Pittsburg, Kansas, a black man's throat was slit and his dead body was strung up on a telephone pole. 'At first the negro was defiant,' the New York Times reported, 'but just before he was hanged he begged hard for his life.

"In Cumberland, Maryland, a mob used a telephone pole as a battering ram to break into the jail where a black man charged with the murder of a policeman was being held. They kicked him to death, then fired twenty shots into his head. They wanted to burn the body, but a minister asked them not to."


Ms. Biss says that over 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress during the 20th century, but none of them became law. "Seven presidents lobbied for anti-lynching legislation, and the House of Representatives passed three separate measures, each of which was blocked by the Senate."


I recall, years ago, of reading how men from a Methodist church in a small southern town, following an evening prayer meeting, decided they needed to lynch a black man, and did so. They had a great time. Knowing something of the religious demographics of the southern part of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century, one can be fairly certain that most of those involved in the lynchings of blacks were members of either a Methodist or Baptist church.

Good Christians, too. Believed in Jesus. Going to heaven. Baptized and born again in the Holy Spirit!

Of course, the religious right, is not into lynching blacks today, but rather have taken after gay people (in every way but actually stringing them up), and they cry out, in wounded whimpering, that these United States is a Christian nation, always has been, and by God, if they have their way, it always will be. Some wish to stone gays to death just like God instructs his followers to do!

As if that would make us better people.

If we've always been a Christian nation, maybe we ought to look for another God. Or none at all.

Jon Stewart - This Week in Demagogues

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
This Week in Demagogues - Ahmadinejad & Chavez
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor