After the Rapture

h/t to Religious Comics

Chik-fil-A, God, hate and voting for anyone but Obama, even the Devil!

Thanks to Crooks & Liars!

Dana Perino can't explain how Bush tax cuts created jobs

More Republican mythology down the tubes!

Thanks to Media Matters for this clip.

Ronald Reagan is not George Washington

If you, like me, are sick of Republicans pandering to their mythological version of the B-grade movie actor turned sleepy president, you'll love this video!

Jason Alexander on Gun Control

[Photo from The Randy Report]

Best known, perhaps, for his portrayal of George on "Seinfeld," Jason Alexander has put together a long, well-reasoned essay with regard to a ban on the so-called "assault weapons" which are currently perfectly legal to own in this country.

On Twitter, he wrote:

I'd like to preface this long tweet by saying that my passion comes from my deepest sympathy and shared sorrow with yesterday's victims and with the utmost respect for the people and the police/fire/medical/political forces of Aurora and all who seek to comfort and aid these victims.

This morning, I made a comment about how I do not understand people who support public ownership of assault style weapons like the AR-15 used in the Colorado massacre, http://en.wikipedia.ord/wiki/AR-15.

That comment, has of course, inspired a lot of feedback. There have been many tweets of agreement and sympathy but many, many more that have been challenging at the least, hostile and vitriolic at the worst.

Clearly, the angry, threatened and threatening, hostile comments are coming from gun owners and gun advocates. Despite these massacres recurring and despite the 100,000 Americans that die every year due to domestic gun violence - these people see no value to even considering some kind of control as to what kinds of weapons are put in civilian hands.

Many of them cite patriotism as their reason - true patriots support the Constitution adamantly and wholly. [The] (sic) Constitution says citizens have the right to bear arms in order to maintain organized militias. I'm no constitutional scholar so here it is from the document itself:

As passed by the Congress:

'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'

As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State:

'A well regular militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.'

So the patriots are correct, gun ownership is in the Constitution - if you're a well-regulated militia... [Emphasis is mine.]

...

Please read the rest of Mr. Alexander's essay here at Salon.com.

The greatest country in the world

The beginning of the new HBO show, "Newsroom."

h/t to my good friend, Art.

Boehner baby

This is from Crooks & Liars:

After John Boehner cried yet again, this time for a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony to honor the 19th century Italian artist Constantino Brumidi (I have no idea who he is, and probably Boehner didn't either) who came to the United States to seek fame and fortune, Jimmy Kimmel decides to poke more fun at Mr Waterworks.

Nora Ephron - RIP

Nora Ephron died on June 26 at age 71.  She brought so much drama and light and humor into our lives through her movies.  She had the "touch," and knew how to push our buttons.  She died too young.

One of her most famous scenes follows:  the faux orgasm scene from "When Harry Met Sally."  In a crowded diner, Meg Ryan as "Sally" lets Billy Crystal's "Harry" know loud and clear he really doesn't know as much about women as he thought he does.



An excellent article in tribute to Ms. Ephron is here.

The Texas evolution wars

The hypocrisy of Mitt Romney & Jim DeMint on health-care reform

The following is from an article by Andrew Romano writing at The Daily Beast.


Back in 2004, 2005, and 2006 a very intelligent, very meticulous man spent a lot of time studying health-care reform. Eventually, he concluded that universal private coverage would only be possible if people were required to pay a fee when they refused to buy insurance. “It’s a kind of mandate,” he explained. “Help everybody get in the pool. That brings down the cost, and at the same time [it] makes sure that people don’t have to worry about losing their coverage... We want everybody in the system. No more free riders.” His name was Mitt Romney. A year or two later, one of Romney’s fellow Republicans praised his Massachusetts reforms, saying “well, that’s something that I think we should do for the whole country.” His name was Jim DeMint.

Fast & Furious another name for Republican chicanery!

[Photo from lifestyleterrorists.blogspot.com]


Mother Jones says:

The "Fast and Furious" imbroglio may have just gone sideways on House Republicans. Just prior to them leading a House vote for contempt against Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday, a far-reaching investigation published by Fortune magazine poked major holes in the conservative storyline about the alleged gun operation. Claims that law enforcement engaged in a deadly plot to let Mexican outlaws smuggle US guns, the magazine reports, are based on allegations by a lone whistleblower who may in fact be the only person who did any illegal gun-smuggling. The real cause of violence and crime south of the border, it reports, is lax gun laws in Arizona and elsewhere pushed by Republicans and their friends at the National Rifle Association.

Read the rest of this enlightening article from Mother Jones here.

Jon Stewart and Mitt's money sources

Giving millionaires one more tax break...the Ryan Plan

The following is from Crooks & Liars "Video Cafe" -


A conservative radio host says that the Catholic nuns who have embarked on a nine-state bus tour to protest the injustice of Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) proposed budget deserve to be beaten with a handgun because they "threw the first punch."

"There's a bus full of nuns headed towards Washington to lobby against the Ryan plan" radio host Jan Mickelson told Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA) last week.  "Do you guys, do you have any power to pull the nuns on the bus over and pistol whip them>"

[Note the lack of civility, decency, common sense, or understanding of the freedoms guaranteed to the people by the U.S. Constitution.  This seems to be representative of GOPers and their sharks in the media waters these days!]


C & L notes:  "The non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found that nearly two-thirds of the cuts proposed in Ryan's budget would be to programs serving low-income Americans, while ... [his] tax cuts would largely benefit millionaires.  People making more than $1 million a year would see a 12.5 percent increase in after-tax income but those making less than $20,000 would see ... [a] decrease of 0.2 percent or less."

The Corporate Oligarchy rules. Heil to the Corporate Oligarchy!

The Corporate Oligarchy rules in these 50 states and thanks is largely due to the United States Supremes who made a decision not so long ago called "Citizens United" which basically gave away the political power in this country to those who have all the money...the corporate oligarchs!

Today, the Supremes went further:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down Montana's century-old limits on corporate political spending, putting an end to the state's resistance to Citizens United and effectively expanding that controversial ruling to the state and local elections."

The State of Montana had a law in place to counter unlimited corporate spending on elections in that state.  No more.

A dictatorship may arise from several different sources and for different reasons.  A dictatorship run by oligarchs is just as bad as a dictatorship run by any other person or group.  Money and power is what it's all about and money and power are the twin goals, fueled by greed, of the corporate oligarchs.  

Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent in this 2012 election by ultra-rich, right-wing persons who, in cahoots with the corporate oligarchs, are committed to do whatever is necessary to bring President Obama down.  The GOP nominee-to-be, Willard Romney, is or soon will be, meeting secretly with a number of the richest people/corporate representatives in the country to devise further strategies to elect persons who will destroy Obama and fulfill their dreams of total control.

This cabal of nogoodniks have very successfully convinced millions of Americans that the president is working against their best interests when, in reality, the reverse is true.  Although it is hard to believe, a majority of Republican voters, still insist that Obama is a Muslim.  Much of the credit for that must be laid at the feet of FAUX News and other sources funded by the Corporate Oligarchs.

Last evening our local NBC outlet aired an interview with Marco Rubio, the Republican nogoodnik from Miami (who once infamously claimed he and his family were part of those "poor" Cubans who snuck out of Cuba by the skin of their teeth, when in fact he came from a very well-to-do clan that had no problem bringing their wealth into the United States and who also seems to be a prime candidate for Mr. Romney's second-in-command) in which Rubio told lie after lie about President Obama with complete impunity!  NBC, you see, is one of the Corporate Oligarchies!

Read the entire sad story as to how the majority of the U.S. Supremes (at least the ones appointed by G.W. Bush and his father) have sold out and are now controlled by the Corporate Oligarchy in this country and around the world.  I say, "around the world," for we are not an isolated country in any sense of the word; we are tied tightly to most, if not all, of the countries, and the Corporate Oligarchs' reach extends through their business and financial holdings into the world of every Tom, Dick, and Mary in the United States and everywhere.  U.S. Corporate Oligarchs are wedded to the Corporate Oligarchs in every other country!

What the Supremes have done is open a floodgate of secret funding of elections in the United States.  U.S. Corporate Oligarchs are now able to buy any election they so desire.  Corporate Oligarchs from, say Saudi Arabia, or perhaps Iran, are now able, through secret financial donations, to influence and perhaps control our voting booths.  

The end result of this chicanery, set in motion by a majority of the U.S. Supremes, is yet to be discovered.  You can, however, bet your last dollar (and it may well be your last dollar unless you're one of the 2% in this country) that you're not going to like it.  

This may sound melodramatic - as did resistance to Hitler in the 1920s and early 1930s - but the American democratic experience is over.  Our country is no longer "of the people, by the people, for the people," or however you want to express the fact that our Constitution invests the power of self-government in the nation's citizenry.  Our country has been fundamentally changed from government by the people to government by the Corporate Oligarchy.  As we write these words, representatives of the Corporate Oligarchy are writing laws for members of Congress to pass which provide them with the benefits they most desire.  As we write these words, representatives of the Corporate Oligarchy are spending millions upon millions of secretly-donated dollars to promote the destruction of President Obama and more importantly, the country that we know and love.d

Lest you think the American corporate Oligarchy would never stoop so low, remember that during our war with the Nazis, known as World War II, the Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and IBM were among the American companies that provided technology, machines, and support for the Nazi war effort!  The Holocaust as we know it would not have been possible without the assistance of International Business Machines!  Remember that the head of the General Motors corporation devised several secret efforts to bring down the president of the United States during those war years!

The decision of the Supremes to strike down the Montana law is the latest example of how the Corporate Oligarchy rules.

Heil to the Corporate Oligarchy!

[Read all about the Montana decision here.]

The Speech Obama Must Deliver...

This is a special post written by my friend, Art Woodstone.  It is a speech he believes President Obama needs to deliver.  Here's his preface:

"The speech Obama will never deliver, but unless he does, the way it looks today, he'll lose, in which event, we all lose."

And now, what Obama needs to say:

You out there:  The Republicans have a plan:  Get rid of the opposition once and forever, and that includes me.  Their other plan--that especially brilliant second plan--calls for austerity: cut back sharply on government expenditures and give still more of a tax break to the one-per centers who, magically, will voluntarily share the money they save with the rest of us in order to create jobs and 'stimulate the economy.'

We're still waiting, waiting for over thirty years for the big moment.  To use the phrase the Republicans now shy from using in their speeches because it's so embarrassing--waiting for this largesse to 'trickle down.'

Why are we waiting?  Because it's a myth the Republican Party embraced in 1980 so they could elect a Republican to the White House.  Within four [check that] months, the man who brought trickle down [also known as supply-side economics] to Ronald Reagan's attention publicly confessed it was a political gimmick--and that's all it every was.  There was no reason to believe it would ever work.

So I ask you to think about this--think very hard about this--why do Romney and the Republican brain trust still insist that 'supply-side' is the magic cure-all for our profound and dangerous economic and employment ills?

The answer:  there must be a few Republican politicians and some Democrats who honestly believe this is the solution, but to them, it can be no more than an article of faith rather than fact.  It does sound so good.


That's the only complicated part of the explanation.  The other part is very clear and simple:  there are politicians, most of them, who know it's a cynical, useless plan but, as cynics, they also know you were raised almost from infancy to believe them because you and they belong to the same political party.

That's no way to vote and that is definitely no way to run a government, not in this country.  Some Republicans in Congress have made it as clear as can be: their first objective is not to cure anything but instead to wipe out the Democratic Party 'forever.'  That includes the likes of me; if you believe them, I wasn't even born in America.

It's one thing to believe in God, to believe in our church or temple or synagogue, it's quite another and quite frightening to blindly place your faith in a political party, any political party, convert from a party into a religion just because it has been your party and perhaps your father's party most or all of your life:  Republicans are always in the right; Democrats always in the wrong.  You can justifiably reverse that formula if you want, although the Democrats I know are a bit more forgiving...[smile] some of them, some of the time.

The saddest and most undemocratic part of all this is that today's Republican candidate for president and today's Congressional Republicans are determined to take absolute control of both houses of Congress as well as the White House.  They want all the marbles, power for the sake of power.


They, the Republican candidate and his Congressional colleagues [many of whom dislike him but loathe me] insist that in the three and a half years I've occupied the Oval Office I have failed to improve the economy.  That's a big wow, a whopper that so many of those who can reliably be counted on to vote Republican blindly accept as the one and only truth worth discussing.

Okay, let's discuss it.  This shouldn't take long.  A President, no President can turn things around all by himself.  No one man, no one President, especially in these complex and critical times can turn government around.  Not without the support of Congress.  And that's as it should be...but isn't.


This is no longer one nation indivisible.  Sadly, it's them against us; it's all-out war.

I haven't had the support of Congress--thanks to the intractable Republican members of the House and Senate who, for the most obvious and ill-tempered reasons of all, reject even items on the agenda that they once supported...merely because I now support them.  I can anticipate the sneers and the accusations of me whining when they know full well how they have deliberately and maliciously stopped cold any progress toward solution of our enormous social and economic problems.

In the Senate, the opposition no longer has to exhaust itself filibustering.  Under present rules, all Republicans have to do is threaten to filibuster--and legislation dies before it is born.  Congress comes to a screeching half.  That's been true throughout my presidency.

As to the House of Representatives, now controlled by the Republicans, they don't have to threaten.  They are in charge and they don't want the opposition to have any say in governing...so long as they can help it.   And it seem they aim to help it forever.

Reelect a Republican majority to the House but should they be displeased enough to see me re-elected as president, the likelihood is the nation will be treated to a lot more of nothing of items of life that over the last fifty years or so have proved vital, even precious.

Actually, if Mr. Romney replaces me, you can count on their voting at last...to diminish or destroy Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare and a fair wage.  And, God help this nation, the Republicans, controlled by the right-wing of the party, will get their way unless you help stop them.


They've been lying all along about how 'unAmerican, how socialist, how communist' Social Security, Medicare, fair wage and now unions are.

Because of your blind faith in one party, you will probably go along with these wild claims...until it's too late to realize how seriously you've damaged your own futures.

Let's look at this a slightly different way:  let's say you elect Mr. Romney and put a Republican majority in both Houses.  It is safe to assume that they will enforce heavy government cutbacks; that means heavy government layoffs.  Hundreds and thousands of layoffs.  Do you think, as they claim, that will lessen our debt?

You'd be wrong:  thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands of newly discharged government employees will be entitled to unemployment insurance, money that comes directly out of government coffers--directly out of your pockets--and when that runs out?  One of two conditions will prevail.  The worse?  These unfortunate government employees, fired too early to qualify for adequate retirement benefits, will end up receiving welfare that they too would rather avoid as they would the plague.  But, as a practical and humane matter, you've got to feed and house your family somehow.


Others laid off might have been prudent enough to have put something aside to assure minimun survival.  But--BUT--they will no longer have the kind of expendable income needed to feed the economy.  Net result, less economic recovery rather than more.

As for me, I have been wrong, at times terribly wrong,  trying to accommodate a stubborn and unified band of men and women from the other party in my naive belief that they have the public interest foremost in mind when they act.  My nature and upbringing made it impossible for me to believe they were not acting in good faith--not until now--not until now when it has become impossible to ignore that my opposition is far more enthusiastic in pursuing absolute power that in pursuing the health and well-being of the American people.  I've had three and a half years to gather the evidence and it has finally sunk in.

I've been a wimp and maybe weaker than I should have been but, from now until Election Day, I shall make it my business to tell the naked truth about them, making it as clear as humanly possible that in opposing this White House's practical proposals in favor of lies, distortions and empty promises they are doing great harm to America and to democracy itself.


I beg you to put aside blind faith in one political party or the other in favor of using the common sense God did mean for you to use.

On Climate Change - Required for Republicans and science-challenged persons

Texas new speed law

When the Texas State Legislature did something really stupid, we used to say, "Only in Texas!" But that's no longer the case. With Repugnicans under the control of the Koch brothers and ALEC, the rich and the religious right, really stupid laws are being passed in almost every state!

But let's start with Texas. A 2011 law, passed by the Texas legislature, allows for a speed limit of 85 mph on some highways. It appears that will be the limit chosen for a new toll road currently under construction.

This is about as stupid as stupid gets. When 3,000 of our citizens were killed by religious nutcases in Manhattan highrises in 2001, the nation went into deep mourning - which has yet to abate completely. But we kill over 30,000 of our citizens EVERY YEAR on our nation's highways and nobody gives a damn!

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, "Speeding is a factor in about one-third of all fatal crashes, killing 900 Americans every month in 2009."

In this country, people drive too damn fast!  In the 1950s, Phillip Wylie, in his book, "Generation of Vipers," came down very hard on speeding drivers. A car is a missile, he said, and we have all kinds of morons, idiots, incompetents, bumblers, and haters pointing these missiles down the road creating piles of carnage.  Today, speeding in the United States murders, on our highways, 10 times those killed by the religious nutcases who flew into the Twin Towers!

And murder it is! If you are exceeding the posted speed limit, or if you are driving too fast for local conditions, no matter what the speed limit, you are a criminal. You are disobeying the laws of the land! If we had enough highway patrol personnel, you'd be arrested. And if you run into another car and people in that car are killed, you are a murderer.

But speeding is "fashionable." Speeding is just what most people do. Try driving the speed limit on I-75 or any other Interstate Highway! The majority of drivers will drive by you so fast, you can't even make out the make of their cars!  That's hyperbole, but you get the point!

And I'll bet a lot of these folks are good, religious folk who think the laws of the land should be obeyed. In fact, on a lot of these speeding cars, I see bumper stickers about "keeping Christ in Christmas," or I see the ubiquitous fish symbol which is an acronym identifying the occupants of the car as followers of Jesus.  I'll bet many of these speeders are fine, upstanding Repugnicans who worry themselves sick over the nation's deficit or the non-existent voter fraud they're always blubbering about!  Bah, humbug!  Their religion is a sham, and their posing as concerned citizens is a cover for their own hypocrisy!

Speeding cannot be taken lightly. Speeding is not a joke. It is a serious and flagrant violation of not only the law but of common sense. Why would anyone with a sane mind direct a 4,000 pound missile down a road at 80-90-100 miles per hour. The slightest mistake, the slightest pull on the wheel, the slightest bump in the road can easily cause the driver to lose control and cause a catastrophe (NOT an accident!) in which people are killed.

If you crash because you are speeding, that is not an accident. If people are killed in that crash, you are a murderer!

But the great State of Texas, which has already dumbed down its educational system so that it's the laughingstock of the nation, is now about to allow people to drive even faster on their highways which means only one thing for sure: more people will die; more people will be murdered by speeders on Texas highways.

I'd suggest, if you must drive on Texas highways, you be very, very careful.  Don't end up a mess on the highways of Texas!

The Ed Show and the End of the MIddle Class

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Planned Parenthood's Anti-Romney Ad

Here we see the real Romney!

The Wages of Syntax

Thanks to Atheist Cartoons.