The Republican Party Rape Advisory Chart

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

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

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

A PROCLAMATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BARACK OBAMA

Rachel Maddow and Christie (Not Julie)

The Fakirs of Duck Dynasty

The language is pretty raw but the message is important.

House Republicans "12 Days of Congress"

This video courtesy of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee

Ethnic cleansing in the Middle East

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

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

Note:  Click on the map to enlarge it.


h/t to my friend, Bob Poris

Musings during the holiday season

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Merry Holidays!

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

This, from the Huffington Post.

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

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

Congress overrode the veto.

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

A rousing, rollicking celebration of Chanukah!

Do the right "Christ" thing this Christmas!

Bill Maher zings Repugs who talk about "their" Kennedy

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

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

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

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

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

Kennedy was James Bond. Reagan was Matlock.

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

Thanks to Heather at Crooks & Liars.

A Letter to William Hague, British Foreign Secretary

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

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

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

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

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


Dear Mr. Hague,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rick Perry - An Empty Head

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

Thanksgiving Socialists

h/t Crooks & Liars

At least we have health care!

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

Photo from Crooks & Liars.

Sarah Palin's description of the Tea Party healthcare plan

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

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

And yes, she really is that stupid!

Republican In Name Only

Rachel Maddow catches Rand Paul plagiarizing!

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

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

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

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

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

President Obama's act of grace after Sandy Hook

[Photo from The Journey to Rediscover]


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

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

From an article by Joshua Dubois here.

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

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

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

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

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


The President does not talk about this.


Two things:

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

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