Thursday, October 01, 2009

Hey, I'm the Victim Here!

This is from our "Are You Fucking Kidding Me?" file. I mean really, my fucking jaw dropped when I read this shit.

Turns out that I, along with the whole Farnsworth clan, are victims of the slavery system. Yes, that's right. Because my great-great-great-etc. grandfather, Rufus Leeking Farnsworth, owned slaves (jeez, after all, we came out of the "shallow south", i.e., Tennessee and Arkansas), then according to Glenn The Beckster's guru, one W. Cleon Skousen, it was the slave owners who suffered the most from slavery, and NOT the slaves!

Well, in words of Jane Ace, you coulda knocked me over with a fender!

Oh, and BTW, I do need to add that, in addition to his membership in the John Birch Society and other extremist rightwing organizations, that Skousen was also a Mormon. The same church that our Beckster, evidently coming down from a hangover of monumental proportions, joined and now crows about with the stereotypical zeal of the convert.

Over at Media Matters, you can read an in-depth analysis of the weirdness that is Skousen -- and of course, by extension, Glenn Beck himself.

I used to think that the Beckster, along with his moronic cohorts like Limpdick and Slanthead and mAnn Coulter, couldn't possibly believe the crap that they were spewing out on the peoples' airwaves. That the gurus recognized that they were nothing more than entertainers who gave their audience what they wanted...

But that was before I learned that Beck was a Mormon convert. And anyone that can even entertain the remote possibility that Joseph Smith was a "prophet, seer and revelator", chosen by god himself, is someone that will believe pretty much anything: Up is down, black is white, left is right, day is night ... the list is endless, but if the current "prophet, seer and revelator" of the church dictates it, then the true believer (in other words, the theologically retarded challenged) will have to parrot the new party line, regardless of whether it makes sense or not.

I am not making this shit up. It's true. I have had the occasion to know personally a number of Mormons over the years, and when The One True Church finally, if belatedly, recognized in the mid-1970s that they were being racist and changed the rules on African-American membership in The One True Church, many of them were privately disgruntled (racist as they were and pretty much still remain) but publicly extolled the virtues of the "prophet, seer and revelator" by having a new "revelation from god" that absolutely contradicted every other "revelation" about the "Negro Problem" that any previous "prophet, seer and revelator" at the head of the church had dictated. Which included the whole "curse of Cain" crap from a theology that went out of favor -- and credibility -- about the time of the First Crusade.

So back to my ancestor the slaveholder. I'll bet that Grampa Farnsworth is resting easy in his grave these days. Despite the fact that he actually enlisted and fought for the confederacy, lost a leg in the process, and ended up in the so-called "Indian Nation" (aka Oklahoma) where he found a bride among the Cherokees and spawned a progeny that includes me, the most liberal of the Farnsworth dynasty, he should be happy that we are all, to this very day, among the uncounted white victims of slavery...

Obama as Hitler. Again.

Jesus, will somebody give this a rest? In Sunday's edition of our local newspaper, some moron wrote a screed on that favorite wingnut topic, Obama is like Hitler Because...

Here's the full text of the letter (without the dope's name -- I don't want him to get any more publicity than is necessary -- but it does rhyme with "dunce"...):

A recent Olympian article by Leonard Pitts, columnist for the Miami Herald, strongly objected to comparing Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler.
Hitler was a skilled schemer, politician, organizer. Obama definitely exercises the same skill levels.
Hitler acquired his following through his ability to arouse street crowds with his speeches. Obama, with his teleprompter, accomplishes the same.
Hitler and Obama began their political careers with small groups; Hitler with the German Workers Party, later becoming fuhrer (leader) of the Nazi Party. Obama, with the infamous political group ACORN, as a community organizer and now a U.S. president.
Hitler organized his private army of hoodlums known as storm troopers and later the SS or Schutzstaffel. Obama has expressed his demand for a civilian youth corps equal to our military. Kindergartners next? Why?
Hitler involved himself strongly in labor unions, business, industry, agriculture. Why? Obama destroys our infrastructure, demanding government intrusion into our financial world, industrial capacity, labor unions, energy, health care, education, communications. Why? Obama is making fools of us all.
For every "why" the answer: Conquest, power, control, mind manipulation — socialism. Hitler demanded a strong socialistic central government. Obama, demanding the same, is still in the process of implementing his socialistic master plan for America. Where will it end?
History will judge.
Hitler in hating Jewish people became a racist monster, spreading death as no man before.
All true Americans, blessed by our Constitution, freedom and liberty, absolutely must keep this nation a free republic, for our children and future generations.
God, I am so fucking sick of this shit, and this one was the last straw. So here is my response to this dickhead, submitted to the paper that same day. On Monday I got called with the usual questions (i.e., "did you write it yourself?" "Is it a form letter?" etc.), so it ought to be in print within a week.
Fox News followers and lockstep Limbaugh listeners (aka "dittoheads") can apparently parrot the "Barack Obama is like Adolf Hitler because…" crap endlessly, with reckless abandon, as we saw in Sunday's letters. And sadly, the reasonable-sounding sophistry of this specious "proof" can have a certain superficial appeal.
While you can use those same arguments in a comparison between pretty much any politician and Adolf Hitler, I am particularly amused by applying them to a much different icon of the US Presidency, Ronald Reagan.
Reagan, too, "acquired his following through his ability to arouse … crowds with his speeches"; "involved himself strongly in labor unions, business, industry, agriculture"; "was a skilled schemer, politician, organizer"; and "began his political career with small groups" (e.g., the Screen Actor's Guild and the GE board of directors, at whose bidding he once railed unsuccessfully against the freedom-killing "socialist slavery" of Medicare).
Those who blindly follow the rightwing's marching orders, without exercising a single iota of critical thinking, are the sheep that the true wannabe dictators of this nation can happily call on to bleat on command whatever absurd talking-points they want them to spout.
Thus we have a litany of "Obama is not an American; Obama is a socialist; Obama is a fascist; Obama is a communist" etc. etc. Who knows what'll be next, but I don't think they can do much better than their "Obama is a fascist-communist-socialist-racist-atheist-Muslim-Kenyan-radical" rant.
About the only thing left is "Obama is a War-of-the-Worlds Martian".
Watch for it.
While I was pretty much free to choose most any politician as representing those talking points, I was more than happy to apply them to Saint Ronald, in a blatant attempt to piss off the letter writer and the literally dozens of Rethugs that we have in the liberal bastion of sanity (mostly) that is the state capital.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Still More Treasonous Rethugs

Remember that movie from the early 60s, Seven Days in May?

The story was a fictional account of a planned military coup of the President of the United States. Altogether a fascinating premise and a terrific motion picture, but it was obviously speculative fiction of the it-can't-happen-here genre.

But now we're forced to ask, "Or can it?"

Some dickwad named John Perry, a regular columnist over at über-fascist rag and wingnut website Newsmax -- which is a monetarily-supplied quasi-subsidiary of the RNC, no less -- just came out with one of his regular columns, this one entitled "Obama Risks a Military Intervention", wherein he appears to fall just milimeters short of calling for the military to overthrow the Obama Presidency. As a backdoor trapdoor escape from charges of blatant treason, he says that that he is "describing what may be afoot" but that "is not to advocate it".

Bullshit. I don't give a rip how many mealy-mouthed fake "disclaimers" he struts out, he is calling for a military takeover, an armed coup.

Which he claims will be "bloodless". Yeah, right, and I can play center field for the Yankees.

Immediately after the leftwing blogosphere got ahold of this, Newsmax took it off of their website. But never fear, Con Web Watch, which keeps a constant eye on this kind of thing, managed to get a copy off of Newsmax and onto their own server. You can read it at http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/graphics/nmperrycoup.pdf.

And I think I'll keep my own personal copy as well. If there was ever a candidate document for permanent flushing down the Memory Hole, this is it, so a few months from now that can deny that it ever existed.

What am I saying? If Obama papered the Washington Monument with copies of it and projected on the wall of the Pentagon, they'd still deny that it ever existed.

Anyway, what Perry is advocating (his denials aside) stops little short of treason. The question is how much longer can we as a nation continue to function with this constant yapping in the background, these constant calls for the overthrow of the US Constitution and the end of our representative democratic republic?

Of course I think that was is partially behind this crap is the feeling on the part of those doing it that they are hoping for a confrontation and a silencing. That way they can dance around like headless chickens shouting, "See, told ya so. Police state! Repression! Communist Fascists killed free speech!"

It's Banned Books Week

Every year the American Library Association, along with others, "celebrates" Banned Books Week, while extolling the freedom to read.

From their website:

Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.
Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.
The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings. Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections. Imagine how many more books might be challenged—and possibly banned or restricted—if librarians, teachers, and booksellers across the country did not use Banned Books Week each year to teach the importance of our First Amendment rights and the power of literature, and to draw attention to the danger that exists when restraints are imposed on the availability of information in a free society.
Check them out. There's a lot of information on their site, including lists of banned books, and ways you can help in your community.

It's always interesting, but not surprising, that the Religious Right and other "social conservatives" of their ilk are always in the forefront of the torch-and-pitchfork mobs demanding that a book be banned, isn't it? I think the tip-off was that "intellectual freedom" thing. It's a concept that scares them to death.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Inciting to Murder is a Crime. In Fact, It's Treason

Back in my earliest days at college I, along with a bunch of other we-can-save-the-world freshmen, used to occasionally engage in the "What If" game. You know, what if you could back to Ford's Theater in 1865 and stop John Wilkes Booth from shooting Abraham Lincoln? How would things be different today?

Sure, it was basically a college bull session, but it was a fun intellectual exercise. However, there was also a "moral dilemma" version: What if you could go back to Munich in 1923 and kill Adolf Hitler, knowing that you likely would die yourself if you did it?

Pretty universally we all agreed that we would do it. You know, that old sacrifice yourself for the greater good ethos. And even today, I can say that given the opportunity I would still do it. Remember, Hitler was a historical malignancy, a butcher, a mass-murderer of unlimited proportions and unthinkable evil. Hell, yes, I'd do it.

"Farnsworth, so what?" I can hear you saying.

Just this. Wackjob Congressman Trent Frank of Arizona, at last week's wingnut thugfest in Washington DC, said the following:

Obama's first act as president of any consequence, in the middle of a financial meltdown, was to send taxpayers' money overseas to pay for the killing of unborn children in other countries. Now I gotta tell you, a president that will do that, here's almost nothing that you should be surprised at after that. You shouldn't, we shouldn't be shocked that he does all these other insane things. A president that has lost his way that badly, that has no ability to see the image of God in these little fellow human beings, if he can't do that right, then he has no place in any station of government and we need to realize that he is an enemy of humanity.
I added the emphasis there to show what these assholes are really about. It's an easy step from a United States Congressman calling the President of the United States "an enemy of humanity" to someone taking my old "What If" game to a logical level, updated for a new century.

Yes, I'm talking about the assassination of the President by some halfwit wacko convinced that he is saving the world, saving humanity, saving god from the liberal-commie-fascists embodied in the form of the antichrist Barack Obama.

And of course all those loudmouth agents provocateur, those inciters to murder on the right, will throw up their hands in mock dismay at the very notion that anyone would take what they say seriously.

Oh, and what does Franks say when the uproar ensued? He issued one of those half-assed Rethug non-apologies and then sent an aide out to confuse the "liberal" media with the Obama birth certificate distraction -- "Oooo, look, shiny keys!"

Fuck Franks. If someone does try to take out the president, then at the very least Franks and all of his fuckwit cronies on the right (are you listening, Crybaby Beck, Slanthead Hannity and Bill Orally?) ought to be indicted for treason. They will be criminal conspiracy accessories before the fact of the murder of the president, and I while I don't personally believe in the use of the death penalty, I'd be willing to make an exception in their case. After all, they believe in it, and who are we to deny them something that they fully and unequivocally support?

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Poe's Law

Sometimes you see something that is so obvious, so naturally right-on, that you end up scratching your head in wonder that you've never heard of it before.

This morning I stumbled on a terrific new (to me) blog The Bay of Fundie, Keeping the Radical Right at Bay, where I discovered this little gem:

Serious fundie watchers are familiar with Poe’s Law. But like any concept that is mostly internet based, you may encounter it many times before finally finding out what it is.
...
[Quoting from the Urban Dictionary] “Similar to Murphy’s Law, Poe’s Law concerns internet debates, particularly regarding religion or politics.
'Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing.'
In other words, No matter how bizarre, outrageous, or just plain idiotic a parody of a Fundamentalist may seem, there will always be someone who cannot tell that it is a parody, having seen similar REAL ideas from real religious/political Fundamentalists.[emphasis added]
I bolded that last phrase, because that’s an important part. Another way of phrasing this is to say that some fundies are so absurd as to be self parodies.
We need that perspective on the definition to truly appreciate the almost Poe-worthy description over at Conservapedia. As we all know, Conservapedia is so ridiculous that it frequently is a self parody.

Be sure to scroll down the page to read the Conservapedia quotation and look at the hilarious comic panels.

I confess to a certain degree of personal chagrin when I consider that up to this point I was unfamiliar with Poe's Law, given how much I like to rail against the Religious Right.

Great stuff, and thanks to Ron Britton, the blog owner, for providing it. I'll be adding the site to my blogroll and reading it regularly.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Scalia: Out of the Theocracy Closet

As if we didn't have enough to worry about, now I learn -- sadly to no surprise -- that SCOTUS flack Antonin "Quack-Quack" Scalia has finally come out of the theocracy closet and stated that "whatever the Establishment Clause means, it certainly does not mean that government cannot accommodate religion, and indeed favor religion."

In an exclusive interview published in, of all places, a Brooklyn newspaper called Hamodia: The Daily Newspaper of Torah Jewry, we get a fascinating -- albeit frightening -- look inside the mind of Scalia, and it's not a pretty sight:

When I first joined the Court, I needed to spend a lot of time researching what the original understanding was, since the lawyers would just quote the last Supreme Court case. There are now two for sure, thoroughgoing originalists on the Court, Clarence Thomas and myself. And I think the Court as a whole has become more receptive to originalism. I think - or perhaps I just hope - that American jurisprudence is moving away from an evolving Constitution to an enduring Constitution.
I have been here for a long time now - 23 years. In that time, I think the Court has become more receptive to the needs of religious practice. We have allowed government practices that favor religion, practices to which, in the 60s and 70s, we were quite hostile. Earlier we weren’t hostile. When I was in elementary school in Queens you were able to get out early on Wednesdays for religious instruction. In the early 1950s the ACLU challenged this as violating the Establishment Clause...
A decade later the Court changed its mind and adopted the so-called principle of neutrality - which states that the government cannot favor religion over non-religion. This is not an accurate representation of what Americans believe. The Court itself has contradicted that principle a number of times - including the case approving tax exemptions for houses of worship (Walz v. Tax Commission) and cases approving paid chaplains in state and federal legislatures. More recently we have allowed the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas State Legislature. I think we have been moving back towards what the American Constitution provided.
I am not sure how Orthodox Jews feel about the Establishment Clause, but I assume they do not like driving G-d out of public life. We had a monumental decision last term involving the Establishment Clause, which has been the principal instrument to that end. During the Kennedy administration, Congress passed a bill that gave federal aid to public and private schools. It was challenged by the ACLU, and the Supreme Court ultimately disallowed the aid to private schools. The case that allowed that suit to proceed, Flast v. Cohen, reversed a long-standing principle of law that there was no standing to challenge a law simply because you are a taxpayer. Flast v. Cohen says a taxpayer who is not personally affected has standing to challenge an alleged violation of the Establishment Clause. Last term we limited that holding to suits challenging congressional action. To challenge executive action on Establishment Clause grounds you must be personally affected.
Did you get that bit about "driving g-d [sic] out of public life"? I don't know about your town, but where I live you pretty much can't throw a rock without striking a church. You can't get much more public than that, and I don't see any of them having to tear down their steeples so the "public" won't be offended by looking at them.

There's a lot more to this wide-ranging interview, including near the bottom of the article this little gem: "My court has a series of opinions that say that the Constitution requires neutrality on the part of the government, not just between denominations, not just between Protestants, Jews and Catholics, but neutrality between religion and non-religion. I do not believe that. That is not the American tradition."

Cut through to the core and this means that all of us godless secular humanists out here in the Reality-Based Community are going to be fucked big time if the theocrats, aided and abetted by the likes of Scalia and his ilk, ever get their Dominionist way.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Palin's Pallin' Around with Who?????

According to reports out of Hong Kong, Sarah I-See-London-I-See-Russia Palin spoke before a rapt -- or is that wrapped? -- audience in her first foray into the international-woman-of-mystery scene.

Reactions were ... mixed, shall we say. One European delegate to the CLSA Investors' Forum said that "she was brilliant". He spoke, however, under conditions of anonymity. Jeez, imagine that...

Two US delegates walked out, with one saying -- also anonymously -- that "it was awful, we couldn’t stand it any longer".

Read the snarky report over at The Raw Story, and you Rethugs out there, maybe you can explain this:

Palin also tackled the recent US trade spat with China, a country she said the United States should have the best possible relationship with.
According to delegates, she said US President Barack Obama’s administration worsened an already difficult situation when earlier this month he slapped duties on Chinese tire imports blamed for costing American jobs.
So, if I'm getting this right, Sarah Palin, after accusing Barack Obama with "pallin' around with terrorists", is now pallin' around with ... Communists??????

Oh, the horror, the horror...

Monday, September 21, 2009

Taking Our Country Back, One Sucky Job at a Time

And it's about fucking time. Now there's a HU-U-U-U-GE movement on the part of Real Americans to stem the tide of illegal immigration by Taking Our Jobs Back.

And I'm talking about REAL jobs, not some layabout medical-insuranced retirement-planned do-nothing getover government job like, say, air traffic controllers or police officers or firefighters. No! We're talking about REAL jobs for REAL people.

Like washing dishes and cleaning toilets and picking lettuce and working on the killing floor in slaughterhouses and shit like that. Now there'll be no more of that waiting "at home on their couches, with an ice-cold Coors, a family-sized bag of Chee-tos and a clicker in their hands as they wait around for the job that never seems to materialize."

No More, I say! And not only No More, but HELLA NO MORE!!!

Thanks to my blog-buddy Alicia over at Last Left Turn Before Hooterville, I just got educated on this whole new movement:

Yes, from the ashes of the failed Minute-Man Movement, the Gimme Back My Job, Dammit Coalition (GBMJ,DC) has risen, and it has spread like wildfire among conservatives sick and tired of illegals taking the jobs from deserving American citizens. No longer content to wait for the government to do it for them, these patriots have taken matters into their own hands. Now they're doing more than just protesting or watching from the sidelines - they're taking back their Constitutional, God-given right to a job. Suddenly, you see them everywhere - on the sidewalk with a leaf-blower strapped to their back, in the parking lot of your favorite restaurant with the keys to your car or inside, balancing a heavy-laden bus tray full of dirty dishes as they adroitly refill your iced tea glass on their way back to the kitchen. You may find them bent over in a lettuce field under a blistering sun with a rake in their hand, or endangering their limbs with casually-maintained but lethally sharp meat-cutting machinery for fourteen hours or more a day while earning somewhere around three dollars an hour, with no benefits, medical insurance, workman's compensation, or even bathroom breaks.
Most of them say they've never been happier.
"For the first time in my life, I feel needed," says Coalition member Chuck B. Liggett, 70, a former accountant who now works in a chicken-packing plant in Amarillo, Texas. "When the floor boss screams at me for slowing down, I feel a surge of pride because what I do actually matters. Now, I do an honest day's work for my pay, and by the time I collapse on my filthy mattress on the floor of my stinking room at the end of my fifteen-hour shift, I know I really earned that forty dollars!"
Really, why should those goddam illegals take all of the good jobs and get all the fucking breaks? I mean, hello, welcome to the real world, people...

You can read the whole thing over at Alicia's blog. It's well worth it.

Sidebar to Alicia: You go, girlfriend and I hope to see you in DC again this November.

Blunt-Boehner 2012: The GOP Dream Ticket

I note with some amusement that Huckleberry Huckabee won by a wide margin the straw poll at the so-called Values Voter Summit this weekend.

This sets up what many in the wingnuttery see as a GOP "dream ticket" for 2012: Huckabee and Palin.

Actually that's not a bad team for them to front: Those two just happen to be the most Religious-Right fundo-annointed wackjob candidates that they could possibly come up with.

And two of the most easily-defeatable candidates that the Dems could possibly confront.

But all that aside, I have another suggestion for the Rethugs:


Missouri's Roy Blunt and Ohio's John Boehner* are both good foot soldiers in the GOP. As a former GOP senator Roman Hruska said in a different context (the attempt by Tricky Dick Nixon to elevate G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court), "...there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance?"

Indeed.

[* Okay, don't get your panties in a bunch; I know that he likes it pronounced "Beyner", but come on, who can really pass this up...?]

Friday, September 18, 2009

A Ricochet of "Love it or Leave it"

Back in the day, the watchword was aimed as us dirty hippie war protesters: "America: Love it or Leave it". It has such a snappy cadence and pointed message that it resurfaced in this decade, aimed at those of us in the reality-based community who were opposed to the regime of Baby Doc Bush and the BFEE

Ah, how the worm has turned, the shoe is on the other foot, etc etc.

Now it's our turn to throw it back on them. How sweet it is, in a big-time schadenfreude way.

Danny Schechter, over at OpEdNews.com, has prepared a ready-made form letter for all of the teabaggers and others of their ilk to show the courage of their convictions and cancel their Social Security and all of those other bad-government programs that they ought to, if they are not rank hypocrites, refuse to participate in:

DECLARATION OF PERSONAL INDEPENDENCE FROM GOVERNMENT
To: The Administrator, Social Security Administration
Kathleen Sebelius,, Secretary, Health and Human Services
and all other relevant government officials and departments.
I am a [(check one) man woman other FOX news employee] over the age of 65. I am (check one) white.
In the spirit of the 9-12 movement and the vision promulgated by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and the Republican Party and its fellow travelers, I, the undersigned, hereby revoke all my current government benefits.
I hereby reject and repudiate my Medicare benefits and all other forms of Social Security. Despite my disabilities or the onset of various medical complications, my personal political philosophy dictates that I can no longer participate in what I consider an oppressive bureaucratic [(check one) Socialist Nazi Fascist Obamaist system].
...
I base my decision on information I've gathered from [(check one) cable news my local bar World Wrestling Federation my friends and associates]. What's more, I have skimmed legislation proposed by non-American President Barack Hussein Obama and his do-nothing-I-like Congress, and what I've read sounds like something straight out of [(check one) Nazi Germany Communist Russia/China/ North Korea/Canada Terrorist Iran And All Those Other Countries Sweden New York City, especially Green Witch Village all of the above].
...
I will also stop using the Internet because I have learned that its development was funded initially with national defense funds, not Al Gore's personal wealth. I am considering returning my driver's license because the government should not be regulating my freedom to travel. Ditto for other public services or any and all so-called "options." I reject all options.
There's a lot more of it, so be sure to read the whole thing. You can even print it up and have it ready the next time that IBIL* of yours starts ranting about the "god damn communist-fascist government" of Barack Obama. That ought to shut him up for a while.

[*IBIL = Idiot Brother-in-Law]

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Glenn Beck to Get "Key to the City" of Mt. Vernon WA???

Out here in the Wet Corner of the country (i.e., Washington State), and especially in the liberal enclave that is the state capital, we tend to get kind of smug about our liberal bona fides.

I mean after all, going back in history, the IWW was a strong presence here in the early part of the last century, the first general strike in the nation occurred in Seattle, and we've tended to vote -- in many cases lopsidedly -- for the progressive presidential candidate in nearly all of our elections... The list goes on.

Which, as I say, makes us kind of smug about our progressive outlook.

But some of us tend to take a peek outside the liberal fishbowl that is the Seattle-to-Olympia corridor -- where most of the liberal voters live -- and remember that history has some other lessons to teach us.

Such as the Centralia Massacre and the Everett Massacre and the fact that the Discovery Institute, the country's premier anti-rationalist "think tank" devoted to so-called "Intelligent Design", has its headquarters in Seattle.

Not to mention that the founder and HMFIC for many years of the Xian political movement "The Family", one Abraham Vereide, got his start in Seattle, and from that has sprung the whole C Street protection-of-Republican-assholes-at-any-cost bullshit.

And, finally, the fact that über-fascist and full-time Rethug moron Glenn Beck is a native of Mount Vernon, Washington... Which is less than an hour's drive away from Bellingham, where I attended college. Which, even back in the day, had a reputation as being a bastion of regressive knuckledragging wingnut morons who were outraged that the radical institution of a -- gasp -- state college even existed within their "sphere of influence"...

So now the reactionary knuckledragging pillars of the community of Mount Vernon are proclaiming that Glenn Beck, aka Mister Ima Fukkin Asshole is Top Dog and the mayor is giving him "the key to the city".

No, I don't know what exactly that key will open, since there aren't any brothels or Chinese opium dens left in Mount Vernon, but it's still an outrage.

BTW, need I mention that Glenn Beck, in addition to being a fulltime asshole and race-baiting industrial-strength moron, is also an industrial-strength Mormon and a self-confessed "recovering" alcoholic and drug addict? Who graduated rom Sehome HS in that bastion and hotbed of liberalism that is Bellingham WA?

This is all supposed to transpire on September 26th. I'm tempted to drive up there, just so I can ask Mister Beck why he wasn't at the "million moron march" in The Other Washington last weekend.

I'm just sayin'...

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Domestic Violence is a "Pre-existing Condition"???

In one of the most jarring WTF moments I've had in a long time, I've just learned that domestic violence is legally considered a pre-existing condition as grounds for denying health insurance in eight states and Washington DC.

See the shocking story on Buzzflash, and then tell me again why the Rethugs want to stifle all health insurance reforms.

Oh, yeah. They're the party of "family values". I forgot.

Mad Men

Welcome back, Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. In case you missed the debut return episode last night, here's a clip that shows (1) The hypocrisy of the Rethugs, and (2) The Daily Show's still got it.

Allie at One

You might remember last year when my first (and so far only) great-grand-daughter, Alianna Catalina Avalos-Bazan, was born.

Well, now she's a year older and way cuter:


She is, of course, the most beautiful baby in the world.

And no, I'm not at all biased...

Monday, September 14, 2009

The Generals Take Off the Gloves

There's a must-read piece on the Miami Herald op-ed page today, written by two retired USMC generals, Charles Krulak and Joseph Hoar about Darth Cheney. It's called Fear Was No Excuse to Condone Torture, and it pulls no punches in its criticism of the former VP:

[W]e never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas -- and his scare tactics.
We have seen how ill-conceived policies that ignored military law on the treatment of enemy prisoners hindered our ability to defeat al Qaeda. We have seen American troops die at the hands of foreign fighters recruited with stories about tortured Muslim detainees at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. And yet Cheney and others who orchestrated America's disastrous trip to "the dark side'' continue to assert -- against all evidence -- that torture "worked'' and that our country is better off for having gone there.
In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Cheney applauded the "enhanced interrogation techniques'' -- what we used to call "war crimes'' because they violated the Geneva Conventions, which the United States instigated and has followed for 60 years. Cheney insisted the abusive techniques were "absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks against the United States.'' He claimed they were "directly responsible for the fact that for eight years, we had no further mass casualty attacks against the United States. It was good policy . . . It worked very, very well.''
Repeating these assertions doesn't make them true. We now see that the best intelligence, which led to the capture of Saddam Hussein and the elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was produced by professional interrogations using non-coercive techniques. When the abuse began, prisoners told interrogators whatever they thought would make it stop.
Torture is as likely to produce lies as the truth. And it did.
There's a lot more to this opinion piece, and it's worth reading the whole thing.

So who are these two Bin-Laden-loving Al Qaeda-enabling America-hating cowardly disgraces to their uniforms? Only a former commandant of the Marine Corps and a former commander-in-chief of the US Central Command.

It's going to be interesting to see if Clusterfox News even covers this, and if they do, what tactics they will take to discredit these two highly-decorated general officers, e.g., "Why do the generals hate America so much?"

Thursday, September 10, 2009

"YOU LIE!"

By now everyone has seen -- or at least heard of -- Rethug Congressman Joe Wilson (R-Deepsouth Racist) calling the president of the United States a liar during a joint session of congress.

In case you've been under a rock, here's the video clip from last night's address:



Naturally the wingnut pigs on Faux News and the rightwing airwaves have been falling over themselves, predictably, with variations on "The Democrats did it to Bush", etc. etc.

Now is the time to call bullshit on that. I challenge anyone to come up with a video that shows anything even mildly similar to this incident. My next month's salary to the lucky rightwing pinhead who can do it. Good luck to you on trying to find it.

Anyway, back to Wilson. After seeing the shitstorm he'd created, he did call the White House later last night to apologize personally to Obama. His phone call, however, was taken by Rahm Emanuel, who said he'd pass it on.

While it wasn't entirely one of those famous Republican-patented non-apology apologies, it did come pretty close: "This evening I let my emotions get the best of me. While I disagree with the president's statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility."

Bullshit. That isn't good enough. He needs to apologize to Congress for his boorish and totally uncalled-for behavior, and to the the American people.

Good luck on that happening.

In the larger picture, though, if a member of Congress can get that carried away with his emotions, to call the President of the United States, addressing a joint session of Congress on national television a liar -- shouting it out -- because he let his emotions get the best of him, then maybe members of Congress as well as the general public need to pass through metal detectors before they take their seats. Who's to say that the next time some Rethug (it's always them, isn't it) gets so wound up that he'll open fire with an Uzi streetsweeper?

Okay, back to Wilson. His bio says that he was in the military (albeit the Army Reserve and National Guard) from 1972 to 1975. As an officer! When I was in the military, pretty close to the same time as Wilson -- except of course I went to Vietnam and he didn't -- it was beaten into our heads that no matter what kind of an asshole your superior officer happened to be, you had to respect the rank, if not the person.

And that apparently is a lesson that Wilson never learned. Or chose to forget. I can just imagine what would have happened to some hapless 2nd Lieutenant who let his "emotions get the best of him" and shouted at Wilson "You lie!" during a military formation.

And that's why Wilson's outburst is even more reprehensible. It's one thing for a no-nothing idiot first-term freshman congressman to let something like that slip out. It's something else for an experienced politician who was also a military officer to do it.

Wilson' opponent in next year's election is a guy named Rob Miller, who is also a veteran (a real veteran) of 13 years in the Marine Corps, including two tours in Iraq, and a Democrat!

Rob is going to need some funds to send this neanderthal Rethug pig packing. Please contribute as much as you can to his campaign.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Damn Uppity Negroes!

I hear that Good Ole Boy Saxby Chambliss (R-Racist) is mouthing some shit about Obama better be showin' some "humility" at his speech tomorrow.

Okay, is there anyone left in this country with a brain that doesn't know what he means?

He means this: That damned Negro needs to stop bein' so goddam uppity!

Anybody doubt that? I grew up in the south(ern) US in the 1950s, and I know what that means.

The "Indoctrination" Speech and the GOP Rebuttal

After weeks of tempest-in-a-teapot whining about that goddam fascist communist in the White House's plans to indoctrinate America's school children with his unAmerican ideas, the speech finally happened today.

And, just as predicted, it was just chock full of anti-American rhetoric and exhortations.

Over at The Daily Kos, Hunter presents the contents of the official Repug Party rebuttal, stolen from the desk of Michael Steele, and it's "presented in no particular order, because keeping track of things is hard":

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today?
That's a personal question, children, and you don't have to answer it.
When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years.
HE ADMITS IT! HE ADMITS IT! And Indonesia is RIGHT NEXT TO KENYA. (Teachers, please remove all maps and globes from the classroom at this point.)
* * *
Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class.
Don't knock yourself out on it, though, because intellectual endeavor is for liberals and communists. But the three most nonsensical essays will be published by Regnery Publishing. Any of you proving to have exceptional illiteracy will be made Fox News anchors.
There's a lot more, so I encourage you to read the whole thing. And then wonder along with me if this isn't satire at all, but the text of the actual rebuttal... At this point, when the Repugs are engaging in tragic (for the rest of us) self-parody, it's pretty hard to keep one step ahead of them.

Friday, September 04, 2009

Speaking of Town Halls and the Pricks Who Attend Them...

Okay, maybe I was a little premature in saying that the steam was running out for the (dis)loyal opposition. My friend Debby reminded me of something that had happened two days earlier at our local town hall, and then sent me a video of a portion of Brian Baird's town hall in Vancouver...

It's not the whole thing, obviously, just a snippet of some jerkwad dickhead asshole ex-Marine "standing up" to Baird. So it turns out that the same prick jumped up at the Olympia town hall and pulled the "It's Not in the Constitution" card on Baird last Monday.

Check it out. The guy has his own YouTube site where he posts not only this crap but also apparently is an enabler of the whole Obama-Hitler-Health-Care-Equals-Nazis blah-blah--blah crowd, and -- surprise, surprise -- it turns out that he is also running against Baird for his seat in Congress.

Naturally I posted my own comment on this video:

I am also a disabled veteran (Vietnam) and I am proud to say, Mister Hedrick, that YOU DO NOT SPEAK FOR ME!
I am for a single payer health care system. I get the best health care in the world in the VA system. Why can't my fellow Americans avail themselves of the same thing?
I am also a resident of Washington's Third Congressional District, and I will do my god damnedest to see that YOU are not elected as my congressman. No way, no where, no how!
Semper Fi, dude.
I really thought it would be shitcanned, never to see the light of day, but there it is, on his YouTube site.

Now, as much as I disagree with Brian Baird on SO many issues, I feel that am forced to join -- or start, if there isn't one already -- a Veterans for Brian Baird group, just to see this turdbrained asshole get his lunch handed to him on a silver platter.

I am fucking sick, as a matter of fact, of assholes like this pretending to speak for me as a disabled veteran. I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to confront this prick when he disrupted Brian's town hall here in Olympia.

But, I get the feeling, that I'll still get my opportunity. It's a long time to the elections of 2010.

Stay tuned...

Thursday, September 03, 2009

Another Week, Another Town Hall. Ho Hum.

Last night I went to Brian Baird, my own congressman's, town hall. Due to family obligations, I had to miss the one here in my own city, so I had to drive a few miles to the south and attend the town hall in the next county over.

Of course there was someone from "the other side" taking names ... in a way -- she demanded of everyone coming through the door where they lived. My buddy Ralph told her he lived in Thurston County, "which is part of the Third Congressional District" he added, as a reminder to the neandethals living in Lewis County that they are not the center of the universe. In return he got a sneer that silently called him a carpetbagger. Or worse.

I just uttered a guttural "third district" and pushed past her. Somewhat to her surprise and chagrin, it appeared.

The town hall, by the way, was held in the auditorium of the local community college, which, surprisingly, is now the home of the controversial "Twelve Labors of Hercules" mural. The mural, an almost-abstract study in black and white, adorned the state House of Representatives chamber for a number of years. Until the Republicans took over the state government and then, in true form, found the murals "pornographic" and draped them. After almost ten years, the community college in Centralia adopted them and now they are on display there.

So it was good to see them again, still alive, after all these years.

I think the steam is running out of the opposition. Since Lewis County is the home of that infamous Uncle Sam billboard and is top heavy with NRA guns-n-god wackos, I really expected more in the way of wingnut craziness -- you know, this health care proposal goes against the constitution, Obama is out to enslave us, the Democrats are gonna take away our goddam guns, blah blah blah. But by and large, even though the knuckledraggers outnumbered the smart people about 4 to 1, the crowd was pretty well-behaved.

Damn it. I was hoping for some of that good old fashioned fascist-thug-shouting-down-the-opposition stuff.

Monday, August 31, 2009

Five Symptoms of Rethug Schizophrenia

It's now official. The Republican Party is clinically insane.

The Mayo Clinic definition of schizophrenia: A serious brain disorder in which reality is interpreted abnormally resulting in hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thinking and behavior.

Over at Crooks and Liars, Jon Perr delivers the diagnosis:

  1. Keep Government Out of Medicare.
  2. Barack Obama is a Muslim.
  3. Barack Obama Was Not Born in the United States.
  4. Government Death Panels Will Euthanize My Grandma.
  5. President Obama Raised Taxes on Working People.
These are the things that Republicans believe -- really believe!

Go read the whole thing for a patient, thorough point-by-point deconstruction of these beliefs. The already-well-known phenomenon of "Obama Derangement Syndrome" is just a part of it.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Vets Group Demands Apology from GOP, Faux News

The group is Veterans for Common Sense and they've called out ClusterFox News and the Rethug party for lying about that "death book" which allegedly calls on veterans to kill themselves:

The claim that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has a manual encouraging veterans to "commit suicide," made by Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, is an asinine assertion with no basis in fact.
Steele made the charge two days ago (August 25th) on FOX News. Steele's egregious comments are an outrageous slander against VA designed to create an atmosphere of mistrust and fear among the millions of our veterans who rely on the VA for medical care. Veterans demand an apology from Steele and FOX News.
"Let me be absolutely clear, Steele lied. There is no VA manual encouraging veterans to commit suicide," said Paul Sullivan, the executive director of VCS, a non-profit based in Washington, DC providing advocacy for veterans, especially veterans with mental health conditions.
Here's that link again to the actual pamphlet. If you read it, you will be ahead of Michael Steele, Chris Wallace and every other talking-without-thinking meat puppet quasi-pundit on the right. Of course, if you are reading this blog, then you already are way ahead of them...

I guess it was just a matter of time before the wingnut thugs got around to trying to scare veterans. They've pretty much run though everyone else. Fuckers.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

A Great White Hope?

Still don't think that the Republican party is the home of racists? Go no farther than Kansas, where freshman congressional representative Lynn Jenkins said, on August 19 at a political forum, that the Rethugs are still looking for "a great white hope" to defeat Barack Obama.

A "great white hope", for people who have been living under a rock, who haven't the first clue about history, sports and racism, and who don't go to movies, refers to the search for a white boxer who could defeat Jack Johnson, described by Ken Burns as "the most famous and most notorious African-American on earth".

And, naturally when it comes to pretty much anyone in the Rethug party apologizing for anything, she issued one of those famous "non-apology" apologies:

"She apologizes if her words have offended anyone," Jenkins spokeswoman Mary Geiger told The Associated Press. "That was not the intent in any way, shape or form."
At an event at University of Kansas in Lawrence, Jenkins denied she was speaking in racial terms and said she meant only that the GOP needs "a bright light."
"I was unaware of any negative connotation, and if I offended anybody, obviously, I apologize," Jenkins told the Lawrence Journal-World. [Emphasis added]
Jeez, gimme a break already. Is she really so out of touch that she thinks that way? If so, she really doesn't belong in the House of Representatives. Especially not from Kansas, whose history in race relations is such that the biggie of all US Supreme Court decisions regarding segregation came out of Kansas. The Brown v. Board of Education case came out of Topeka, Kansas, and not out of, say, Selma, Alabama.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Town Hall Meeting and the VA "Death Book"

Last night I attended a congressional town hall with Adam Smith (D-WA 9th) with a crowd of nearly 2000 people. So many people, in fact, that the venue had to be changed twice, finally ending up in a high school stadium.

The crowd, as you can imagine, was restive, but this time the pro health care reform people outnumbered the astroturfers by about 2 to 1. And you know how it is with bullies -- if they are outnumbered, they tend to be less offensive, less pushy. Less asshole-y.

Plus Adam Smith is a pro at working a crowd, and he handled the few vocal hecklers pretty well. The only fracas that developed happened when some jerkwad held up one of those infamous Obama-as-Hitler posters. Everyone around him started shouting, "Put that picture down!" Naturally he refused to do it, and finally someone tore it away from him, crumpled it up and threw it over the railing onto the field. Then a small scuffle broke out, but I was sitting too far away to see any of the details of it.

But that was the only incident really worth mentioning. Otherwise people who were asking questions of the congressman were by and large respectful, even those who disagreed with him.

One guy got up and asked Smith if he knew about the "death book" that was being passed out by the VA and asked him to have it pulled from all VA facilities. Smith said he didn't know about it, but that he would look into it. Then the guy said that he'd heard about it on Fox News Sunday...

The crowd -- at least our 2/3 of it -- groaned loudly and almost in unison. I think the guy was a little put off that his favorite ox had been gored.

That VA "death book", by the way, is a pamphlet entitled "Your Life, Your Choices", and you can read it for yourself. Go ahead and then tell me whether it's a "death book" that advises ailing veterans to commit suicide, as we are being told by Limpdick, Slanthead, and especially Michael Oxymoronic-Black-Republican Steele.

Ted Kennedy RIP

So long, Ted. It was great to have had you on our side.

This truly is the end of Camelot.

Now the best thing that the Dems in congress can do is to pass a health care reform bill that will honor your memory.

What about it, folks?

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Crazy Days, Crazy People

Last weekend I manned our local Americans United chapter table at our local annual Hempfest celebration. It's always interesting doing tabling, especially at something like Hempfest, and Saturday was no exception. Our spot was sandwiched in between a medical marijuana tent and some neo-hippies selling items made from hemp fibre, so we had a pretty good location.

Maybe too good.

First a woman came up and said that we (AU) should stop fighting god and that the Ten Commandments should be on display in every government office and classroom because we're a "Christian Nation". I told her that was a common misconception and handed her one of our "Is America a Christian Nation?" pamphlets that dispels -- succinctly and thoroughly -- that concept. She started shaking it in my face and yelling at me, and then as she was stomping away she shouted, "And god bless you!".

One of the girls at the next booth turned to me and said, "It didn't sound like she really wanted god to bless you..."

No, I'm sure she meant the opposite, but I was glad to see that she took the pamphlet with her.

About an hour later a man came up and immediately started into an intense unblinking monotone rant about the Federal Reserve and how we've been operating without a Constitution since March 4, 1933 (the inauguration of FDR), and that all members of Congress should be forced to swear allegiance to Jesus Christ and to the Constitution.

So then he kind of runs out of breath, because the first rant was done without inhaling, and then he says "You don't have a clue about what I'm talking about, do you?"

I was sorely tempted to advise him that, since he was a constitutional scholar and expert, then he knows that Article VI Section 3 provides that there shall be no religious test for holding public office. But I didn't, since this guy appeared to be fairly unhinged, several bubbles out of plumb, a dozen bricks shy of a load, etc etc. The last thing you want to do is try to reason with a crazy person.

"No, I really don't," I said instead.

Wrong answer, apparently, since then he started again from the top. It went by so fast that I couldn't get it all, but the gist of it was that the Federal Reserve has enslaved us since March 4, 1933 (that date was pretty important, evidently, since he mentioned it several times) and the only way out will be an armed and violent revolution. "Watch for it!" he yelled as he was walking away. "I don't have to worry because Jesus Christ is my savior!"

Like I've always said, Jesus, save me from your followers...

Monday, August 24, 2009

Spitting on Nancy Pelosi

My brother-in-law who lives in Hawaii and works in the medical field sends me wingnut stuff periodically, sometimes just to get my goat, but sometimes with actual questions. He unfortunately works in a rural part of the state with a number of reactionary wingnut medicos who are constantly trying to fill his mind with senseless rightwing bullshit.

So the other day he sends me a copy of this "open letter" written to the Speaker of the House by an attorney named Dennis L. Guthrie, who practices law in Charlotte, NC. The letter was dated August 11, 2009, so it is of recent vintage. I'm reproducing the whole thing here because it's actually quite humorous, in a bone-chilling car-wreck-on-the-freeway kind of way...

Dear Ms. Pelosi:
I write to you out of utter disdain! You are despicable and un-American as the traitor Jane Fonda.
I am a soon to be 65 year old who has voted in every state and local election since 1966. I have voted for both Republicans and Democrats alike. I have worked on campaigns for both Republicans and Democrats, white and black. I served the country I love in Vietnam, as my son did in the Middle East. I was awarded two bronze stars. I have been involved in politics since age 6 when my father was the campaign manager for a truly great American Congressman, Charles Raper Jonas, who worked for his constituents and his country, and was to be admired, unlike you.
You obviously haven't read the Constitution recently, if ever, the Federalist Papers, or even David McCullough's book on John Adams. You ought to take the time while riding around in your government provided luxury executive jet to do just that. You represent Socialistic and even Marxist principals [sic] that our founding fathers tried to avoid when setting out the capitalist republican form of government represented by our Constitution.
I find it interesting that you and your husband are multi-millionaires with much of your fortune being made as a result of your "public service". You have controlled legislation that has enhanced your husband's investments both on and off shore. At the same time you redistributed the wealth of others. Our system of a free market economy is being destroyed by the likes of you, Harry Reid, and now our President. You ride around in a gulf-stream airplane at the tax payer's expense while criticizing the presidents of companies who produced something for the economy. You add nothing to the economy of the Unites States; you only subtract therefrom.
I would like to suggest that you return to the city of fruitcakes and nuts and eat your husband's canned tuna and pineapple produced by illegal immigrants and by workers who have been excluded from the protection that 90% of the legal workers in the Unites States have.
I await your defeat in the next election with glee.
Don't ever use the term "un-American" again for protesters who love this country and are exercising their rights upon which this country was founded. By the way, while I served in the Army, I was spit on by the same type of lunatics who support you and who you probably supported in the 60's and 70's. You are an embarrassment to all of us who served so that you would have the protected right of free speech to call us un-American, as do the majority of the people of this formerly great country. You are a true disgrace to most of the people who served this country by offering themselves for public service in the United States Congress.
I feel certain you aides will not share this letter with you, but I intend to share it with many.
Sincerely,
Dennis L. Guthrie
dlguthrie@gdhs.com
Jeez, where to begin? The hatred squeezing out between the lines of this diatribe is almost physically palpable. Okay, this guy is supposed to be an attorney, yet he doesn't seem to have the slightest idea about the history of the founding of the United States.

Those Socialist/Marxist "principals" that the founders tried to avoid? Actually, it was pretty easy to avoid them, since Karl Marx wasn't born until 1818, and didn't publish the Communist Manifesto until 1848.

And that "capitalist republican form of government"? The US Constitution is remarkably silent on economic matters -- in fact, like "god", there is not a single reference to capitalism, freemarket economics or anything that could remotely be considered "economic" in nature, other than recognizing the existence of slavery, but only to establish in law that a slave was only three-fifths of a man.

The other charges? They are both stale and overblown, and have pretty much proved to be lies by now:
· Pelosi's "luxury" jet? Here's what Snopes has to say about that.
· Star-Kist Tuna, American Samoa and Nancy Pelosi's husband? Here's Snopes again.
· Redistributing wealth? Snopes.
He also claims that he was spit on while serving in the US Army. I doubt it. I really do, I'm calling bullshit on that claim here and now, and my regular readers all know how I feel about that.

It's really sad to see someone my own age, a fellow Vietnam veteran, being suckered in by all this rightwing propaganda bullshit that comes over the airwaves from the likes of Rush Pimple-Ass Draftdodging Limbaugh (BTW, where's Guthrie's Vietnam-vet rage about Limbaugh the draft-dodger?) and out of the mouths of the ClusterFox meat puppet magpies.

Of course Guthrie is from North Carolina ... anybody want to bet on his ethnic heritage? My next paycheck says that he's one of those fearful "White people are being kicked aside" guys, one of those closeted racists who just can't stand it that ONE OF "THEM" is now their president, but since we all now live in a "post-racial" nation, they can't just come out and say "Kill the Nigger", the way they'd like to. So they have to get their anger up over non-issues, such as the health care "death panels" and "socialized medicine" and the like, and redirect their hostility to a more easily attacked target, such as the Speaker of the House. Note that the president was mentioned, but only in passing as one of those evil "destroyers" of the free market economy.

Got news for ya, Denny G. It was the capitalist pig Wall Streeters and those greedy CEOs that you praise who have destroyed your precious "free market" economy.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Jon Stewart Calls "Death Panels" McCoughey on Her Bullshit

You probably saw a lot of this interview on The Daily Show, but here, in two segments, is the whole discourse between Betsy "Death Panel" McCaughey on Jon Stewart, including the part that was cut for time from the broadcast.

As I've said before, things have come to a sad state of affairs when a fake news show is doing a better job at calling out these wackjob liars than the rest of the media.

Part One:


Part Two:


Small wonder this smarmy-perk bitch got fired the next day. Oh, sure, she said she resigned because of her "concerns" over a "conflict of interest"... Bullshit. She was called out by Jon Stewart on the death panels and lost it big time. That's why she was fired. If you can't take the heat, stay out of the fuckin' kitchen

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

A View from Outside: Republicans are Insane

This, sadly, is what the rest of the world sees when they view the mess that is the US.

Johann Hari, across the water at the UK's Independent has an incisive commentary, entitled Republicans, Religion and the Triumph of Unreason, with the subtitle How do they train themselves to be so impervious to reality?:

Since Obama's rise, the US right has been skipping frantically from one fantasy to another, like a person in the throes of a mental breakdown. It started when they claimed he was a secret Muslim, and – at the same time – that he was a member of a black nationalist church that hated white people. Then, once these arguments were rejected and Obama won, they began to argue that he was born in Kenya and secretly smuggled into the United States as a baby, and the Hawaiian authorities conspired to fake his US birth certificate. So he is ineligible to rule and the office of President should pass to... the Republican runner-up, John McCain.
...
These increasingly frenzied claims have become so detached from reality that they often seem like black comedy. The right-wing magazine US Investors' Daily claimed that if Stephen Hawking had been British, he would have been allowed to die at birth by its "socialist" healthcare system. Hawking responded with a polite cough that he is British, and "I wouldn't be here without the NHS".
...
This kind of mania can't be co-opted: it can only be overruled. Sometimes in politics you will have enemies, and they must be democratically defeated. The political system cannot be gummed up by a need to reach out to the maddest people or the greediest constituencies. There is no way to expand healthcare without angering Big Pharma and the Republicaloons. So be it. As Arianna Huffington put it, "It is as though, at the height of the civil rights movement, you thought you had to bring together Martin Luther King and George Wallace and make them agree. It's not how change happens."
There's a lot more, so please take the time to read the whole thing.

Barney Frank Stands Up to Psycho Freak

Gotta love this. Barney Frank hands it right back to some female "Obama is Hitler" wackjob at a town hall meeting:



This ought to be mandatory viewing for every Dem in congress. If some of them "grew a couple", we'd be seeing more of this.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

When Does Negotiation Become Appeasement?

When it comes to the Health Care Debate, it already has. In what is so far the biggest disappointment in the Obama presidency, I saw that certain "signals" were being put out over the weekend that the "public option" will likely be thrown under the bus, in exchange for the approval of the Rethugs in Congress.

Well, how about that?

I think someone needs to tell our president that negotiation with those people is fruitless, that they ultimately will vote down any health care bill that the Dems propose, and that it's time for the true majority in the Congress to kick their across-the-aisle buddies to the side. They've already shown that bipartisanship is not in their nature. Any gestures towards bipartisanship are seen as weakness, appeasement, to be exploited in drawing even more lines in the sand.

Witness Sunday's Meet the Press, where David Gregory asked Tom Coburn (R-Sanctimonious) if he would vote for any of the proposed bills if the public option were taken out.

Guess what? The answer, once you got through his politician bullshit, was "no". And that's the case across the board with the assholes of the right. All their job is now is to obfuscate and obstruct and prevent any health care bill from passing.

And the commanding general of the dick army, Dick Armey (R-Dickhead), admitted -- at Rachel Maddow's prodding -- that he considers Medicare to be "tyranny".

That's the mindset of these people. It's hilarious that they are now trotting a video from 1961 with Saint Ronald Reagan railing against "socialized medicine", saying that it would signal the end of freedom in this country, blah blah blah.

The proposed legislation that he was frothing at the mouth over? Medicare. Jesus, how many times can you go to that well and expect to be taken seriously. The vast majority of people who are on Medicare think it works well and do not want to lose it.

Note to the Dems: Forget bipartisanship, forget negotiation, forget the Party of No even exists. You have 60 votes in the senate and a mandate from the American people: Do the right thing and pass comprehensive health care/insurance reform, WITH THE PUBLIC OPTION.

Anything less would be, in the words of that commercial from several years back, "uncivilized".

Monday, August 17, 2009

Rachel Hands Dick Armey His Lunch

For those who don't normally watch Meet the Press, here's a highlight from yesterday's show that is a "must see", in which Rachel Maddow "owns" Dick Armey:


Thursday, August 13, 2009

Let's Call it What it Really Is: Racism

Those loud and disruptive morons at the town halls want "their America" back. Yeah, that would be the America of Jim Crow laws, full segregation, "Sundown Towns" and "Strange Fruit".

They just can't stand the fact that a black man, of all people, is president of the United States.

So what do they do? Show up at town hall meetings and act like a bunch of neo-fascist brownshirt thugs, shouting down anyone and everyone who even looks like they might have voted for that uppity Chicago jiveass motherfucker.

They are angry white people who have been caught on the wrong side of history. So what do they do? Behave like a dangerous bunch of senile two-year-olds, throwing temper tantrums because they can't have what they want. It's a disgusting display by a bunch of people who really ought to know better, but apparently don't. They've allowed themselves to be whipped into a frothing-at-the-mouth frenzy by Glenn I'm-An-Asshole-AND-I-Play-One-on-TV Beck and Rustie Fatboy-Bigmouth-Draftdodger-Limpdick Limbaugh and that walking talking piece of human nitrogenous waste Sean Hannity, to the point where civil discourse is now an impossibility.

Remember, I grew up in the 1950s in Oklahoma, I went to a segregated grade school (the modern one, of course -- the black kids attended a falling-down two-story firetrap over on the "wrong" side of the tracks). I know about racism first hand, and I know the people who still harbor their just-below-the-surface innate racism.

While there are no longer signs on towns across America -- North AND South -- that say "Ni@@er, don't let the sun set on you in OUR town", the attitude is still there. And now we have one of THEM in the office of the presidency, living in ... the WHITE House!

Oh, the horror, the horror.

Except that it's not funny. Gun sales have shot off the charts since November, being purchased by people who see the end of their America right around the corner and are going to approach it armed and dangerous. Just south of me, along Interstate 5, a reactionary wingnut keeps the infamous "Uncle Sam" billboard. The latest says "I'll take god, guns and gold. You can keep the change". And this is in the western part of Washington State, which voted overwhelmingly for Obama. Of course, it is in rural Lewis County, where in 1999 the state supreme court ruled that just because a couple gets a divorce, it doesn't mean that they're not still first cousins...

So, take a look at that bozo in New Hampshire who wore a loaded sidearm to the Obama speech in the high school? Did you catch his sign: "Water the tree of liberty"? Recognize that? It's from Thomas Jefferson in his firebrand years: "The tree of liberty must from time to time be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots."

Jeez, now what do you think that bloodthirsty knuckledragging moron was really thinking? Who was the "tyrant" and who was the "patriot" in the scenario working its way through his enfeebled feverish brain? That borders on being a "clear and present danger" threat on the life of our president. So what does that motherfucker get for his troubles? Arrested? Even questioned by the Secret Service?

No, he gets his 15 minutes of fame, not only on ClusterFux News but also on Chris Matthews' Hardball. Give me a fucking break already. This lowers the bar on nutjob batshit craziness to the point where some Rethug asshole is going to think he can bring an RPG launcher to the next presidential press conference.

I think what's going on is that the Limbaughs, the Becks, the Hannitys, the O'Reillys and their ilk are intentionally fomenting an armed rebellion, knowing that their minions will never be able to pull one off, but instead will be put down forcefully.

Which will result in a "See, I told you so" movement on the toxic wingnut airwaves, a self-fulfilling prophecy that the Obama Administration is suppressing dissent, which in turn will whip up more revolution, in a slowly-constricting cycle that will provoke more suppression, etc etc etc.

You know, that whole "blood of tyrants and patriots" thing.

I think that the wingnut puppeteers are ultimately placing their bets on the armed rabble -- especially since they are doing their utmost to create more of them -- to turn back the clock on progressive changes and reinstate THEIR America.

The Glenn Beck Advertisers

Over at the Color of Change website, they've got a simple on-line petition that they will send to the hapless capitalists who are still advertising on Beck's totally-nutso squirrelfucking-insane show.

Please consider dropping by and signing the petition. Send them a message that Glenn Bilk and his ilk do not represent us and the REAL America.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

An Embarrassment of Ignorance

I always check out my hometown newspaper's online site, just to see what's going on in the rural KKK part of the state, and I am seldom disappointed in what I find, since it's pretty much exactly what I expect.

Witness today's reader-contributed commentary by the local liberal, Will We Destroy Another President?

The knuckledragging mouthbreathing subhuman morons who inhabit the blogosphere in Cowshitz County, Washington, come out in fire-breathing mobs when Bill Kasch has anything to say, and they haven't disappointed this time.

Witness the following, submitted by someone who goes by the monicker "Tiger":

The corporations back when FDR was in power, had to close their doors, because the President, and his congress increased taxes over 69% when FDR started all his first programs and someone had to pay for them. By the way, many of FDR's programs failed miserably, and no one left to pay for his Ideas.
That is why we had high double digit unemployment, and a deep depression until we entered WW2 in 1941, and the depression was not over until 1954. Now Obama is taking the same stupid moves that will prolong our next depression for decades.
If Obama is successful in pushing through this healthcare plan, and the Environmental Cap-and-Trade program, our costs will speed to the sky at hugh leaps. Fuel will become shortages, and of course you will not have a job to pay for it anyway. We will have a depression that will make the one in 1929 through 1954 look like a cake walk.
In the first depression, my Dad lost everything, and he told me that when he found a part time job, all he had to eat was 2 slices of home made bread with a piece of cabbage between, because that is all he had! If we went into the same situation today, it would be like hell on earth. People will kill someone for a loaf of bread, because todays people haven't any idea where milk comes from, or how to grow vegetables. Religion grows.
Okay, I don't know what he means by "religion grows" (except I'm reminded of those pro-pot posters back in the 60s that showed a healthy marijuana plant and the slogan "god grows his own"...), but the rest of that garbled crap is straight out of the Faux News Misinformation Machine.

So your old buddy Farnsworth had to ring in on this issue himself:
Tiger, before you start shooting your mouth off about things you know nothing about, you might want to read a little history. The Great Depression, despite what you hear on Faux News, was the direct result of nearly a dozen years of continuous Republican rule, and it started in 1929. FDR wasn't elected until 1932 & didn't take office until March of 1933.
Even though the vast majority of the programs instituted by FDR and the Democrats helped immensely, the depression they inherited was so bad that it still stretched on for another eight years or so, until the deficit spending required by WWII created jobs and bailed out industry. So don't fall for the wingnut slogan that "no nation ever spent itself into prosperity"--it's a lie, as WWII shows.
I don't know where you got that date of 1954 for the end of the Great Depression since the post-WWII decade was, by all economic indicators, an era of unprecedented prosperity and job growth. And the top marginal tax rate during the 1950s? You'd better sit down for this one Tige -- 91%!!!
So all of you people out there who think that tax cuts are THE answer to everything seem to be ignoring both history and reality. But I guess your continual quoting of Faux News and Fatboy Draftdodger Rustie Limbaugh, has already demonstrated that: "My mind is made up, so don't confuse the issue with facts."
Not that this is going to change Tiger's misconception of the world or how it really works. I'm actually embarrassed to have graduated high school in a county where this kind of ignorance runs rampant.

But what're ya gonna do? Aside from beating some sense into their heads, and I'm a little long in the tooth to actually engage in the kind of violent retribution these fuckers really deserve...

BTW, I will be attending one of those "Town Hall" meetings in a couple of weeks, given by my "other Congressman", and I'm taking my video camera with me. Assuming that I don't end up in the hospital after being assaulted by the Neo-Nazi reThugs, I'll be posting the after-action report here.

Monday, August 10, 2009

I Am an American Conservative Shithead

As with A Day in the Life of Joe Republican and A Day in the Life of a True Conservative, both of which are featured prominently in my permanent links sidebar, there's a new one going around:

I Am an American Conservative Shithead
This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.
I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.
After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.
On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.
After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.
And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.
What a bunch of hypocritical assholes. These are the same ones who yell "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE" at the top of their lungs, and in the same breath, "AND STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY SOCIAL SECURITY!"

Sunday, August 09, 2009

So Who is Blackwater's "High Executive" Joseph Schmitz?

He's been all over the news channels, the ones who are covering the Blackwater hearings anyway, appearing as some kind of shadowy borderline sleazy obstructionist at the Pentagon for his Lord and Master, Erick Prince.

But did the media bother to tell us just who the fuck he is?

No, they did not, but I'm here to correct their sins of omission.
He is one Joseph Schmitz, the son of dead Orange County California rightwing wacko, fulltime nutjob, former US Representative (R-Fascist), minor party presidential candidate, adulterer (naturally: he was a Rethug after all) and an accused-and-therefore-likely child abuser John Schmitz, who was considered "too extreme" for the John Birch Society and was expelled.

Old John Schmitz also just happened to be the father of über-horny fired-in-disgrace grade school teacher and convicted child rapist Mary Kay Latourneau.

In this case it appears that the nut doesn't fall far from the tree, but you'd never know it from the news coverage. It's like Little Joey "Rat-Faced-Git" Schmitz popped out of thin air, the result of some Immaculate Misconception, and immediately started scurrying for a dark hiding place like the rat he so strikingly resembles.

When will the media do its job and report fully? Short answer: Never, as long as they remain beholden to -- in thrall to -- the rich capitalist pigs who really run this country. You can bet your bottom dollar if it were a Democrat who had all these weird skeletons in his closet, it'd be on the news 24/7 and you'd never hear the end of it.

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Rendering Unto Caesar...

This is one of those great "nyuk nyuk nyuk" moments.

Down in Florida, the Dinosaur Adventure Land theme park, founded by a Religious Right wingnut named Kent Hovind, is foundering. Hovind also founded something called the Creation Science Evangelism Ministry and is now doing a ten-year stretch in a federal pen because he neglected to pay the IRS more than $470,000 in payroll taxes.

Now his theme park is likely to be seized and sold at auction to repay some of those massive debts.

Hovind, naturally, still is claiming that he's not guilty, and that he and all of the theme park employees were "employed by god" and so he didn't have to pay taxes. Nor, evidently, did he.

So what happened to all that "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto god that which is god's" that supposedly came right out of the mouth of Jesus Christ himself? (Hint to Hovind: You can tell because the stuff that JC said shows up in red in the so-called Red Letter edition of the New Testament.)

Oh, that's right -- he's working directly for god, and Caesar doesn't enter into the equation. Except for those pesky and impertinent IRS agents who trundled poor Hovind off to federal pen. But I'm sure that Hovind is one of those "imprecatory prayer" guys who is already praying for god to sweep those nefarious agents of the Antichrist off this world and straight into the mouth of hell.

You Too Can Vote in the Chamber Pot

It's actually the Chamber Poll, but some of the questions are so loaded that they belong in a chamber pot... you know, questions of the "have you stopped beating your wife" variety, but what can we expect from a bunch of rightwingers who will skew their own survey so its results are what they want them to be?

As I think I mentioned before, I'm on the mailing list of something called Friends of the US Chamber of Commerce. Not because I agree with anything they stand for, but it's one of those stealthy espionage "know your enemy" things.

So they have a poll going on right now on their website, and I'm sure that pretty much the only people voting in it are rightwing assholes. But it isn't limited to them. There's no litmus test to take the poll.

So everyone, spread the word to all your progressive friends to take the poll at http://www.friendsoftheuschamber.com/takeaction/index.cfm.

Here's what I put in the comments box as to what incentives congress can provide small businesses:

Universal single payer health insurance will relieve small businesses like mine of the burden of providing decent health insurance. I am all for it and I can't believe that other small businessmen are against it. In fact, they AREN'T, once they learn the truth, and the Chamber ought to start the dissemination of some hard facts about it instead of using scare tactics and suborning the intimidation of US representatives.
Okay, so I may have a "small business" but I don't have any employees. So I lied. So sue me.

I Guess We Were ALL Born in Kenya...

...and here's my Kenyan birth certificate to prove it:



I know the text is pretty small on this copy, but you can see the larger version here and you can even make your own!

Lots of fun! Fool your friends!

[HT to Dusty over at It's My Right to Be Left of Center for the link]

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Blackwater Head a Murderer? Say It Isn't So.

The news today is that Eric Prince, the founder of Blackwater and one of god's own annointed, has been fingered in two sworn statements (here and here) by two men before a federal court for murdering people who were cooperating with the Feds investigating the company.

According to one of the statements, Prince

...views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."
In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting "illegal" or "unlawful" weapons into the country on Prince's private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.
I guess we might now want to be on the lookout for Prince to show up at that notorious C-Street House of God to get absolution for these sins: If you are working for god, you are not committing crimes no matter what you do.

Anyone who has followed the career of Eric Prince -- specifically having read Jeremy Scahill's fascinating Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, knows that this outfit is capable of literally anything, including the murder of its own consiglieri, in order to maintain its power. Watching Prince is like watching scenes from The Godfather II.

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

A Dangerous -- and Disgusting -- Tactic

Over the course of the last week or so, there has been a closely coordinated -- there's no other word for it -- attack on US Representatives when they've been speaking at their local "town hall" type meetings.

The opponents of health care reform banded together to ambush the poor public servant, shouting down those in the audience who oppose them, and in general turning what is supposed to be a "peaceful assembly" into something that resembles an angry mob scene.

Anyone recall the last time the Rethugs organized "spontaneous" angry mobs to get their way? No, it wasn't Nazi Germany (but that was a good guess).

It was Florida in the waning days of 2000, when the GOP trucked in professional thug operatives from all over the country to storm the barricades at the voting-counting locations. Sadly, that tactic worked all too well, even back then, and there's no reason to suppose that they've learned anything from it -- except that it works.

I'll be attending the upcoming town hall meetings my two Representatives give (I have two because I live on the line dividing two Congressional districts, and while I vote in only one of them, I still consider the other guy my "other Representative") to see if any of these Rethug assholes try any bullshit shenanigans.

I'm not sure what action I will take in response, but I'm hoping that it will be reasoned and measured.

Bullshit. Fuck 'em, I'm going ballistic.

Monday, August 03, 2009

Okay, I'm Back

The heat wave is more or less history -- for now. It's a reasonable 85 degrees today and we're back to speaking to each other in moderated tones. Let me tell you, though, going through a week plus of temperatures hovering near the triple-digit mark can be very trying on a relationship.

Fortunately one of us (guess who) maintained his sense of humor through the whole thing and, aside from the day when I had to sponge up She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed from the tile floor in the kitchen and stick her into the fridge until she reconstituted herself, it was pretty bearable.

For me, anyway. But I told her when she came out of the refrigerator not to count on me to do that consistently, because...

Because...

Because I don't do "chick work"...

The bruises have pretty much healed up by now, and the doctor says that I'll eventually be able to walk again, once the full-body cast comes off and I go through some rigorous physical therapy...