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.

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.

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.

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?

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...

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.

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

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.

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".

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:

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.

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.

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!"

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.

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]

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.

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.

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...