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.

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?

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.

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.

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...

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...?]

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]

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'...

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...

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?"

"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.

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.

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...

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.