Tea Party Schizophrenia: A true mental disease

In a recent poll, it was found that supporters of the Tea Party movement were likely to support the Christian Conservative agenda.

"While the loosely organized Tea Party movement has focused largely on shrinking the size of government and other fiscal issues, its backers are more likely to support government restrictions on gay marriage and other social issues, the Public Religion Research Institute found in its American Values Survey."

This is, in a nutshell, just more proof of how bat-shit crazy these people are. It's not that they want less government, it's not that they want their concept of "moral values" forced upon the citizens of these United States, it's that they want both. They want to have their proverbial cake and eat it too. Except, the cake is a lie. It's always a lie.

They want less government interference in regulating things that keep us safe. They want more government meddling into the private lives of homosexuals, wanting the government to pass laws to keep them from being able to marry or share their partner's insurance benefits, some going so far as to say that laws should be passed making homosexual acts/partnerships illegal. They want less government funding of education (wanting to dismantle the Department of Education and quit funding college loans and grants, because ask any slave master from the 19th century about the best way to keep people as chattel). They want more government interference with the bodies of women, to tell them that they must have children, whether they want them or not, whether they are mentally and emotionally fit to have them or not, whether they've been raped and abused or not.

It's really a complete schizophrenia, to sit there and say that the government should have no influence in the corporate lives of businesses but at the same time that same government should be in our bedrooms telling us what to do, who to be with and forcing women to carry a pregnancy they don't want, or is dangerous to their health, to term. I'll call it for what it is. It's goddamned fascism, pure and bleeding simple. It's so Orwellian, it's almost un-fucking-believable, for these ass-hats to sit there and scream that they are the denizens of freedom and democracy, and at the same time wanting to put their jackboots at the throats of their fellow Americans to make them follow their own twisted version of "morality".

Right-Wing Extremists a danger? Really?

What was that a few months back, when the Justice Department caught hell for warning about right wing wackos? What was that? Oh yeah, looks like they were correct in their reasoning, obviously, as anyone with half a brain would realize. I wonder who was pissed about that assessment? Could it be the right-wing wackos who seem to always be ranting at the top of their lungs? Quite a few people owe Janet Napolitano an apology.

Alleged gunman charged in museum shooting

By BRETT ZONGKER and CALVIN WOODWARD

Security Guard Dies After DC Museum Shooting

WASHINGTON (AP) -- An 88-year-old white supremacist has been charged with murder for killing the security guard who had opened the door to let him into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum, officials said Thursday...

In his car, officers found a notebook with a handwritten note saying, "You want my weapons - this is how you'll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews," according to a court affidavit...

This guy, James von Brunn, who murdered the guard, he was also ranting online about how Obama wasn't born here, following the usual right-wing diatribe bullshit. You know, just like what Faux News was saying. Same shit. I know where he gets his news from.

By the way, Stephen T. Johns and the other guards who stopped this ignorant, poor excuse for a human being, are heroes. If it hadn't been for them, countless other innocent people would have died.

Oh, and James von Brunn isn't alone. Just look at the white supremacist forums if you dare. I came across one by accident in a Google search of his name. They're lauding him as a hero. I don't know how such sorry excuses for life can sleep at night. They obviously have no empathy and no conscience. That's the mark of a serial killer, the mark of a despot. People who would kill other human beings and not feel any remorse whatsoever, I don't even have any words for that sorta crap.

The Shoe on the Other Foot: Or How to Sue the DHS Over Nothing

I wound up with another right-wing wacko newsletter in my inbox this morning, this one from Townhall. Titled "Stop Janet Napolitano's War Against Americans and Our Constitution," it says that the Thomas More Law Center has filed a suit against Janet Napolitano for infringing on their first and fifth amendment rights (huh?), and they'd like for you to send them money, it's tax deductible. You know, I really think that some people should have their tax exempt status revoked when they pull shit like this. But whatever, the point is, they're mad because they lost and there's a black guy in the White House, so now they have to go and waste money on frivolous lawsuits over perceived slights against their freedom. The rant is long, incoherent and convoluted, but here's a snippet of it:

Why has Janet Napolitano diverted public attention from the real acts of terrorism in our country, which she now refers to as "man-caused disasters"? And why is she so willing to use the word "terrorist" to describe law-abiding Americans?

The truth is that Janet Napolitano is threatening Americans who disagree with the policies of the Obama administration to "Shut Up or else."

Would you ever have imagined our own government targeting as terrorists our returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who placed themselves in harms way to defend our country?

Would you ever have imagined our own government would target citizens based on their political and moral beliefs such as opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage, or the social programs of the Obama administration?

Gee, that's really funny. I seem to remember G.W. Bush's supporters calling people unpatriotic when they questioned the un-Constitutional things that he did. Now that we have a chance to undo the damage the neo-Cons did to the Constitution, that's suddenly against the Constitution. Yeah. Thinking about it will make your head hurt. G.W. Bush can wipe his ass with our Constitution and use the DHS to strip us of our constitutional rights such as with the warrantless wiretapping and the use of torture, and these bastards didn't care about that, but warn that some right-wing wackos á-la-Timothy-McVeigh might have cause to do others harm, and oh-my-god-the-government-is-going-to-take-away-our-rights!

And all of this because she said that right-wing extremists might *try* to recruit veterans. This would seem like a joke if it weren't so troubling. The judge will probably throw it out as groundless, but you have to ask yourself this, why are these people so upset over the assessment that right-wing extremists are a danger to our democracy and safety? Unless Napolitano hit a nerve. Actually if you take into consideration all the right-wing wackos screaming for secession and the violent overthrow of a duly elected government, and thinly or not-at-all-masked neo-Nazi militias who want a white Christian America, you might see that perhaps Napolitano isn't so far off the mark.

Cap and Trade Hysteria

For some reason, I'm on multiple right-wing wacko mailing lists. I don't know why. What a waste of bandwidth. I don't have the heart to unsubscribe though, because I figure that it's best to know what your enemies are up to. Most of the time these newsletters are full of lies, and always full of hysteria. They use tactics that are designed to scare people. Make them think that everything is going wrong and they'll suffer for sure. Fear is what they're selling, and obviously quite a few people are in the market for it.

Today I got a newsletter from John Ensign, the Republican Senator from Nevada. This guy is certifiable half the time, and he's elected. He might be a nice guy in person, I've never met him, but his newsletters often stretch the truth of things and propagate hysteria, just like all the other wackos. So the newsletter screams that Obama is going to pass something called a Cap and Trade system on energy and it's going to cost every family $3000 a year. Turns out that $3000 might actually be more like $300, but who's paying attention to where they're getting these numbers?

Now, first of all, as educated as I am, I had no idea what a Cap and Trade system is. I imagine to his uneducated readers who can't think for themselves this sounds scary. Something they don't know what it is, and it costs a lot. But I can think for myself so I went off to find out what this all meant.

Funny thing is, we're already using a Cap and Trade system on a bunch of things, to reduce acid rain and to reduce CO2 emissions. Now, that is the government's website, so since I don't believe everything I read, I have to find some other sources. Turns out that the Canadian press has a very good explanation of how it's supposed to work since they're thinking about doing the same thing.

"In the cap-and-trade system proposed by the panel, all businesses would have to buy credits to cover the emissions they produce. If a company's emissions exceed the cap set by government, they would have to buy more credits from companies that came in under the cap. Such a system creates financial incentives for companies to reduce their emissions because they can then avoid having to buy more credits and also be in a position to make money selling their unused emission credits."

Now, here's the key thing. This will make prices go up, if energy providers fail to reduce their emissions. They will pass it onto the consumer, obviously. What they'll have then is a very angry consumer. In Texas, we have choice about who we get our electricity from. There's competition and I imagine that they'll be competing like mad to make it as cheap as possible. Secondly, if they can sell any credits left over to make a profit, well that would benefit business.

Thirdly, this money isn't going out the window. They may have to pay the government, they may indeed pass some of it on to us, however in the end, that means that the government has money to use, if we can persuade them to use it on something to benefit us, our infrastructure, our schools, or education, it's a win-win situation.

Lastly, so what if you have to pay a little more? Quite frankly, you can't breathe money. If we don't do something, indeed it may already be too late, the ice at the poles will melt and the temperature of the earth will rise, along with sea levels, and all coastal areas will be flooded. The only question is, by how much? This isn't up for argument. Sure the nutty people who think that Jesus is coming back any day (any time now since 2000 years ago!) and so it doesn't matter, will tell you that scientists are wrong. They haven't bothered to look at the data (surprise, surprise), the fact that the ice sheets are melting quite fast already, or that the mean surface temperature has risen three quarters (0.75) of a degree Celsius in the last century, most of that in the last decade. Oh sure, that doesn't sound like much, until you realize that it only takes about a 7 degree increase to render much of the planet absolutely uninhabitable and that the temperature increase is speeding up.

Let's use our heads, think this through just a little bit. How much crap do you think we can throw into the water or put into the air, before it is too much? Forget the rhetoric, the political motivations, the cost, or anything else. It's common sense. It doesn't magically disappear or go away. It adds up. Sure what you put into the atmosphere in a day might not matter, but compound that by years upon years and that's another matter. Add to that the exploding population, the rising of third world countries to industrialized status who are contributing a lot to pollution too, and we have on our hands what could be a disaster of epic proportions. And to fiddle while Rome burns, isn't an option. We have to *try* something. Even if it's wrong, even if it doesn't work. Do we really want to tell our grandchildren, "Uh, sorry, we didn't think anything was wrong, or we were too lazy or cheap to do anything, and well, uh, you're going to have to live (or die) with this mess."

In the end, the businesses that should be coming up with creative ideas to make things cleaner and more efficient are instead spreading propaganda that there's nothing wrong. It's like Pompei. The volcano erupts and people go back to what they were doing, despite the fact that ash is falling. They think that it will just stop eventually. Well, we know how that turned out don't we?

"Only when the last tree has withered, the last fish has been caught, and the last river has been poisoned, will you realize you cannot eat money."--Native American Proverb