May God Have Mercy On Your Souls

I've got news for my Republican friends. Every single person who is going to recieve unemployment insurance under this bill is unemployed. Every single one of them doesn't have a job, and that's why they need this money. Now I know what the Republicans are thinking, they're thinking, why don't they just sell some stock? If they're in really dire straights maybe they could take some of their art collection and send it off to the auctioneer. And if they're in deep, deep trouble, maybe the unemployed can sell one of their yachts. That's what the Republicans are thinking right now. But that's not the life of ordinary people. The 99% of America who actually have to work for a living, that doesn't just clip coupons and live off of interest and dividends like my Republican friends do. That's why we need this bill to pass, because of the 99% of America that deals with reality every day. The people who will lose their homes if this bill doesn't pass. The people who will be living in their cars if this doesn't pass. That's why we need this to pass. And I will say this to Republicans who have blocked this bill now for months and kept food out of the mouths of children, I will say to them now, may God have mercy on your souls.

And here is the root of the problem. These rich bastards that run everything haven't got a clue what it's like to wonder where your next meal is coming from, or whether you might get laid off when you live paycheck to paycheck. They haven't got one iota of an idea of what it's like for the rest of us.

First they came for the Jews...

It's truly amazing the number of dumb ass people we have in this country. I know, I know. Calling people dumb asses is probably counter-productive, but really, what else can you call people who are so ignorant, so undeniably moronic, that they protest against the First Amendment to the Constitution?

Anti-mosque protests on the rise, say Muslim advocates

By Liz Goodwin liz Goodwin – Wed Jul 21, 5:16 pm ET

Opposition to the construction of mosques has skyrocketed in cities and towns across the country, scholars and advocates of Muslim culture tell The Upshot.

Public protests against three planned mosques have made news in the past week: Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin joined others in opposing the building of a mosque a few blocks from the World Trade Center site. Hundreds demonstrated against a proposed mosque in a small town in Tennessee (pictured above). And some residents of Temecula, California, are opposing the local Muslim community's plan to build a bigger mosque, saying it could become a hotbed of radical Islam.

...

"There is very little counter-thrust in the public debate, and the result is, I think, Muslims are becoming increasingly concerned about their security in the country," Zogby says. "This is a worrisome environment. Something's got to give."

Opponents of mosques feel freer now to openly object to the presence of a mosque in their community, says Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy organization.

...

Of course, opponents of mosques do not consider themselves bigots, and many are genuinely concerned that mosques may help produce homegrown terrorists. According to the Washington Post, 34 Americans have been charged by U.S. authorities since January 2009 with direct involvement in international terrorism. But in many of these case, it appears the suspects were radicalized via Internet contacts.

...

A pastor opposed to the proposed Temecula mosque reflected these fears of homegrown terrorism.

"There is a concern with all the rumors you hear about sleeper cells and all that. Are we supposed to be complacent just because these people say it's a religion of peace? Many others have said the same thing," Pastor Bill Rench told the Los Angeles Times.

...

Some opponents of the mosque in Tennessee have told local news outlets they think people will learn jihad inside the mosque's walls, though the local Muslim community has had a smaller mosque in the town for years without incident.

Several hundred people in Tennessee took to the streets of Murfreesboro last week to protest the local Islamic Center's 15-acre land purchase. They were met by a counterprotest of equal size.

"In Islam, a mosque means 'We have conquered this country,' " one man told a local CNN affiliate. "And where are they? They're in the center of Tennessee. They're going to say, 'We have conquered Tennessee.' "

A plan for a separate mosque was tabled in another town in Tennessee this year after public opposition, reports the Tennessean.

Ahmed visited the site of a mosque in Columbia, Tennessee, that had been burned down and vandalized with painted swastikas in 2008, while researching last year.

"The local tiny Muslim community was in a state of shock because most of them were born in America and had lived very happily in the small community," he says. "People say, 'Go back home,' and they say, 'Where do we go? This is our home.' "

I believe that Lewis Sinclair was right, when fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. They may come for the Muslims first, but they'll come for you eventually...

Not-So Breitbart Just Keeps Turning Up...

...like a bad penny! Because when you don't have truth on your side, you fight by using lies.

Racial firestorm surrounds USDA employee's ouster

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that he would reconsider the department's decision to ask Shirley Sherrod to resign. Sherrod, the director of rural development in Georgia, was asked by department officials to leave her job on Monday after conservative bloggers posted an edited video of her saying that she initially didn't give a white farmer as much help as she could have 24 years ago, when she was working for a nonprofit farm aid group.

Sherrod says the video distorted her full speech, which described how she came to realize the white farmer needed her help and which she says was intended to promote racial reconciliation.

...

The two-minute, 38-second clip posted Monday by BigGovernment.com was presented as evidence that the NAACP was hypocritical in its recent resolution condemning what it calls racist elements of the tea party movement. The website's owner, Andrew Breitbart, said the video shows the civil rights group condoning the same kind of racism it says it wants to erase. Biggovernment.com is the same outfit that gained fame last year after airing video of workers at the community group ACORN counseling actors posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend.

What I want to know, are the people who made this decision so stupid that they believe anything that comes out of Breitbart or any of his associates' mouths? Really? Because, if you have any sense you should never believe a liar. Once someone has lied to you, you can never believe anything they say ever again.

Oil for Dinner Anyone?

Anger grows as disaster reaches Panhandle beaches

Meanwhile, BP's Hayward assured investors that the company "considerable firepower" to cope with the severe costs. Hayward and other senior BP executives struck a penitent note in their first comprehensive update to shareholders since the oil rig explosion.

"We will meet our obligations both as a responsible company and also as a necessary step to rebuilding trust in BP as a long-term member of the business communities in the U.S. and around the world," said BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg. "This is in the interest of all our stakeholders."

When the last fish is choked to death by all the crap we pour into our water and the last bird is drowned by all the mess we pump into our air, maybe then we'll realize that we can't eat money... or not. These corporate thugs would squish the last butterfly in the world if they thought for a moment they'd get a profit out of it.

Rainbows and Unicorns

So I got some crap in my email from the NRSC entitled "Rainbows and Unicorns". Supposedly it was an April Fool's Joke. For some reason, I'm not laughing. I deleted it, or I'd post the text of it. You can google it and see the retarded video that some vapid, poor excuse for a human being took the time to make.

It takes a lot of cajones to blame the other party when your party is the whole raison d'etre for the economy being in the shite state that it is in.

But you know what, I could give a rats ass. It must be nice to get paid a lot of money to trash your opponents with lies and pandering and meandering waffle while your countrymen have no jobs, can't make ends meet and live out of their cars after being laid off. I mean, it must really burn their biscuits to see so many dirty poor people while they drive to work in their Mercedes and BMWs.

Every single word these political "mavericks" utter makes me hate them even more. In another age, it would have been peasants with pitch forks. Now? It's just a bunch of whiney emo kids complaining that their iPod won't hold a charge and so they can't poke their friends on Facebook or harvest their tomatoes in Farmville.

You know, they waste so much money on nothing. And there are people starving to death, and all they can do is poke sticks at each other. I wish that these stupid fucks would find some deserted island to go to so they could leave the rest of us the hell alone. They could leave all the money they had nothing better to do with anyway to charity, and go drown in their sea of stupidity, hatred, and ignorance.

A Terrorist by Any Other Name

They say that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. And apparently that is the truth since some right-wing wackos are lauding Joe Stack as a hero. Joe decided that he was mad at the government and the IRS and flew a plane into a building housing the IRS in Austin.

You see, all terrorists are pretty much the same. They are mad at "the man" (the government, or other power) and want to strike out at it. Except that usually they never hurt what it is they're mad at. Stack didn't hurt the government at all. Just like the terrorists on 9/11 who flew the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They were mad at our government too. But in both instances, neither party hurt the government at all. All they accomplished was hurting innocent people and destroying the lives of those close to them.

Apparently Joe decided that our laws didn't apply to him at some point about thirty years ago and tried to get out of paying taxes. And you know what they say about fighting the law. It wins. The thing that really gets me, is that he was complaining about the government taking everything, but if he had just been a law abiding citizen and paid his taxes, he probably would have done well for himself. How many people can afford to own planes? And he owned a house too, in Austin, in a fairly nice neighborhood. I mean, seriously. He obviously wasn't poor, but by breaking the law and trying to avoid paying taxes, he lost, and in more ways than one.

People who think that by perpetrating violence on innocent people, that it will accomplish something, are seriously fucked up in the head. And those who think that this idiot is a hero, are as fucked up as he was. I suggest if they don't like living in a free and democratic society, where taxes pay for services like the fire department and the police, they should scurry off somewhere, perhaps to a deserted island and form their own country and leave mine the hell alone.

Snow Forecast = Mob Mentality?

I'm glad I don't live where it snows any more. If it snows where I am now, we'll know hell has completely frozen over. But I did once live where it snowed, and I never could understand why everyone goes for the dairy products that have to be refrigerated. Milk? Sour cream? Don't they know when the power is out, they won't want to get in the fridge, and if it's out long enough, everything will go bad anyway? So silly. And the silliness is in full swing in DC, where they've shut the whole place down in anticipation of what could be the biggest blizzard on record.

At a Safeway in Hanover, Md., dairy products and other perishable items were scarce. There wasn't a single egg in the store, and only a few bottles of milk remained.

"I've come from two other places that are out of milk and sour cream," said Cheryl Conner, 50, of Hanover. "This one's out of sour cream, too, it's crazy."

It's total Lulz.

Well, That's Retarded...

Or as they'd say in Boston, "re-tah-ded". But I digress. WTF is wrong with Palin anyway? I know that uneducated morons tend to have a poor grasp on the English language, but no one in their right mind who wasn't a complete asshole would refer to a child as being retarded. That would be mean. Retarded, the way it is used in the English language now, simply means stupid. NTM, I heard that Palin called her own child that. Whether that is true or not, I could give a rat's ass.

Really? This is all these fuckers have to complain about? People are starving to death, dying over nothing, people in Haiti have lost everything, and all the Palin-ites can do is complain because someone used a word. Fuck 'em, they can take their retarded grasp of the English language, their PC (while simultaneously decrying PC) shit and shove it up their lily white arses.

I mean, when was the last time that you heard someone use the word "retarded" in the context that Palin is screaming about? Maybe fifty years ago? Fucking retards >.<

~~~
Wow. I went complete Boston-ite slash New Yorker in this post LOL

For those of you who have never lived in the northeastern United States, the words "retarded" and "fuck" are adjectives, adverbs, nouns and verbs, and sometimes even prepositional phrases. XD

Putting Religion First

On my way home tonight, I saw a bumper sticker that said:

Catholic
Conservative
American
In that order.

And I thought, really? You put your religion before your country? (And on top of that they put their political ideology before it too, but that's a whole other post). I suppose that is the way people do it. And I also think that makes them a traitor. Either you defend the Constitution or you don't. If your religion gets in the way of defending the Constitution, then you're not an American. It can't come third. It's either first, or not at all. Christianity is diametrically opposed to secular democracy, which is what the Constitution lays out for us. There is no religion in the Constitution. The only mention of religion is in Article 6, and that is to ensure that no religion is required to hold office or serve the United States.

"...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

I suppose when you believe the big lie, that the writings of semi-nomadic pastorlists, who thought the stars were permanently pasted into the night sky, are the words of "god" and that everyone who doesn't believe what [fill in the sect here] espouses is going to hell, that would make you betray your own country, and if it came down to it, your own countrymen because they're not like you in that they are a different religion, or no religion at all.

Article six was a huge step forward in our civilization. Prior to it, in most places, you had to be the religion of the ruling party to vote (if you could vote), to hold office, or in some instances, to even live in said place. In the colonies here, prior to the Revolutionary War, there were laws that required people to be a certain religion to participate in the operation of the colony. That is the reason why Roger Williams left Massachusetts to found Rhode Island. They ran him out because he wanted a voice in his own governance without having to convert to the official state religion.

I just don't get these people. And it's late... I'm sure I'm rambling now...

OMG! Teh Gayz are Serving! in the UK anyway...

Over at JoeMyGod you can read the discussion about how Peter Spriggs is an asshat. He claims that 1.) if gays serve openly in the military they will go on rape sprees, that 2.) if they serve tons of straight people will resign in protest and that 3.) homosexuality should be outlawed and gays imprisoned. If you read my post from the other day, he's not alone. Unfortunately.

What this is about though, is that gays serve openly in the UK and have for ten years now. And their fundies had the same arguments as ours are having now, and everything they said, never materialized.

Large-scale resignations from the UK armed forces were widely expected in some quarters, when the ban on gays was lifted - but in practice they did not materialise.

At least one British army brigadier publicly resigned in protest, citing "strongly held moral and military convictions" but most observers were surprised at how smoothly the new law - which was forced on the UK government by the European Court of Human Rights - was implemented...

British Security Minister Lord Alan West, a former head of the Royal Navy, told the Associated Press in July 2009 that allowing gays to serve openly was "much better".

"For countries that don't do that - I don't believe it's got anything to do with how efficient or capable their forces will be. It's to do with prejudices, I'm afraid," he said.

I find it appalling that we, America, are supposed to be the land of the free, a place where everyone is equal and has civil rights and equal protection under the law, and yet the Europeans right now have surpassed us in civil liberties by leaps and bounds. For godsake, Portugal has allowed gay marriage. Conservative, Catholic Portugal! Of all places. And we're the United States, and we're a bunch of fucking asshats over here apparently. I suppose that's what happens when you found a country with Puritans. Their descendants are uptight assholes who have to meddle in their neighbor's business to make sure they're doing what some deity or other wants.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." --CS Lewis

What's a Matter with US?

"It's like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy." --Thomas Frank

I read this article over at the BBC, and I have to tell you, they hit on something there. No one cares about facts. They only care about how things make them "feel." It's why people elect idiots to office, who serve not the people who elected them, but Corporate masters. It's why they blame Obama for the mess we're in, and why they blame him for not waving a magic wand to get us out of it. I suppose that Obama should have studied a bit harder at Hogwarts, because he just isn't all that good at magically cleaning up two decades of Republican mismanagement in a year.

Last time I checked, large, complex civilizations don't just turn on a dime. You can think of our civilization as a really big aircraft carrier. You don't just whip it right around like it's a Lamborghini or something. It's not possible.

People are stupid. They don't care about facts, or logic, or what is real, or what it actually takes to accomplish something. All they care about is listening to pundits and talking heads shriek about things that make them "feel" like they have some kind of power over the situation and that validate any emotions they might have about it. Because, when it comes to humanity, facts are never important and neither is the truth.

Queue the Cattle Cars

Props to JoeMyGod for this one...

"If you believe that what drug abusers need is to go into an effective detox program, then we should likewise put active homosexuals through an effective reparative therapy program.
The bottom line here is that, biblically, those "who practice homosexuality" should come under the purview of the law just as much as those who take people captive in order to sell them into slavery." --Bryan Fischer (emphasis mine)

And to think my last post was on Anne Frank and the suppression of literature in our public schools. Today, I read that yet another ignorant demagogue wants to send homosexuals to prison for reparative therapy. Is the fact that the Nazis called for the same thing lost on these idiots? Apparently, or they wouldn't spout such nonsense.

My next question is, who the hell do these people think they are? Bryan Fischer is unequivocally calling for a theocracy, openly and without any sort of shame. Subject to Biblical Law as Civil Law?! In these United States? Bryan Fischer, if you read this, YOU CAN GO FUCK YOURSELF! And so can the rest of the fuck-tards who follow his thinking.

I daresay that I haven't been quite so angry and simultaneously annoyed over anything in a long time. I suppose it should come as no surprise. Oh sure, you read this sort of thing all the time from some crackpot troll on message boards, or blogs. But this guy is on the radio, people actually listen to him, he has a platform, and what he is advocating is an overthrow of our democratic system. Our Constitution doesn't allow the sending of people to prison for thought crimes, or crimes against a religion. If Bryan Fischer wants theocracy, he can go live in fucking Saudi Arabia. I keep telling these ignorant bastards that, but they don't get it. Probably because they have the critical thinking skills of a slug. And that's an insult to slugs!

If you think this doesn't affect you because you're not gay or you don't know anyone who is, remember that in Germany, lots of people thought that what was happening didn't affect them because they weren't Jewish, until it was too late.

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out.
                --Martin Niemöller

I've probably said it before, but I'll say it again, in the Middle Ages people were subject to civilian law for religious "crimes" which were what we would now call thought-crimes. We're talking like Orwell's 1984 here. Orwell wasn't writing solely about the future, he was drawing on the past. People could be dragged in before the Inquisition, in what amounted to a kangaroo court, convicted of heresy after interrogation, (see: torture) for not *believing* what they were told they should believe by the Church. They were then, in what amounts to a mockery of morality and justice, "relaxed" or turned over to the secular authorities for punishment. This meant burning at the stake in most times and places, though later it might amount to hanging.

Make no mistake, this is exactly what people like Bryan Fischer want. They want to be able to kill people for not conforming to their version of Christianity. They will never say it outright, not until they're in a position to carry it out, but they're getting bolder and bolder all the time. When we're to the point that they're willing to openly push for incarcerating people for not believing as they do, we're on a dark and dangerous path as a country. We can't let the demagogues drag us back into the Dark Ages...

"As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
                --Justice William O. Douglas

They'd Really Rather Burn the Books Instead

Some dipshit parent got mad that The Diary of Anne Frank has explicit material in it, and school officials in Virginia caved to it. And you wonder why American children are some of the lowest ranking in the Industrialized world. Our education system here is a joke.

If these "Christian" (and I use that term loosely) don't want their children to learn anything, they should home-school them. And hide the Bible from them while they're at it, because the Bible is about a hundred times more illicit and graphic than The Diary of Anne Frank. Of course the dipshit parent has probably never read either.

So there you have it. This is the exact same reason why an entire nation of people went along with the Nazis and allowed millions to die in death camps. Because they were stupid and uneducated chattel.

The Truth Can Send You to Federal Prison

I'm thoroughly amused by the story that James O'Keefe was arrested along with three neo-Con friends for trying to tap into the phone lines in a Democrat's office in a Federal building. How stupid can you get? I wonder how many more felonies Lack-of-any-ethics O'Keefe is planning on committing before he's thirty.

You see, we have laws in this country, such as privacy laws, that prohibit taping or recording audio of a person without their permission or without a court order. Apparently, some neo-Cons like O'Keefe think they're above the law. I wonder if his friend's daddy can get them out of this one. I suppose it's likely, if daddy has some pull with the Feds. They're rich white boys after all. They'll probably get a slap on the wrist. What they really deserve though is to pay the price for breaking the law. If that happens, I'll be pleasantly surprised.





Upon leaving the courthouse on a measly $10k bail, it was reported that O'Keefe said "The truth will set me free." To which I thought, the truth can send you to prison, but I digress. You see, I think that the whole thing with them taping those workers at Acorn was a load of bullshit. First of all, they edited the tapes in their favor, and cut out pieces that didn't fit with their agenda. Secondly, the things they said were so outrageous that most people, especially people who aren't very intelligent, would probably be caught off guard, so much so that they might say strange things or things they wouldn't ordinarily say because they're confused. It amounts to entrapment. Most of the people at Acorn actually called the police on them. They may have said what they said to play along, and then report them, because that's how you gather information. But as usual, the truth is never what is important. It's just what you can fit into a ten second sound bite. People lost their jobs over it, whether they were really guilty of anything or not.

Whenever neo-Cons are concerned, it's always a double standard. If it's them that's in trouble, they scream it's "just a few bad apples," but if it's anyone else, it must be "wide spread corruption."