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."

The Corporatocracy: It's Official

In case you weren't paying attention, a few days ago the Supreme Court basically ruled that a Corporation has the same "rights" as you and me. If you had been reading the news, you'd probably have missed this, because no major news network bothered to actually report it. Surprise, surprise. Oh, sure, some had letters or editorial opinions about it, but it wasn't news worthy. We all surely knew that the Corporations were in charge. After all, they give to both parties, and every single official in Washington is indebted to them in some way. Sure, Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life, which is supposed to put them above fearing for their position, but they can still be impeached by congress. And since the Corporations have Congress in their pocket, if the Supreme Court doesn't go along and toe the line, they can and will be dissolved.

I decided that it would be fitting to rewrite the Declaration of Independence in favor of the Corporation, seeing as that is what we have become. Enjoy. Feel free to share, just link back here. I call it "The Corporate Declaration of Independence"

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for Corporations to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with a Government, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Corporations are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Business Models, Deregulation and the pursuit of Profits. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Corporations, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Corporation to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Bottom Line and Profits. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that Corporations are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of regulations and worker protections, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Oversight, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Corporations; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present United States Government For and By The People, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Oversight over these Corporations. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

They have refused their Assent to Deregulation, the most wholesome and necessary for Corporate Profits.
They have forbidden their Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till their Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, they have utterly neglected to do our bidding.
They have refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of slave labor, unless those people would be given the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right unknown to them and formidable to a free people only.
They have called together legislative bodies at times unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from our Lawyers, for the sole purpose of fatiguing us into compliance with their measures.
They have dissolved Committees repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness their invasions on the rights of the Corporations.
They have refused for a long time, after such disolutions, to cause others to be appointed; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the Corporation remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of worker strikes from without, and bankruptcy from within.
They have endeavoured to prevent the Corporations of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, so that we might pay them slave wages.

They have obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing their Assent to Laws for establishing the Judicial Rights of Corporations.
They have made Corporations dependent on their Laws alone, for the tenure of their existence, and the amount and payment of their worker's salaries.
They have erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Regulators to harrass our Corporations, and make them comply with worker protection laws.
They have kept among us, in all times, Federal Regulators without the Consent of our exective boards.
They have affected to render the People independent of and superior to the Corporate power.
They have combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our business model, and unacknowledged by our lawyers; giving their Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of Federal Regulators among us:
For protecting them, by a Laws, from retaliation for any Fines which they should impose on the Corporations of these States:
For cutting off our free Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Off Shore Tax Shelters:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for using Child Labor and worker abuse:
For abolishing the free System of Monopolies in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein government Oversight, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute Oversight into these Corporations:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Corporations:
For suspending our own Executive Boards, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

They have abdicated Free Market Capitalism here, by declaring us out of their Protection and passing Laws of Oversight against us.
They have plundered our CEO's pay, ravaged our stock options, dissolved our Monopolies, and destroyed the lives of our Executives.
They are at this time transporting large Armies of Regulators to compleat the works of Bankruptcy, Regulation and Oversight, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Overseer of a Corporatocracy.
They have constrained our fellow Corporations, caught in Pyramid Schemes, to become the informants of their friends and Brethren, or to lose their Tax Exemptions by their Hands.
They have excited worker insurrections amongst us, and have endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our Enemies, the merciless Union Organizers, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished desire to protect workers of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define the leader of a Free People, is unfit to be the ruler of Corporations.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Worker brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our organization and the cost of doing business here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these Oversights, which, would inevitably interrupt our ability to use them as slave labor. They too have been deaf to the voice of business and of Profit. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in Hostile Takeovers, in Peace useful workers.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the Corporations of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good Corporations of these States, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Corporations are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent Corporations; that they are Absolved from all Laws and Protections for their Workers, and that all political connection between them and the benefit of the Worker, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Corporate States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, run roughshod over Workers, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent Corporations may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Business Models, our Lawyers and our sacred Profits.

Jefferson and the rest were great men, but they weren't capable of saving us from ourselves.

What progress we are making...

A hundred years ago, if you had told your average American that black people would have equal rights someday, they would have thought you quite mad. And if you had told them that a black man would be elected President of the United States, they'd have had you committed to a mental asylum for being completely off your rocker.

I hope that someday, whether it be a hundred years from now, or a thousand, that people look back on this age and consider it as barbaric as we consider the Medieval period. I hope that someday all people really are treated equally, and that there is no more hunger or homelessness in this world. It's a nice dream isn't it?

"What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books." --Sigmund Freud

"Rudy and the Big Lie"

Sounds like it could be the title of a blockbuster movie huh?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

*Sigh* It really makes Goebbels look like an amateur.

Oh, and Rudy here is a frickin' mathematician, 6 days is less than 10. Really? I would have never known that.





Just keep saying it.* The chattel will love you for it.

*"it" being 9/11

A New Year, Same Shit

LOL I don't really have anything much to write about. Same shit, different day. I could talk about whatever news story, but it would just be rehashing the same mess. It is all a mess and all the same isn't it?

I read a few books over the holiday, and right now I'm reading "The Inquisitor's Manual" by Bernard Gui. Let me tell you, reading it will make you very happy that you live in the 21st century and have secular laws like the Constitution to protect you from religious crazies. Well unless you're unlucky enough to live some place like Iran or Saudi Arabia which are still run by religious zealots :\

Really, if you're American, you should all go and find a statue of Thomas Jefferson and kiss it!

The Double Standard

I'm sure that by now you all have heard about the shooting at Fort Hood here in Texas. It's a tragic thing, so many people killed for no good reason. It's really sad. What's also sad is some of the comments left on various news articles. Instead of offering the families of those who were slain their condolences, the racists are out in force and the anti-Muslim sentiment is oozing forth. The shooter is apparently of Jordanian descent and his name is of Arabic origin.

Whether or not he did what he did because of his religious beliefs (which I do doubt at this moment), why does everyone blame Islam? What truly would be irony is if he turns out to be a fundamentalist Christian evangelist, but I do digress. You see, crazy doesn't discriminate. He didn't open fire on those people because of religion, even if he claims that is the reason. Rather he did it because he's crazy. Period. Crazy. Nothing else.

But you say, the Koran is full of violence. Then I dare you to read the Bible. The Bible too has commandments to kill non-believers, witches, idolaters, homosexuals, etc. But when some crazy Christian kills someone, even when they claim their religion made them do it, we don't see people condemning Christianity.

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Ex 22:18

And the man that committeth adultery with [another] man's wife, [even he] that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. Lev 20:10 (Man, all the cheating Republicans better watch out!)

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood [shall be] upon them. Lev 20:13

A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood [shall be] upon them. Lev 20:27

That is of course not counting all the smiting that "god" does, or ordering the killing of a man for gathering sticks on the sabbath (Num 15:32-35) or the ordering of the ancient Israelites to keep all the virgins for themselves after slaughtering an entire town (Num 31:17). However, "god" appears to change his mind by Deu 5:17 by saying "Thou shalt not kill" but forgets all about it by Deu 13:6,

If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which [is] as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; [Namely], of the gods of the people which [are] round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the [one] end of the earth even unto the [other] end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. Deu 13:6-10

The Bible is full of genocide, of "god" ordering the ancient Israelites to kill their neighbors and take their land. Of ordering them to kill unbelievers. During the Medieval period, western Europeans took all of this to heart, and murdered millions because of it, and that's not counting the crusades in the Middle East.

On that note, do you want to know why the Middle East is in the state it's in today? Because Medieval Christians invaded one of the most enlightened civilizations on earth and reduced it to ashes, and the British came along and finished it off in the 19th and early 20th century. Of course, they fucked up Africa too, so go figure.

The Arabs gave us the number zero, algebra, optics, and a myriad of other things prior to the invasion by a bunch of barbaric western Europeans. If you were a female in the Middle Ages, it would have been best for you to have been born in the Muslim world. During the Medieval period, women in the Middle East had rights that the women in western Europe did not have. Such as the right to testify in court, hold property and initiate divorce. And this history is buried here in the west, glossed over by people who would rather forget that our ancestors were a bunch of asshats.

Recommended reading: The Crusades through Arab Eyes

Fox News is of course NOT NEWS!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
For Fox Sake!
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

"But according to Fox, their weekday news programming, and this is according to Fox, runs from 9am to 4pm and from 6pm to 8pm for a total of nine newsy hours a day. So for the audience let me help you out because it does get confusing.

The three hours that you spend in the morning with Fox and Friends, not news! Your four o'clock to five o'clock post tea and crumpets neo-Kabudo break, NOT NEWS! The five o'clock to six o'clock emotional whirl wind and national group therapy session that is Glenn Beck, not even close to news!

O'Reilly, Hannity, Van Susternenenen, NOT NEWS! This is according to Fox News. Those people, the ones featured in promos about how "Fair and Balanced" Fox News is, are not news. These people, otherwise known as the only people you ever think of, when you think about Fox News, are not news. They're Fox Opinu-tainment. Apparently Fox News are these folks, or as they're known, who the fuck are these folks? That's Fox News...

The truth is the news side of Fox and the opinion side of Fox are like the McDLT. The hot side stays hot, and the cool side stays cool, but when you put it together and eat it, well I think you know what ends up happening."

US Government Sponsored Human Trafficking

As if allowing your employees to gang-rape women isn't enough, how about abducting people from their homes by promising them jobs in the United States, only to take them and force them to work for little pay in Iraq?

Buddhi Gurung, who calls himself a poor Nepali man, described how he was unable to get a job to support his wife and two sons during fighting by Maoist rebels and the army in 2004. When an agent promised him a job in America for $500 a month, he said he borrowed about $2,800 to pay him — but instead of going to the United States, he was taken to Jordan via New Delhi.

After a month in Jordan, he said he was put in a van with 11 others and driven to Baghdad. Twelve Nepali friends in the van that left just before his were abducted, paraded on television and eventually beheaded. Gurung said he wound up at the U.S. Al Asad Air Base where he was forced to work and paid less than the promised $500 a month.

"We would hear bomb blasts nearby and we knew our life was at risk," Gurung said. "I always wanted to go back to Nepal but neither my passport was with me, nor did I have any money or knew any other way to go back. ... Finally, after 15 months, I was permitted to go back to Nepal. ... This is how my life was saved."

Gurung and the families of the 12 Nepali men have filed a U.S. federal lawsuit accusing Houston-based defense contractor KBR Inc. and a Jordanian subcontractor, Daoud & Partners, of human trafficking.

When I was reading this, I was like, how in the hell did he wind up being forced to work in Iraq? I know that there are criminal organizations that abduct people, but surely once he was found by our people, he would have been sent home. And then I read that KBR was responsible, and it suddenly made sense. Why recruit Americans, who you'll have to pay really well, and pay hazard pay for going some place so dangerous, when you can just abduct people from third world countries and force them to work? This shit just keeps getting deeper. And our congressmen are tangentially responsible for everything that these contractors have done, by failing to have oversight of the situation.

I did a search but, there doesn't seem to be much about this case in the news. Surprise, surprise.

Al Franken Pwns Hudson Institute Bitch

Hahahahahahahah.

It would be funnier if it weren't so damned sad.

Let me tell you a little story about the "American Dream." My step-mother developed cancer. Her insurance company dropped her and she needed multiple surgeries to remove the tumor. (Surprise, surprise you say). She kept having seizures and couldn't work obviously, she had to wait forever to get disability. My father and her had to file bankruptcy to keep from losing everything they had worked so hard for. It destroyed their marriage. And they're not the only ones. Their story is the same many times over throughout this whole country.

Meanwhile, these politicians are lining their pockets with lobbying money from the Corporatocracy. Wall street fucks up and they get million dollar bonuses. How does that bitch in the video sleep at night? I'm not sure.

I'm sorry, but if you bust your ass and work hard, you shouldn't be in danger of losing everything if you get sick. When the one percent of the people in the United States are worth the same amount of money as ninety percent of the people here, you have an uneven distribution of wealth. Guess what? Tax the fuckers, because there is a point where "doing well" becomes having an obscene amount of money. Oh, "but that's not fair" whine the idiots who are persuaded by those who it affects (see: the bloody filthy rich) to be righteously indignant. Life isn't fair. Guess what else isn't fair? Starving to death on the streets while Buffy dines in her yacht and complains about having to pay too much in taxes.

Come on, I want to make so much money that I have to pay a lot of taxes on it. I'll do it and I'll be happy about it! Seriously. But then again, I grew up in a ghetto. I know true poverty. I have seen it with my own eyes. I have lived it and I have breathed it. It's ridiculous that in the richest nation on the planet, we have people who are homeless, who don't know where their next meal is coming from, who are laid off after working thirty years at the same place because their job was outsourced to Mexico, where we have people who die because they can't get the care they need. Where Corporations are subsidized with our tax money by the government while they make record profits. WTF America? WTF.

Transcript:

Al: I think we disagree on whether the health care reform we're talking about now in congress should pass. You said that kinda the way we're going will increase bankruptcies. I want to ask you, how many bankruptcies because of medical crises were there last year in Switzerland?

Bitch: I don't have that number in front of me, but I can find out and get back to you.

Al: I can tell you how many it was. It's zero.

*laughter*

Al: Do you know how many medical bankruptcies there were last year in France?

Bitch: I don't have that number but I can get back to you if you like.

Al: Yeah, the number is zero. Do you know how many were in Germany?

Bitch: From the trend of your questions I'm assuming the answer is zero, but I don't know the precise amount and I would have to get back to you.

Al: Well, you're very good, you're very fast. The point is, is that I think we need to go in that direction, not in the opposite direction. Thank you.

Bitch: Do you know the cancer survival rates in those countries?

Al: You know, you've picked on one, and if you look at that study, did you know that we pick easily, much more easily survivable cancer rates. So if you want to get into digging deep into studies, that study isn't legitimate. I've heard that before. That's because we find easily survivable cancers to count as ones that we survive. You can cherry pick stuff to find one little place where somebody says our system works better than the French or the Germans, but we're talking about bankruptcy here today.

Bitch: *deer-in-headlight look*

Al: And the fact of the matter is, you're saying that if we go more to a French system or a Swiss system, that we'll have increased bankruptcies, but the fact is they don't have bankruptcies and we do for medical care. Thank you.

Beck: Freedom is not *really* Freedom

From Crooks and Liars:



Watching Glenn Beck is like watching a real life version of Orwell's 1984 in action.

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Corporations are your friend.

Hey Beck! The 13th century called, they want you back. Because that's what this boils down to. They don't want the plebes to have information, just like the medieval Church didn't want the peasants to be literate, because then they might get ideas in their head. And when they say they want broadband access for everyone, that doesn't necessarily mean in their homes. It means that you can go to a library or some other publicly funded place and access the internet. I think that's an important thing.

The only thing that disturbs me is that people believe everything Beck says. As much as he mentions him, I wonder if Beck has ever read anything by Karl Marx. I wonder if he can define "socialism" or "fascism" or "Marxism" beyond just saying that the Obama administration is "all of those things."

“You have a freedom of speech or the government. You can’t really have both,” said Beck.

Really? I could have sworn that the piece of paper that G. Dubya Bush wiped his ass with, also known as our Constitution said that *we the People* are the government. And herein lies the danger. The right-wing wackos scream about how terrible the government is, but we're all supposed to be the government. We're supposed to decide what happens, by electing officials who carry out our wishes. The Constitution, that piece of paper that so many religious fundies want to throw out and replace with the Bible, is supposed to protect our rights. And yet we have Conservatives screaming we need a revolution, we need to overthrow a duly elected government, yadda yadda yadda. There is nothing wrong with our Constitution. It has served this country well (for the most part) for over two hundred years. I do believe that there is a word for that. It's called treachery. And, as Jack Sparrow said in Pirates of the Caribbean, "The deepest circle of Hell is reserved for betrayers and mutineers." But on a more serious note, these people have apparently never read the Declaration of Independence (or anything else of value for that matter):

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

Maybe what it boils down to is that Beck is so paranoid, he's afraid of himself.

Think Progress has more.

What *Was* Fought For at Omaha Beach?

Thanks to True Blue Texan for this:




This video moved me to tears. Can you tell me exactly what was fought for at Omaha Beach? Was it so that we could discriminate against people? So we could lynch and roast people alive? Was it so we could act like moral busy bodies and holier-than-thou-arts? Was it so that religion could take over our government and run it as a theocracy?

Or was it so that everyone could have life, liberty and pursue happiness? So that the Constitution of the United States could be upheld? That everyone would have equal protection under the law.

"I have seen with my own eyes the consequences of caste system and it makes some people less than others or second class, never again. We must have equal rights for everyone. It's what this country was started for."

And I too have seen the depths of human depravity (just read some history). It is often masked as religious piety or national pride. Do not forget that it wasn't just Jews who were massacred by the Nazis seventy some years ago.

"As many as one-half million Gypsies, at least 250,000 mentally or physically disabled persons, and more than three million Soviet prisoners-of-war also fell victim to Nazi genocide. Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Social Democrats, Communists, partisans, trade unionists, Polish intelligentsia and other undesirables were also victims of the hate and aggression carried out by the Nazis." citation

All that it takes for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing. Why is equal rights even a question? It's the United States for godsake! WHY?! So that some religious fanatics can feel better knowing that preventing Joe and Jack down the street from getting married makes their deity happy? WHAT. THE. FUCK.

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may 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

Christians Fighting Each Other in Ireland in 1908

I found this today and it's very interesting. It's a reprint of a newspaper article from a hundred and one years ago today (their time), when Catholics got angry about a local man, a Protestant who had a meeting in his store. It caused days of violence.

The lower classes of Roman Catholics in the country were very ignorant, and made a ready prey for any bad leading and bad passions...and the least suspicion of proselytising on the part of Protestants... was quite enough to drive their Roman Catholic neighbours of a less educated class into paroxysms of senseless intolerance such as they experienced in Swords last week.

Those words are profound, and still relevant today. Intolerance and upheaval is what happens when you have a few people inciting the less educated among us, by stoking fears and prejudices.