Blessed are those who love their Bible, but hate the poor: 3 revisions Tea Party style.
Tag Archives: Mitch McConnell
How Many Secularists and Non-Secularists Can Dance on the Head of a Pin?
Poobah Self Disclosure: I’m an atheist. You may be a Christian…not that there’s anything wrong with that.
America is an unhappy place these days. Opposing forces not only bludgeon each other bloody, but as Mitch McConnell recently announced, they make it a political priority to wipe out their opposition like Genghis Kahn scorching the earth of the steppes. Nowhere is this fighting as pointless and picayunish as in the Secular v. Non Secular Death Cage Match.
As a rule of thumb Republicans are the logical home of the stupidly religiously zealous. Folks like the Family Research Council, Glenn Beck, and loopy Michele Bachmann trumpet vuvuzela the superiority of the God-ed while practicing the most shockingly unchristian behavior against the ungod-ed. Even their captive audience of soft-headed, opportunistic political drones have trouble with them – especially when they stop donating money and votes.
The religious zealots have a huge David and Goliath thing going on. “Dear God, give me a slingshot and guide mine rock into the eye of my Godless oppressors, the libruls.”
But fundamentalists have no lock on the asshat zealot market. Stop by a Jesus Freakery and read the comments. Go to a Atheisterie and the words seem plagiarized from the same source, “You’re a know-nothing asshole who’s a traitor intent on wiping out what crumbs of democracy we still have left.”
And one more similarity. Almost all the over the top bloviation mentions how much anyone who disagrees is some sort of hate-filled, brainless zot – as though we’re all Little Georgie Shrubs.
Most Christians are reasonably sane and the same goes for the secular crowd. All the reasonable ask is a bit of wiggle room because they’re entitled to it. They want to go to church (or not), put up the occasional Christmas Holiday tree (or not), and be safe from the incessant yawping of people who would staple the 10 commandments to everyone’s forehead or consign religious gatherings to a dank cellar with the lights turned out – sort of an ecumenical Gitmo.
But out there on the dark edge of Firebase Freedom lurk nuts to the left of us and nuts to the right of us, as unreasonably pissed about the, “In God We Trust” motto as they are by the, “Christians über alles and the hell with anyone else” brigade.
The balance between freedom of religion and freedom from religion is delicate and a very narrow gap. One person’s “absolute” freedom is another’s horrible shackle.
As with all Constitutional rights, we don’t get to vote on them or change them at will to suit our fancy. However, there’s nothing wrong with a legitimate argument about where the line lays. But, meanness for the sake of meanness is meaningless, rude, and counter-productive.
So everyone, let’s kiss and make up so we can go back to something important, like hating Congress and the President.
You know, something useful.
- FYI – Religious Freedom In Indonesia. (jwitness.wordpress.com)
- U.S. claims restrictions on religious freedom in Azerbaijan. (jwitness.wordpress.com)
- Is ‘Freedom of Religion’ Necessary? (friendlyatheist.com)
- Do atheist activists poison everything? (barefootbum.blogspot.com)
- The Future of Secular Humanism (superscholar.org)
- The Forgotten “Social Issue” (thecynicalchristian.blogspot.com)
- Middle East Christians are told to embrace secularist drive | Austen Ivereigh (guardian.co.uk)
- -What’s the Difference: ‘Freedom of Religion’ vs. ‘Freedom of Worship’ (answersforthefaith.com)
- I Get Email (spaninquis.wordpress.com)
- The Secular Donation Box (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
- Religion: A Peril for Jews: Secularism (time.com)
- Who persecutes believers? Other believers (liberalconspiracy.org)
- Landmarks in the Critical Study of Secularism (3quarksdaily.com)
- Rick Santorum: DADT is Part of a Secularist Plot to Push Religion Out of the Public Square (crooksandliars.com)
- Spiritual Life of an Atheist: Values Matter, Not Belief – Lessons From A Second Viewing of Avatar (sannejohnson.wordpress.com)
- Call to ban school assemblies by secularists who claim ‘Christian character’ infringes children’s human rights (dailymail.co.uk)
Thanks for Giving it The Old College Try PolitiFacts
LIAR, LIAR, HEALTH CARE ON FIRE - PolitiFacts makes the stunning discovery that the biggest lie of 2010 was, "a government takeover of health care." Who knew!
If there’s one year-end task that’s most difficult, it must be compiling the many Most of the Year, Best of the Year, Stupidest of the Year lists. Let’s face it, the modern world is a target-rich environment of cheese. Americans – especially those whom Fox News makes stupid – are addicted to these things. It gives everyone the chance to voice the opinion that whoever picked the list is a dead-wrong ass cake and there’s nothing Americans like more than eating their ass cake and having it too.
BTW, Mark Zuckerman as Time’s Man of the Year? Puhleeze! Either of the LoJoHos – LiLo or ScarJo - would be better choices. Then again, Zuckerman would easily win a contest against Kim Kardashian as Biggest Ass of the Year so everything evens out.
But the hardest of the hard, (Actually, that could be a spectacular list too…may I nominate Ron Jeremy?) 
is bipartisan PolitiFact’s choice of Lie of the Year. Damn! These guys are brave. The balls of a Wall Street bull, or at least the balls of a Wall Street CEO! As outrageous as Tony Hayward equipped with a microphone.
So without further ado – drum roll please – PolitiFact’s 2010′s Lie of the Year is… A government takeover of health care!
(Sound of crickets…)
THEY PROTEST, YOU DECIDE - A woman protesting the take over of government health care displays the reason why she's one of the viewers Fox News made stupid.
A government takeover of health care? Of all the stupid, idiotic, patently false utterances of 2000-fricking-10, that was the best you could come up with? For Chrissakes, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a lie this year. There was an election dammit! There wasn’t an election ad during the entire race that didn’t kill a hard-on with its lies.
Still, the PolitiFact’s survey did speak a truth. It recognized that in a lying-ass bumper crop of a lying year there were clear winners and those clear winners where The Party Couldn’t Talk Straight™.
It’s not that Democrats didn’t spout their own share of truthiness and bald face lies, they just used a little more finesse – sort of putting a little English on the 8-ball to grab defeat from the jaws of victory. When Republicans smacked Dems in the face with the Putrid Mackerel of Lying Bay™, the Democrats most often just genuflected and said, “Thank you sir, may I have another?”
Ten minutes later Fox News would cut in with breaking news. “Hey Brian. Republican Minority God, Mitch McConnell, has just announced that Democrats tried to coerce him into a sexually deviant behavior called, um, I’m not sure how to pronounce the word…bipartisanship – I’ll just use gay for short so as not to confuse our viewers. He said he only escaped by fighting off the gang of socialist zombies by beating them with his new $1500 wingtip shoes. After the break, we’ll go to Fox and Friends to report more details and you’ll decide they are the God’s honest truth. Back to you Gretchen!”
PolitiFacts, thanks for giving it the old college try.
- “Government Takeover Of Health Care” Is PolitiFact’s Lie Of The Year (mediaite.com)
- The Lie of the Year (washingtonmonthly.com)
- PolitiFact: Sanders telling the truth on vast income inequality (dailykos.com)
- PolitiFact: Truth Is Out There, Barely (thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com)
- The Most and Least Honest Pundits (Hint: Don’t Believe Glenn Beck) (dailyfinance.com)
- Think Fast …thinkprogress (ynative77.wordpress.com)
- Fox ‘straight news’ reporter James Rosen raises laughable Obama ‘security’ concern, lies about Obama’s promises (crooksandliars.com)
- It’s A Fact: Fox News Makes You Stupid (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
- Study confirms FOX News makes you stupid (nowpublic.com)
- The Crying Game (crooksandliars.com)
- Ron Jeremy Web Redemption with tosh.0 (ronjeremy.com)
- Palin Doubles Down on “Death Panels” (alternet.org)
- Was Health Bill a ‘Government Takeover’? (blogs.wsj.com)
The Elephants Eat the Carrot and Beat Obama with the Stick
IT'S A DIRTY JOB, BUT WHY'S HE DO IT? - There are no 'mixed signals'. Much of the damage done to Obama was caused by Obama.
There are many things Barack Obama has reneged on during his first two years and as a result the country has never benefited from his promises of change. Instead, he’s become more Bush Lite in many ways.
The War of Error goes on – apparently indefintely. Gitmo is still open and many of the accused are still waiting for counsel, much less actually getting a trial. He’s cast aside promises on gay marriage, DADT, transparency, and limitations on presidential powers hoping some lucky Washington voodoo will somehow resolve the issues for him. On every major issue, he begins compromising before negotiations even begin. But perhaps his biggest blunders are in the way Americans live and work , or often, don’t work.
Obama faces a host of accusations that he’s a raving socialist busily fist-bumping the ghost of Karl Marx. The problem is, the facts don’t fit the accusations and they don’t fit because Obama has perfected that Bushian ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Profits Up, Obama Down
Despite the cat calls, profits at American corporations have steadily risen since that awful commie took office. In fact, they set a record in the Q3. Profits are up, not because Obama opposes business, but because he colludes with them. The CEO compensation juggernaut is traveling like such a runaway locomotive that even the richest of the rich are calling for higher taxes on themselves – yet, Obama is open to the idea of extending Bush tax cuts for the rich before the debate gets underway.
No wonder the head Mertle of the Grand Old Turtles, Mitch McConnell, feels justified in treating Obama persona non grata. He knows The Messiah™ will crack at even token opposition. Obama’s once sterling approval overseas is eroding quickly too, making it hard for him to effect meaningful change on the global stage.
Perhaps the best example of his special talent in taking too long to do too little to benefit the wrong people is his woeful stewardship of flagship issue, health care.
Before the debates even began, Republicans, who trumpeted their alleged bipartisan civility, said the bill was DOA. As Democratic lawmakers ineptly tried to hammer out compromise after compromise, they went all dirty sanchez on every Republican with a case of political hemorrhoids while caving to hundreds of demands and letting Republicans call them uncooperative, hyperpartisan Visigoths favoring the offing of your 90-year old grammy because she has a hangnail.
Grammy’s Hangnail
Hidden among those compromises were plenty for health insurers who are some of the most despicable miscreants in American economics. These are people who literally put grammy’s well being far behind their own. They have a proven track record of rationing health care and reaping the rewards in excessive compensation.
Despite a bill that was popular at the time and is now favored by voters 49-40%, Americans got a huge bill from the insurance companies before almost anything actually took effect. They got that because Obama caved to their demands just as he caved to the neo-tea baggers. In return, he was charged with shameless socialism…by the same Republicans and lobbyists who brokered – if one could call it that – the sweetheart deal. Repblibaggers say they’ll repeal it bit won’t – unless by repeal you mean rejigger it so the deals get better for the unhealth care giants and their minions in striped suits and whigtips.
BO may know sports, but politics? Not so much. He has established a firm and repeatable record for setting himself up for the Big Fail. He gives a carrot to the Grand Old Elephants, who throw it a few feet down the road. Trying to be a nice, agreeable guy he bends down to pick up the carrot. Suddenly, the elephant breaks out a huge stick and beats him like a rug. Then, after the beat down, he dutifully hands the carrot back to the elephant who accuses him of being an oafish prick for dropping it, throws it down the road, and starts the cycle again.
For such a smart guy, you’d think he’d learn this is a really mean game of carrot and stick.
- The Republican Plan is Working (redstateprogressive.com)
- Carrots for banks, sticks for autos (politico.com)
- Republicans, Democrats Differ Sharply on Compromise vs. Sticking to Principles (politicsdaily.com)
- For white Americans, things aren’t what they used to be | Gary Younge (guardian.co.uk)
The Pillsbury Newsboy and the NPR Nazis
Roger Ailes, the Pillsbury Newsboy, hates NPR. Thinks they’re a bunch of Nazis. That’s no surprise. Most Republicans hate them. This week they hate NPR because they fired that poor, beleaguered liberal Juan Williams for admitting he’s a pusillanimous ninny who pisses his Sansabelts at the mere sight of a Muslim, just like Ailes and his stable of the Biggest Gigantic Screeching Heads.
Conservatives like Roger like to whine that NPR is single-handedly crushing conservative discourse in this nation. Apparently Roger has very low self-esteem evidenced by the fact that his conservative gab goobs crush all his liberal competitors, including NPR, in the ratings. I guess he’s not only irrationally afraid of Muslims, but liberals too.
Whadaya Know Fanatics at Risk
Now anyone, left or right, can make the legitimate case that NPR doesn’t deserve funding. It’s not exactly like they’re as influential as say, Newscorp. They serve a narrow audience of opera lovers and Whadya Know fanatics, so it’s a safe bet the nation won’t perish without them.
Yes, times are tight and the government could use the money, but in the time Congress takes to vote on this, they’ll have spent about 10 times NPR’s annual budget. But then, that’s the sort of spectacular financial acumen they used to drive us into the dumper to begin with.
You could legitimately argue that NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting shouldn’t get government funds, but you could say the same thing about our other government corporations – Amtrak and the Postal Service. But if a politician is taking donations from the direct mail lobby, they should STFU. Ditto for all the Midwestern pols who cry like babies every time Amtrak cuts back. It’s ghastly that 12 of their constituents who board trains in their state each year will surely swoon without their subsidized rail service.
And, NPR may be a government corporation, but it’s still a corporation. It has a board of directors and everything, just like Chevron (one of their sponsors). Whatever happened to deregulation and staying out of a corporation’s business? After all, part of the reason it isn’t self-sufficient is that Congress severely limits the ways it can collect money. Come to think of it, that may be answer to high oil prices…but there I go talking like a socialist again.
Look, this country is in deep trouble whether you think Obama is a Kenyan Kommie intent on crashing the country like an Islamic hijacker or that Boehner and Mitch are trying lurch the country back to 1879 when men were men and women were women (who MitchBo and the Boys don’t think deserve equal pay for equal work).
Slapping the Faces of Creationists
I admit it, sometimes I listen to public radio or watch public TV. There’s some interesting stuff on there and the bulk of it has no ideological bent at all – unless you count those documentaries about animal evolution as a slap to the face of Creationists everywhere.
Even so, I could go for defunding them even if the Dems won’t. It would only offset the deficit by the amount it took me to type this sentence, but I do get that it’s importantly symbolic. I can even sympathize that it’s wrong to use public monies for purely political purposes, but so are the bucketloads of cash Republicans piss away politically preening to the great unwashed.
But if you’re going to defund them, be honest. It’s not about the money. It’s not about the librul programming. It’s not about the threat All Things Considered poses to conservatism. It’s not even about Juan Williams. It’s about being pains in the ass for the sake of being pains in the ass.
So conservatives, if you’ll cop to that, I’ll gladly picket the local NPR outlet and demand they return last year’s pledge to me.
- Report: Roger Ailes Apologizes To Anti-Defamation League Over NPR Nazi Comment (mediaite.com)
- NPR hails ‘good judgment’ in Congress for voting down funding cuts (thehill.com)
- Eric Boehlert: Will NPR’s Mara Liasson Defend Her Colleagues From Roger Ailes’ “Nazi” Attack? (huffingtonpost.com)
- Proposal to Defund NPR Wins GOP Anti-Government Spending Contest (foxnews.com)
- Roger Ailes: Jon Stewart’s ‘Crazy’; Calls NPR Execs ‘Nazis’ Over Juan Williams Affair (mediaite.com)
- Republican Push To Defund NPR Fails (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
