Saturday, August 21, 2010

A message to Rush Limbaugh . . .

It warms my heart and lifts my spirit to know that there are others out there who are of the opinion that Rush Limbaugh is a worthless piece of shit.

These people have more class and worth to offer our society than Limpballs and his ilk could ever wet-dream of doing.





Good on them.



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Friday, August 20, 2010

Two pea(heads) in a pod . . .



Well isn't this a lovely pairing?

Glenn Beck has tagged aging rocker/gun nut Ted Nugent to speak at his 8-28 Gathering of Fuckheads. Nugent in recent years has a childish habit of strutting around on stage toting assault rifles and other various extensions of his small penis and threatening to use them on Democratic politicians.

The "Nuge" is the kind of "man" my conservative buddies drool over. In fact, I'd say they probably find themselves forced to stifle the onset of a raging hard on whenever they see and hear old Ted blustering and chest thumping about his guns and his manhood (usually on Fox News - where else?).

But here's something a lot of people don't know about Mr. Nugent. Many years ago, there was a nasty and bloody little war in a far off placed called Vietnam. It just so happens that he-man Ted was of U.S. draft age while that war was in full swing with an endless assembly line of dead American soldier's body bags being shipped back home.

So what did he-man Ted do when he was called up by his local draft board for a pre-draft physical in preparation for serving his country? If you guessed that he-man Ted was so eager to ship out to Vietnam and to gallop forth into battle with his fearless ego and his beloved guns blazing against the evil Viet Cong that he disavowed personal hygiene for a month and showed up at the draft board in clothing that he'd slept, pissed in and shit in for a week, you'd be right on the fucking money. The draft board obviously questioned Mr. Nugents mental status and sent him home. And thus America was denied a soldier hero.

After the draft board incident he-man Nuge demonstrated his courage and his humility and his sorrow at not being able to defend America from the communist hordes by making this statement:

“But if I would have gone over there, I’d have been killed, or I’d have killed all the Hippies in the foxholes. I would have killed everybody.”

Now there's a "real" man's man for ya huh?

Ted recently has been hanging out with some folks who mmmm ... lets say seem to have a wee bit of a problem with dark skinned people, Jews and foreigners.

Anyhow, I think it's fitting that the coward and closet bigot Beck invited a fellow coward and open bigot like Ted Nugent to a rally which takes place on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech and which the Beckster bills as his rally to "reclaim the civil rights movement."

Who says wingnuts have no affinity for divine comedy?



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Thursday, August 19, 2010

They look like Muslims!!! Kill them!!!!

Thank you FOX News and right-wing AM hate radio:

By MIKE KELLY
RECORD COLUMNIST


At one point, a portion of the crowd menacingly surrounded two Egyptian men who were speaking Arabic and were thought to be Muslims.

"Go home," several shouted from the crowd.

"Get out," others shouted.

In fact, the two men – Joseph Nassralla and Karam El Masry — were not Muslims at all. They turned out to be Egyptian Coptic Christians who work for a California-based Christian satellite TV station called "The Way." Both said they had come to protest the mosque.

"I'm a Christian," Nassralla shouted to the crowd, his eyes bulging and beads of sweat rolling down his face.

But it was no use. The protesters had become so angry at what they thought were Muslims that New York City police officers had to rush in and pull Nassralla and El Masry to safety.

"I flew nine hours in an airplane to come here," a frustrated Nassralla said afterward.

Reading that made me think of this scene from the 1943 Henry Fonda move "The Oxbow Incident."

In this scene, Fonda is reading a letter to a group of men who had just found out they had hanged an innocent man in their zeal for vengeful "justice." The words in the letter were the hanged man's last to his wife and infant sons.





I don't believe I am exaggerating in stating that I think it's just a matter of time before Fox and the wing-nuts have innocent blood on their hands.



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The Disease is Spreading . . .



It truly has boiled down to the very uncomplicated fact that there are a shitload of stupid, knowledge averse, truth be damned people in this country:

Today, Pew put out a poll showing that 18 percent of the American public believes President Obama is a Muslim. That number includes 31 percent of Republicans. Only 34 percent of the adult public says Obama is a Christian, down from 48 percent in 2009. When asked how they learned about Obama’s religion, 60 percent of the respondents cited the media, with tv mentioned the most frequently.

While journalists and pundits on cable news today did acknowledge the “media” have had a role to play, they also seemed to place some of the blame on Obama and his staff, saying that perhaps the President should go to church more frequently and more openly to show the public that he truly is Christian.

I have no doubt that some of my conservative friends count themselves among the 1/3 of Republicans who believe President Obama is a Muslim. I have no doubt that they also share the belief that George W. Bush departed office leaving America in a much stronger economic state than what was left to him by his predecessor. But I gotta tell ya -- I'm going to lay it on the line here. I am sick and goddamn tired of reality denying assholes. And yes, while I do not relish thinking of people who I call friends in that terminology -- it just so happens that it is what it is. Do not waste your breath asking me to apologize for or debate that analysis.

At some point you just have to stand up for the truth, defend it and call on the purveyors of falsehoods to account for their willful ignorance and willingness to believe in and propagate lies.

With that said, I would be derelict if I failed to give a big FUCK YOU! to the media for smugly implying that other people's conscious choice to be ignorant is somehow Obama's fault and stating that he should publicly attend church more often. The fucking nerve of these people. Has the mainstream media looked in the mirror lately? Is it any wonder that a sizable percentage of sane America is of the view that the fourth estate's reputation is lower than a slug's scrotum sac?

It's just so mind bogglingly depressing to think about it all at times.

"Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion."

----Gustave Flaubert



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The pitchfork crowd get's played for fools (again) by Fox . . .



Looks like the hair pulling and bed-wetting from the right, egged on by FAUX News, over the big, evil, scary "mosque" being built a few blocks from the former WTC site center is in all likelihood a lot of expended, sputtering rage over something that was always more of a dubious concept on paper than anything that was realistically imminent.


By MAGGIE HABERMAN & BEN SMITH | 8/18/10 7:11 PM EDT Updated: 8/19/10 12:07 PM EDT

When President Barack Obama turned the battle over a planned New York Islamic center into a national debate over religious freedom, he unwittingly allied himself and his party with an ill-planned, long-shot development project described by one of its most prominent allies as “amateur hour.”

The efforts to launch the $100 million Cordoba House (now dubbed Park51) two blocks north of the World Trade Center site have been an uphill battle from the start, and not just because of controversy. And even as the “Ground Zero Mosque” emerges as a hotly debated national symbol, New York government officials and real estate insiders are privately questioning whether the project has much chance of coming to fruition.

The Cordoba Initiative hasn’t yet begun fundraising for its $100 million goal. The group’s latest fundraising report with the state attorney general’s office, from 2008, shows exactly $18,255 — not enough even for a down payment on the half of the site the group has yet to purchase.

The group also lacks even the most basic real estate essentials: no blueprint, architect, lobbyist or engineer — and now operates amid crushing negative publicity. The developers didn't line up advance support for the project from other religious leaders in the city, who could have risen to their defense with the press.

So, since the Republicans and the right have access to this same information, the only reason for them to continue their contemptible hysterics over this obviously manufactured controversy, boils down to nothing more than a cynical, cowardly effort to tap into the misguided fears and ignorance of the Idiocracy crowd to gin up support for their Teabagger candidates in the November elections.

It's crass, it's disgusting, it's deceitful and it's craven. But then that is your modern day conservative movement described to a fucking "T" isn't it?

And as far as Harry Reid, Howard Dean and a few of their timorous Dem colleagues go, I think this cartoon pretty much says it all about those spineless weasels:




And don't even ask me what I think of our dysfunctional media . . . there aren't enough adjectives in Roget's Thesaurus to describe their societal uselessness.



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Sometimes I wonder why I even try . . . .




Our grand Idiocracy:

By ALAN FRAM, Associated Press Writer Alan Fram, Associated Press Writer – 46 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Americans increasingly are convinced — incorrectly — that President Barack Obama is a Muslim, and a growing number are thoroughly confused about his religion.

Nearly one in five people, or 18 percent, said they think Obama is Muslim, up from the 11 percent who said so in March 2009, according to a poll released Thursday. The proportion who correctly say he is a Christian is down to just 34 percent.

And the lament of Thomas Paine echoes in my brain:

"These are the times that try men's souls."

I wonder how Paine would have dealt with the challenge of living in a nation of idiots?

Sigh . . .



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Mock! Mock! Mock!!

I've said it in the past, I say it today, and I will continue to say it in the future -- all Fox News has to do to get me to stop attacking and mocking them is to disavow that they are a "news" organization and change their name to GOPTV. It really is as simple as that. But since we know it will be a cold day in hell if that ever happens --- on with the mocking!

Jon Stewart mocks their in your face hypocrisy:


The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
News Corp. Gives Money to Republicans
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Wednesday, August 18, 2010

WTF ? There are no Muslims in lower Manhattan? Really??

THE S T O O P I D!! OH HOW IT BUUUUUUUUUUUUURNS!!!





You just knew big head O'Falafel would eventually get around to adding his 2 cents worth of ignorance and stupidity to the debate.

Sigh . . .



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Our Big Fat Greek Disaster . . . .



These are the same "austerity measures" that right wing Republicans in Congress are salivating about and wanting to implement here to address America's economic malaise.

While I think Obama and the Democrats have pandered to and sucked up way too much to the Wall Street moneyed interests, and not done nearly enough to ease the economic suffering of working, middle-class Americans, the alternative (GOP austerity) will be nothing short of full blown, long term economic devastation to the country.

But don't take my word for it --- go ask the Greeks:

Tensions Rise in Greece as Austerity Measures Backfire
By Corinna Jessen in Athens

The austerity measures that were supposed to fix Greece's problems are dragging down the country's economy. Stores are closing, tax revenues are falling and unemployment has hit an unbelievable 70 percent in some places. Frustrated workers are threatening to strike back.

If you think shit is bad now -- just put Boehner and the Tea-baggers in charge of the government come November. Riots will be the least of our worries.



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The Islamic, Purple Menace . . .

One of the few remaining, honest journalists in America, Greg Palast, has some serious questions.

Greg's questions.



Of course Greg's questions are deliberately ridiculous. In fact they are just as ridiculous as the person who manufactured the "ground zero mosque" controversy to begin with:





How anyone finds this demented loser Pam Geller credible after claiming the Obama administration has adopted "the color purple" as their official gang colors is beyond my reality-based comprehension.

But if my conservative friends insist on putting their faith in Geller and her mentally ill delusions -- about all I can do is offer you this:







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Joe Scarborough: Newt Gingrich is "deplorable" and "sick" . . .

Well -- it's official. Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and the rest of the "The Islamicists are coming to kill us!" wingnut crowd have sunk to the nadir of moral, intellectual and cultural relativism with their ridiculous attacks on the Muslim Americans who bought a run down building several blocks from the WTC site and wish to turn it into a community center.

At least that's what former GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough says:





Hell -- even known nativist and Nazi defender Pat Buchanan thinks the Gingrich crowd has gone off the deep end:





If you've lost Scarborough and Buchanan from your cause -- I'm thinking that it is not out of the realm of possibility that the cause itself is/was, at minimum, shallow and indefensible to begin with.



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Gohmert Pyle USMC (United States Maniacal Congressman) . . .

Every time former judge and current Republican Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert opens his profoundly stupid mouth, I just have to sit back and marvel. I can only imagine what type of constituency would be needed to get someone of Gohmert's intellectual caliber elected to Congress over and over again. And quite frankly - the mere thought of it terrifies me.

Anyhow -- Jon Stewart demonstrates why the Louie Gohmerts of the world need to be mocked to the point of irrelevancy. It's not a role I gleefully relish, but I certainly understand the importance of decontaminating our national discourse of such anti-intellectual blight.


The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jon Stewart & Anderson Cooper Look at Gaping Holes - Security
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Freaked me out . . .




I saw this Yahoo! News headline this morning:

Mind-Controlling Parasites Date Back Millions of Years

And for a moment I was in awe, because who knew that right wing extremism had a presence a million years ago?

Ka-ching!



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Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Sad . . . just sad . . .

So much for "The American Dream" ---





And yet, if the right wing and the lap dog media are to believed, the issue of some Muslim Americans wanting to put a community center in a dilapidated building a few blocks from the former WTC site is a much more important subject to be addressed right now.

Our discourse, our politics and our media are ruled by fucking fools.



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Laughter --- still and inarguably the best antidote to stupidity . . .




Lol --- yes --- they should be mocked ---- mercilessly so . . .

You know what to do: [CLICK HERE]



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Heckuva job Georgie . . .

Meanwhile - in a galaxy far, far away . . .


By STEPHEN FARRELL
Published: August 17, 2010

BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber penetrated apparently lax security measures at an Iraqi army recruiting office in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing dozens of recruits in the first major bombing of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. The attack comes in the fraught period just ahead of the Aug. 31 deadline for American forces to reduce their numbers.

Iraqi soldiers said they pulled at least 40 bodies away from the scene, where a large pool of bloodstained water and a pile of flip-flops sat in the middle of a square beside the vast security walls that shielded those inside the former Ministry of Defense building, but not those who had lined up outside. Iraqi officials at the Ministry of Interior and the nearest hospital said the death toll was at least 48, with more than 120 wounded.






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Wanted: Strong Voices of Reason . . . .


When the right leaning Cato Institute starts questioning the wisdom and sanity of trying to start a culture war with all Muslims, and specifically American Muslims, you just know that the people (right-wingers, teabaggers, etc.) who are presently in the act of doing just such a thing, do not have America's long term best interests or security in mind.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that not only are the right wingers once again putting themselves and their troglodyte movement on the wrong side of history, they also appear quite willing to put the lives of every single American man, woman and child at risk in order to advance their intellectually and morally corrupt ideological agenda.

Posted by Christopher Preble

Some leaders within the Republican Party seem to have fixed on a useful club with which to bludgeon the president and his fellow Democrats — Cordoba House, aka the “Ground Zero” Mosque. Over the weekend, Republican strategist Ed Rollins explained how the party would use the issue in the coming months:

ROLLINS: Intellectually, the president may be right, but this is an emotional issue, and people who lost kids, brothers, sisters, fathers, what have you, do not want that mosque in New York, and it’s going to be a big, big issue for Democrats across this country.

“Face the Nation” Host Bob SCHIEFFER: So you see it as an issue that’s going to continue?

ROLLINS: Absolutely. No question about it. Every candidate — every candidate who’s in the challenge districts are going to be asked, how do you feel about building the mosque on the Ground Zero sites?

This strategy, exploiting still-raw emotion and implicitly demonizing Muslims, threatens to trade short-term political gain for medium-term political harm to the party. And it most certainly will translate into long-term harm for the country at large.

Opposing the construction of a mosque near the Ground Zero site plays into al Qaeda’s narrative that the United States is engaged in a war with Islam, that bin Laden and his tiny band of followers represent something more than a pitiful group of murderers and thugs, and that all American Muslims are an incipient Fifth Column that must be either converted to Christianity or driven out of the country, else they will undermine American society from within.


Since it appears there are no longer any thinking adults in the GOP who will do the right thing and stand up to the neanderthals who have hijacked their party, it is truly becoming imperative for the remaining sane Americans to step up and start speaking out against this lunacy. Otherwise, it's just a matter of time before history repeats itself in this manner:

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Socialists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Socialist.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak for me."


Sigh . . .




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Lose your job? You're no longer an American then . . .

Compassionate conservatism in all of it's stupendously revolting glory.






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WWJST -- What Would Jon Stewart Think . . .?

Jon Stewart gets it too (unsurprisingly).


The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Mosque-Erade
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorTea Party



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The GOP's Sound Bite Constitutionality . . . .

Keith Olbermann weighs in with a dose of sober sanity on the right-wing manufactured controversy known as the "ground zero mosque".





With every passing day, I find it increasingly difficult to think of or refer to these folks on the far right as "my fellow Americans." Their zeal for using emotional wedge issues like this to divide Americans for purely political and ideological gain is nothing short of cowardly and disgusting - and frankly - un-American. I mean -- think about it -- this country is in serious economic trouble right now. Devastatingly high unemployment, people losing jobs, homes, life savings - lives ruined - and no relief for the foreseeable future. And all the right can think of doing is playing cultural warrior games. And though it is understandable considering the fact that they have no ideas, no vision whatsoever for how to deal with this country's truly serious issues, it does not make it any less insidious.

The America I grew up in and the history I was taught stressed the importance and magnitude with which a little document called the U.S. Constitution has had in the formation of our Democratic Republic and the critical role it has played in the freedom that ALL AMERICANS benefit from.

Watching how the right has been cynically manipulating this issue though, I'm beginning to get the distinct impression that the right wingers view the U.S. Constitution as being a great deal less sacrosanct than their desire to regain political power and "stick" it to the Democrats. In other words, just like the phony flag lapel pin controversy, and the Obama birth certificate crap, the right wing really doesn't give a rat's ass about Democracy -- it's a throwaway word to them -- a weapon so to speak, to be used only as a political prop whenever the need arises to shove it up their political opponent's ass.

Anyhow - good for Olbermann for pointing out the obvious and while I harbor no hope whatsoever that it will sway the right wing from their path of destructive hate, at least people are starting to push back in the mainstream media and questioning the motives of the wingnuts in general. It's a necessary start.


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Monday, August 16, 2010

Hate 24x7x365 . . .



It really is sad, and I have to say, a bit frightening to see the level of influence which ignorance and hateful vindictiveness from the right wing crowd is having on the national discourse. The Rude Pundit has noticed it as well and frankly, while the prose and tone are a bit rough around the edges, I pretty much agree with everything he says here. It's worth printing in it's entirety:

8/16/2010
In Brief: The "Ground Zero Mosque" and Victim Worship:

Here's one of the stupidest things said so far about the whole big ball of stupid that is the "controversy" over the Muslim community center being built two blocks from the sight of the former World Trade Center: "Everything Bloomberg and Barack Obama say about this sounds right. But if the only constituency that matters here - the ones left behind by the victims of Sept. 11 - think they're wrong, they are." That bit of solipsism masked as empathy is from New York Daily News writer Mike Lupica.

Really? How much of the architecture of Lower Manhattan needs to meet with the approval of the families of 9/11 victims? Did they vote? Because of fears of offending their apparently delicate sensibilities, in 2005, the International Freedom Center was booted from the plans for construction at Ground Zero because it might not be solely devoted to fetishizing the attacks of 2001. Or, in other words, because it might have too much freedom. The fear that mean art might leap off the page and attack 9/11 survivors also got the Drawing Center to withdraw from the site's proposed Frank Gehry-designed art center, which has still not gotten off the ground.

Enough. Truly, enough. This is written with utter sympathy for people who lost loved ones or were hurt or made ill by the attack on 9/11. But it is with complete disdain and a "fuck you" to those who exploit their pain in order to spread hatred (and that includes some of the victims themselves). There is something appalling and sick about watching preening bags of fuck prance around on Fox "news" and use dead people as shields so they can say bad things about Democrats, liberals, and/or Muslims.

And, by the way, have you ever spent time in the blocks around Ground Zero? It ain't some pristine site of our American revirgination. It's a filthy downtown of a city, like every filthy city downtown. The streets are dirty; there's homeless people all around; there's discount stores, fast food joints, and other crap places in between the decent buildings and public art. Some of the people from outside the city who want to talk about "honoring the dead" or some such shit probably buy the crap Twin Tower souvenirs from the Middle Easterners selling them at grubby tables across the street, between Ground Zero and the Trinity Church, or they get street meat from Halal carts. Fuck, before the 9/11 attacks, it was a fucking wasteland at night and on the weekends down there. The Cordoba House? That's on a block that no one walks down unless they're specifically looking for a place there, not because it's dangerous, but because it's just another goddamned city block with nothing special about it.

So, really, truly, take your sudden belief in the glowing sanctity of the ground that holds the construction site of an office building that will be filled with Wall Streeters dicking over Middle America and shove it up your opportunistic and hateful asses.


I'm also glad that there are people like Stephen Colbert around to put this bullshit in it's proper perspective on the teevee:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Weapon of Mass Construction
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes2010 ElectionFox News




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