Hold Your Prayers, God is Busy in the Southwest These Days

Tags

immigration, religious right, right wing, teaparty

See, God is a little bit busy these days. If you hadn’t heard, a lot of children have been making their way to Merika these days, fleeing, you know, violence. Although nobody seems to talk much about that, the violence that is.

A vocal if hopefully small herd of mean people call them “illegals” and scream at the kids, telling them to “go back home”. Some have suggested that a well aimed firearm at the border might do the trick just fine, and no one of course should think they are meaning anything violent by that call to arms.

While not going quite this far, but *nudge nudge, wink wink* maybe they are, a couple of our pious types have ‘splained to us, the spiritually lacking, that this is all part of God’s plan. Brian Fischer, blasphemer-erradicator in charge of American values said thusly:

“Our southern border is there by God’s design. To disregard it, to treat it as if were not there, to regard it as something not worth respecting and defending, is an insult to the God who put it there for our benefit.”

Just forgettabout that “bring the little children unto me”. You missed the damn footnote: “unless they are from another country and *ick* brown or black, and are entering unto me illegally”.

 

Nodding in agreement is Texas *cough* Pastor Robert Jeffress who points out that God wants a fence between them and us, because, God was always clear about boundaries:

 

“Yes, Jesus loved children, but he also respected law. He said, render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” Jeffress clarified for the faithful on Fox News. “So, we need to do both. Show compassion, but secure the borders.”

 

Just forgettabout that stuff in the early part of the bible, about welcoming the stranger and hospitality and so forth. All that, we know, is made irrelevant by Jesus, oh except for that little part about not suffering men who lay with men to live. And maybe that part about witches too. That might stay in too.

 

What the religious right who pushes this vile push back against children, is that it was one of their own, George W., that “compassionate conservative” who signed into law the requirement that these kids can’t be returned to their country of origin without proper legal proceedings.

 

Just before leaving office, on Dec. 23, 2008, George W. Bush signed into law the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. This bipartisan measure, named for a 19^th century British abolitionist, was aimed at extending and beefing up efforts to prevent and prosecute human trafficking and protect the victims of trafficking.  More importantly, it described exactly how unaccompanied children crossing the border must be treated.

 

The crazies on the Right have of course ignored their own complicity in this legislation, and find it more profitable to insinuate that the President has in fact invited these kids from their violence-wracked homelands to America for some nefarious purpose:

 

I have to believe that when you don’t respond in any way that you are either inept or you have some ulterior motive of which you are functioning from,” Perry said during an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”

 

Ricky (I can’t believe these glasses haven’t made me smart yet) Perry actually said that, although what the conspiracy is for or about, is beyond his meager brain power to discern.

 

Meanwhile, the Right continues to live in cognitive dissonance which prompted one comedienne to suggest that the children should paste the name “fetus” on their forehead. That sounds harsh, but these are the same people who are willing to go to extreme lengths, i.e., Hobby Lobby, to protect the rights of a “fertilized egg”. To turn children away who are fleeing violence and possible death in their own country, seems a interesting juxtaposition to say the least. 

 

To say nothing of our sanctimonious lip service paid to all those poor Syrian children who are living in makeshift tent cities all over the Middle East, having fled the murderous bombardments of Bashar Al-Assad. No finer example is John S. McCain and his wringing of hands at the “humanitarian tragedy” that is going on. Yet we hear nothing from the old fart when it comes to protecting these poor children arriving frightened and alone because their families believe that the trek to Merika is far safer than allowing them to remain at home.

 

No, in fact McCain says no to authorizing money to the President to deal with the crisis, finding it:

 

“It would cost us very little to fly them back, as compared with the cost of taking care of them while they were here,” he said.

 

Mostly McCain has whined about not being allowed to take his cell phone with him in viewing the detainment camps in Arizona. His Senatorial rights, he claims trump these kids right to privacy. Change the policy, he bellowed.

 

We in America are again caught in that position we so often find ourselves in–telling the rest of the world how to behave, all the while doing the in-opposite at home. Another shaming moment in the US of A.

 

It’s Not Left vs Right, It’s Right vs Wrong

Tags

economy, editorial, GOP, poor, race, rant, teaparty

A movement is arising.

It began with Occupy Wall  Street.

It arose with Moral Mondays in North Carolina.

It’s spreading.

Throughout the South.

It’s moving to Wisconsin, and there are murmurings in Missouri.

People are getting tired of being tired.

And it’s not Democrats although no doubt most are. It includes Republicans and Independents and people who have little to do with politics. It includes some business folk, but probably not so many as people who are working stiffs. And poor. Lots of the poor.

And they come to state legislatures and stand in silent witness that these bodies of Republican control are unjust and immoral.

Yes immoral.

Republican extremism known by the name of Tea Party, is an immoral wound in America and people are not going to take it any more.

Let us be clear. Like it or not, believe it or not, (and the extremists are very good at refusing to accept reality), big business (aka Koch brothers) organized and funded the Tea Party movement. Their intentions were not made known of course but their intentions are clear: reduce taxes on the rich, reduce corporate taxes, reduce regulation on business, and continue to subsidize business so we can continue to laud “free market economies” (which of course given all this are not even close to being free, but are protected by government itself) as the best thing on earth.

To the Tea Party they formed, the message went: your taxes are going to takers not makers. You have worked hard and deserve that money yourselves. All you need do is fund the military so we can continue to enforce our will of “right” on the world. We can create the jobs if you just do your part and give us a free hand. That’s what democracy is all about, that is capitalism. It’s the government and its incessant socialistic welfare mentality that is destroying this country.

Now some of the Tea Party are well-educated business types. They are tiny business operations for the most part, but they like to think of themselves as “entrepreneurs” which makes them sound like the Kochs, and Trumps and those kind. But most of the Tea Party consists of not very well-educated white aging men and their overly made up and coiffed wives who like that idea that more money should be in their hands and not going to “those” people. You know “those” people, the ones are required to called “black” now, when in the day it was fine to call them “N*****”? And all those Mexicans, which are still just Mexicans, even though plenty of “them” actually come from Guatemala and Nicaragua and other places called Latin America. And then there are those “Orientals” from the “Orient” since Asian is still not de rigueur in this culture, and it’s all one big country isn’t it? After all, Sarah thought Africa might be a country, right?

Then in the ultimate hypocrisy of all hypocrisies, there in a dose of “Christianity” to hide that racism/downright hatred underneath. “See, it’s not me, it’s God who has a problem with fags!” And if that makes them feel vulnerable, well, throw in a dose of the 2nd Amendment was made for you and me, and voila, we have a mess of a human being filled with self-righteous hate, little actual knowledge of the world, but a gun-defended arrogance to do everything but call it publicly what they call it privately.

But ordinary folks are getting tired. Ordinary decent people who don’t have to wave a bible around to know what is right and what is wrong. And they are tired of watching years of work being undone by barely literate Republican senate and house members who pass insane laws one after another, making it safe and right for white America to live in their fantasy of the “good ole days”.

So people are marching. And more of them march every week.

IN NORTH CAROLINA THE GOP HAS SINCE 2010:

1. Raised taxes on the lowest 80% of it’s citizens
2. Removed a tax credit on 900,000 working families
3. Enforced restrictive voter laws
4. Blocked increased Medicaid coverage for the poor
5. Cut Pre-Kindergarten funding
6. Cut unemployment benefits
7. Voted itself a right to intervene in abortion lawsuits
8. Repealed a law that allowed death row inmates to challenge their convictions on racial grounds
9. Increased the standards at abortion clinics to that of surgical centers and made it illegal to offer abortion coverage if you are a public health insurance company.
10. Offered no increase in base salary to school teachers even though they are paid at the lowest rate in the country.
11. Tenure is to be phased out and no salary increases are to be given for master’s degrees. Teachers aides are severely cut.

IN GEORGIA, THE GOP HAS:

1. Refused to grant increase in Medicaid coverage affecting some 600,000 Georgians and made it a crime to assist someone who is seeking ACA coverage.
2. Cut more than 7.6 BILLION dollars to public education over the last 10 years.
3. Restricted workers rights and benefits
4. Promoted more stand your ground and like gun legislation.
5. Cut unemployment benefits
6. Promoting enforcement of voter suppression laws.

When you go nation wide, the results are the same. GOP-led legislatures are doing the Koch’s bidding everywhere, often with bills written by the KOCH legislative arm, ALEC. Everywhere the tune is the same–lower taxes on the rich, cut out programs for the poor, all with the promise to Mr. and Mrs. White OLD people–this will all benefit you, we promise. Just wait for it.

Let me repeat. There is nothing Christian in any of this. People who are TEA PARTY adherents and claim they are Christian are lying. They are at best Christianists, people who use the bible and their own personal interpretation of it to hide behind while they endorse and argue for a denial of health care for the poor (they can use the emergency ward if they need to — duh who pays for that stupid?), a denial public education to the poor (let’s have vouchers, and the poor will end up with the poorest of poor systems but they had their “choice”), a denial of food, unemployment insurance (that breeds dependence and doesn’t teach work ethic–yeah hungry babies are eager to work), a denial of voting rights (everybody can get a voter ID–yeah except for the cost and the travel to a distance center, and oh yeah, lots of people can’t get a birth certificate any more because records are lost, but a gun permit is okay, but  student ID is not), a denial of basic rights to undocumented workers (since they steal our jobs–yeah we were wondering where you were in the bean fields yesterday and even the little one’s can pick can’t they?), a denial of fair wage (business can pay whatever it wants to, that’s the American way–along with child labor, and unsafe working conditions right?), and on and on…

They say all this and have the temerity, the audacity, the chutzpah, to suggest that Jesus would approve! Jesus hated government they say, and Jesus hated the minimum wage. Jesus loved guns and self-defense. Jesus is nothing more than a malleable dummy used while these vile gutless wonders shrink in horror at their own diseased and flesh eaten faces staring out from the dead sockets from which they look upon a world they hate as it slips from their nail-torn fingers.

Lord save me from the Christianists and though I don’t believe in Hell, but God, sometimes I wish there was one, for these puke excuses of humanity.

Other than that, I’m having a great Sunday.

With My Nose Pressed Up Against the Glass

Tags

crap I didn't learn, GOP, Sarah Palin, teabaggers, teaparty, Ted Cruz

Seriously, these people are just crazy.

Let me put it this way. If the rapture comes, Washington D.C. will never know. They won’t realize anything is wrong until they leave the halls of Congress and find the streets empty.

They ain’t gettin’ raptured. No way God would bring them up to the heavenly garden. Not with their penchant for stupid is as stupid does. And they be doin’ stupid most all the time now.

I can’t keep crying wolf, heck, it’s beyond that.

You just sit in fascination reading one account after another of people gone wild. The lunatics from gerrymandered red state districts tell us that their constituencies tell them to HOLD THE LINE. Even if that means that the country is destroyed? Wellllllllll, nobody ever thought past HOLD THE LINE!

It gets back to that old debate–as an elected representative, do you take a poll and vote the majority, or do you use you “independent” judgment under the theory that you know more than they do? It seems that they do pretty much both, whichever is convenient at the moment. Vote against a Syrian military action because the “folks back home are unilaterally against it.” Vote against background checks for weapon buyers because “hey, that’s my source of campaign funds” and the folks really don’t get all the fine points that I’m privy to.

To hear them tell it, Republicans in Congress hate Ted Cruz. Hate him. Think he’s a total jerk. Yet he seems to be running the show, as the country slides into the turlit. Unless it doesn’t. Like I said, crying wolf is getting old, and people are starting to yawn and ignore the entire bunch of clowns.

Until.

Until the shit hits the fan. I’m not sure what shit will hit what fans, but I bet it will.

I started reading a book about a guy who teaches math at the college level. He started reading about creationists and got intrigued and went to a homeschooling convention. It became a hobby of sorts and has written a book of his experiences with these strange folk. An example will suffice:

A speaker was giving all the rip-roaring good reasons why it was important to home school and keep the kiddies from learning about all the evil out in the real world in the form of evolution, that atheistical concocted nonsense, and homosexuality which is the devil’s joy. During the question and answer, our writer asks,

“Given that eventually your children will be going out into that world, do you ever think that it might be better to let them experience it now when they are young, and you still have some control over them, and can guide them along, rather than them getting all the worldly stuff when they leave home and you have no such control?”

The answer?

“NO! Next question.”

I mean these folks are dogmatic, and unable and unwilling to even consider alternatives to their own very weirdly structured world view.

That seems about where we are when it comes to the Tea Birchers. They have mind blocks that prevent them from even hearing the question let alone considering any alternative. If the Black guy is for it, I’m against it! Heck, I’m against it if he is neutral, that’s just a trick! The black ops are coming any day, Lord let me just get to the gun store in time to buy another Beretta, or Tank, whichever I can get.

I can sit with a bowl of popcorn, but I end up dribbling the popcorn into my lap, I’m so mesmerized by the perfect craziness of these people. This is way beyond opposition, this is infants in control of the nursery, holding the wet-nurse by the tit and demanding chocolate or they will rip it off.

I live with dry mouth as a constant condition since I can’t keep it closed long before it pops open again in disbelief and I stand there mouth agape at ANOTHER statement by another joker. Sarah is back in the mix, and somebody yesterday said it best when they realized that the reason she always has that big gulp with her everywhere is that is the only thing big enough to carry all the vodka she guzzles on a daily basis to keep beating the drums of stupid. She is stupid, she defines it, she smothers it with Wasilla grins and Moosilini winks. She’s beyond stupid, she a blinking caution light stuck on yellow.

She would pick her nose in public if she could find it. She reserves most of her “speechifying” for Facebook where she culls the followers to only those who approve, and has ghost writers correct her world salad leaps of logic and syntax before hitting the “post”.

Harvard is busy trying to figure out who let TED into their hallowed halls and made them the laughing-stock of the Ivy League.

Texas is tipping into the gulf with so many weird ass representatives that it’s only fair to send life rafts to its citizens before they fall in the drink.  They make Arizona’s governor SEEM sane by comparison.

And it is all about comparison. If you line up Cruz, Gohmert, Perry, Bachmann, Lee, Stockman, King, and half a dozen others up in a line, they are proof positive that everybody in a mental institution should be released immediately. Again by comparison. Doesn’t that make you shiver when the crazy fool who hears voices and sees green people eaters and is thinking of getting a gun, figures he MIGHT be crazy, but then sees that bunch and says, “nah, I’m fine and heads off for the gun store?

I mean I wanna dig a hole and crawl in, and let me know Jesus when you are returning so I don’t miss your arrival to straighten all this mess out.

So how is your day going?

Careening Down a Hill Toward a Wall

Tags

GOP, Humor, TeaBirchers, teaparty

It should never be said that I can’t sling the crap in both directions.

This man needs to go into the bathroom, close the door, and do his business, and then SHUT THE HELL UP!

Now, I’m the first person on this lovely earth to tell ya, I don’t care about his online fun. I truly don’t. I’m not saying its wrong, immoral, or anything. If he was a truck driver, or short-order cook, hey have at it dude. If he was a neurosurgeon, sure, why not.

But dude, you are a public figure, asking the good folks of NYC to entrust their lives to you. They have a right to expect you are doing more with your time than caressing your weenie.

Seriously.

If you wanna be a public servant, I’m sorry, but you gotta choose–goofy Internet sex, or being mayor. You can’t have both.

And dude? Carlos Danger? That isn’t even erotic. It’s cartoonish.

But then you are the subject of the above aren’t ya?

The only voting the GOP wants to do these days, is the usual repeal Obamacare. I mean how many times? Are you each getting a certificate to frame, hand down to your grandchildren, in the hope that one day in say three trillion years it will be worth $10 on the Antiques Roadshow?

Now the Mike Lee, TeaBircher from UTau as in YOU Taw?, is asking his fellow dipshits to vote to shut down the government in order to block Obamacare. I mean he wants it defunded.

Which is the new GOP way of governing. Take an existing law you don’t like, and just starve it to death. That’s how the minority protects it’s minority constituency against the big bad old MOST OF US!

Which has caused saner (barely) heads in the GOP to say, oh Lord, we can’t do that. Shutting down the government hasn’t worked well in the past. Let’s not lose everything in 2014 guys. (By the by: mightn’t it be a good idea GOP to offer your incoming freshmen a little class in HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, so they know that this kind of crap has been tried before and BACKFIRED?) Just a thought there.

Meanwhile, the President gave a thoughtful and deeply moving reflection on the Trayvon Martin case and it’s impact on the African-American community. It was not pejorative in any way. It was tempered and quiet. I cautioned against violence.

The Right-Wing Madness went berserk.

See, African-Americans are not allowed to speak about race. That’s “playin’ the race card”.

White people are allowed to speak about race as long as they say, “we are post racial” in this country.

They are also allowed, in the spirit of good clean fun to imply that the President is only “half black”, born in Kenya, has the mentality of a welfare recipient, is a plantation negro, and similar bigoted things, not because the speaker is a racist mind you, but is simply “speakin’ the truth”.

Yeah.

Let me get this straight. They all flocked to defend Zimmerman because he was “threatened”, but they all flocked to attack O.J. when he claimed he didn’t kill those two white people. In one case, we should respect the jury verdict, in the other not so much. Which is which? Oh I’m sure you know.

Texas and other places, all run by the great unwashed TeaBirchers, are just helping women they say.

They want women to be safe.

So when they are done, a woman can travel some 6-8 hundred miles to get an abortion if she really HAS to.

Course, if she doesn’t have a car?

Oh, well.

So is the GOP also funding public assistance for pregnant women’s health care?

Are they increasing child care funding?

Are they increasing Medicaid?

Are they increasing food programs for the poor?

NO?

I thought they were trying to help women?

The GOP after 2012, decided they needed to reach out to Latinos.

They reached out really really good.

They said the Senate bill was wrong, because they want to take it “one-step-at-a-time”. That means they want to spend a lot of money putting border patrol agents shoulder-to-shoulder. And  then they want to wait a few years.

Then they want to do a study to see if anybody got across the border without permission. And if there is a rumor that one did, well, they will authorize even more agents, and build the fence even higher, and wait another few years, and do another study, and well.

You see where this is headed.

Then Steve King called them animals, and then said they had calves like cantaloupes from carrying drugs across the border. He knew that from playing cop riding with border agents. He actually felt their calves. And he meant nothing sexual for sure. He was merely doing “hands on” research.

And he can’t figure why anybody would be offended. But Boehner and Cantor just wish he would SHUT THE HELL UP.

Texas couldn’t wait to get going on its voting restrictions.

Neither could North Carolina.

The North Carolina one is aimed at all the right left people. Students, old people, poor people, union people.

It:

• Eliminates early voting
• Eliminates pre-registration
• Precludes extending hours open if needed (if you are in line at the close of the poll you may now be turned away)
• Gives more power to those who want to challenge people in line and give them faulty advice
• Disallows a family to claim their children as deductions on income taxes if their child votes “out-of-state”.

How does any of the above stop the non-existent voter fraud?

Um. . . . give me a minute I’m thinking.

All in all, the GOP seems to be doing an excellent job in positioning themselves to win the favor of the Independents across America. Doncha think?

 

Mewling at the Northern Lights

Tags

astronomy, atheists, blogging, fundamentalism, Ground Zero, infinity, Muslims, northern lights, Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle, sun, teaparty, wacko rightwing

Howdy!

Hopin’ the day so far is finding you alive, and relatively content. It’s a rainin’ here. No news in that. Not a lot, but with the humidity being 100% making it feel AWFUL, I decided to not try the food gathering trip today.

Alert: HOUSEKEEPING: WordPress, ever trying to upgrade for its users, has added a new “like” button at the end of each post. It will add your gravatar (unique or generic) as well. The point being, I would ask you to use it if you in fact like the post. As they point out, hitting that button can suffice for a comment you don’t have time to make or otherwise are disinclined to do, and allows me to get a better idea of what post topics are most enjoyable for you. After all, I do want you to come here and enjoy yourself, so understanding your likes helps in doing that. Please NOTE: the button only appears on the comment page, so click “add comment” then hit the button between the end of post and the comment box. I wish it were on the main post, but alas it is not.

Enuf said.

You may have heard that the sun has recently gotten riled up about something. Probably something Mercury said–that little planet is hot as hell and always whispering into the sun’s ear. In any case, sol got a bitch on and sent out a nice big cosmic flare which will be entering earth’s upper atmosphere.

The key word is atmosphere. Without it, the sun’s pissiness would fry us. As it is, it provides a delightful free show for those in northern climes. It’s hard to see the northern sky here, what with the danged trees. One has to look nearly straight up to see the sky, but, I’ll take a look as best I can and see if anything can be seen tonight.

I came across a really good post on the teaparty movement. As usual, the right wingheads are trying to make much ado about nothing over the journo-list. One on that list gives some background to the general “the sky is falling” tactics of the teabagger promoters. Be very sure that this is no “grassroots” movement, but one highly orchestrated by the corporate and political world in order to get the masses of dupes to do their bidding. Yesterday we posted a link to a review of the 60’s leftist movement and how it was wrecked by the Right. This is the same Right, as Lindsay points out.

Lindsay also has a good post on the proposed Islamic center in the vicinity of Ground Zero. I am in complete agreement. I am simply appalled at the rhetoric being unleashed. The hatred is open and ugly. First of all, plenty of Muslims died in 911. Second, the vast majority of Muslims hold no truck with fundamentalist Islam. Third the anti-Muslim talk dribbling from the mouths of fundamentalist Christianity is diametrically in opposition to their constant chant of “freedom of religion.” Do these intellectually challenged bigots EVER see the parallel between themselves and the  ffundamentalist jihadists they so fervently hate? FUNDAMENTALISM IS FUNDAMENTALISM!

Also see Moe at Whatever Works, for more links and comments on this sick affair.

Slate has a delicious article on atheism. Mostly I loved it because it agreed with my position, (which was not original with me I can assure you) that fundamentalists and atheists have so much more in common than they think. Atheists, are just as guilty of asserting as true what they in fact can only speculate about. To the point: Atheists assert that all that is not understandable yet will be some day, because they think it will be. No proof my dear skeptics. The article suggests that a defensible position can only be agnosticism of which I would heartily agree. Read and see what you believe. In the end, believers and unbelievers alike merely CHOOSE to believe one or the other.

The New Republic has a review of a new book that investigates the search for mathematical infinity. Sounds like it might be a most  spell-binding book to take a look at. Full of the history of the chase. A case of when mysticism triumphs over science.

Sharron (that woman is more of an idiot than Sarah) Angle has well, gone and done it again. Said something so STUPID that you half way want to believe that a talking dog has been discovered. I mean a human said this! And her lap dog Foxy Propaganda which was the supposed point of her chat, actually showed the clip, proving that for all their protestations, they basically are doing as she asked.

What? She told journo-not Carl Cameron, that she “needed the press to be her friend.” Cameron kinda laughs, all the while no doubt thinking, “damn girl, don’t give us away.” Here I quote her verbatim:

. . .we wanted [journalists] to ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported. And when I get on a show and I say send me money to SharronAngle.com, so that your listeners will know that if they want to support me they need to go to SharronAngle.com.”

The gist is that Sharron wants the media to be glorified stenos for her “message” which is more or less send money to me. Of course Fox, dunderheads and willing stooges, did just that, airing the clip. Other outlets showed a string of similar “interviews” with friendlies wherein Ms. Sharron re-entreated again and again to “send me $25 to SharronAngle.com.” Too funny. This woman is  a joke.

No doubt you have heard of the Sarah (that woman is an idiot) Palin’s Grizzly Mamas video. Progagandee at Urantia Sojourn has a nice take on it and a very good link to Adrianna Huffington’s post on the same subject. Well worth the read.

Until we meet again!