Wal-Mart will take your guns

And Obama will whistle at the white girls if we don't act now.

Conspiracies certainly occur.  The assassination of Lincoln involved a conspiracy as did the American Revolution, the Russian Revolution and the Babington Plot amongst countless others.  The selling of something as a conspiracy however has been refined to a formula and indeed the absence of evidence seems to make it all simpler.  An observation out of context, a partially true statement or a totally untrue statement loudly asserted is all one really needs to get the theory rolling and momentum creates enthusiasm which creates more observations and assertions the preposterousness of which are enthusiastically overlooked.  The Internet can produce more than enough "experts" to verify or deny anything and hide facts behind a labyrnth of web links.  I remember a certain white coated "doctor" touting a diet pill that proved not only useless but ineffective and dangerous.  How many people bothered to use the Information Superhighway to discover that the man in the medical costume was a Doctor of Marketing from some college you never heard of?

Of course certain observations can assist the necessary triage.  Might the theory have merit or not? Should we bother to investigate or can we reject it out of hand -- or is it obviously true?  One helpful process is of course, to consider the source.  Karl Rove, Glenn Beck, Fox News, Ted Cruz?  No, that sound isn't a truck backing up, it's the bullshit alarm. So far not one of the dire predictions have come true, from the "death panels" to the "double Dip' recession to the Communist Agenda.  Is doesn't seem to matter. "Change you can step in" read the bumper sticker I saw yesterday.  Never mind the recovery, the market highs, the unemployment lows, Obams is a "disaster." He went over there and apologized to them and if you can't see that, you're part of the conspiracy.

Consider the "Jade Helm 15" conspiracy theory.  Do we need to read all the web posts, the YouTube clips to reject it?  Do we need to follow the "arguments," look at the pictures, examine the witnesses? Do seriously think Obama is going to use the military to invade the South?  Is he conspiring with Wal-Mart to grab our guns, swarming up out of underground tunnels pushing Wal-Mart shopping carts?  Ted Cruz seems to doubt it, but as the government is "untrustworthy," we have to give it some credence. Of course when Bush suspended Posse Comitatus and made it legal to use the Army to invade the US, we didn't hear a peep or a whimper, but that's different.  It's OBAMA who is untrustworthy and we know that because Ted Cruz tells us, because the Texas Governor tells us the invasion is imminent The wolf is coming, never mind those ten thousand mistaken cries and when this passes away and nothing comes of it and when the whole thing is denied, there will be no shame and you will believe the next one.

One might consider that since this latest is so similar to the propaganda that reached a crescendo during the Clinton years and has yet to diminish, it has no more merit than the Vince Foster Murder or Clinton's plan to turn the armed forces over  to the UN and furnish them with nuclear weapons stored in tunnels and bunkers under Philadelphia.  I can't list them all but suffice it to say it was all hokum.  Too bad we don't remember and like an old man with advanced dementia, every morning in America is a new day.  You can be wrong every day for 25 years but we will believe you again and again.  Every Democrat is all about inviting the foreigners to take over, to bankrupt us by supporting the "takers" and grabbing our god given guns.  Have we been wading through the bullshit so long we can't smell it any more or is it just so much fun to suspend disbelief?

Ablow the man down

So, another Monday morning in this best of all possible countries; this greatest there ever was since the Big Bang and greatest there will ever be until Jesus comes back. And what do I read in the news this proud American morning?

Mark Sanford, as though he hadn't disgraced himself enough as Governor of South Carolina, calls President Obama a spear chucker.  Don't tempt me, Mark.

The American Family Association, that Far Right group of  Freaky Fundies masquerading as an American Family Association tells it's cult members to keep their kids out of school for an Oct 30
anti-bullying event, “Mix It Up For Lunch Day,” they insist, is 

"just another thinly veiled attempt to promote the homosexual agenda."  

Imagine trying to tell kids it isn't the Christian thing to do to beat up gay kids or torment them to the point of suicide.  What would Jesus do, after all?

And on Fox & Friends some alleged psychiatrist aptly named Ablow declared that Vice President Biden was probably demented based on what he saw in the 'debate' with Lyin' Ryan.

“I did not evaluate Joe Biden, but if someone said to me, we want you to do what’s really required. You have to put dementia on the differential diagnosis. You have to say bizarre laughter, interrupting. If this were your dad or your grandfather, wouldn’t you say if you brought him to me, Keith, tell me, is he suffering with dementia? Because he can’t seem to listen, he’s laughing inappropriately.”

I did not evaluate, so I know the problem. How very Fox.  Is this what they call an Ablow job?    to tell the truth, Ryan makes me laugh at him  too and I just can't listen to the goddamn lies and sedition from the foreign owned Fascist propaganda organization any more, nor do I think laughter is what is really needed here as a national response to the Idiot's Crusade. Bring back the laughing stock!

I read this morning at Raw Story that "A Florida judge has ruled that a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who believes he is the “Prince of God” and is convinced that he will be resurrected to sit for eternity at God’s right hand is sane and can put to death next week."

Good to know that such people are considered sane in Florida and perhaps that explains why according to my local paper 81% of this county's inmates plan to vote for Mitt the Shit and Lyin' Ryan. So the hell with the Supreme Court ruling against killing the insane, We don't need no damn government and we're gonna do the Christian thing anyway.  Jesus is going to need a man like Prince John Ferguson when it comes time to shove the Jews into the lake of fire after the Rapture.

My current issue of Newsweek has a lurid cover story proving that heaven is real because some guy who went into a coma from meningitis says he went to heaven and met beautiful women there.  Another straight to the recycling bin issue.

So perhaps we have to put dementia in the differential diagnosis of our national psyche and definitely we have to be grateful there isn't a YHWH to blow America to kingdom come or to wherever Sodom wound up, because if this is the best of all possible countries, no god worth his apocalypse would stand for our sad, demented, ugly and hate filled planet. Or perhaps I'm wrong about that and perhaps that's what the newly discovered comet 2012 S1 (ISON) due to fill the sky in about a year is all about. If it doesn't blow us all to hell, perhaps the fundies and righties and all the other dimwitted, demented friends of the Fox will dress in purple robes and tennis shoes and take the Cyanide Express to the Mother Ship.  Even in the worst of times, there's always hope.

T minus 34 hours and raving

Dies iræ ! dies illa
Solvet sæclum in favilla:
Teste David cum Sibylla !


Well the End is neigh and a Day neigher than it was yesterday, but the proof is certain, says Harold Camping, even though he formerly had 'proof' 1994 was the big one; the Dies Irae, the End time.

But he has proof that God is allowing us to have gay pride parades and same sex marriage as a set up for the fall and the proof is in something called the Book of Jude, which I'd never heard of, my Bible ending somewhere around the book of Daniel or so and being in various Semitic dialects, not Greek. Anyway Camping says God all gaybashing mighty explains it in Jude 7 which is funny because although the Bible has at least two names for God ( and two versions of the stories to go with them) Jude isn't one of them. The real Tanach doesn't tell us that the elder Yahweh or the somewhat later Elohim wrote it either. That was Moses, it supposes -- nor did the prophets claim to actually be God, but that's a long road I won't go down today, you'll be pleased to hear.

But seriously -- it's important now in these last days before John the Revelator's ( also not God) psychotic episodes come true, to be familiar with the words of God, speaking through Jude and Camping (the least godlike of all) of course, so I looked it up to see just who this fellow was, but although I did find a site that explains it all, I had to stop reading the explanation when the writer accused Theologians ( as to be distinguished from believers) of incompetence.

" This subject is under constant dispute by many theologians. The trouble with them is they can't read English."

Stunning and in the interest of brevity I could quit right here -- but I won't.

I certainly can read English, but I can't claim to be an authority on this questionable early second century book, since I can't read Greek, so score one for The Bible Study Page. I'll even overlook the gaseous certainty that whoever the author claimed to be, he must then be, and the ubiquitous practice of naming anonymous religious texts for long dead prophets. I'm just not in an argumentative mood.

So I'll have to believe them when they say that God himself guarantees that Jude, like James, the Upright, was the brother of Jesus, but as the English language was more than a thousand years away in the future and out of respect for Mrs. Christ, or Miriam as poor old impotent Joseph ( who none the less made other kids with her) called her, let's call them Jehudi and Jacov just like their mother did. Not nice to contradict Jewish mothers, I can tell you -- I mean you want to talk about days of wrath?

So then -- just what does Jude 7 give us as the WORD OF GOD that can't be attributed to Jehudi son of Miriam or some other writer in another country?

"In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire."

Well I guess Jehudi would know, being the half brother of the son of God or maybe the full brother - who the hell knows, but it's funny that neither of the real Gods, Yahweh and the Elohim mentioned this a thousand years and a half earlier and what they did mention didn't need some adopted son to relay the message. I thought it mentioned something about inhospitable treatment of strangers, and condoned tossing your virgin daughter to a crowd to be gang raped, but as the book was likely written quite a long time after these cities disappeared, who the hell could possibly know?

Anyway, since neither Lot nor his daughters were blasted to hell for incest, I think we can dismiss the sex thing entirely, OK? If Mrs. Lot was fossilized for looking over her shoulder, but Lot gets off for free (yes, that's a double entendre - aren't I wicked?) the whole God-hates-perverts thing came right out of Jude's ass and into Camping's mouth.

As far as I can gather from Bereshit, or Genesis, Gay Pride wasn't the problem with the cities of the plain at all, and as far as we know, ancient Greece wasn't blown to hell by a firestorm like Gomorrah, nor was Egypt whose kings made Oedipus look like a prude, but who am I to argue and point out contradictions?

Like the Wrong Reverend Phelps, Camping believes "God hates fags" and is going to kill most of us for allowing them to live in peace like other people, just like he killed the Sodomites and Gomorrans for their gay pride parades and same sex marriages. And he'll find proof somewhere whether it makes sense or not, and since none of his followers are really quite sane, it doesn't matter.

The real proof of Camping's high fecal content will come at the International Date Line ( no, not the phone sex number) on 6:00 PM Saturday when nothing at all happens and the Repo men will begin to pick up all those vans, The leases on the billboards will expire, his followers will stand around like fools looking at them and wonder how they're going to get their property back and the 18 million dollars Camping has raised will likely disappear into various "good works." Perhaps he'll rapture himself to Marbella or Monte Carlo.

Anyway, Even though there are two sets of commandments given in two slightly different settings by Gods with two different names in the Bible, it's obvious to me that God doesn't like having words put in his mouth and for those who believe Jesus was Divine ( no, not the Drag Queen) I think Jesus didn't think much of you putting hate speech or damnation in there either. Of course in my personal religion, God not only speaks through our mouths, he speaks only through our mouths and thus nobody can be certain of what he's all about. Certainly for those like me who escaped out the back door during those weekend religious study classes and actually read it in its entirety, Psalm 77:19 comes to mind.

"Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known. "

Like the Poet said: nobody knows where God is going or where he has been and his wake is long lost in the waves, so stop pretending you know.

The Liberals did it, the Liberals did it!

The reaction was swift and predictable. Trolls, whose abusive name calling I won't indulge by posting have assured me that the Arizona shooting was the work of a "Liberal" like me although a man obsessed with returning to the gold standard and pretty much toeing the Tea Party line sounds pretty conservative although I'm the first to say those words are less meaningful as descriptive words than they are as tribal markers. Enraged paranoid schizophrenic who was provided a target by irresponsible political rhetoric? But that won't do, this is a game for two parties, not for reasonable people.

Fox, without of course admitting any culpability or telling it's viewers that they were doing it, has demanded it's talking heads tone down the rodeo of rage. Sarah Palin redacted the hell out of her web site and that picture of smiling Beck pointing two pistols at the camera suddenly disappeared from view so that they can say who me?

I don't expect any public self-examination and I do expect the hunt for false equivalence to escalate on the Republican side along with the effort to portray the shooter as being outside the ring of righteous wrath, around which their circus tent is pitched. I'm sure that soon enough, Michelle Bachmann's desire to have people "armed and dangerous" so that they can "fight back" will be cleansed of inherent irresponsibility and any trace of inappropriateness, but I'm not sure the idiot rage can be stopped at this point even if God raptures up the entire Fox staff and Bachmann loses the power of speech. (please, God?)

The hoplophobes, the safety nuts who would dearly like and fatuously think they can legislate away all they are afraid of, (and that's lots of things) from cars that go faster than a Model T to McDonalds Happy Meals are pushing more gun control and usually without any knowledge of guns or how they're already controlled. There's a great deal of hoopla about "extended magazines" from those who call them clips and confuse cartridges with bullets.

"Why would anyone want one?"

is the loaded question as though they weren't the choice of many yacht owners who find themselves in an updated and unwanted episode of Pirates of the Caribbean - and many of my friends have been. It's either that or buy an Uzi at twice the price. They used to be banned! it's said, and that's true - or sort of true since they weren't really taken off the marked by that ban. With a supply of tens of millions of units, banned weapons and accessories actually saw a boost in sales of "pre-ban" items, but that remains news to those who really are so far out of the great loop of reality they think a semi-automatic rifle is far more dangerous when it has a plastic military stock instead of a nice walnut one. No military in the world uses what we're told is an "assault rifle" and of course the famous ban didn't actually ban these civilian weapons -- but who reads? Who needs to when we have those freeze dried, microwaveable TV Dinner opinions available? Solidarity, on both sides of the mainstream, is too much fun to risk and emoting is the American pass-time, of course. But I digress.

"That Jared Loughner was legally able to obtain the gun and ammo that he used to attempt an assassination of a member of Congress, slay a federal judge, and kill others should send a shiver down the collective spine of this nation."

writes one website Jeremiah. How could we have made that illegal without making it illegal for millions and millions and millions of people who like to shoot targets, clay pigeons or real pigeons? How could we make it impossible when all our efforts to make things go away by outlawing them have failed and made the alleged problem worse? Are Democrats all about not trusting the citizenry and imposing prior restraints without probable cause? It's too easy for their opposition to make that case and apparently it's too hard for Democrats to recognize the contradiction or that they're equally the party of fear as the party that obsesses about taking away guns and imposing Sharia law. In fact this incident could be a gain for Republicans who have used the fear of more gun bans to make Democrats into depraved authoritarian bogeymen.

Hey, that a handful of Saudis and Egyptians could hijack a plane because reinforcing the cockpit doors was an unnecessary government regulation is scarier, but that's just me. I still don't want to make all sharp things illegal. That Tim McVeigh and accomplices were able to buy fertilizer and fuel oil and rent a truck was more deadly. Where's the Mothers Against Ammonium Nitrate movement? What's to stop me from buying some and going spontaneously insane?

Frankly I'm more spinally shivered that people drive drunk while talking on the phone and smoking cigarettes at 40 over the limit in 7500 pound vehicles with bumpers at the height of my face. It's a clear and present danger. I'm in danger from people who run jet skis through packed anchorages at 60mph and towing their kids behind on inner tubes more than from madmen with guns in a country where violent crime has been declining for decades. If I go 6 miles southwest of here, I'm in more danger from alligators and wild hogs than from any man sane or otherwise. But even if we do ban everything that has the potential for mayhem -- like alcohol or drugs or 1200 horsepower speed boats; kitchen knives and chain saws, most of us are smart enough to know it won't solve the problem. Most of us.

The problem is crazy violent people. Instead of providing care and treatment, we protect their freedom to roam about, soak up the Fox fantasies about overthrowing the government with violence until they flip and buy a gun or drive the wrong way down the interstate -- or fly a plane into an IRS office.

Freedom isn't safe. I wish I could make those words flash like a neon sign and I wish the Democrats would not so quickly and obliviously shoot themselves in the foot by making this about more ineffective gun control. That's not because I like them so much. It's because what I want is something between the "we can't trust you to be responsible" and the "why should I have any responsibility for anything" attitudes.

Thus spake Shimkus

Now, this atheist has been accused of having it in for Christians, but since I staunchly maintain I've never met one, I must deny it. What makes me the angriest, and it does make me angry, is not some abstract faith in an ineffable power, but the scriptural inerrancy epidemic spreading like a dangerous plague. It's not a Christian thing, it's a dementia thing and as far as Bible as the inerrant word of God cult goes, it's a stupid thing. All religions and much political thought is susceptible to the disease.

There isn't any God but the ones we make up, nor does he do anything we don't do for him, but if our definition includes honesty or coherence or lack of self-contradiction or even a 21st century child's knowledge of cosmology, he didn't write the books of Moses, the Gospels, the various different versions of Isiah found at Qumran or any of the rest of it, culled and selected and edited and redacted by generations of people from a wider library of books. For lack of space I simply can't cover all the territory, but for it to have been written by an all-knowing, it must describe an alternate universe, not this one.

But I digress. My point was that Jews like Representative John Shimkus (R-IL) have been turned into truth eating zombies far more dangerous than B movie producers ever imagined. It's not a Christian thing. He thinks that we shouldn't worry about climate change because God won't allow any dire consequences. It's not that I think we're likely to all be drowned and not about how accurate I think current projections might or might not be, it's that people of this ilk get people killed. Electing Shimkus is like hiring a blind chauffeur who drives by faith. He's like a general who tells his troops the other guys are firing blanks. Don't mind those bullets, our religion will protect you, said Jack Wilson and not one bullet was stopped and how many Indians died? If you're not dumb enough to think that's right, you're too smart to support Shimkus in seeking chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

No, Shimkus believes in his version of his selected book and not in any other. If I could ask him why, he'd either have to do his own Ghost Dance or give me evidence for it's power to predict what will or won't happen with the weather, crustal movements, the evolution of microbes the outcome of battles and the flight paths of asteroids - and he can't. There's no test of reality it can pass. There's no way to show it more accurate than the Popol Vuh or the Quir'an or Bullfinch's Mythology, Aesop's Fables or a random number generator. Therefore the choice is his and it's a choice not based on evidence. What he calls God's voice is Shimkus' voice and thus spake Shimkus and Shimkus alone.

I'm always amused by people who call my logic arrogant. As people who tell you what God will or will not do and does or does not like, the title really belongs with believers, not with skeptics since we're not claiming anything special. The burden of proof to show that since there are an infinite number of words from an infinite possibility of gods, it's just your personal celestial ventriloquism at work? I don't have to, I'm not making assertions. The burden is on the believer. They proclaim endlessly about God's will as clearly set forth but when the predictions don't work, or contradict themselves, when life and death are random and there's no order or justice - well then they say we can't understand. Which is it?

It's your choice what to believe and your conclusions are no more divine than mine, although your knowledge may be superior and your reasoning better. It's still only you and me. God hates fags? Well no he doesn't, but I'm speaking of the true god Zog and I should know since I invented him and can invent as many more as I like all equally above question. Zog knows all about physics and mathematics and history and in fact everything I know, he knows -- and that's surely more than yours does. Zog says magic doesn't work, prayers fall on deaf ears, no danger will be averted lest you take measures and I know it's true because I believe and my belief can't be shown to be more or less well founded by any means I know of.

So when do we start restoring sanity?

OK, so you think my last post was petty, or over the top and just plain silly? You think the country hasn't lost any connection with reality and we haven't turned into gap toothed, tattooed and camouflage clad Chatty Kathy dolls who squawk the same old tinny phrases when anything at all pulls the string? You think that objective, fact based and reasoned perceptions aren't more rare than raisins in some off brand breakfast cereal?

CNN.com is running a story today about a countrywide Federal crackdown on sex traffic in underage girls. This Federal initiative began in 2003, but according to the kind of people who post comments, child prostitution is Barack Obama's fault. And not just that - Obama likes people to abuse young girls. You see, some of the culprits were from Somalia where most people are Black and nominally Muslim. Obama's father was from Kenya which is on the same continent as Somalia. Therefore Obama is a Muslim and a child molester who wants to protect child molesters.

I realize it's fashionable amongst liberals who aren't scientists to say that IQ means nothing, but it certainly does. If yours is above room temperature, you'll question the presence of "therefore" anywhere in that statement. You won't see it as the fair and balanced "other side" of the story.

The inability to see that this string of pronouncements doesn't even superficially resemble a logical or factual progression seems more than prima facie evidence of congenital and irredeemable idiocy. I'm sorry to sound all Democrat here, but there's something wrong in making it hard for a brain surgeon to get a green card while allowing massive political power to people who only resemble human beings in that they walk on two legs - and rising to power by riding their wave of idiotic anger.

John1865

This is absolutely Obama's fault. The Democrats want illegal's in our country, so they can get their votes. We need to unite and close our borders.

jake1111

And to think.. This is what Obama wanted to protect and even proposed a law suit on Arizona to protect these monsters!.. Remove this man ASAP!

jake1111

This still wont stop it. We must stop the Obamaism of protecting radical Muslims, Ilegal immigrants etc and remove all illegals from this country ASAP!

BobMD

Isn't third-world immigration just great for our society? Our culture gets enriched with third-world customs like child prostitution.

pemch

These f-gg-ts should be put behind bar for life.


OK, so that's enough. I don't have to tell you ( if you're not a Republican dupe) that illegals don't vote, Obama isn't trying to support sex crimes, especially by arresting the offenders and isn't encouraging immigration by deporting half a million illegals every year. I just put in the last one to show the total disrespect for reality it takes to suppose that male homosexuals really want to rape girls. I left out the one suggesting that all people who have a pension [sic] for young girls should be executed because it's a form of murder even though the victims were rescued alive.

No, all the comments aren't insane, at least not completely, but some of the sane ones claim that the courts don't have mandatory sentencing, which of course is nearly as grotesquely stupid as blaming Obama because there were some Somali pimps involved while ignoring the demonstrable fact that the current administration is deporting half a million immigrants a year, which is far, far more than the Republican administration did. And then there's the fact that the current administration actually rounded up these folks, which makes it hard to wrap one's mind around the assertions that the federal government cannot do anything and should do even less.

No, Obama doesn't want to import and support foreign organized crime, isn't encouraging illegal immigration and in fact it's the Republicans who are protecting companies who hire them. No, child prostitution isn't a previously unknown import, although many of the victims are and if anyone insists that Obama is "protecting radical Muslims" by rounding up, prosecuting and jailing criminals, perhaps it's time to deport such folks or have them committed to mental institutions. But you know, there's a certain party who loves the insane zeal, loves the cognitive disabilities and yes, the insanity and, don't give me any more bullshit about Democrats are just as bad -- they're not -- and you all know damned well people who post comments like these call themselves conservatives.

Our founding fathers certainly weren't deluded enough to equate liberty with rule of the most manic. Where is the protest? And who is it shouting "elitist" when any shy suggestion is made that, despite the neo-Maoist sentiments of the tea baggers, dumb people say dumb things and make bad leaders and bad voters. And OK, lets be fair and ask who enables and encourages them by being all cute and not voting "in protest" because Obama didn't leave you the present you wanted for Christmas? Yes, you're damned right it's your fault too.

Masters of mendacity

Sarah Palin says that the Constitution tells us that our "Unalienable rights" come from God. They don't, nor does the Biblical God deviate from the endless list of things he'll incinerate you for long enough to get into life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Ask the Amorites. We're commanded to kill their children or be destroyed by old God-O-love. Ask Job. "Shut up or I'll kill you along with your wife and kids" is far more typical. Freedom to worship or not worship your own gods after your own custom? Freedom to choose your own government? Fughettaboutit. That the authority of Government comes from God and not from the governed is as antithetical to our constitution as an electron is to a positron and as Palin is to Jefferson.

But it's more than just stupidity on her part. It's more than ignorance. It's more than the will to power and the lack of conscience that might prevent a better person from playing upon the passions of the ignorant rabble who listen to her, it's a slap in the face to those who after mankind's long struggle with God appointed kings and heresy trials, the persecution of variant religions, divinely justified genocide and slavery, managed to found a government free of the notion that only God or his self appointed agents can found a legitimate government. Far from being behind the 1789 Constitution, religious conservatives who hadn't already fled to Canada and the Bahamas or back to England, opposed it for Biblical reasons. To oppose George III, rex Dei gratia, was to oppose the will of God and the Bible is the source of that idea, not the enlightenment philosophers of the era.

Sharon Angle says the constitution isn't even about government. "Government isn't what our founding fathers put into the constitution" she says. dumb questions are hardest to answer and dumb assertions of this magnitude are virtually unassailable and those who make them are ineducable, so why try?

But if it's a race for the Master of Mendacity degree, Glenn Beck is ahead of the pack. Commies like Franklin Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson separated us from our history -- were trying "to separate us from our Constitution and God" he tells us -- hoping, I suppose that putting the words next to each other will generate the illusion that a document banning state recognition of religious institutions is somehow the product of religious belief. Are we trying to separate anyone from the law, by interpreting it as supporting freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the freedom to protest and petition and discuss? Are we trying to invent a new history by reading the source documents? Are we trying to separate Beck from whatever bizarre religious beliefs he has or from the magic underwear he wears? Only in his paranoid fantasies.

We're trying to keep him and his cronies and his bronze age taboos out of our religious lives, which although that may be a slap in the face to his imagined God, it's what mine approves of. It's hard to know whether such conniving, power seeking serpents truly believe the apple they offer us is good to eat, but the audience of both these creatures is uneducated, opinionated and as chock full O' nuts as a New York coffee shop. What they don't know is dangerous. What they think they know is calamitous.

What the constitution is about, what it says, what it was meant to accomplish and what the motivations for it were is not a mystery. It's meant to be flexible; to be able to change to suit changing times, but none of the claims made by the dime store revolutionaries in tricorn hats are remotely true. Their concept of freedom resembles the tyranny Jefferson was so passionate to oppose. Their concept of history is a mythology written by enemies of freedom.

Stop the Universe, I want to get off

So Stephen Hawking tells us there may be a nearly infinite number of universes. I had to wake up in this one, this morning.

Illegal immigrants should be shot on sight, says one Republican. It's like Stopping Hitler, you know -- worth the price.

President Obama looks like a Demon, says Rush.

"And I don't say this lightly. There are a couple pictures, and the eyes, I'm not saying anything here, but just look."

Of course there's no separation of Church and State, says Constitutional Scholar and former witchcraft dabbler, Christine O'Donnell, who in spite of her publicist's best efforts, isn't me.

Nancy Pelosi is a puppy killer says the GOP.

O'Donnell isn't a nut job, says John McCain -- because she won the Republican primary.

You know, I'm not even going to comment on all this. Too busy packing my bags.

Masturbation, mutilation and Tea

Apparently, my feelings about the Tea Party are very funny over in Trollhattan, because I'm regularly accused of stupidity and dishonesty and the entire list of standard calumnies when I mention the evidence of insanity in the house of Tea. "Proof" is the usual demand of the rightly accused and of course there's never proof of insanity; but not only do most people know it when they see it, they also know the preponderance of evidence when they're drowning in it.

Take Christine O'Donnell -- please. Masturbation, says the Delaware Tea Party Express candidate soon to appear on primary election ballots, is the same as adultery and as "proof" she offers the Bible. Yes, the same book that tells us that a cheeseburger is an abomination and damnation results from using cotton thread to sew a linen shirt.

"the Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can't masturbate without lust."

Of course when she says "the Bible" she's referring to a Gospel and it's inclusion under the biblical rubric is a matter of dispute and a matter in which proof has no place. It's also a document which, like the Koran, has no legal status in our country, yet she rolls on with rapturous certainty:

"When a married person uses pornography, or is unfaithful, it compromises not just his (or her) purity, but also compromises the spouse's purity. As a church, we need to teach a higher standard than abstinence"

she told MTV, some years ago. Of course we're a secular Republic and not a church, but can you think of something of a "higher standard" than abstinence that doesn't include genital mutilation? I can't, but one does not expect the words of a Tea Party candidate to mean what they say any more than one expects Biblical cosmology to reflect reality.

One does expect however that when one refuses to list one's place of residence while running for Representative, using the excuse that her house was broken into, when in fact it wasn't, one will be called a liar as well as a nutjob. Please feel free to do so with my blessing.

Again, I'm sure I'll be called names and "proof" will be demanded. I'm sure I need not remind you that it's the guilty party that demands proof of their guilt, while the innocent often has more faith in the evidence. If there are more nuts in that misbegotten party than in the fruit cake you threw away last Christmas, perhaps this will serve as one more chewy bit of that evidence.

Christ in camouflage

No, we don't have to worry about private militias and of course they don't represent the "conservatives" who jabber and jape, mock and malign the concept that a dark skinned President could be legitimate, election results notwithstanding. They're nothing to worry about.

It appears to be our right to play soldier and prepare to overthrow the government and rave about American being for "Christians" only because Jesus wants it that way. Of course there's no law against believing or teaching that the President of the United States is the child of an imaginary horned god of evil and is here to destroy everything good, including the good Christian militias who train for a mythical battle of the gods cribbed from Zoroastrian splinter sects and Gnostic fantasies. It's a free country -- so far.

It sure is scary shit though. If you're a resident of rural Martin County Florida, you might be a redneck, but even if you're not, there's a chance you're buying all the .223 and 7.65X39 you can get hold of at inflated prices and squirreling it away for Armageddon and the next Presidential election or for whatever the Mayans allegedly forsaw in the stars. There's also a good chance you're just a nostalgic and frustrated old Confederate and that decal on your pick'emup and the flag waving over your cracker shack indicate a serious longing to try it all again.

At any rate, if you're any of the above, you're not alone and you're less alone than you were a few years ago when the right hand of Jesus presided over his crusade and his omnipotent presidential powers. Militias are prospering as they haven't since 1861.

"The only thing on earth to save the testimony and those who follow it, are the members of the testimony, til the return of Christ in the clouds. We, the Hutaree, are prepared to defend all those who belong to Christ and save those who aren't. We will still spread the word, and fight to keep it, up to the time of the great coming."

It's the credo of the Hutaree, a Christian Militia, who are waiting and training in anti-Satan warfare for the end of time just in case God can't handle it himself; all the Jew killing and rapturing and devil chasing ain't easy, and needs reinforcements. The Anti-Christ Obama is damned near omnipotent after all, even if he has such a hard time getting the Republicans to behave like adults. No, if you want to stop Satan you need lots of camo and lots of ammo and it won't hurt to kill some cops and their families either. I know it sounds a bit questionable, but it's all there on their website. Hutaree, explains the camo clad site means Christian Warrior in some undisclosed language. Moronish, perhaps?

It was that plan that prompted the indictments today of 9 self-styled "patriots" after a series of raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. The idea was to spark some kind of war against the police by killing at least one and them blowing up his funeral so as to help bring on whatever it is they think needs bringing on. Sounds a bit like Charles Manson's strategy, but I'm sure they thought of it independently.

Meanwhile, back in Michigan, the allegedly unrelated Michigan Militia still plans to hold their "Open Carry Family Picnic & Tea Party" to be held on April 10, 2010 so while the bomb making classes at the Hutaree house of hate will be on hold for a while you can still take the family to Michigan for a good old family time and play games like pin the mustache on Obama, kill the gun grabbers and Let's Pretend our taxes are going up.

And while we're playing games, does anyone want to bet that more commenters will bash me for "misunderstanding" the teabag patriots than will be concerned about armed madmen and trying to take over the government by killing the police?

Stoning the Orca

"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes."

-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.

It was inevitable, since after all, this incomprehensibly huge and ancient universe exists only to provide a place in which God can test the mindless obedience to a farrago of meaningless and often contradictory rules of the sentient apes whose existence spans an infinitesimal part of the space time continuum -- anything that happens must be seen in the context of peremptory power and abject submission to the words of ancient men who went their whole, ignorant, bug-infested lives without soap. Or so saith the AFA.

A captive 6 ton top predator, by following its possibly God given instincts to grab and kill any smaller animal at water's edge was God's way of testing his demand that an Ox who gores a man must be stoned. That's right, the sad death of Sea World trainer Dawn Brancheau was God's punishment to "the west" for the very concept of animal rights and her death a test to see if we'd follow the commands of ancient, flea bitten, psychotics. By not "stoning" the Orca, it's only going to get worse. God will have his Oxen (and Orcas) stoned even if the hirsute brutes he chose to write down his words never heard of such an animal.

Have I been listening to too many paranoid schizophrenics at Nurse Ratched's cuckoo's nest? No, just the perennial font of psychotic idiocy called the American Family Association.

"Chalk another death up to animal rights insanity and to the ongoing failure of the West to take counsel on practical matters from the Scripture," wrote Bryan Fischer, at the AFA's official blog. “When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable.”

Do you think that if I stampeded some Oxen through their offices and gored the living shit out of Fischer and his batshit crew of straight-jacket candidates, the AFA would find me liable and sue me? I think so too but I would truly love to try it. After all, I could easily cite the 613 Biblical Commandments, 600 of which they routinely ignore, such as the "abominations" of the cheeseburger or using cotton thread to sew your linen clothes or turning on the lights on Friday night. A good goring and stoning would only be God's work, dontcha think? The work of that smelly, sociopathic little God who lives in some dank invisible basement in some invisible world and tortures animals for fun.

There is no place in a sane and decent society for these sick bastards and the curious selection of perverted bronze age superstitions they'd like to replace our laws with. The Bible, or whatever dubiously assembled antique political documents they'd like to tell us is the backbone of existence and the source of all goodness, is simply not compatible with decency, truth, freedom and the safety of humans beings or their families. Freedom from being ruled by its self appointed priesthood has been the long struggle of our kind and I will not have it snatched from us after two centuries of secular Democracy by these evil men.

"for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man," said Jefferson.

Yes, me too.

What's in a name?

After listening to the self-contradictory, incoherent, quasi-literate and massively hate-packed rhetoric emanating from CPAC, where we were told that the concept of progress was a Marxist idea, that Progressives wanted to progress toward Communism. Liberals were the enemy of freedom and most insane of all: "Royalists" It's hard to hold on to any hope that what's left of the American Right retains even a rudimentary grasp on reality or any commitment to any ideal in any way related to Democracy and the Rights of Man. Taxes are Communism, protection of the rights of minorities is Communism, secular democracy is communism, but collusion between corporations and government isn't, as Mussolini Defined it, Fascism -- it's freedom.

A party that won a solid majority in a free election is an "insurgency." Teddy Roosevelt, his opponent Woodrow Wilson and Adam Smith are all Communists who tried to destroy us and Glenn Beck got what he calls a "free" education, not by attending any private school, but by using taxpayer funded, government owned resources at the public library. Yes those of us who have pushed through legislation that finally allowed women and minorities to vote or own property or live like free men and women are simultaneously Nazis, Bolsheviks, Trotskyites, Maoists, and yes -- Royalists. Those of us who think vast sums of corporate money are corrupting the system are any wildly preposterous political epithet that comes to mind, but also Communists, Marxists, Trotskyites and the kinky sex partners of the Taliban. That they're not calling non-Republicans Irridentists or Scrooby Separatists is only the result of their neglected education, but of course those things are only another form of Marxist Islamofascism and Trotskyite lesbo-Feminism with a bit of royalism thrown in for flavour.

"Protect our precious Medicare?" Well that's not communism even tough it and Social Security were until the country voted for health care reform. Why? because Obama is a Fascist follower of Pol Pot, trying to corrupt our youth and a Communist, Muslim, illegal alien, soft-on-terrorism, cannibal none the less - and because any hateful insanity must be true if it vilifies Obama - he's a Royalist.

No accusation is too ludicrous whether it contradicts all the other accusations or not. It' s not important to make sense or to tell the truth; it's only important to pump up the accusations, pump up the hate.

After listening to John Yoo describe a Republican justice department according to which, an American president like the one he served has more power than any European Monarch did in the age before Democracy, including the right to wage wars, internal and foreign, suspend civil rights, amend laws, refuse to obey laws, to lie, misrepresent and fabricate and to justify any action by Presidential fiat, it's hard to believe we're not simply listening to cross talk between parallel but vastly different universes. Is it legal for the President to order that the testicles of an innocent child be crushed to make his parent talk? But of course says Professor Yoo! Do as the President says shall be the law -- but we're Royalists all the same.

It's not so much that the Republicans seem to have defined conservative values as Marxist and indeed almost everything including evil itself as its opposite, they're inventing their own paranoid psychotic reality permeated by gibbering, drooling and incoherent rage, it's that we're not in open revolt against them; that they have a huge, armed and vastly wealthy base of support.

And we just sit and listen.

Toxic Tea

It's the "liberals" and the "lefties" that have destroyed the black family, says the absurdly right-wing man of color. The resident blogger agrees, as he always does when anyone ascribes yet another evil to his shooting gallery of straw targets -- or Commies, Marxists, far-left Liberals, "pussies" or Homosexuals as he terms them interchangeably.

They're both educated people, if you can grant any credibility to what passes for education in the United States, but of course these are Tea Party people, proclaiming articles of faith to one another and in protected sanctuaries where the comments of the reasonable, the informed, the sincere are not permitted to be heard and the vilification of the more or less innocent is the flesh and blood in their Psychotic sacrament. Only in America can someone long for a future of miraculous anarchy, concentration camps, forced deportations and even mass murder -- and insist he's not only speaking for everyone, but is a conservative.

No, Godot will arrive, spend his two week vacation at my house and depart before anyone can explain how the emancipation of slaves, the restoration of civil rights and integration of the schools was an insidious Liberal plot against "black families" regardless of the length of time it took, in part because of the political and sometimes the armed resistance from conservatives. The question of why the end of race-based housing and employment discrimination broke up families; why the end of restricted hotels, separate but unequal restaurants, swimming pools, beaches, bathrooms, drinking fountains and public transportation was a vicious act designed to harm African American families, can only be explained by people who can't tell a tax cut from an increase when seen through a tea bag.

No, I won't link to that blog, since I've had long experience with rabid death threats to me and my family. I've had many long tirades threatening Liberals with deportation to North Korea at gunpoint or even extermination after "the producer class" stages their armed revolution when I've attempted reasonable, respectful and sincere communication with people like the college professor who runs the place, and I don't want to attract any more threats and hysteria to this blog. But be aware, they're out there in both senses of the phrase. You may not know of them, you probably don't read them and odds are ten to one you don't agree with them, but from such ugly sores, horrible diseases grow - and they're out there believing that 2012 marks the end of our world and the beginning of theirs.

Nationalizing Wal-Mart

So let me get this straight, President Obama, or if you're a Republican, just plain Obama, is a dangerous leader because when someone tried to blow up a plane he took hours before mentioning the magic word "War." That was bad. Never ever talk of criminal activity when you can describe it as an act of war, unless of course it's our criminal activity. The non-sequitur correlate of this principle is that no rules apply when the words are coming from on official right wing spokesman, like Rush or Sarah. So it's OK for him to call people "retards" on the air, but just disgusting for Rahm to use it in private. Likewise it's OK for Rush to insist there's no war on while all the rest of his party continue to justify each and every crime, transgression. Actually no rules apply to Rush at all, since he can get away with such statements as insisting that the President has already dealt the US a more devastating blow than we suffered in World War II without being called a liar, an ignoramus or the worst enemy Truth ever had by his party.

But let's start at the beginning, Rush claimed yesterday that Wal-mart was lobbying heavily to keep "Obama" from nationalizing the company. Lord knows they have lobbyists, but it takes a certain kind of person to broadcast that there is any likelihood of such an action and a really special kind of person to believe it. Now why would that be something awful you might ask Rush? Because there's no war on, says he, driving home the point that whether there is or isn't is situational and specific to any particular argument he's trying to make. There's a war when you can attack the President with it and there isn't when you can attack the President with it and both times Rush will be right.

"The last time this happened was World War II, but that was because there was a war on and it made sense"

The last time what happened, Rush? It may make sense to him, but not only are we losing men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, we did not nationalize Wal-Mart then or ever, nor is anyone contemplating it but Rush.

"Country is under assault, more so than we were during World War II, other than the Japanese. But the Germans never attacked us, the Japanese did."

he continued and I'll leave it to you to figure out what alternate universe these "facts" come from. I suspect there are numbers of people who will simply accept that the current administration is more dangerous to our national security than what in the late 1930's was the most powerful military on Earth, will simply nod and accept that Germany didn't declare war on us and didn't over-run Europe and attack England and that we didn't lose almost half a million troops or that untold tens of millions of people didn't die -- Obama is dangerous and has already done us more harm than the Axis powers and without a doubt is going to nationalize Wal-Mart.

Does anyone reading this believe that Rush Limbaugh isn't stark raving mad with power, thinking he can invent alternate histories, create alternate realities and use them to attack the government and the people of the United States of America? There are millions who do and it may be that one or two of them will take it upon themselves to do Rush's bidding and rid us of the man who has already ruined everything for everyone.

Of course it's a United States of America where the president's imaginary "gun grab" has already taken place, where people who just got a tax cut are protesting an imaginary increase, where people who can't afford a check-up much less treatment for a serious illness are screaming about "Obama" taking away their ideal situation and somewhere, somebody is plotting acts of violence because after all, "Obama" is not only a Nazi, but a more dangerous one than Hitler. Thus spake Limbaugh.

MarXrays from planet Obama

My doctor was running a bit late yesterday morning and I spent about a half hour sitting in the waiting room staring at the wall. About 10 minutes before my name was called, a tall, gaunt man in his late 70's lowered his newspaper and said to his wife in the loud way those hard of hearing do: "this is just wrong." His wife seemed to slump down in her chair and mumbled something about Obama only urging kids to work hard and stay in school. "Sixth graders aren't the ones dropping out" he replied "and asking them to help him - that's just wrong."

Of course nothing is "just wrong" it's what you say when you don't have a reason you wish to think about, much less discuss. Of course nobody faulted Bush for reading to kids, and I don't remember any such idiocy about keeping kids from listening to the President since radio broadcasting began in the 1920's, but the idea that president Obama should avoid talking about civics or anything else with school children is based on unsavory premises that need to be hidden -- and so "it's just wrong."

It's amazing how the idea that Obama not only would be "indoctrinating" anyone by making a public speech; much less indoctrinating them in some insidious Marxist plot, is to me one of the most fascinating things about American insanity. It may be the most obviously contrived meme ever to infect us, stemming at first from his questioning of the gospel of tax cuts and privatization and then reflecting the demand by a large majority for the kind of system we have in Medicare already. I don't have space to show how foolish this is and I don't need it -- just read the papers.

If a graduated income tax is Marxist, then as I've said several times, Adam Smith and Teddy Roosevelt were socialists FDR was the anti-Christ and Dwight Eisenhower was Lenin. Still the meme has cascaded down from the RNC through Fox and the ignorant backwoods bastards who hate black people and want to launder their bigotry at Murdoch's laundromat. "Work hard and stay in school?" "Think about ways to improve our nation?" COMMUNISM! FASCISM!

It's not just that miserable old hypocrite in the waiting room, doubtless having his bill payed by "socialist" medicare, it's the ignorant, stupid, miserable bastards of America pushing school boards to let their kids stay home and not be exposed to the communising Obamanite which emits MarXrays causing them to speak French and visit a dentist regularly.

Michelle Malkin is squealing like a stuck pig. World Net Daily is calling for a national "stay home from school day." Glenn Beck is being -- Glenn Beck and the rest of the Republican blogswamp is croaking like bullfrogs after a rainstorm: "Obama wants to create his own Hitler Youth!" School boards all over the country are being besieged by howling rednecks and districts in 6 states so far are refusing to tune in. It's crawling through the nation's school system like a flesh eating virus.

In a way, it's encouraging that after nearly 8 months, giving a speech to America's students is the worst thing they can pin on Obama, but that this pathetic collection of misbegotten miscreants will buy into it as enthusiastically as monster hunting peasants surrounding castle Frankenstein makes me continue to be ashamed at any country with such people in it.