Away from shore

Capt. Fogg will be off shore until Oct 8

Snatch and Grab at G20

The G20 circus is back in town and no matter how many rings it has, it's all sideshow. Does this picture show US troops shoving a protester into a car? The security people claim that no, these were policemen wearing camouflage. There is a mix of National Guard and Policemen on the street in Pittsburgh to keep the peace, but it matters who did this and why, because the US Military can't make arrests and may not be used to enforce the law - oh wait - there's the Patriot Act.

Again, G20 security claims the man was removed because he was vandalizing stores. Can we be sure? The blog DemocraticUnderground.com bulges with comments, some of which assure us it was all staged, or that it was an innocent bystander having his freedom of speech infringed upon - but who knows? There's the Patriot act - almost anything can be legal, either the death of Posse Comitatus or the spiriting away or arrest with no charges of anyone, or so it seems to many of us. Who can be sure what is happening here?

There's the Patriot act and many of its more egregious features are set to expire at the end of the year. Whatever it was that the picture shows, that legacy of George Bush will allow speculation of all sorts, legitimate and otherwise because it will allow things none of us want. As it is, the powers granted under the Patriot act have been used primarily to go after dope smokers, not terrorist suspects. A bill backed by two Democrats and an independent may be able to put the brakes on widespread abuses, although I would like to see the entire thing scrapped. Otherwise people who believe they really are planning to round us all up will be justified in worrying and none of us will ever be quite sure what's going on in Pittsburgh, Washington or anywhere else.

The plots thicken

I don't know why, but since the Vietnam era, the hawkish types seem to have preferred the world "embolden" to the more conventional "encourage." It may be simply that we prefer not to use the word "courage" when talking about our enemies, but figuring that one out is beyond any area of expertise I might pretend to. None the less, the Cheneyesque assumption that Obama, by being Obama, the liberal/fascist/Commie/Muslim born in Kenya and Indonesia will spur or "embolden" Islamic enemies to attack us to a greater extent than the refulgent presidency of George W. Bush did, is sure to be in the news again.

The last few days have seen the arrest of people involved in credible bomb plots, including the attempt to blow up a skyscraper in Dallas, Texas. Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, 19-year-old illegal immigrant from Jordan was arrested after he dialed a number on his cell phone that he had been duped by Federal Agents into believing would detonate a large bomb. He had been under close surveillance for some time.

This follows on the heels of the arrest of Denver resident Najibullah Zazi as part of another bomb conspiracy that had advance to the point of assembling the chemical components. Both of these plots were foiled by what seems to be good police work and not anything resulting from the massive powers given to the President by the infamous "Patriot Act."

It would be hard to justify the opinion that the 2001 attack was a one-shot deal not to be repeated and it's been a no brainer to predict that the next attack wouldn't involve hijacking airplanes. Although Zazi may have received training in Pakistan and Smadi claims to be a "soldier of bin Laden," these plots may have less to do with anything hatched at the top levels of some central organization than with the more diverse worldwide culture of anti-Western hatred. It's hard to say these attempts wouldn't have happened if Afghanistan had been cleansed of the Taliban or Qaeda training camps. Of course the threat remains vanishingly small to any individual but it's important to note that Smadi wanted to blow up Wells Fargo as a blow to our banking system -- and it would have been.

But again, the FBI seems to have done its job and without waterboards or Transylvanian castle dungeons or reading the mail of the Quaker churches and without bombing any country back to the dark ages and this makes the idea that Obama has disabled our ability to deal with terrorists less of a credible talking point.

Love in the time of Republican insanity

Face it, it's been downhill since that socialist Lincoln freed the slaves. In no time at all, we gave women the vote and only a hundred years after that bearded Marxist in the bad hat betrayed the freedom of slave owners, the descendants of those slaves could vote too. The speed of our nation down the slippery slope to Socialism is breathtaking. Only a century after those lazy slaves were allowed basic human rights, the damned Liberals were insisting that God was wrong in separating the races and wanted to allow interracial marriage. There will no stopping this slide and there's no fooling Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) it's all about galloping socialism.

"If there's a push for a socialist society, a society where the foundations of individual rights and liberties are undermined and everybody is thrown together living collectively off of one pot of resources earned by everyone, this is one of the goals they'd have to go to, is same sex marriage, because it has to plow through marriage in order to get to their goal. Not only is it a radical social idea, it is a purely socialist concept, in the final analysis."

Makes your head swim, doesn't it? The incisive and trenchant logic, I mean. Why isn't everyone smart enough to see that denying life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is our last defense against Socialism? Why aren't they smart enough to see that we need government to take over everything in our lives from our morals to our freedom to our love life in the name of smaller, less intrusive government? Thank God for Iowa!

Tea stains

Maybe Chuck Norris has been kicked in the head once too often. Maybe he deserves another one. He's been barking about being true to the "spirit of our founders" by avoiding the use of a contemporary US flag to wave over their "tea parties" unless the flag is first desecrated by staining it with tea. His op-ed in World Net Daily links to a WND page peddling pre-desecrated flags for $73.50. I don't know if Norris gets a piece of the action.

"If you insist on posting a modern USA flag too, then get one that has been tea stained, to show your solidarity with our founders."

The idea of being lectured to about political philosophies of the Enlightenment and the visions of the somewhat disparate men who drafted our constitution by an intellectual midget like Norris is galling enough but the spectacle of being urged to stain the flag by people who have been clogging up the legislative process for over 40 years trying to make it a crime to deface a flag is too much to let slip by without at least one Wilsonian "you lie!"

One of the things I'm sure our "founders" would agree on is that presidents are not to be chosen or un-chosen by mobs of belligerent barbarians carrying guns in the street. In fact the wisdom of letting the populace have much direct power was much discussed and protected against by the electoral college and the indirect election of senators.

Another thing I suspect they would agree on is that we the people are the founders of a country designed to be a constant work in progress through the institutions designed for that purpose. For someone who does nothing in this world but play a tough guy beating the crap out of stage ruffians in the movies to raise rabble that the rest of us will have to deal with is an outrage. For someone forgetful or dishonest enough to pretend that we don't remember him telling us that Bush was president and must be trusted, followed and honored as such, to now preach revolution is disgusting.

If talking about tea is supposed to remind us that taxation without representation is tyranny, perhaps it will remind some of us that we have representation, but Chuck doesn't like or respect the process that elected them. Is representation by self appointed gangs without election and without taxation their Utopian vision or is it just formless and inchoate rage?

Do we need anything better to remind us that Republican views of civilization and government are entirely situational and entirely opposite when they are in power and when they are thrown out in the street? It's all about winning at any cost and about vengeance at any cost when they lose.

Paling around with Communists

It's funny that we live in a country so afraid of facing up to its history and its responsibility that anything even so mildly critical as admitting your president was sometimes an embarrassment is a death sentence to your career and reputation. Ask the Dixie Chicks.

That doesn't apply however to Republican critics, particularly critics of Barack Obama. As you know, Sarah Palin has been touring China and viciously berating our country and its policies to an international audience, in speeches to which the press is not invited.

It's reported that some delegates to the CLSA Investors’ Forum, part of the French bank Credit Agricole, walked out "in disgust" complaining that she would only take pre-arranged questions, talked too much about Alaska and criticised Obama without offering any solutions of her own. Predictably, some said she was brilliant. Of those, one European delegate said: “She said America was spending a lot of money and it was a temporary solution. Normal people are having to pay more and more but things don’t get better. The rich will leave the country and the poor will get poorer.” That's a condition that well describes the Reagan and Bush years although she apparently spent much time praising Ronald Reagan.

I'll leave it to you to decide if reiterating her lies about death panels and "socialized" medicine to an audience, every nationality of which but the USA already has universal health care, indicates brilliance, insurmountable ignorance, vicious disregard for truth, justice and the United States of America. I won't ask if you think that telling an audience in China that Barack Obama and our trade policies are unfair to China nibbles away at any claim to patriotism she may have. She knows it does and CLSA reports that they closed the meetings to the press only because Palin didn't want to be known for what she is; a lying, chiseling, invidious little creep willing to sell out her country for her personal advancement.

Inside the Mind of Mark Foley

"Ninety percent positive — 99 percent positive from Palm Beach," said the station's general manager, Chet Tart in an e-mail to Florida's Sun-Sentinel. "Negative from other areas."

He's talking about comments on Inside the Mind of Mark Foley, a radio show that debuts at 6:00 PM Eastern on WSVU-AM 960 KHz.

He's still a local hero, never mind the sexual harassment of teenage boys that caused his embarrassed resignation and "rehab." Disgraced Republicans do that: they become heroes like Ollie North, G. Gordon Liddy and now Mark Foley -- martyrs to the cause, whatever it is and without that unpleasant martyrdom thing.

Of course Foley is a minor league player compared to the guys that ran illegal wars, illegal arms deals and burglaries out of the White House. He's just a sad fellow compared even to Shouting Joe Wilson or Larry, "Wide Stance" Craig. I'm not upset or surprised that he still has friends and supporters, I'm just amazed at how the public can't wait to get advice and presumably snarky opinions about the real enemies: Liberals, from him on the radio.

The producer isn't going to risk putting any irate callers on the air though. The show will consist mostly of pre-recorded answers to e-mailed questions. If you're interested, you can reach him at Foley@Seaviewam960.com.

Here come the Judge - again

Orly Taitz -- always in the news. Perhaps you remember my Sept. 16th post about how Judge Clay Land threw her "Birther" suit out of court with a warning that she would face consequences for any further frivolous suits. Ms. Taitz is not so easily dismissed, it seems and Judge Land not kindly disposed toward a motion she filed asking the Judge to reconsider -- at least not toward the part in which she called him a traitor and claimed that the 11th circuit court was subject to "external control" and political pressure from an illegitimate president.

At this point, even the Army Captain on whose behalf the suit was filed has bailed out and apparently can't wait to get to Afghanistan. Taitz now has 14 days to show the infuriated judge why she shouldn't be fined $10,000 for contempt. It will be interesting to see how deep a hole this rabid pit bull can dig herself into. Ten thousand seems a very small fine considering how much her insane crusade has cost us all and I'm hoping she can parlay it into some serious jail time.

Lefties

"All political violence is committed by the left in this country,"

said Ann Coulter, continuing her livelihood of making preposterous proclamations designed to inflame any reasonable person enough to produce a counter attack. Given a sufficiently absurd, preposterous or outrageous premise, that becomes so difficult that most of us are reduced to tears and she to witch-like cackles.

Of course the fulcrum of that statement, as it so often is, is the definition of "Left." In this case Left would have to include abortion doctor shooters and bombers, schizophrenics trying to impress Jody Foster, people like Byron De La Beckwith and of course how can we forget those Islamic "Liberals" who blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? If John Wilkes Booth can be a liberal, than there are only three conclusions we can make about Ann Coulter: Insane, dishonest or both.

When something like insisting that there is little danger to a president surrounded by angry opponents equipped with rifles and telescopic sights can inspire even Geraldo Rivera to say she's insane, logic again allows only two conclusions, Rivera is a liberal and ipso facto potentially violent, or he's right and she's insane.

Coulter has a long history of calling the police and claiming people are stalking her. She claims she's more likely to be shot than the President although one wonders about her reaction to being surrounded by armed men carrying signs calling for her assassination. She said nothing however, about being more likely to be fed rat poison than the Federal Judges she deemed worthy of such treatment. I wonder if she has a food taster - or if she eats what humans eat.

With some whores, at least you get sex

From others you get beat up and robbed blind by the pimp and you thank them for it all the way to the emergency room.

You remember Betsy McCaughey, the blond gun for hire who went on the Daily show with a huge bound volume purporting to be HR3200, the proposed health care reform bill. She's the one who thought she was smart enough to shut Jon Stewart up by referring to a mysterious clause on page 418 and was stupid enough not to realize that Stewart had read it and had a copy right there.

She all but slunk out of the studio to a chorus of jeers and allegations that she had received a good deal of money from Cantel Medical Corporation for lying about older people needing to face a "death panel" soon surfaced. She resigned her board of directors position within hours of her humiliation on the Daily Show. ABC News credited McCaughey with launching this lie about death panels on the Fred Thompson radio last July and Stewart is not Thompson. He can, and bothers to read and has more than enough wit to skewer a media whore like McCaughey.

I still hear a lot of echoes from the brainless who pick their opinions up from the pavement with a shovel like the guys who used to follow horses, of her earlier article "Deadly Doctors" in the New York Post. It lies about Ezekiel Emmanuel, Rahm Emmanuels's brother the doctor, claiming he wants physicians to forget the Hippocratic oath and focus on “social justice” rather than healing patients. That's code for Communism of course and of course it's another lie and another dollar for Betsy.

She has a long history of lying about health care. Back in 1994 she wrote an article for The New Republic that did a lot to kill the Clinton health care reform effort and which was later retracted by the magazine as being full of lies. The The Atlantic magazine ran a story further debunking her statements. Crooks and Liars yesterday reported that Rolling Stone will soon report her torpedoing of the Clinton plan was bought and paid for by Philip Morris, the Tobacco corporation along with Republican think tanks and the right wing medial.

Of course the people who need to hear this don't hear anything but Beck and the Fat man and like most victories over ignorance and falsehood, it's Pyrrhic, still it makes good reading while you wait for the charity doctors to fly in to treat your pancreatic cancer.

Shame

Palm Beach County, unlike counties in some other places, exhibits a huge disparity amongst residents and the bottom of the barrel is more visible and more in contrast with the upper strata. Stark poverty exists, sometimes within a short walk from breathtaking wealth. The Byzantine palaces of Boca Raton, the Hilton sized seaside abode of Rush Limbaugh can remind the viewer of Monopoly houses dumped at random on the board. Some residents have the chauffeur drive the house keeper to the drug store to pick up their drugs under assumed names, others can't afford medicine without which they have a short time left to live.

Like many third world countries where the mega-rich watch medical relief teams treat the poor from their comfortable adn beautiful estates, Palm Beach County will soon host Remote Area Medical caregivers to treat an estimated treat 4,000 to 5,000 people who don't have medical insurance. According to the Palm Beach Post, RAM's Stan Brock

"will travel to South Florida in a World War II era C-47 cargo plane. It will contain at least 40 dental chairs and the equipment necessary for several dozen Florida-licensed ophthalmologists, optometrists and opticians to examine hundreds of patients and make glasses on the spot. "

Things like dental extractions, fillings, prostate tests mammograms, pediatric exams and H1N1 flu shots and other essential things not available in Emergency Rooms will offered for free, no questions asked. Of course it's embarrassing, or should be, to patriots fond of calling any criticism or negative assessment of our proud country to be so easily compared to Haiti or Honduras. It's also far from being enough to occasionally offer relief from pain and disease to the peasants on an occasional basis, but as long as we're talking about shame, isn't it time to heap some of it on those who are too afraid that the most profitable corporations on Earth might have to operate with profit margins of less than 35% unless we maintain a sick and suffering underclass? What about politicians that can look at the will of three quarters of the population and dismiss it in favor of the corporations that pump billions into their bank accounts?

I'm embarrassed for my country when I see that this is the best we can do and more so when I listen to the excuses: that complete government withdrawal will fix it without leaving millions and millions to die, that a government administered guarantee of insurance coverage will lead to Socialism or Communism aren't more credible fears than the bogus Death Panels when we already have real ones at Cigna and Fortis and Humana. Will some illegal be able to scam the system? Sure, people scam any system, some people buy booze with food stamps, but that doesn't argue that we let a million children starve. The fear that someone will get something for free when we have to pay for it seems all out of proportion to the risk and the risk can be controlled.

No, there is no guaranteed right to health care in the constitution, nor is there to police protection, free public education, public libraries, national parks or municipal fire departments. Certainly no right to Social Security, unemployment or disability insurance. None of those things turned us into Communists, none of them destroyed capitalism, made us less competitive in the world market, stifled entrepreneurship or made any of the hackneyed warnings into a reality. All of them are tokens of civilization and have made us a better country. Single payer health insurance won't do those things either. If we had had it a few decades ago, you might still be driving a Chevy or Chrysler instead of something from the Pacific rim where workers have government health insurance.

Sometimes an opinion is just a lie

It's going to get harder for Fox News to hide behind the giggles, the puffed up pretense to being offended and accusations of insanity if more of the other networks begin to fight back against Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes's lie machine. Brad Blog covers CNN’s Rick Sanchez's, slapdown of Fox. Sanchez, who seems of late to be more willing to speak up against injustice went after Fox's Washington Post ad claiming they were the only network to cover the 9/12 "tea party" in Washington.

It's good to see someone get mad at the ever increasing torrent of lies, distortions and false claims emanating from Fox. It's going, as I said, to get harder to call the few vocal opponents like Olbermann and even Jon Stewart crazy or inconsequential if CNN is willing to run ads as they did yesterday evening, accusing Fox of "Distorting Not Reporting."

The people who send me wingnut e-mails about things that are designed to outrage the ignorant, often preface them with "why isn't the MSM covering this?" although usually, they are and have been. Fox's WaPo ad seems to have been the "enough is enough" trigger and even ABC declared it “demonstrably false.” The claim that no other networks were there was deemed by the Post to be an expression of an opinion not a lie, which of course doesn't help their credibility, regardless of what they claim the meaning of the word "is" is. Sanchez, concluding his diatribe said this:

“Let me address the Fox News Network now, perhaps the most current way that I can — by quoting somebody who recently used a very pithy phrase. Two words, that’s all I need. ‘You lie.’”

Lets hope it becomes a movement. Let's hope the Glennbeckery, the outrageous liberties taken with the news have finally pushed the timid competition into speaking out for the truth - they way they're supposed to.

He lied -- no he didn't

As though on cue, the South Carolina courts have upheld a $10 million dollar award to Jerome Mitchell who purchased health insurance from Fortis in 2001 when he was 18. A year later, when trying to donate blood, he was told he had HIV. Fortis decided he had lied on the application where it asked if he'd been diagnosed with immune deficiency and rescinded his policy.

As we know, although some won't admit it, Insurance companies pay bonuses to their death panels who reject claims and rescind policies, but I'm sure whatever they paid was a drop in the bucket in comparison. The court didn't mince words in upholding Mitchell's claim and upheld $10 million in punitive damages.

"We find ample support in the record that Fortis' conduct was reprehensible ... Fortis demonstrated an indifference to Mitchell's life and a reckless disregard to his health and safety"

and Mitchell was fortunate enough to be young enough to survive long enough to be vindicated. His life expectancy without very expensive treatment would have been 4 years, according to his suit. Older patients often die before they can get their day in court or before the inevitable appeals process winds down. The death panels love it when that happens. I think it happens rather frequently.

Do we need a public option to tame this kind of swashbuckling? Not necessarily, but we need something and we needed it a long time ago.

If at first you don't succeed

I've written often enough about my opposition to giving our government the power to execute people and I'm not going over it again. This time it's about the method. Many people really don't care if an execution is agonizing or hideous. It's apparent considering the number of years we've been using the electric chair. The first time it was used, witnesses ran howling from the building, some went down on their knees with projectile vomiting - but we took a long time about looking for something less grotesque; a long time during which victims were set on fire, steaming eyeballs and sparks were popping out of smoking skulls and one prisoner who survived the chair was led back to it a year later after the Supreme Court said there was nothing cruel about it.

After the Conservative recrudescence when public sentiment responded to fear mongering and swung toward executions again, the idea of a quick painless death by injecting some drug seemed the most humane and thus more marketable. It's what we do with pets we love as though they were family after all, but instead of using a single painless shot of a barbiturate which insures loss of consciousness and a quick end, we rig up a contraption that requires an IV needle to be in place and a series of three injections. If the needle, which is installed by non medical professionals, is done incorrectly, and it often is, it produces a long, excruciating death while the prisoner is paralyzed and conscious. There's no reason for it that I can find except they started doing it that way and conservatives don't like change, whether it's an improvement or not. It's more important to appear "tough" to the other Republicans.

A recent Ohio case where the victim was strapped to the death chamber crucifix, involved 2 hours of jabbing him with needles while he sobbed and begged to be able to help end it all. The executioners couldn't find a vein and gave up, allowing convicted rapist/murderer Romell Broom a one week reprieve until his veins heal. Then they'll try again and God forbid they should try something proven to work well. Ohio Gov Strickland assures us no thought will be given to this.

"That does not mean there will be a review of the larger issue of lethal injections," Strickland said Wednesday. "That's been settled."

There's no report as to whether he washed his hands afterward.

Millions, billions, trillions. . .

I'm pretty new to Twitter, but the place sounds like an aviary today with all the giggling about Sean Hannity's statement that Acorn, the subject of much hilarity this week, is slated to receive eight and a half TRILLION dollars from the government. I'm not sure that Sean is aware that the Census bureau dropped ACORN a week ago as Fox reported. Even so - $8,500,000,000,000.00? Sean, thousands, millions billions trillions -- there's a difference!

So I'm wondering if maybe the next time I call him Insanity Hannity y'all won't say I'm over the top? I mean, I'm just sayin'.

It's about policy

About one out of three New Jersy "conservatives" seem to think that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ, says TPM. About half of those think he has the number 666 on his scalp. To me, the idea that that many people can assert that the concept itself is rational is shocking enough, but of course, as Michael Steele assures us, it's certainly not a racial thing. That the same third believes he wasn't born in the US couldn't be other than a valid suspicion independent of his complexion either. Oh no, it's not about his color, it's about his policies and one certainly notices a lot of policy discussion amongst the pistol packing, Kalashnikov carrying crowd carrying signs calling for the murder of his children. It was about his policies quite a bit before anyone know what those policies might be.

"I think people who are guilty of that kind of personal attack against Obama have been influenced to a major degree by a belief that he should not be president because he happens to be African American"

said former President Jimmy Carter yesterday. That's a massive understatement in my opinion.

"When a radical fringe element of demonstrators and others begin to attack the president of the United States as an animal or as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler or when they wave signs in the air that said we should have buried Obama with Kennedy, those kinds of things are beyond the bounds,"

Indeed they were out of bounds some time ago and the early defensiveness of his attackers about "the race card" long before accusations of racism began to emerge suggests an awareness. At this point, I don't think any doubt remains as I don't think there has been such an irrational series of accusations and threats of violence since the Salem witch trials. Posters of Obama as an African warlord or as a Nazi in "teaparty" posters reek of racism.

It's inevitable that someone will comment that there are deranged Democrats and racist Democrats and stupid Democrats, fallacious defense though it might be. I'd like to ask just how many people showed up in protest of Bush's illegal actions carrying weapons and carrying signs demanding the death of the president, his wife and "stupid children."

Here come the Judge!

Orly Taitz - the name seems designed for mockery, but anyone so inclined hardly needs such a prop. Yes, she's the one who is still filing lawsuits, using our clogged-up courts as a soapbox to give the voices in her head an audience: the voices that say Barack Obama was born In Kenya on a variety of dates both before and after it became a Republic and is ineligible to be president. So far it hasn't been working out well. That may change.

She's been serving as council for US Army Captain Connie Rhodes who volunteered for service in Afghanistan so he and Taitz could file suit for the right to refuse the orders he requested to be given. Other than the fake birth certificate Judge Clay Land of the US District Court in Columbus, Georgia says is inadmissible since she paid to have it made up (the fact that it's dated incorrectly and got the name of the country wrong doesn't help its credibility) she has presented nothing but a series of diatribes and no evidence whatever that could refute the State of Hawaii's certification that Obama was born in Honolulu.

It's not good to try fooling the judge. Clay threw it, and her apparently, out of court saying she:

“has presented no credible evidence and has made no reliable factual allegations to support her unsubstantiated, conclusory allegations and conjecture that President Obama is ineligible to serve as president of the United States. Instead, she uses her complaint as a platform for spouting political rhetoric, such as her claims that the president is ‘an illegal usurper, an unlawful pretender, an unqualified impostor."

WTVM-TV in Columbus reported, that the judge also stated that Orly Taitz,

“will be subject to counsel sanctions for bringing any future actions in his court which are similarly frivolous.”

Think you can slow down a wingnut that easy? Sorry, the Taitz has inflicted another suit in the US district court in Santa Ana, CA using another, differently dated, bogus certificate she also claims to have obtained by bribery in Kenya and other servicemen who claim they won't go because Obama isn't really president.

Will Judge David O. Carter give her case the same heave ho? Don't be too sure. Judge Carter, a former U.S. Marine, repeated several times that this case is very serious and must be resolved quickly so that the troops know their Commander in Chief is eligible to hold that position and issue lawful orders to our military "in this time of war." He's already refused the Obama team's request for dismissal. The plan, according to Jeff Schwilk, founder, San Diego Minutemen who somehow seems to have a voice in this, is to force Obama to reveal his true birth certificate - right, the one he revealed a long time ago and which was attested to by the governor of Hawaii and their director of vital records.

"Taitz did a great job, winning some huge victories today, she was fearless!”

said Schwilk, to the SonoranNews.com I'm sure she was. A sane person would have been terrified.

Am I mocking the innocent here? I'll leave it to you, but we can be sure that we will be hearing from people who condemn this disrespect for fraudulent, seditious cases and believe every word of these charges. Oh, those Liberals! All they have is mockery!

Rush's tale

A Tale of Two Cities, The Miller's Tale, a tale told by an idiot - it doesn't matter in the great game of Pin the Tale on Obama. Any tale will do. Your host today is Rush Limbaugh and he's here to tell us that a tale of someone getting beat up on a school bus can be pinned on US President Barak Obama. What? You want a reason? Well two black kids beat up on a white kid for some undetermined reason and because nature abhors a reason vacuum, the bell rings and we pin the tale on Obama!

That means of course that this incident, because there doesn't seem to be evidence of it being race-related, instantly goes on to round two where it becomes the model for the future Where Barak Obama individually directs the actions of all high school students ( remember the speech?)

"In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering,"

said Rush yesterday. In other words, the fact of a biracial president guarantees that the "darkies" will no longer frolic gaily about the plantation as God and the GOP intends and as Rush proves, have already formed an American Mau Mau movement to invade the inner sanctum of the white race, rape our women and drive the streets of Palm Beach in Escalades with that terrible racist music blaring while Rush is trying to sleep.

That's right - the white kids get beat up - all of them and all of the black kids will cheer and because this has never, ever happened before when the White House was really white, it's Obama's fault, QED.

Tune in tomorrow when Rush will explain to us that all the mockery he gets from those miserable liberals proves that everything he says is correct.

In case you missed these

Some gems to share:

"You can buy a Kalashnikov in Alabama, but no sex toys please!" from Mario Piperni dot Com

"9/12: a day when people who don't have health care are fighting to stop health care for them with terrorist tactics." From LU CIFER

"He didn’t talk to Main Street. He needs to spend every minute of every day constantly reassure[ing] crazy people on the Right that he doesn’t want to abort Sarah Palin's baby and shoot grandma in the head or turn Murrica into a Franco-Islamic Communist Caliphate. This is perhaps unfair, but after all, he is Black." Howard Fineman on the Chris Matthews show -- Crooks & Liars.

Mock around the clock

Obama is a man of parts, more parts than I can keep track of and the number of parts grows every day - every hour if you inhabit the Republican loonysphere or have friends that love to put you on wingnut mailing lists.

He's a terrorist, a pied piper leading our children to Maoism and Sharia Law, a guy who murdered his grandmother and wants to murder yours. He was born in Indonesia and Kenya and went to a terrorist indoctrination school.

He's listed in the Book of Revelation by name as the Anti-Christ.

He's a Marxist and he's a Nazi who nonetheless wants to disband or weaken the army to the point where the communists take over - or maybe the "Muslins" as a sign waver tells us. He's a child molester who parties with homosexual child molesters on the White House lawn. He hates white people. He wants to remake the country in the mold of "European Socialism." He wants to confiscate your guns and declare martial law and send Republicans off to "camps." He murdered and raped a young girl in 1990. He hates "white culture." He's a man in the mold of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and perhaps Mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria.

He wants to ban all religious broadcasting in the US. He hates Christians, he was raised by a racist Christian minister. He had Chrysler dealerships owned by Republicans closed. The "Obama Tribe" was behind the recent political unrest in Kenya. He plans to bring his Kenyan family here illegally. He wants to give illegal aliens free medical care at taxpayer expense. He wants to make Capitalism illegal. He refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. He supports infanticide for unwanted newborns.

He lies. He lies about everything. He's gay too, but this only a taste of the vast shit salad being offered up at the loonyville diner. I'm sure you can find more if you try, but if you do, don't tell me. With all this mindless, immoral mockery, I'm starting to think that maybe the guy really is the Messiah.

Censorship in America

Anyone still clinging to the excuse that religion is a source, or the source of morality should examine the foetid depths of moral emptiness to which religious authorities will descend in defense of something demonstrably false and viciously idiotic. Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish informs us that:

"A celebrated new movie about one the world's greatest scientists cannot find a distributor in the US."

Although Darwinism thoroughly proves the idea that complexity and organization do arise and evolve over time as a result of mindless algorithms, most Americans, with the help and censorship of the Christian establishment, not only are totally ignorant of the evidence, ignorant of the principle, but are unaware of just how much Darwin's dangerous idea has revolutionized such diverse things as the development of the digital computer and epidemiology.

The Christian establishment has of course tried to satanize everything from the telescope to the ratio Pi to the barometer over the centuries and of course has punished science and scientists heavily, but such things now go on mostly in the United States. Contrary to George W. Bush's assertions, the jury is not out on Evolution any more than it's out on the Pythagorean Theorem, the Speed of Light or the age of the universe. But far worse than the pathological denials of fact are the immoral, dishonest and dangerous attacks on Darwinian science as a source of extremism. A "Christian" website that pre-judges movies for the believers has launched into an attack on Creation so viciously dishonest that it has succeeded in censoring it so that cannot be shown in the US.

It's easy for someone with little education and a superstitious mind to buy the slander that the philosophy of science founded by Charles Darwin leads to eugenics and that Darwin himself was

"a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder". His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering."

But of course we're not told how little the real Darwinism has to do with the "survival of the fittest" interpretation cooked up by others. One might as well blame Louis Pasteur for biological warfare. One might as well blame Nietzsche's hatred of anti-Semitism for Hitler. One might as well blame Jesus for the Crusades, the Inquisition and the dangerous lies of the American religious right. That less than 40% of Americans "believe" in evolution shows the cultivated and stultifying ignorance that lubricates our downward slide, that produces the enthusiastic gullibility that produces sign waving mobs and demented political displays.

Of course the Christian jihad against science and scientific method and scientific epistemology is part of a larger Church led war against Democracy. The concept of heresy, the freedom of opinion, is a grave offense but the backbone of Autocracy and the greatest impediment to Democracy in history has been religious orthodoxy. So far they've kept that movie out of our country and our survival depends on their failure to maintain our ignorance.

Bye Bye Norma Rae

You remember Norma Rae, although her name was Crystal Lee. Sally Field played the Union Organizer from Burlington North Carolina in 1979 and won an academy award for the performance. Ms. Field who presumably is financially secure, is still with us but Crystal Lee, who wasn't, isn't. She got brain cancer she couldn't afford to treat, she had to battle her insurance company to live up to its contractual obligation, they stalled and she died Last Friday.

Sarah Palin is right, Death Panels are real and the Health Insurance companies all have them, practicing 'delay and deny' tactics that resulted -- intentionally -- in the death of the 68 year old Crystal Lee Sutton. Her insurance company interfered between her and her doctor, she couldn't afford Chemo on her own and some employee likely got a bonus for saving the company money.

Like Most Republican arguments, the Death Panel idea illustrates the principle of projective accusation. if your president was guilty of more lies than any other in history, you start accusing the opposition of lying and if you're lucky you can find a mote in his eye and gleefully use it to deny the giant sequoia in your own. Thus to protect the insurance companies that profit by interfering in the doctor-patient relationship, dictate and deny treatment and let people die unnecessarily they accuse a system designed to stop it of doing the same thing. Americans are stupid enough to buy it.

Death Panels are real and death panels are inevitable because corporations are beholden to their stockholders, not to their insured clients. Actual panels of actual people get salaries and bonuses for obfuscating and delaying claims until it's too late, or for scouring your life for some unreported case of acne or the flu to justify denying your cancer claim. A large part of your premiums go, in fact, to pay for these Death Panels and to keep the stockholders happy.

Perhaps someone will chime in here and deny it. I hope so because I'm dying to say You Lie! I can't wait to tell the inevitable troll who will insist that just like Public Schools, Public Libraries, National parks and the National Guard, Government claims administration is Socialism! You lie!

Plan 9 from Outer Space

Mention ACORN to a Republican and watch him start to hiss and twitch. Some are still telling me that because a few ACORN workers registered fake names like Micky Mouse, the will of the majority was overturned and Obama managed to sneak in the door. Of course Micky never actually showed up at the polls -- for obvious reasons -- and Obama won by 10 million votes, but reality never has stood in the way of any Republican belief system. They're still out in the streets with signs shrieking about Obama and corruption and ACORN. They have to, since the Marxism thing, the Birth certificate thing: the death panels, the death book and the other accusations have succeeded at best at looking like the ad hoc plot of an Ed Wood movie.

The silly symphony probably won't drop the theme now that the Government has decided not to use that organization to collect census data in the interest of avoiding the appearance of impropriety. They'll take it as an admission that the Pod people from planet Zorchtron did indeed rig the election, but maybe it will weaken the inevitable claim that the government is using the census to round up Republicans to feed them to brain eating zombies in a secret cave underneath Philadelphia. Maybe not. The chances of someone leaving a comment arguing that there are insane Democrats, that I've rewritten the popular vote margins (like all lefties do) or that any mention of the unprecedented, gun toting madness out in the streets is all part of plan 9 from outer space to smear the sacred name of George W. Bush.

Wait for it.

The dogs do bark

"This is not some kind of radical right-wing group,”

said Senator Jim DeMint, to the Times today.

Sure it is, although to DeMint the definition of radical right might be a bit idiosyncratic. Thousands Rally in Capitol reads the headline although the picture shows at most a couple of hundred white, middle aged people carrying all sorts of signs ranging from the inexplicable to the ridiculous. A huge photo of Nancy Pelosi with a thought bubble saying "Nazis" has the word Astroturf!!! under it. Another claiming that

"Jesus Christ is the messiah and not Obama"

is there to reinforce the idiotic idea that Obama supporters think he's chosen of God and perhaps to help us forget the glaring fact that Bush was widely portrayed as God's right hand.

"Just say no to Chicago Style Politics"

brays another, doubtless setting off thousands of WTF alarms in the Windy City - often referred to as the city that works.

"Obama's nuts, that's why he's involved with ACORN"

reflects the inexplicable obsession with that organization the less mentally organized Republicans seem possessed of.

"Trade freedom for security. . . you will have neither"

says a large sign approximating a Ben Franklin quote that would have been very much appropriate for the previous administration: so appropriate to the gang who gave us the Patriot Act, ignored the law and told us blowing up Iraq was necessary to preserve "our freedoms."

In fact, the fact that not only were these marionettes not in display in Washington a year ago but also that the Bush administration routinely bussed protesters out to remote and fenced-in enclosures while Bill O'Reilly called them "loonies" certainly speaks better for Obama and worse for Republicans than anything else. It certainly doesn't speak well of the silly people, the stupid people, the petty people who see these choreographed parades as anything but bought and payed for advertising: bought and payed for with our country's future.

The man in the monkey mask

I call it a conservative thing. Some may differ, but certainly one has to see Arizona as a red state and Arizona has become the first to follow in the path of countries like the UK by putting up speed cameras everywhere, under the pretense of making the roads safer. Of course as we've seen since the end of the misguided 55 mph national speed limit, speed enforcement in most cases does nothing to reduce the highway death rate and often may make it worse. It's demonstrable that over 80% of drivers exceed posted speed limits and according to the National Motorist's association, the few people who rigidly stick to the limit or drive slower than the prevailing speed, are involved in the majority of accidents - up to six times more than average. The mantra amongst traffic engineers was that the safest speed was that which 85 percent of drivers would maintain and until politics got involved, that's the way it was done. Today, that 85% will drive at 10 to 15 over in a 70 mph zone and generally will keep up that speed if the limit drops to 65. The few pokes who want to do 70 either cause knots of traffic or are forced to sit in the right lane while 18 wheelers honk at them and entering traffic has to take evasive action. Meanwhile as speeds continue to rise, accident rates continue to fall, particularly on the interstates which account for only a small fraction of fatalities.

Arizona however, is using that old "speed is a factor in all accidents" fallacy and the typical scare tactics about dangerous highways to cover up the privatization of law enforcement. It's about money and police departments, like most everyone else, are strapped for revenue. The Arizona machines have issued half a million tickets in the last year and the state has made a $23 million dollar profit.

Arizona is also a libertarian state and some have gone from amusing pranks to sabotage and perhaps even to murder to defeat what they call a "speed tax." Silly String and post-it notes have been found covering camera lenses. One fellow from Phoenix has accumulated 37 tickets but refuses to pay since he cannot be identified as the driver -- he wears a monkey mask while he drives. An Arizona Department of Public Safety spokes man tells us that he "has repeatedly endangered public safety and that the agency is taking his case very seriously." and yet, despite constant surveillance and stake-outs trying to get a picture of him putting the mask on, they haven't been able to find a reason to pull him over - and of course, grave danger to the public safety that he is, he hasn't had any accidents, which may lend evidence to my assertion.

Most Arizonians are either protesting or ignoring these robo-tickets and there may be a link between the shooting death of a speed-enforcement van operator and public outrage over the surveillance program. Citizens groups intend to put up some ballot initiatives next year to ban these things. I hope they succeed.

Limbaugh's Lament

My first thought was, he lied in every word

-Robt. Browning-

When the man behind the curtain speaks, Republicans listen. Others become speechless. It's all too predictable that Limbaugh would support Joe Wilson's outburst and not surprising that he claims to have been squealing "you lie" himself throughout the entirety of President Obama's health care speech.

"He is lying, President Obama is. From the moment he opens his mouth until he ends the speech"

he grunted on his radio show yesterday. Of course and as usual, no discussion of how or about what he actually lied ensued. Boss Hog said he lied, that's enough and Wilson never should have apologized and his colleagues shouldn't have pressured him to do so.

It reminds me of the first time I heard his radio show. I was driving through Georgia, in the days before satellite radio and I decided to give him a minute to see what he was about.

[Rush] "I mean, the guy (President Clinton) just makes me sick"

[caller 1] "Ditto Rush! I see him and I want to vomit"

[caller 2] "Ditto, ditto - oh ditto ? Rush everything about him is disgusting. He makes me sick, sick!"

The call and response chorus went on and on until I turned it off and I've only heard him a couple of other times in all these years - I mean he makes me sick, but I can usually tell you why without inventing things.

That no plan offered by anyone provides health insurance for illegal residents of the US isn't hard to determine, but Rush isn't about facts, he's about emotions; hate for the most part. It's easy for him to say that Obama is plotting

"to completely tear down the institutions and traditions that have made this country great."

It's impossible however, to make a case for that without lying. In fact his attempts to preserve some of those institutions are the basis for other Limbaugh anger crusades. I'm at a loss to understand what American institutions made America great and are now in peril from the concept of making insurance available to everyone, unless stupidity, dishonesty and perhaps insanity are institutions. I'm at a loss to understand just how

SEC. 246. NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS.
Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.

Means the opposite of what it says without subscribing to Limbaughian logic. In fact it proves that Rush is a liar, something all to easy to do, but one thing Rush knows is that the more absurd and preposterous the claim the less effective is the irrefutable proof of its falsity. Rush knows and Rush profits and Rush keeps on lying and Republicans keep on following in his wake, terrified to disobey. It's not so much that he makes me sick but that he is the sickness.

Joe Wilson's Word

“You lie!” he shouted at the President in response to Mr. Obama's attempt to debunk the Republican shouting point that his health care reform plan would give free health care to illegal immigrants. My reading of HR3200 ( and everyone else's) indicates that this is true, but South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson hasn't read it or doesn't care or just likes to shout insults in his official capacity as a Republican congressman and bar brawler.

The outburst last night certainly shocked not only the left side of the house but the side that had been rolling their eyes, smirking and looking offended at every clear elucidation of what the plan would and would not do. Although I'm constantly reminded by Republicans at how the entire concept of hatred and irresponsible rhetoric originates in the "Liberal" domain, nobody can seem to remember such an outburst, not even when Nixon told us he was not a crook or when G.W. Bush told us whoppers about Atomic bombs and uranium deals and mobile chemical weapons labs and Saddam Hussein being behind the 9/11 attack. He lied and anyone who said so was called a traitor and an ally of the "terrorists."

It's a new kind of game out there now. Disruptions, threats, thuggery, Glenbeckery and outbursts like this aren't part of some spontaneous culture change. I think it's deliberate and it's deliberation born out of desperation. A majority of us want some government administered option like Medicare.

Of course it came as an excellent counterpoint to the President's hints that gratuitous obstructionism was going on and that wasn't lost on the right side of the aisle. Wilson had to call the White House to apologize. Republican leaderSenator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told the NY Times

“I think we ought to treat the president with respect”

and I'm sure other Republicans agree - particularly when he's telling the truth.

I'm with McCain

The Supreme Court is about to revisit prior decisions that in some cases for as much as a century have been restricting the ability of corporations and trade unions to finance political campaigns. That there should be one vote for every eligible citizen is inseparable from any definition of democracy, but is a corporation an eligible person with human rights like any person?

John McCain says no, and I absolutely agree. In a press conference with Russ Feingold, McCain said:

“The one thing I know is that if the court overturns long-standing demands — long before McCain/Feingold as it’s called, the ban on corporate and union campaign contributions, I think you will see an era of corruption.”

That's an understatement. Massive amounts of money give massive political power and that turns democracy's somewhat level playing field into a cliff. As voters, we can't mount trillion dollar ad campaigns, produce movies, buy networks. As voters in a system where money does all the talking we might as well not vote. In fact, we're already in a position where this will be decided without our vote and thanks to the consistent appointment of ultra right wing judges over the past decades, it will be decided by long gone administrations whose policies are no longer in vogue.

Can we look forward to the Toyota administration? The Cigna Presidency? ( I almost said the Halliburton Administration, but arguably, we've already had that.) What's to stop it, since there are corporate entities, foreign and domestic, big enough to put anyone in office. It's a situation far more frightening than losing the health care reform battle.

Cross posted from The Swash Zone

The no option option.

Now that my 65th birthday is less than 6 months away, I'm starting to get large numbers of e-mails trying to sell me motorized wheelchairs, "mobility" devices, diabetes supplies, reverse mortgages, medicare supplement plans and other stuff I don't need and don't want and have no use for. What do they know that I don't know? Nothing at all, it's just that we're all being sorted and filed like those old Holerith cards the young and hip no longer remember and finding that the many headed beast of commerce has put us in the out box can come as a shock.

For some it may be a shock to find that we haven't been a nation of individuals and individualists able to define ourselves for ourselves as the myth would have it, but things to be sorted, labeled used or put on the shelf as the corporate barons decide. It gets increasingly hard, but keeping off the conveyor belt that the great Deus ex Corporation uses to transport us from cradle to grave is worth it and I think all the more with every passing year and with the diminishing respect that goes with it.

Why, when retaining that respect, retaining the ability to steer one's life, to change it's course, to decide which road to take next, is increasingly the center of an aging person's consciousness do people insist that it's in my best interest to cover my eyes, take my hands off the wheel and trust to luck and to someone who benefits from my dying soon?

When the people would just as soon get rid of you, that's when -- and people like Sarah Palin and her coven of demented familiars certainly don't care if there are "Death Panels" in the Democratic health plan because they know of, tolerate and are supported by the death panel industry: the insurance companies. Every one that can read and does read knows that it's absolute fiction, but they keep trying to keep the meme alive and alive it remains despite absolute proof to the contrary: the government will come to your house and talk you into suicide. A government panel will decide to keep you from getting treatment to keep costs down. Sarah Says. Fox says. the billions the Insurance companies are pouring into lobbyists says. over and over until the lie becomes flesh.

How can the President make a speech and speak louder than all that money? I don't know, I can barely bring myself to hope that for once in my lifetime the magic word "socialism" won't stun our minds into submission to authority. I hesitate to hope that people will even bother to listen to him, or at least not the people who need to. I don't bother to hope much at all these days.

No bottom

I've had enough of dwelling on trolls and I'm not going to let this one get whatever goats I've got left.

For the moment I'm just going to move on, so, just as a test, I'm removing the information in this post, perhpaps to be continued later, but I hope not.

Are we at the bottom of the barrel yet?

I would never say all Republicans are psychotic, but for some reason every demented person I've encountered in recent months has traded in his voices from Neptune and instructions to kill from the neighbor's dog for pre-packaged rants from the Republican playbook.

That's OK, it gives me something to write about other than cars and boats and the sad state of the ionosphere these days, but it no longer suffices to rave about birth certificates and Marxism, it's no longer enough for people who dropped out of high school to give us their views on international finance and monetary policy or to make crude racist jokes or simply to babble incoherently about "Liberals." It's now personal.

Some wise Republican supporter spent most of last night posting comments here, using my screen name: dozens of them, going back for months. Nasty sexual comments about my family, accusations of pederasty and of course the entire RNC catechism. The kind of stuff I could easily use in a court of law if Blogger will give me the name of the tortfeasor. Of course I don't expect any Republican to step up and say "gee, that's really not what we are all about" at least not without tongue firmly implanted in cheek, because these days, that's what they are all about: libel, Bible and babble; screaming in the street.

I've had to implement comment moderation. I welcome any comments from sane and reasonable people whether I agree or not, but it must now be subject to a delay.

New Blogs

Perhaps you've noticed a few new links in the right hand column. In recent weeks I've added:

• Mario Piperni dot com
• A Radical Perspective
• The Green Eagle
• Lu Cifer's (Daily...maybe!) Rants!
• Pharyngula
• Napman57's Weblog
• The Political Junkie
• Sleeping With The Devil

I know, that's a lot of blogs, but they're well worth it.

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.

School for Socialism

I agree with Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer. President Obama, by going on TV and telling school children to work hard, stay with it and take personal responsibility for their education is spreading a Socialist ideal. Good republican families should teach their kids to kick back, drop out and stop listening to Socialists.

"As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology."

and there's nothing more socialist than getting an education. God (the fundamentalist one) only knows education is the enemy of everything Jim Greer and I stand for: school prayer, using the schools to preach that abortion is murder and that complete anarchy will allow a free market utopia.

the Democrats have no problem going against the majority of American people and usurping the rights of parents by sending Pied Piper Obama into the American classroom.

even when that majority seems to be less than 25% as concerns public health care.

Of course Greer and I part company at this point. He simply doesn't go far enough. Public schools are government run, which means they are much more expensive than private schools and they are supported by unfair graduated property taxes which hurts those who create jobs. They should be closed and the responsibility of brainwashing and restricting information should be left to the parents!

Public schools -- the next thing you know we'll be having public police, fire, EMT and even public government! All these things should be returned to the private sector just like George Washington would have demanded if he'd been psychotic Conservative.

The entire government should be run by a private corporation, the military by private corporations, the police, etc. That way it would cost less, the invisible hand of morality for profit would keep them all honest and we would all live happily ever after in the miraculous prosperity of the Worker's Paradise while the State withers away.

amen.

Lift up thy voice

Remember the first time you heard Handel's Hallelujah Chorus or the Laudamus te from Bach's B minor mass? I felt the same way, only different, when I read Profit 451's rant on Lu Cifer's Rants.

It needed to be said, it was said better than ever I could and it sums up nearly everything I have been trying to put out there piecemeal for years and years. Read it now. pass it on.

Blackwater

Barack Obama is not trying to set up government death panels as the idiot Palin has told us, but he sure as hell is continuing to employ Blackwater Death Squads. I believe this to be the most dangerous, if not the most sinister development in American history. Comparisons between the state of our union and the collapsing Roman Empire are a dime a dozen, but when mercenaries begin to outnumber regular military, it becomes a threat and when the mercenaries have an objective which includes an evangelist theocracy, when they openly indulge in orgies, child prostitution, murder, destruction of evidence, illegal arms dealing, money laundering, tax evasion and armed mayhem with impunity while arrogantly refusing to allow congress to examine their books -- the threat demands that overused Roman comparison.

Such use of mercenary troops, immune from Congressional oversight and legal obligation, may or may not be unconstitutional, but it is, in my opinion, unconscionable.

The contract with Blackwater and its subsidiaries was set to expire in May, however the Obama administration has now decided to temporarily extend it through September, according to The Nation. Barack Obama needs to end this danger immediately. If we cannot raise sufficient troops to maintain our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, we need to get out now, because the presence of heavily armed, privately owned military forces loyal to who knows whom in the United States may be the biggest threat to national survival since the Civil War.

WTF?

I really hate the proliferation of telephone keypad abbreviations like "WTF?" It's childish, and pointlessly vulgar and grossly overused. That weakens the use of the full phrase which in rare but important cases demands the full response: WHAT THE F*CK?

“I believe what we’re seeing is an orchestrated attempt to radically change this country from what the founders had in mind,”

said Dallas, Texas "pastor" Stephen Broden yesterday on Glenn Beck's dementia fest. What the F*ck? I'm not sure which "founders" he's talking about since many of them favored slavery and few would have advocated any system wherein Broden could speak with any kind of authority -- even the authority of Paranoid dementia. What is this man raving about? why it's about health care of course, the most frightening thing there is to the anarchists and corporate feudalists who pay Beck's salary and own the broadcast network that blares his madness to the world. Perhaps it's so frightening since "conservatives" have fought every effort to grant civil rights of any kind to minorities in our history. There is little ground left to hold in the name of "the founders."

Maybe Beck is desperate since his monstrous lies which include calling Obama, Justice Sotomayor and others racists, have cost Fox some big sponsors, but instead of backing off the "invasion from Mars" rhetoric, he's provided more disreputable and despicable sources to back him up. Broden thinks that advocates of abortion rights are only trying to get rid of Blacks. He thinks that Marxist radical racists like Barack Obama are trying to destroy our culture and wants to launch hit-squads to murder minorities. Never mind that countries with government sponsored or provided insurance options seem to be free of any of these predicted outcomes much less Marxism. We don't need to show you no steenking evidence, we're "conservative."

As Andrew Belonsky writes at Gawker, Beck may be trying to assert that he he himself is not a racist because he's found a black man as demented and racist as he is and

"Certainly he can't be called a racist, because he's black."

So if a black and therefore not racist guy agrees that Obama is a fascist, socialist, Marxist, genocidal maniac like Hitler and Saddam Hussein, Beck, ipso facto, is not a racist.

WTF?